The Long Crisis

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told foreign service officers at a meeting at the State Department that Iran, China, and Russia are making “disturbing” gains in Latin America and Washington can no longer afford to shun leaders from nations like Venezuela and Bolivia.

“The prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs. It didn’t work,” Clinton correctly said. “If you look at the gains particularly in Latin America that Iran is making and China is making, it is quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders,” she said.

“We are competing for attention and relationships with at least the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians,” Clinton stated , and it was not in the U.S. interest to turn its back on any country in the hemisphere.

The approach taken by the Bush and other American administrations has been very short sighted and counter productive. Telling other nations that you are “with us or against us” turned off even leaders of nations who are supposed to be our allies. The punitive approach to maintaining sanctions against Cuba has brought disdain and dismay from friends and foes. Not that the Chinese mind. They have been busy cutting long term deals with Cuba to help explore and to drill for oil in promising offshore Cuban oil fields.

In fact the Chinese have been clever in pursuing long term deals for natural resources from Latin America, Australia, Africa, and all points in between. While the United States has been hopelessly bogged down in two self destructive expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the Chinese have been entering into long term commercial contracts for the raw materials that they will need to power their economy past the US within the next twenty years or so.

The Chinese have proved once again that the pen is more powerful than the sword. Hopefully, under President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton some common sense will be restored to American diplomacy. Unfortunately, the position taken by Obama in taking only limited actions towards Cuba and escalating the war in Afghanistan do not look promising.

The United States needs to rethink the way that it interacts with nations even if the recent past has a history of conflict and of misunderstandings. The days of Monroe Doctrine like proclamations are over.

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