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monroe doctrine
US Institutions Reward Latin American Leaders’ Crimes in the Name of Liberal Order
As long as these leaders pledge allegiance to the neoliberal order and the Washington Consensus, their authoritarian abuses are ignored, and they are embraced by elites.
Mar 15, 2025
On February 25, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, or SAIS, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in global affairs and an intellectual vanguard of the liberal order, held an event with former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. The theme: “Democratic Backsliding in Latin America.”
What the event crucially withheld is that Zedillo himself is responsible for crimes against humanity and the destruction of his country’s democratic system under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s “Perfect Dictatorship,” a period of uninterrupted 71-year rule.
Zedillo served as president from 1994 to 2000; he was the last heir of that era, during which the PRI kept rigging elections, threatening opposition parties, buying votes, and deploying security forces against opposition to hold on to power.
If Zedillo is lecturing on democratic backsliding, can we really expect him to acknowledge his own role in it?
Failing to mention his crimes was not an accident—it epitomized a broader, deliberate pattern of whitewashing of Latin American leaders responsible for horrendous crimes by U.S.-led, liberal institutions.
Within days of assuming office, Zedillo provoked the worst economic crisis in the country’s history, better known as the Peso Crisis, when he immediately devalued the peso by 15% and converted private banking debt to public debt, causing enormous economic strife, inequality, poverty, and death.
Zedillo also targeted political opponents including in his own party, and repeatedly used the state’s power against peaceful protesters. After years of calling Indigenous protesters demanding further autonomy “terrorists,” state security forces committed the Aguas Blancas and Acteal massacres under his watch. He attempted to suppress reporting on the massacres (only acknowledged decades later) and accelerated conflict with the Zapatistas, while categorically refusing to negotiate with the group despite its popular support against legitimate grievances.
Silence means access, and access bolsters the institution’s connections, at the cost of truth and progress. Voicing any concern over Zedillo’s blacklist of abuses might lead to Zedillo refusing to give the talk, which would affect SAIS’s prestigious image, no matter how it might pervert the school’s supposed educational mandate.
There are countless examples of this corrupt system at work. Former President of Colombia Iván Duque, who is largely responsible for purposefully tanking the Peace Accords and perpetuating civil conflict, as well as repeatedly using the military to kill peaceful protesters, was given a Global Fellowship with the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program and another at Cornell, and frequently visits prestigious think tanks and universities, including Georgetown, to lecture about democracy.
Alejandro Toledo, the disgraced former president of Peru now in jail for his role in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, has held positions at Stanford and Brookings. Álvaro Uribe, the former president of Colombia who exacerbated the War on Drugs and allegedly supported the far-right paramilitary death squads (now the largest drug producers in the country), was also given a fellowship at Georgetown. These are just a few examples of a long list of criminal Latin American leaders in prominent positions in liberal circles in Washington and beyond.
Former Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who suspended constitutional rights to deploy the military against protesters and drug cartels, and called an election to prevent Congress from holding him accountable for his corruption, was also given a column in the Wilson Center’s magazine (while he was being impeached), prompting my own resignation from the program. He was also offered a Senior Leadership Fellowship at the Florida International University, along with Juan Guiadó, Álvaro Uribe, and others.
To cite one last ongoing example, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has also been parading around various universities and think tanks, particularly in Washington and Miami, allegedly earning significant cash and gifts despite Ecuadorian law preventing large foreign donations. Noboa has maintained a “state of exception” for more than 13 months, expanding state powers and suspending constitutional rights. Thousands have been arrested without trial, and the ensuing conflict has resulted in thousands more deaths, as the state feeds a worsening cycle of violence, disproportionately targeting marginalized populations, that shows little sign of letting up in the long-term. That includes four Afro-Ecuadorian boys, 15 years old and younger, who were murdered by military forces in Guayaquil late last year. Barring a major shift, it is expected that Noboa will be offered a cushy fellowship or consulting golden parachute in the United States after leaving office.
Their crimes seem to cause no pain for the American liberal intelligentsia, who are supposed to uphold an order based on “rules and norms.” Rather, they seem to be applied selectively based on naked national interest.
