PARAGUAY: Poor landlocked Paraguay has recently staged an attempt at diplomatic break-out. Frustrated at what it sees as shabby treatment by its supposedly close allies, Brazil and Argentina, it has, since June, started flirting with regional bogeyman, the US.
In that short space of time, Paraguay has signed an agreement to allow US troops on to its soil for a series of joint military exercises spread over the next 18 months, confirmed the opening next year of an FBI office in its capital Asunción, and raised the possibility of signing a free trade deal with Washington.
Such actions have not gone down well with its neighbours, suspicious that the US wants to build a permanent military base in Paraguay from where it can spread its influence.
The many groups in the region only too willing to believe the worst about US intentions have openly speculated that the yanquis want a military base in Paraguay to be able to control the Bolivian gas fields.
They also speculate that it may be to get access to the Guaraní Aquifer - one of the world's largest reserves of fresh water, which stretches across Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
Quickly identified as the likely site of a future US base in Paraguay has been the huge Mariscal Estigarribia airfield in the remote desolation of the northern Chaco region.
Built in the 1980s by US technicians during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, it has an 3,505m (11,500ft) runway, longer than the one at Asunción's international airport and far in excess of the needs of the few aircraft in the Paraguayan air force.
Paraguay however denies there are - or will be - any US troops at Mariscal.
"This speculation about Mariscal is nonsense," says the country's armed forces spokesman, Col Elio Flores. "Anyone can come and visit it and see it is just not true."
While the Paraguayans and the Americans insist the joint military exercises currently under way will not develop into a permanent US military presence, others note that the Pentagon gave similar assurances while conducting joint exercises at the Manta airbase in Ecuador in 1999.
Those assurances had to be quickly withdrawn after the US signed a 10-year lease on the base - which remains the country's only permanent military outpost on the South American continent.
As much as it is about courting the US, the new direction in Asunción's foreign policy is also a warning to Brazil, which has long seen Paraguay as within its sphere of influence.
Until now, Paraguay has been a loyal member of the Brazilian-led regional trade bloc Mercosur, which also includes Uruguay and Argentina. Its economy is heavily integrated with that of its massive neighbour. But the bloc's poorest member has grown increasingly resentful, believing Brazil is taking it for granted.
For too long, Asunción feels Brasília has counted on its loyalty without making the required pay-offs in inward investment and in convincing the other major Mercosur player - Argentina - to honour treaties that guarantee free passage for Paraguay's goods down Argentina's rivers to the Atlantic.
Brazil has reacted badly to its ally making eyes elsewhere. Its foreign minister, Celso Amorim, said his country was "requesting more transparency about the content of the agreements signed between Paraguay, a Mercosur member, and the United States", adding: "We see no reasons for having a US base in the region."
On the mooted free trade deal between Paraguay and the US, Mr Amorim was blunt, noting that Mercosur did not allow its members to sign bilateral trade deals.
"Paraguay must understand that the choice is between Mercosur and other possible partners," he declared.
In response, Paraguay's president Nicanor Duarte Frutos insisted on his country's right to look beyond the region. "We are not corseted into Mercosur. Paraguay has been independent since 1811," he said.
"We will continue maintaining Mercosur and the friendly relations we have with Brazil and Argentina which are our brothers, but we have to look to the world and explore other possibilities."
Other politicians in Paraguay though are more openly frustrated with the slow pace of integration under Brazilian stewardship of Mercosur.
Luis Castiglioni, Paraguay's vice-president and ardent backer of the new foreign policy direction, took Mr Amorim's comments as a chance to angrily denounce Mercosur as only good for "presidents meeting every six months for photographs and making grand declarations".
This anger in Paraguay reflects a wider discontent over what is perceived as Brazil's failure to pay the political and economic cost for the regional leadership role it has claimed for itself in the last 10 years.
Whether it is complaints at cheap Brazilian imports putting pressure on manufacturers in smaller Mercosur markets or grumbling about the slow pace of Brazilian-funded infrastructure projects, the trade bloc has become a tense club.
The US has taken advantage of all this to gain a toehold in a country.
Washington has long been concerned that Paraguay's weak state institutions and thriving black market economy have allowed it to become a haven for drug traffickers, arms dealers and possibly Islamic extremists.
The focus of its concern is the triple-frontier border area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina all meet. Here the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is infamous for all sorts of contraband, drug-trafficking and money-laundering.
The US has a long-standing, openly stated belief that the city's Muslim population has been infiltrated by Hizbullah and possibly other Islamist groups.
Therefore, as well as providing medical services in Paraguay's poor rural interior, the military exercises to be conducted through the end of next year will also focus on anti-terrorism training for Paraguay's security services.
Whether or not the US is concerned enough to seek a permanent base in Paraguay remains to be seen. Both sides vehemently deny it, though the Manta base in Ecuador remains a cautionary warning that circumstances can change rapidly.