While the eyes of the world are understandably focused on today's Middle East peace summit in Annapolis, Md., another diplomatic parley is getting underway in Washington that has a direct bearing on U.S. policy in Latin America. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Thomas Shannon, Jr. is hosting his counterpart in the Chinese Foreign Ministry for two days of talks at the State Department that will concentrate on economic development issues and specific countries in the region that are of interest to both Washington and Beijing. China's bilateral trade with Latin America has nearly tripled in the past four years, and this week's meetings with director-general Yang Wan Ming represent a follow-up to the discussions that Shannon held with Chinese officials during a visit to Beijing in April 2006. That trip represented the first ever visit to China by the State Department's top official on Latin America, and it reflected in part mounting concern in the Bush Administration over Beijing's dramatically enhanced profile in a region that has traditionally been viewed as Washington's natural sphere of influence. The opening of a low-profile channel of communication with the Chinese is also one more example of the quiet but effective diplomacy that has stamped Shannon's tenure as assistant secretary since he took over the position in the fall of 2005.

By most accounts, the 49-year-old career diplomat is a huge improvement over the right-wing Hispanic political appointees who preceded him in the job. Whereas former Reagan Administration official Otto Reich and onetime Jesse Helms legislative aide Roger Noriega allowed domestic political pressures back home (read: Miami's powerful Cuban-American lobby) to drive U.S. policy in Latin America, Shannon is much more attuned to broad trends and sensibilities inside the region. That helps explain the renewed emphasis on social justice issues and poverty reduction programs that has characterized Washington's approach towards Latin America in recent months. Those themes figured prominently during President Bush's five-nation tour of the hemisphere last March, and while visceral loathing of the lame-duck chief of state continues to run high throughout the region, Shannon has worked hard to improve relations with friendly governments and reach out on occasion to openly hostile ones.   

When Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega regained power in Nicaragua's presidential election in November 2006 after a 16-year-long hiatus in the opposition, Shannon flew to Managua within weeks of the balloting to sit down with the president-elect. That represented something of an about-face for the Oxford-educated native of Minnesota. In the weeks leading up to the vote, Shannon had expressed satisfaction with the "close, positive, constructive relationship" the U.S. had been enjoying with Nicaragua of late but then pointedly warned, "I'm not sure that would be the case with Daniel Ortega." Yet when the Sandinistas' return to power became a fait accompli for Washington, pragmatism won out over ideology in Shannon's policy calculations. In a similar vein, Shannon met with Hugo Chavez' foreign minister Nicolas Maduro in New York at the beginning of October to discuss, among other things, Venezuela's newly launched efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Colombian Marxist guerrillas whose ranks include three American citizens. The Shannon-Maduro talks represented the highest-level contact to occur between the Bush Administration and the Chavez government in years, and the usually gringo-bashing foreign ministry in Caracas issued a statement describing the discussionas as "very cordial."

Shannon for his part hastens to point out that U.S. policy in Latin America is the work of President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he is merely one of many officials charged with its implementation. And indeed, when Bush decided earlier this fall that it was time to reiterate Washington's hopes for "regime change" in Cuba and uphold the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against Havana, Shannon dutifully did his bit to defend what has been a manifestly failed campaign to remove Fidel Castro from power. But the assistant secretary gets high marks overall from Latin Americans across the political spectrum, and in his own self-effacing way Shannon says that U.S. prestige and credibility are beginning to recover after the fallout from the invasion of Iraq. "This president has been more involved with the region than any other since John F. Kennedy and the (pro-development) Alliance for Progress policy," he says. "But we've found a new way to articulate our message that allows people to understand the message of this administration and show that we understand and care about the problems the region is facing." And as this week's meetings with the Chinese underscore, the United States isn't the only major power keenly interested in Latin America these days.