Latin America in Global Affairs

If one reviews the leading journals of international politics on central issues of war and peace or geopolitical developments, articles on Latin America are almost absent. Of course, one could argue that this reflects the positive fact that none of the great conflicts of our time take place in Latin America. They are elsewhere: North Korea and Iran on nuclear proliferation, the Syrian civil war, the Sunni-Shia confrontation, ISIS, the South China Sea, Russia and Ukraine, Europe’s migration crisis etc..  Not so during the Cold War when the battle of influence between West and East extended to Latin America and Fidel Castro’s Cuba was one of the central issues. Cuba’s communism is no longer an international issue and Venezuela’s pseudo-communist dictatorship is almost only an internal Latin American interest and followed closely by the “Lima Group”, created for this purpose. President Trump’s question whether the US should militarily intervene has remained just a question.

Some would argue that Latin America’s restricted role in global diplomatic affairs has a great deal to do with its internal problems: the constant struggle for democracy, economic decline, growing inequality, the fight against drugs, or corruption. Indeed, these issues absorb enormous energies within these political systems leaving limited resources for external diplomacy. Much energy has, in fact, been spent on the presently 33 preferential trade agreements inside Latin America, of which the Pacific Alliance (Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru) is the most important, while a Latin America-wide free trade arrangement is still missing, though highly desirable if  its businesses are to  become more competitive on the world market.

Global activities of Latin American countries have focused on basically two areas: the initiatives of some of its larger countries and economic relations with the outside world.

The efforts of Brazil to gain a permanent seat in a reformed UN Security Council are particularly important. Along with Germany, India and Japan Brazil has worked toward that goal but so far achieved only the consideration of some new approaches to Security Council reform regrettably without any concrete results.

Moreover, Brazil is an active member of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which has agreed to the formation of a development bank and a currency reserve arrangement but did not turn into anything resembling a diplomatic alliance due to differences of interest.

Latin America’s global role is more substantial in the economic field. Argentinia, Brazil and Mexico are members of the G 20 group and therefore play an important role in attempts to  achieve some coordination of policies in the fields of finance, trade and investment. Since the Trump Administration has been challenging  the basic principles of free trade, Latin America has become an important ally of the other members of the G 20 group in defending the liberal economic order.

For this very reason the European Union has revived its negotiations on a trade agreement with the members of MERCOSUR (Argentinia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay). Its potential volume would be significantly greater than the agreements with Canada and Japan (eight times and four times respectively), which the EU concluded in part as a  reaction against the protectionist policies of the Trump Administration.

Whether at the level of NAFTA and negotiations with the US and Canada or the level of the World Trade Organization, Latin America has become a major force in defending the basic principles of an open liberal world economy and will hopefully continue to play that role.