I The New Republic skriver Jorge Castañeda, författaren till den lysande Utopia Unarmed – The Latin American Left After the Cold War, en intressant artikel om effekterna av att USA nu helt slutat att intressera sig för den kontinentala grannen i syd: "It has grown increasingly difficult for certain regimes to blame Washington for their failures. From Venezuela to Argentina to Bolivia, populist governments have pursued economic and social policies, as well as geopolitical alliances, that can scarcely help their people. When these policies inevitably fail, these governments won’t be able to replicate the rhetorical trickery of the Cubans or the Sandinistas. They cannot hold Washington responsible for their setbacks. At best, they can argue that the peasants in the Andes are still hungry because of the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but that is not an easy sell."

Castañeda har klivit rätt långt högerut på sistone o hans tonart börjar kännas igen, så den som vill ha lite bra motvikt i ett besläktat men annat ärende kan läsa Greg Grandins essä Muscling Latin America i The Nation: "The anchor of this condensed Monroe Doctrine is Plan Colombia. Heading into the eleventh year of what was planned to phase out after five, Washington's multibillion-dollar military aid package has failed to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States. More Andean coca was synthesized into cocaine in 2008 than in 1998, and the drug's retail price is significantly lower today, adjusted for inflation, than it was a decade ago. But Plan Colombia is not really about drugs; it is the Latin American edition of GCOIN, or Global Counterinsurgency, the current term used by strategists to downplay the religious and ideological associations of George W. Bush's bungled 'global war on terror' and focus on a more modest program of extending state rule over 'lawless' or 'ungoverned spaces,' in GCOIN parlance."