Diplomatic Realism in Latin America

Mike Pompeo gave a speech the State Department heralded as being about U.S. "diplomatic realism." It is quite a statement, full of inconsistencies, logical fallacies, and falsehoods. Basically, diplomatic realism means the U.S. pursues its interests while lying about it.

--"No one in the region any longer believes that authoritarianism is the way forward." Sadly, this isn't true, as Latinobarómetro results show that 28% of Latin Americans think authoritarianism is no worse than democracy. Indeed, support for democracy down dangerously, and we should not assume otherwise.

--He mentions Hezbollah and Iran, which signals he ignores his own analysts about their importance.

--"There is more democratic cooperation in our hemisphere today than at any point in history." This makes no sense.

--"Colombia has closed its border to Venezuela out of concern that protesters from – terrorists from Venezuela might enter." Quite the slip of the tongue there. Protesters are terrorists are far as he is concerned.

--"We cannot tolerate these regimes inviting bad actors in, and trying to turn allied democracies into dictatorships.." This makes no sense.

--He argues that Obama's Cuba policy made everything in Cuba worse, without evidence (because there isn't any).

--After discussing Cuba, where economic sanctions have failed, he notes that sanctions will succeed in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

--He does reject armed force in Venezuela, so there is at least something positive.

--After noting how much the U.S. has punished governments, then going on to discuss punishing Central American countries with aid cuts, he insists U.S. foreign policy is based on "respect for how our neighbors and allies run their affairs." Laughable.

--He then argues that U.S. immigration policy is based on respect for its neighbors, which is too stupid a claim to bother getting into.

--he mentions religious liberty multiple times, which is code for discrimination against the LGBTQ community, contraception, etc.

--He says the U.S. will be "Vigilant that new democratic leaders don’t exploit people’s frustrations to take power, to hijack the very democracy that got them there." There is no shortage of irony there.