The NPR Politics Podcast - Democratic Backsliding Rocks The Summit Of The Americas Before It Begins

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

The United States is hosting a major gathering of heads of state from the Americas, but some countries are upset President Biden has elected not to invite some leaders the White House described as "dictators." The move led other leaders to boycott — raising questions about whether the summit can effectively address pressing challenges like migration.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and international correspondent Carrie Kahn.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Naomi Beasley from Berkeley, California, and I'm seven years old. I'm on my way to my aunt's wedding in Bloomington, Indiana, where I'm going to be with my cousin. This podcast was recorded at 1 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, June 7th, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll officially have a new uncle. Here's the show. An Indiana wedding, too. Indiana. Makes me so nostalgic. Hey there, it's the N. An Indiana wedding, too. Indiana. Makes me so nostalgic. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And today on the show, we are joined by special guest, Keri Kahn. Hey there, Keri. Hi. So, Keri, you are normally based in Mexico City, but today you are joining us from the fabulous studios at NPR West in Culver City, California. Is that correct? It is. I'm very excited to be here in the studios. This is where I started my career at NPR, so it's like coming home. I'm happy to be here. Well, you are there also because you're covering the Summit of the Americas.

The opening ceremony for that is going to be tomorrow. The summit takes place every few years, gathering leaders from North, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean. And this year it is in Los Angeles. And I should say, you know, as sort of usual, it seems like the run up to this summit has been a tad dramatic as far as who's on the guest list, right? Who's getting an invitation? Yes, it's been all about the guest list and the invites. And the big no-show is Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And he says he is definitely not coming. He's actually heading down south in his country. He says he's not coming because not everybody is invited.

And the big no-shows and then people that were off the guest list were Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The White House says that they were not invited because they are not democratic nations and that this is all about democracy and they are not coming. I mean, Freika, what has been the explanation that you've been hearing from the Biden administration? I mean, I heard a little bit yesterday from the White House press secretary, this idea that they don't want to invite countries that they believe are run by dictators. That was Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary's words. But I don't get the sense of clarity, I guess, of why all these other countries, some of which actually are invited, those leaders aren't even showing up.

Yeah, I mean, this is a big problem that the Biden administration has. And I mean, I spoke with the Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols yesterday about this. He runs Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department, you know, kind of sets the administration policy on this. And he signed a pact that they would only democratically elected governments would be invited. And the United States says that they should stick with that. Obviously, democracy is a big push for President Biden. But as we're seeing, you know, there is a push in another direction in much of Latin America. Lopez Obrador wants a more inclusive summit, more inclusive agreement. And I think that's just kind of a sign of how the region is shifting, where you got a lot of leaders who are having some autocratic tendencies. It's not just Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. You know, some of these other countries have some autocratic tendencies that are of concern

to the Biden administration. And the bigger picture is it just kind of shows how U.S. influence is really waning in the region. And it's interesting to see that a lot of other countries have said that they're not coming either. We're seeing, along with Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are also not coming to the summit. They're sending their foreign ministers too, which is very troubling when these are the countries that should be at the table. Because one of the big topics of discussion here at the Summit of the Americas is going to be migration. So how are you going to talk about migration when you don't have the countries where their citizens are sending the most migrants to the United States at this time. How are you going to have a discussion about migration when they're not at the table?

But there's a lot of talk that they're using this as an excuse because they don't want to have to talk about their own democratic erosions, their own slides of democratic principles and problems with democracy in their own countries at this time and that there are autocratic and authoritarian processes in their countries now. And so they're using this too as an excuse to not come. The Biden administration clearly did not want, ideally, for this Summit of Americas to be playing out the way that it is, where all this attention before it even kicks off is about who's showing up and who's not going to show up. And yet it seems like President Biden, since he came into office, has spoken about having a hard reset for diplomacy, that America is back on the world stage, and that as compared to his

predecessor, Donald Trump, he was hoping to improve diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. And here's the summit where, as you all have described, a number of critical leaders are not going to show up. Yeah, I mean, this was definitely an example of that. This summit was geared to demonstrating U.S. influence in the region to show that the United States had turned the page from the previous administration, from the Trump administration, that had a pretty rocky relationship with the region. Sometimes a lot of fights with so many other different countries as well. And let's also just remember, President Biden came into office with perhaps the most experience with Latin America than any other

president. He visited at least 16 times as vice president. He basically led the Obama administration's efforts to kind of forge a new relationship then. And this is what he ran on as a candidate, talking about the experience, right, and the relationships that he had. Yeah, to bring back more civility, to bring back more of a partnership with other leaders, particularly those leaders that mean so much, such as the Latin America. And there's no bigger relationship. There's arguably Mexico is the most important relationship that the United States has with another foreign leader. That's why this is such a big deal. I think that's a great point, Franco. And what is it that went so wrong? And how did this get off on such a bad footing? I think that is just some of the big questions that we'll see

as the summit rolls out this week and will be answered in the next couple of days. You know, will the Biden administration be able to pull something out by Friday's end? I mean, your question of what went wrong, Carrie, I mean, this is a whole deeper dive conversation. But I have been thinking a bit about this when we hear the president consistently and his team talk about this notion of carving up the world into autocracies and democracies, and then dealing with the fact that in reality, the world is really messy. And there's a lot of countries that might fall somewhere in between. And I mean, that's not necessarily just germane to the countries here at the Summit of Americas. But I think about it when we heard the president

