Three Things that the Governments of the U.S. and Bolivia Should Do.

At the beginning of this month I wrote a post titled, U.S./Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell. Like most writings on the topic, it was about politics. It was about the relationship between two governments –a lot of that relationship being about leaders ticking each other off and regular people paying the price.

But in fact, the relationships between two countries should not be defined by how their governments are getting along. They are about the relationships between two peoples. Governments, truth be told, have a certain tendency to screw things up.

So I have been thinking. What are the issues right now between the U.S. and Bolivian governments that have a real impact on people’s lives – from both countries? From that perspective what should be done?

Which brings me to my follow-up to the first post, this one entitled: Three Things that the Governments of the U.S. and Bolivia Should Do.

I understand that there are a lot of possibilities here, but I picked these. Each one will effect people’s lives in profound ways.

1. Save People's Jobs: The U.S. Should Restore Bolivia's Participation in Andean Trade Preferences

For almost two decades, until the end of 2008, Bolivia was one of a several Andean countries that received special trade preferences under the ATPDEA trade accord with the U.S.. This meant that whole new U.S. markets were created for Bolivian products like textiles, weavings, and woodwork. Tens of thousands of jobs were created in Bolivia and new sales markets were created in the U.S. – a win/win proposition all around.

But then, last September, when the Morales and Bush administrations went to diplomatic war with one another, President Bush tossed the trade preferences into the mix and used his executive authority to kick Bolivia off the list. Bush attributed the move to his administration's sudden (and political) "decertification" of Bolivia's anti-narcottic efforts. But his move also broke directly with Congress, which on a bipartisan basis voted to keep Bolivia on the preference list.

If you would like to read more detail on the issue, and see a brief video of testimonies by the workers who stand to lose their jobs, have a look here.

So now it’s time to reverse Bush's action. These workers, who have nothing to do with any diplomatic fight, should not be turned into political pawns. The Obama administration should side with Congress and reverse the Bush policy.

2. Let Children Have Families: The Bolivian Government Should Re-open Adoptions to the U.S.

Bolivia is a nation with many, many orphaned children. Most are abandoned early in their lives by young single mothers who can't afford to support them. Some get taken in by other family, but thousands are not so fortunate and they end up living in an orphanage. In Cochabamba alone there are nearly eighty institutions that take in abandoned children, ranging from the good to the miserable.

But not even the very best orphanage can come to being raised in a family, with parents who love you. Every parent knows that every child needs to have at least one adult who thinks she walks on water. Institutions can't do that. I know. For four years I helped run one of the better ones here and it doesn't come close.

The answer is adoption.

It would be great if adoptions by Bolivian families would provide families for all these children. They don't. Not even close. Foreign adoptions help make up the difference, giving thousands of Bolivian children families and homes.

In 2002 the Bolivian government (under President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada) halted foreign adoptions, amidst concerns that the foreign nonprofit agencies responsible for sending follow-up reports about these children were not doing their job. Bolivia declared that it would only allow adoptions to countries that operated under the provisions of an international adoption treaty (the Hague Agreement). Under that agreement the governments themselves assume responsibility for follow-up reporting.

Some countries, including Spain, Italy and Holland, were able to quickly operate under the new rules and Bolivian adoptions to those countries were reopened. For the U.S. things were much more complicated. The U.S. does not have a single national agency for children and the follow-up work required is a state-level responsibility. So the State Department had to establish a complicated coordinating system with the states in order to comply with international adoption rules.

U.S. authorities have told me that this process is now complete and that the only thing that stands in the way of re-opening Bolivian adoptions to the U.S. is the final signing of paperwork between the two governments.

Neither bureaucratic inaction nor political disputes should get in the way of re-opening a door through which hundreds of children each year can find the very thing they need most, a family that loves them. The U.S. and Bolivian governments should take action as soon as possible to re-open the door to U.S./Bolivia adoptions.

3. Re-build the Bridges of Understanding: Bring the Peace Corps Back to Bolivia

Last September, right around the same time that the U.S. and Bolivian governments were having a diplomatic meltdown, the Bush administration also pulled all 113 Peace Corps volunteers out of Bolivia. In fairness, at the time Bolivia was also having a domestic political meltdown all its own, with serious violence in specific parts of the country. The U.S. claimed the pull-out was to protect the volunteers' security.

Yet, what the Bush administration did was far more than move the volunteers in the affected areas out to safer territory. With virtually no advance notice to these young people, they were put on a plane to Lima and told they were never returning to Bolivia. Many weren’t going to be able to finish their Peace Corps service at all. They left behind friends, pets, and communities without even having the chance to say goodbye.

Then the Peace Corps fired most of its local staff and auctioned off most of its equipment, signaling that is wasn't coming back, certainly not anytime soon.

Across the U.S. on our recent book tour, Peace Corps volunteers who had been pulled out of Bolivia last September came to see us and to talk. They told us how devastated they were to have been yanked out. They told me that it was unnecessary to permanently pull them from Bolivia to protect their safety. Several, who were in areas where violence was a risk, told me that they could easily have been moved temporarily to Cochabamba or some other peaceful region of the country until things calmed down.

