The Obama Administration and the Americas

The central theme of this book is that the next U.S. administration must seek to rebuild inter-American cooperation and to refocus—in a disaggregated, nuanced, patient, and sensitive way—on how to promote, strengthen, and protect democratic governance in the Americas. The mood of the American voting public, the foreign policy elite, and the attentive public all point toward a backing away from continuing the U.S. democracy promotion agenda. The authors in this book argue that, in the specific context of the Western Hemisphere, the goals of U.S. policies are more likely to be advanced if democratic governance gains more traction in the region, and that the United States can help advance this prospect if it pursues sound and sensitive policies.The contributors include Rodrigo Pardo, former foreign minister of Colombia; Jan Gabriel Valdes, former foreign minister of Chile and head of the UN mission in Haiti; Daniel Zovato, International IDEA; Jennifer McCoy, Carter Center; and Marifeli Perez-Stable, Michael Shifter, and Daniel Erikson from the Inter-American Dialogue.Abraham F. Lowenthal is professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and president emeritus of the Pacific Council on International Policy.Theodore Piccone is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He serves as an advisor to the Club of Madrid and has served on the National Security Council, at the State Department and Pentagon.Laurence Whitehead is Official Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College and director of the Mexican Studies Centre, Oxford University.