The management of the geopolitical crisis of the United States in Ukraine is encountering problems not only in the European allies who do not want war or the repetition of the historical error of Afghanistan, but also finds a lack of consensus in its zone of Ibero-America.
Of the twenty-four most important countries in the area of Latin America and the Caribbean, at least ten are in a geopolitical space of relative autonomy with respect to US interests. The White House disdained diplomatic work by recently convening the Summit for Democracy based on the unidirectional interests of Washington and right now it is preparing a Summit of the Americas to strengthen the Ibero-American bloc in the face of military challenges with Russia and China.
Ibero-America was abandoned by the United States from 1989-1991 due to the fall of the Soviet Union and the exhaustion of the cold war, which was sold in intellectual terms in the American ideological space as “the end of history”. Presidents Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump and now Biden did not understand the logic of the geopolitical conflict and assumed the historic victory of capitalism. Even the crisis of 9/11 of 2001 was encapsulated in the space of terrorism.
In the last thirty years, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have been finding their spaces of relative national autonomy without falling into the guerrilla trap of Cuba and have moved within the swampy limits of caudillista populism with its language of “anti-imperialist” autonomy. The absence of strategic national security thinking in the White House in those years facilitated nationalist experiments, somewhat because the US government no longer wanted to spend dollars subsidizing countries without development viability. Without the specter of socialism due to the isolation of Fidel Castro and the budgetary inability of the Soviet Union to finance governments that Washington was not interested in, the Ibero-American political situation lost its regional referents.
The presence of Russia and China in Ibero-America is not as real as the bellicose strategists in Washington would like to point out. Putin’s Russia only has business relations and arms sales with Venezuela, but without any regional geopolitical effect; and Cuba and Nicaragua, the two countries with classic socialist governments, do not represent any strategic position for US adversaries.
In recent weeks, there have been no geopolitical moves by the White House in Ibero-America within the Ukraine crisis. In the reality of power, Ibero-America remained very distant from any participation in the context of the crisis in the Middle East, perhaps with some visits by minor regional political personalities –especially from Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela– to Saddam’s Iraq Hussein, but more in search of funds for local military spending than for military alliance agreements.
The past of the cold war recalls the active presence of Cuba, the Soviet Union and, to a significant extent, North Korea in the guerrilla training of radical Ibero-American groups. Cuba was a focus of political and ideological influence in Latin America after the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, but without any intention of building Marxist governments in the region. The populisms of the early 21st century did not excite the Castro brothers and they only concentrated on supporting the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez for the cash and oil support to Havana.
In any case, some geopolitical versions could lead to political support from Latin American populist governments for Vladimir Putin and his strategy of not losing Ukraine’s key position; the declarations of United We Can in Spain against the possibility of the Spanish government repeating the model of the Azores Pact –the conservative Aznar’s support for Bush to invade Iraq and Afghanistan– are having repercussions in Ibero-America through the recently formed Grupo Puebla, which it has created an anti-US geopolitical alliance with populist governments in the region.
The Democracy Project and the Summit of the Americas are lukewarm proposals from the Biden administration for Ibero-America because they are focusing on the acceptance of the United States as a beacon of traditional democracy. Several regional presidents disdained the White House at the last Summit for Democracy and the issue did not generate media effects in the countries of the Ibero-American region either.
The priorities of governments and Ibero-American societies have to do with the search for non-capitalist economic models of development to meet the demands of accumulated poverty; Although many of the caravans of American and Central American citizens to the United States are encouraged by the cartels of human traffickers, it should not be overlooked that a good part of the migrants have been forced by poverty, low economic growth and the violence of the organized crime in their countries.
The Summit of the Americas hosted by the White House in the middle of this year could lead to a US demand for solidarity, support and loyalty to US geopolitical interests in Ukraine to drive a wedge into a part of Russia’s strategic border. The same thing happened with Afghanistan during the failed Soviet invasion and then with the US military defeat by the Taliban.
The lack of a security strategy and foreign policy of the United States towards Ibero-America has been a geopolitical failure since 1992, although with the American certainty that the southern region of the empire lacks strategic value.
Political Indicator joins the atmosphere of presidential succession 2024. Sign up for the WhatsApp network of the weekly Palacio Nacional 2024 digital magazine: Ana Karina Sánchez López, [email protected] WhatsApp: 55-1058-6460 and consult www.indicadorpolitico.mx
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