“If the US assumes that it has staunch allies [in Latin America], it is making a big mistake.”
Readers of my May 13 piece, “Washington Faces Ultimate Snub, As Latin American Heads of State Threaten to Boycott Summit of Americas,” may recall that the Biden Administration is struggling to persuade heads of state from Latin America to attend the ninth Summit of Americas. As the FT notes, the event, held once every three years or so, “is supposed to show that America is back in its own neighbourhood.” Yet less than two weeks before its grand opening, “the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles threatens to expose Washington’s weakness in the region.”
The trouble began when Washington hinted it was thinking about excluding from the guest list “antidemocratic” governments from the region including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, drawing the ire of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Aka AMLO).
The Mexican leader said he would not attend the summit unless all Latin American and Caribbean countries were invited. Since then a growing roster of Latin American leaders have threatened to do the same, including the presidents of Argentina, Chile, Honduras and Bolivia. Guatemala’s President has said he will bow out after the US criticized his government for appointing its attorney general Maria Consuelo Porras, whom Washington accuses of corruption, to serve another term.
Even the Vatican has been using its back channels to pressure Washington to extend an invite to Cuba. According to official government sources in Havana, no fewer than 18 of the region’s 35 nation states have asked Biden for all American states to be invited to the summit. But that will not be happening.
Door Slammed Shut
The Biden Administration this week confirmed it will not be inviting Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, despite its recent offer to drop some of its sanctions against Caracas so that US oil majors can resume buying Venezuela’s heavier grades of oil, in the hope of relieving some of the price pressures in US energy markets. Washington will also not be inviting Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who said he wouldn’t want to go to LA anyway even if they unfurled the red carpet for him. Cuba’s president Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel has also said he won’t be attending.
In other words, AMLO’s attempt to bring all leaders of the Americas under the same roof in LA has failed. But it is not all bad news. AMLO’s ploy has certainly helped to cement his leadership in Central America and arguably across Latin America as a whole — something even mainstream publications in Mexico have conceded. Also, with so many empty places, Washington has decided to fill one of them by extending an invite to Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, a country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean but which, together with Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Britain, once colonised just about every inch of Latin America and the Caribbean.
One silver lining for Washington is that Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who himself is no great fan of democracy, has confirmed his attendance at the summit after the former veteran Democratic senator and Biden aide Chris Dodd paid him a visit earlier this week. Relations between the two countries have been pretty frigid since Biden took office.The two presidents have not even spoken since Biden’s election.
Bolsonaro had hinted he wouldn’t be attending the summit. But yesterday he said he will, seemingly because he has been offered a bilateral sit-down with the president. But he also took the opportunity to level criticism at Biden for apparently snubbing him at a G20 Meeting last year, suggesting it was perhaps due to Biden’s advanced years.
But the problem goes far deeper than relations between Mexico and Madrid and Mexico and Washington. As Rodrigo Anguilar, an analyst who recently became the first ever Mexican member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a far-ranging interview with the right-of-center Mexican daily Reforma, “If the United States assumes that it has staunch allies [in Latin America], it is making a big mistake,” adding Washington should be wary of setting conditions for the upcoming summit:
Perhaps [this sort of behavior] was understandable at a time when the United States, with enormous arrogance, practically bossed the world after the fall of the Soviet Union. But it is totally anachronistic at this point. With the influence of China in the region, and other actors, with geopolitics radically changing globally, setting conditions on a summit of this nature seems to me to be a mistake. Because it also seems to me that the purpose of these summits should not be [addressing or punishing] good or bad behavior…
What do I think a summit of this kind should look like? As a regional get together where challenges and opportunities in the region are discussed, regardless of the enormous differences. And this is what the United States has to understand: there is another reality in the world. We have a post-Covid scenario in which Latin America was greatly affected economically by the pandemic and we need to sit down to discuss this and other issues.
As even legacy media outlets in the West (including El País, the Financial Times and Foreign Policy) are conceding, the US is fast losing influence not only globally but also within its own neighborhood. And it needs to change tack, fast. While China was able to pull off a smoothly run virtual summit with Latin American and Caribbean foreign ministers in December, culminating in a unanimously agreed three-year action plan, the Biden Administration has managed to antagonize many of the region’s leaders even before sending out invites to the Summit.
This is after failing to give Latin America and the Caribbean the attention it deserves, even as Washington hopes to reassert influence in the region. The Biden Administration has not even sent ambassadors to many of the region’s nations, including Brazil, Chile, Panama, Haiti, Salvador, Panama, Bolivia and Cuba. Even more incredible, it has not even nominated an ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), the organization that organizes the Americas Summit.
