Gonzales in Argentina: Dealing with a Bad Reputation

The role of reputation in international law and international relations is incredibly hard to quantify. Among assertive unilateralists in the US, it is often argued that dents to American reputation that result, for example, from deviations from well-established international human rights standards, are outweighed by the need for other states to deal with the U.S. Internationalists, on the other hand, can be prone to over-emphasizing the degree to which powerful states can be effectively constrained by reputation alone. However difficult to measure, the cumulative effect of such reputational damage on the day-to-day diplomatic process ( is nonetheless real. (Just ask anyone who has served as an American diplomat overseas during the past four years.) I was thus struck by this discussion at Andrew Sullivan’s blog of the reception Attorney General Gonzalez received on his official visit to Argentina last week. The fact that the U.S. has largely ignored South America for the past four years may weaken its hand now that it would like to warn its allies in the region (correctly so) on the perils of Hugo Chavez. But there is not a little irony in the sight of the procurer of the infamous Department of Justice 2002 torture memo being lectured on human rights by officials in Argentina. Senior State Department officials (Nick Burns was in Argentina this week) have met with a similarly cold reception on the issue of human rights, as the LA Times has noted:

Critics were quick to assail Washington’s human rights record, citing abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. All have fanned anti-U.S. sentiment in a region where Washington’s previous interventions and alliances with military dictatorships remain fresh in the collective memory.

The left-leaning Argentine newspaper Pagina 12 mocked Burns’ assertion that the Bush administration was “a champion of human rights” and that it supported the Argentine government’s efforts to try abusers from past military regimes.

“If Burns’ lack of memory of the proved responsibility of the United States in the successive military coups that devastated Latin America in the decade of the 1970s was notorious, worse was his omission of the situation in Guantanamo,” the newspaper said, referring to the detention of terrorism suspects on the base.

Bush is scheduled to tour South America next month, but will skip Argentina:

Kirchner, Argentina’s president, posed for photos with the U.S. envoys but generally distanced himself. It was not lost on the political class here that Bush will skip Argentina next month, but visit tiny Uruguay, just across the Rio de la Plata. Kirchner is weighing a reelection bid this year, and analysts say that being seen as too cozy with Washington is not smart politics.

Reputation is a tricky thing; hard to regain once it is lost.