The presidents of Mexico, Bolivia and Honduras are not going to protest the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The presence of Argentina and Brazil should save the US from ‘humiliation’.
The American Joe Biden government, after spending weeks in the face of fears of a fiasco and threats of boycott, arrives at the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles expecting to turn the event into a turning point. The international policy of the United States, despite the losses and controversy among the participants.
Former US Ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon told BBC News Brazil that Americans see the event as an opportunity to “form a new agenda and a new understanding of what is important to the Americas today.”
But it’s not just him. In the face of competition with China for influence in the region and tensions with Russia amid the Ukraine War, the Summit offers a chance for Americans to unify the continent under the leadership of Democrat Biden, who will propose at least five explanations. Migration and strengthening of production and supply chains will also be discussed with policies and plans on issues such as environmental protection, climate change, democracy and resilience to pandemics.
The Summit of the Americas, organized by the United States, reflects the ideas of the so-called Monroe Doctrine, with the ideal of “America for the Americans” in its lauded goals. Started in 1823 to preach that Europeans should not interfere with their former colonies on the continent, the ideology has received varying interpretations over the centuries, but has always boiled down to the idea that Americans seek political priority (or intervention). continent.
“This rhetoric still exists, but in practice the US has lost the main narratives in the region, its legitimacy has been shaken by the crisis to its own democracy, and the government does not have the means to compete with the Chinese in investment in infrastructure and innovation. He talked about the Chinese tech giant who will be Americans Latinos’ attempts to exclude Huawei from their operations.
Judging by the region leaders’ bumpy route to the city of California in the second week of June, the symbolic and practical implications of the event for the United States remain questionable.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, has fulfilled his promise not to attend the Summit unless the governments of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are also invited to attend.
The United States refused to send invitations to the teams of Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro, whom Washington described as dictators and human rights violators. In the US, the Cuban and Venezuelan diasporas are politically powerful and decisive for conflicts such as the November midterm elections. And an invitation from Biden to the rulers of these countries will land badly in the communities.
Exclusion has given some leaders in the region, particularly those on the electorate left, the ability to confront the Americans and score points in their domestic politics by opposing the White House decision, such as AMLO.
And it gave the Chinese a chance to insert Washington. “Isn’t Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela the countries of the Americas?” He mocked Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
White House Task Force
The White House has tried to downplay AMLO’s absence. On the one hand, US officials said the Summit could have been successful without it. On the other hand, the Biden administration has launched a veritable high-level task force to lure representatives to California.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been sent to Honduras to meet with newly elected Xiomara Castro, who has announced that she will send only her foreign minister to the meeting.
The Biden representative, former Senator Cristopher Dodd, was in Brasilia to deliver a “personal message” from a White House resident about the importance of Bolsonaro’s presence in Los Angeles. After a year and a half in power, Biden also offered Bolsonaro the first opportunity for direct interaction between leaders. After raising doubts about the 2020 US elections, Bolsonaro, who was uncomfortable not being greeted by the American president earlier, changed his mind and decided to attend the event.
Biden himself spent 25 minutes on the phone last week convincing Argentine President Alberto Fernandez to travel to Los Angeles, which is protesting the exclusion of the three countries.
And the wife of the US president, Jill Biden, went on a trip to Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica in 1994 to lure presidents who did not want to attend the meeting created by the US.
In total, about half of America’s representatives will be in Los Angeles. In addition to AMLO, the leaders of Bolivia (Luis Arce), Honduras (Xiomara Castro) and Uruguay (Lacalle Pou), who caught covid-19 on the eve of the event, are also noteworthy.
“The fact that Americans have to make such an effort to get people to the Summit shows more weakness than strength. For many years, Latin America has lagged far behind priority in US foreign policy. Now Latin presidents write on the wall. Professor of politics at FGV and at the Wilson Center “I don’t see Americans as so urgent,” says researcher Daniella Campello.
For Stuenkel, pulling Bolsonaro to the Summit freed Americans from the “humiliation” of seeing the two main countries (Brazil and Mexico) in their events. Also, compare it to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who managed to lure Bolsonaro and Fernandez to Moscow just two weeks before he launched his invasion of Ukraine. “In practice, however, Americans are adjusting to a new situation where Latin America is much less dependent on Washington than before,” Stuenkel says.
Last chance?
International policy analysts caution that Biden may be facing his last opportunity to prove that he can positively change the relationship between the United States and Latin America.
“Biden hasn’t been able to show that he’s really very different from Trump for the region,” says Ryan Berg, a Latin America researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
According to Berg, after promising a new look at Latin America in the campaign, Biden failed to significantly change the dynamics of America’s relations with the region. Immigration policies differed little from those of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Latino governments resent the lack of an economic plan to save the continent from the crisis-ridden US even before the Covid-19 outbreak began. And they state that the distribution of vaccines against covid-19 in the region was done first by China and then by the USA.
Trump, whose election banner was “America First” and which even included building a wall on the Mexican border to prevent immigration, did not develop close ties with Latin America. Many international analysts attribute the rapid growth of China’s presence in the region to this power vacuum.
Breaking the tradition of silent diplomacy, Beijing accused the Americans of wanting to push the agenda of the Summit of the Americas to all Latin countries with the format and agenda of the invitees. “The United States has spoken for Americans in America, but this is only for the American people,” spokesman Zhao said.
The criticism of the Chinese resonates in Latin America. It is common to hear from South American diplomats that the US only wants to discuss immigration from the perspective of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), which has nothing to do with the Brazilian reality. and Colombia, for example, which received large numbers of Venezuelan troops. On the other hand, Americans will be less porous about Brazilian demands, such as an end to the use of handcuffs by deported Brazilians on US flights returning to Brazil.
Like Trump, Biden has struggled to understand the region, not just in terms of his own domestic policies – and what will and will not please a conservative Latino voter in Florida – and that there is no uniformity in the continent’s affairs. According to Thomas Shannon, American diplomacy should attend the event with a willingness to listen, not just speak.
According to American diplomat Michael McKinley, former ambassador to Brazil, Colombia and Peru, the current Summit is in danger of failing precisely because of these old mistakes.
“Despite the Biden administration’s efforts to define a new and positive vision for engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean, old issues are likely to emerge at the Summit of the Americas, which takes a more skeptical view of Washington and its intentions. A new US perspective is needed – the region’s diversity, priorities, and political “Without this shift, perception and reality decline in US influence will likely deepen,” wrote McKinley at the United States Institute for Peace.
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source: Noticias
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