As Anguilar notes, Washington will need to buck its ideas up if it wants to maintain a leadership role in the region. That will mean changing the way it treats many of its neighbors:
In Washington’s list of priorities should be, without a doubt, not taking for granted that these Latin American countries will be aligned with the United States.
This is especially true given the recent election of left-of-center governments in Bolivia, Honduras, Argentina, Peru, Chile and the likely electoral triumphs of Gustavo Petro in Colombia this coming weekend and Lula in Brazil in October. Many countries in the region are no longer willing to accept Washington’s insistence on democratic credentials, particularly given Washington’s own predilection for supporting brutal autocracies in other parts of the world as well as its long history of toppling democratically elected nations in Latin America (and beyond).
The irony has not been lost on the US’ biggest geostrategic rival, Beijing, which is determined to take advantage of perceived US weakness in the Americas. “Instead of benefiting Latin America . . . the US has brought Latin America wanton exploitation, wilful sanctions, inflation, political interference, regime change, assassination of politicians and even armed aggression,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said last week.
Unlike the US, China generally does not try to dictate how its trading partners should behave and what sorts of rules, norms, principles and ideology they should adhere to. What China does — or at least has by and large done over the past few decades until now — is to trade with and invest in countries that have goods — particularly commodities — it covets. As Anguilar notes, it has worked a treat in Latin America and the Caribbean:
What China is doing in Latin America is what it is doing in other regions, through its infrastructure initiatives, generating a tremendous volume of trade. In the last 20 years, China has gone from investing $18 billion to $450 billion, with projects ranging from nuclear power plants in Argentina, the Bogotá Metro, not to mention the [$64 billion of] trade generated with Venezuela, which allows Venezuela to subsist.
China is very important, because for the United States it really is the new adversary… I believe that this has them very concerned — as it well should… If [Latin American countries] only think in the short term, [they] can also commit the enormous error of ceding sovereignty to a superpower like China. If China buys up ports in Chile, what implications does it have for geopolitics, sovereignty and security?
In an urgent effort at damage control, Washington dispatched a team to bend AMLO’s ear last week. Since then US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar has called in on Mexico’s National Palace so many times that some pundits have quipped that he may as well install an office next to AMLO’s. Washington has also pledged a partial relaxation of restrictions on Cuba. But it could all be too little, too late.
AMLO has said he will confirm his attendance definitively today (Friday, May 27). Personally speaking, I think it is unlikely that Washington’s paltry concessions will be enough to twist AMLO’s arm, though I could be wrong. The decision to invite Spain to the conference is unlikely to help matters either given AMLO’s recent clashes with Madrid, particularly over his proposed energy reforms.
Even if the Biden Administration wanted to make bigger concessions, its hands are most likely tied by electoral considerations, particularly in Florida. Once the perennial swing state, Florida has been taking on a deep shade of red of late, but is still considered key to the Democrat’s electoral ambitions for this November’s mid-terms. Any significant concessions given by Biden to Latin America’s “axis of evil” (Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua) will be seized upon by Republicans as a gesture of appeasement. And that sort of messaging is likely to be lapped up by many within the Latin American diaspora in Florida.
Even more concerning is the fact that Washington does not seem to be able or willing to change its ways when it comes to regional relations. Margaret Thatcher’s classic dictum “there is no alternative” (Aka TINA) appears to be the name of the game.
The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last week put forward the “Upholding the Inter-American Democratic Charter Act of 2022.” The proposed “bipartisan” legislation includes initiatives aimed at “strengthening” US cooperation with the OAS, which AMLO himself has talked about replacing with a “body that is truly autonomous and not anybody’s lackey,” as well as addressing “ongoing and emerging threats to democratic governance in the hemisphere, including on issues related to election interference, dis/misinformation, and corruption.”
Same Old, Same Old
If passed, the legislation will attempt (and most likely fail) to reinstall the US as the dominant force in the region, with zero tolerance for governments that do not meet its high standards of democratic governance.
“While important progress has been made to advance good governance and the rule of law since the signing of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, we must recognize the fact that the Western Hemisphere is not immune to the current wave of democratic decline and creeping authoritarianism facing the world. From Havana to Caracas, Managua to San Salvador, now is the time to bolster the United States’ diplomatic strategy to help confront challenges that are threatening the underpinnings of the Charter’s norms and principles,” said Chairman Menendez.
