30. Briefing Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rogers) to Secretary of State Kissinger1
Some Reflections on Latin America
I promised you an analytical piece on Latin America before my trip—and one after. And here are some pre-trip reflections.
I. The Postponement of the Buenos Aires MFM.
We had given you an earlier memorandum on the reasons which led Latin America to the postponement of the Buenos Aires meeting. They are essentially that the Venezuelan drive for leadership in Latin America coincided with Latin American disillusionment with the New Dialogue, and increasing apprehension over the possibility of U.S. retaliation against efforts to defend raw material prices. There are some ironies in this:
(A) Venezuela’s Denunciation of the U.S. Trade Bill. There is, first, a heavy irony in the fact that Venezuela led the charge of economic coercion against the United States on account of the Trade Bill. For it is hard to imagine anything which has had such disastrous effect on the development aspirations of the non-oil producers in Latin America as the recent oil price increase. The oil price increase affected the balance of pay[Page 93]ments of these countries directly; no country can develop without energy, and a reduction in the capacity to import energy has a direct effect on development programs. In addition, the non-oil producers are by and large producers and sellers of other basic commodities—copper and other metals, bananas, coffee, etc. The prices of these have softened considerably in recent months. This happened because of the recession in the industrialized countries. There is a direct correlation between the prices of raw materials and industrial activity in Europe, Japan and the United States. The oil price increase was a major cause of the industrial slowdown, and have in the decline in commodity prices. It thus has had a double-whammy effect on the economic outlook of the poor countries.
There is no public indication that Venezuela is prepared to face up to this fact, nor that any of the other countries in Latin America will tackle Venezuela on the oil price increase. (Blanco has inscribed the oil price increase on the agenda of the OAS General Assembly as an item for discussion. We shall see whether he and other countries follow through, and if Venezuela begins to make noises about a price concession on oil to Uruguay.)
(B) The Importance of the Trade Bill Overall. The second irony is that the Trade Act, which is now thought in Latin America to have contributed about as much to world order as Genghis Khan, is a major step forward. This is most particularly so because it authorized the U.S. to begin the Geneva negotiations. And the Act looks even better if one compares it to the condition the world would have been in now without it—rife with moves toward protectionism, and the United States market increasingly closed to Latin American exports. There is little appreciation of this in Latin America. The Venezuelans have made no effort to make the point. And when we do so, it is met with surprise.
(C) Preferences as “Economic Aggression.” There is a third irony: that the issue arose at all with respect to the granting or withholding or preferences. Preferences are, by definition, preferences. Someone must be excluded. They are the grant of an advantage.
And the irony is particularly heavy in this respect because it was Venezuela and Ecuador who are complaining. Venezuela’s total tariffed commodities are about $15 million. Had it been eligible only a very small fraction of its industrial output would have been advantaged. Beyond that, there is every indication that Venezuela, in any event, should be excluded from anyone’s preference system. For it is hard to imagine any country—the Arab states to one side—less entitled to preferences. Or to state it another way, more appropriate for exclusion from a preference system. Certainly, Venezuela, in terms of its present balance of payments, has much less claim on GSP than Italy. So [Page 94] for Latin America to complain about the exclusion of Venezuela from the preference system is truly ironic.
(D) A Real Example of Economic Coercion. There is a fourth irony. The United States has been guilty of “economic coercion.” The ban on arms aid to Chile is a perfect example. The Congress insisted that we not trade in arms with the Chilean junta until and unless that government changed its internal policy. This was a clear case. But no Latin has raised it.
II. Some Generalizations about Latin America.
In addition to the irony which is always a consolation to the civilized man, there are, I think, several principles which may be extracted from these recent events.
(A) The Leaders and the Followers. One would have to conclude at the moment that Venezuela is a new Latin leader. If it can do as well as it did with Schacht as Foreign Minister, we are bound to expect some considerable initiatives under Escovar. Carlos Andres Perez, the President, is ambitious to make his name in Latin America. He may come a cropper, in his attempts. As Bolivar said, he who attempts to make unity in Latin America plows the sea. But Carlos Andres Perez is going to try. The acid test will be for him the forthcoming Caracas meeting of Latin American heads of state.
It would be idle to deny that he has a rather clear field. Mexican foreign relations are a shambles. Rabasa, in the period prior to the final cancellation of Buenos Aires, took three different and utterly inconsistent policy positions—first, in favor of non-cancellation; then in favor of your conciliation of Venezuela and Ecuador in order to allow B.A. to go forward; and, finally, a last desperate effort to seem of consequence by a statement endorsing a position already taken in Cuba by Echeverria’s Resource Minister that Mexico would not attend Buenos Aires if Cuba did not go. It will be interesting on my trip to see if I can find out anyone who is now prepared to take Mexico seriously in the foreign relations field.
As to Brazil, one can only conclude that President Geisel is not interested in foreign relations at the moment (with a possible exception of maintaining and cultivating Brazil’s ties with the neighboring small countries of Bolivia, Paraguay and to an extent Uruguay—in part in competition in the traditional way with Argentina.) From all appearances, Silveira has played, or been forced to play by internal constraints, a follow-the-leader role on the Trade Bill/Buenos Aires debate. And there evidently are no new initiatives to be expected from Brasilia in the near future on any of the major vexing issues.
