Can Biden Heal a Fractured Hemisphere?
By Oliver Stuenkel
January 28, 2021
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2021-01-28/latin-americas-darkest-hour
On the campaign trail, U.S. President Joe Biden famously described the approach of President Donald Trump’s administration to Latin America as taking “a wrecking ball to our hemispheric ties.” Now that he is in office, Biden has pledged to restore those ties and rebuild regional cooperation—reasserting hemispheric leadership grounded in principles of mutual respect and shared values.
Although this shift in tone is certainly welcome, Biden must understand that the Latin America he visited a record-breaking 16 times as vice president is riven by fresh ideological divisions and rising poverty. And as the new administration works to reset U.S. regional policy in a more positive direction, it must also prepare for a worst-case scenario in which Latin America’s uneven economic recovery and slow vaccination efforts fuel a resumption of the large-scale political unrest that shook Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua prior to the pandemic, in 2019. Biden may have hoped to use the upcoming Summit of the Americas to articulate a grand…
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