People in the news

Carlos Pascual

Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (August 2009-March 2011)

(Brookings Institution)

Why He Matters

Pascual is a leading U.S. expert on crisis. The former U.S. ambassador to Mexico has spent his career studying conflict management, failed states and economic development.

After fierce complaints from Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Pascual was forced to leave his post in March 2011 after the publication of internal cables in the Wikileaks controversy in which he criticized the Mexican army as "risk averse" in pursuing drug traffickers.

Read more

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution (since 2006); U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (2000 to 2003); Director, American Aid to Europe and Eurasia (2003 to 2004)
Hometown: Cuba
Alma Mater: Stanford University, B.A., 1980; Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, M.A., 1982

Office: American Embassy Mexico P.O. Box 9000 Brownsville, TX 78520-9000
Email
Web site

Path to Power

Pascual was born in Cuba, but emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was three. He earned his B.A. from Stanford University in 1980 before moving to Boston, where he received his master's from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 1982.

Pascual began his foreign policy career in 1983 as a Foreign Service officer with USAID in Sudan, South Africa and Mozambique. Eventually, he was promoted to deputy assistant administrator for Europe and Eurasia at the State Department.

Read more

The Issues

"The 21st century will be defined by threats unconstrained by borders," Pascual wrote in a memo to President Barack Obama, released just days before he took office in January 2009. "The moment is ripe to overhaul the international system." Pascual believes that the U.S. must provide leadership for some of the biggest global problems, including global warming, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

To do this, Pascual has called on the U.S. to revitalize its relationship with the United Nations, the G20 and NATO. He also thinks the way the U.S. government is currently structured of is antiquated and will be unable to handle interconnected global issues. "Rather than placing climate change, nuclear security, economics and terrorism into separate organizational cones, develop integrated management strategies that capitalize on ways these issues affect each other," he wrote. "This massive agenda will move ahead relentlessly," Pascual concluded. "The United States can either engage and shape it, or defensively react to events."

Read more

Pascual also believes that transforming countries into open-market democracies is key to limiting violence and developing a strong relationships between countries.

National Security and International Organizations

The current international system's ability to address security issues is outdated, and lacks the capability to meet global safety challenges, Pascual argued in an article for the Brookings Institution. "A profound but underappreciated truth about globalization is the extent to which national security and international security have become inseparably linked This is true even in the most powerful countries."

Pascual writes that to rebuild international order, strong states must exercise their power responsibly and weak powers must be supported in their efforts to develop democratically. To do this, Pascual believes that multi-national organizations must mobilize resources and the U.S. must redevelop a stronger relationship with major and rising powers.

Failed States

Pascual has written extensively on weak and failed states, which he says pose a serious risk to U.S. and global security. He believes that conflict prevention must be a key element of policymaking. "Crises will inevitably occur, but if they are the United States' only impetus for response, there will be less chance of success," he wrote in a 2005 Foreign Affairs article.

When conflicts do erupt, Pascual believes that the international community must help stabilize problems, address their root causes, and then step in to create "laws and institutions of a market economy." The global network must also help stakeholders within a country develop a long-term transition plan. The U.S., he wrote, must be able to handle all four of these stages. To do so, Pascual proposed creating a State Department office (with a $100 million budget) dedicated to planning stabilization and reconstruction around the world.

The Bush administration created just such an office in 2004, establishing the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department, which Pascual ran.The office monitored weak states, developing proactive plans to address crises and bring democracy and open markets to countries that were unable to sustain themselves.

The office was fiercely criticized by some activists on the left, who saw the office as a new form of colonialism. In "The Shock Doctrine," Naomi Klein suggested that the American government was taking advantage of crises to pass policies (mostly benefiting businesses and the wealthy) that never would have passed in other times.

Pascual has not studied Mexico, but he has written that problems like the illegal trade of drugs are transnational issues that require the international community and several state actors to work together to solve.

A peer wrote on Politico that "I have never heard him publicly or privately refer to Mexico as a likely failed state" while at the Brookings Institution. Instead, his friend said he focused on strengthening global institutions like the G20, which give Mexico a voice in international politics.

Cuba

Pascual believes America's 50-year-old Cuba policy has failed spectacularly because it does not advance the "democratic aspirations" of the Cuban people. A better approach, he wrote, would be to "support the emergence of a Cuban state where the Cuban people determine their political and economic future of their country through democratic means."

Pascual suggests engaging the Cuban government by ending some of the U.S. trade embargoes levied against it, particularly on communications agreements; diplomatic relations on a reciprocal basis; and disaster relief and environmental stewardship.

Pascual called Obama's April 2009 decision to loosen travel restrictions to Cuba a good first step. But he said real change cannot come to the country until the trade embargo is lifted. "It isn't enough," Pascual told The Washington Post. "In and of itself, it's not going to produce a radical change in Cuba. But it's a recognition that a change is necessary."

The Network

Pascual has ties to several members of the Obama administration from his time at Brookings and in the Clinton administration. He worked at Brookings with U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice , who has also studied failed states. He served on the National Security Council with Philip Gordon , the assistant secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs.

Read more

Additional Resources