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Joe Biden/Archive Photograph
Boycott threats, questioned leadership, uncertain results: the IX Summit of the Americas, which the United States will in two weeks for the first time since the inaugural event in 1994, It runs the risk of being a fiasco, analysts warn.
The meeting, scheduled for June 6-10 in Los Angeles, was presented by US diplomacy as “< strong>President Joe Biden’s top priority event for the region”, after his predecessor, Donald Trump, did not participate in the last meeting four years ago.< /p>
But Biden’s commitment to build a “sustainable, resilient and equitable” future with his neighbors, and so on. To counter China’s growing influence in the region, it remained overshadowed by the possibility of many empty chairs.
“A boycott by a large group of leaders would be a black eye for the United States, he told AFP Benjamin Gedan, deputy director of the Latin American Program at the Wilson Center.
The government of Havana denounced A month ago they were leaving him out of the preparations. Cuba attended He attended a Summit of the Americas for the first time in 2015, in Panama, within the framework of Washington’s rapprochement with Havana promoted by former President Barack Obama. and came back to be in Lima in 2018.
But the Biden administration, which since January has signaled that the “commitment to democracy” It would be “a key factor in who is invited and who is not,” he said that he did not expect the presence of Cuba, nor of Nicaragua and Venezuela, since “they do not respect” The principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter in force since 2001.
The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, replied: then, unleashing the controversy: “If not everyone is invited (…) I would not go”.
His counterparts from Bolivia, Luis Arce; from Honduras, Xiomara Castro; and from Argentina, Alberto Fernández, as well as As leaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which brings together 14 countries, they also questioned their participation. his assistance, but asked for help. a call “as broad as possible”.
In addition, the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, whose government Washington accuses of obstructing anti-corruption investigations, has already announced that he will not attend, while his counterpart from Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, once very close to Trump and notoriously distant from Biden, indicated that he would not attend. that “I was still deciding.”
“Lack of ambition”
“A Summit of the Americas, without Brazil and Mexico, even for completely different reasons, is a failure”,sentenced Jorge Castaéda, former Mexican foreign minister and professor at New York University (NYU), in statements to the Univision network.
“President Biden and his team should have known that these dilemmas were going to present themselves and I think they did not act accordingly,” he said.
It didn’t help either. That a high-level US delegation traveled to Caracas in March after Biden banned Russian oil imports over the invasion of Ukraine, CSIS analysts Ryan Berg and Daniel Runde noted, calling it a “Unwise approach to the regime of Nicolás Maduro”.
“The strategic error of the administration and the message that democracy and human rights were of secondary importance to the dubious prospect of increased oil production It was the door for some in the region to denounce the inconsistency of the United States and insist on the presence of dictators at the Summit”, they wrote in a column in The Hill.
But in addition, they affirmed, the Biden administration “has utterly failed to develop a set of policies that will attract the turnout needed to make the Summit of the Americas a success.”
“The lack of ambition shown (…) has reduced the cost of desertion for regional leaders,” they maintained. And they urged Washington to make concrete proposals on free trade agreements, an increase in the capital of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and support in the recovery from the pandemic and in food security.
According to Gedan, a summit that brings together most of the presidents of the region, but does not produce significant results, would also be a “bad scenario”.
“For many years, US presidents have warned Latin America about the drawbacks of doing business with China, but the White House has failed to offer serious alternatives,” he said.
“The summit is an opportunity to show that the United States should be the region’s preferred partner,” he said.
The vice president of the Council of the Americas business forum, Eric Farnsworth, who as expert in Latin America will testify on Thursday in a committee of the Senate on the IX Summit, agreed.
“The region seeks Washington’s leadership in economic recovery efforts, including the expansion of trade and investment. n,” he told AFP.
“If the White House comes up with a meaningful agenda for regional cooperation, people will focus on it. “In that and all the maneuvers prior to the Summit will be quickly forgotten”, he assured.