The summit of discontent of the Americas

The 9th Summit of the Americas began in Los Angeles on Monday and will continue till Friday. This is the second time the United States is hosting the summit since the inaugural event in 1994.

Following the years of the Donald Trump presidency, during which relations between the US and its neighbors became deeply strained, the incumbent administration of President Joe Biden would like this summit to be remembered as one of unity, one at which the countries of the region once again rally around the US' leadership to jointly face common challenges.

But the conditions point to a very different outcome, not to a summit of unity, but to a summit of discontent, with lasting impacts on US influence in the region.

Three US decisions are responsible for this. First, the US has chosen to turn the summit into a platform from which to lecture other countries, rather than one for frank dialogue among partners. Nothing illustrates this better than the Biden administration's decision to not invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the summit on the fabricated pretext that attendees must meet US standards of democracy.

Most countries of the region have criticized the Biden administration's decision as a reassertion not of US leadership but of US arrogance, which would take the region in the wrong direction, with many saying that Biden's predecessors invited Cuba to the summits in 2015 and 2018.

Notably, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leader of the fourth-largest economy in the Americas, conditioned his attendance on all countries of the region being invited to the summit. Following the US' intransigence on the issue, he announced that he will not attend the summit. The leaders of Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, St. Vincent and Grenada have followed in Lopez Obrador's footsteps.

The leaders of the other regional countries such as Argentina and Brazil are attending the summit, but only after the US dispatched its envoys to persuade them to do so. And most Caribbean states have said they will use the summit as an opportunity to criticize the US.

Second, the US has failed to realize the hypocrisy of its actions, obsessed as it is with other countries' problems while failing to see its own.

Recent polls show an increasing number of US citizens questioning the very institution of democracy, especially because of the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. For example, a National Public Radio/Ipsos poll conducted a year after the riots in the US Capitol in January 2021 showed that about 64 percent of US citizens believe democracy in the US is in crisis and at the risk of failing.

In another poll－by the University of Massachusetts in December 2021－33 percent of the respondents said that Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was probably or definitely illegitimate. The people of the Americas have thus been compelled to believe that the so-called bastion of democracy is in disarray.

Moreover, the very Inter-American Democratic Charter the US has used to criticize the conditions in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua states that democracy is more than about elections, and also depends on advances in other areas, such as poverty alleviation and the elimination of racial discrimination. And yet the US continues to be beset with shootings, targeting of racial minorities, police violence, and structural racism that socially and economically affect the most vulnerable, including the African-American and Latino population in the country.

Should the US then be excluded from the summit given its shortcomings as a democracy? Surely not. Better to bring everyone to the table than to exclude countries based on an unfounded sense of superiority.

Third, the US has chosen to bulldoze ahead with the summit, regardless of the contradictions that have emerged along the way. The summit agenda prioritizes discussion on issues such as migration and pandemic response. But how can migration be discussed without the Mexican leader being present? What can the US say about pandemic response when it hoarded vaccines in the early phase of the pandemic and decided to not invite Cuba, a regional leader in healthcare?

Moreover, the US has undermined its own legitimacy, with promises that have failed to materialize. Little has come out of the framework for infrastructure development "Build Back Better World". And with early polls pointing to a Republican victory in the midterm Congressional elections, the other countries from the Americas expect very few of Biden's promises to actually stick.

Quoting the Bible, Abraham Lincoln once said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Biden should heed this warning, and prioritize dialogue rather than exclusion, and commonalities instead of arbitrary notions of difference, so as to keep the house of the Americas intact. Should he fail to do so, the standing of the US in the region will further weaken.

The summit of discontent could be the last Summit of the Americas should Biden choose the latter option.

The author is a researcher and professor at Universidad Externado de Colombia.

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