Feb 27th 2003
A horribly
difficult moment for Vicente Fox and his
country - Time to be counted
The Economist
(print edition – Mexico City)
When it won its
non-permanent seat on the United Nations
Security Council, Mexico never thought it
would come to this. Over the next two
weeks, as the debate over the second
resolution on Iraq is played out in New
York, it has to take perhaps the most
difficult diplomatic decision it has ever
made: whether to support the resolution,
as America demands, abstain, or vote
against.
Mexico's position is
trickier than any other member's. On the
one hand, it has actively sought in
recent years to become America's best
partner and friend. Back in 2001, which
now seems a painfully long time ago,
President George Bush famously remarked
that America had “no closer
relationship”. Why, his amigo
President Vicente Fox, in his boots and
jeans, was obviously a closet Texan.
On the other hand
comes the tug of old Mexico: a country
with a strong history of
non-interventionism, even isolationism,
mixed with what many Mexicans like to
think of as a tradition of pacifism,
especially in foreign affairs. After
weeks of toing and froing, Mr Fox's
government must now show where it stands.
The American
connection is all-consuming. The two
countries celebrate the tenth anniversary
of the North American Free-Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) this year, which has
linked Mexico umbilically to its
neighbour. Almost 90% of its exports go
to America. About 20m people of Mexican
descent live in America, more than a
fifth of Mexico's own population. America
bailed out Mexico when the peso collapsed
in 1995. Why on earth, ask many
Americans, should Mexicothink twice about
supporting America now?
When Mexico sought a
Security Council seat in 2001, as part of
Mr Fox's new strategy of playing a role
on the world stage, America naturally
endorsed the idea. Now, in Mr Bush's
view, it is time to live up to those new
responsibilities. He is exasperated by Mexico's
lack of support, as he made clear last
Saturday in a blunt phone call to Mr Fox.
An abstention will not do, either. In the
words of one American official, “An
abstention is a failure to step up to the
plate and play the game.”
But the exasperation
is not all one-way. One of the great
ambitions of Mr Fox's government, elected
in 2000, was to get a comprehensive
immigration accord with the United States,
protecting the rights of an estimated
3m-5m illegal immigrants in America. This
was always going to be an uphill task,
but after September 11th 2001, when America
began to distrust all brown-skinned
incomers, talks on such an agreement
stalled completely. The resulting
resentment and frustration in Mexico have
fed into the lack of sympathy for Americaover
Iraq.
In a poll last week
for Consulta Mitofsky, 79% of those asked
thought that Mexico should not support America.
Mr Fox, who faces vital congressional
elections in July, reads such figures
keenly. Some foreign-policy experts, such
as Jorge Montaño, Mexico's ambassador to
the UN during the last Gulf war, fear
that the president's “macho
statements” against the war have
boxed him in: unable to consider the
second resolution on its merits, he will
simply have to abstain.
However, the
Americans are confident that it will not
come to that. The administration is not
doing anything so vulgar as putting cash
on the table, as in the case of Turkey.
But it is reminding Mexicoof the possible
effects if it fails to come through. A
stream of American officials, sounding
much more hostile than sorry, have been
trekking south to argue the point. Most
of the pressure, though, is coming from
the grass-roots. Rogelio Ramírez de la
O, an independent Mexican economist,
argues that American boardrooms are
discussing whether to cut back future
investment in Mexico if the Mexicans
disappoint them. One American diplomat
has given warning that a Mexican No could
“stir up feelings” against
Mexicans in the United States. He draws
comparisons with the Japanese-Americans
who were interned after 1941, and wonders
whether Mexico “wants to stir the
fires of jingoism during a war”.
The Americans note
that Mr Fox, for all his political
posturing and his genuine moral
difficulties (as a firm Catholic, he can
hardly ignore what the pope is saying
about war and peace), has always left
himself some wriggle-room. On February
25th he seemed to make his strongest
statement so far against Iraq, arguing
that “the world wants peace, but
only the disarmament of the Iraqis can
assure that peace.”
If Mr Fox is going
to accept the logic of his vaunted
position as America's closest ally, there
will be no option in the end but to vote
with America. But he had better start
making the case very soon. With public
opinion so unprepared, a Yes vote could
do him and his party great short-term
damage. It might also earn him a
longer-term reputation for leadership.
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