Real Instituto Elcano
Madrid, 3 de noviembre de 2008
Por Ray Walser

"…On 20 January 2009, either John McCain or Barack Obama will take the presidential oath of office and assume the vast, global responsibilities entailed by occupying the Oval Office. The US, Latin America and the world will face a new era, one that, for the first time in two decades, does not feature a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Expectations will run high.

While Washington pundits and the development community will stress the deep structural challenges presented by poverty, inequality and ethnic divisions in the Americas, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and Homeland Security will dust off policies and plans to deal with the gamut of threats from alien smuggling and drug trafficking to insurgency and terrorism.

The new President will have to make favourable contacts with dozens of leaders, from heavyweights like Brazil's Lula da Silva and Mexico's Calderón to Prime Ministers of small friendly nations such as Barbados and Uruguay. Indirectly via press statements and diplomatic manoeuvres, the new President will send signals to Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and the Castroite gerontocracy that rules Cuba. By January 21, the next President will be immersed in the hardball world of code-word security briefs and White House situation room meetings, where bad guys seldom sleep, where terrorists, criminals and insurgents exploit ungoverned space and the weakness of governments, where a 3am telephone call and crisis management situation might be just an incident away.

Either McCain or Obama will be expected to articulate a broader vision for the Hemisphere and set the tone for four years at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad & Tobago in April 2009. This will give most of the leaders of the Hemisphere their first real look at the new President.

If Barack Obama is elected President he will more than likely command ample Democratic support in the House of Representatives and the Senate, whereas McCain will face an uphill struggle to accomplish a successful policy agenda and need to concentrate to re-forging bipartisan strategies.

An Obama victory also means a potential for an initial period of bureaucratic bloodletting and in-fighting that could cut deep into the current ranks of policy makers and immobilise the policy-making bureaucracy for months. Following through on ambitious promises of a ‘new partnership' and ‘bottom-up reform' will require broad reviews of existing policies and potential bureaucratic reorganisation as well as lengthy lead time to request resources for new initiatives and move them to legislation in Congress.

A danger facing an Obama presidency could be overselling the promise of change in US policy unsupported by fresh resources or genuine US commitments. As President, Obama will also have to avoid fragmentation and discipline dovish, protectionist, pacifist, isolationist elements that flourish within the ranks of the Democratic Party. The challenge will be doing more than cosmetic rearrangements that leave Latin America questioning Washington's readiness to change policy that serves a broad spectrum of US interests from economic growth to security.

If McCain wins, his programmes will be easier to implement because they will be built on continuity and some serving officials will remain in place until suitable replacements are identified and confirmed. The challenge for McCain will be to show Latin Americans that he takes the region seriously and is ready to explore new lines of cooperation and partnership in accordance with changed geopolitical realities that go beyond the present Bush Administration.

Conclusion: An overriding need will be restoring the health of the international economic system as quickly as possible and keeping the US running as the central motor for Hemispheric growth and prosperity. These challenges will require addressing trade and energy issues as well as good governance, rule of law and poverty reduction. They will also require keeping vigilant eyes on Hemispheric security and on an array of difficult threats.

In the longer run, the coming US presidential election offers an opportunity for greater conceptual boldness in addressing the challenges of Latin America's urgent social agenda. There is still a hunger for the American brand and a large audience in the rising and aspiring social base that lies between traditional elites and a state-dependent poverty class and yearns for genuine democracy, good governance, sound institutions and rule of law. Either Presidents McCain or Obama will need to weave the successes (and the failures) of the Bush Administration into new policy initiatives that optimise opportunity and that combine new strategies of partnership with the reassertion of the US historic and productive leadership role in the Western Hemisphere".

Extracto del ARI del Real Instituto Elcano