"Pink Tide" is a Useless Term

This article in the Christian Science Monitor disappointed me because I thought we were finally leaving behind the "pink tide" label. It refers to leftist or center-left government elected since Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1998. Those who use the term generally see these governments as a bloc, or nearly so. So the question is whether "they" will last, with the assumption there is a "they."

The article ignores cases where the left is not winning (e.g. Colombia and Mexico) where voters have been gone back and forth (e.g. Chile and Guatemala) or elections where the right very nearly defeated a leftist incumbent (e.g. Brazil and Venezuela). It also ignores the vast differences between "leftist" governments.

Ultimately, we'd be better served by breaking out of the left/right dichotomy, which is really locked in the Cold War. For all of the talk from Venezuela, capitalism won. This means so-called "leftist" governments combine greater attention to social welfare with kowtowing to foreign investors. Ask Peruvians who live around mines what they think of Ollanta Humala (who, incidentally, says he is not left or right, but "below").

It also means they talk socialist and govern capitalist. Michelle Bachelet, after all, is a "socialist" while carefully protecting the most capitalist economy in the hemisphere. Criticisms of her come more from her words than from her policies, which are typically much less radical.

I know "left" and "right" are deeply embedded terms that won't go away. But can we at least retire "pink tide"?

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Obama and Cuba

For those of you who have read Back Channel, or at least my review of it, this story is like a blast from the past. There are rumors that the Obama administration might have a minor policy change with Cuba, something that could be "concrete," but we're not sure. What we do know is that even minor policy shifts require ridiculous secrecy, multiple countries (in this particular case it's Spain, while in the past it's been Mexico and others) and high-pitched screaming from Cuban Americans in Congress. This story could've been written at almost any time since the 1980s, when the Cuban American National Foundation became prominent.

There may be some policy changes and they will have a real impact (economically and otherwise) on Cubans, albeit not on a major scale. What's notable is how minor shifts are treated as something much bigger. We all need to remember that thanks to Helms-Burton, substantive erosion of the embargo laws must come from Congress. For all the talk about executive orders these days, President Obama can tinker, but not much more. Yet even tinkering is viewed as radical.

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Cuba and Argentina During the Dirty War

Newly declassified documents show that Cuba and Argentina had a close and positive relationship during the era of the Dirty War.

Although they kept it quiet, Argentina's dictators had a gentlemen's agreement with Castro. Under the pact, Videla supported Cuba's bid in 1977 to join the Executive Council of the World Health Organization, a diplomatic feather in Castro's beret. The quid pro quo was that Havana stump among nonaligned nations to name Argentina to the United Nations prestigious Economic and Social Council. Apparently Cuba's vote was the 18th and decisive ballot, landing Argentina the coveted UN seat. 

Both sides profited from the arrangement. "The Cubans always, always supported us and we supported them," Gabriel Martinez, then Argentina's ambassador to Geneva, said, though no one appeared to be listening at the time. 

The secret cables help explain the prolonged bonhomie between the two otherwise inimical regimes, highlighted by the cordial encounterbetween Castro and Argentine General Reynaldo Bignone, during a summit of nonaligned nations, in New Delhi, in 1983. 

It also shines a light on why Castro could carry on for hours in the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana railing against right-wing tyrants but never raise his voice against the Argentine junta, even as it threw scores of discontents in the dungeon or into the Atlantic.

Fidel Castro had quite a lot in common with Henry Kissinger, both consummate realists and friends of the junta. Ideology goes out the window for what you perceive as a critical national interest. If this means accepting the deaths of thousands, so be it.

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Misinterpreting Executive Action

President Obama's executive action on immigration has received plenty of criticism, but from Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog we get the most creative.

It will be construed in the developing countries ruled by Chavistas, Mugabes, and the like as encouragement to continue ruling by fiat whenever a troublesome legislature refuses to rubber stamp their will.

Apparently Nicolás Maduro would not continue exercising traditional executive authority in Venezuela on his own--he needed this "encouragement" from President Obama.

Meanwhile, a lot of bad actors running fake republics around the world are smiling, and that is not good for U.S. policy or interests.

