Latin American Relations with the Middle East

Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis

Marta Tawil Kuri, Élodie Brun, Marta Tawil Kuri, Élodie Brun

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000570052
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Global Politics

Latin American Relations with the Middle East surveys the dealings of ten Latin American and Caribbean states – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela – with the Middle East.

This volume examins these states' external behavior at both an empirical and conceptual level. Empirically, authors seek to examine Latin American and Caribbean foreign policies towards the Middle East in four dimensions: diplomatic attention; trade and investment (including the energy issue); development cooperation; security matters/intelligence, and relationship with multilateralism (Iran, Palestine, and Syria). Case studies are selectively deployed to observe the influence of unfavorable circumstances that have increased since 2015, such as domestic turmoil, wars, economic crisis, ideological bias, and international constraints. Conceptually, the book enhances the theoretical framework for understanding Southern countries' foreign policies, through fomenting dialogue with Latin American and Caribbean regional literature on foreign policy. Authors inquire about how decision-making processes occur, and uncover how influential actors help to test the main hypotheses of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA).

Forging essential new paths of inquiry, this book is a must read for researchers of International Relations, Foreign Policy, South-South Relations, Latin American Politics, and Middle Eastern Politics.

1 Under the Western Sign Argentina’s Relations with the Middle East during Mauricio Macri’s Government

Mariela Cuadro and Alejandro Frenkel

DOI: 10.4324/9781003264675-3

1 Introduction

This chapter aims at analyzing the Alianza Cambiemos government’s Foreign Policy toward the Middle East from 2015 to 2019 guided by two main arguments. First, we assert that it was mediated by its relationship with the United States (US) and mainly focused on economic and security issues. Second, it entailed a process of identity/otherness constitution based on keeping a distance from a Southern identity and, instead, participating in a Western one.

In developing these arguments, we will also pay attention to continuities and discontinuities between Cambiemos and Kirchnerist governments. This is important to assess the different considerations of the Middle East of two parties that presented themselves as opposite from each other in their “country projects.”

To sustain these ideas, we frame the chapter on Alberto van Klaveren’s analytic framework for Latin American Foreign Policies (van Klaveren, 2013) and David Campbell’s work on the links between identity/difference and Foreign Policy (Campbell, 1998). Van Klaveren conceives Foreign Policy as the international expression of a society and the tool whereby it is bind together and integrated into the world. The author lays out the impossibility of prioritizing a single factor influencing Latin American Foreign Policy and maintains that for its analysis it is necessary to take into account both the internal and external structure as well as the decision-making process. Whereas the former defines the limits within which the actors move, the process refers to the concrete actors – institutions, groups, and people – and their relations. Thus, according to the author, the study of Latin American Foreign Policies should comprise the complex relationship between social structures and actors, and among actors themselves.

As is manifest, van Klaveren participates in the “bridge” metaphor guiding the main conceptions of Foreign Policy. Campbell problematizes this idea pointing out that it implies two preexistent realities: the state and the anarchical international system (Campbell, 1998). This way, it assumes the inside and the outside are preexistent realms, thus occluding Foreign Policy’s boundary-producing function. Although the overall critique to the study of Foreign Policy exceeds the objectives of this chapter, we are interested in bringing to the fore Campbell’s conception of foreign policy as being a way of constituting and reinforcing identity and otherness. Campbell defines Foreign Policy (with capital letters) as the institutional process and foreign policy (with small letters) as the way of constituting identity and otherness. Indeed, Campbell differentiates Foreign Policy (with capital letters) from foreign policy (with small letters). While the former refers to the institutional process, the latter concerns its constitutive function. According to the author, F(f)oreign P(p)olicy is a discursive practice that entails a specific definition of the self and the other (Campbell, 1998).

As we will explain, Cambiemos’ foreign policy was based on an Argentinean tradition that situates the South American country within the West, thus reinforcing what was called by Walter Mignolo (2002) as “occidentalism” and participating in a peripheral orientalism, as depicted by Hernán Taboada (1998). Furthermore, this can be linked to what van Klaveren defines as foreign policy culture (van Klaveren, 2013). Although from another epistemological and theoretical stance (closer to constructivism in International Relations), the author points out that the images and symbols of the world and relations with other countries constructed by the elites are key factors to understand Latin American Foreign Policies.

To explore these assertions, we have divided the chapter into five sections. The first one aims at contextualizing Cambiemos’ reading of Argentina, the region, and the world. Within it, we tackle the question of identity both theoretically and in its Foreign Policy toward the Middle East. The second section deals with trade and investments, and it is mainly centered on Argentina’s relation with Gulf countries. The third tackles South-South cooperation. The fourth section inquiries into security issues: Israel, Iran, and Palestine play a prominent role in it. Finally, the fifth section is dedicated to Argentina’s multilateral policies concerning the region.

