From
Speaker of the House John Boehner's speech today at the Council of the Americas:Free-market capitalism and representative democracy go hand in hand, and they have worked hand in hand to lift nations out of chaos and into competitiveness.
I returned from Latin America convinced that our objective should be to make the entire Western Hemisphere a free enterprise zone – free markets, free trade, and free people.
I had a vision of neighbor countries, each with a distinct identity and unique national character, but with a shared, ironclad commitment to freedom and democracy.
It’s an attainable vision, but challenges exist. I believe there are three major threats.
The first such threat is Iran, which has made little attempt to disguise its global ambitions, or its interest in gaining a foothold in Latin America that can serve as a base of support for those ambitions. The same week our delegation was visiting Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, another foreign leader was conducting a Latin America mission as well.
That leader was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It was telling that his itinerary included none of the nations we visited, including Brazil – which, to President Rousseff’s great credit, has spurned Iran’s recent advances.
Instead Brazil has opted to pursue a path that demonstrates it seeks a responsible leadership role on the global stage – a role that corresponds with its considerable economic potential and role in the region.
Indeed, while I and the members of our delegation were visiting three of Latin America’s most vibrant democracies, Ahmadinejad was being hosted by nations such as Venezuela and Cuba, whose governments have been linked to state-sponsored terrorism and have isolated themselves internationally.
His trip underscored the designs Iran has for expanding its influence in Latin America, and its eagerness to forge bonds with governments in the Western Hemisphere that have demonstrated a lesser interest in freedom and democracy.
While the influence of Iran and other rogue nations represents the external threat to the prosperity of the Americas, there also continues to be a threat from within.
This is the second challenge I want to identify: the ongoing threat posed by international drug cartels, anti-democratic insurgents, and trans-national criminal organizations that have long sought to destabilize Latin America and its democratic nations’ economies. There has been unmistakable progress made in the fight against such lawlessness in Latin America. I witnessed it first-hand this winter.
In Colombia and Mexico, I saw the aggressive, state-of-the-art methods being employed by national police forces in those nations, often using U.S.-built or supplied technology.
Support for U.S. engagement in these vital efforts has traditionally been bipartisan, starting with Plan Colombia, implemented under President Bill Clinton and Speaker Denny Hastert, and the Merida Initiative set in motion by President George W. Bush.
For more than a decade, a major focus of the United States has been to partner with countries whose governments struggle to maintain legitimate state authority over significant portions of their territory.
When our neighbors have faced these situations, we’ve worked with them to develop, adjust, fund and execute the strategies needed to stem the tide.
These initiatives have been largely successful. But the threat remains.
We know, from years of hard experience, how insurgents, criminal gangs, and terrorist organizations operate when they’re left to their own devices.
They form transactional relationships to leverage resources, and create networks for their own survival – carving out zones that allow freedom of movement and operation outside the government’s control.
We know such organizations can still spread rapidly in Latin America if left unchecked, partly because of the region’s unique characteristics.
The geographical proximity and close cultural connections among the countries, the uneven strengths of the central governments, and other factors lend themselves to a 'spillover effect' in Latin America when such bad actors are given an opening to exploit.
We have to continue to deny them such an opening.
We have an unavoidable responsibility to anticipate this threat and to understand the potential for it to grow as a regional problem in Latin America – one that threatens the smaller countries in the region in particular.
That leads me to the third and most serious challenge, which is the one we don’t talk about: the question mark that exists in many of the region’s capitals regarding the future of the U.S. commitment. There are voices in both American political parties calling for the United States to adopt a new posture of isolation and reduce our level of engagement in Latin America, arguing for a halt in aid to nations such as Colombia and Mexico.
The head of the AFL-CIO has called on President Obama to shelve the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
And the Obama Administration itself, even as it has touted the benefits of free trade with Colombia, has spoken of 'turning the page' from Plan Colombia.
The threat of U.S. disengagement is the most serious of the three threats I have identified because if it occurs, the other two threats will multiply exponentially.
This in turn will wipe out economic opportunities -- not just for the United States, but for all the nations of our hemisphere.
The vision I have described – a community of nations, committed to free people and free markets – will be in peril.
The best defense against an expansion of Iranian influence in Latin America – and against the destructive aspirations of international criminals in the region – is for the United States to double down on a policy of direct engagement.
The economic potential of Latin America will never be reached if the forces of lawlessness in the region sense that the United States is no longer engaged and committed to their eradication.
