A whole new world?

National Interest, The, Winter, 2001 by William J. Perry

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Indeed, this debilitating cultural legacy persists to the present. Even when the worst was over and countries such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Mexico began to develop into their modern selves, enormous problems persisted. Even when comparatively successful, they tended to remain class-bound and statist, with many old conditions and habits conducive neither to good citizenship nor to the broad-based diffusion of economic opportunity; Thus, local intellectuals and aspiring politicians tended to be attracted by populist or Marxist dreams of utopian redemption. This trend, already evident by the end of the 19th century, led to a renewed round of often bloody contention in the new environment of the Cold War.

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Only in the 1990s did it prove possible for all Latin American states (except Cuba) to support real democratic governance and to embrace a liberal economic model for economic growth and development in harmony with the advanced countries of North America, Europe and East Asia. But the question remains as to whether this represents a definitive departure from an unfortunate past, or merely a cyclical high point doomed to turn down again at some point in the future. On a higher level, it raises the general point of how much culture matters, and of whether and how fast political cultures change.

But this is no longer a matter of mere academic inquiry from the standpoint of U.S. policymakers. They perceive how seemingly irresistible forces are driving the United States into an inextricably closer relationship with its hemispheric neighbors, not merely in the conventional terms of overseas political, economic and security interests, but also in ways that uniquely affect the composition and wellbeing of American domestic society. Three U.S. presidents now have seen this clearly enough to support a far-sighted, integrative policy aimed toward ensuring that Latin America becomes a valuable asset to our country--not a debilitating liability--in the uncertain world of the future. But such a course would plainly be impossible if the region were condemned by cultural factors to periodic regression into authoritarianism, economic debacle and violent instability. Thus, having some sound notion of the correct prognosis has become indispensable to proper formulations of our present and future approach.

THE PAIR of historical books in this quartet--Wood's and Harvey's--make clear that divergent natural and geographic circumstances, worldviews and experiences have yielded predictably different results between what became the Latin American nations and what was to ultimately emerge as the United States. Distinct processes of conquest and settlement produced different kinds of colonies, with different relationships to different kinds of mother countries. Building upon this, their respective and nearly contemporaneous struggles for independence gave rise to very distinct societies and forms of government. Moreover, their subsequent trajectories of development pulled them even further apart in terms of technology, material wellbeing and degree of power in the wider world. Within little more than a century, the United States rose from its rather rustic beginnings to a position that was so dominant as to allow the likes of Richard Olney, Secretary of State for Grover Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt to declare so mething approaching a protectorate over the rest of the hemisphere.

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A whole new world?

National Interest, The, Winter, 2001 by William J. Perry

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