The Americas Summit became a "Tucao Conference", and American values diplomacy was cold
From June 6th to 10th, the 9th Summit of the Americas was held in Los Angeles, USA.
This is the first time the summit has returned to the United States since the first summit was hosted by the United States in Miami in 1994.
Although it is at the home court, the United States has obviously failed to make the summit as "home diplomacy" should be. First, it was boycotted by many Latin American countries on the issue of participating in the meeting, and it was disgraced in front of the whole world. The army of Latin American refugees caught Americans by surprise.
Finally, the various new initiatives proposed by the host have been questioned because of their lack of sincerity and empty ambitions.
It should be noted that this "turmoil" not only reflects the long-standing contradiction between control and anti-control between the United States and Latin American countries, but also reflects some new features of the "Pan American System" in the new era.
The essence of the problem is that the relative decline of US-style hegemony is increasingly becoming an indisputable fact for the vast number of developing countries, including Latin American countries.
The summit encountered "three embarrassments"
On June 10, the Ninth Summit of the Americas came to a close after President Biden and the leaders of the 20 Latin American countries jointly announced the so-called Los Angeles Declaration on Immigration and Protection.
Compared with previous summits, the "topic attribute" of this summit seems to be stronger.
This is not because of the achievements of the summit, but because of the "three embarrassments" it encountered.
First, the "low check-in rate" at the summit is embarrassing.
The United States refused to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to participate in the conference on the grounds of "undemocratic", which eventually led to an unexpected crisis of participation.
The leaders of Mexico, Bolivia and Honduras made it clear that they would not attend the summit because they opposed the US' hegemonic practice of excluding Cuba, Venezuela and Nepal.
Among them, Mexican President Lopez's behavior style has made him "plus points" at home and abroad.
Not only that, even at the meeting, the President of Argentina, the Foreign Minister of Mexico and even the Prime Minister of Belize, a small Central American country, still "relented" and continued to "shell" the US government's policy of isolation towards other countries.
In addition, the leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador and Uruguay did not attend the meeting due to various reasons such as bilateral relations and health.
Second, the sudden arrival of the refugee immigrant army is embarrassing.
Just as the summit was convened, a "caravan" of as many as 15,000 migrants set out from southern Mexico towards the US-Mexico border.
As if to express dissatisfaction with Biden's domineering behavior, quite a few of these immigrants come from the ancient, Venezuelan and Nigerian countries that the United States refused to invite.
In the face of this group of Latin American immigrants who came to "build momentum" for the summit and may be the largest in history, the organizers of the conference, who had been disgraced by the "low check-in rate", made it clear that they "couldn't bear it".
US Secretary of State Blinken even called the challenge "unprecedented".
Third, it is embarrassing that the outcome of the meeting is nominal.
At the summit, the United States once again demonstrated its ability to fool around with tongues, and launched the following documents in a high-profile manner, which can be regarded as the main achievements: First, the "American Economic Prosperity Partnership" plan.
White House officials say the plan is just a framework for now, and its success will depend on how the U.S. negotiates with its Latin American partners in the coming months.
In terms of content, the framework is almost similar to the recently concluded "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework", which does not contain substantive provisions such as tariff exemptions and market access.
The second is the Action Plan for Health and Resilience in the Americas.
The plan only stated that an organization called the "American Health Team" would be established to train health personnel in Latin American countries, but did not mention the anti-epidemic needs such as vaccines that Latin American countries are most concerned about and most urgently needed.
The third is the "US-Caribbean Partnership to Address the 2030 Climate Crisis" plan.
The White House does not yet know how much investment the plan can give to Caribbean countries.
The fourth is the Los Angeles Declaration on Immigration and Protection.
As the final statement of the summit, the declaration is an explanation for the Biden administration, which had hoped that the summit would focus on immigration issues from the very beginning.
However, the focus of the declaration is more on coordinating regional countries to help the United States share the pressure of immigration, and it does not pay much attention to the underdevelopment of the region that actually leads to immigration.
In addition, the absence of leaders from Mexico and Central America's "Northern Triangle" certainly undercuts any commitments made at the summit on immigration.
The 'Pan American System' Is Unprecedentedly Questioned
Talking about the Summit of the Americas and the relationship between the United States and Latin America, it is natural to get around the "Pan American System" structure behind it.
Based on the ideological core of the "Monroe Doctrine", under the "leadership" of the United States, the regional hegemon, in modern times, American countries have gradually established a set of pan-regional governance structures covering a full range of issues - the "Pan American System".
The Organization of American States, a regional organization established after World War II, is the most important contemporary representative of this system.
The well-known Pan American Health Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank are all specialized agencies of the organization.
The Americas Summit is a system specially established by the organization to promote the construction of the Americas Free Trade Area.
In recent years, although the free trade area agenda has long been fruitless, the Americas summit has barely survived, and has gradually developed into the most attention-grabbing signature system in the "Pan American System".
