Latin America 2010: Summits Upon Summits for Latin America’s Leaders

As the ash cloud ruins plans for many to attend the funeral in Poland and China becomes the next location which suffered from a major earthquake, Latin American leaders spent the last week and a half mostly in international summits in the region and in Washington DC. As a reflection of the region’s new found importance in the global arena, issues of security, economy and trade abroad highlighted the three main summits as they relate to Latin America.

The most well know of the summits, the Nuclear Security Summit last week on April 12th and 13th in Washington DC brought together many of Latin America’s strongest military powers to create an agreement to curb the dispersion of nuclear materials worldwide and bring closer security ties between the US and its allies. Latin America, while not the main focus of the security threats, was tied in with the main unspoken focus of the talks. Obama’s move in creating the summit is seen by many as an indirect method for putting pressure on Iran and its nuclear program and show a united front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions by making the point to other states that cooperation with Iran would not be tolerated by the US or its European allies. During the talks, President Kirchner of Argentina was prized with a half an hour meeting with President Obama, and while Brazil made a point of not supporting pressures on Iran by the hosts of the Summit, a military cooperation pact was signed between the US and Brazil. Brazil’s middle of the road position comes from Lula’s desire to keep Brazil on the front page and keep economic ties open with Iran and Venezuela, without alienating the US and Europeans economically or politically while they make efforts to isolate Iran. While Brazil may have to choose sides at some point in the future if a hot conflict comes about between the West and Iran, right now economic cooperation and maintaining a balance between leftists and capitalists in Latin America is the mainstay of an intelligent Brazilian economic policy. Hence the following economic conferences…

The World Economic Forum was hosted in Cartagena, Colombia the first week of April where Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was praised by many business leaders for improving the security situation in Colombia and allowing for increased investment in his country that was seen to be a “failed state” nearly a decade ago. Many investors, while knowing Brazil as the region’s economic powerhouse, see Colombia as a policy leader in increasing investment and limiting trade barriers to investment in the region. Many investors even saw Colombia as a model for investment in Brazil, which is seen as still have many trade barriers to investment from abroad. Uribe took the opportunity to promote Colombia and its investment strategies, as well as to point out how a lack of open policies could lead to a situation of state controlled industries and a lack of ownership rights for investors as seen in Venezuela and Bolivia. Whatever one’s political perspective is, the World Economic Forum in Colombia achieved its goals by showing Latin America as a source for secure investment from abroad and is a key forum for promoting the region’s renewal as a strong contributor to economic globalisation and the diversity of trade.

After the Nuclear Summit, the second official BRIC Summit on April 14th and 15th last week in Brazil took place with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao coming to Brazil to promote closer ties between the BRIC nations, which represented over 65% of world GDP growth from 2003 to 2008. Unfortunately President Hu Jintao had to depart early to attend to the earthquake victims which killed more than 2000 people in China last week, but agreements to further promote China’s and Brazil’s further cooperation in the area of infrastructure and energy development were agreed to, as well as to begin planning the 3rd BRIC Summit in China. Closer cooperation between all BRICs in the areas of UN reform and policies to promote economic cooperation and limit the long-term effects of the 2008 economic crisis were agreed to as well. While the 2nd official BRIC Summit does a lot to promote closer economic ties between Brazil and China mainly, the commonalities between BRIC nations are few, and in some ways the BRIC are in competition with each other for North-South investment as opposed to creating a true South-South trade regime. While China might displace trade ties between Brazil and the US, Brazil as well as other BRICs seem to be creating the agreements for a South-South trade flow, while being careful to maintain their North-South investment strategy with the US and Europe. While South-South economic agreements will become a real outcome, interests in obtaining investment from anywhere for local economic gains and some commonalities between BRICs as large developing nations is likely the natural limit to commonalities between BRIC nations. This is not necessarily a negative point in the larger scheme of things, as keeping open investment between China, Brazil, rogue states and the US allows for more flexibility in investment for BRIC nations. Eventually issues such as Iran’s nuclear ambitions might push the BRICs to choose sides on the issue, or to not become involved, or even be used as leverage as Russia did in signing a new arms pact with the US two weeks ago or strengthen ties with the US as India has done in opening their own nuclear program with Western support after years restrictions by the West. In the end, BRICs will not dominate global policy development on security or economics as the US and Europe did not disappear and still control the bulk of investment. BRICs can move in lock step together to some degree, but since their interests and societies and economies are different, influence from BRICs will contribute a lot to the global economy and security more as individual large nations and hegemons in their regions as opposed to a block of BRICs. A sharing of policy development would be the likely outcome, hopefully as a positive for all nations involved and limiting security threats where appropriate. These three conferences are a positive reflection of these goals.