Washington still appears to be blind to the actual aspirations, needs and interests of the countries south of the Rio Grande. It is also apparently blind to its own democratic decline and creeping authoritarianism. It seems to be incapable of thinking in anything but neo-colonial terms. It does not want to listen to its counterparts or treat them as equals; instead it will continue to impose — or at least try to impose — its own political system and values on others while ensuring they continue to adhere to US economic and geo-strategic interests.
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It’s so weird to me that the US allowed itself to get here. I mean the US has caused coups in so many Latin America countries and installed both vicious (internally) and compliant (to us corporations) governments – how is control slipping away so easily? It’s like the US hasn’t been paying attention at all.
It’s like a common refrain – Q: what were they thinking? A: they weren’t.
This is a long-standing arrangement. Between 1798 and 1994 the U.S. is responsible for 41 changes of government south of its borders. The Monroe Doctrine essentially says to Europe “These are no longer your colonies, they’re ours!”
It’s not an accident that Castro is a hero in Latin America.
Meanwhile, AMLO has also nationalized its Lithium reserves. He has painted a target on his chest. Will Mexico be the next country couped?
Our Cuban policy has been outdated for decades. Obama started to change our policy towards Cuba. When Trump took over he reverted back to the same old outdated policies.I hope Biden will change that. We need to normalize relations with Cuba. It is in our national interest.
He hasn’t. So far, Biden’s policy towards Cuba has been somewhere between Obama’s and Trump’s.
The US Cuban policy was from day one when Castro took over, a failure and an atrocity. But that was nothing new, as the United States of Atrocities, together with UK, has caused more misery for more people than anything during human history. It is just to hope that the US will have a very violent civil war, a war of the proportions that that nexus of evil have meted out all over this planets.
We should be thankful that we have the bulwark of China and Russia (and Iran) to counter US aggression.
I’m hoping that joe b. doesn’t back down so his fails so China can call a summit to be held in Cuba;-)
Thank you for this post. This act was so poorly considered given the history of the area I literally gasped when I read it:
What next? Inviting someone else from Europe for another intervention? If this is State’s ham-handed attempt at engineering a suitable political outcome they might want to read up on what happened to the last guy they tried to install as king of Mexico to pay off Euro debt. Or was the thinking that since they mostly all speak Spanish it was fine?!
It really has the “don’t make me get your father!” feel of exasperation while disciplining children, doesn’t it?
I’m sure it will go over well…
Due to the successful austerity policies of EU, something like 1.4 million Spaniards have moved to South and Central America for work. So Sanchez kinda has constituency there.
Or maybe he’s there to remind everyone that the old overlord was much worse than the current wannabe.
1.4M Spaniards sounds kind of high (wikipedia’s latest references only have ~7600 work permits a year issued to Spaniards in 2013, I’m not sure where to find latest stats). There are less than a million Americans immigrated to Mexico as of 2019 and they make up the largest portion of immigrants to Mexico.
I wondered if it might be an attempt to scotch the entire affair since it wasn’t going Uncle Sam’s way but honestly it was probably a viciously stupid attempt to create some new market synergies between old colonial relationships.
I suspect the invitation was at Sánchez’ request, perhaps a quid-pro-quo for siding with Morocco and cutting Europe off from Algerian gas, making Europe ever more dependent on Tio Samuelito’s (h/t Amfortas) promise of LNG.
There are a lot of Franquistas left in Spain who still have wet dreams of being an empire. This will help Sánchez “Make España Great Again” and prop up his make-believe government.
Inviting someone else from Europe for another intervention?
Alaska was a Russian colony. Perhaps Biden could invite President Putin?
Your last question (was the thinking that since they mostly all speak Spanish it was fine?) is the most telling. For many recent administrations, leaders have focused on starting from scratch and making a name, while erasing–and even reversing as if for spite– the predecessor’s decisions. But the presidency is a continuum we call, or called, “the peaceful transition of power.” We were not like the French with its spanking new Fourth Republic when DeGaulle took over. Somehow, our global compass has been spinning as if the world just wants what the last man standing wants–and he wants to win reelection. He does not need to look outside or study history. We had our chance when Barack Obama was awarded the Peace Prize. There was an aspirational hope that by electing that specific man, the USofA had grown up, that it was no longer an adolescent on the world stage. Now, however, we are collectively acting as entitled trust babies to whom the world owes something. We can come out of it, but not before we stop making up stories as if they wee true.
Why is Biden making so few appointments, even to to prestige posts?
I was wondering that, too. Looks like the GOP is (of course) blocking a bunch of appointments, but it also looks like the Biden Admin is running real late with Nominations. A little research turned up the list below, from US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, showing pending appointments.
