World Geostrategic Insights interview with Stephen Liston on the status and prospects for U.S.-Latin American Relations.
Stephen Liston has served in the international government affairs field for over three decades as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, a government relations executive, and a business association leader. Regionally, his career has focused on Latin America and Europe, including a tour as U.S. deputy national coordinator for the Summits of the Americas. He now runs a consulting firm specializing in international affairs, stakeholder engagement, and foreign language training, teaching, and advising.
Q1 – Over the years, bilateral relations between the United States and various Latin American countries have been multifaceted and complex, characterized at times by strong regional cooperation and at other times by economic and political tensions. Moreover, it appears that Washington does not have a single “Latin American policy,” but rather different bilateral or sub regional strategies: Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean are deeply integrated to the United States; the Andean is the area of major U.S. concerns, due to political instability and drug trafficking; while the countries of the Southern Cone seem to remain more defocused from U.S. attention. Can we say that currently the U.S. agenda for Latin America is more centered on the economy, and on common problems such as drug trafficking, the environment and migration? Or do concerns about geopolitics, national security and ideology remain a priority? Basically, how would you describe the current state of the U.S.-Latin America relations?
A1 – The unfortunate truth is that U.S. relations with Latin America are at a low point. The causes are many, but high on the list are two global phenomena: the increasingly divisive, populist politics that many countries are experiencing, driven in large part by social media and economic dissatisfaction, and the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China. The effect of these in the United States has been, in the first instance, to bring the isolationist strand of U.S. culture to the fore for the first time in nearly a century, resulting in a turn inward and a framing of U.S. foreign policy in terms of more narrow domestic concerns such as migration, jobs, industrial policy, and the cultural battles that dominate national politics.
At the same time, the growing rivalry with China has replaced the Cold War and post-September 11, 2001 lenses through which U.S. foreign policy was viewed by most Americans. Building a global community of nations around security, open, rules-based trade, and democracy- and human rights-promotion was the hallmark of U.S. policy post-World War II, even if imperfectly implemented. This new organizing theme, while still unfocused, seems to be driving a more transactional and reactive foreign policy based on discrete interests rather than overarching principles. As it rapidly becomes all-consuming, regional, sub-regional, and national considerations that should be the principal determinants of U.S. policy are being pushed aside. This is clearly the case with regard to Latin America.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, broadly, the same populist politics have combined with economic weakness, resistance to rapid social change, and all the costs and benefits of the internet and social media to create a new wave of instability. This has made it harder for the region to engage the United States in a coherent, sustained fashion on its priority concerns. Initiatives such as Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance that showed enormous promise in giving greater heft to the region have descended toward irrelevance. And as Latin America faces the real possibility of suffering yet another “lost decade” economically, China has become a major player in the region on the economic and commercial front. Even as this economic clout increases China’s ability to gain diplomatic ground in the region, Brazil under President Lula da Silva is actively cultivating and expanding the “BRICS” partnership, which it sees as a counterbalance to U.S. influence in South America and globally.
The result is that the United States and Latin America are talking past each other even more than they have historically. U.S. priorities in the region, largely reflecting domestic concerns, simply aren’t the region’s priorities. While the U.S. is too large a commercial partner and has too great an influence politically to be ignored, Latin Americans are finding interactions in recent years to be frustratingly one-sided when they can generate a conversation at all.
Q2 – In a speech delivered at the National Palace on Jan. 9, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico, said the United States had “forgotten,” “abandoned,” and shown “contempt” for Latin America and the Caribbean. How do you judge this statement? Is it an isolated case, or is this feeling of “abandonment” also widespread in other Latin American countries?
A2 – AMLO is both right and wrong in his public assessment of the U.S. relationship with the region. He is right in that the region is clearly not a priority for the United States, and the sentiment is widespread in Latin America and the Caribbean. Except with regard to the domestically driven issues on which the U.S. sees Latin countries as drivers (e.g., migration, jobs, drugs, managed trade) and the global priorities where the U.S. hopes Latin countries will be supporters (e.g., climate, China, Russia, cultural issues), U.S. policymakers have little time for the region. That said, this has largely been the dynamic between the United States and Latin America for the last 70 years, and regional leaders have been criticizing U.S. policy in the region along the same lines as AMLO for about that long.