Peace Corp volunteers not only make a direct and valuable contribution to the communities they live in, they also form a two-way bridge of understanding between countries. The U.S. and Bolivia could use a good dose of that these days. Peace Corps volunteers are a part of what a 'people-to-people' relationship is all about.

Bring them back. The Bolivian government should ask the Peace Corps to return and the Obama administration should accelerate efforts to do that.

Special Note: While the comments section continues to be at rest (see post below) we are happy to hear directly from people who have thoughts on these goals and how they might be achieved. Drop us a note at: contact@democracyctr.org.
Interestingly, our daily visits seem to have increased since the comments section was put on hold.

U.S. Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell

Dear Readers:

Back from the book tour. Back from the snows of Minnesota and Chicago to the sunshine of Cochabamba. Back from planes, trains, and subways to simple morning walks to greet the neighborhood cows. Back to work.

Across the U.S. for the past month one of the questions we were asked the most was: What does the future hold for new relations between Bolivia and the U.S., under President Barak Obama?

I want to tackle that question in two posts this week. This first one is an overview, a look at the recent trajectory of relations between the two nations. Later this week I'll be back with a post: Three Things that the U.S. and Bolivian Governments Should Do.

The photo for today's post, appropriate to the subject at hand, was taken by the partner of one of our Democracy Center staff in Oruro at Carnaval a week ago. He took just before he sprayed foam on Evo from behind. Bolivians, Presidents included, like to have a good time.

Thanks again to everyone who came out to see us on the tour!

Jim Shultz

U.S. Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell

The Way it Was

For many years Bolivian governments and governments in Washington had a splendid relationship. But it was one based on Bolivian governments being quite happy to do pretty much anything Washington asked.

In the War on Drugs, Bolivian governments willingly allowed local drug prosecutors to receive special salary bonuses directly from the U.S. embassy. To keep those bonuses coming the prosecutors on Washington's payroll put thousands of innocent people in jail, giving the U.S. Embassy the escalating arrest statistics it happily reported onward to the State Department as evidence of its success. President Morales suspended the bonuses after taking office.

In reform of the nation's economy, the U.S. government and the international financial institutions associated with it (the World Bank, the IMF, and others) found happy allies in Bolivia's governing elite. Together they made the country a test lab for the policies of the Washington Consensus. While these moves made U.S. energy firms like Enron happy (the Texas company took control of Bolivia's oil pipelines), Bolivians were made worse off.

That convivial relationship changed in 2006, when President Evo Morales took office. A fierce U.S. critic, he told a stadium rally in Cochabamba that if the U.S. intended to continue using Bolivia as an economic test lab that he would "become the U.S.'s worst nightmare." On election night he ended his victory speech with an old cocalero chant, "Grow coca, death to the Yankees." But he said it in Quechua and none of the U.S. correspondents caught it.

Given that, it is actually surprising how well the Bush/Morales relationship began.

Shortly before the Morales inaugural I had conversations with both Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the Bolivian government's designee for U.S. Ambassador. Both told me they hoped for good relations with the U.S., an intent that was clearly signaled to Washington as well. By happenstance I ended up flying the next day, from La Paz to Washington, on the same flights as the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Thomas Shannon. Shannon had been the Bush administration's official representative at the Bolivian inaugural. He told me that was genuinely impressed by the new government's desire for cordial relations.

That message snaked its way up the diplomatic chain of command and resulted, some weeks later, in an official congratulatory call from President Bush to President Morales. Someone I know who listened in says that all went well on the call until Evo mentioned his political party, Movement Toward Socialism. Bush, I was told, could be heard turning to his aids and saying with some surprise, "He's a socialist?"

From afar it seemed like the Bush administration was suffering a bout of internal schizophrenia about what to do with Evo. One day Bush called Evo to congratulate him, then a few days later then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stood before a Washington press club, lumping Morales with Hugo Chavez and warning about the dangers of the continent's new "populist" leaders.

But on substantive policy matters the non-hawks in the administration seemed to carry the day. Bolivia's anti-drug efforts were certified as meeting U.S. standards and Bolivia continued to be included in the Andean Trade Pact (ATPDEA) that allowed its textiles tariff-free access to U.S. markets. Morales also stuck to his more dovish post-inaugural tendencies toward Washington. When asked by a U.S. journalist if he joined in Chavez's famous declaration at the United Nations calling Bush the devil, Morales demurred, saying he found no benefit to attacking people personally.

Goldberg Wars

It was probably inevitable that the Washington/La Paz honeymoon wouldn't last. President Morales distrusts the U.S. government viscerally, having been personally on the blunt end of the U.S. War on Coca. And the Bush administration was never comfortable with a cocalero socialist who counted Hugo Chavez as a close friend.

Diplomacy is the business of seeing how such conflicts can be kept in check, allowing for the mutual benefit of both sides. But skillful diplomacy takes a skillful diplomat. And the man who Mr. Bush sent to La Paz as his new Ambassador in August 2006, Phillip Goldberg, was not, by a stretch, a skillful diplomat.

It didn’t take much more than 5 minutes in the room with Goldberg to witness his condescension toward Bolivia and his cluelessness at diplomacy. In a roomful of U.S. citizens here in Cochabamba I watched jaws drop as Washington's chief diplomat in Bolivia made a joke about a woman being lynched in El Alto.

