Da Plane, Da Plane
At The Monkey Cage, Diego von Vacano (from Texas A&M) argues that the Evo Morales plane incident is going to literally transform the hemisphere. There will be a spike of "leftist rhetoric and policies" and even Chile and Colombia will become more leftist as a result solely of this one incident.
This seems overstated to me, and I wrote in comments that I was not convinced. He responded that Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela making the asylum offer was already evidence. I think this is more tat for the initial tit, so to speak, and not a harbinger of nationalizations or other typically "leftist" policies.
I think we should also be careful not to conflate criticism of the incident with anything beyond the incident itself. Peru, for example, can condemn it while continuing talks with the United States.
As I've written before, this incident is serious and deserves condemnation. At the same time, however, I just don't see evidence that it will have the massive effects that a number of people are ascribing to it.
1 comments:
Yeah, you're probably right that it won't have massive effects. However, it might give Latin American governments some reason to act with greater solidarity in defense of other Latin American governments that are overly maligned in the U.S. press (and in the blogosphere). Once they recognize that the U.S. government and its toadies in Europe can humiliate one of them, the obvious question ought to be: "Which Latin American president will they try to humiliate next?" The best way to avoid being humiliated is to stick together.
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