Of course, AMLO and the region’s leaders are well aware of the longstanding dynamic between their countries and the behemoth to their north. They don’t really believe the U.S. has abandoned the region, and his complaint isn’t really about being ignored or forgotten. Rather, it’s about a sense in the region that Latin America deserves a bigger space in U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps this is true, but why doesn’t it get this space? As a superpower, U.S. foreign policy at the highest levels has been and remains driven by crises of global import and by economic interests. Latin America, thankfully, has few crises of that magnitude, and its economies simply don’t carry sufficient weight to merit special policy attention (outside of Mexico, of course, a top-three trading partner with about 15% of global U.S. trade; Brazil, the next-largest U.S. trading partner in the region, accounts for less than 2% of U.S. global trade). The difficult relationship with many countries and leaders of the region often make it easier for the U.S to look elsewhere for support and engagement.
AMLO is wrong, however, in that, even as senior policymakers give little thought to the region, the active presence of the United States throughout the region on a daily basis continues unabated. Diplomatically, militarily, geopolitically; through law enforcement, business, and people-to-people ties; culturally, financially, commercially, politically – the ties that bind are deep, varied, and increasing. U.S. diplomats continue to engage on a wide range of fronts, continue to be immersed in the day-in and day-out developments of each country in the region, and continue to see Latin countries as partners on a range of U.S. foreign policy concerns. In fact, the counter-complaint that diplomats regularly receive from governments in Latin America and the Caribbean is that the United States is too much in their business for their liking.
At the heart of AMLO’s statement, though, is the sense that something has changed. In the simplest terms, the region now feels it has options in a way that hasn’t been true for decades. With U.S. global influence being challenged even as its interest and ability to project power and influence are waning, AMLO and many of his counterparts are putting the U.S. on notice that casting Latin America as a bit player has greater consequences now than it did in the past. It’s not clear that the U.S. has gotten the message. And with the next U.S. election, just over a year away, shaping up to be a rematch between Trump and Biden, prospects for greater attention to the region and a more balanced U.S. approach seem limited.
Q3 – At the Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles, in June last year, the U.S. president Biden spoke of a US- Latin America partnership aimed at “stimulating growth and economic recovery” on the continent, to combat corruption and climate change, but also counter Beijing’s growing influence in Latin America. What’s your opinion? Does this idea of a “Partnership for Economic Prosperity” have any concrete developments?
A3 – The Los Angeles Summit of the Americas is perhaps the highest profile example of the current dynamic between the United States and the Latin America/Caribbean region. The 1994 Summit of the Americas, conceived and executed as a major post-Cold War foreign policy initiative by the Clinton White House, suffered when Latin countries, led by Brazil, refused to sign on to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. After the realignment of U.S. policy to fight the so-called Global War on Terror in 2001, the focus of the SOA process changed, but U.S. engagement remained. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s last-minute cancellation to attend the SOA in Lima – a first by a U.S. president – was only partially redeemed by an equally last-minute commitment by the U.S. to host the next one. When Joe Biden took office, there was a widespread expectation that an internationalist president, with arguably more experience in the region than any previous president, would use the Summit to showcase a more robust engagement with the region. Despite giving itself an extra year to plan amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden Administration simply didn’t make it happen.
From start to finish, the U.S.-hosted Summit reinforced the sentiment that the region didn’t really matter. Major initiatives, including the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), materialized in the final weeks before the meeting, with no regional buy-in. The agreements signed reflected U.S. priorities, not a regional consensus. The APEP process since the Summit, which has largely floundered from lack of high-level interest in the U.S. and a sense of ennui in the region, has only served to reinforce the message of the Summit – especially in contrast to the concrete agreements the U.S. is negotiating with partners through the parallel Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). A missed opportunity prior to the Summit and at the Summit has been followed by a missed opportunity in the succeeding year. While the possibility remains to turn these outcomes around and engage in a serious relationship-building exercise with the region, with each missed opportunity the task becomes more difficult.
Q4 – Until this summer, you were senior director of the Council of the Americas. What is the main mission and activity of this organization?
A4 – The Council of the Americas (www.as-coa.org) was founded by David Rockefeller in the 1970s to provide a space for businesses and governments of the Americas to engage on matters of relevance to the region, to build partnerships, deepen understanding, and expand the space at senior executive and policy levels dedicated to the region. Governments and companies, including a growing number of multilatinas, continue to see the Council as one of the most respected institutions bringing key regional players together on a non-partisan basis. In many ways, its mission is more needed today than ever before. As the commitment throughout the hemisphere to democratic institutions, open, rules-based trade, and private sector-led growth is increasingly challenged, the Council of the Americas stands committed to these bedrock principles as the basis for rebuilding and sustaining a mutually beneficial relationship between the United States and the other countries of the Western Hemisphere.
Stephen Liston – Managing Partner Liston Alto Associates