Uribe’s lunch in the summit of the Americas with Obama was anything but
a diplomatic victory. It only demonstrates the fallacies of Colombian
diplomacy when compared to the United States new approach.
The US new diplomacy was unveiled in Europe and was
ratified in the summit of the Americas. This diplomacy, can be argued,
is based on multilateralism instead of unilateralism and on
representing more the voice of the country instead of a particular
sector. Of course it is still early to judge on how real these emphases
are, but Colombia would be wise to understand and put these principles
into practice.
Uribe’s lunch in the summit of the Americas with Obama
was anything but a diplomatic victory. All the contrary, Uribe was
perceived as an excited teenage-groupie waving Obama’s autograph. The reciprocal visits
that Uribe “arranged” would be only logical in light of the enormous
economic aid the country receives and the military base the US is
setting up in the territory. To be fair with Uribe, Obama’s decision
not to meet any head of state was because this was a regional summit;
something that narcissist and demagogue presidents failed to
understand. It was Obama’s opportunity to express the new multilateral
approach that his administration has been promulgating.
US policies and diplomacy working for the benefit
of a select few have started to change. This is demonstrated by the
increment in taxes to the better off in society and the reversal on the
permissibility of torture, among other changes. Uribe’s policies, on
the other hand, have become personal politics that are revitalized by
stigmatizing the few bold people, who demand better wages and who clamor for justice on the atrocities of paramilitaries and the
military. By extension, Uribe’s diplomacy is mainly based on promoting
Free Trade Agreements that only benefit the elites (and his sons) and ultimately removes any dignity that the country may have left.
Uribe’s diagram of the three pillars of his
presidency – security and democratic values, investment with social
responsibility and social cohesion – was good enough for Bush, who did
not have a clue about their significance. But Obama was a community
organizer, civil rights lawyer and constitutional law professor who
would be demanding results rather than accepting nice sounding
theories. If Obama was really paying attention to Uribe’s scribbles,
Trinidad may not have had enough napkins for Obama to explain the
difference between empty words and real actions. Uribe’s diplomacy
based on cheap salesman tactics leaves a lot to be desired.
In the end, Obama’s autograph may be no more than a
simple reassurance to Uribe that all his humiliating efforts have not
been totally in vain. Obama is aware that Colombia still remains
strategically important for US interests in the region. However, The US
president is more concerned with avoiding deep splits in his party and supporters (labor unions) stemming from submitting to congress a recycled FTA. Therefore, the recent positive remarks about Colombia’s “significant progress” towards complying with the trade pact are merely a pat on Uribe’s back that can save him some face in the country.
Obama is the latest figure trying to embody a
different type of diplomacy that to a large extent displaces
unilateralism and the neoliberal ideology that it pursuit. Regionalism
and multilateralism, promoting a less extreme capitalism, have become
the norm, and Colombia has failed to adapt to these changes. Not so
much because Colombians do not believe in them but because the national
discourse has been directed towards the symptoms of the economic
system, the guerrilla and paramilitaries, rather than the root of the
problems, which is the system itself.
Author Sebastian Castaneda is Colombian studies psychology and political economy at the University of Hong Kong