Previously, Maduro (who is running a "fake" republic) had been frowning, wondering how to justify his actions. Now he is smiling because Obama followed the precedent of previous presidents.

Periodically I've noted the U.S.-centric view of U.S.-Latin American relations. This is an excellent example. The article suggests that leaders around the world make domestic decisions based on U.S. politics. If anything, Chavistas spent a lot of time comparing Maduro to other Venezuelan presidents, not to the United States.

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Guns in El Salvador

The British NGO Action on Armed Violence published a report on guns in El Salvador. It takes pains to explain how many different sources of guns that exist, but one inescapable conclusion is that the United States is directly responsible for many of them. By funding the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s, the U.S. was responsible for sending thousands of weapons--some very powerful--to the country. More recently, the massive gun trade in the United States has brought even more guns into El Salvador. (We can thank Cuba as well, because it funneled many to the FMLN.)

So El Salvador is hit both ways. The United States has a long history of intervening, then leaving countless guns post-conflict that make their way into criminals' hands. That's true in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Additionally, it is hit by the gun trade, which is currently a major problem for Mexico, which unlike El Salvador has strict gun control laws. It's not clear how you even begin to address the problem.

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Back Channel to Cuba

I read Leogrande and Kornbluh's fantastic book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (2014). It is really well researched and just fascinating to read.

My 10 year old daughter has a hamster, which gets into her little wheel and runs like crazy. Sometimes she even gets on top of the wheel and runs like she's on a treadmill. The poor thing never gets anywhere, but keeps trying, or at least there is the illusion of trying. So goes U.S.-Cuban relations.

Thus, one remarkable point of this book is that many different go-betweens--reporters, business leaders, exiles, diplomats, you name it--have spent countless hours traveling and talking, with very little to show for it. Sure, there are periodic breakthroughs, but the core sticking points remain equally sticky after 50+ years. As Robert Gates once remarked after a meeting, "The initiative had been worthwhile, but had failed utterly" (p. 184). But they keep trying. Each chapter starts to sound amazingly similar even though the names change (for obvious reasons they do so much more frequently on the U.S. side).

Talks have floundered in large part because both sides consider the preconditions too steep. In the 1970s, Cuba would not abandon Africa. Meanwhile, the U.S. would not abandon the embargo. More recently, Cuba would not hold elections while the U.S. still would not abandon the embargo. The U.S. wanted compensation for nationalized property, but Cuba would only discuss that if there was compensation for damages wrought by the embargo and exile attacks.

One great feature of the book is its judicious tone. Leogrande and Kornbluh don't often take sides--they just dig deep into the historical record. The book cries out, though, for a framework. For example, I am not convinced about Fidel Castro's commitment to negotiations. Sometimes, as in 1975, he happily blew off months of talks. We need a better grip on his own goals to know when he wanted advancement, when he didn't, and how far he really wanted them to go. The U.S. was committed to negotiations only to the extent that they required concessions solely from Cuba. So at what times was a positive outcome even possible or likely? Conceptually, what should we realistically expect?

And just now, we have a U.S. official saying maybe we can negotiate, but Cuba needs to take more steps first. The more things change...

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Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace

I read Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace (2013) and I was disappointed. As far as I can tell, it does not add to our understanding of why World War I started. Instead, it advances the vague argument that no one thought it would happen, then it happened because people did stuff.

It's a long book, so is filled with anecdotes--to be fair, many of them interesting--about how people didn't think war would happen even though we all know now it was about to erupt. But what annoyed me again and again were the brief and entirely superficial comparisons to the current day. They are so superficial that I assume some editor forced them in.

So when there is discussion of new powers, then she adds a single sentence to say she hopes the U.S. and China will handle things well, or with communication she mentions trying to deal with social media. Or she compares Nicholas II to Saddam Hussein because they both like uniforms (p. 275).

Meanwhile, the Tsar does stuff, the British do stuff, the Kaiser does stuff, etc. Which stuff was more important? We aren't told. Whose decisions were most critical? We aren't told. Which country did the most decisive stuff? We aren't told.

