Peace Support Operations and the U.S. Military by Dennis J. Quinn

Author:Dennis J. Quinn [Quinn, Dennis J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781839746642
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Barakaldo Books
Published: 2020-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Part III: Peace Support Operations: Regional Perspectives

WESTERN HEMISPHERE SECURITY: CAUTIONS ON NEW MILITARY MISSIONS — Luigi Einaudi

Impact of NAFTA

NOT SINCE FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AND THE GOOD Neighbor Policy has the United States moved so explicitly to recognize and strengthen its geopolitical moorings in its immediate neighborhood. The end of international conflict in Central America and the silent revolution of democratization in South America add to the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) potential for increasing prosperity for the entire Western Hemisphere.

Argentina and Brazil have set a positive global example by ending their nuclear competition. With Chile, they have banned chemical and bacteriological weapons. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela have joined Mexico in lowering inflation and dismantling centralized economies.

That the political systems of these countries have remained democratic during periods of severe austerity and major adjustment pains demonstrates that democracy and economic reform are compatible. The lesson that dictators are not necessary to impose and maintain the discipline of economic reform is more than welcome—it has global implications.

Ambassador Luigi Einaudi is a Senior Advisor or the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, dealing with the Western Hemisphere, Southern Europe and multilateral affairs. Prior to his present position, he was the United States Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States. Ambassador Einaudi earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard.

With economic growth rates in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela higher than those in the United States and Canada, the wealth gap between North and South may finally begin to narrow over the next generation. NAFTA could thus mark the end of the lost decade in Latin America and the beginning of a new era of hemispheric prosperity and good neighborhood.

Post-Cold War Challenges

Haiti, drug terrorism, and looming instability in Cuba make the point that the end of the Cold War does not mean the end of trouble, even in the Western Hemisphere. Misery and mass migration can overwhelm the most traditional of relationships and the most precise of legal guarantees. Uncontrolled flows of automatic weapons through Miami may be replacing Cuban-trained guerrillas as threats to Latin American governments. The special security needs of small states in the Caribbean and the lingering boundary disputes and potentially explosive mixes of poverty and internal violence in Latin America can still dwarf natural calamities like earthquakes and hurricanes.

The Western Hemisphere cannot, moreover, be isolated from the broader troubles of the global community. The end of the Cold War presents challenges to global order on the scale of the end of World Wars I and II. Yet after successfully defeating Iraqi aggression, the world community’s response to the far more complicated geopolitical repercussions of the disintegration of the Soviet empire remains unclear: will we overcome centrifugal nationalism, as we generally managed to do after world War II, or will we indulge it, as we did after World War I?

A final difficulty in these storms is a missing conceptual anchor. To quote the June 1993 report of the Eighty-Third American Assembly: “During the Cold War,...we had an enemy and our policy was to contain that enemy.

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