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 Editorials | Opinions | August 2007 
Three Impeding Factors to Breakthrough
 Liu Weidong - People's Daily
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| | If the annual “Three Amigos” summits are designed to showcase North American solidarity, the just-completed meetings in Montebello fell short. Instead, they provided reminders of how the leaders of Mexico and Canada chafe at what they see as dictates from Washington. |
Some analysts believe that the United States, Canada and Mexico did not achieve any essential breakthrough in security, trade cooperation and other issues.
Why did the summit fail to make a breakthrough?
First, the three parities do not have any common point of concern. Either in terms of geopolitical influence or national strength, the United States holds a position of absolute dominance among the three countries. As a great power, the United States aims to gain more interest through controlling the agenda of the multilateral negotiations. But Canada and Mexico even expect more from the cooperation. In this context, all countries intended to take advantage of this opportunity and express their own idea. However, the parties lack of a common interest. The United States advocates cooperation of North America against terrorism, but neither Canada nor Mexico is interested in the topic. For the US and Mexico, their focal point is drug smuggling on the border and US immigration policy. For the US and Canada, the most prominent issue is the term of troops stationing in Afghanistan. In such circumstances, it is not realistic to expect the three to share a common destiny.
Secondly, the nature of the summit made it difficult to make breakthrough. All the topics on the agenda of the summit are old and tough problems left over for years. For instance, for the issue of illegal Mexican immigration, even the US Senate, House of Representatives and administrative departments have launched several rounds of battle but achieved no result, how could people expect it to be solved by the three in two days? Another example is Canada claims the predominance of the "Northwest Passage" in the North Pole. For a long time, the United States has refused to acknowledge it. Even now when it is seeking help from Canada in anti-terror issues, Bush still cannot give it up because of its crucial role as a new channel for future economic lifeline. As for the topics of food security and deepening cooperation which involve national interests of each, the three simply cannot reach any agreement within two days. Considering the presidential elections next year, the Bush Administration would not compromise easily, so as to prevent attacks from opponent.
Thirdly, the multilateral mechanism itself has more symbolic meaning than practical significance. From a historical perspective, the main purpose for the countries to establish a multilateral consultative mechanism is to emphasize the common principles and demonstrates their solidarity gesture to outsiders. To resolve real problem, people usually rely on bilateral agreements. Telling from the joint statement signed by the leaders of the three countries, the parties reached consensus on the promotion of multilateral free trade, enhancement of the competitiveness of the three in the global market, and strengthening the management of human resources and logistics during crisis. But they came with no significant implementation plans at all. Undoubtedly, there is still a long way to go.
As a result, every side has declared its position on some simple issues. But the difficult ones are still remained unsolved. The integration process of economic and security is not easy at all, which involves in exactly all the factors: political demands, trade structure, economic level, public opinion, etc. The tough process of the European integration provides vivid evidence to this point. Although with the development of globalization, countries have more and more interest in common, the three in North America and the countries in North and South America still have obvious differences in both concepts and interest. These differences are big enough to prevent them from unfolding full cooperation. Actually it is already not a bad outcome at all for the three to reach a consensus in principle like this.
The author Liu Weidong is associate researcher at the Institute of American Study under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. |
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