As long as these leaders pledge allegiance to the neoliberal order and the Washington Consensus, their authoritarian abuses are ignored, and they are embraced by elites. Attendees, organizers, and institutions enable this whitewashing to protect their geopolitical and economic interests—whether to uphold liberal order or, more cynically, to maintain U.S. control over Latin American sovereignty.
This revolving door extends beyond think tanks and universities—many of these disgraced leaders secure high-paying consulting roles with American firms, advising on the very legal and political systems they once manipulated. Zedillo, beyond his talk at SAIS (and his fellowship at Yale), is also a consultant with various American companies including Citigroup and Coca-Cola, for which he manages multi-million-dollar portfolios.
Evidently, this system has permeated through all institutions belonging to the old liberal order, whether they be think tanks, educational institutions, development organizations, or multilateral regional organizations, all of which have repeatedly provided cover, and even support, to criminal leaders from the region, in the name, supposedly, of “democracy and freedom.”
This incestuous system, consequently, rewards terrible leaders who pay lip service to liberalism, contributing to the perpetuation of institutionalized corruption, human rights abuses, and democratic backsliding in Latin America.
For those consuming these institutions' output—events, speeches, research, and courses—this corrupt cycle distorts the truth, obscuring the crucial historical and political context behind future policy decisions. If Zedillo is lecturing on democratic backsliding, can we really expect him to acknowledge his own role in it?
Having these bad actors as messengers also incentivizes the next generation to participate in the corrupt system themselves, having the leaders as mentors. The leaders, coming from a very powerful position with immense connections and social and economic capital, can provide internships, fellowships, and other opportunities, often with financial reward (and thus ownership). Mentees will then become part of the sociopolitical caste that birthed the corrupt leaders, be fed revisionist history, and perpetuate the cycle further, damaging progress for generations.
This incestuous system rewarding corruption and loyalty to the American-led liberal order should be called out at every turn. Certain heterodox analysts, scholars, journalists, and activists, have themselves been critical, incurring significant professional risks to speak truth to power. Some of these events and appointments, for instance, Uribe’s appointment to Georgetown, have been widely protested.
These critical debates are not “grey areas” or a “game,” they are part of a broader, centuries-long effort for independence, sovereignty, and popular rule, despite very well-funded colonial efforts, including by liberal elites in Washington, against self-determination.
As Eduardo Galeano wrote in his iconic The Open Veins of Latin America, “History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘See you later.’” The weaponization of democracy and freedom by liberal elite institutions to cover up pro-American regional leaders’ crimes for imperial interests is a mere repackaging of Monroe Doctrine dogma, and it won’t go away until it is gutted inside and out.
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It’s Time to Transcend War, the Meteor of Our Own Making
The need for enemies—the worse the better—may well be humanity’s most profound existential threat.
Mar 02, 2025
“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”
The words are from George Orwell’s 1984 (where else?), explaining the root causes of a dystopian world. The book may be a work of fiction, but his words are deeply embedded in reality—we need enemies, the worse the better! This certainty may well be humanity’s most profound existential threat. I fear it could be “the meteor” that hits Planet Earth, ultimately spelling extinction for the dominant species.
Mostly what we do is prepare for—and wage—war. We always wage it in self-defense, even when in retrospect its motivating factor is colonial conquest. When it comes to the manifestation of power, at its core are the words “us vs. them.” That captures the public spirit so much more fully than cooperation, connection, understanding... or, groan, love.
Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating.
As far as I’m concerned, this is humanity’s primary challenge of the moment. It’s time to transcend war, the meteor of our own making.
As we all know, wars are waging across the planet right this moment. Unless we’re directly affected by the violence, we can easily reduce it to an abstraction, usually with the help of the words “self-defense”—a particularly egregious term when used by the one inflicting the most harm. And for some reason, the name George W. Bush comes to mind—the guy who bequeathed us the “Axis of Evil” as our current reason to be afraid.
