Will America maintain strong partnerships with South America or will “benign neglect” of our Latin neighbors come back to bite us?
While the U.S. Government has expended enormous political, economic and military assets on the Middle East and Asia, benign neglect of South and Central America and the Caribbean could find America losing her neighbors economically to China and India, and politically to nations such as Iran that have aligned with Cuba and Venezuela. A March 2008 JINSA visit to the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) located near Miami and Joint-Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S) in Key West focused on the issues, challenges, successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy.