AN INCREASINGLY RANCOROUS war of words between the United States and its closest northern neighbour, Canada, is by all accounts electrifying an otherwise limp Canadian general election campaign.
I’ve been reading accounts. I will not regurgitate them here. It may not be at the centre of our attention that the Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is embattled; that his Liberal Party is in trouble over allegations of sleaze; that the US Ambassador to Canada has blundered in, joining battle with Mr Martin; that Canadians are angry at America’s approach to global warming; or that the country is still seething at America’s decision (now reversed) simply to ignore a World Trade Organisation ruling outlawing US tariffs on Canadian timber.
We note such things in passing. From thousands of miles across the Atlantic, these things may seem as small beer to us as (no doubt) our own domestic politics seems to Canadians.
But something which does demand attention leaps from the page in every report. All sides — including Mr Martin’s Conservative challenger, Stephen Harper — agree that their leader’s spat with Washington is bringing him new support among his voters.
Mr Harper is perplexed that the US State Department should have accepted Mr Martin’s invitation to a fight. Didn’t they know that knocking the White House brings votes in Canada?
Those of us who have been wary about America’s emergence as an unchallenged superpower tend to direct our criticisms towards what we call “bullying”. We have constructed an image of a neo-imperialist giant which does what it pleases, throws its weight around, tramples on weaker nations, and generally gets its way.
But the trouble is that while America aims to lead the free world, all over that world American foreign policy is going seriously adrift. Objectives are being stymied. Costs are mounting. Fruits are not coming in. The really serious objection to Bushite foreign policy is not that America is trying to strong-arm the rest of the world; it is that America is not succeeding.
Nowhere is this truer than in the United States’s own backyard: the Americas. Now I do not follow international relations with a professional eye. I can tell you little more about how US foreign policy is faring, country by country, than you can glean yourself by reading newspapers. No great insights follow.
But amateurs are well placed at least to stand back and take a look at the general picture. Were you or I to attempt a foreign policy equivalent of the US President’s annual State of the Union overview, what would that overview be for the New World?
All across the Americas, Washington’s foreign policy strategy is in trouble. I say “Washington’s” because, though George W. Bush’s tactics and tone are very much his own, much of the strategy must be common to all US presidencies. The strategy is to seek and succour in the Americas a growing community of nations that are democratic, free-market, open to trade with and investment from America, and friendly to Washington.
How is that strategy faring? Washington’s policy of drawing Latin American economies towards a sort of single American market in which the US is the dominant partner and the dollar rules has always appealed to me. But it has not, for the junior economic partners, proved the quick success that Chicago School economists hoped. In small and weak economies, terms of trade have suffered, exports have often languished, and during downturns the politics of the free market has proved fragile in the face of the hungry and jobless mob.
In Argentina they bang saucepans. In Bolivia they used to string up their presidents. Electorates have lurched to the left. Now fearful governments are moving steadily towards the left. “Globalisation” has become a dirty word. Meanwhile, China has been seeking ground-breaking oil and gas agreements across the continent.
An exception to this trend is instructive. President Uribe of Colombia is greatly to the US’s liking, and despite (or perhaps because of) his troubled human rights record, remains popular. It is bashing Marxist guerrillas, however, not the free market, that endears him to voters. As with Alberto Fujimori (who saved Peru from the Shining Path terrorists) the Centre-Right in Colombia is dependent on fear of terror for survival. The economic part of their ideology is not a winner.
Of Cuba the less said the better. Even more upsetting to Washington is the possibility that whoever succeeds Castro may need to demonstrate equally anti-US credentials. Guantanamo doesn’t help. Oil-rich Venezuela has elected a populist socialist president, Hugo Chávez, for whom Washington’s dislike is intense, and who returns the compliment. Venezuela’s democratic structure is breaking down. Ecuador’s left-leaning Lucio Gutiérrez is an admirer of Chávez.
Brazil, the economic powerhouse of the continent, has elected the maverick “Lula” (Luis Inacio da Silva) who has infuriated, and been infuriated by, Washington — famously instituting a visa requirement for US tourists in response to America’s imposition of a visa regime on Brazilians.
Argentina elected the left-leaning Nestor Kirchner, who has now ousted Roberto Lavagna, the stern monetarist Finance Minister who brought the economy back from ruin. As with Brazil and Ecuador, Washington has to make the best of leaders who are not ideological allies but not, at least or yet, sworn enemies. The same is true in Chile, where the centre-left Michelle Bachelet has just won the first round of the presidential race.
Mexico likewise faces a tight race next year between one centre-right and two leftist candidates; the problem is that the Mexican economy is not responding to American-inspired liberalisation. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, administrations acceptable to Washington are holding the line, but under pressure.
Seven weeks ago the leftist coalition Frente Amplio won the elections in Uruguay. It was an overwhelming repudiation of the free-market former-president, Jorge Batlle, vilified as a Bush-poodle. In nearby Paraguay President Duarte presents Washington with few problems. But Paraguay is not a proper democracy.
Two enormous headaches are gas-rich Bolivia and oil-and-gas-rich Peru. Tomorrow Bolivians will choose between the leftist, ethnically indigenous coca-grower Evo Morales, and a former president, Jorge Quiroga. It will be tight. Quiroga is the favourite.
Washington would be relieved. But that would split this volatile country cruelly between the poor, Indian-dominated Andean highlands, and the wealthier and whiter lowlands. In a future where national strikes and civil strife may loom, America will be on the side of the rich against the poor.
Something similar threatens in Peru. Early next year (with Fujimori probably still detained in Chile) Peruvians are likely narrowly to prefer centrist candidates to an emerging leftist populist, Antauro Humala. But Humala has huge and growing support among the poor, and both his opponents have already tacked leftwards to head him off. Again, Washington looks destined to end up on the side of the well-fed against the hungry.
It isn’t working. Reasons why that matters for Washington would include the sub-headings Oil, Gas, Minerals, Drugs, China and Illegal Immigrants, but should also include worries about America’s image as a moral leader for capitalist democracy. And I am afraid that it is in the tension between those last two words that the core of the problem resides. Capitalism isn’t winning elections, and Washington preaches both.
Those of us who also preach both (as I do) need to look hard at this contradiction. I do not know how it should be resolved.
