What would President Monroe say?
China: Learning to enjoy the Brazilian bear hug. Presidents Lula and Hu. Source: Xinhuanet
An Economist article discusses the growing presence of Great Powers, especially China, in Latin America, flouting nearly two centuries of U.S. dominance in the region, since the articulation of the Monroe Doctrine in the early 1820s. In the near term, this worry is overdone. Longer-term, if the U.S. continues to damage its sovereign creditworthiness, i.e. by not putting in place a medium-term fiscal consolidation program (that is, to reduce America’s rising government debt) — a program that should include putting health care reform on hold, then America’s relative decline will accelerate and this will affect its projection of power in the Western Hemisphere.
In the 1820s, as revolution in Spain led to unrest in its colonies in the Western Hemisphere, the Holy Alliance of autocratic east European courts — Russia, Austria and Prussia, threatened to intervene in these colonies. President Monroe in 1823, backed by the British Navy, warned Europe that any extension of European power to the Western Hemisphere would be “dangerous to our [U.S.] peace and safety.”
Nowadays, as the world moves increasingly toward a multipolar system, power projection in Latin America is largely in the form of commerce. China, India and others seek, above all, the region’s raw materials to fuel their rising economies. True, with economic influence comes political influence. True as well, such powers as Russia and Iran seek direct political influence through arms sales and energy deals with the likes of Chavez’s Venezuela, Cuba, and Evo Morales’s Bolivia. But these countries are on the fringe. More of interest to U.S. policymakers are China’s economic relations with the major economies of the region, notably Brazil. China’s economic relations with Brazil have been hand in glove — raw materials fueling a manufacturing juggernaut, while with Mexico, they have been competitive. Brazil is also a manufacturing nation and will one day find China an unwelcome competitor.
So, the thrust of the foreign “intervention” is commercial and good for Latin America. This is good for the United States as well, insofar as China supports growth in the region and the U.S. no longer has to be relied on so heavily as the source of demand and investment for the hemisphere. In previous U.S. downturns, Latin countries hovered on the brink of default (or in fact defaulted), whereas this crisis they have weathered, due in part to demand from China and elsewhere.
China, for its part, is “intervening” in Latin America as a rule-abiding member of the global capitalist system, wrought by the U.S. and its allies. This should not worry American policymakers. Sure, they should keep an eye on the mischief-making of countries like Iran and Russia that seek to upset the U.S. in its own backyard, much as Krushchev did with Cuba in the middle of the last century (however less dramatic and threatening the current mischief-making is). Again, the smartest thing U.S. policymakers can do is get America’s fiscal house in order — by first of all, postponing health care reform — and revive the formidable U.S. economy — upon which the country’s power projection is based — not least through continued banking overhaul, workout of real estate loans, policies to increase household savings, and a reform of monetary policy (by discarding Greenspan’s discredited approach).
