In early August, the Clinton Administration announced that it was lifting a 20-
year ban on the sale of major weaponry to Latin American militaries. As Michael
Klare explains, the White House had been under heavy pressure from U.S. arms
manufacturers to lift the ban and incorporate the arms industry into the concep-
tual core of U.S. Latin America policy. U.S. firms, the logic goes, should be able
to sell anything to anybody. By paving the way for the sale of F-16 fighter planes to
Chile and other countries in the region, the White House has linked “free trade” to
another long-standing underpinning of U.S. policy: that the region’s militaries have been and remain our
strongest and most reliable allies.
Since the presidency of George Bush, the elaboration and implementation of trade agreements-along
with the consolidation of neoliberal market-oriented restructuring-have been the most visible facets of
U.S. Latin America policy. Clinton’s drive to extend NAFTA into a Free Trade Area of the Americas has
been met by demands from U.S. arms manufacturers who want to be included in the deal. The interests
of these firms have often been advanced by Pentagon officials seeking to preserve their own institutional
power. Moreover, merchants and Pentagon officials have been aided by the constant escalation of the war
on drugs which has emerged as a convenient rationale for U.S. military presence in the hemisphere. The
drug war has allowed for a continued engagement with Latin American and Caribbean militaries via train-
ing, assistance and joint operation programs.
Republicans and Democrats alike have happily approved increases in military aid to the region. The
lifting of the ban on the sale of sophisticated weapons would not have been possible without a certain
level of bipartisan support. Through foreign aid and arms sales, support for Latin American military and
police forces more than quadrupled from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 1997. Coletta Youngers argues
that the drug war has strengthened the very militaries and intelligence services that at least some civilian
governments in the Andes have been struggling to bring under control.
As Clinton’s first term was taking shape, then-National Security Advisor Anthony Lake wrote that the
aim of U.S. policy in the Americas would be the “enlargement” of the area within which free markets and
free elections held sway. It was understood by all the relevant players, of course, that what was really
being enlarged was the scope of U.S. influence. “Free markets” have not meant the free circulation of
goods and services as much as the opening of Western Hemisphere economies to (mostly U.S.-based)
transnational investment, bringing low-cost, tax-free production and the easy movement of goods and
capital-but not workers-across national borders. “Free elections”-important as they are after years of
brutal dictatorships in much of the hemisphere-have not allowed sovereign peoples to choose among
alternate futures, as much as they have given voters the ability to choose among alternate managers of a
U.S.-dominated hemispheric system.
Four years ago, when it looked like Clinton was naming some relatively enlightened professionals to
Latin America policy posts, we wrote that any real shift in U.S. policy toward the rest of the Americas
would be severely constrained by real long-term U.S. interests in the region and by the bureaucratic lega-
cies of past policies and events. Those constraints have been strong indeed. The long-term interests of the
U.S. governing elite are revealed most clearly by the continuation of U.S. trade policy, while the bureau-
cratic legacy of decades of military and paramilitary intervention-compellingly detailed here by Kate
Doyle-is powerfully present in the various programs and policies of the war on drugs. It looks like busi-
ness as usual for U.S. Latin America policy-at least for the next four years.
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