Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is right to say that the United States is wrong to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the Summit of the Americas being held this week in Los Angeles. However, the president commits the same sin he opposes by boycotting the summit in protest.
Fortunately, Mexico still will have a presence at the summit. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will be AMLO’s proxy at the sessions. Diplomatic teams are scheduled to begin discussions Tuesday, with the heads of state arriving Wednesday.
The Biden administration says the three countries are being locked out because they are not democracies.
“There can’t be a Summit of the Americas if all the countries of the continent don’t participate,” Lopez Obrador — commonly known by his initials AMLO — said Monday. The omission, he said, is a sign of our country’s “old interventionist policy, of lack of respect for nations and their people.”
His isn’t the only voice of protest. The presidents of Argentina and Chile also have said that all American countries should be allowed to participate, but as of Monday they still planned to attend.
Biden is being selective, as those countries have significant relationships with others in the region, and a failure to respect those relationships is myopic. Moreover, we also we maintain relations with other non-democratic countries, such as open trade, diplomatic relations, defense pacts and even criminal extradition treaties.
They include two of the three excluded nations. U.S.-Venezuela trade is nearly $6 billion a year; our country buys oil, machinery and grains and sells minerals, meat and seafood to the country, as well as various services such as information technology and travel. Trade with Nicaragua approaches $2 billion, with that country sending us fuels, textiles, coffee and other raw goods and receiving finished products. Many of those goods from both countries flow come to, and through, the Rio GrandeValley.
While the U.S. hasn’t had normal relations with Cuba for more than six decades, Biden, to his credit, opened talks with Cuban authorities in April. Those talks primarily focused on immigration flights between the two countries — Cuba has refused to accept expatriates who were denied U.S. visas and ordered deported — but they have raised hopes among many that more substantive discussions are possible. Allowing Cuban officials to attend this week’s summit would have shown that we are serious about breaking the diplomatic impasse between our two countries.
It’s been said that the best strategy to deal with non-democratic regimes is not to ostracize them, but to show the people watching the summit back home the benefits of social and economic freedoms. Once they see what they’re missing, they might be more inspired to fight for change.
Unfortunately, our government has chosen instead to take a stance that supports the idea of two competing worlds, where divergent views aren’t tolerated. We can only hope that our country doesn’t become the next to be told that we aren’t welcome at the table.