possibly visiting Saudi Arabia. There's a whole, I think, sense of clarity that this administration wanted to have, this dichotomy. And it's really been difficult, I think, for them to be as pure as they want it to be. But the backsliding of democracy in the Americas has been so dramatic in the last couple years. And the inattention of the United States towards Latin America in the last few years has been so stark that it's a difficult issue for the Biden administration to tackle right now. And I think that what's happening in the Summit of the Americas and the countries, the amount of countries that aren't showing up, and this just coming to a head right now is really

coming into focus for the Biden administration. And it will be interesting to see how he deals with these countries that have showed up and how they're going to pull this out in the next couple of days. It'll be really interesting to see it play out. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. We have lots more to discuss and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. You know, Franco, part of the reason it seems like this has been so unwieldy and maybe always has been is that this is a huge gathering with many countries that don't necessarily have unanimous common interests in terms of the specific issues that they're trying to tackle. It feels like it is just difficult to set up from the start. Yeah, I mean, no question. I mean, you have more than

30 countries, like you say, with such different interests. You know, some say that that is why the news gets so caught up in all the controversies. You were talking about all the personalities and melodrama that seems to draw the attention in the lead up to these events. And that's because it's really hard to do anything of substance when there are so many different interests involved. I was actually talking about this with Dan Restrepo. He was the top advisor for Obama for Latin America. And he says, you know, he really thinks that the summit has run its course. And he said the flaw is putting all these countries together and thinking that you can actually solve big problems. What does Mexico and St. Kitts and Nevis really have in common?

Or Belize and Brazil, right? I mean, they don't. You know, and what he suggests should happen is he's pushing for smaller meetings, like instead of all these countries, North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, you know, trying to come up to some type of unanimity on something. He thinks the United States should have smaller meetings, more frequent meetings, one with North American leaders, which I guess they do with the former NAFTA group or the USMC group, but also one with South America, one with Central America, and another one with the Caribbean, because you can see where those countries have closer interests and ties. And he feels you can get things done better in those smaller groups. So all of this being said, I am curious about what is actually supposed to be happening at this gathering. I mean, it does seem like the United States has at least an ambition for specific things, goals, policies to come out of this summit. Thinking about it in a broader hemispheric way, what they're hoping for is to get declarations

on certain hemispheric issues. And the big one at this summit is about migration. And they're trying to change the direction and look at it in a regional aspect, like look at migration more hemispherically and change the way that we talk about it as more shared responsibility, looking at the root causes, all these buzzwords. Yeah, we hear about this a lot here in Washington. Yeah. And to be fair, I would say that under the Trump administration, migration was very transactional. You know, it was it was very much it was enforcement, enforcement, enforcement. And so now the Biden administration wants to change that language and they want to change that whole talk and make it a shared responsibility because the migration crisis

has never been this this bad. I mean, Carrie, I feel like we talk about migration constantly when we talk about, you know, Central America, Mexico. And I feel like, I don't know how to say this, but it feels like I'm having the same conversation. Similar policy conversation. No, definitely. No, definitely. That is a valid point. And you are. But the numbers that we're seeing are stark and they're very

different than we have seen. And a lot of it is post-pandemic. This is an economic crisis that we haven't seen coming out of the pandemic. And you have to realize that this is a different crisis. These are new numbers that we haven't seen. And a lot of it has to do with the post-pandemic economic crisis, but a lot of it has to do with the slide of the democratic erosion in a lot of it has to do with the post-pandemic economic crisis, but a lot of it has to do with the slide of the democratic erosion in a lot of these countries, which are Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. We're seeing numbers coming out of these countries that we haven't seen in decades too. So it's exacerbated the migration crisis, and that's what this summit is focusing on. In just getting back to the point that you were making, Asma, I mean, it is kind of like we have had these conversations over and over again. And yes, it is a different time.

Yes, the pandemic exacerbated the problems. But the United States has been sending billions and billions of dollars, for example, to Central America for many administrations. And Biden has been part of that. And, you know, as Carrie's pointing out, we're now having, you know, historic type levels of migration coming from that region as well as other regions, which is why I think it just makes this issue so daunting. And I imagine all the more challenging when you don't have all the countries involved even showing up to discuss it. That's exactly right. I mean, the critics that I speak to about some of the administration's policies, you can send billions of billions of dollars to these countries. But if the countries

themselves, if the governments themselves do not want the change as much of the United States, it's not going to happen. The leaders themselves have to want to want these changes more than the United States does. And I think that is a sign that these leaders are not coming, that you can raise the question, do they want the same changes as much as the United States does? And it doesn't look that way. All right. Well, Carrie, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And we're hoping for great weather. In L.A. I feel like it's always supposed to be great weather.

That's what I always hear from Californians. There's never a bad day, bad weather day in L.A. I'm looking forward to it. Don't tell all the people in Washington, D.C. that. Well, I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And thank you all Ordonez. I also cover the White House.

And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.