Stick to the Present, Secretary Kerry
“The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.” This statement, given by John Kerry in a speech at the Organization of American States last week, should have elicited a great deal of response from the Latin Americans. Instead, it was mostly ignored.
Federico Finchelstein, an associate professor of history at the New School for Social Research, discussed what Kerry’s speech overlooked in an article in The Guardian last week. Finchelstein and his co-author (Columbia professor Pablo Piccato) commented on how many of the most pressing issues facing Latin America garnered little mention, including migration, drug trafficking, and increased investment from China. Both scholars question the actual significance of focusing a speech on a centuries-old military paradigm that has so little relevance to policy today.