And time after time Goldberg displayed an innate ability to make international incidents out of diplomatic molehills.

First there was 'Ammogate'. In June 2007 Mr. Goldberg's military attaché, a U.S. Army Colonel, arranged for his son's fiancé to bring 500 rounds of ammunition into Bolivia in her suitcase. When the bullets were discovered at the La Paz airport the story was major front-page news. Ambassador Goldberg downplayed the incident publicly and paid an apology visit to the Bolivian Vice President. Even members of Goldberg's staff told me later that the Embassy had blown it by not making the Colonel apologize on television or sending him packing altogether. Imagine how U.S. Homeland Security might react if the niece of the Bolivian ambassador to Washington was stopped in Miami with 500 rounds in her suitcase.

Here's a Latin American joke: Why has there never been a coup in the United States? There isn't a U.S. Embassy.

Further evidence Mr. Goldberg's inability to run the Embassy came in February 2008, when news broke that one of his security aides was asking Fulbright Scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to spy on behalf of the U.S. government by passing along information about Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. The Embassy's antics put hundreds of U.S. young people at risk and were a direct violation of U.S. rules. Yet again, in public, Goldberg tried to treat the incident as minor, failing to understand totally the reactions of the Bolivian people.

To be clear, in the breakdown of U.S./Bolivia relations Goldberg has had a good deal of help from President Morales. Time and time again his anti-U.S. instincts took over. Sometimes it came as declarations, including a public repeat of his "Death to the Yankees" slogan when foreign reporters were watching. But words were not the only thing Morales tossed into the mix. When incoming U.S. Senate leader Henry Reid paid a visit to La Paz over New Years 2007, Evo took that moment to announce that U.S. citizens would be newly required to carry visas. Last year when Senator Christopher Dodd – one of the most important progressive voices on Latin America in the Senate – boarded a plane for Bolivia, he was told that Evo wouldn’t see him. Not even frenzied phone calls to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington could change Evo's mind (Dodd met only with the Vice President).

Finally, in July of last year, Assistant Secretary Shannon made a return trip to Bolivia in the hope of resolving some of the tensions that Goldberg and Morales could not. Happy statements of continued friendship came out of those meetings, but the mistrust sewn in both directions for two years were, in the end, insurmountable.

The September Meltdown

Whatever diplomatic civility remained between Bolivia and the U.S., if there was any, melted entirely in September as Bolivia was in the midst of its own domestic political meltdown.

In August President Morales survived an election showdown with his regional adversaries, winning the backing of 67% of voters in a national referendum. That same vote also ousted two of his fiercest opponents among the governors, both by wide margins. When Evo announced that he would use his fresh mandate to push forward with a national vote on a MAS-drafted constitution, the remaining regional governors opposed to Morales decided to go to war. In Santa Cruz the governor egged on mobs of youth who torched public buildings. In the Pando the Governor there was charged with involvement in a massacre of more than a dozen campesinos.

A wiser diplomat would have remained carefully neutral, issuing calls for peace from the bunker-like U.S. Embassy in La Paz. But on the eve of the violence, when it was clear that the nation's divisions were headed for a violent precipice, Mr. Goldberg went on tour, to visit two governors who were Morales' harshest critics – Sabina Cuellar of Chuqisaca and Ruben Costas of Santa Cruz.

What was said in these meetings is known only to those present. But shortly afterwards Cuellar called for Morales' resignation and Costas launched the street attacks in Santa Cruz. Here is a link to the September declaration by a group of MAS Congress Members which outlines the specific actions charged by the Bolivian government against Mr. Goldberg.

Those visits set off the string of events that leads us to where we are today. In short order Morales declared that Goldberg was encouraging the governors' efforts to undermine democratic rule in Bolivia and ordered him out of the country. With that move, whatever dovish instincts may have still been alive within the Bush administration were quickly overtaken by the move into retaliation mode. Bolivia's ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, was ordered out of the U.S. Bush then suddenly 'decertified Bolivia's anti-coca efforts and removed it from the Andean Trade Preference Program.

The administration also pulled more than 100 Peace Corps volunteers out of Bolivia, citing "security concerns". The Embassy here apparently had no such security concerns when it asked some of those volunteers to spy on its behalf. I have spoken to many of these volunteers in the months since. Most felt totally safe where they were, they were not told they were being pulled from Bolivia when they left their villages, and they are bitter at the possibility that they were used as political pawns.

This was the Bolivia/U.S. relationship inherited by the Obama administration.

What Would Obama Do?

The election of Barak Obama inspired great hope here in Bolivia as well as in the U.S. Taxi drivers in El Alto asked me about him. President Morales seemed to feel a personal sense of connection. "What is happening in the world?" he asked. "An indigenous man is president in Bolivia and a black man is president in the United States." But how does that translate into changes in diplomatic relations?

When asked about this on our book tour I made two points.

The first is that U.S. relations toward Bolivia are operating at the moment on Bush holdover autopilot. As a source in Washington, close to the administration, explained to me, Obama will focus all of his attention and his political capital on three things – the economic crisis, the War in Iraq, and the War in Afghanistan. Latin America, and Bolivia less so, is not even on the radar screen. What decisions are being made are mostly likely being made at a level far below President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The administration hasn't even gotten around to naming a successor to Assistant Secretary Shannon, the person that will lead administration policy development toward the region.

