The Americas: Don't Expect Too Much; The new administration isn't likely to pay any more attention to Latin America in its second term than it did in its first.

Byline: Riordan Roett (ROETT directs the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.)

The newly crowned Bush administration will grab the spotlight in Latin America this month. The president will attend a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Santiago, Chile, next week. Then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will visit Quito, Ecuador, to participate in the sixth Defense Ministerial of the Americas meeting. For South America, which felt snubbed by Washington for most of the last four years, the two visits are a welcome change. But they may not mean much over time: President George W. Bush is unlikely to give any more priority to U.S.-Latin American relations in his second term than he did in his first.

The reasons are relatively straightforward. The region does not pose an immediate security threat to the United States, and there is little likelihood of a nuclear challenge in any of the countries in the area. Furthermore, Latin America has chosen to sidestep any involvement in the war on terrorism, which will remain the major preoccupation of the new administration. Finally, on one or two issues of relative priority in Washington, D.C.--such as free trade--the nations of the region have proved to be less than supportive of the U.S. negotiating position. The decade-old plan to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has stalled and appears unlikely to regain momentum in the short term.

The priorities of the president's first term will likely continue in the second. The administration's antipathy to the regime of Cuba's Fidel Castro will be reinforced. The economic embargo, criticized by many in the business community and in Congress, will remain in place. The White House may find measures to intensify it through even greater restrictions on access to the island. Plan Colombia--the U.S. effort to bolster that country's war on guerrillas and drug mafias--will receive strong support both in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Washington will continue to maintain a healthy diplomatic distance from President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, but the relationship will be pragmatic given the U.S. dependence on oil shipments from that country. With luck, the ...