U.S. Hosts Summit of the Americas
U.S. president Joe Biden welcomes some—but not all—Western Hemisphere leaders to the ninth Summit of the Americas today in Los Angeles, as he attempts to convince them that amid a war in Ukraine and a policy shift to Asia that the United States also has time, and energy, to engage the region.
The problem for Biden is that many Latin American leaders aren’t buying the pitch, and expectations are low heading into the event.
Despite some absences, 23 leaders are still expected to gather today as Biden unveils the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, a proposal to boost trade and investment, while protecting the environment.
The most high-profile absentee today is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who on Monday followed through on his threat to boycott the event over the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the proceedings.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said those countries were not asked to attend because “we just don’t believe dictators should be invited.” (That democratic litmus test isn’t universally applied by the Biden administration, as the recent U.S.-ASEAN summit and a potential Saudi Arabia trip suggest).
A shaky commitment to democracy applies to some of those attending the summit, too. According to the Associated Press, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro only agreed to come to Los Angeles on the conditions that he would receive a one-on-one meeting with Biden and that two topics remain off the table: Amazon deforestation and Bolsonaro’s own questioning of the integrity of Brazil’s voting system (an issue on which CIA Director William Burns has already intervened personally to signal Washington’s displeasure).
On Venezuela, Washington is persisting in its support for Juan Guaidó, the opposition figure considered the country’s rightful interim leader by the United States. Guaidó and Biden are expected to speak via videolink this week, even as the United States slowly eases energy sanctions on the Venezuelan government led by President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro won’t be waiting on a White House call either: He’ll be in Ankara today to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a sign of more discord with the Biden administration, the leaders of the so-called Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—will also skip the summit. The decision is a blow to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked with addressing the “root causes” of migration flows from the Central American countries.
Dan Restrepo, a former Obama administration official writing in the Los Angeles Times, says it’s time to scrap the Summit of the Americas concept entirely, arguing that “trying to find consensus-driven common ground among these disparate states inevitably leads to pablum with no real-world effects” and accounts for the “personality pageants” that take away from a real discussion.
Restrepo calls for splitting the summit into three regions: The Caribbean, Central America, and South America, and hosting each on a rotating annual basis. That, along with the annual North American leaders summit, “would afford the Western Hemisphere the level of sustained high-level attention that U.S. interests in the region merit,” Restrepo writes.