Latin American Perception of Threat

Thanks to Orlando Pérez for pointing this out to me. The Pew Research Survey looked at what citizens of different countries currently see as threats. It includes a diverse group of Latin American countries, and they are not concerned about the same things as the United States.

Climate change is a big deal to Latin Americans whereas in the U.S. we have a big chunk of the ideological spectrum mocking it (and in fact one member of Congress is boycotting the Pope's speech to Congress today because he doesn't like the Pope emphasizing it). The U.S. is obsessed with Iran and Latin America is not.

Part of this is that Latin American countries do not have strong interests outside the hemisphere and are more focused on their own conditions, which are greatly affected by climate and economic stability. What this also means is that we see a lot of disjuncture between U.S. and Latin American priorities. This is not nearly as bad as it was during the Bush administration (where refusing to support the invasion of Iraq was a major bone of contention) but it's still there.