For a long time, the contradictory relationship between control and anti-control displayed by the United States and Latin American countries around the "Pan American System" has long been normalized.
Needless to say, just under the America Summit, a mechanism that has been established for less than 30 years, the struggle between the United States and Latin America can be described as "splendid".
First of all, the U.S., which was the “original intention” of the summit mechanism design, pushed for the construction of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Amid the opposition from Latin American left-wing countries at that time, it did not even survive the first four summits and was “stillborn” early. .
Second, the issue of participation rights always exists.
In fact, with the exception of the seventh summit, which barely managed to gather all 35 countries in the Americas, the rest of the conferences have not been able to talk about unity.
Cuba has been excluded from the United States from the very beginning and has only participated in the seventh and eighth summits so far.
The leaders of Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Antigua and Barbuda, Paraguay and other countries have also missed the summit.
At the last summit, even US President Trump chose to temporarily "skip the meeting", causing an uproar.
Surprisingly, four years later, although the United States is no longer under Trump's rule, the intensity of the conflict between the United States and Latin America at this summit has reached a higher point.
The "Pan American System" has encountered unprecedented opposition and doubts, and its uncertainty and instability have risen.
Many countries have launched the most violent "shelling" so far on the summit's parent organization, the Organization of American States.
Argentine President Fernandez called for the reorganization of the organization and the removal of its leadership in the presence of Biden.
Mexico's foreign minister reiterated Mexico's consistent demands for reform and even abolition of the organization.
El Salvador's President Bukele, who did not attend the meeting, said on social media that the organization "has lost its raison d'être."
But blame is blamed. Latin American countries have not formed any mature views on where the "Pan American System" should develop in the future. Only Mexico put forward a proposal to build a new type of American relations based on the European Union's integration organization.
Although the Biden administration has not responded directly to the above-mentioned accusations and suggestions, this does not mean that the United States has no interest in reforming the "Pan American System".
In his speech at the summit on the 8th, Biden made it clear that he would implement fundamental reforms to the Inter-American Development Bank.
But exactly how to change, Biden did not elaborate.
Immigration crisis backfires on U.S. hegemony
"Symptoms" appear in the "Pan-American System", and it is often necessary to find the cause in the "lesions" of the "Monroe Doctrine" behind it.
For most of the 200 years since its birth, the "Monroe Doctrine" advocating the hegemonic logic of "America is America's America" has always been the decisive variable affecting US-Latin America relations.
But in recent years, especially after the world has entered a period of turbulent change, the legitimacy of the "Monroe Doctrine" has been eroded, and the relative decline of American hegemony in Latin America is becoming an indisputable fact.
To a certain extent, the crisis of refugee and immigration from Latin America, which has continued to ferment last year, can be regarded as the first systematic backlash of geopolitical significance for American hegemony within its "sphere of influence" in the Americas.
This was completely unexpected in the United States.
For a long time, as a "world hegemon", coupled with its unique geographical environment, few geopolitical challenges can truly threaten the United States.
Even if the United States does bad things all over the world, the reaction of the system is often difficult to touch its core interests at home.
But justice is late but never absent.
The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has quietly changed the situation.
Under the impact of the epidemic, the governance dilemma of Latin American countries has been further exacerbated.
Out of the usual indifference to the "backyard" and its own inability to protect itself, the United States finally allowed Latin America to become one of the more failed regions in the world to fight the epidemic.
In this context, the people at the bottom of Latin America have nowhere to go, but they can only gather together in a flood to the United States with their yearning for a better life.
The escalation of the immigration crisis and the coldness of the summit in the Americas undoubtedly reflect the objective reality that the US leadership in Latin America under Biden is at a relatively low point in history.
The reasons for this situation are comprehensive.
Judging from the objective environment, major external variables such as century-old changes, the epidemic in the century, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are intertwined and superimposed. The trend of multi-polarization, diversification, and porosity in the world has intensified, global governance has become more difficult, and problems and challenges have emerged one after another.
The US-style unipolar hegemony system is increasingly difficult to adapt to this world.
The same is true in Latin America.
From the subjective point of view, the "arrogant" mentality of the United States is stubborn, and it has fallen into the "Thucydides trap" narrative and cannot extricate itself from it. What it sees in its eyes is only competitors, and the real demand for Latin America and even the vast developing countries is fundamental. not interested.
What people need is equality and development, and the United States is always talking about democracy and values, so full of "chicken and duck talk" that a Mexican scholar pointedly pointed out, "The summit agenda (proposed by the United States) seems ambitious. But no one knows what the content is. In fact, it's all trivial chores."
Of course, the decline of American hegemony did not happen overnight.
Even more so in its American "base camp".
In the short and medium term, the "Monroe Doctrine" will still linger in the Latin American continent, and the "Pan American System" will likely continue to survive for a period of time after undergoing some reforms and adjustments.
We'll have to wait and see how the future summit of the Americas will evolve.
(Author: Bu Shaohua, Deputy Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute of the China Institute of International Studies)