José Miguel Insulza’s election as Secretary General of the Organization of American States, and the consequent defeat of the candidate supported by the Bush administration, emphatically demonstrated the decline of America’s continental leadership. The US not only lost control of the OAS, an organization that generally serves US interests, but also failed to get last month’s Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata Argentina to endorse unanimously a declaration supporting America’s trade and political positions for the region.