Recommendations for a New Administration

Base Hemispheric Relations on Opportunities, Not Threats

Before discussing what countries the president should prioritize or what laws to change, it might be useful to look at U.S. policy on the macro level.  The new administration should consider adopting four self-explanatory guiding principles:

  • Get our own government's own house in order,
     
  • Upgrade priorities in the hemisphere,
     
  • Distinguish between countries, and
     
  • Support institutions that complement U.S. interests

Whatever one's policy or partisan differences, I think we can agree that for the last decade, since 9/11, U.S. policy toward the Americas has drifted.  We have not paid sufficient attention to the area that is right on our own borders and is of rising importance to us.  U.S. policy has been episodic and inconsistent, lurching from crisis to opportunity and back again.

Howard Wiarda