United States Policy and Security Interests in Latin America in imposing their collective solution on the crisis, the fact that they could discuss such a crisis in their sub-region is a mark of pro­gress. The most significant obstacle to the formulation of a Latin American response to its collective opportunity for autonomy and rule making in the international community is Brazil's sense of uncertainty in its role in hemispheric and world affairs. A debate has been playing itself out in Brasilia for nearly a decade – ever since Fernando Henrique Cardoso declared that Brazil should have a seat on the UN Security Council – over what role Brazil should play in world affairs. To simplify, since the topic should be the subject of another paper, the debate sets traditional nationalists against modernizing globalists. The former, led by the foreign ministry, Itamaraty, and some of Lula's closest advisers, prefer to have Brazil exerts its influence in South America and distance itself from the United States without inserting itself aggressively into global affairs. There is a significant element of anti-Americanism in their thinking. The later believe that Brazil's long-awaited moment of greatness has arrived and that the nation is fully prepared to play a major role in world affairs. The nationalists see no reason to pay a price for being a rule maker; the globalists understand that rule makers are rule makers who assume responsibilities along with their privileges. Brazil has a credibility problem even in South America. Why will it become involved as a peacema­ker in Honduras, but not in Venezuela and Colombia? Why did Argentina and Uruguay not turn to Brazil for help in resolving their differences? In several of the countries of the region, most notably Argentina, foreign policy has become an instrument of domestic political contestation, so that the ability of the nation to become an effective player in international affairs is severely inhibited. In all countries, domestic politics plays a role in foreign policy. Beyond a certain limit, however, the nation loses credibility as a reliable partner and its relevance in international affairs declines. The concept of autonomous action at the international level has little appeal since it is the way in which local benefits are won that counts. For all of these reasons, there is among the nations of Latin America a lack of an autonomous foreign policy that seeks to maximize the national interest in world affairs and that asserts a coherent vision of the nation's role in world affairs. The exception to this generalization, of course, is Chile. Brazil may be said to be an excep­tion-in-waiting, as it certainly is headed in that direction. Mexico could become such a nation when it feels that it is freed from the suffocating danger of drug violence. Otherwise, in the near future, we must look to small groups of nations, mainly sub­regional neighbors, for collective action in the response to common problems. On occasion there will be ad hoc groupings of nations that feel they share a common sense of how to deal with common pro­blems. Curiously, this failure is most obvious in the realm of trade and economic development, subjects on which, histori­cally, Latin American nations have found it easy to agree. Today, there is no common trade agenda in dealing with the U.S. or with the Europe Union. However, the July 2010, Page 9