(B) Multilateral Disputes and Bilateral Relations. We have in ARA attempted to do an estimate of the extent to which the debate over the [Page 95] Trade Bill and Buenos Aires MFM have had fallout in terms of bilateral relations. We have found, in fact, very little. There is a precious little linkage between the rhetoric of the multilateral issues—which as a matter of institutional practice are largely monopolized by foreign ministries—and the day-to-day grist of relations in the bilateral area. I would hazard a general principle. We can continue to have warm and productive bilateral relationships even when Latin America, with its flags of solidarity unfurled, is knocking us around in the OAS. By the same token, the most cordial atmosphere in multilateral fora will have little fallout effect if some nattering concrete issue arises to plague our bilateral relationships.
(C) Bearbaiting. One should quickly add another principle of inter-American relationships, however. That is that in certain countries and at certain times there will be a positive domestic political advantage to baiting the United States. This is not universal. And it is not true at all moments in history, even in any single country. The curve, for example, goes up and down in Mexico. Argentina is another example of the variation in this incentive. It was profitable for Peron in his earlier tenure to be profoundly anti-United States. Not so today.
III. Our Policy
What in the circumstances should be our policy? It seems to me that the answer to that question must depend on what our interests are. And in order to define what our interests are, it is best to start with a clear definition of what they are not.
Our interest is not to be loved. Too often in the past American policymakers have taken love and admiration as a test of policy. They have looked back with not entirely justified nostalgia to the earlier Roosevelt era of the Good Neighbor Policy, and to President Kennedy’s personal cachet in the hemisphere. But I think we ought to be quite clear that U.S. policy in Latin America is no longer a popularity contest. Not that the United States cannot be regarded with respect and warmth. Rather, that we should not assume that the index of verbal friendliness is a measure of the success of our policy, or that on the other hand, a diplomatic discourse marked by tough language is necessarily evidence of failure.
U.S. popularity in Latin America, if the past is any guide, is a cycle. There is kind of boom and bust phenomenon, periods and spurts of euphoria, in which Latin America responds to a U.S. initiative with a show of enthusiastic interest. But these booms, like all booms, contain the seeds of their own decay. For over and over again these periods of upswing have been followed by a turn of the cycle downwards. What were interpreted as promises and assurances of U.S. help and sympathetic understanding give way to a realization that the United States cannot and will not cave in to the totality of Latin verbal demands.
[Page 96]In short, Latin America today is no place for Valentine’s Day diplomacy.
By the same token, it is not in the United States’s interest to see the frustration and disappointment of Latin American aspirations. In the past, when the Alliance for Progress euphoria wears off, Latin America convinces itself that the U.S. is just a big economic bully. That is the kind of period we are in today.
Latin Americans must understand that we understand that we are not advantaged by their poverty. Our economic fortunes and future wealth do not depend on continuing Latin America as the haulers of wood and drawers of water—doomed to be raw material exporters for the rest of time. Begger-thy-neighbor is not in our best interest. Therefore, it is not U.S. policy.
Nor is U.S. policy related to any very significant strategic interests in the area. Sub-Sahara Africa aside, Latin America is probably of less strategic significance to the United States than any other region in the world. It is the source of a substantial proportion of our foreign oil requirements, as well as other minerals. But in large part—Cuba and the Missile Crisis aside—it was not the cockpit of any serious Cold War issue. Nor does it seem likely to be. Nor is Latin America a linch pin in the world economic and financial system, like Japan or Europe. The hyperbole President Kennedy always liked—that Latin America is the most important area of the world—is a bad overstatement.
What then are our interests, if they are not popularity, or the maintenance of a tributary relationship, or security?
The best way to work out a definition of this interest, it seems to me, is in terms of a vision of what kind of Latin America we would like to see five, ten or twenty years from now. My view of the Latin America most compatible with long-term United States interest is a region of two dozen disparate states, moving ahead effectively and with confidence toward their development goals—that is to say, increasingly in command of their own destinies, increasingly able to ensure that their citizens enjoy the decencies of life, increasingly self-confident and comfortable in the world environment.
That state of affairs is years away (but closer than it was fourteen years ago when the Alliance began). Until we get closer to it, I see a period of challenge. That challenge will come from the deep Latin American concern with the economic power of the United States, and Latin America’s fear that we are prepared to use that power to force the other states of this hemisphere to policies they sense are not in their national interest.
From this have come the suggestions (touched on in other papers, and which Ambassador Crimmins has put so forcefully in his recent cable to you) that during this transition period we reduce the multilat[Page 97]eral fora which provide rich opportunities for bloc confrontation, and strengthen our bilateral understandings around the hemisphere.
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Summary: Analyzing the state of U.S.-Latin American relations and assessed U.S. interests in the region, Rogers suggested the United States rely less on multilateral forums and more on bilateral relationships in its dealings with Latin America.
Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P830035–1100. Confidential. Drafted by Rogers on March 4. According to telegram 52560/Tosec 155 to Kissinger in Aswan, March 8, Rogers was to travel to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia between March 10 and March 17. (Ibid., D750081–0245) No post-trip briefing memorandum from Rogers to Kissinger on Latin America has been found. The memorandum from Rogers to Kissinger on the postponement of the Buenos Aires meeting has not been found. The cable from Crimmins referred to in the final paragraph of this memorandum is telegram 1508 from Brasilia, February 27. (Ibid., D750070–0373.)
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