“The best foreign policy is domestic policy”, said the newly elected López Obrador, who claims he wants to fight corruption, poverty and violence in Mexico.
“I congratulate our brothers, the people of Mexico, and their president-elect, López Obrador. Let the broad avenues of sovereignty and friendship between our peoples be opened. With him, truth wins over lies and the hope of the Patria Grande is restored.” With this tweet Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro congratulated Andrés Manuel López Obrador on his July 1 electoral triumph. Having won 53% of the vote – an unprecedented success since 1982, at the time of the “perfect dictatorship” of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – López Obrador will lead Mexico for the next six year. He will be officially sworn in at the beginning of December.
Maduro’s tweet gave ammunition to the critics of the new president – a left-wing nationalist, accused by the opposition of populism and Chavista sympathies – but it can also serve as a starting point to tell a different, more accurate story. That is, that Mexico had not chosen a Head of State with so little interest in foreign politics in many years.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to start the fourth Mexican revolution, i.e. that of honest people against the “mafia” of economic and political powers. He pledged to eradicate rampant corruption and impunity by setting a good example, reduce poverty and underdevelopment through redistributive policies, and end the epidemic of violence – which killed over 29,000 people last year and probably even more in the current year – by granting amnesty for minor crimes. One of the main points of his programme is achieving food and energy self-sufficiency, an objective which implies at least a partial withdrawal from world trade and, in particular, a restriction of Mexico’s economic ties with the United States, the country’s most important economic and strategic ally. In foreign policy, López Obrador announced that he intends to follow the principle of non-interference.
With the exception of the years of Echeverría’s presidency (1970-1976), Mexican foreign policy has traditionally been loyal to the principles of neutrality and non-intervention in the affairs of other countries according to the Estrada doctrine, named after the Minister of Foreign Affairs Genaro Estrada, who first articulated it in 1930. This stance began to loosen up by the end of the 20th century, when Mexico was slowly transitioning to a market economy and, by extension, gravitating towards North America and international organizations, as demonstrated by the signing of the free trade treaty with Canada and the United States (NAFTA) in 1992 and its accession to the OECD in 1994.
After the historic defeat of the PRI in the presidential elections of 2000, the new centre-right administration decided to drop the Estrada doctrine and replace it with the Castañeda doctrine, named after the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Castañeda. The new foreign policy doctrine established under President Vicente Fox aimed precisely at increasing Mexican involvement in international affairs. Fox’s two successors – Felipe Calderón and the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto – essentially continued this approach. Mexico quickly transitioned from being an isolated country to becoming the State involved in the greatest number of free trade agreements in the world. Mexico’s agreement with the European Union, for instance, was updated last April.
But López Obrador doesn’t seem to be interested in anything happening across the Mexican border. The gap between him and Peña Nieto already emerges in their different approaches to the Venezuelan question. Peña Nieto decried the crisis of democracy in Venezuela by refusing to recognise Maduro’s last election win and adopting a tough stance with him in American multilateral bodies. He has done so both to promote respect for human rights (with considerable hypocrisy) and out of fear that the Venezuelan diaspora might grow to the point of burdening Mexico with the same problems currently facing Brazil and Colombia.
Of course, Maduro could not hold his tongue: he called Peña Nieto a coward and a lackey to the White House. López Obrador, for his part, says he will not interfere in what he considers – in the words of Héctor Vasconcelos, his foreign policy advisor – “a strictly domestic situation”. But this is clearly not the case: one only needs to look at the 1.2 million people who fled Venezuela over the last two years. In other words, the anti-Maduro front in Latin America seems destined to lose one of its most important voices.
López Obrador might not care so much for foreign affairs, but foreign affairs cares about him. Indeed, the president-elect will have to engage with his American counterpart and defend Mexico’s national interests. The issues at stake are not only associated with immigration – Mexican illegal immigrants in the United States, the wall, joint management of migration flows from the Northern Triangle – and the fight against drug trafficking, but also with the economy: Mexico is dependent on the United States, where over 40% of its imported goods come from and 80% of Mexican exports go, but with Donald Trump US-Mexican trade relations have entered a phase of deep uncertainty. Trump wants to reduce America’s trade deficit with its southern neighbour. In keeping with his protectionist views, he imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel imports (spurring Mexico’s retaliation) and initiated a renegotiation of the terms of the NAFTA agreement.
The importance of Mexico’s ties with Washington compels López Obrador to take a cautious and pragmatic approach in dealing with Trump. He has already done so with NAFTA, which he formerly opposed and now supports. Outside the North-American framework, however, it is very likely that Mexican foreign policy will become less influential. The nomination as Foreign Minister of the former mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, a politician who enjoys an excellent international reputation, will not change López Obrador’s general stance. In fact, the new president has already made clear that Ebrard will help him observe the principles of non-intervention and self-determination of peoples.
In his years as the head of the government in Mexico City (2000-2005), López Obrador stood out for his efficient and responsible administration, which earned him an astoundingly high approval rate. His preference for pragmatism over ideology that was already his hallmark at the time could now lead him to use foreign policy as a tool for achieving two of the main goals on his agenda: alleviating poverty and reducing economic inequality. These issues are particularly pressing in the southern part of the country.
Next to investments in agriculture and tourism, López Obrador’s plan for the South includes the construction of a modern railway line along the isthmus of Tehuantepec, connecting the ports of Salina and Cruz (on the Pacific Ocean) with Coatzacoalcos (on the Atlantic Ocean), and covering a stretch of about 200 km. The idea is to create an alternative trade corridor rivaling the Panama Canal and to invite China to participate in the construction. At the moment, the project is little more than a rough sketch, but Beijing could in fact have enough money and interest to get its hands on it: China is investing a great deal in the development of infrastructures and commercial hubs to be integrated into the colossal design of its New Silk Road. In this view, the Tehuantepec corridor could represent another leg of the Pacific route, in addition to the pivotal Panamanian Strait.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not really concerned with Xi Jinping’s geopolitical strategies, he is interested in them only insofar as they translate into investments and jobs for his people. As for Trump, the new president will invite him to finance a development programme in Mexico, in order to strengthen the country’s economy and address the root causes of illegal migration. He is already envisaging a special area with reduced rates along the border. “The best foreign policy is domestic policy”, he once said. This, perhaps, is the López Obrador doctrine.
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“The best foreign policy is domestic policy”, said the newly elected López Obrador, who claims he wants to fight corruption, poverty and violence in Mexico.