The book ends with "There are so many questions and as many answers again" (p. 645). That's true only if you don't engage the existing literature and think about which answers make more sense than others.

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Immigration and Presidentialism

There is plenty of uproar over President Obama's announced executive actions on immigration, piled on top of his past statements about how he wasn't authorized to do them. Republicans are talking of "anarchy" if he pushes them through. He is an emperor, a king, etc., etc.

This reminds me a lot of the long debate about presidentialism in Latin America, which sought to explain the breakdown of democracy. Perhaps most prominently, Linz and Valenzuela's book The Failure of Presidential Democracy argues that presidential systems are very rigid in part because they do not easily allow for the executive to leave if he/she no longer has the confidence of the legislature. Particularly in a second term, there is no way to hold a president accountable. Meanwhile, the president will inevitably blame Congress for gridlock.

Their pessimism has been criticized since then, such as by Shugart and Mainwaring. In particular, they note the importance of many other variables--inequality for example--that explain breakdowns of democracy. The overall point of rigidity, however, is an interesting one. Democracy will not break down in the United States, but the rigidity exacerbates partisan rancor. In the 2014 midterm elections, voters divided the government even more sharply, so the president was in a position to choose between capitulating or to fighting harder. Obama is choosing the latter, but short of impeachment/conviction--which is really difficult--Republicans cannot remove him from office.

I wish that the popular discussion about gridlock would come back to these institutional realities. Our presidential system is simply set up this way. At times we resemble Latin American cases, though plenty of variables--an apolitical military, for example--do not lead us down the same destructive paths. But as polarization increases, the system we tend to venerate (because it was set up by the "Founding Fathers") can actually make things worse.

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How to Make U.S.-Latin American Relations Worse

A member of Congress who happens to be mine has an idea to damage U.S.-Latin American relations. He argues that if the United States provides foreign aid to a country, then at the United Nations that government must vote the way the U.S. wants on the issue of Israel. According to the recording, he appears to like the idea of making this a law but first wants to "reason" with these countries.

So, for example, before the United States helps alleviate the problem of children migrants, all Central American countries must give their UN votes about Israel to the U.S. government. If the U.S. wants to provide anti-narcotics assistance to Mexico, the Mexican government has to hand its votes to the U.S. That will go over well, I think.

The really odd part of this idea is that it assumes foreign aid is not tied to U.S. interests. Foreign aid aimed at drugs, for example, is not there for the good of the receiving country. Once a country refused to give its UN vote away--as would immediately happen--the result would be harmful to U.S. interests. The hemisphere would turn immediately against the United States just for the naked attack on sovereignty.

This has no chance of passing, but is an example of how too many policy makers have thought over the years. The United States is correct and opposing views are not valid.

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Enabling Law in Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro announced all the laws he has passed through the Enabling Law that gives the executive decree power. It was about to expire. They cover a wide range of issues that he says will help the country combat the "bourgeoisie's economic war." It is a "new era in the revolution."

The enabling law was passed last year, and according to Maduro its main intent was to fight corruption. I would expect the current batch of laws aimed at the economy will be about as successful as the anti-corruption efforts.

The government defends the laws, arguing accurately that they were used by other governments in the past. This logic seems a little strange, since they also claim those governments were corrupt and inept.

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Aging (and Ageism) in Academia

I saw this article on aging professors at the Chronicle of Higher Education. The core argument is that older professors are selfish--they harm students and they're "hogs"!!--if they do not retire. If you don't retire by 70, you are not "honorable."

Set aside the issue of using anecdotes while claiming universality (I have plenty of anecdotes about great and productive older professors). Or the unsubstantiated argument about harm. The real problem I have with this argument is that it assumes that either younger professors are unselfish or it is fine if they're selfish because they're less expensive and more energetic.

A dirty secret of mine is that while in my 20s I entered this profession selfishly. I discovered many years ago that I got tremendous personal enjoyment reading, writing, analyzing, etc. about Latin American politics. This blog shows that I still do. I think my passion for it comes out in class. But it's largely selfish. The decisions I make are often centered on me--how exciting is this opportunity? Will it help pay for my children to go to college? I work hard and I think I do a good job, but it's not out of selflessness.

