tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674624.post7702336566559014081..comments2024-02-21T05:16:22.788-05:00Comments on Two Weeks Notice: A Latin American Politics Blog: More Latin America Op-EdingGreg Weekshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15765114859595124082noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674624.post-59658055656748301402008-11-30T11:54:00.000-05:002008-11-30T11:54:00.000-05:00Greg, Liked your two postings on U.S. policy/strat...Greg, <BR/><BR/>Liked your two postings on U.S. policy/strategy options on LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean) for the Obama Administration.<BR/><BR/>You mentioned key concept of flexibility and a flexible mindset in your posting of November 28, and I think that sums it up. <BR/><BR/>I might add that there's strong tendency of editorial writers and policy types in the White House and State to come up with general, one-size-fits-all vision for the region couched in platitudes and generalities, as you say. Thereafter, the U.S. attempts to shoehorn each country in the general vision, thus forcing each country into the unnecesarily defensive positions to which you refer. In essence, we keep coming up with regional, top-down paradigms which present broad,"you're for us or against us", choices to leaders in the hemisphere, and this approach simply hasn't worked, because the "down" part of that paradigm frequently refuses to go along with what the "top" (read, Washington, etc.) posits as the regional vision.<BR/><BR/>I submit that, dia en hoy, we should work from the bottom up in developing regional visions. By that, I mean that we should figure would what our policy should be vis-a-vis each and every country as our first priority. Once we've done that, we should come up with a regional vision/stragegy statement that takes into account those varied and various approaches and seeks to describe in regional terms how we propose to deal with LAC. <BR/><BR/>I realize that such an approach would make it nearly impossible for editorialists, State policy makers and Brookings Institute sorts to issue regional bromides as you put it, but too bad; broad-brush platitudes such as those coming out of Brookings, WHA/PPC, or the NYTimes are cliches at the least and counter-productive straight-jackets at worst, for field practicioners of foreign policy on the ground in our Embassies....Tambopaxihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978665666431987347noreply@blogger.com