As the Summit of the Americas this week in Colombia was drawing to a close, President Obama touted more regional integration even as increasingly hostile Latin American leaders openly called for change in U.S. and regional policies. Analysts and officials throughout the hemisphere and across the political spectrum said the whole gathering reflected the U.S. government’s growing isolation and waning influence in the region.
On everything from Cuba to the drug war and the Falkland Islands controversy, Obama found himself under fire from supposed American allies, many of whom have been showered with U.S. tax dollars over the years. A growing chorus of Latin American heavyweights — from the right-leaning Presidents of Guatemala and Colombia to an assortment of socialist strongmen — openly rebelled. No final “declaration” was even signed after the gathering.
Canada and the United States, for example, rejected calls by the rest of the governments to invite the communist dictatorship ruling over Cuba to the next Americas Summit. And the brutal Cuban regime, seizing on the propaganda opportunity, praised what it called the anti-Washington “rebellion” while ridiculing and mocking the Obama administration.
“President Obama should realize that the Cartagena summit was not propitious for advising democracy in Cuba,” noted a statement by the communist regime published in one of its top propaganda organs. “We Cubans will take care of Cuba.” The Castro dictatorship also said Obama was forced to use the “imperial veto” to block a statement condemning the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on the island, which the regime exploits to rally its captive populace and to deflect attention from the fruits of its own disastrous policies.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who visited Obama before the gathering, blasted U.S. monetary policy — perhaps unaware that the elected government has no real control over the actions of the privately owned monetary cartel deceptively named “Federal Reserve.” Along with the regimes ruling Russia, India, China, and South Africa — the rest of the so-called “BRICS” — the government of Brazil and numerous Latin American powers are increasingly working to sideline the troubled U.S. dollar.
The U.S. administration, meanwhile, attracted a barrage of criticism when Obama claimed he was “neutral” in the ongoing conflict between the governments of Argentina and Britain concerning the Falkland Islands — which Obama mistakenly called the “Maldives.” Latin American leaders and pro-U.K. analysts all blasted the President for refusing to take sides, but advocates of non-intervention were pleasantly surprised by the unusual stance.
Increasingly influential and unified socialist demagogues also seized on the summit to attack the U.S. government from all angles. The totalitarian-minded President Rafael Correa of Ecuador even boycotted the summit to protest the Cuban dictatorship’s exclusion. And a parade of other rulers piled on throughout the gathering.
“It seems the United States still wants to isolate us from the world, it thinks it can still manipulate Latin America, but that’s ending,” claimed socialist Bolivian strongman Evo Morales, a key player in the region’s lurch toward massive government and diminished freedom. “What I think is that this is a rebellion of Latin American countries against the United States.” Perhaps ironically, the socialist strongman said the Obama administration was acting “like a dictatorship.”
The increasingly hysterical regime of socialist “President” Hugo Chavez in Venezuela added its commentary to the debate as well. “The isolation of the United States was evident in Cartagena,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro was quoted as saying, referring to the Colombian city where the dubious and expensive hemispheric gathering was held. Countless analysts, even in the U.S. media, echoed the sentiment. “If Cuba is not invited, there won’t be another Summit of the Americas,” Maduro added.
As the U.S. government’s influence in the region declines, Latin American powers have become increasingly intertwined with Russia and the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China. Meanwhile, the once-prominent Organization of American States, which hosts the Summit of the Americas, continues its march toward irrelevance.
In its place, other regional integration-promoting organizations dominated by socialist regimes — entities such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) — are becoming more powerful. In North America, meanwhile, trilateral so-called “integration” is accelerating between the governments of the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
Still, President Obama touted hemispheric integration at the summit in Colombia, calling for more “coordination” and “cooperation” among the region’s governments. Two new initiatives were also announced: an “intercontinental” business network and a broadband expansion scheme — supposedly designed to bring the nations closer together. An emerging so-called “Free Trade” agreement — critics refer to it as a “managed trade” deal — between the United States and Colombia governments was a hot topic, too.
“The days when we could think of each of our economies in isolation, those days are long gone,” Obama claimed. The real question, according to the U.S. President at least, is: “How can we make sure that globalization and that integration is benefiting a broad base of people?”
Obama also painted an extraordinarily misleading picture of a hemisphere clamoring for an end to national sovereignty. “Between us, we represent nearly one billion people. They ask nothing more than that we come together and make the progress that none of us can achieve alone,” Obama alleged without mentioning who exactly was asking for more integration. “We can go further together. That’s why we’re here.”
It was not immediately clear why the President felt that pursuing more “integration” with the region’s governments would be desirable — especially as much of the hemisphere is now firmly under the grip of an organized cabal of socialist-minded rulers backed by totalitarians like the communist tyrants ruling over China. But if the socialist leaders are taken at their word, their vision of what Venezuela’s Chavez called the “New World Order” will include a significantly reduced role for the U.S. government.
And that process is already well underway. However, as countless analysts have observed, much of the trend toward diminished U.S. influence in the region can actually be attributed to American policies themselves — funneling taxpayer money to prop up leftist regimes and state-controlled companies like Petrobras; waging a “drug war” that empowered Marxist terror groups like the FARC; spending so much money that the U.S. government has become the largest debtor in the history of humanity; and much more.
Latin American socialists, meanwhile, have exploited the situation to seize control of the region. Through the Foro de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo Forum) — a group founded by Fidel Castro, former Brazilian President “Lula,” the Sandinistas, and assorted communist narco-trafficking organizations — some two-thirds of the region’s governments are now dominated by political parties belonging to the cabal. Russia and China, of course, are deeply involved as well.
Without significant changes in American policy — both at home and abroad — the troubling regional trends will only continue to accelerate in the coming years, according to analysts. But it is not too late to turn the tide. Experts say the best way to reverse America’s decline would be for the federal government to completely restore U.S. sovereignty and simply follow the Constitution.
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