President Juan Manuel Santos Comes to Washington

By Peter Hakim
Infolatam, December 6, 2013

President Santos’ visit to the United States this week was not expected to produce much change in U.S.–Colombian relations. Instead, the visit reaffirmed that Colombia is the United States’ principal ally in South America, and among its strongest commercial partners—and that Colombia highly values its close ties with Washington.

Both presidents went to great lengths to emphasize that the visit was mainly concerned with economic relations, not security issues.   But that shift began several years ago—and then accelerated when Santos took office in 2010. It was in 2006 that Colombia and the United States signed their free trade agreement (FTA), which finally entered into force last year after being ratified by the U.S. Congress.  U.S. security assistance to Colombia has been tapering off for some time, from its peak of nearly $1 billion a year to the current $300 million (which is still the largest aid package to any Latin American nation).

Public statements on the visit mostly avoided discussion of Colombia’s still considerable security and drug-related concerns.   The exception was Colombian-U.S. cooperation to deal with these issues in Central America and the Caribbean.  President Santos has been a particularly strong and effective advocate for finding  new and more humane approaches to drug problems in the hemisphere and worldwide.  It was mainly his initiative that led the OAS to produce an exhaustive year-long study of alternative drug strategies.  Yet drug policy was hardly mentioned in any report on the visit. Nor has there any suggestion that the two presidents spoke about Cuba, although Santos has for some time called for end to the US’s outworn policy of isolating and embargoing Cuba and, indeed, spoke publicly on the issue while in Washington.

Perhaps the most difficult item on the two presidents’ agenda was the issue of labor rights.  To help gain U.S. congressional support for its free trade arrangement with the United States, the Colombian government agreed to a Labor Action Plan that called for a series of measures to protect union leaders and generally extend labor rights. Implementation of the Action Plan has been slow and disappointing, has provoked persistent criticism and protest from US labor unions, human rights groups and other NGOs, and congressional leaders.

President Obama once again expressed in a variety of ways his strong endorsement of the Colombia peace process and his support for President Santos’s efforts to make it work. Although U.S. backing will probably not make much difference at the negotiating table, it may help reassure Colombians that the United States stands behind the peace talks despite their location in Havana and the important involvement of Venezuela. It should also assure them that former President Uribe’s opposition to the talks has not had much impact in Washington.  President Obama’s support will leave President Santos more confident that the United States is unlikely to raise objections to the terms of a peace accord worked out between the Colombian government and the FARC.

It is unclear whether the two presidents talked much about the state of U.S. relations with Latin America beyond Colombia. There were no press reports on such a conversation. Yet the need for re-energizing U.S.-Latin American ties and making them more productive has been a central theme for President Santos since he took office. When he spoke at Brown University two years ago, the title of his talk was “Why the US should give a damn about Latin America.”  No other Latin America leader has more strongly urged Washington to re-engage with Latin America and to assign the region greater importance in its foreign policy. It is hard to imagine that the Colombian president is not expressing his views on U.S. policies toward Cuba and illicit drugs, which he views as continuing obstacles to U.S. cooperation with the countries of the region.