4 NACLA — REPORT ON THE AMERICAS | VOL. 47, NO. 4 ARTURO LÓPEZ-LEVY What Obama’s New Cuba Policy Means for the Rest of the Americas While Washington won’t be able to break apart Latin America’s “pink tide,” its new stance on Cuba is a test case for reasserting U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. O n December 17, 2014, having apparently decid- ed that the United States could pursue its hemispheric in- terests more effectively by nor- malizing its relations with Cuba, President Barack Obama an- nounced his country’s willingness to restore full diplomatic relations between the two countries. This marked an obvious landmark not only in U.S.-Cuba relations, but in Washington’s relations with the entire continent. More than ever, U.S.-Cuba relations may now be seen as a test case of Washington’s determination to replace intimi- dation with leadership/hegemony in its relations with Latin America. U.S. hemispheric priorities including economic and energy integration, a multilateral hemi- spheric dialogue with emerging powers, the accommodation of Bolivarian elites, immigration, public security, and drug policy have all been undermined by the lack of a stable U.S.-Cuba rela- tionship. Obama’s initiatives to- ward Cuba are thus best under- stood as an attempt to better the possibilities of U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere. The United States wants to be able to rely on a hemispheric or- der that is supportive of liberal- democratic hegemony and a re- gional market economy, and the components of such an order are falling into place. Not even the turn to the left of the past decade can be considered a deviation from this tendency. In Brazil, the left has governed with develop- mentalist policies, compatible with the preponderant role of a market economy. Similarly, the Bolivarian economic order rejects neoliberal fundamentalism, but despite its rhetoric of “socialism of the 21st century,” its economic policies can be located within a framework driven by the market. In the political sphere, there are now multiparty competitive elec- tions in every country of the re- gion. Cuba is the only country on the continent where an important political actor (the party-state) UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s famed Cuban Missile Crisis speech at the UN Security Council, October 1962. SIGNALEER / CREATIVE COMMONS MAPPING THE MOMENT