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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...1202.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/02/12/ixop.html
Meanwhile have you seen what's been happening in Bush's backyard?
By Niall Ferguson
(Filed: 12/02/2006)
What if it all turns out to be no more than a storm in a mint tea cup? Looking back, will historians one day say something like this? "The worldwide outcry over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper convinced yet another small European nation of the vulnerability of multiculturalism in the face of an intolerant culture. Yet global sales of Danish butter recovered remarkably quickly. Like the similar furore over Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1988, this was no more than a pretext for a collective emission of steam in the Muslim 'street'."
To judge by the column inches - make that miles - devoted to the cartoons in the last few weeks, we are living through a world-historical event. I don't believe it. The real point is that all this noise is a distraction from more important global trends that have nothing to do with Islamic hyper-sensitivity. While the US since 9/11 has become fixated on the Muslim world, a region much closer to home has been quietly spinning out of American control.
"Who lost Latin America?" is the question the next Democratic contender for the presidency may legitimately be able to ask. For since the election of Hugo Chávez as President of Venezuela in December 1998, there has been an inexorable erosion of US influence south of the Rio Grande. The most recent manifestations are the election victories last month of the coca-chewing populist Evo Morales in Bolivia and the socialist Michelle Bachelet in Chile. Some opinion polls suggest victories for the militant Ollanta Humala in Peru this April and the staunchly anti-gringo Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in July. And it's anyone's guess what will happen in Brazil and Ecuador.
The question "Who lost Latin America?" might seem to imply that the US once owned or controlled it - which was indeed one of the earliest aspirations of American foreign policy. In 1823 President James Monroe enunciated what became known as the Doctrine "that the American continents are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European powers". By 1904 that had mutated into the claim that the US had the right to invade and "police" Latin American states if their politics took a turn unpalatable to Washington: Theodore Roosevelt's so-called "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.
Throughout the 20th century, the US exercised that "right": in, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama How long have you got? In fact, virtually the only central American state not to find itself on the receiving end of US military intervention has been Costa Rica. For a time, the region still seemed to matter. When he was elected President, George W Bush made a point of saying that his Main Man among foreign leaders was not Tony Blair but Vicente Fox of Mexico.
Yet since 9/11 all that has gone out the window. The Monroe Doctrine seems to have given way to the "Moan No" doctrine - as in: "Mr President, we've just heard that another Latin American country has elected a wild-eyed populist." "Oh, noooooo " When Mr Bush last paid a visit to the region - to the Summit of the Americas in Argentina last autumn - it was a fiasco. His idea for a hemispheric free trade agreement was dead even before he stepped off the plane.
This seems to me the really big story of 2006 - and yet virtually no one is paying it any attention. And it's not as if the new populists in Latin America aren't looking for some attention. Only last week President Chávez called Tony Blair "a pawn of imperialism, trying now to attack us from Europe", and "the main ally of Hitler" - as he has taken to calling Mr Bush.
"The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the US president has no limits," Chávez recently declared. "I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W Bush."
Now if Mr Chávez were a Muslim leader this would be front-page news. But because he says it in Spanish, everyone just yawns. Come on folks, let's do some geography. It's just over 2,000 miles from Washington to Caracas. It's nearly 7,000 miles to Kabul. And although his supporters don't go in for suicide bombing, Mr Chávez is sitting on 6.5 per cent of the world's oil reserves - more than the whole of North America, including Mexico and Canada.
The naive explanation for this strange indifference to Latin America is that since the end of the Cold War it doesn't matter. Rubbish. It mattered enough to Monroe and Roosevelt, long before the Soviet Union came on the scene. And it should matter even more today, for two reasons.
One I've mentioned: South and Central America account for 8.5 per cent of the world's oil reserves (and 4 per cent of its natural gas reserves). Besides energy, however, there's democracy; to be precise the fate of the President's project to spread democracy around the world. And besides democracy, there's immigration.
Point one. The new regimes in Latin America are a throwback to the bad old days of anti-global economics. They may not nationalise oil and gas fields, but they are keen to "renegotiate" (ie repudiate) existing contracts with foreign companies - and not just in the energy sector. Such policies are almost certain to be counter-productive, scaring off foreign investors and making it much harder to run current account deficits.
Point two. The new populists are coming to power in large measure because of the successful mobilisation of indigenous peoples against the Hispanic or "Ladino" elites who have dominated Latin American politics since the era of conquest and colonisation. What we are seeing is the result of the democratic process. So you don't need to go all the way to the Middle East - where Palestinians have just voted overwhelmingly for the zealots of Hamas - to find evidence that democracy doesn't always produce liberal governments. Sometimes it can produce governments that explicitly promise to violate property and political rights.
Point three. The kind of policies that populists pursue are a recipe for trouble. Only one economy in the region has performed worse than Haiti's since 1995 and it is Venezuela's. Despite the oil bonanza, Venezuela's GDP per capita has contracted at an average rate of 1.1 per cent a year. The first five years of Hugo Chavez caused it to collapse by 23 per cent.
Now, what do Latinos do when their home economies tank? They try to emigrate. And where do they head for? The United States. In 2004, 42 per cent of immigrants to the United States were from Latin America (including the Caribbean). I was in Arizona last weekend. Guess what the folks there grumble about most these days? Clue: it's not Islamic fundamentalism.
Sure, the hullabaloo that young Muslim men are so good at generating is great for television news. It also lends credibility to the idea that we are in the midst of a great "Clash of Civilisations". And from the point of view of the White House, it seems to justify President Bush's prioritisation of what he now calls "The Long War" against Islamist terrorism.
But will it make it into the history books? Sorry - my money's on the "Moan No" doctrine and the loss of Latin America.
Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University.