When I hit 70 years of age I will have to decide about what's left of my future. I will make that decision with me and my family first and foremost in mind.

Professors approaching 70 who are still enamored with hanging out with students and colleagues, or even fretting about money, have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves.

Curse those professors who love coming to work! I'm not even approaching 50 (well, OK, define "approach") and I openly acknowledge that I am doing this mostly for myself. I don't feel guilty about that.

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Obama v. Congress on Immigration

On immigration, President Obama and congressional Republicans have hit head on immediately, after all the talk of bipartisanship that no one actually believed. From the Washington Post:

Congressional Republicans said Friday they are considering a series of showdowns over funding the government if President Obama goes ahead with his expected plans to unilaterally overhaul the nation’s immigration system. 

Instead of passing a spending bill in coming days that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, they are now mulling a short-term measure that expires early next year, according to more than a dozen top lawmakers and their aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

These are signals. Whether or not Republicans will actually go through with a showdown over immigration is another story. Messing with government functioning is broadly unpopular and the last time it hurt Republicans more, so this is clearly a risk.

I don't see much risk for Obama. For several years, conservatives have criticized him for not securing the border, while his base criticized him for not pushing anything through. I don't think the conservative base can dislike Obama any more than they already do, so he has almost nothing to lose. The strategic upside is bringing back the people who chose not to vote in the midterm elections because they felt he was all talk and no walk. He can also claim that he's taking these actions because Congress refuses to pass legislation.

An interesting question is whether it would've been a good idea to do this before the elections. Instead, he used the rationale that pushing immigration would hurt candidates in tough races. Those candidates lost anyway, and perhaps might've fared better had his inaction not annoyed people who might actually have voted.

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Religion in Latin America

Pew Research has a bunch of thought-provoking polling data on religion in Latin America. There are plenty of political implications as well, though at this point we can only really speculate on them. Some highlights:

--Only 69% of Latin Americans are Catholic
--19% are Protestant
--8% are unaffiliated

Here is the trend over time:

What implications?

--Protestants are more conservative on social issues than Catholics, while unaffiliated are less so. This will likely lead to more tension on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.

The growth of "unaffiliated" is intriguing:

I wonder why we see it in some countries and not others? It's amazingly high in Uruguay, which corresponds as well to the more permissive social environment we see there. What's going on in the Dominican Republic?

On the other hand, Mexico remains very Catholic in comparative terms, yet we also see political support for more liberal social policy. That may correspond to urban versus rural divides. That in fact explains a lot here in North Carolina along the same lines!

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ISIL and Latin America

Carl Meacham asks the question of where Latin America is with regard to fighting ISIL.

Many of the countries in the anti-ISIL coalition are providing support via military aid and airpower. But with an adversary like ISIL, support is just as important on the domestic side. Much of ISIL’s threat stems from its ability to recruit support and militants from outside the Middle East. And the potential that those recruiting efforts could target Latin Americans is not farfetched.

I'm not buying this. Connecting the Arab population to ISIL is a big stretch. Maybe you get a deranged volunteer here and there, as you do in the United States, but I just don't see Latin America as a battleground for the Middle East (even with the always-cited Argentina bombings 20 years ago, the Triborder Area, etc).

I see Latin America as mostly irrelevant to ISIL. Sure, encourage countries to combat money laundering, which is actually far more important for drug trafficking than for the Middle East. But we shouldn't encourage sucking Latin America into a regional conflict created in large part by the United States.

So the real answer to the question is that Latin America is primarily on the sidelines and that makes sense.

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Nicolás Maduro Is In a Barbie World

AP reporter Hannah Dreier keeps her tongue firmly in cheek with this story, which highlights the bizarre ideological swirl that characterizes Nicolás Maduro. In the name of socialism, he mandated discounts on, among other things, Barbies.

Andrea Alberto, a 22-year-old student, managed to nab a stack of dolls for her stunned-looking 3-year-old, under whose arm she'd tucked an "I Can Be Cheerleader" Barbie, complete with sparkling pompoms.

