A Rare Opportunity

www.msnbc.com By Jorge G. Castaneda NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

Mexico and Chile are now key swing votes in the U.N. Their actions could change the shape of Latin American diplomacy

March 24 issue — In Chile and Mexico a vigorous debate is taking place. Many in Santiago and Mexico City are questioning whether these two countries should have joined the U.N. Security Council, only to find themselves between a rock and a hard place: support the United States on Iraq and betray their principles, or oppose the United States and pay the consequences.         BEHIND THIS DEBATE lies a broader, more complex dilemma: whether Latin America should actively participate in the construction of the new post-cold-war world order, characterized both by U.S. hegemony and by the rest of the world’s effort to limit and control it, knowing that this participation involves the acceptance of new responsibilities, the modification of basic principles and the ceding of important segments of sovereignty. Or whether the subcontinent should remain faithful to its traditions and convictions, knowing that this implies its “absence at the creation” of an order it will have to submit to in the end.         Most arguments used in Mexico and Chile against participation in the highest body of multilateral legitimacy are contradictory. A country cannot support multilateralism, the United Nations and international law on the one hand, and refuse to participate in the Council on the other; a nation cannot denounce U.S. unilateralism and then refuse to belong to the only mechanism that can, very rarely, place limits on that unilateralism. The arguments used against Chile’s or Mexico’s belonging to the Council (“We’re very vulnerable because of the border or the imminent approval of a free-trade agreement”; “We’re more committed than others to the principles of the U.N. Charter, in view of our nationalist and/or foreign-policy traditions”) can be applied to almost every country in the region.         Three countries—and, until recently, four (El Salvador, Panama, Ecuador and Argentina)—still use American currency; there is a strong and growing U.S. military presence in Colombia; Venezuela sells a considerable proportion of its oil to the United States; Costa Rica largely lives off U.S. retirees. And there is no shortage of countries in the region imbued with a strong nationalist tradition in foreign policy: from Peron’s Argentina to Vargas’s Brazil and, of course, Mexico, Chile and Cuba. If every Latin American country that is to some degree vulnerable to the United States and/or maintains a traditional foreign policy abstained from joining the Security Council, it would be left without Latin American membership.         Beyond this unpersuasive reasoning, a contradiction of even greater dimensions stands out. Latin America is one of the regions of the world whose interests would best be served by the existence of a new international order that is at once rigorous, broad and precise. When it comes to environmental law, indigenous people’s or migrants’ rights, human rights or international trade, the defense of democracy or workers’ rights, Latin American nations have more to gain and less to lose than almost any other region in the world from the creation of a regime of universal values.         But, at the same time, few parts of the world today demonstrate such commitment to a series of traditions and principles contrary to this universalist project. Nonintervention, the unrestricted defense of sovereignty, the reluctance to accept any explicit ceding of sovereignty, an emphatic rhetorical and ideological nationalism, are all constants in the stances and sentiments of most Latin American governments. Partly for historic reasons, occasionally due to internal political considerations, in other cases for geographic motives, the majority maintain a great deal of skepticism about the type of new order that can be constructed.         Identifying the opportunities offered by today’s situation and taking advantage of them is now up to two Latin American governments in particular. Not because either, Mexico or Chile, has the capacity to alone determine the direction of the new international system. Nor because both coincidentally hold a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council during 2003. But because these two nations—due to their economic and political clout, their geographic location, their diplomatic vocation and tradition and their vision of the world—are perhaps the only ones capable of championing forward-looking stances in the region. Nonetheless, they still face an uphill battle against the ideological resistance and baggage, which constantly undermine their ability to provide diplomatic leadership in Latin America. Part of the problem is that their national identities were forged by 19th and 20th centuries’ nationalism, which forms the backbone of their creation as nation-states. And this nationalism, instead of basing itself on the search to preserve and pursue national interests in an international context necessarily in flux, is anchored to Westphalian concepts of sovereignty that are by definition timeless.         Latin American elites have demonstrated a stubborn reluctance to engage in their countries’ separation from the past. Mexico and Chile, the countries and governments that, fortunately, represent Latin America in the Security Council, are without a doubt the most capable of breaking this inertia and assuming leadership: it’s not an easy task, but it has become increasingly indispensable and unavoidable.        

Castaneda stepped down as Mexican foreign minister in January 2003; he teaches International Relations at the National Autonomous Mexican University and at New York University.