But an inescapable fact of American history is the long trail of evil enemies who have helped define us over the centuries. As Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy writes:
...the American identity is probably the best example of a “self” understood through “otherness.” Research in various disciplines has shown that Americans have long defined themselves through a binary narrative of “us” versus “them.“ Whether it takes the form of the American Indians of the Frontier, the British during the American Revolution, the immigrants in the early 20th century, the Nazis, the communists, and more recently the terrorists...
He also notes, a la Orwell, that our enemy of the moment “has three constant characteristics: It is always deemed a threat, somewhat uncivilized and evil, and serves to define national identity by demarcating... ’ a self’ from an ‘other’... “
Nations are essentially random creations. In order to unify socially into actual entities, their populations have to have a clear sense of who they aren’t. I would add to the above list of “others,” the country’s long history of racial exclusion, which of course begins with the importation of slaves, who were property, not actual human beings. “White” was a word bequeathed to us by God, apparently, and even though moral sanity has been slowly seeping into our national identity, whiteness still plays a significant role in the national task of othering. Think about the “invasion” going on at our southern border, for instance.
And, oh yeah, there’s also that war on Gaza—by which I mean genocide—that we’re playing a key role in sustaining, But as President Trump 2.0 keeps telling us in various ways, we also have a lot of work to do “Americanizing” the Western Hemisphere, from reclaiming the Panama Canal to... uh, seizing Greenland? And then there’s the recent decision by the State Department to officially designate some major Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Yikes, that means they’re really, really evil.
As Jon Rainwater writes, this isn’t just a symbolic gesture. Doing so “opens the door for military intervention under the guise of counterterrorism. The U.S. could justify drone strikes or cross-border raids without Mexico’s consent—a blatant affront to its sovereignty.”
What could be wrong with that? Come on, we have the most powerful military in the world; it’s up to us to decide how and when to use it, right? No matter, as Rainwater points out: “Combining the failed strategies of the war on terror and the war on drugs is not just misguided—it’s doubling down on failure.”
And not only that. “Designating cartels as FTOs,” he goes on, “feels like another chapter in this playbook: framing another country’s problems as existential threats to justify American imperialism. So long liberal internationalism, hello Make the Monroe Doctrine Great Again.”
No matter that war is hell. No matter that the problems humanity faces are basically the problems it created—and they’re serious. Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating. I open my soul with a shout into the darkness. We live, as Rainwater notes, in an interconnected world—a world of complex wholeness. Creating borders can be a reasonable way to get a handle on that complexity, but only—only—if we can also see beyond the borders we’ve created and embrace the wholeness we’re still trying to understand.
What does this mean? As much as I want it to mean. oh, let us say a high-five with God, it often means—as we struggle to transcend our impulsive violence—far quieter, almost unrecognizable change, if any change at all. Consider, for instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent opposition to the latest U.S. sale of weapons to Israel to keep its evisceration of Gaza going. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee now has to consider the merit of his Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, or JRDs. Last November, Sanders also filed JRDs regarding the latest Biden administration’s weapons sale to Israel. When the Senate voted on them, the resolutions lost; only 19 senators voted in support, which can easily feel like nothing more than a pathetic loss.
But maybe it was more than that. “...never before have so many senators voted to restrict arms transfers to Israel,” noted the senior policy adviser for the organization Demand Progress. He called the vote “a sea change” among congressional Democrats—an awakening, an infusion of... do I dare say: moral sanity?
This doesn’t stop the slaughter. This doesn’t stop the hell. But let it give us the will to keep trying.
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The Dangerous Folly of Labeling Mexican Cartels 'Terrorist Organizations'
Combining the failed strategies of the war on terror and the war on drugs is not just misguided—it’s doubling down on failure.
Feb 25, 2025
In the capricious tapestry that is U.S. foreign policy, you can find a recurring pattern: Washington champions sovereignty as a holy principle of the international order when it aligns with its interests—think Ukraine under Biden—but casually disregards it when inconvenient.
The latest thread in this tapestry is last Thursday’s unprecedented State Department decision to formally designate eight groups, including major Mexican drug cartels such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Beneath the Trumpian tough-on-crime pose lies a policy that threatens to violate Mexico’s sovereignty and destabilize a vital relationship, and reinforces the imperialist tendency that has caused so much damage here in the U.S. and across the globe.
