It would have been seen as a routine courtesy. But when Bolivia’s new president, Evo Morales, received a congratulatory phone call from White House last week, he confessed he was surprised.

The US has made no secret of its concerns over Morales’s plans to legalise coca cultivation, strengthen state control of Bolivia’s energy resources, and his fraternal links with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s anti-US leader. But here was George Bush on the phone commending Bolivia’s “strong commitment to the democratic process’’ and, says his spokesman, urging “constructive dialogue’’. It is a measure of the US’s uneasy relations with many Latin American governments that Bush’s call was regarded as unusual. Conventional wisdom, after a raft of election successes by left-of-centre politicians and a fractious regional summit in November, is that the US is losing control in its backyard.

But Bush has urgent reasons to raise his game. They include Chavez’s confrontational stance, his regional oil politics and his alliance with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. This week he called on Venezuelans to arm themselves and “launch a counter-attack against US imperialism’’.

His speech followed tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions. The US is also concerned that China, hungry for raw materials and energy deals, is filling a Latin American vacuum caused by post-9/11 neglect. Washington’s security, immigration, and drug worries are all linked to the so-called “slow-growth trap’’ in which many regional countries are stuck despite the current commodity-led export boom.

“US’s tattered relations with Latin America have mainly translated into a series of lost opportunities for both sides,’’ said Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue in Foreign Affairs magazine. “The US could end up paying a stiff price for the region’s economic reversals and unsettled politics ... Washington can do better.’’ That message now seems to have been heard and is spurring a US counter-offensive. Its twin objectives appear to be the isolation of Chavez and his Cuban “axis’’ and deepening engagement with states such as Bolivia. General Bantz Craddock, commander of US southern command, echoed Bush’s conciliatory words, and said that the US should work with Morales.

Deputy commerce secretary David Sampson says the US, building on pacts with Mexico, Chile and central American countries, is considering bilateral deals with Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Hakim said that was hardly surprising because despite disagreements, productive economic ties were “what the majority of Latin American countries need from the US’’. Pulling these and other levers, the US hopes to thwart Chavez’s attempts to broaden his anti-American alliance. And for all his talk of revolutionary solidarity and multinational oil company “conspiracies’’, Morales may yet succumb to Washington’s blandishments. Overcoming his surprise at Bush’s call, he made one request: lower US trade barriers. If he wanted to discuss it, he said, the man Chavez dubs “Mr Danger’’ was welcome to visit any time. — The Guardian