DESPITE the Middle East, Japan and the ongoing risk of a shutdown of the US federal government all competing for his attention, US president Barack Obama will today push ahead with a scheduled visit to Latin America.
The decision to continue with the tour of Brazil, Chile and El Salvador at a time of dramatic global tensions is a bid to demonstrate that Washington is committed to engaging with an increasingly self-confident region it has largely ignored or bullied in the past.
The highlight of the five-day trip will be a speech in Chile which US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said would see Mr Obama “articulate Latin America’s importance to the United States”.
However, while he will be politely received, the region’s leaders will need convincing that the US really means to reverse a decline in engagement with Latin America evident since the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, Mr Obama promised a “new chapter of engagement that will be sustained throughout my administration”. But he has failed to follow through as his attention has been consumed by the US’s endless wars in the Middle East.
Looking to fill the gap has been China, which is now the top trade partner of both Brazil and Chile and is becoming a major source of investment for the region. While Washington focuses on the Middle East, Beijing has strengthened links with Latin governments by loaning out tens of billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in return for guaranteed supplies of oil and minerals.
Seeking to show the US will compete with China for business in a region growing at five per cent a year, Mr Obama will bring a large corporate delegation with him. He is also expected to lobby on behalf of the US defence industry, which is competing against France and Sweden to supply Brazil with 36 fighter jets in a deal worth €5 billion.
US relations with Brasilia were put under severe strain last year after Brazil voted against increasing UN sanctions on Iran. The falling out over Iran is likely to ensure that Mr Obama will not publicly endorse Brazil’s campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, as he did India’s in November. A permanent seat has long been the principle goal of Brazilian diplomacy.
The country’s foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, told reporters ahead of Mr Obama’s arrival that “in language simple and direct, we are waiting for a relationship of equals”.
The often prickly edge to US-Brazil relations was emphasised yesterday, when Mr Obama’s plan to give a speech in a public square in Rio de Janeiro was scrapped. The decision to move the event to a theatre came amid reports that Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff considered the original idea presumptuous, with one minister reported in local media as saying it would be the equivalent of a Brazilian showing up expecting to give a speech in Times Square.
Ms Rousseff and her El Salvadorian counterpart Mauricio Funes, who will host the US president on the final leg of the tour, are both former Marxist guerrillas who took up arms against US-backed dictatorships.