There are *many* appointments pending, including dozens of Ambassadors, but (almost?) all of those appear to have been nominated this year, so it looks like the Democrats really have been slow to get their lists together. OTOH, there are many more lower-level appointments pending; I’d bet that those are mostly being held up by GOP just to screw things up.
Of the pending Ambassadorial nominations, I only found 6 for this hemisphere:
Hugo F, Rodriguez Jr – Nicaragua
Candace A, Bond – Trinidad and Tobago
William H. Duncan – El Salvador
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley – Brazil
Michelle Kwan – Belize (yes, the figure skater!?)
Mari Carmen Aponte – Panama
https://www.congress.gov/committee/senate-foreign-relations/ssfr00?q=%7B%22source%22%3A%22nominations%22%7D
From this post, I think that what the Biden regime is attempting to do with its foreign relations in South America was what it announced that it wanted to do with China – compartmentalize it. So instead of having a comprehensive, integrated relationship with China, it wanted the ability to ask China for help isolating North Korea one one hand while at the same exact time launching punishing sanctions on Chinese trade on the other. This idea may have met with satisfaction in the many fiefdoms of Washington DC but no modern country can have relations with another powerful country under such a set up.
So I think that they were trying to do the same here in South America and not inviting Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela was this idea in practice. So with Venezuela, they would not invite them but on the other hand want them to increase oil production to help them out. It is like the neighbour who asks to borrow your car but while doing so, hands you a summons because your tree is overhanging his property line. Has Joe also invited President Juan Guaidó? But the most bone headed thing that old Joe did was to invite Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister of Spain. That is like South America having a conference and inviting the British because they use to run America. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Do they have the political memory of goldfish?
Please do not cast aspersions upon goldfish intelligence.
Q. What did one goldfish say to the other goldfish in the tank?
A. Watch out for the drones overhead!
Why do I get this picture of the realization that many Latin American countries are telling the US to ‘talk to the hand’ slowly dawning on Tony Blinken, and he then asks “What other countries speak Spanish that we can invite instead?”.
Maybe they’ll invite Portugal next – they’re next to Spain, could be they speak Spanish too.
lyman alpha blob: Question: Is it possible that Georgetown Snark Blinken is even dumber than any of us suspected?
As you write, here is the logic, I s’pose: “Well, that Pedro Sanchez is tall and speaks Spanish, so he can get all mi casa su casa with them.”
And Portugal! It’s the funny form of Spanish except with tils on the vowels instead of ñ. Let’s invite them too.
And I hear that the Brazilians have a really odd way of speaking Spanish. But Victoria Nuland’s on the job, planning the next coup, so we don’t have to appoint an ambassador to Rio de Enero.
Having watched the US stagger and flounder around for years now, it’s becoming abundantly clear that all the Ivy League Beltway Blob best and brightest types are really morons.
I blame grade inflation and the lack of teaching Classics. Only partly kidding with that last bit – these idiots do seem intent on proving Santayana right about those who don’t remember history. Of course they probably don’t know who Santayana is either – they’d need a lackey to google the wikipedia entry for them if it ever became important.
Indeed: Because the classics are set / written in the Mediterranean world, they twist U.S. racial categories around right away. But we wouldn’t want to do that, would we?
Herakleitos on space and time. Sappho on desire and eloquence. Ovid’s Metamorphoses on storytelling and the changeability of the gods. The Greek Anthology on sentiments and the delicacy of life. Virgil’s Aeneid on–wow, all kinds of things, some unexpected.
One would come away from those books a different person. But we wouldn’t want that to happen, I guess.
One aside to both remembrance and the Classics – during the run up to the Iraq War, many of the speeches delivered by the Congress Critters could have been taken verbatim from Thucydides’ account of the Athenian orators drumming up support for the invasion of Syracuse.
We all know how THAT turned out.
Actually, almost no one did, especially Congress Critters.
And re LAB’s observations: When I pointed tout hese ominous parallels to other friends, reactions of all but one (who realized the invasion was folly from the git go and whose upstairs neighbour coincidentally was Walter Blanco, author of a recent translation) was, “Who’s Thucydides?”
Is it possible that Georgetown Snark Blinken is even dumber than any of us suspected?
After watching that fiasco in Alaska with the Chinese, I am not sure how dumb he is but he is blindingly incompetent. I would not hire him as a waiter. I’d be out of business in a week and possibly being sued by aggrieved customers.
