The Summit of the Americas: Why It Matters

April is Western Hemisphere month for U.S. President Barack Obama, and the capstone event is the Sixth Summit of the Americas, a regular meeting of the 34 democratically elected presidents and prime ministers of the hemisphere. Originally scheduled to arrive in Cartagena, Colombia, on April 14, President Obama announced he would arrive one day earlier to get a head start on bilateral meetings with his regional counterparts.

In the lead-up to the Summit, President Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper on April 2 for the latest round of the North American Leaders’ Summit.  The three leaders pledged to make our integrated North American economy more competitive. Then, on April 10, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff made an official visit to Washington to discuss the economy, energy, education, and other areas of joint concern. Her visit, coming one year after President Obama’s trip to Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, yet again highlighted the increasing clout of the world’s sixth-largest economy.

But beyond the one-off focus around these meetings, most Americans are missing out that Latin America is booming. Eighty percent of Latin America’s 500 million people live in countries where the economies are consistently growing faster than in the United States. These are, for the most part, middle-class countries eager to buy the products we export. Forty percent of U.S. exports go to the Western Hemisphere, including Canada. Standard & Poor’s rates the sovereign debt of the Bahamas, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay as investment grade, while Canada is rated higher than the United States. More than half our imported oil comes from this hemisphere.

These are some of the reasons why hemispheric cooperation is necessary.

I’ve attended three of the five previous Summits of the Americas, the most recent of which took place in April 2009 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where I served as chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy. I love the Summits, but the media and mainstream America can’t quite figure out what to make of them. Here’s the low down. 

All summits make decisions on the basis of consensus. The greater the number of countries attending the summit, the harder that consensus is to reach. So don’t look for the final communiqué to break ground on this year’s theme, “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity.” It is negotiated well in advance by platoons of bureaucrats. 

Leaders are unlikely to change long-held views in Cartagena. The Brazilians are not going to suddenly initiate negotiations on a free-trade agreement with the United States.  President Obama is not going to sign on to Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina’s proposal to legalize drugs. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is not going to stop being his Bolivarian self.

While U.S. initiatives in Cartagena will be lauded by the White House press secretary as earth shaking, don’t count on it. There will be no Marshall Plan for Latin America or a new Alliance for Progress; the U.S. can’t afford them and they would be inappropriate.  With the important exception of Haiti, the Americas are comprised of mostly middle-income countries. Their solutions will come from within, but the United States can be a genuine partner in those efforts, and doing so is in our national interest.

What is important is what will likely go unreported by the media: the myriad of small—but important—“inside baseball” issues that can potentially improve the lives of millions in the hemisphere. This includes accelerating energy integration, improving security for ordinary citizens against criminal gangs, and making it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to grow and enter export markets. 

Small ball is how most baseball games are won.  It is how millions of people moved out of poverty in the hemisphere over the past two decades.  And it is likely to be what will keep the Americas growing. If it’s small ball, why not just link leaders with Skype?  The Summit is important.  That’s why.

Groups of nations hold summits for the same reason that families come together for the holidays. It demonstrates that the relationship will endure for the long haul. Just as relatives cannot be chosen, we remain neighbors with the nations of the hemisphere no matter what happens.  That’s what families and diplomacy are all about: coming together, talking and trying to understand different perspective. And, just like those family reunions, it’s the kitchen conversations and exchanges on the back deck that are often most important.

Multilateral summitry forces our leaders to meet with those with whom they don‘t agree.  The side conversations at meals, in the hallways, after and before the formal meetings—carefully arranged “bilats” and “pull asides”—are where the important work is done.  It is how presidents and foreign ministers convey messages to countries with which they have difficult relations. It is how positions on Syria or Iran or North Korea are discussed in a meeting that is ostensibly about the Western Hemisphere. 

And just like family gatherings, there is also a celebratory aspect to Summits of the Americas. For Colombia, the host of the Summit, this weekend’s meetings will be the diplomatic equivalent of the Olympics or the World Cup. It is an opportunity to celebrate all that Colombia has achieved in building a self-sustaining democracy where the economy is booming and the poverty level is dropping rapidly. The leaders will also emphasize what the countries of the Americas have in common. And like families, it is where we hope that the industry and hard work of the successful nations will rub off on the laggards.

Summit of the Americas?  What a great idea. It has the power to change our hemisphere. One step at a time.

This article was published April 11, 2012, in Americas Quarterly.

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he United States has achieved the near impossible.  We have managed to offend Canada.  Energy Program Director Jeremy Martin and I were in Calgary last week where everyone we met is upset with the United States for delaying the decision on the Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast.  One thing is clear:  the Canadians are going to continue developing the oil sands with or without the pipeline.

Jeremy and I were in Calgary to promote greater participation by the Canadian energy industry in the May 21-23 La Jolla Energy Conference.  We have invited Alberta Premier Allison Redford to be our keynote speaker.

February was a busy month for the Institute.

We held an energy roundtable in Bogota on February 9.  Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Tomas Estrada opened the conference, and Minister Mauricio Cárdenas was the closing speaker.  The panelists and speakers emphasized that good policy plus better security have attracted more foreign investment to the Colombian energy sector and have doubled oil production from 2005 to 2011. Coal, oil, gas and minerals now comprise 70% of Colombia’s exports. Colombia, which already exports electricity to Ecuador, is working hard to export electricity to Panama and Chile. Colombia is no longer the land of Juan Valdez.

In La Jolla that same week, Training Director Lee Tablewski organized a program for a group of a dozen women entitled “Women:  From Poverty to Power.”  Inspired by Under Secretary of State María Otero, Dr. Inés Bustillo of the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and others, the participants returned home ready to implement the strategies they learned here.  During the conference, we held a lunch in honor of Deborah Szekely, a longtime supporter of IOA and a key figure in women’s empowerment in the U.S. and Mexico. (Check out this profile of Deborah that ran in U-T San Diego.)

On February 15, financial analyst Luis Maizel spoke at the Institute about the impact of the recession on Latin America and the economic prospects for Latin America in 2012. On February 16, Dr. Javier Mendieta, director of the Agencia Espacial Mexicana (the Mexican Space Agency) met here with San Diego business leaders interested in the agency, its work plan and its procurement requirements. 

March looks to be even busier.

On March 16, the Department of State is meeting here with a dozen deputy trade ministers from the Hemisphere to discuss “The Americas in the Pacific Century.”  We are still ironing out details, but it looks like we will have a public discussion with a senior State Department official the night of March 15.  We will let you know as soon as we confirmed our guest speaker.

On March 23, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Mexico and Canada Matt Rooney will speak at the Institute on Mexico as well as on border issues. 

On March 26-29, Institute Vice President Lynne Walker is running a training course that will bring together experienced journalists from Russia, Italy, Pakistan and Sri Lanka along with journalists from Mexico, Central America and Colombia to discuss the dangers they face and ways to cover stories on organized crime and corruption without risking their lives. 

On March 28, Jeremy Martin is holding a round table in Mexico City on energy issues in this election year.

As the new president of the Institute, I am very proud of what we are accomplishing.  If you have any ideas, suggestions or feedback, please share them with me.  And if you are a Twitter addict like me, follow my Twitter feed at ioa_shapiro.

One last note.  Intern extraordinaire Chelsea Jensen graduates from her masters program in international relations at the University of San Diego in May.  If you are looking for a bright, motivated, bilingual addition to your staff, you can get a copy of Chelsea’s resume from administrative assistant Hernan Nuñez.