The second is that in the absence of a strong vision for U.S./Latin American policy, it is possible that some of the basics will be driven by politics. As I said in the U.S., I think the new administration will have a naughty list and a nice list, with Hugo Chavez heading the former and people like Lula of Brazil heading the latter. Where Evo ends up is up for grabs.

Oil Corruption, the CIA, and Human Rights

All of which brings us to the stories currently grabbing a few column inches in the U.S. and headlines in Bolivia.

For the last month the Morales administration has been hit with a major corruption scandal involving its newly reconstituted state oil company (YPFB). The scandal broke when an oilman by the name of Jorge O'Connor was killed in late January in La Paz. He was carrying $450,000 in cash, apparently on its way to be handed over to the head of the state company, Santos Ramírez. Stung badly, Morales ordered Ramírez to jail and fired many of those who worked with him.

As I was quoted in yesterday's Washington Post, "I don't think it's any secret to anybody that corruption in the Bolivian government did not end when Evo Morales became president."

Then last week Morales came up with a new theory of why the state oil company has suffered such a string of corruption and mismanagement charges under his administration. The C.I.A., he charged, has infiltrated the company to create problems for his government. The Embassy in La Paz angrily denied the accusation and Morales opponents declared that the President was just trying to shift attention away from the corruption scandal.

This is not the first accusation by the Morales government that the U.S. has been meddling in internal affairs in Bolivia. In addition to the charges leveled against Goldberg, his government has accused USAID of providing backing to his opponents and also accused the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of meddling and ordered it to leave.

Finally, this week the Obama administration tossed its own grenade into the mix, with the State Department's annual issuance of human right reports on 191 nations across the globe (not including the U.S.) – from Albania to Zimbabwe. These reports are always received with skepticism, coming as they do from a country that makes rendition flights to sweep people away to U.S. operated torture camps. It is worth noting, for example, that the Cuba report makes no mention of the surest source of human rights abuses on the island, the U.S. prison at Guantanamo.

The report on Bolivia -- which was surely written long before Mr. Obama took the presidential oath -- included warnings similar to those under prior governments. These include unjust detentions, abuses by police and soldiers, and infringements on press freedom. Yesterday Morales declared, "The State Department does not have the moral right to speak of human rights, those who have most punished the whole world…who went to Iraq to kill."

I think it is a very good thing to have a global review of human right situations around the world. But it also seems clear that the U.S. has shot itself in the foot for a long while to come as a credible messenger.

And Now…

This is how we got here, to a place in U.S./Bolivia relations where neither nation has an ambassador to the other, where 20,000 Bolivian workers remain at risk due to President Bush's political moves on trade, where the Peace Corps is gone and not coming back, and where the relationships between two peoples that ought to have good relations are now deeply soured because of the actions of their governments.

How can we get to a better place? Tune into our next Blog post later this week.

Hillary Clinton on Morales and Bolivia

As the Bush administration heads out the door, the U.S. Bolivia relationship is basically in political tatters. A relationship that started off rocky but hopeful when President Morales took office, descended into an ongoing diplomatic spitting war – over issues ranging from the U.S. Embassy asking Fulbright scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to gather intelligence for it, to charges that Morales was abandoning the battle against illegal coca.

All that hit rock bottom in September when Morales charged the U.S. Ambassador with stirring up political protest against the government and sent him back to Washington, followed by the U.S. sending Bolivia's ambassador packing, decertifying the Bolivia anti-coca effort, and axing Bolivia from a trade program threatening 20,000 jobs.

So the question is whether that sour turn in U.S. relations will change course under President Barak Obama. Morales has made it clear both in private and in public, in a series of speeches in the U.S. last month, that he is hopeful for a new start. How does the incoming administration feel about Bolivia?

Last January, we asked a friend of the Democracy Center, Tim Provencal, a former Maryknoll lay missioner in El Alto, to wade through the snows of Dover, New Hampshire and ask then-candidate Hillary Clinton a question about Bolivia. That video is a part of the Democracy Center's Voices from Latin America campaign which you can learn more about here.

Today Clinton is President-elect Obama's designate for U.S. Secretary of State. That makes her public comments in January, in which she voiced strong support for Morales, all the more relevant. To see a video of her complete statement on Bolivia, click on the video screen above. Here is a portion of what she had to say:

I understand the pent up desire of the people of Bolivia, especially the indigenous people, to finally have a say in their country and in their future…and I think that the United States has made a series of miscalculations. Granted they go back decades but they've been a particular problem in this [the Bush] administration. I believe we should have done much more to support Morales. He has done what is understandable, as a populist leader, he has turned to those like Chavez who have offered to help him…so I will try to create a new relationship with Latin America and that certainly includes Bolivia.

Time and politics, and the developments in the U.S./Bolivia relationship since September, can certainly have an effect on the way Secretary Clinton will steer that relationship. But if her views expressed in public in Dover a year ago hold, the door seems open for a change of course – and that would be a good thing for both countries.

