Heine & Ray Explore Troubling Lead-Up to Summit of the Americas
In his latest The Hill op-ed, Ambassador Jorge Heine, Research Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, discusses the troubling lead-up to the IX Summit of the Americas and how a policy of “active non-alignment” is developing in Latin America.
Heine co-authored the article, titled “In the Cold War with China, Latin America is neutral,” with Rebecca Ray, a Senior Academic Researcher at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center). In their piece, the two explore the difficult lead-up to the Summit of the Americas during which the United States has indicated that select Latin American countries – Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela -will not be invited. Heine and Ray argue that this “zero-sum, exclusionary approach to the development challenges of the Americas initiated by the Trump administration and continued by Biden is a dead-end street.” A policy of “active non-alignment” is already burgeoning in the region as a number of countries look to diversify development investments and focus on their own issues. If the U.S. hopes to maintain strong diplomatic ties in Latin America, Heine and Ray argue that it must work with all parties on such difficult issues as economic reactivation, pandemic control, and climate change mitigation.
The full article can be read on The Hill‘s website.
Ambassador Jorge Heine is a Research Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He has served as ambassador of Chile to China (2014-2017), to India (2003-2007) and to South Africa (1994-1999), and as a Cabinet Minister in the Chilean Government. Read more about Ambassador Heine here.