The decline of U.S. hegemony in the Western hemisphere
In Bush II, Obama, and the Decline of U.S. Hegemony in the Western Hemisphere Thomas O’Keefe, Stanford lecturer in international relations, applies competing definitions and conceptions of hegemony to various foreign policy initiatives and events during the George W. Bush & Obama administrations to test whether they manifest a decline in traditional U.S. dominance and leadership in the Western Hemisphere. Below, Professor O’Keefe answers questions about his new book.
What sparked your interest in the loss of U.S. hegemony in Latin America? What inspired you to write this book?
My interest in this topic was the result of my having served on two policy committees of the Obama campaign in 2007 and 2008, and then as Chair of the Western Hemisphere Area Studies program at the Foreign Service Institute between 2011 and 2016.
Based in Arlington, Virginia, the Foreign Service Institute is the training facility that U.S. diplomats and other federal government employees attend before they are posted abroad. In both instances, I saw little interest in anything related to Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in terms of viewing the region as a source of solutions for many of the problems confronting the United States. At the same time, my numerous trips to the region during this time period underscored how increasingly irrelevant the U.S. was becoming in terms of trade, lending, investment capital, and as a model or example for almost anything.
The inspiration for writing this book was sparked by a comment from the reviewer of an article I submitted to an academic journal a few years ago. Although the reviewer’s criticism — that I had failed to discuss different theories of hegemony — did not prevent the article from being published, it did peak my intellectual curiosity to further explore what exactly is meant by hegemony and how the concept has manifested itself in terms of U.S. relations with its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.
In the book, you trace several missed opportunities for U.S.-Latin American cooperation on free trade, climate change, and energy security. Do you believe one event in particular served as the tipping point for a decline in relations? Or do you view the decline in relations as the result of aggregate failures to cooperate?
I believe the administration of George W. Bush was most responsible for setting in motion the decline of U.S. leadership and influence in Latin America and the Caribbean through the invasion of Iraq, and the decision to respond to the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the northeastern United States with a war in Afghanistan rather than tracking down the masterminds and trying them in a court of law. Both wars revived memories throughout Latin America and the Caribbean of the worst excesses of U.S. behavior in the region throughout much of the twentieth century, when the U.S. sent in the Marines to invade and occupy countries or used the CIA to overthrow governments it did not like — including those that were democratically elected. In addition, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan absorbed huge amounts of human capital and other resources that left little time or money for either the Bush White House or the succeeding Obama administration to devote to regions outside of the Near East or to issues beyond the endless war on terrorism.
Why do you think China became so successful as a major trading and investment partner in Latin America? What made Chinese policy in Latin America more effective than U.S. policy?
In many ways, the return of China as a major commercial presence in Latin America is a restoration of the status quo prior to the nineteenth century. The decision by China’s rulers in the sixteenth century to use silver as the currency of the realm coincided with the discovery of major silver deposits in what is today Bolivia and Mexico. The Spanish in particular, and the Europeans in general, used that silver to purchase goods from what was then (and is again) the world’s factory. Centuries before it became a resort, Acapulco was where Spanish galleons laden with silver sailed from to cross the Pacific to meet with Chinese merchants in Manila Bay and return with goods that were in great demand in both the Americas and Europe.
The policy most responsible for China’s return to Latin America was the decision of the Communist Party leadership in Beijing in the 1980’s to shift to a more market-oriented economic system that managed to lift tens of millions of Chinese from poverty and into the middle class. That eventually led to an explosion in demand for what Latin America has to export, and produced an army of new Chinese entrepreneurs and state-owned or parastatal enterprises searching for investment opportunities throughout the Americas. China has also benefited from having a non-interventionist foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere that has allowed it to have strong economic relations (particularly in terms of lending) with countries shunned by the United States because of human rights concerns or a lack of transparency in commercial dealings.
Do you see other areas of the world where the United States might “loose out” to China if we neglect regional cooperation?
The Western Hemisphere was where the United States first emerged as a political, economic, and military power on the world stage at the end of the nineteenth century. If U.S. hegemony is in decline in a region of the world where it was first manifested, then this is not a good sign of what is to come in other parts of the world where the cultural links are much weaker such as in Asia or Africa.
Do you believe the United States will be able to recover some of its lost influence in Latin America? What steps would need to be taken to repair damaged relations?
Donald Trump threatens to be the nail in the coffin for U.S. influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, if I ever write a sequel book post-Trump administration, it may well be about the demise of U.S. hegemony, and not just within the Western Hemisphere, but globally. I remain cautiously optimistic that at some point following the Trump presidency, a majority in the United States will elect leaders to national office who are comfortable with the U.S. no longer acting as the world’s policeman, and who are more concerned with creating a more inclusive domestic economic system that guarantees access to quality health care and education.
In the long run, the U.S. is most influential and projects genuine leadership in the Western Hemisphere when it fulfills the ideals contained in its Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. It was these very same ideals that inspired people from throughout the Americas to seek independence from their own colonial masters in France, Spain, or Portugal in the years after 1776.
How do you hope this book will inform the discourse on inter-hemisphere relations?
The Trump administration is dismantling U.S. foreign policy capabilities, particularly the State Department. Having worked there for five years, I know the State Department was in desperate need of reform to make it more efficient and effective. Trump’s efforts, however, are ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater,’ so to speak. He has fired or contributed to an exodus of genuine and committed foreign policy experts and is thereby decimating the State Department’s institutional memory.
My hope is that this book will contribute to a long overdue examination of U.S. relations with Latin America and the Caribbean free of outdated ideological blinders. When Trump finally leaves the White House, the State Department will have to be rebuilt with a new generation of diplomats and experts, some of whom may have read my book and will hopefully use it as a catalyst for devising a new foreign policy vision for the Americas.
Thomas Andrew O’Keefe, is a lecturer in International Relations at Stanford, and is the President of the Mercosur Consulting Group, Ltd. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the Villanova University School of Law, and has an M. Phil. in Latin American Studies (History and Economics) from the University of Oxford. A dual national of the United States and Chile, O’Keefe was Chair of the Western Hemisphere Area Studies program at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute from July 2011 until November 2015.
