The Americas Archive

This weekend’s informal U.S.-China summit in California had several key objectives: personal trust building between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping; halting the negative momentum in bilateral relations; reducing tensions regarding disputed issues; and signaling to domestic and international audiences that the United States and China can work together. But the main objective—and outcome—of the meeting was mutual reassurance. The summit resulted in only general statements and did not achieve specific policy commitments. But it came at a very early date in China’s domestic political cycle, just three months after the completion of Beijing’s power transition. […]

How will Susan Rice be remembered at the United Nations? Since President Barack Obama announced his decision to appoint Rice as his national security adviser last week, analyses of her service at the U.N. since 2009 have swung from the gossipy to the philosophical. The gossips have recycled stories of Rice’s robust sparring with her counterparts, which at times involved fiery language. The philosophers have reflected on the ambassador’s role in advancing the cause of humanitarian intervention in Libya, as well as in later debates over nonintervention in Syria. But many commentators have missed one basic point: Rice kept the […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent speech on America’s use of drones in the conflict with al-Qaida and its affiliates marked his administration’s first real attempt to explain a program that has generated much domestic criticism and international outcry. By contrast, few have taken notice of Brazil’s increasing use of surveillance drones, which it has been dispatching over its vast borderlands in an effort to control illegal immigration, contraband and smuggling. So far, Brazil’s drone initiative has not generated as much political controversy as Obama’s program. Nevertheless, President Dilma Rousseff’s administration must tread lightly lest it offend bordering nations that carefully […]

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced that Susan Rice would replace Tom Donilon as national security adviser and nominated Samantha Power to replace Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. The New York Times called the two women “outspoken voices for humanitarian intervention,” noting how they had joined forces with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to persuade Obama to back the NATO-led Libya intervention. But despite their interventionist reputations, Rice and Power will implement the agenda of the president, explained Mark Jacobson, who is senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and also serves as […]

In an unusual and potentially momentous informal summit, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, will today begin three days of talks at a Californian desert ranch in what are being briefed as wide-ranging discussions on high-level strategic issues. Commentators are focusing on the potential for a personal rapport between the two leaders to emerge, with significant effects on broader relations between the world’s two most important nation states. But the initiation of a major strategic shift is dependent on the two sides overcoming a series of persistent disagreements and managing respective domestic pressures that limit the […]

Back in January, writing in these pages, I wondered whether the appointment of John Kerry as secretary of state and Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense heralded “the third installment of President Barack Obama’s approach to national security,” an Obama Doctrine 3.0 characterized by “retrenchment and rebuilding” rather than intervention. Kerry and Hagel seemed to complement National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s perspective on foreign affairs; Steve Clemons, back in 2010, had described Donilon as a “realist” and as a “skeptic of many of the military’s grand schemes in which large resources are given [and] big promises made.” Obama’s decision this […]

Three months have passed since Nicolas Maduro took power in Venezuela following the death of Hugo Chavez, and almost 50 days since he became the country’s elected president. However one chooses to date his tenure, there is no denying that, as president, Maduro so far looks anything but commanding in his job. Maduro narrowly managed to survive the election, with barely enough votes to keep the presidency in Chavista hands. Since that razor-thin, rather embarrassing performance, he has battled a constant stream of awkward difficulties, finding plenty to worry about at home and looking for enemies abroad. In the short […]

In a May 23 speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama announced a shift in U.S. national security strategy. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, he noted, the United States “went to war.” After 12 years, al-Qaida has been decimated. Those of its leaders still alive spend more effort hiding than plotting new attacks. The American homeland “is more secure,” the president said. And the United States had ended or is ending large-scale military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism still threatens, Obama argued, but the nature of the threat has changed […]

At this weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia Security Summit in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel delivered a well-crafted speech that reaffirmed the core tenets of the Obama administration’s Asia Pivot and showed how the Pentagon was still executing the strategy despite budgetary constraints and the departure from the administration of some of the strategy’s key architects. Yet the reactions to the speech from the senior Asian defense officials present made clear that the pivot continues to face serious obstacles. Hagel underscored the United States’ enduring security ties with the Asia-Pacific region in […]

The latest meeting of the leaders of the Pacific Alliance on May 23 in Cali, Colombia, was the best one yet, suggesting that this new economic bloc is an emerging powerhouse in Latin America. The alliance is an effort by Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru to link their economies more closely together through trade, finance and labor market integration to build mutual economic competitiveness. It is one of the most dynamic and potentially significant developments in hemispheric trade relations since negotiations to form a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) broke down in 2003. In the intervening decade, China’s […]

Last week, operators of the Liberty Reserve currency exchange were indicted for laundering $6 billion. Liberty Reserve was part of a growing industry of online payment systems that allow illegal enterprises, from child pornography to weapons trafficking, to move money within an unregulated system, creating a hub for criminal conduct that is both centralized and global. Explaining that the indictment will serve as a temporary blow to money launderers and others moving money on the boundary of legality, Gurpreet Dhillon, a professor of information security at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, told Trend Lines that digital currencies are here […]