Hillary Clinton has been touring Latin America this week. First she traveled to Peru, where she attended the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), before visiting Ecuador, Colombia, and Barbados. To her credit, the secretary of state is trying to build support for readmitting Honduras to the OAS, and she is also seeking to fortify the U.S.-Colombia partnership. While her outreach to Ecuadorean leader Rafael Correa (whom she met with in Quito on Tuesday) will almost surely be futile, Clinton deserves praise for her attention to hemispheric relations.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration still lacks a coherent strategy for the region. Each of the four U.S. presidents who immediately preceded Obama launched at least one major initiative in the Western Hemisphere. Under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, trade liberalization became the lodestar of U.S. policy, resulting in NAFTA, an expansion of the Caribbean Basin Initiative trade programs, CAFTA, and several bilateral free-trade pacts, including agreements with Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Panama. Not only has the Obama team refused to push for significant new trade expansion, it cannot even persuade congressional Democrats to approve the Colombia and Panama deals, which were signed three years ago.