Bush Suspends Bolivia's Participation in ATPDEA Trade Program

For Thanksgiving this year President Bush took to the White House lawn to pardon a turkey (a presidential tradition). Meanwhile, back inside the White House pressroom, the administration was announcing that it was turning another turkey into U.S. foreign policy – formally implementing the administration's threat to remove Bolivia from the Andean Trade Preferences Program (ATPDEA). The move could destroy as many as 20,000 jobs in Bolivia, just as the global economic crisis is driving up unemployment to levels not seen in decades.

To see a video produced by The Democracy Center last month featuring interviews with three workers whose jobs are on the line, see here. The video was also shown at the Trade Representative's public hearing on the Bush decree.

In a statement, Mr. Bush's press secreatry declared:

President Bush signed a proclamation that suspends the designation of Bolivia as a beneficiary country under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). The suspension, which takes effect on December 15, 2008, is the result of Bolivia's failure to cooperate with the United States on counternarcotics efforts, which is one criterion for ATPA and ATPDEA eligibility. If Bolivia were to improve its performance under the ATPA and ATPDEA programs' criteria, the President would have the discretion to issue a proclamation to redesignate Bolivia as a beneficiary country.

Seeking to Tie President Obama's Hands?

There is certainly a reasonable debate to be had about Bolivia's current anti-drug efforts, and the Bolivian government has expressed a willingness to have it. But in reality the Bush announcement looks mostly like a political effort to tie the hands of his successor on an issue fraught with politics.

Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have raised questions about President Morales' commitment to deal with the portion of Bolivia's coca crop that eventually ends up as part of the illegal drug trade. To be clear, a strong portion of Bolivia's coca goes for traditional uses such as chewing, and to legitimate industrial uses such as tea. But not all of it does and a good deal of Bolivian coca does feed the illegal drug trade, though primarily headed toward Brazil and Argentina, not the U.S. (which imports its cocaine primarily from U.S. ally Colombia).

That concern, tied to the ATPDEA agreement, was translated in October into a much more sensible approach, and a bipartisan one – legislation that renewed Bolivia's participation in ATPDEA for six months (instead of the year granted to other nations), pending a review by the incoming administration. That approach made sense at a variety of levels. It was bipartisan and it left the policy choice to the new president as part of a new political approach to the region. This is very different than putting that policy decision in the hands of a lame-duck President whose deep unpopularity in the region is rivaled only by his deep unpopularity at home.

The bipartisan Congressional approach also maximized the leverage that U.S. policy makers might have on Bolivia anti-drug efforts. The one issue in Bolivia/U.S. relations that the Morales government has worked hard is the country's continued participation in those trade preferences, a theme I heard over and over again in my recent meetings with both Bolivian and U.S. policy makers. The Bush executive decree only pushes Bolivia father away from being influenced by Washington, as it seeks to replace U.S. markets for those textiles and other products.

And an administration headed by a Harvard MBA might at least have enough common sense to know that markets broken are not so easily put back together, as U.S. suppliers look elsewhere.

All this will put the incoming Obama administration in the awkward position of having to reverse the Bush decree just to put its policy in alignment with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, a move it should make quickly nonetheless. President Obama will have some strong political cover if he does make such a move, including from the senior Republican in the Senate on foreign policy issues, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. President Morales met with Lugar last week in Washington, after which the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced:

The United States regrets any perception that it has been disrespectful, insensitive, or engaged in any improper activities that would disregard the legitimacy of the current Bolivian government or its sovereignty. We hope to renew our relationship with Bolivia, and to develop a rapport grounded on respect and transparency. In this regard, after appropriate and constructive official contacts, I hope that we will have a U.S. Ambassador in La Paz soon, and that we will look forward to having a Bolivian Ambassador here in Washington, D.C.

Lifting the suspension on the ATPDEA with Bolivia will strengthen the growing political and economic relationship between our nations and help bring new jobs and good will to the region.

In effect, the Bush administration's final decision on Bolivia and ATPDEA this week is the equivalent of Mr. Bush leaving a plate of stale turkey leftovers in the White House refrigerator, with a note encouraging the new occupant to eat up. President Obama will be far better off dumping the unwelcome gift in the trash and starting over fresh with Bolivia. There is plenty of eagerness by the Morales government to do so, and support on Capitol Hill as well.

The Bush Administration 'Decertifies" Bolivia's Anti-Drug Program

Readers:

This week President Morales is in the U.S. and among his goals is to lay the groundwork for better relations with the Obama administration than he has had with the Bush administration.

There are many thorny issues in the U.S./Bolivia relationship – trade issues, U.S. protection of Bolivia’s indicted ex-President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and Bolivia’s close relationship with U.S. antagonist Venezuela. But the toughest issue remains the U.S. War on Drugs in Bolivia, an issue that is likely to dominate the opening moves in the Morales-Obama relationship.

In September, the Bush administration formally “decertified” Bolivia’s anti-coca efforts, triggering among other things the administration’s removal of Bolivia from an important trade preference program, a move that could cost the country at least 20,000 jobs. To many the Bush administration move looked less like a sober assessment of Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts than it did one in a pile of retaliatory moves against Morales for his ouster of the U.S. Ambassador (whom Morales claimed was actively undermining the Bolivian government.

