Repercussions of the Joe Biden administration’s insistence on not inviting the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Ninth Summit of the Americas, in session in Los Angeles, are so strong and broad that it has been a challenge for the administration to even make sure the invited leaders show up.
That multiple regional leaders have protested the decision, even with threat of their personal absence, is just one sign of Latin America’s discontent with the arrogance of Washington.
And that seems to be indicative of the difficulties the current United States administration faces in securing influence in, if not control over, what the US has long deemed as its “backyard”. There are widening cracks in the regional mechanism, which are symptomatic of the fundamental problems in the values-based diplomacy pursued by the administration.
From the perspective of the US, there may be too much alarmism in some observers’ judgment that the divisions and acrimony that have come to the fore are symptomatic of declining US influence in its immediate neighborhood, but they should make decision-makers in Washington ask themselves one critical question they have long ignored: What should the US reasonably expect of the Americas?
When the Bill Clinton administration masterminded the Summit for the Western Hemisphere in 1994, it was meant to serve as a vehicle to advance US interests in the Americas. Despite the Clinton administration’s enthusiastic embrace of economic globalization, the summit was a de facto outgrowth of the longstanding Monroe Doctrine, which took the Americas as a US sphere of influence. But little has been delivered on the many promises made by successive US administrations on promoting regional prosperity, such as the proposal of a Free Trade Area of the Americas, simply because, economically and geopolitically, the countries of the Americas have never been priority concerns on Washington’s agenda.
Even today, when the White House claims the summit is the highest priority for the administration in the Western Hemisphere, many remain skeptical. Because, as many people have pointed out, it wouldn’t have been the case had the current administration not been sandwiched between policy quandaries.
The Biden administration and the Democratic Party are under mounting pressure from migration issues, which are looming large on the horizon in the run-up to the midterm elections, and also desperate to hedge the perceived growing Chinese influence in the region. This is why some analysts are pessimistic about what the summit may produce, because they believe it is more about addressing Washington’s pressing needs than those of Latin American countries, who want pragmatic development assistance.
Thus the touting of an economic partnership for the Americas that the Biden administration is expected to announce at the summit has met with a lukewarm response as it is regarded as a political tool to further Washington’s agenda since it remains unclear what the US is actually offering in practical terms, as is the case with the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity that the proposed partnership seems to be modeled on.
Editorial, China Daily
