The Western Hemisphere Summit: A Good Idea Whose Time Has Not Yet Arrived

Whatever its stumbles, the Clinton Administration’s policy in the Western Hemisphere has had its priorities right. Bill Clinton courageously led a bipartisan effort on behalf of the North American Free Trade Agreement. And his Administration has fostered democracy and market economics, as well as a larger Western Hemisphere community, without alienating our neighbors. It would thus be a pity if overzealousness in pushing a hemispheric summit jeopardized what has been achieved and what seems realistically within reach during Clinton’s term.

Proposed by Vice President Al Gore, the Western Hemisphere summit, scheduled for early December in Miami, is a good idea whose time has not yet come. Heads of government assembled at a summit can either issue general declarations designed to impart a new sense of direction or, if well-prepared, they can issue an action program to steer their bureaucracies toward established goals.

But the best that can be hoped for under present circumstances is a symbolic public-relations exercise. The new Mexican president will not take office until Dec. 1; the Mexican Cabinet, normally announced the day before the swearing in, will have had barely a week in which to establish itself. Brazil will be focused on the election of a new president Oct. 3, with a runoff Nov. 15 if no candidate wins a majority. Because the inauguration is Jan. 1, Brazil would, in effect, have to be represented at the summit by two presidents: the outgoing one, without authority, and the incoming one, as yet without power and probably without a program--especially if there is a runoff. In preparing for the summit, the Clinton Administration will lack interlocutors to harmonize its views with two of the key Western Hemisphere countries.

In truth, the United States has yet to formulate views capable of being harmonized. The policies that receive most attention--the possible invasion of Haiti and the conflict with Cuba--have little Latin American support. Above all, the Administration has yet to make up its mind on the overriding issue for the other summit participants: how to relate NAFTA to the rest of the hemisphere. All this risks either that divisive peripheral issues will dominate the agenda or that the summit will peter out in platitudes.

This would be a pity, because the new governments in Mexico and Brazil will be in an unusually favorable position to join us in giving new impetus to a creative Western Hemisphere policy. Mexico has passed a crucial hurdle toward becoming a pluralistic democratic society. And Brazil seems to have traversed the political instability following President Fernando Collor de Mello’s impeachment and stands poised to reassert its influence.

In Mexico, the test for the newly elected president, Ernesto Zedillo, will not be whether he presides over the defeat of his own party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but whether he manages to bring about a genuinely pluralistic process. This will not be a simple matter, given the historic dominance of the PRI and the regional base of other parties. But Zedillo seems committed to rapid political modernization.

The United States has a dual obligation to understand the difficulty of this political evolution and to have confidence in the new leadership--at least until there is strong evidence to the contrary. The missionary tendencies of some middle-level Administration officials, and their apparent preference for the more radical advocates of political change, should be curbed. With respect to the summit, this means that declarations on democratization should emerge from consultations in which the new president of Mexico is perceived to be a principal contributor and not the recipient of condescending lectures. Such an approach is, however, incompatible with a summit during the first week of Zedillo’s presidency.

The problem is even greater with respect to Brazil, where the sequence of economic and political reform is the reverse of Mexico’s. Mexico is moving toward political pluralism as the result of economic reform; Brazil is gaining economic momentum in the aftermath of a drastic reform of its politics. The fight to overcome political corruption has enabled former Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso to master the rampant inflation that had threatened to undermine public confidence and drive the democratic politics toward extremism. After the election, the Brazilian economy will gain impetus from accelerated foreign investment that, in turn, will further stabilize Brazil’s politics.

As Brazil masters its domestic difficulties, it will resume a leadership role in Latin America. It will have the strongest economy (as large as all other South American economies combined); one of the most experienced and able foreign services in the world, and an established tradition of participation in international affairs. A reformed Brazil can be expected to favor greater Western Hemisphere integration based on “Mercosur,” the regional grouping of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, which it has sponsored. Launched in 1991, Mercosur has three options: It can complement NAFTA, become an alternative to it or ultimately combine with it. Any Western Hemisphere summit that fails to explore these possibilities will also fail to deal with the key issues before the Western Hemisphere. Thus the reemergence of Brazil as a major interlocutor challenges the United States to a new approach to coordination with our neighbors.

Neither such a Brazilian-U.S. dialogue nor adequate consultations with the other countries of Latin America will be possible before the summit. What little is known of summit preparations derives from a State Department paper, circulated to potential participants, that seems more suited to an academic conference than to a meeting of heads of state. Its headings are vague, the various initiatives it outlines as imprecise as they are vast and unachieveable in the time remaining. And, despite its scope, the proposed agenda is silent on the future relationship of NAFTA to the rest of the hemisphere. These deficiencies cannot possibly be corrected in the time remaining before the summit and in the absence of a Brazilian or Mexican contribution.

So long as Mexico and Brazil cannot participate in meaningful consultations, the existing procedure conveys a patronizing implication that the United States wants the summit for either domestic political reasons or as a platform to lecture Latin America.

All this suggests the following necessities:

* Delay the summit until the spring;

* Use the interval to come up with a U.S. set of proposals;

* Take advantage of the presence at the United Nations of most Latin American foreign ministers during September to begin shaping an agenda that reflects a common hemispheric program.

The planned summit is a constructive step in a basically constructive Administration policy. It should not be spoiled by meeting for the sake of meeting--when the basis for a real dialogue is so close.