Contest for the Americas.

• Author: Farnsworth, Eric

President Joe Biden's virtual summit of democracies in December 2021 was a timely initiative highlighting the intensifying battle for the future of global governance while seeking ways to build and promote democratic practice worldwide. That includes the Americas where democracy is clearly on the defensive and, in some cases, retreat. But even more than invitations to the December event, supporting regional democracy effectively will require the United States to pay heed to hemispheric policy after years of underinvestment. As China and other authoritarians actively seek to enhance their global positions, Washington should pursue a robust post-COVID-19 agenda that focuses on the strategic value of Latin America to the United States and strengthens democratic governance against the gravitational pull of less salubrious alternatives.

Democracy has demonstrably lost ground in the Americas over the past generation--and the trend is accelerating. At the first Summit of the Americas, a periodic gathering of all regional democracies held in Miami in 1994, only one leader--Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro--was not invited. The next time the United States will host the Summit of the Americas, in 2022, at least three nations--Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--will not meet basic conditions of democratic eligibility. And soon there may be even more. In the twenty-seven years between U.S.-hosted Summits of the Americas, the map of regional democracies has gone from monochromatic to variegated, including some nations which remain democratic today but where national executives are actively disregarding democratic responsibilities and requirements and trendlines are unfavorable.

It's the old story. U.S. foreign policy elites generally ignore the Western Hemisphere until they can't, and then they scramble to catch up. Policy tends to move from crisis to crisis, with officials and strategists never really investing the time and effort necessary to build enduring relationships to head off crises before they occur or manage them effectively when they do. Usually, that means whenever regional developments impinge upon domestic politics, such as migrant surges as seen in 2021 or during election cycles when politicians seek to improve their standing with Hispanic voters, who now make up almost 20 percent of the total U.S. population and account for around half of total population growth over the past decade. Drug trafficking and trade also break onto the domestic agenda from time to time; energy too, particularly during periods of global energy insecurity.

But efforts to mainstream the Americas in Washington's broader global strategic calculus have largely failed. To the extent there are no nuclear weapons in Latin America or significant threats of cross-border terrorism, that can be forgiven. To the extent it is due to hidebound, uncritical thinking or a misunderstanding of what is really at stake, it can't. Indeed, the region is often considered irrelevant strategically and, if discussed at senior levels, only as a footnote to more consequential matters. There are exceptions, of course, but only those that prove the rule. Emblematic of bipartisan neglect, even as the hemisphere has been headed in the wrong direction, is that numerous embassies, including Brazil and Argentina, remain without ambassadors, and there was no Senate-confirmed assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the top regional diplomat, between August 2019 and September 2021--a stunning lapse. It's not new, and it begins at the top: Henry Kissinger, considered by some to be America's greatest living statesman, thought of Latin America as little more than a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica. This sort of thinking has long infused the worldview of the foreign policy establishment.

But times change rapidly, even if attitudes don't, and the region has changed fundamentally since the Miami Summit. The increasingly fraught condition of hemispheric governance, undermined by our own democratic missteps, and the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Venezuela's grinding humanitarian crisis, and, to the upside, opportunities for clean energy development and other efforts to reduce climate change, among other priorities, cry out for significant, sustained engagement. Yet regrettably, U.S. grand strategy continues to downplay the significance of the region and the importance of meaningful, visionary steps that promote win-win solutions, as the Chinese like to say, with regional partners. We are in a global battle for hearts and minds, where decisions are being made today that will lock in relationships for the longer term. But Washington doesn't think in those terms, and continues to...