2 Contextualizing Change

2.1 The Local, the Regional, and the Global According to Cambiemos

The new governmental coalition that took Mauricio Macri to Argentina’s presidency in December 2015 marked a turning point in Argentinean politics: for the first time in its democratic history, the government’s Executive branch was not under the hegemony of the Partido Justicialista or the Unión Cívica Radical.

Like each government in Argentina’s history since the 1983 democratic recovery – when a democratic period that would last until today was opened –, Macri’s sought to differentiate itself from its predecessor, Kirchnerism’s. To do so, it drew up a program that entailed deep economic and social transformations as well as changes in the realm of Foreign Policy. These last were based on a different understanding of the international scene. Indeed, Cambiemos government classified Kirchner’s “populist” economic policies as protectionist and its critical views of the international order¹ as indications of underdevelopment and Argentina’s isolation from the world (El Día, 2020). The new government redirected the economic model toward a “framed neoliberalism” (Zelicovich, 2018) guided by economic openness and trade liberalization and, at the same time, by maintaining some social welfare policies.

Based on a positive reading of globalization,² this redirection implied the reshaping of Argentina’s Foreign Policy with the aim of “returning to the world” “free of ideologies.” However, Cambiemos did not establish an equal and horizontal relationship with all countries in the world. Instead, it redefined Argentina’s global alliances focusing on a “Western insertion” (Busso, 2017), which meant strengthening ties with the US and European countries. Barack Obama’s visit to Buenos Aires in March 2016 would become a symbol of this turn.

Through the “return to the world” narrative, driven by a neoliberal economic model based on foreign direct investment, Macri’s government renewed support for the international liberal order and attempted to build a “trustworthy” image of the country in the face of world powers and the international economic establishment. This explains Macri’s presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos just one month after taking office. The same can be affirmed about the commitment to multilateral and global governance institutions – especially those related to economic and trade issues. In 2018, Buenos Aires hosted the World Trade Organization ministerial summit. On that occasion, President Macri stressed that “never before in history has Argentina been this connected to the world as today” (Macri, 2018a). Besides, the South American country applied for membership to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and served as chairman of the G20 Forum, adopting a role as an “honest broker” during the presidential meeting (Deciancio and Tussie, 2019).

It is worth noting that, according to a survey carried out by the Argentinean Council on Foreign Relations (CARI, by its Spanish acronym) in 2015, the reinforcement of occidentalism and the alignment with the US were supported by scholars and politicians, among whom the US image improved between 2010 and 2015. This converged with the identification of terrorism as one of the main international problems for Argentinean society during these years (CARI, 2020).

However, this globalization-friendly reading was altered by a wave of nationalism and protectionism in the West. Although the alignment with the US continued to set the course for Argentinean Foreign Policy even after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, these global changes led to adjustments in the government’s international strategy. The bonds with China and Russia entered the agenda, the optimistic vision of globalization was blurred, and South-South cooperation was revalued. These movements also coincided with the US decision on raising interest rates, which led capital to leave emergent markets toward the North American economy and particularly affected Argentina and Turkey.

At the regional level, Macri’s victory in the elections signaled another milestone in the transformation of the political cycle in South America, characterized by the decline of progressive governments and their replacement by neoliberal ones. The latter promoted a reduction of state intervention in the economy, prioritizing foreign investment attraction and commodities exportation toward extra-regional markets (Sanahuja and Comini, 2018).

The local and regional turn-to-the-right affected South American-Middle Eastern relations and, unlike the previous period of “booming relations” (Tawil Kuri, 2016), the interregional bonds weakened. This affected the political realm. As an example, in Argentina-Middle Eastern relations, anti-colonial issues like the Palestinian cause and the Malvinas Islands question disappeared from the agenda. This way, except for Israel and Iran, between 2015 and 2019 relations were mainly reduced to trade links.

Concerning Foreign Policy decision-making process, the hardcore of the decisions concentrated on President Macri’s party (PRO), mainly constituted by former Chief Officer Executives (CEOs) and NGOs members (Gené, 2018). Undoubtedly, the strongly corporate nature of the decision-making structure represented another novelty for Argentinean politics. Cambiemos government centralized the Foreign Policy design in the Executive branch, a common place in Latin American countries, as explained by van Klaveren (2013). The Chief of Staff, Marcos Peña Braun, and the Secretary for Strategic Affairs, Fluvio Pompeo, took over the assignment of commanding the president’s international agenda and the articulation with other areas of the state that particip...