Return of the Cold Warriors.

Will Bush appointees move the U.S. back into the era of gunboat diplomacy?

IT WAS REFRESHING TO SEE GEORGE W. Bush travel to Mexico on his first official trip abroad. Latin America was at best a low priority for Bill Clinton, who didn't visit the region until his second term. President Bush has made it clear that Latin America matters to him. "I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency," Bush said during last year's presidential campaign. "Those who ignore Latin America do not fully understand America itself'

Now that is nice and unusual commentary from a U.S. president. But actions speak louder than words. Bush subsequently suggested he didn't understand Latin America--specifically its huge political progress in the past two decades--by naming two Cold War ideologues from the Reagan era to high diplomatic posts. Such a move sends a clear signal to the region's leaders: Stand back and let us get things done the old way. through dirty deals that end-run your own legitimate roles as elected leaders.

It is possible that Congress will have done the right thing by the time this column is published: rejected Bush's choice for assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. The nominee, Otto Juan Reich, in the 1980s headed a government agency accused of running an illegal,' covert propaganda effort against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government and in favor of the anti-government Contra rebels. In 1987, the United States comptroller general found that Reich's office engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities."

Another troubling nominee is John D. Negroponte, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bush vows to make him a "key member" of the administration's foreign policy team. In the 1980s, as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte helped conceal from Congress the human rights abuses of a CIA-equipped Honduran secret army intelligence unit, Battalion 316. The 61-year-old former envoy collaborated with the unit's director, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez, who was also the chief of the armed forces.

Alvarez, later assassinated on the streets of Tegucigalpa, routinely ordered torture and murder of suspected leftists. A 1995 four-part series by the Baltimore Sun showed that the U.S. Embassy knew of the abuses but blocked the full truth from getting into the embassy's annual human rights report, which is reviewed by the U.S. Congress. Some 180 Hondurans disappeared during that period.

What signal would such appointments send to Latin America? With Miami's hard-line Cuban Americans calling the shots, it would mean the same failed policy toward Cuba that gives Fidel Castro the David vs. Goliath status that makes him such a hero, still, to so many Latin Americans. Obviously, the 40-year-old economic embargo will continue in force. The embargo's indiscriminate nature has hurt the Cuban population as a whole, worsening the general economic decline that has caused so many to take to the rafts. It has also provided the Castro government with an excuse for its repressive policies while alienating many of the United States' most important trading partners. If we can trade with China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, which have even worse human rights records, why can't we trade with Cuba? It has been estimated that the United States and Cuba could do as much as US$7 billion a year in commerce if the embargo were lifted.

In Venezuela, the Bush advisers could unravel Clinton's policy of "positive engagement" with populist President Hugo Chavez, who fancies himself as the new Fidel and has many Venezuelans worried that he is using his political mandate to set himself up as an elected dictator. Bush's Cold War veterans are likely to take a more aggressive stand, which could mean relying on the CIA and covert activities rather than working with other regional governments to find a diplomatic solution.

In Colombia, meanwhile, where the United States is being drawn into the government's long-standing war, primarily with guerrillas of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Robert B. Zoellick, Bushs pick for trade representative, has made comments that I hope are not indicative of future policy. "The U.S. should offer serious, sustained and timely financial, material and intelligence support," he said in a speech earlier this year. With apologies to David Halberstam, that sounds like the making of a quagmire.

Bush's speeches indicate he's eager to engage Latin Americans as respected trading partners in this increasingly globalized world. Yet his choices of emissaries for the region so far invoke the phantoms of U.S. gunboat diplomacy that terrorized our neighbors in the past.