Word: washington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Obama got off to a good start in Latin America, engaging leaders and promising a new attitude from Washington. The problem with the shift on coups is that Latin America now expects action to back it up. Honduras is Obama's first hemispheric crisis. There are obviously higher White House priorities right now, and Obama insists he's diligently working for a negotiated solution. But diplomats from Brasília to Mexico City say they fear he's only half-heartedly pressuring Honduras' new government to let Zelaya back in to finish his term, a perception that could squander...
Obama is stuck in the New World's new paradox. Latin America today is less dependent on Washington, and less tolerant of its interventionism, than it has been for decades, thanks to the counterweight of rising star Brazil and the anti-U.S. gospel of Venezuela's oil-rich leftist President, Hugo Chávez. Yet for all that newfound self-reliance, Latin America still looks to the U.S.'s superpower leadership to put the squeeze on rogues like the Honduran coupsters. No other force in the western hemisphere, not Brazil, and certainly not the Organization of American States, wields...
...result, any perceived indifference to Honduras on Obama's part could sour his start and make it harder to engage the region on matters Washington cares about, like drugs and trade. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, who tacitly backed a failed coup attempt against Chávez in 2002, promised a new relationship with Latin America, but saw his free-trade plan for the hemisphere die and drug production soar. Now even moderate Latin leaders are decrying Washington's quiet efforts to use military bases in Colombia for U.S. antidrug operations; their pique will increase if they decide Honduras...
...With Burma, however, inaction is probable. The international community has long groped for effective measures - be they carrots or sticks - to persuade the generals to behave better. Last month U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted that Suu Kyi's release could encourage Washington to lift its ban on new investment in Burma. That's obviously off the table for now. Post verdict, it has been replaced by growing calls for the U.N. Security Council to approve a global embargo on arms sales to the regime and investigate its atrocities allegedly committed in its long-running war against ethnic insurgents...
...mocked for trying to succeed in a male-dominated field, but that didn't stop Anne Wexler, 79, from forging a career as one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists. A mentor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, she was the first female founder of a major K Street firm...