A Vacuum at the Top of Obama's Latin America Team

U.S. policy toward Latin America is suffering from a lack of experience at the top. Neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden or anyone in the cabinet could honestly be considered a Latin Americanist. And Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's nominee for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs -- the top diplomatic post in the region -- remains unconfirmed, the victim of a Republican senator's cheap political maneuvering.

It's been nearly nine months since Obama took office, and nearly five since he launched what he calls a new foreign policy era of "mutual respect and equality" in the Americas. While both developments have been widely celebrated throughout the region, so far the Obama administration has delivered only policy potpourri -- a hodgepodge of decisions that demonstrates a lack of coordination and strategy.

Take Cuba policy, an area that places the U.S. and Latin America at odds, but where meaningful change would send an unequivocal message of a fresh start. Though welcome, Obama's modest initiatives -- easing travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans and restarting some bilateral talks -- have done little more than restore the conditions of the pre-George W. Bush era.

One might argue that the U.S. took an important first step when it supported rescinding a provision that has suspended Cuba from the Organization of American States since 1962. But this symbolic gesture hardly signaled a new policy of engagement; rather, it was practically forced on Washington by its neighbors.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been praised for their anti-drug stance, openly acknowledging that the market for weapons and drugs in the U.S. is partly to blame for the rampant drug-related violence in Latin America. But some of the goodwill Obama and Clinton earned with that mea culpa has been squandered through the administration's misstep in Colombia.

This summer, U.S. and Colombian officials decided to relocate a counternarcotics mission that had been closed in Ecuador to several military bases in Colombia. In many respects, the move is a natural extension of U.S.-Colombia anti-drug cooperation. But because the decision appeared to have been made in secret, the plan rekindled old fears of sweeping U.S. intervention in Latin America. Had the deal been brokered with someone like Valenzuela in place -- a person who is familiar with the region's history and could have anticipated the backlash -- the resulting controversy might have been averted.

The U.S.' position on Honduras has also suggested a lack of coordination. Following the June 28 coup against President Manuel Zelaya, Obama joined the other leaders of the Americas to unanimously condemn the ouster and demand that Zelaya be restored to office. Such a principled stance pleased a region that had come to expect only expedient and unilateral action from Washington.

But as time passed and pressure mounted from some Republicans in Congress, administration officials began to backpedal: In a letter to the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department explained that the U.S.' position was "not based on supporting any particular politician or individual." Weeks later, under pressure from other leaders in the Americas, the Obama administration imposed harsh new sanctions on Honduras to compel Zelaya's reinstatement.

These actions, sometimes inconsistent, often reactive, constitute Latin American policy in the U.S. today. It is precisely the kind of policy for which Valenzuela once criticized the Bush administration: "second-tiered or derivative." And one of the reasons such policies still exist now is that Valenzuela remains unconfirmed. With years of experience working in the executive branch and even more as a scholar of the region, Valenzuela would be unanimously confirmed by the Senate -- were his nomination not stuck in limbo, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

DeMint is among a handful of Republicans in Congress who insist that Honduras' democracy triumphed the day Zelaya was forced into exile at gunpoint. The senator has put a hold on the confirmations of Valenzuela and Thomas Shannon, a former Bush official and Obama's nominee for ambassador to Brazil.

The Obama administration tried to appease DeMint when it softened its condemnation of the coup. Administration officials have also tried to cut a deal that would allow the Senate to vote on Valenzuela's confirmation in exchange for continuing to hold off on Shannon's. But DeMint has not yielded. He isn't exactly known for being cooperative, having infamously told conservative activists that Obama's defeat on the issue of health care "will be his Waterloo ... it will break him."

Of course, holding up nominations is not a new trick. The late Senator Jesse Helms turned it into a fine art. In the 1990s, he derailed ambassadorial appointments to Brazil, Mexico and Panama. For 14 months, he delayed Richard Holbrooke's confirmation as U.N. ambassador. Later, Senate Democrats refused to confirm Otto Reich to be assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs; Bush circumvented the process and appointed him during a recess.

This sort of obstructionism targets officials named to Latin American posts more often than those appointed to other regions. And the reasons aren't always clear. Perhaps it is that Latin American affairs tend to arouse decades-old Cold War polarization in Congress. Or, worse, perhaps Latin America is seen as less important than other regions, and confirming an ambassador to Brazil seems somehow less critical than sending one to Afghanistan or Israel.

One thing is clear: This is the kind of Washington interference that Latin America could do without.