PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The leaders from up and down the western hemisphere were all set to dive into a menu of Pacific halibut, aged sheep’s milk cheese and crème fraîche chantilly at the lavish Getty Villa on Thursday night, but first President Biden wanted to talk about unity.
He had met with many of the leaders in person — in bilateral meetings at the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas that day, in previous interactions as vice president, or even in a welcoming ceremony earlier in the evening — and waxed philosophical about his optimism.
“I thought today was a good day,” he said, holding the microphone in the villa’s columnated plaza that peeked out over a sliver of the Pacific Ocean. “I used to always kid Barack – President Obama. I’d always say to him all politics is personal, meaning that it makes a difference when you get to know someone, whether you agree or not, it makes a difference to look in their eyes and understand a little more what’s in their heart.”
And in the gathered leaders’ hearts, he said before putting down the microphone, were more similarities than differences.
But those differences have come to dominate the story of the ninth Summit of the Americas.
Earlier this week, the Biden administration made the decision not to extend invitations to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The summit is about solutions and cooperation between the world’s democracies, the administration has said, and the trio of authoritarian countries’ government systems most assuredly are not. “The president’s principled position is that we do not believe that dictators should be invited,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
ACCUSATIONS OF HYPOCRISY
But since the administration drew its line in the sand, other nations have been rebuking Biden and the United States for what they see as an unfair or even a hypocritical stance.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced he would not attend the summit hosted by his country’s neighbor to the north, although he will visit the White House next month.
Leaders of other nations attended the summit but chose to question or challenge Biden’s decision to his face.
At a plenary gathering, John Briceño, the prime minister of Belize, said the summit belongs to “all of the Americas” and that it was “inexcusable” that some countries were barred from attending. The influence of the gathering, he said while standing just a few feet from Biden, was “diminished by their absence.” Later, he added, “Geography, not politics, defines the Americas.”
Speaking at the same session, Argentine President Alberto Fernández proposed that host countries not be allowed to exclude other countries from the summit. He said the United States’ decision to not invite the trio of countries was particularly cruel as they tried to recover from the epidemiological and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Venezuela, he said, had been helping to fuel his continent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting roller coaster of energy prices.
“We definitely would have wished for a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those who are absent is calling to us,” Fernández said.
Others have pointed out that the United States can be hypocritical about which countries to label “authoritarian.” The administration has faced questions about why it continues to deal with oil-rich Saudi Arabia — even reportedly planning a presidential trip to a nation whose crown prince is accused of being the architect of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
BIDEN DRAWS CONTRAST WITH TRUMP
Adding to the tension, Biden is trying to transform the United States’ relationships with its neighbors on this side of the globe. Former president Donald Trump — who Biden alluded to several times throughout a long Thursday at the summit — had little appetite for international alliances, and at times openly disparaged other countries, sometimes in crude and insulting terms.
Biden, on the other hand, told fellow leaders multiple times that he was at the summit to listen to what they had to say about issues of common interest, and spent longer-than-expected talking to a conglomeration of Caribbean countries, along with Vice President Harris.
And he stressed that the democracies present would still be able to provide results for their citizens.
“I think we are a far cry from what we saw from a previous American administration,” Biden said, outlining joint efforts in health care, migration, climate and jobs. “That’s what our people expect of us,” he said. “It’s our duty to show them the power of democracies to deliver when democracies work together.”
