The Pentagon's Image Problem in Latin America and Africa

 This is a must-read article for any Latin American and foreign policy enthusiast.  Indeed, Latin America is against U.S. interests and may not be safe for Americans to visit because of Pentagon activities. 

War Is Boring: The Pentagon's Image Problem in Latin America and Africa

David Axe - World Politics Review, October 15, 2008

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=2776

The U.S.S. Kearsarge amphibious assault ship set sail from Norfolk, Va., in August, on a mission to provide free medical care to six Latin American countries. But five days into her four-month cruise, on Aug. 11, Kearsarge made an important detour, swinging within helicopter range of Miami to receive visitors. The roughly 20 people who clambered aboard from the hulking Marine Corps choppers represented a mix of U.S. military brass, civilian aid workers, local Miami elected officials and Spanish-language media.

"Our multinational team is dedicated to recommit and fortify our relationships in South America," Capt. Frank Ponds, ranking U.S. officer on Kearsarge, told the assembled VIPs in one of the 1,000-foot-long vessel's staterooms. He was specifically referring to the ship's current medical mission, but his words could also apply more generally to the July launch of the U.S. Fourth Fleet, a new headquarters for Latin American naval operations that is intended to boost U.S. military presence in what one analyst has called a traditionally "forgotten" part of the world. Kearsarge's cruise represented one of Fourth Fleet's first deployments.

Later, Ponds explained to the embarked reporters accompanying the vessel on her tour that ceremonies like the one on Aug. 11 were a key facet of Kearsarge's mission. Treating a few tens of thousands of patients in Latin America would not be enough: The Navy also needed to explain what it was doing, and why, to the hundreds of millions of people in the region who would not be receiving medical care. Ponds said this "strategic communications" was vital to "influencing generations to come."

But according to some experts, Ponds' efforts were too little, too late. Public opinion in Latin America has already turned against the Pentagon's reinvigorated activities in the region -- and against the United States in general. America's image has "eroded" in six Latin American countries surveyed in a recent Pew poll, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, a Chilean polling organization ranked President George W. Bush as the least popular world leader in the opinions of Latin Americans.

The United States has a major perception problem in the two world regions where the Pentagon has decided to focus greater effort. Latin America and Africa represent new frontiers for a military that in recent decades has mostly concerned itself with Western Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. In addition to Fourth Fleet's recent launch, in October the Pentagon formally stood up Africa Command, a new headquarters overseeing all of Africa, save Egypt. The so-called AFRICOM has proved deeply unpopular among everyday Africans -- so much so that only one country, Liberia, offered to host the command's facilities. Rather than risk further alienating Africans, AFRICOM instead chose to keep its facilities in Germany.

Similarly, in the Southern Hemisphere, Fourth Fleet has been a magnet for criticism. Upon hearing of the Pentagon's intention to stand up the new headquarters, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused the U.S. of deliberately provoking a new "Cold War" in Latin America. Chávez followed up his accusation by inviting the Russian navy to conduct exercises off the Venezuelan coast. Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa supported the invitation. "The U.S. Fourth Fleet can come to Latin America but a Russian fleet can't?" Correa said.

Anti-U.S. rhetoric might be expected from the region's most hardline leftist regimes, but even current and former U.S. allies have protested renewed U.S. military interest in Latin America. The same day Kearsarge began delivering aid to impoverished eastern Nicaragua, that country's president, Daniel Ortega, accused the vessel of carrying spies. Chile, perhaps the staunchest U.S. ally in Latin America, lately has been skeptical of the Pentagon's intentions in the region. And Brazil, which sent doctors to help out aboard Kearsarge, nevertheless cited Fourth Fleet as a potential military rival. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Brazil's navy must protect the nation's newly discovered "subsalt" offshore oil reserves "because the men of Fourth Fleet are almost there on top of the subsalt areas."

This despite Fourth Fleet's largely humanitarian focus, perfectly reflected in the Kearsarge cruise. "Adm. Jim Stavridis, who is the commander of SOUTHCOM, speaks very eloquently about these missions of peace," says Bob Work, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Of Fourth Fleet's five stated mission areas, three are humanitarian in nature. Nos. 4 and 5 are multinational naval training and counternarcotics. "Kinetic" combat doesn't even make the list.

But the Pentagon failed early on to impress upon Latin American leaders its essentially peaceful intentions in forming the new headquarters. According to Mark Schneider, an analyst with International Crisis Group, the U.S. government did not effectively consult with the region's governments before announcing Fourth Fleet. "If it had been done in a different way, it might have been accepted," Schneider says. "It needed to have been done in a collaborative way." The Pentagon should perhaps have expected a certain wariness among Latin Americans, especially considering the U.S. military's history in the region. "We know of many historical cases of U.S. intervention in Latin American countries," said Leonid Golubev, Russian ambassador to Bolivia. Indeed, the airstrip in eastern Nicaragua where Kearsarge landed her first batch of medical supplies in August was the same strip built by the U.S. as a base for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion targeting Cuba.

AFRICOM's problems are similar in nature. Unlike Central Command, which has as its primary mission prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, AFRICOM is mostly a training and humanitarian organization, with only a few thousand combat troops (those assigned to a Special Forces base in Djibouti). "This is not a kinetic environment," said AFRICOM boss Gen. Kip Ward. "We are there to help our partner nations build their capacity, working in totality with the overall U.S. government program in a particular country."

"Not focused on war fighting," is how Theresa Whalen, the Pentagon's top Africa official, characterized the new command.

That may be so, but in failing to clearly communicate this focus to the continent's leaders and to everyday Africans, the Pentagon didn't take into account the lingering fear of colonialism that is widespread in Africa. "U.S. AFRICOM project has a hidden agenda," one Nigerian commenter wrote in a post on the command's official Web site. "Washington should understand that Africa does not need AFRICOM to solve her problems, many of which have foreign coloration."

Soon after AFRICOM was announced in late 2006, stories circulated in the African press claiming that the U.S. planned to build permanent bases on the continent, and already operated a secret airbase in Botswana. "We could just not kill that rumor," Whalen said. She said African reporting on AFRICOM, dominated by Nigerian, South African and Kenyan news organizations, was "not particularly sophisticated." And even today, two years later, there's a "great deal of speculation, misinformation," according to Jerry Lanier, a State Department adviser to AFRICOM.

The Pentagon is at least partly to blame, says Jose de Arimateia da Cruz, a professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Georgia. "Two years into AFRICOM planning and launch, there is still very little dissemination of information."

As for Latin America, press conferences aboard U.S.S. Kearsarge cannot undo the long months of relative silence that preceded Fourth Fleet's launch, and which have undermined the new headquarters' "mission of peace."

David Axe is an independent correspondent, a World Politics Review contributing editor, and the author of "War Bots." He blogs at War is Boring. His WPR column, "War is Boring," appears every two weeks.