The Venezuelan government apparently gives a lot of thought to Barbie. Back in 2007, Hugo Chávez went off on Barbie (and Superman) and made a point of how much he disliked the doll. And just one year ago, the Venezuelan state news agency had a story associating Barbie with the empty-headedness of the opposition.

It's a nice clientelist move to make the price of dolls artificially low, but it's not particularly socialist. Barbie remains a symbol of the United States and is produced by a U.S.-based multinational corporation, Mattel. Barbie is all about capitalism. Certainly that is the impression I get as my 6 year old daughter pushes her around in a fancy car and decides what jewelry she's going to wear. Viva la revolución! Barbie o muerte!

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Lamenting the Berlin Wall's Fall

Via Hugo Pérez Hernáiz, this is just priceless. Aporrea, a pro-government Venezuelan news site, ran an op-ed about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.

It laments the occasion and yearns for the glories of the Soviet Union. Those were the days.

The wall protected the workers from the evils of capitalism, so he felt sad when it came down. It was absolutely necessary to build the wall because the United States was building a "Dollar Wall" of capitalism.

Hugo Chávez himself had rejected 20th century Marxism, preferring what he called "21st Century Socialism," which still has no real meaning but at the very least is not intended to copy the Cold War Communist model (or at least one of the models) as Cuba did. Clearly Aporrea thinks its readership would be interested in nostalgia about 20th century Soviet Marxism, though given what we know--e.g. "the people" were badly exploited--it's hard to understand why.

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Legatum Prosperity Index for Latin America

I happened across this prosperity index by the Legatum Group, which is focused on investment. What's funny is that I saw it on TeleSur, which quoted it uncritically despite Venezuela's poor showing. From that article, this interest seems to stem from the fact that the index tries to view "prosperity" in much broader terms than just GDP growth (so, for example, Chile ranks lower than Uruguay even though its economic growth is better). It has eight different ranked variables.

For Latin America, such indices generally show similar results. Uruguay is in great shape (1st in Latin America, 30th in the world) and Venezuela is in terrible shape (100th in the world, one place worse than Rwanda). Chile (33rd) and Costa Rica (34th) are also high. Panama is right up there as well (41st). Honduras is the worst in Latin America (105th overall) and it has been getting steadily worse each year.

As with any index, you take it with a grain of salt. At the very least, though, they're useful in sparking discussions about comparative progress in the region, especially in terms of how different areas can be high and others low. Eocnomic growth without improvements in education, health, etc. is not really prosperity.

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Is The Latin American Left a Disappointment?

Manuela Picq argues in Al Jazeera that there is a "collective sense of disappointment" about how little structural change has occurred under leftist governments. Further, "the revolutionary left disenchanted its supporters in the most overt ways."

I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly in one way and completely disagreeing in another. She is exactly right that there is a lot less revolution going on than claimed. Nothing being done is particularly new, and some of it is just ordinary capitalism. And she's pretty angry about it:

The problem with such development strategies inherited from the 1970s is not only that they perpetuate dependencies most leftists and progressives in the region are trying to reverse. They continue to treat Indigenous territories as terra nullius, dismiss Indigenous authority and allot their territories to extractive industries that fuel the global capitalist system.

The problem lies in making the jump from those facts to "collective disappointment." Rafael Correa and Evo Morales are perhaps the most popular presidents in the history of their countries. Venezuelans kept voting for Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro even while the economy tanked. Daniel Ortega has high approval ratings.

I can understand the idea that many governments had potential for political and economic transformation, and some people are disappointed they did not pursue it. But I am not convinced this sentiment is broadly shared by government supporters.

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Shlaudeman Memo on Cuba

I've been reading LeoGrande and Kornbluh's Back Channel to Cuba, which I will review once I'm done. As I read, I am struck by how much U.S. policy is on a treadmill, where we claim to be moving forward even though we're not.

In 1975, as the Ford administration--under Henry Kissinger's direction--prepared for some sort of normalization of relations, Harry Shlaudeman wrote a memo outlining the situation. It's declassified here at the National Security Archive.

