Tag Archives: Mexico

Article in Foreign Policy: AMLO and Juárez

On October 1, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel President López Obrador will finish a momentous six-year term. He will be handing over the National Palace to his handpicked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. No one doubts that AMLO has been a transformative president. He upended Mexico’s political party system, dominated the media and the agenda, and yet left office with sky-high approval ratings. To his final days, he has also elicited strident critiques from those who see him as a threat to Mexico’s democratic and economic model.

In foreign affairs, however, AMLO’s transformative effects are less clear. He is oft-maligned as internationally ignorant, and even isolationist. He rarely travels abroad, and he made clear his focus would be at home. This has led, we think, to misinterpretations of the outgoing president’s worldview.

In a new article for Foreign Policy, Carsten-Andreas Schulz and I argue that AMLO’s legacy is better understood as an attempt to revive the republican internationalism of his hero Benito Juárez. We draw on our recent article in the American Political Science Review, “A Turn Against Empire: Benito Juárez’s Liberal Rejoinder to the French Intervention in Mexico.”

AMLO Was No Isolationist

Book talks

Today (April 25), I will be presenting my recent edited book North America 2.0: Forging a Continental Future alongside my coeditor Alan Bersin at the Mexican Council for International Affairs (Comexi).

Update: a video of the presentation is available here.

We are very pleased to be joined by Shauna Hemingway, Deputy Head of Mission at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City, as well as Comexi president and Sergio Alcocer, former Mexican Under Secretary of Foreign Relations for North America.

The presentation is being done in person at in Mexico City, although I will be joining online (sadly!). It starts at 10 a.m., CDMX/US Central; 5pm UK. Links for both online and in-person attendance are available via the tweet below. The book is available for a free download via the Woodrow Wilson Center.

I also had the opportunity to present my book, A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics in a class at Georgetown University – Qatar (also virtually, although next time I hope to take up the invitation for a visit!). The students were absolutely great, and we had an engaged discussion of the challenges small states face in their foreign policies. Thanks so much to Prof Rory Miller and Dr Fahad Al-Marri for the invitation. I’ve been thrilled to see the continued interest in the book from across the world.

Article online: Foro Internacional

foro-internacional-coverA new article is now out in Spanish in Foro Internacional, which most consider Mexico’s top academic International Relations journal. My piece, “Coloso fragmentado: la agenda ‘interméstica’ y la política exterior latinoamericana,” is the first piece in the January issue. The English title would be roughly “A fragmented colossus: The ‘intermestic’ agenda and Latin American foreign policy.” The official text is in Spanish, but I have included links to both Spanish and English versions and abstracts below.

La versión del artículo en español se encuentra aquí.

An unofficial, pre-translation English-language version is available here.

Abstracts below the jump.

Continue reading “Article online: Foro Internacional”

Truman in Rio: How Brazil, Mexico, and the United States Shaped Regionalism in the Americas

I have just learned that the Harry Truman Library Institute has awarded me a travel and research grant to support archival work at the Truman Presidential Library. My work there will focus on the creation of the inter-American system after World War II. I am particularly interested in debates around democracy, sovereignty/intervention, and international organization. The archives there will complement the work that I am doing in Rio de Janeiro this summer (supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust), work I did last fall in Washington, and archival research done previously in Mexico City while a visiting professor at CIDE.

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Harry and Margaret Truman in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Truman Library

Here are a couple paragraphs from the application that give a sense of the project:

“The creation of the modern inter-American system, particularly the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty), has usually been explained as an effect of U.S. regional hegemony. On the one hand, this is understandable. The United States, in the closing stages and immediate aftermath of the Second World War, was at the apex of its relative power. In the Western Hemisphere, it had achieved the near-unanimous cooperation of Latin American states with the Allied war effort—with the exception of Argentina. The inter-American system solidified this state of affairs, while also serving to bring the reluctant Argentines into line.

“This project adopts a more multifaceted approach to regionalism. U.S. power and leadership were certainly crucial to the development of the regional system. However, during the creation of the post-war regional institutions, Latin American states—often led by Mexico and Brazil—sought to create a system that provided them an important forum and offered the possibility of greater influence. President Truman recognized those countries’ importance, paying each a visit in 1947, as well as hosting their leaders in Washington.”

The project ties into a couple medium-term article projects, including one with Max Paul Friedman. Eventually, it will all be part of a big book project that looks at Brazilian and Mexican policies toward regionalism and regional organizations over several decades.

 

What I’m reading: La conexión México – La Habana – Washington

Homero Campa, La conexión México – La Habana – Washington: Una controvertida relación trilateral, Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 2014

On December 15, 2014, I presented a paper in Havana at a “series of conversations” on U.S.-Cuban relations. That paper looked at the role of Panama, host of the April 2015 Summit of the Americas, as a potential facilitator of U.S.-Cuban dialogue. If I had subbed in Canada or the Vatican for Panama, I would have looked much smarter two days later when, to our surprise, Presidents Obama and Castro announced a prisoner exchange and move to re-establish relations.

Homero Campa, whose interesting book on the role of Mexico as a sometimes interlocutor between the U.S. and Cuba came out in 2014, might feel similarly unlucky. As it turned out, despite their historic role between the United States and Cuba, Mexican diplomats had no hand in last year’s secret negotiations, which led to today’s big announcement of the opening on embassies in Havana and Washington. Read differently, Campa’s book is a bit more prescient than my paper (though trust me, I can suggest a more prescient reading of my paper, if you’d like!). Mexico’s lack of involvement—and by all accounts, Mexicans were surprised by the announcements—fits with the larger pattern of its declining role as a broker between the United States and Cuba.Continue reading “What I’m reading: La conexión México – La Habana – Washington”

Available for pre-order: Latin America Confronts the United States

Latin America Confronts the United States
A new book on U.S.-Latin American relations, coming in November 2015 from Cambridge University Press.

My first book, Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence is now available for pre-order through Cambridge University Press. It has a cover design, too! The book is due out in November–so why not do your holiday shopping now? (Don’t all families do hard-cover academic book exchanges?)

Here is the summary from Cambridge:

“Latin America Confronts the United States offers a new perspective on US-Latin America relations. Drawing on research in six countries, the book examines how Latin American leaders are able to overcome power asymmetries to influence US foreign policy. The book provides in-depth explorations of key moments in post-World War II inter-American relations – foreign economic policy before the Alliance for Progress, the negotiation of the Panama Canal Treaties, the expansion of trade through NAFTA, and the growth of counternarcotics in Plan Colombia. The new evidence challenges earlier, US-centric explanations of these momentous events. Though differences in power were fundamental to each of these cases, relative weakness did not prevent Latin American leaders from aggressively pursuing their interests vis-à-vis the United States. Drawing on studies of foreign policy and international relations, the book examines how Latin American leaders achieved this influence – and why they sometimes failed.”