Labeling cartels as FTOs isn’t just a symbolic gesture; it opens the door for military intervention under the guise of counterterrorism. The U.S. could justify drone strikes or cross-border raids without Mexico’s consent—a blatant affront to its sovereignty. President Claudia Sheinbaum highlighted: “This classification should not serve as a pretext for the United States to invade our sovereignty.” Any such military intervention would violate Congress’s constitutional war powers, but Trump is unlikely to respect such legal niceties.
The desire to rise out of extreme poverty can not be bombed out of existence.
Elon Musk has made this clear. Musk recently declared on his social media platform that the FTO designation would make cartels “eligible for drone strikes,” a comment that is both legally dubious and deeply unsettling.
They’re Entrepreneurial Criminals, Not Terrorist Ideologues
Mexican cartels are not terrorists in the way most people understand that word. They’re not trying to overthrow governments or spread extremist beliefs. Yes, they commit horrific acts of violence—killings, kidnappings, extortion—but their primary motive is profit, not ideology. As the narcocorrido (“drug ballad,” a musical genre popular on both sides of the border) "Clave Privada" by Banda el Recodo goes:
I was poor for a long time
Many people humiliated me
I began to earn money...
Things are flipped around now
Now they call me boss.
Understanding the driver of these cartels isn’t rocket science: it’s all about the Miguelitos (i.e. the 1000 peso note). Imposing travel bans might inconvenience cartel leaders but it won’t dismantle their billion-dollar empires. The terrorist designation is unlikely to even cut profit margins because many cartels are already designated as transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), so the FTO designation does not provide significant new policy tools to target their finances.
Drone attacks are unlikely to stop a notoriously violent business where cartel leaders are already frequently killed in assassinations by competitors or shootouts with government forces. The war on terror has shown to the U.S. that “Decapitate the Kingpin” is a loser’s game. In fact, Mexico’s own “kingpin strategy” targeting and elimination of high-ranking cartel members has created power vacuums and increased violence. Combining the failed strategies of the war on terror and the war on drugs is not just misguided—it’s doubling down on failure.
The desire to rise out of extreme poverty can not be bombed out of existence. Meanwhile, the other main drivers of this problem are illicit markets fueled by U.S. demand for drugs and corruption within Mexico—issues that require smarter policies to address. Words matter in policymaking. Using “terrorist” as a catch-all term is already destructive and distorting, from the U.S. “war on terror” to the Netanyahu-Biden-Trump war in Gaza to China’s oppression of the Uighur in Xinjiang. This action exacerbates the problem.
The Imperialist Echo
There’s something disturbingly familiar about this whole idea—a familiar whiff of paternalism. For decades, the U.S. has intervened in Latin America under various pretexts: fighting communism during the Cold War, waging war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s, and now combating “terrorism.” The results have often been disastrous for the region. Designating cartels as FTOs feels like another chapter in this playbook: framing another country’s problems as existential threats to justify American imperialism. So long liberal internationalism, hello Make the Monroe Doctrine Great Again.
This approach doesn’t work in today’s interconnected world. Problems associated with drug trafficking—and migration—don’t respect borders; they require multilateral solutions rooted in trust and mutual respect—not unilateral declarations from Washington. Meanwhile, Trump is cutting thoughtful, nonviolent programs like U.S. funding for an organization that has reduced the number of children recruited by gangs to help move drugs and migrants across the border. Trump froze another program targeting fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking at key ports.
A Smarter Path Forward
None of this is meant to downplay the seriousness of cartel violence or its devastating impact on both sides of the border. Tackling this issue requires nuance and humility—especially from the U.S.. Instead of designating cartels as FTOs, policymakers should focus on strategies that address root causes: reducing demand for drugs through treatment programs; cracking down on gun trafficking from the U.S. into Mexico as some members of Congress are working to do; supporting anti-corruption efforts within Mexico; and strengthening bilateral cooperation rather than undermining it.
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