Foreign Policy of Evo Morales - Relations With The United States

Relations With The United States

Prior to becoming president a rift with the U.S. was foreshadowed after Morales called President George W. Bush a terrorist: "Bush is the only terrorist, because he is the only one who intervenes militarily in the affairs of other countries. This is state terrorism, but those who demand their rights, those people are not terrorists."

On September 10, 2008, Evo Morales declared the US Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, persona non grata—the eighth U.S. ambassador to be declared so, which was quickly followed by the ninth. Goldberg said of the decision that "I regret that the Bolivian government took this decision. I think this has set back U.S.-Bolivian relations." Morales had accused him of conspiring with the opposition after Goldberg was caught on film leaving the office of opposition prefect Rubén Costas following a secret meeting in the early hours of the morning. The U.S. reciprocated by expelling the Bolivian ambassador in Washington. Tensions grew further when Bolivia refused permission for planes from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to fly over Bolivian territory. Morales said: "It's important that the international community knows that here, we don't need control of the United States on coca cultivation... We can control ourselves internally. We don't need any spying from anybody."

Morales said his country should not fear U.S. suspension of trade preferences with Bolivia. In Vallegrande, near where Che Guevara died, he said: "We don't have to be afraid of an economic blockade by the United States against the Bolivian people." Still, his government announced it would send a delegation to Washington to lobby for the country's continued participation in the ATPDEA, a regional trade pact with Andean states offering lowered import tariffs for cooperating with U.S. anti-narcotics efforts.

Relations took a further bite when Morales ordered DEA agents to leave the country within three months from November 1, 2008. In expelling the U.S. agents, he accused them of supporting the opposition separatists, conspiring to overthrow him, spying and having killed farmers. Morales said his country can fight cocaine trafficking on its own. Morales told police officers in the administrative capital of La Paz that, "Some politicians say that with the withdrawal of the DEA, drug trafficking will increase ... I trust that our national police is prepared to fight drug traffickers. We're capable of funding the operations of the national police against drug trafficking." This followed moves earlier in the year where the presidents anti-drug czar Felipe Caceres said Bolivia should "nationalize" the fight against the drug trade, and that the government was ready to invest about $16 million to achieve this.

A 2008 annual report to the U.S. Congress cited three states, including Bolivia, for failing to fight illegal drugs, the first time Bolivia made it onto the most severe category on the list with other political opponents like Venezuela and Myanmar. Morales upped the ante and condemned the United States in saying that it has no such authority to certify whether other countries are successfully fighting drug trafficking. He added that the counter-narcotics "certification process of the U.S. government has to end. It's just political vengeance. It would have to be the OAS or the United Nations that would lead an effort like that."