Ahmadinejad Visits Latin America, Washington Implores and Seethes

From Venezuela, on 10 January Ahmadinejad flew to Nicaragua to attend the inauguration of President Daniel Ortega, elected to a third term last November.

And why might Nicaragua be disinclined to heed Washington's advice? Perhaps the fact that President Ortega was one of the Sandinista leader who in 1979 overthrew the corrupt presidency of Anatasio Somoza, only to find itself under attack by U.S. armed and funded "Contra" insurgents operating out of neighboring Honduras in an eight-year campaign.

And, in one of those piquant ironies of history, the Reagan administration, in order to support the Contras after Congress blocked funding, in 1986-1987 covertly sold weapons for cash to... Iran, leading to the notorious "Iran-Contra" affair.

And Cuba? Well, since the U.S. has blockaded the country with economic sanctions since 1960 and currently has no direct diplomatic relations, perhaps Nuland's entreaties will receive less consideration in Havana than they might.

Which leaves Ecuador, whose president, Rafael Vicente Correa, an economist by training educated in Belgium and the United States, took office in January 2007.

And what has President Correa done to antagonize the U.S.?

In December 2008, he declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate, arguing that it had been contracted by previous despotic regimes, pledging to fight creditors in international courts of jurisdiction. Even worse, Correa in June 2009 brought Ecuador into the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas, or ALBA) founded by Chavez in alliance with Cuba in 2004.

The biggest story overlooked by the Washington press corps over the past decade, fixated as it was on the Bush administration's "global war on terror" (GWOT) was Latin America's increasing assertiveness and independence from America's dictates, whose policies towards its southern neighbors even the august Council on Foreign Relations labeled "hegemony." It apparently has yet to occur to either Ms. Nuland or her superiors that countries south of the Rio Grande regard the Monroe Doctrine as a dead letter.

But Ahmedinejad's biggest secret diplomatic weapon is treating his Latin American hosts with respect, as equals. Until those "inside the Beltway" learn that simple lesson and that it's no longer 1823, the year the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed, it would seem that the Washington press corps is bound to endure further briefings from Ms. Nuland.