John Walsh, an expert on the U.S. drug war at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), wrote:

The Bush administration’s decision to label Bolivia as a “demonstrable failure” in drug control – and to then use decertification as the pretext for suspending trade preferences – was evidently meant to punish Bolivia for President Morales’ expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. But the decertification boomeranged because it was so obviously unjustified, underscoring longstanding complaints in Latin America that the certification process is hypocritical and decided for political reasons, rather than on the basis of the drug control record.

WOLA, along with another group, the Andean Information Network, recently published an analysis of the Bush administration’s ‘decertification decision, “Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case.” That analysis was submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative as part of the administration’s public hearing process on its plans to axe Bolivia from the Andean Trade Preferences Act.

Because of the importance of this issue we wanted to bring this analysis to our readers’ attention. Below is a segment from the introduction and a link to the full analysis, which you can also go to directly here.

Jim Shultz


Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case

An analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America and the Andean Information Network

On September 16, 2008, the Bush administration announced its determination that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months” to adhere to its “obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”1 Ten days later, the Administration announced its intent to make Bolivia ineligible for benefits under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), asserting that “Bolivia’s demonstrable failure to cooperate in counternarcotics efforts over the past 12 months indicates that Bolivia is not meeting important criteria” to qualify for the tariff preferences.

The Bush administration’s “decertification” of Bolivia came just days after Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador, whom President Evo Morales accused of conspiring against the government.3 Departing Bolivia on September 14, the expelled U.S. ambassador, Philip Goldberg, warned Bolivians that the decision to expel him “could have serious impacts that have not been appropriately weighed.”

In explaining Bolivia’s decertification at a September 16 press briefing, David T. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, remarked that the decertification “was not a hasty decision.”5 Asked specifically whether the decertification was “linked to the ambassador being kicked out or any other tit-for-tat,” Assistant Secretary Johnson said that it was not. But these protests deny the obvious – that the decision to decertify Bolivia was a reprisal against the Morales government for having just expelled the U.S. ambassador – not because of Bolivia’s supposed “demonstrable failure” in drug control.

Read the full analysis here.

An Update on our Peace Corps Blog

We have received a good deal of feedback following our Blog post last week about the Peace Corps pullout of Bolivia and the auctioning off of its Cochabamba training center.

A number of Peace Corps volunteers wrote to us thanking us for our support of their work. One of those who was recently returned home wrote, "Thank you for your human portrayal of the fate of PC Bolivia, and for filling me in on what has become of our beloved Huallani [the training center]. Now, back in the US and putting my life back together, I again find that your reporting is the best out there."

Though the Peace Corps management has not contacted us directly, we have been told by several different sources that those managers are not happy that we suggested a link between the Corps' sudden departure from Bolivia and a flurry of moves by the Bush administration that came at the same time, aimed at politically punishing President Morales for his ouster of the U.S. Ambassador. Those moves included the removal of Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade agreement, its 'decertification' of Bolivia's anti-drug efforts, and the expulsion of Bolivia's ambassador to the U.S.

The Peace Corps press office, in reply to an inquiry from The Democracy Center, wrote:

The safety and security of all Peace Corps Volunteers is the agency’s highest priority. Since January 07 in Bolivia, we’ve initiated our Emergency Action Plans 20 times at varying degrees including alerts, standfast, and volunteer consolidations. Peace Corps suspended the Bolivia program because of increasing civil unrest, including blockading of major transportation routes, and escalating violence against Bolivian citizens.

We are maintaining most of the PC vehicles, all the furniture and equipment in the Cochabamba office as well as a skeletal staff. The furniture and equipment that is being sold is from the Training Center that was scheduled to be shut down and moved to the main Peace Corps Office in Cochabamba. The decision to close the Training Center was made a couple months prior to the decision to suspend the program.

I am certainly willing to listen to reasoned debate on why the Peace Corps was pulled from Bolivia and what real plans the Corps has for coming back. Some sources have told us the Corps claims it will be back in operation as soon as a year from now, others say 2010. Officially the Corps says it "plans to re-assess the suspension when the security environment improves in Bolivia." Our main hope, as we expressed earlier, is that the Peace Corps comes back soon. We think it is good for Bolivia and good for the U.S. as well.

Dismembering the Peace Corps

Lot #11: 1 cork bulletin board, 1 wooden desk with glass top, 1 medium sized wooden bookshelf, 1 chair, 2 Spanish/English dictionaries, three books in English.

Behind a long adobe wall, just outside the small town here of Sacaba, the U.S. Peace Corps' training center has been converted into an auction house. The last material evidence of the Corps' presence in Bolivia is up for bid.

Those looking at Lot #51 can get a former staff refrigerator with a bedspread thrown in. Those interested in Lot #62 can have 7 former Peace Corps rulers, 10 folders, a stack of books that volunteers left behind for their successors, and a map of Bolivia.

In September, against a backdrop of political violence in two of Bolivia's nine departments, the Peace Corps pulled out all 113 of its members, flying them to Lima, Peru. Many people thought, at the time, that it was just the U.S. taking a temporary safety precaution. But as it turns out, the Peace Corps evacuation from Bolivia is not a temporary one.