The Rev Kev sez, “But the most bone headed thing that old Joe did was to invite Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister of Spain. That is like South America having a conference and inviting the British because they use to run America.”
You forget that in the U S of A, the English get invited to everything and treated as if they know more because they say things like “bespoke” and “bubble-and-squeak,” which make Americans all squishy inside.
It’s as if the US of A has never ceased to be the colony. There is no other explanation for why any U.S. politician wastes a moment of time on a certifiable cretin like Boris Johnson. “But he says ‘waistcoat’!”
The US practices politics of demonization. They disagree with Venezuelan politics so they demonize the country. They are evil and there is no redemption. That is what you do when you are preparing for war. But it also costs because if you are they only one demonizing a country, and other countries don’t see the situation the same way, then you are in an awkward position. When I was in Ecuador a few years ago, I was surprised at how cheap gas was. I asked about the prices and was told that Venezuela gave Ecuador a special deal on gas. They didn’t see Venezuela as a threat. Cuba has been sending medical teams to South America and the Caribbean for years, they also shared a Covid vaccine when the rich countries weren’t. The US is still stuck in the cold war and it is costing them.
overlooked in this narrative is the unforced error of driving the newly revolutionised Cuba into the arms of the USSR, back in the day…i reckon Latin America remembers…and it might perhaps inform them in their dealings with China, et alia.
i hope that this new interest in sovereignty has legs…the usa doesn’t deserve the monroe doctrine, having abused it for more than a century.
reading this, i kept thinking about the Pink Wave down there in the late 90’s- here, recently…and what usa,inc. did in response.
obviously, a majority of folks want a more lefty government and society…it’s only the local feudal elites that want to be in bed with Tio Samuelito.
all of this, from latin america to the rest of the “3rd world”, is an own goal, of course…the footfall of Nemesis, coming to reward the now somnambulist Hubris for its excess.
Re: “Many countries in the region are no longer willing to accept Washington’s insistence on democratic credentials, particularly given Washington’s own predilection for supporting brutal autocracies in other parts of the world as well as its long history of toppling democratically elected nations in Latin America (and beyond).”
One can remember the former US presidential candidate (and subsequent Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton’s secretly recorded statement about foreign elections in which the USA has an interest:
Hillary Clinton: ‘We should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win’
https://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/
Spreading the USA Democracy brand = influencing the results of foreign elections before/after as the citizens of foreign countries can’t be trusted to vote “correctly”.
“Ongoing and emerging threats”
It must be the excess of security agencies in the US that have an existential need for threats for self justification. Enemies have to be found everywhere. A new one to be created for Latin America.
It is really amazing to watch this Band of Cretins play what should be a moderately strong hand into embarrassing loss after loss.
“Can’t anybody here play this game#$%^&***??”
(Throws cap onto the ground and stomps on it….)
Thanks for this post.
I guess the dissonance between ‘what we say’ and ‘what we do’ has reached an unavoidable recognition.
The Biden Administration this week confirmed it will not be inviting Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, despite its recent offer to drop some of its sanctions against Caracas so that US oil majors can resume buying Venezuela’s heavier grades of oil, in the hope of relieving some of the price pressures in US energy markets.
Pedro Sanchez must have something going with AMLO’s opposition for Biden to invoke his name like a threat. Mexico is our major trading partner; we really don’t want to mess that up. It’s gotta be a Pemex connection. Biden would probably not have gone to Venezuela if AMLO had given us all the oil we demanded. Not to mention all the drugs coming in over the border and under the table – keeping our deep state well funded. Most of it coming from China (I’m thinking fentanyl). Maybe we should just threaten Mexico with a suggestion that we might simply go straight to China, bypassing Mexico altogether. What was Cienfuegos doing in San Diego anyway?
Strange attitude – do you actually want the US empire to prosper?
Your last question (was the thinking that since they mostly all speak Spanish it was fine?) is the most telling. For many recent administrations, leaders have focused on starting from scratch and making a name, while erasing–and even reversing as if for spite– the predecessor’s decisions. But the presidency is a continuum we call, or called, “the peaceful transition of power.” We were not like the French with its spanking new Fourth Republic when DeGaulle took over. Somehow, our global compass has been spinning as if the world just wants what the last man standing wants–and he wants to win reelection. He does not need to look outside or study history. We had our chance when Barack Obama was awarded the Peace Prize. There was an aspirational hope that by electing that specific man, the USofA had grown up, that it was no longer an adolescent on the world stage. Now, however, we are collectively acting as entitled trust babies to whom the world owes something. We can come out of it, but not before we stop making up stories as if they were true.