Mark B. Rosenberg - The United States and Central America: Geopolitical Realities and Regional Fragility

The United States and Mexico:

Between Partnership and Conflict

Jorge Domnguez and Rafael Fernndez de Castro

The United States and Chile:

Coming in from the Cold

David R. Mares and Francisco Rojas Aravena

The United States and Venezuela:

Rethinking a Relationship

Janet Kelly and Carlos A. Romero

The United States and Argentina:

Changing Relations in a Changing World

Deborah Norden and Roberto Russell

The United States and Peru:

Cooperation at a Cost

Cynthia McClintock and Fabian Vallas

The United States and Brazil:

A Long Road of Unmet Expectations

Mnica Hirst, with an essay by Andrew Hurrell

The United States and the Caribbean:

Transforming Hegemony and Sovereignty

Anthony P. Maingot and Wilfredo Lozano

Routledge
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The transition from authoritarian rule to constitutional government

The continent-wide economic depression of the 1980s and the subsequent shift toward more open market-conforming economies

The end of the Cold War in Europe

The transformation of relations with the United States

Each of these major events and processes was an epochal change in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. More striking is that all four changes took place within the same relatively short time, though not all four affected every country in the same way. They became interconnected, with change on each dimension fostering convergent changes on other dimensions. Thus, by the beginning of the new millennium, we had witnessed an important transformation and intensification in U.S.Latin American relations.

This book is part of a series of ten books on U.S. relations with Latin American and Caribbean countries. Each of these books is focused on the fourth of these four transformationsnamely, the change in U.S. relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Our premise is that the first three transformations provide pieces of the explanation for the change in U.S. relations with its neighbors in the Americas and for the changes in the foreign policies of Latin American and Caribbean states. Each of the books in the series assesses the impact of the epoch-making changes upon each other.

The process of widest impact was the economic transformation. By the end of 1982, much of North America, Western Europe, and East Asia launched into an economic boom at the very time when Latin America plunged into an economic depression of great severity that lasted approximately to the end of the decade. As a consequence of such economic collapse, nearly all Latin American governments readjusted their economic strategies. They departed from principal reliance on import-substitution industrialization, opened their economies to international trade and investment, and adopted policies to create more open market-conforming economies. (Even Cuba had changed its economic strategy by the 1990s, making its economy more open to foreign direct investment and trade.)

The region-wide economic changes had direct and immediate impact upon U.S.Latin American relations. The share of U.S. trade accounted for by Latin America and the Caribbean had declined fairly steadily from the end of World War II to the end of the 1980s. In the 1990s, in contrast, U.S. trade with Latin America grew at a rate significantly faster than the growth of U.S. trade worldwide; Latin America had become the fastest growing market for U.S. exports. The United States, at long last, did take notice of Latin America. Trade between some Latin American countries also boomed, especially within subregions such as the southern cone of South America, Venezuela and Colombia, the Central American countries, and, to a lesser extent, the anglophone Caribbean countries. The establishment of formal freer-trade areas facilitated the growth of trade and other economic relations. These included the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which grouped Mexico, the United States, and Canada; the MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South), with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay; the Andean Community, whose members were Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela; the Central American Common Market (CACM); and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). U.S. direct and portfolio investment in large quantities flowed into Latin America and the Caribbean, financing the expansion of tradable economic activities. The speed of portfolio investment transactions, however, also exposed these and other countries to marked financial volatility and recurrent financial panics. The transformation in hemispheric international economic relationsspecifically in U.S. economic relations with the rest of the hemispherewas already far-reaching as the twenty-first century began.

These structural economic changes had specific and common impacts on the conduct of international economic diplomacy. All governments in the Americas, large and small, had to develop a cadre of experts who could negotiate concrete, technical trade, investment, and other economic issues with the United States and with other countries in the region. All had to create teams of international trade lawyers and experts capable of defending national interests and the interests of particular business firms, in international, inter-American, or subregional dispute-resolution panels or court-like proceedings. The discourse and practice of inter-American relations, broadly understood, became much more professionalless the province of eloquent poets and more the domain of number-crunching litigators and mediators.