The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 1 covery and burgeoning inequality in the United States has set the stage for rising protectionist senti- ment. Absent a broader social pact in our own country that in- vests in productivity and spreads the benefits, as well as the costs, of free trade more equitably, the pro- tectionist impulse will remain dif- ficult to counter. In any case, the stalled free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama deserve to move forward. In April, an agreement between Colom- bian President Juan Manuel Santos and President Barack Obama on labor rights issues improved the chances that the accord would be submitted to Congress. But gener- ally, trade pacts are unlikely to gain long-term, broad- based support in the absence of a coherent, shared vision of the role of trade in U.S. economic growth, coupled with a strategy for cushioning the adverse effects of trade on specific sectors and communities. Trade adjustment assistance has been a positive component of the agenda in the past, and should remain so in the future. North versus South America Much of the focus, and certainly the resources, per- taining to U.S. policy in the hemisphere have been de- voted to addressing the security crises in Mexico and Central America, and to a lesser extent the Caribbean, due to drug trafficking and other activities of organized crime. This is entirely appropriate and urgent given U.S. proximity to these countries and subregions, the role of American demand for illegal narcotics in fueling the vio- lence, and the role of arms trafficking and money laun- dering on the U.S. side of the border. The Obama administration has made great strides in embracing the notion of shared responsibility for the orgy of drug vio- lence engulfing Mexico. Under the Merida Initiative, announced in 2007 and funded in 2008, a widening array of U.S. agencies — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Justice Department, Customs and Homeland Security — have deepened strategic cooperation with Mexican coun- terparts on issues from intelligence sharing to banking reg- ulations. U.S. assistance to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean has also gone up, but may not be sufficient to reverse or halt the penetration of drug car- tels at all levels of society. Meanwhile, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Of- fice of National Drug Control Pol- icy, has made modest but none- theless significant adjustments in U.S. domestic counternarcotics budgets, increasing spending for prevention and treatment of drug use by more than 17 per- cent in 2010 and treating domes- tic drug consumption as a public health issue, not just a law enforcement problem. But there is still no national debate over more fundamental ways to reduce the de- mand for drugs in this country, which remains a central driver of violence and institutional decay throughout the region. Despite the shift in U.S. policy emphases, Mexico demonstrates more than any other Latin American country how U.S. domestic political considerations trump foreign policy in ways that undermine hopes for a new direction. By September 2009 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives had revoked the licenses of only 11 of the thousands of gun shops along the 2,000-mile U.S.- Mexican border. Nor has there been any push by the ad- ministration or by Congress to renew the 10-year ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004. And neither the ad- ministration nor the Senate has made ratification of the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufac- turing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explo- sives and Other Related Items a priority. (CIFTA was adopted by the Organization of American States in 1997 and submitted to Congress the following year by President Bill Clinton.) The Dangers of Partisan Polarization Ultimately, U.S. policy toward Latin America will re- main a product of domestic priorities and partisan consid- erations as they interact with changed realities in the hemisphere. There is little evidence to suggest — and much to refute — that the United States is irrelevant to Latin America or no longer considers the hemisphere a priority in diplomatic or economic terms. At the same time, many Latin American countries are unimpressed with the United States’ record on issues that we have declared a priority, including reducing poverty and inequality, addressing climate change and developing al- F O C U S Mexico demonstrates how U.S. domestic political considerations trumpforeign policy in ways that undermine hopes for a new direction.