Silvina María Romano

Political-Economic Factors in U.S. Foreign Policy The Colombia Plan, the Mérida Initiative, and the Obama Administration

U.S. policy in Latin America, even when couched in the openly diplomatic discourse used by the Obama administration, is based on military presence and serves the economic interests of the United States and allied Latin American elites. In order to secure the free-market context that ensures U.S. access to Latin America’s strategic resources, U.S. administrations have focused on issues such as security and the fight against narco-insurgency and terrorism, encouraging and directly supporting Latin American regimes in which increased military presence in the government is purported to guarantee internal stability during a time of increasing violence. In reality, what they foster is a complex balance between stability and instability that maintains the region’s overall dependence and, therefore, its status as a source of U.S. wealth and power.

Liberal Democracy and National Security: Continuities in the Bush and Obama Administrations

The antiterrorist policy of the George W. Bush Administration established a relationship between democracy and security that implied the limitation of the former as a necessary condition for the achievement of the latter. This strategy led to the diminishing of the basic liberties promoted by liberal democracy through legal means with the putative objective of guaranteeing the ‘security’ of American citizens. A key starting point of these policies can be found in undercover operations carried out abroad by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of State at the beginning of the Cold War. This article focuses on the continuities and ruptures between the official discourse of the G. W. Bush Administration and that of the first years of the Cold War, focusing on the realist and liberal patterns present in those discourses. This leads to an analysis of the relationship between democracy and national security under the antiterrorist policy implemented by the G. W. Bush government, approached from a power elite perspective. The aggressive foreign and homeland policies of the US government were based upon a booming military–industrial pole, closely bound to free market expansionism and liberal democracy as key dimensions in the reproduction of capitalism. Included in this consideration are the 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategies, the Patriot Act (2001), and the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (2003) (or ‘Patriot Act II’) put in place by the G.W. Bush Administration, as well as the National Security Strategy (2009) established by President Obama.

Guatemala, Estados Unidos y las ONGs: La desarticulación del Estado y el rol de la asistencia

Within the frame of the Cold War, economic and technical assistance was deployed by the United States private and public sectors, as well as by the Bretton Woods Institutions, in order to expand markets and to enhance the alliances between periphery countries and the Western Hemisphere. In Guatemala, this assistance was the corner stone for the reconstruction of the government after Arbenz overthrowing (1954), undermining the results of the reforms carried out by the “revolution governments”. After the Peace Accords (1996), in the neoliberal atmosphere spread along Latin America, foreign assistance played a main role in the reconstruction of Guatemalan institutions. Many of the needs which should be solved by the state are rather covered by foreign assistance provided by governments, NGOS, corporations or private foundations. Meanwhile the state (once more) reinforces its “security” aspects. So ?which are the interests behind this assistance? ?there is any relation between the NGOS in Guatemala and the global power net shored by neoliberalism? ?in which sense the economic assistance is bound to military assistance?