Developing A New U.S. Latin America Policy

These talks were born of a deep concern over the course of U.S. foreign policy. Many of us had been working for many years in solidarity movements and on foreign policy issues in different parts of the world and although we had seen periods in which there was overt intervention and policies that led to widespread violence and bloodshed, such as the dirty wars in Central America, we had not seen a time when the U.S. government so openly defended unilateral action, military force as a basis for leadership, and narrowly defined U.S. economic and security interests as the sole organizing principle for international relations. We were not only concerned about the many ways in which this new doctrine could put other peoples in the world at risk, but also about how it went against so many deeply held values of the U.S. people and actually put our own communities here at greater risk as well. I think in this room many of us hold the conviction that security is built on creating strong communities based on shared values rather than a fortress mentality that only emphasizes the kinds of disparities we are here to challenge today. At the same time we knew there was reason to believe in the possibility of change. A large percentage of the U.S. population was becoming more and more actively involved in thinking about the U.S. role in the world and opposed to the way the government defined it. From this perception of the state of things, three main challenges emerged. http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1668&cid=1&sid=27

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