Bush's Phone Offensive

It would normally have been seen as a routine courtesy. But when Bolivia’s newly elected populist president, Evo Morales, received a congratulatory telephone call from the White House last week, he confessed he was surprised. The US has made no secret of its concerns over Mr Morales’s plans to legalize coca cultivation, strengthen state control of Bolivia’s energy resources, and his fraternal links with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s fiercely anti-American leader. But here was George Bush on the phone commending Bolivia’s "strong commitment to the democratic process" and, says his spokesman, urging "constructive dialogue".

It is a measure of the US’s uneasy relations with many Latin American governments that Mr Bush’s call was regarded as unusual. Conventional wisdom, after a raft of election successes by left-of-centre politicians and a fractious regional summit in November, is that the US is losing control in its own backyard.

But Mr Bush has increasingly urgent reasons to raise his game. They include Mr Chávez’s confrontational stance, his regional oil politics and his alliance with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. This week he called on Venezuelans to arm themselves and "launch a counter-attack against US imperialism". His speech followed tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.

The US is also concerned that China, hungry for raw materials and energy deals, is filling a Latin American vacuum caused by post 9/11 neglect. Washington’s security, immigration, and drug worries are all linked to the so-called "slow growth trap" in which many regional countries are stuck despite the current commodity led export boom.

"Washington’s tattered relations with Latin America have mainly translated into a series of lost opportunities for both sides," said Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue in Foreign Affairs magazine. "The US could end up paying a stiff price for the region’s economic reversals and unsettled politics ... Washington can do better."

That message now seems to have been heard and is spurring a US counter-offensive. Its twin objectives appear to be the isolation of Mr Chávez and his Cuban "axis" and deepening engagement with states such as Bolivia.

Mr Bush’s conciliatory words were echoed by General Bantz Craddock, commander of US southern command, who said Washington could and should work with Mr Morales. Playing to the Bolivian leader’s radical bent, he said the biggest threat to regional security was poverty and social inequality.

Coincidentally, perhaps, the US has begun inviting Bolivian indigenous student leaders, a key Morales’ constituency, for free, month-long trips. Potentially more influential is the dangled carrot of free trade agreements and reduced tariffs.

Deputy commerce secretary David Sampson says the US, building on pacts with Mexico, Chile and Central American countries, is considering bilateral deals with Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Brazil and others could follow. Mr Hakim said that was hardly surprising. Despite old antipathies and present disagreements, productive economic ties were "what the majority of Latin American countries most want and need from the US".

Pulling these and other levers, the US hopes to thwart Mr Chávez’s attempts to broaden his anti-American alliance. And for all his talk of revolutionary solidarity and multinational oil company "conspiracies", Mr Morales may yet succumb to Washington’s blandishments.

Overcoming his surprise at Mr Bush’s call, he made one request: lower US trade barriers. If he wanted to discuss it, he said, the man Mr Chávez dubs "Mr Danger" was welcome to visit any time.