The Bush administration, in addition to bringing a premature halt to this year's class of Corps volunteers, has also cancelled plans for any new class as well. The Peace Corps – a rare positive U.S. symbol in a country deeply skeptical of the U.S. – is gone and it isn't coming back. Its vehicles, computers, stoves, lamps, computers and other accessories will be sold Friday to the highest bidder – souvenirs of a valuable program being dismembered.

Using the Peace Corps as a Political Tool

There is really little question about the motive for the Bush administration's withdrawal of the Corps. It isn't safety, it's politics. Shortsighted politics.

Bolivia is a big country of more than 2 million square miles. The September violence, as frightening as it was, was limited to a very small portion of the country. The worst of it, in Pando, took place in a part of Bolivia so remote that one would truly need to go to great lengths looking for trouble in order to find it. The vast majority of the volunteers were nowhere near the violence, nor threatened by it. Those that might have been nearby could easily have been moved to Cochabamba or another region at peace.

The Vermont-based School for International Training's (S.I.T.) semester abroad program for U.S. undergraduates is notoriously more cautious about safety concerns than the Peace Corps. In October 2003, during the political conflicts that led to the ouster of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the S.I.T. students were whisked off to Buenos Aires while the Peace Corps remained. This time around the S.I.T. students stayed safely put in Cochabamba, and remain here, while the Peace Corps volunteers were ordered, most against their wishes, on a plane to Lima.

And if there was any question remaining about whether safety or politics was behind the U.S. move, the answer to the question became clear when the Bush administration announced that the Corps was not coming back at all.

The administration's withdrawal of the Peace Corps from Bolivia was part of a package of hastily imposed policies aimed at punishing President Morales for declaring the U.S. Ambassador here, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata' and sending him home. It was as if administration officials reached into a drawer and pulled out a list titled, "What We Do if Evo Crosses A Line." It included:

· Kick out Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman
· Decertify Bolivia's anti-coca efforts
· Eliminate Bolivia's participation in the ATPDEA trade program

And pull out the Peace Corps, for a long time if not permanently.

Sadly, this was not the first episode of the Bush administration pulling the Peace Corps into U.S./Bolivia diplomatic battles. A year ago a U.S. Embassy security official in La Paz illegally asked a Fulbright scholar and Peace Corps volunteers to pass along any information they came across about Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. Whether those were the rogue actions of one stupid security official or something more conspiratorial can be debated. But it left a shadow of U.S. politics over the Corps that its withdrawal now only reinforces.

The Washington Post's new correspondent for the region, Joshua Partlow, authored a front-page article two weeks ago about the dissatisfaction among Corps volunteers at being used as political pawns, and how some of them have returned back to Bolivia on their own to continue their work here. He quoted a volunteer from Maryland, whose letter to friends and family circulated widely at the time. "The Peace Corps, unfortunately, has become another weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal," wrote volunteer Sarah Nourse. She called the Bush administration's move, "one more chance for the US to maintain its tough image and hit back, harder."

Advice to President-Elect Obama, Send them Back

Here at the Democracy Center we didn't have to look too far to find what the Peace Corps means to those who participate in it, and to those whose lives they touch. Yi-Ching Hwang, a member of our staff, served a two-year stint in the Corps, working in the highland community of Quewiñapampa.

"Living in that community for two years has transformed my way of looking at and interacting with the world. It is a time I will never forget. More than two years after my service, when I returned to visit, surprisingly, from the littlest of kids to aging grandmas, they still remembered my name and warmly greeted me. It is as if I’ve never left."

Just weeks after taking office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Peace Corps by executive order, with a modest start of trying to put 500 volunteers in the field by the end of the year. He declared at the time:

"Our Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict. It is designed to permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development."

The final days of the Clinton administration eight years ago are remembered most for a flurry of last minute executive pardons, some of them highly questionable. The final days of the Bush administration seem likely to be marked by a full scale effort to lock his successor into a set of policies that will be difficult to reverse, from weakening environmental protections to locking in a hard line against governments not to Mr. Bush's liking.

Over the next few months we will be putting forward a set of proposals aimed at rebuilding the torn relationship between the U.S. and Bolivia, including steps that both governments, of Presidents Obama and Morales, will need to take.

Here's the first of those suggestions – President Obama should reverse the Bush administration's error and send the Peace Corps back into Bolivia in full force. And President Morales should make clear that the Corps is warmly welcomed and that its security and that welcome will always be protected and honored.

Young people like Yi-Ching are an asset in Bolivia, both for the work they do and the relationships they build, not government-to-government but people-to-people. The President-elect has already signaled his desire to rebuild the U.S. tarnished image and place in the global fabric. Sending the Yi-Chings of our country back into Bolivia is a very good place to begin.

Shoot-Yourself-in-the-Foot Diplomacy for Beginners

Last month when Bolivian President Evo Morales declared the U.S. Ambassador, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata', the international media and diplomatic reviews were decidedly negative.

The editors of the New York Times declared, "We understand why the Bush administration and Congress are fed up with Bolivia’s president." A few hours south at the Washington Post, editors there described the ouster of Mr. Goldberg as the expulsion of, "a respected professional, on the spurious grounds of fomenting rebellion."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration reaction was starker still.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormick declared, "President Morales’ action is a grave error that has seriously damaged the bilateral relationship. The United States is the largest single country provider of development assistance to Bolivia, is Bolivia’s largest export market, and is the major provider of counternarcotics assistance."

