Americas Summit: U.S. Government Losing Regional Influence

As the Summit of the Americas this week in Colombia was drawing to a close, President Obama touted more regional integration even as increasingly hostile Latin American leaders openly called for change in U.S. and regional policies. Analysts and officials throughout the hemisphere and across the political spectrum said the whole gathering reflected the U.S. government’s growing isolation and waning influence in the region.
On everything from Cuba to the drug war and the Falkland Islands controversy, Obama found himself under fire from supposed American allies, many of whom have been showered with U.S. tax dollars over the years. A growing chorus of Latin American heavyweights — from the right-leaning Presidents of Guatemala and Colombia to an assortment of socialist strongmen — openly rebelled. No final “declaration” was even signed after the gathering.
Canada and the United States, for example, rejected calls by the rest of the governments to invite the communist dictatorship ruling over Cuba to the next Americas Summit. And the brutal Cuban regime, seizing on the propaganda opportunity, praised what it called the anti-Washington “rebellion” while ridiculing and mocking the Obama administration.
“President Obama should realize that the Cartagena summit was not propitious for advising democracy in Cuba,” noted a statement by the communist regime published in one of its top propaganda organs. “We Cubans will take care of Cuba.” The Castro dictatorship also said Obama was forced to use the “imperial veto” to block a statement condemning the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on the island, which the regime exploits to rally its captive populace and to deflect attention from the fruits of its own disastrous policies.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who visited Obama before the gathering, blasted U.S. monetary policy — perhaps unaware that the elected government has no real control over the actions of the privately owned monetary cartel deceptively named “Federal Reserve.” Along with the regimes ruling Russia, India, China, and South Africa — the rest of the so-called “BRICS” — the government of Brazil and numerous Latin American powers are increasingly working to sideline the troubled U.S. dollar.
The U.S. administration, meanwhile, attracted a barrage of criticism when Obama claimed he was “neutral” in the ongoing conflict between the governments of Argentina and Britain concerning the Falkland Islands — which Obama mistakenly called the “Maldives.” Latin American leaders and pro-U.K. analysts all blasted the President for refusing to take sides, but advocates of non-intervention were pleasantly surprised by the unusual stance. 
Increasingly influential and unified socialist demagogues also seized on the summit to attack the U.S. government from all angles. The totalitarian-minded President Rafael Correa of Ecuador even boycotted the summit to protest the Cuban dictatorship’s exclusion. And a parade of other rulers piled on throughout the gathering.


read full article here Americas Summit: U.S. Government Losing Regional Influence