The Americas Archive
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Venezuela threatened in early April to retaliate against a European Union decision to ban Venezuelan state airline Conviasa from flying in the EU. In an email interview, Susanne Gratius, a specialist in EU-Latin America relations at the Madrid-based think tank FRIDE, discussed EU-Venezuela relations. WPR: What is the history of European Union-Venezuela relations under President Hugo Chavez? Susanne Gratius: Relations are distant but cordial. Unlike U.S. policy, there are no diplomatic tensions or open conflicts between the EU and the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Despite limited mutual interests, the EU has become the main donor and a principal […]
In March, the Mexican Senate ratified an agreement with the U.S. governing the exploration and development of transboundary oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico. In an email interview, Duncan Wood, director of the international relations program at Mexico’s Autonomous Institute of Technology and a senior associate in the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussed the U.S.-Mexico transboundary energy agreement. WPR: What is the history of energy cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico? Duncan Wood: Since the nationalization of Mexican oil in 1938, the relationship between the two countries in energy matters has […]
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Earlier this month, the U.S. Army War College’s annual Strategy Conference sought to analyze how the U.S. military needs to adapt to an era of constrained resources and a changing global security environment, which includes the Arab Spring, the U.S. shift toward the Pacific, the effect of cyber warfare and the protracted global economic crisis. Titled the “Future of U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Austerity: Challenges and Opportunities,” the conference comes at a time when the U.S. is undertaking its fourth post-World War II defense drawdown, along the lines of those that occurred following the Korean War, the […]
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For more than two centuries, Englishmen have burned an effigy of Guy Fawkes every year on Nov. 5 to commemorate the foiling of the Gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in 1605. In the 21st century, Fawkes has been given a new lease on life by online activist groups who use photos of Guy Fawkes masks — modeled after that worn by the hero of the science fiction movie “V for Vendetta” — as their online avatars. These so-called hacktivists, who combine computer hacking with social, political and economic protest, have straddled the line between simple criminal behavior and legitimate […]
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U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere has suffered a series of setbacks over the past month. The first, the Washington summit earlier this month between Presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, was simply lackluster. The second, last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, was an outright fiasco. Instead of laying out a common agenda for the hemisphere and rebuilding America’s leadership role in the region, the U.S. found itself isolated in a diplomatic corner over Cuba, to say nothing of the Secret Service prostitution scandal that soon overshadowed the proceedings. More generally, Obama’s Latin America policy […]
Under pressure from Brasilia, Mexico agreed last month to limit its automotive exports to Brazil, prompting Argentina to threaten to revoke its own trade agreement with Mexico in an effort to gain further concessions. In an email interview, Barbara Kotschwar, a research associate at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discussed the Economic Complementation Agreement 55 (ACE 55), the 2002 automotive trade deal between Mexico and Mercosur, the trade bloc comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. WPR: What is the current state of trade between Mexico and Mercosur, particularly Brazil and Argentina, and what is the ACE 55 agreement […]
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International relations experts are pretty much down on everything nowadays. America, we are told, is incapable of global leadership: too discredited overseas, too few resources back home, too little will — period. For a brief moment there, while China held up the global economy during the recent financial crisis, much credence was given to the notion that we were on the verge of a Chinese century. But that popular vision has also waned surprisingly quickly, and now the conventional wisdom centers on China’s great weaknesses, challenges and overall brittleness. Amazingly, where we spoke of a U.S.-China “G-2” arrangement just a […]
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CARTAGENA, Colombia — The Organization of American States prides itself on being the world’s oldest regional organization. Yet, as its members prepare for the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, its relevance in today’s world, especially amid Latin America’s recent wave of regionalism, will be called into question. The OAS remains the best-organized and most inclusive body in the Western Hemisphere, and apart from bilateral relationships, it is considered the prominent link between the United States and Latin America. Nevertheless, the region’s increasingly diversified global engagement and a growing sense of autonomy among Latin American nations […]
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A few months ago, I penned an essay for a WPR feature issue on counterinsurgency arguing that the U.S. Army was adrift as it transitioned out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of the Army’s direction, that remains the case: While the U.S. Navy and Air Force have already crafted a narrative for how they can help the United States meet the security challenges of the 21st century, the Army is still pining for the days when the Soviet Union and its armies, poised to storm across the Fulda Gap, presented an intellectually simpler problem to solve. […]
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Colombia is in the midst of a mining boom, with high commodities prices and Chinese demand placing its nascent mining sector at the center of the country’s economic development model. The challenge for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is to capitalize on the sector’s promise, while avoiding some of the environmental and social challenges that have impacted other South American mining countries, such as Chile and Peru. These challenges are particularly salient for newcomers like Colombia, whose mining sector is slowly taking off. Excluding oil, mining now accounts for 30 percent of the country’s foreign investment and 24 percent of […]
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Argentine officials have been ratcheting up the pressure on Spanish-owned oil company YPF-Repsol, demanding increased investment in hydrocarbon production against a backdrop of declines in output that have made Argentina one of the fastest-growing import markets for natural gas. The threat of a similar scenario with oil has the government on the offensive against the nation’s top energy company. The gas shortage is reverberating throughout the rest of the economy, driving import restrictions to shore up the trade balance and tighter currency controls to ensure the availability of dollars for purchases of foreign gas. Looking forward, the government’s posture on […]
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When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in March 2003, one of the new department’s primary goals was to enhance U.S. cybersecurity. But after several years passed without major DHS initiatives in this area, observers concluded that the department was insufficiently prepared or resourced to address cyber emergencies. Indeed, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the influential think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cybersecurity recommended that the next occupant of the White House formally revoke DHS’ limited authority to coordinate cybersecurity because the department, having never had authority over the U.S. military, intelligence community […]