Former US ambassador Carla Sands says the US neglected its “own hemisphere,” allowing China, Iran, and Russia to gain ground in Central and South America.
00:00When we hear Oliver talk about multi-alignment, you know, a country like Brazil, you know, aligned with Russia, sorry, China aligned with the United States.
00:10No one's picking, well, a lot of countries aren't picking sides.
00:13So if the U.S. has done such a great job leading from the front, why do you think that some countries, particularly in the global south, are looking for other alternatives?
00:23Well, it's a little different in the Western Southern Hemisphere than it is, for instance, in Africa or India.
00:31The South America, Central America, the Caribbean, it's on the United States.
00:35It's our fault that we did not enforce the Wilson Doctrine, that we did not take care of our own hemisphere and make sure that it was secure.
00:43We had weak presidents and presidents, frankly, their attention was elsewhere, unfortunately.
00:48And so we allowed China to come into our area.
00:53Also, Iran is causing a lot of trouble in South America, Central America also, and Russia has a presence, and they're very destabilizing to South America.
01:05So it's causing a lot of turmoil in the south.
01:08And then we've allowed, we haven't done enough trade with South America, South American countries.
01:14For instance, yes, maybe Brazil has a trade deficit with us, but there are other countries that have a trade surplus with us.
01:20We have a trade surplus with them, I mean, to correct that.
