Shifting the Balance

In early 2009, at the start of a new administration in Washington, the Brookings Institution Press published The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change, offering a roadmap for a fresh approach to U.S. relations with its neighbors. Now, at the midway point of that presidential administration, the editors of that insightful volume follow up with Shifting the Balance: Obama and the Americas, an authoritative and critical look at what President Obama and his team have done in regard to Latin America and the Caribbean, how they have been received in the region, and what steps should be taken in the future.

Abraham F. Lowenthal is professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. Theodore J. Piccone is a senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to the Club of Madrid. Laurence Whitehead is an official fellow in politics at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford and editor of the Oxford Studies in Democratization series.