| Three tarnished Reagan figures have hands in
Bush foreign policy
By BART JONES
Their names were synonymous with the U.S. “dirty wars”
in Central America in the 1980s and the Iran-contra scandal. Today, Otto Reich,
Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte have resurfaced and are helping run U.S.
policy toward Latin America again.
The re-emergence of the Reagan-era hardliners is causing dismay
among human rights activists and some Latin America experts who fear the United
States is returning to the Cold War days when it backed brutal dictatorships,
covertly supported coups and sabotaged leftist movements. “There
isn’t a single democratic leader in Latin America that doesn’t reject
and deplore the role that our government played in Central America during the
1980s,” said Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.
“To choose men like Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich is an insult.”
Said Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a
left-of-center think tank in Washington: “We seem to have learned very
little from an extremely bloody past. ... This is probably the most ideological
and least talented Latin America team either in Republican or Democratic
administrations that I have witnessed in monitoring this scene for 35
years.”
The return of Reich, Abrams and Negroponte comes as a wave of
leftists rises to power across Latin America, largely riding a backlash against
U.S.-prescribed free-market economic policies known as the “Washington
Consensus” that some economists blame for exacerbating mass poverty.
Leftists now occupy the presidencies of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador
and Haiti. A left-of-center politician may also win next March’s election
in Argentina, which would put two-thirds of Latin America’s population
under leftist rule.
Since assuming their posts a year or so ago, the Bush team has
come under fire for allegedly supporting a coup against Venezuela President
Hugo Chavez, blocking economic aid for the government of one-time radical
priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, and trying to undermine the campaigns
of leftist presidential candidates in Bolivia and Nicaragua.
Administration officials say they are promoting democracy in Latin
America, encouraging free trade and waging a war on drugs. They defend the
record of Reich, 57, a right-wing Cuban-American and ardent foe of Fidel Castro
who until Nov. 22 was assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Western
Hemisphere Affairs. He is now special envoy to Latin America.
“His performance as assistant secretary of state since
January was exemplary,” State Department spokesman Robert Zimmerman said.
“He has the complete confidence of the secretary of state and of the
president and of the state department senior leadership.”
Zimmerman added: “Given his substantial expertise, his
knowledge of the region, he has been asked to be the secretary’s special
envoy for Western Hemisphere Affairs.”
Abrams, 54, who was assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere Affairs during the Reagan administration, served until early
December as the National Security Council’s senior director for democracy,
human rights and international operations. President Bush recently appointed
him director of Middle Eastern Affairs at the White House.
Negroponte, 63, U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s,
now is U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Another Iran-contra figure, John M. Poindexter, who served as
national security adviser under Reagan, today is director of the Information
Awareness Office at the Pentagon.
The Bush team has provoked controversy on a number of fronts in
Latin America. In April it tacitly backed an attempted coup against Chavez,
pledging to work with an interim government that lasted two days and abolished
the constitution, the su-preme court and the Congress. A high-level State
Department official called allegations that the United States supported the
overthrow of Venezuela’s democratically elected president “absolutely
false” and said the administration was cleared in a probe by the State
Department’s inspector general.
“We investigated fully, and there was absolutely no winking
or green light,” the official said.
Two months later, U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha warned Bolivians
that electing indigenous leader Evo Morales could result in a cut-off of U.S.
aid. The State Department official said Rocha was responding to provocative
comments by Morales calling for the Drug Enforcement Administration to be
thrown out of Bolivia and for the U.S. Embassy to be closed.
Morales, a Marxist, came soaring out of fourth place in polls
after the comments and lost the election by 1.5 percent. Last year, U.S.
officials made similar comments about former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega
during Nicaragua’s presidential election. “It was a direct attempt to
say we’re going to make you starve if you elect Ortega. And it
worked,” Birns said. Ortega lost.
U.S. officials deny they meddled in the election.
The United States also is helping to block $500 million in
international aid for Haiti, an effort, critics say, to strangle the economy
and force Aristide out. U.S. officials contend Aristide has mismanaged Haiti
and ruled in an autocratic way.
Not everyone thinks the United States is returning to an
interventionist policy aimed at crushing leftists in Latin America, or that
Reich has mishandled his post.
Steve Johnson, an analyst with the conservative Heritage
Foundation think tank in Washington, said that after a rough start, Reich
recently has established good relations with Brazil’s new president, Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, and put the United States on record as opposing any more
coups in Venezuela. “I think he’s done fairly well,” Johnson
said.
A so-called “recess appointment” in-stalled as assistant
secretary of state for a year without congressional approval, Reich
automatically lost his post when the most recent congressional session ended.
Bush then named him special envoy, which does not require congressional
approval. Officials say he will still play a key role in policy toward Latin
America. Bush could nominate him to serve again as assistant secretary of
state, but even conservative analysts such as Johnson say he would not
automatically win approval from the Republican-controlled Congress.
“I don’t think Republicans are monolithic in their
support” for Reich, Johnson said. He believes there is a tug-of-war in the
administration on Latin America policy between hardliners such as Reich and
moderates led by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell visited Colombia Dec.
3 and 4, but Reich did not accompany him. Some took that as a sign that
Reich’s star is fading.
Still, Powell’s attention has been focused on the possible
war with Iraq and the war on terrorism, leaving the United States without a
clear policy toward the region, according to many analysts. “I’m not
sure anybody really knows where the administration is going on Latin American
policy,” Johnson said.
Birns said the policy under Reich has consisted mainly of
attacking anyone perceived as friendly toward Reich’s archenemy, Fidel
Castro. “He simply memorizes the names of those he considers to be
communist, which means if you are for the normalization of relations with Cuba,
you’re a communist,” Birns said. “Reich is looking for villains.
He’s looking for some commies.”
But “the Soviet Union is dead. Cuba does not export
revolution,” Birns added. “These are not the issues of today. The
issues of today are that after several decades of the Washington Consensus
development model, the number of poor in Latin America is greater than
ever.”
The lack of a modern, post-Cold War policy is especially
disturbing, analysts say, because the region is undergoing a traumatic
upheaval. And meanwhile, the re-emergence of the Iran-contra figures is on few
people’s radar screens. “Latin America is disintegrating, and
nobody’s noticing,” said White, who is also president of the Center
for International Policy, a left-of-center think tank. If Argentine leftists
win next March’s presidential election, “roughly two-thirds of Latin
America will live under reformist, populist rulers who explicitly reject
Washington’s prescriptions of freer trade, globalization and the
selling-off of public assets,” he said.
“Somebody should be paying attention to them,” White
said. “Somebody should be talking about something else except how big a
threat Fidel Castro is and the absurd charge that he’s a
terrorist.”
Bart Jones is a reporter for Newsday.
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
2003
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