[He got the export market wrong. Brazil and Argentina are much bigger importers of Bolivian products, including energy.]

Then the Bush administration started swinging some bats of its own. It ousted Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., yanked out the Peace Corp, and then pulled out what it thought was its biggest bat of all. In an announcement President Bush made himself, the administration announced that it would remove Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade program responsible for at least 20,000 Bolivian jobs.

The administration's message to President Morales was clear – you mess with us and we mess with you – the diplomatic version of a schoolyard shoving match in which the bigger boy wins. Mr. Morales and his Bolivian cohorts were to be taught a lesson about uneducated diplomacy.

The Art of Shooting Oneself in the Foot

But which country is really losing the diplomatic tussle?

First, let's be clear. Bolivia is not very important to the U.S. It is not a major energy contributor to the U.S., like Venezuela. It is not home to many big U.S. corporations, like Brazil. It isn’t a major source of immigrants, like Mexico. In the scheme of U.S. diplomatic priorities, Bolivia rates somewhere between Paraguay and Palua, i.e. not all that important.

To the extent that the U.S. does care about Bolivia diplomatically, it really has just three goals:

1. Keep Bolivia from establishing even deeper relations with Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez

2. Keep Bolivia from becoming, as it was in the 1980s, a major source of coca for cocaine production (that production has mostly relocated to the U.S. biggest ally on the continent, Colombia).

3. Try to improve the U.S. miserable image in the region (according to surveys, President Bush's popularity in the region now languishes at rock bottom, beside that of Fidel Castro).

So, given those goals, how does the Bush administrations new Bolivia doctrine of economic retaliation stack up?

Well, yesterday President Chavez was back in La Paz again. He and President Morales put pen to a new agreement in which Venezuela will take up some of the slack from the U.S. cancellation of Bolivia's participation in ATPDEA. Chavez pledged to open up Venezuelan markets to a big chunk of the textile exports that the Bush administration now says it doesn't want. So if someone in the State Department thought they were going to undermine the Morales/Chavez bond with the bigger-boy-in-the-schoolyard move, they might want to rethink that.

On coca, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you put 20,000 people out of work in a nation where honest economic opportunity is scarce, some of those people are going to drift in other directions. In Bolivia those 'other directions' often include migrating to the Chapare to grow coca that isn't destined for chewing or tea, but the illegal drug market. It was the destruction of much of Bolivia's mining industry in the 1980s that sent so many ex-miners into the coca-for-cocaine business two decades ago. So while the Bush administration claims that its goal here is to battle increased coca growing for drugs, its actual policies seemed aimed at sending former textile workers right in that direction. Truly intelligent.

Finally, if the Bush administration thinks that its retaliatory moves aimed at Morales have made the U.S. more popular in the region, it might want to take another look there as well. The real mark of declining U.S. influence in the region can be measured by the Chilean summit held by the South American presidents last montn, in response to the Bolivia crisis. The messages from the Presidents was clear – U.S., we do not want you in the room.

On this continent the U.S. is viewed as a contributor to problems, not an ally in finding solutions.

A Wiser Course

It is not a big surprise that the Bush administration would be ticked off, as it clearly was, by the ousting of its Ambassador to Bolivia. In another post we'll get into the question of what role Mr. Goldberg did or did not play in helping promoting civil unrest here last month – the Bolivian government's justification for sending Goldberg home.

But diplomacy is not about blowing off steam, it is about knowing national interests and using clear-eyed strategy as a vehicle for promoting those national interests.

Time and time again, not just in Latin America but globally, the Bush administration has shown itself to be tone-deaf to that basic fact. Now, in its closing days, the administration is not only repeating that mistake in Bolivia but also working hard to force the next President down the same path.

Congress made it clear that while it thought the threat of cutting Bolivia out of APTDEA might be a useful move at this time, actually doing so is the wrong thing to do right now. That's why, on a bipartisan basis, the Congress last month voted to extend Bolivia's participation until June 30, 2009, and leave it in the hands of the new administration to use the deadline as diplomatic leverage.

President Bush is using his executive powers to overrule that law.

Even that well-known Morales/Chavez/Castro radical, Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, knows that the Bush administration's APTDEA move is a diplomatic mistake. He declared so publicly last week, as he was traveling in Mexico with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

At the same hour that the Bush administration was holding the public hearings required by law on its axe-Bolivia plan, in Mexico Rice declared, in effect, that the hearings and supposed process of public input was irrelevant. She announced again the administration's intent to end Bolivia's participation as soon as the required 30-day waiting period was over.

Senator Lugar quickly disagreed. "When Bolivia stands at the cusp of a new era, with a new constitution, U.S. assistance should be forthcoming as an effort to help Bolivia, and not to be an impediment to its progress," said the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have made a good deal the past few months about how they are different that President Bush. Senator Obama, in particular, has repeated over and over again his intention to establish a different kind of diplomacy if he is President, one based on more dialogue and less retribution.

Reversing President Bush's certain removal of Bolivia from the APTDEA trade program may give him his first test to do that. And to show that, unlike his predecessor, during Diplomacy 101 he wasn't sleeping in class.