Over the last few weeks four events have occurred in our hemisphere that have been the subject of widespread comment over the hemisphere as a whole. Some have been expected and others not. In the Latin American and Caribbean sector the sudden death of former President Kirchner of Argentina has raised the question of how secure his wife and present President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, will be in terms of winning the presidential elections in October of next year. And In Brazil the expected occurred as Ms Dilma Rousseff, a former Secretary for Energy and Chief of Staff to President Lula, won the presidential elections in a run-off; after she had – to many surprisingly – failed to obtain the required majority in the initial elections.
In the Caribbean, the government of President Raul Castro has committed itself to a certain, apparently paced, liberalization in both the political and economic spheres, and has indeed continued, at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, the release of political prisoners and their transfer mainly to Spain. But observers will have been somewhat surprised by the measures announced towards the end of October in the economic sphere, and in particular the decision to dismiss as many as half a million employees of state enterprises, promising to provide them with assistance in the establishment of small enterprises. The emphasis on support for small enterprise development has been part of Cuban policy since 1994, more vigorously pursued by Raul Castro after Fidel Castro fell ill. But the latter’s recently quoted statement throwing doubt on the efficiency and productivity of the communist mode of economic organization, did suggest a certain solidity to the path which the younger Castro is now pursuing, in spite of Fidel’s protests about being misinterpreted.
Lastly, the American congressional elections came and went as predicted by the pollsters. President Obama, as the pundits say, “lost” the House of Representatives and the Democrats survived in the Senate with a reduced majority. The results, or at least the interpretation of them by the commentators, are widely interpreted as reducing the President’s room for manoeuvre in pursuing his policies, both towards economic recovery and in health care. And the President finds himself being berated by the Republicans for his management of the economy, while he has kept insisting that what he has done is to rescue it from the financial breakdown and recession that he so visibly inherited from President George Bush.
Many observers have been surprised at the extent to which the Republicans, including the Tea Party enthusiasts, have been able to persuade the American voters that Obama is the cause of the present discontents. In turn, this seems to be leading to a situation in which the President is beginning to be blamed by some in his own party for not being vigorous enough in explaining and defending his policies to the public; and now, in the face of his political reversal, for seeking to find a compromise with the Republicans as they try to tear down his legislative plans. Some observers believe that this, in effect a defensive strategy, is on the recommendation of the President’s political advisers that he should be reminding the public that President Clinton was in the same predicament two-and-a-half years into his first term, and survived by meeting his Republican opponents halfway – a policy referred to as triangulation.
In the hemisphere, it is doubtful that governments are looking at the results of the American elections with such apparent equanimity. The Government of Brazil has been disturbed in recent weeks at an American monetary policy which seems to have the result of forcing a revaluation of the Brazilian real as a byproduct of US policy towards the claimed Chinese manipulation of its own currency as it seeks to control the pace of its devaluation. The Brazilian fear must be, as appears to be case with other countries, that the timidity of President Obama is itself giving rise to perceptions of weakness in the steadfastness with which he is conducting the country’s international economic policy. In addition, the new President, leading a country enjoying a commodities boom that is partly the result of China’s commodities demand, would not want to find itself the victim of unanticipated policy rigidities on the part of the major economic powers that could lead to an economic slowdown.
The same would certainly be the case in Argentinian policy circles, that since that country has also been undergoing a commodities boom particularly in respect of agricultural exports, and which, since the accession to government of the late President Nestor Kirchner in 2002 has been enjoying a relative upswing. Economic growth has been approaching 9 per cent this year. But it is more likely that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her party (which her husband took major responsibility for managing) are in this last year of her presidency more concerned with managing, in his absence, the path to a successful campaign for re-election, though undoubtedly, she would wish for some degree of international economic stability during the period.
It is undoubtedly the case, in spite of some discontent which he has expressed in respect of President Obama’s response to changes in Cuban policy, that President Raul would be disappointed by the results in the American House of Representatives in particular. There, some of the most vigorous Cuban-American opponents of his government have attained senior positions, one in particular, chairing the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
A decrease in what the Cubans have tended to refer to as mild improvements, from the American side, in travel and trade between the two countries, would certainly be a severe disappointment to President Castro. The Americans, with Cuba at their doorstep, as they used to say, are still far from treating Cuba as they now treat their former military enemy (North) Vietnam, as indicated by the visit of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to that country at the end of last month – the second within a few weeks.
But then, the Asia-Pacific region now appears to have a salience in American policy that surpasses US interest in Latin America. And the reasons for this are well known to this hemisphere, both Argentina and Brazil themselves being now increasingly engaged in the economics of the Asia-Pacific sphere.