Castro now has no apparent reason to concern himself further about the OAS sanctions. In fact, he has already succeeded in breaking the inter-American "blockade" without making a single significant concession and without ever having to deal with us. He may believe that a little patience will bring him the same happy result with respect to the U.S. sanctions...In brief, from where he sits, and from what he can see of the course of U.S. politics, there is not much to negotiate about.

Fast forward forty years--after the Cuban Democracy Act, Helms-Burton, changes in travel and remittances, agreements on immigration, etc, etc.--and this remains true. The United States has no leverage over Cuba. The status quo works quite well for the Castro regime, and it feels no need to make concessions.

Right after this memo was written, Fidel Castro sent troops to Angola and U.S.-Cuban relations went back into a tailspin. As always, he was in the driver's seat.

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Ditching The IACHR

The Dominican Republic left the Inter-American Court of Human Rights because of a decision about granting citizenship to the children of Haitian immigrants. Leiv Marsteintredet has an extensive discussion about the issue.

This is a dark moment for the Dominican democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable groups living in the country, the Haitian migrants and Dominican-Haitians. It is also a dark moment for the IACtHR and the whole IASHR, which now results weakened. Even thought the Dominican Republic may be a small and unimportant country in Latin America it is still the most democratic and democratically stable country to ever leave the IACtHR. Peru left in 2000 under Fujimori, an act that never took effect since Fujimori resigned not long after, and Venezuela withdrew under Chávez (in addition Trinidad and Tobago withdrew in 1998). The Dominican case, I fear, is likely to be the worst blow of them all. Peru returned after re-democratisation with Fujimori's resignation, and it is not unlikely that Venezuela would return should the Maduro-regime fall or the opposition win a future election. Today, however, the Dominican Republic is led by its most international human rights friendly government in decades, if not ever, and the regime is a stable electoral democracy, not any form of populist authoritarian regime. It therefore seems very unlikely today that the Dominican Republic will return any time soon.

Aside from the particulars of the case, we're now seeing a country leave the IACHR not because of ideology (such as Venezuela, which claims conspiracies) but simply because it didn't like the outcome. This follows Colombia's decision in 2012 to pull out of the International Court of Justice because it did not like the ICJ ruling on Colombia's maritime border with Nicaragua.

One would think that in this more democratic era, Latin American governments would be more willing to accept decisions made by international institutions. Yet they're going beyond mere disagreement. I think that this merits collective attention in the hemisphere--Venezuela will rant about U.S. control, of course, but all governments need to discuss why they're suddenly ditching these commitments.

Adhering to international institutions requires giving up some sovereignty. Unfortunately, the United States is in a particularly bad position to lecture anyone on that topic, but should be part of a discussion about how a regional human rights regime should function.

Boz has a quick take here as well.

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French View of U.S. Election

Last week I spoke to a French reporter, who then quoted me in two articles. I can read French only to the extent that it resembles Spanish, so I'll trust he got my quotes right! I emphasized the challenge of getting anything done if Republicans took control of the Senate, and more locally the ways in which the Latino vote might or might not matter for the election given how President Obama has talked so much and done so little on immigration.

We're a funny people. We claim to hate gridlock so much but consistently vote to create it. Collectively we'll complain constantly for the next two years, blaming politicians for the mess we're largely responsible for.

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My Voting Day in North Carolina

2014 was really an election about pet peeves. Mine, at least. For example, why do you make people vote at an elementary school but not let school out? I've tried to vote in the morning before and it's a mess of cars and school buses. Today I went late morning after my class and the parking lot was full, mostly because a school was trying to function. We also seem not to like the idea of just having a federal election holiday, which would make it easier for working people to vote. But I digress.

Next pet peeve: normally I get practically attacked when I approach the polling station, as activists lunge at you and try to hand you stuff. It is very annoying and sometimes slightly creepy. Today only one guy could get close to me, and he was slow so I was easily able to side step him as I might do to a slow-approaching zombie. There was another person there, endlessly and oddly repeating "Thank you for voting" to anyone and everyone around.

Inside there were about 25 people in line and 8 voting machines. It took 20-25 minutes, which wasn't too bad. All the volunteers did a great job and all the signing in, etc. went very smoothly. No pet peeves there at all.

