[News] Summit Of The Americas Could Be Biden’s Foreign Policy Embarrassment

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://popularresistance.org/summit-of-the-americas-could-be-bidens-next-foreign-policy-embarrassment/>
Summit Of The Americas Could Be Biden’s Foreign Policy Embarrassment
By John Perry - May 16, 2022
------------------------------

Above photo: From left to right, President Ortega, President Maduro and
President Arce of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia (respectively).

The grandly named Summit of the Americas is due to be held in Los Angeles
next month, if the Biden administration can decide who to invite and what
to talk about if they turn up. As things stand, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina,
Honduras and most of the Caribbean states have said they will not attend if
Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are not included.

Although Biden no longer calls them the ‘troika of tyranny’ like Trump did,
the governments of these three countries are still ostracized by
Washington. But in Latin America, Biden’s threat to exclude them from the
party has not gone down well. While it might be Washington’s turn to host
the summit, the invitation list is supposed to include every state in the
two continents, regardless of political disposition. Mexico’s president
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, one of those threatening to stay away, asked
‘how can a summit be “of America” without all the countries of America?’
He’s now been joined by several other countries calling on Biden to
reconsider. Even Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro says he’s not going to Los
Angeles, although this may be more to do with US criticisms of his attempts
to undermine Brazil’s October elections.

So far, the summit lacks not just an invitation list but also an agenda.
Biden’s priorities seem to be threefold. One is to find ways to stem the
flow of migrants crossing the Rio Grande. While he might reach some sort of
agreement that he can offer to a skeptical US public, the chances of it
having any effect on migration numbers are slim. A year ago, Kamala Harris
was charged with producing a migration strategy that would address its “root
causes”
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf>,
but nothing that would achieve this has yet emerged. For example, concern
about numbers arriving from Cuba has not triggered any easing of US
sanctions, even though Cubans are leaving because of harsh economic
conditions caused partly by the US embargo and made worse by the pandemic
and its effect on tourism. If anything, Biden has stepped up the pressure
on Cuba by making trade, financial dealings and travel even more difficult.

Biden’s second objective is to urge Latin American countries to stop
building close ties to China and Russia, but he faces a hard battle to
shift Latin America’s international allegiances. Unlike China, he’s not
able to offer major investment without political strings attached. Nor can
he overcome Latin American sentiment that Russia’s attack on Ukraine has
been provoked by US and NATO expansionism in eastern Europe. Biden is said
to listen to General Laura J. Richardson, head of U.S. Southern Command,
who seems to have persuaded him that a new Cold War must be fought in Latin
America. However, as Marcos Fernandes has pointed out
<https://www.laprogressive.com/latin-america-2/latin-america-global-politics>,
it’s not a picture recognized by many governments, who see their links with
China, Russia, India and other eastern economies as productive
partnerships, helping to revive their post-pandemic economies. China, in
particular, was quick off the mark in supplying ant-Covid vaccines to Latin
America, vastly outstripping the US response. Meanwhile, Biden spends
$billions on a proxy war and is as indifferent to escalating food prices
and food insecurity in southern countries as he is to similar problems in
the US.

NATO’s recent overtures to Colombia, even though it is hardly part of the
“North Atlantic,” are part of this proxy war. Washington sees Colombia as
emblematic of a successful relationship with a Latin America country.
Glossing over its government’s recent history of killing peaceful
protesters, US National Security Adviser Juan González said in April
<https://pledgetimes.com/colombia-represents-bidens-vision-for-latin-america-2/>
that “Colombia symbolizes all the best” of Biden’s vision for the
continent. He added that “we are talking about one of the most vibrant
democracies in the hemisphere.” When he promised that the US would not
“measure, evaluate or punish a country like Colombia,” he was offering the
usual free pass available to Washington’s allies, regardless of their human
rights record.

In the same month Latin Americans were given another reminder of US
hypocrisy when former Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández, was
extradited and imprisoned in New York. He had left office only in January,
having been Washington’s closest ally in Central America for a decade,
despite staying in power via two fraudulent elections and violently
suppressing any dissent. As well as turning his country over to North
American extractive industries which destroyed local communities, Hernández
spurned advances from China and backed US foreign policy, even relocating
Honduras’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem (to follow the move made by
Trump). But he’s now served his purpose: he will likely spend the rest of
his life in US prisons after the US belatedly admitted
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/april/joh-s-luck-runs-out> that he had
been running a narcostate.

Biden’s third aim is to separate off Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the
rest of Latin America, hoping that even though the continent has shifted to
the left he can maintain US influence over governments such as President
Xiomara Castro’s new administration in Honduras and President Gabriel
Boric’s in Chile. But even a firm US ally like Colombia may soon have a
more open agenda if Gustavo Petro wins May’s election, given that he has
already promised to re-establish relations with Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela.
If Lula wins in Brazil in October, he will call for the US to recognize
Maduro as the legitimate Venezuelan president and end the farce of
pretending that Juan Guaidó is the real head of state. He will also want
more open relations with Nicaragua and Cuba. Costa Rica has a new
president, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, still a firm ally for Washington, but who
has promised better relations with neighboring Nicaragua. In the Caribbean,
the countries in the regional grouping CARICOM are insisting that Cuba be
invited to Los Angeles, even though it is not a CARICOM member.

I recall that when the US-inspired coup toppled Manual Zelaya as president
of Honduras in 2009, almost all Latin America leaders met shortly
afterwards in Managua. Even right-wing leaders joined Hugo Chávez, Rafael
Correa, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega in condemning the coup. This show of
Latin American unity only lasted a few more years, until the US installed a
US puppet, Luis Almagro, as head of the Organization of America States in
2015 and put together its “Lima Group” of allies in 2017. But now, US
influence in the region is waning again: it has no ambassador
<https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article260811557.html> in eight
of the countries, the OAS is discredited, the Lima Group is falling apart
and electorates are voting in new administrations which, at best, are wary
of US intentions. By late this year Latin America’s four biggest economies
could all have left-wing presidents.

At the previous summit in 2018 in Lima, it was only Donald Trump who failed
to attend. The last fully attended summit was in 2015 in Panama City, when
the brief rapprochement between the United States and Cuba led to a
presidential handshake between Obama and Raúl Castro. Since then, relations
between Washington and its southern neighbors have worsened. But Biden’s
agenda of appeasing domestic opinion on migration, pandering to
right-wingers in Florida who want Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela ostracized
and pursuing a proxy war against Russia has little to offer Latin Americas
who want peace and economic recovery after the pandemic. Biden seems to
want the Summit of the Americas to address *his* concerns, not those of
Latin America. If the event is a flop, it will be his fault.
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