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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://popularresistance.org/summit-of-the-americas-could-be-bidens-next-foreign-policy-embarrassment/">popularresistance.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Summit Of The Americas Could Be Biden’s Foreign Policy Embarrassment</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By John Perry - May 16, 2022<br></div>
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<p>Above photo: From left to right, President Ortega, President
Maduro and President Arce of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia
(respectively).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf">“root causes”</a></span>,
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.</p>
<p>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 <span><a href="https://www.laprogressive.com/latin-america-2/latin-america-global-politics">pointed out</a></span>,
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.</p>
<p>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 <span><a href="https://pledgetimes.com/colombia-represents-bidens-vision-for-latin-america-2/">said in April</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <span><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/april/joh-s-luck-runs-out">admitted</a></span> that he had been running a narcostate.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <span><a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article260811557.html">no ambassador</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <u>his</u> concerns, not those of Latin America. If the event is a flop, it will be his fault.</p>
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