Choosing, though, can be problematic in my district. I live in a weirdly shaped district where only one party has won for over 50 years. This year the incumbent was simply running unopposed. North Carolina is an embarrassment in this regard--too many House elections are just jokes. Hooray for the strongest democracy in the world! So I wrote in my own candidate, who may or may not be fictional.

As for the high profile senate race, it was a dispiriting and uninspiring campaign between two--actually, three--terrible choices. On that one I just held my nose and chose. We've been saturated with ridiculous ads that seem to string together non sequiturs. It was the most expensive senate race in history. This too is an embarrassment.

They reached all media. In the past week we took to ignoring the phone. It literally got to the point that my apolitical 12 year son asked me not to vote for either Thom Tillis or Kay Hagan because he was so sick of their online ads. Way to inspire young people!

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Reassessing the Drug War (Or Not)

Check out Russell Crandall's article in The American Interest on the drug war. Great, nuanced stuff. The core of the argument is that the Obama Administration talks about changing the thrust of this war and gradually (but haltingly) has done so at home, but the militarized approach in Latin America remains unchanged and unquestioned.

It is simply not enough for the Obama Administration to tell the American public that it has “reason to be optimistic” about future drug abuse containment efforts, but then never reconcile this expectation to what the data actually tell us. Rosy predictions also undercut any effort to assess whether the amounts we spend on the effort are worth it. If cocaine use decreases but marijuana use grows over a given period, is that progress? Does that justify the budget expense? We don’t know, because we don’t even ask those kinds of questions. So we don’t know if the money could have been better used on one of the innovative programs that the Administration is so enthusiastically promoting, like drug courts or fair sentencing. Nor does the strategy address the obvious question of whether the drop in U.S. cocaine consumption simply reflects a shift to another substance. 

Since the strategy mutes any connection to what happens in Latin America, the attentive public also cannot readily know that, while domestic cocaine consumption has dropped by half, there has been a concomitant spike in consumption in Brazil and Colombia. Another less publicized development that might dampen our optimism is that Evo Morales’s Bolivia no longer cooperates with Washington on the drug front. That almost no Bolivian cocaine makes its to the United States (American consumption is almost exclusively from Colombian product) likely explains why Washington did not make more of the reality that the U.S.-led drug war is no longer operating in that heretofore vital South American “source” country—not because of any success it scored, but only because commercial patterns changed. 

Innovative programs or Sweden-style rhetoric aside, there is and will continue to be an inertial and almost impregnable military-narcotics-industrial complex, especially on the international side of the drug war—though it will always get less attention than the domestic side of drug policy, especially when punctuated from time to time by Mountain Sweep-style media spectaculars. The Obama Administration has shown that we can embrace, at least tentatively, a more holistic approach to our domestic issues. The question, though, is whether we have the courage to apply a new approach within the broader war on drugs, and tell the American people that the old way of doing things in Latin America just doesn’t work. Only courage can enable change. So far there is no sign of it.

He's right. Almost nobody anywhere beyond activists and concerned academics are asking the right questions. Plus, the phrase "inertial and almost impregnable military-narcotics-industrial complex" hits the nail on the head.

This means that at least for now we're stuck. It is incredibly difficult to get Congress and senior policy makers on board for a real rethinking of U.S. counter-narcotics policy in Latin America. Like so many other militarized programs, many are afraid to change because they'll be labeled as soft. That's one reason that long, counter-productive wars (from Vietnam to Iraq) drag on.

Sadly, we don't even know if we're "winning" because we've never defined winning. So you keep on fighting for the sake of fighting, of doing something.

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Hezbollah in Peru

There is a report that a Hezbollah agent was arrested in Lima and Mossad believes he was going to carry out an attack on Peruvian Jews. I am scratching my head about this because the Jewish population in Peru is tiny, only a few thousand in the entire country. The article suggests that maybe Israeli backpackers would be targets.

Here is the Interior Ministry's statement.

There is a lot we don't know here, but I keep wondering why Hezbollah would make this effort in a country that from a political perspective has little to no symbolic or strategic value.

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