Author: Sheng Tang rushong source wechat official account: the chief shopkeeper’s knife has been authorized to reprint
Unlike the global democracy summit organized by Biden last year, the Latin American Summit held in Los Angeles will take an offline approach, that is, all participating national leaders will attend the summit in Los Angeles in person. This gives many national leaders a more difficult choice: go or not? Video conferences can be fooled with a tablet, but offline meetings are people who want to be present.
Unlike hard left countries like Bolivia, many Latin American countries are not willing to directly offend the United States, so they can only choose to go. However, there are many ways to go. For example, President Lopez of Mexico and President theomara of Honduras both chose to let the foreign minister attend the meeting instead of going there in person. President bosonaro of Brazil finally chose to attend the meeting when the United States sent a special envoy to communicate. Biden sent a special envoy to Brazil to promise bosonaro that if bosonaro attended the meeting, Biden would hold bilateral talks with him. That is, he gave Brazil a special treatment, which made bosonaro change his mind. In this way, he would be embarrassed if he didn’t go.
The so-called Latin American summit must be the participation of leaders of a country. The summit, as its name implies, is the highest level of participants. Mexico and Honduras, for their part, obviously do not take the United States seriously. It’s like entertaining at home. If you have enough face, the highest ranking relatives will naturally come to join in. But if you don’t have enough face, but you still have a little face, it may be that the relatives only send a half eldest child to drink the wedding, or even give gifts to people, or even to people. In the last case, basically, it is equivalent to a reversal. Bolivia is such a country.
However, for the United States, there are several countries in Latin America that must come to join in. It goes without saying that big countries like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina all have to take the lead. If the second chair and the audience don’t come, it’s easy to fool them. But if the chief becomes rarer, the host will certainly lose face. Therefore, the United States has adopted the method of sending invitations to Argentina and Brazil, and Mexico should also arrange for sending invitations. However, Lopez estimated that he did not see the gift list on the invitation, adhered to his own ideas, and finally chose not to attend the meeting, but somehow gave some face to let his foreign minister attend the meeting. I don’t know what it was like for bosonaro to see that he, as the Reverend of a country, was sitting at the top with the foreign minister of Mexico.
On May 27, 10 days before the Latin America summit in Los Angeles, the 21st Bolivarian alliance of the Americas summit was held in Havana, the capital of Cuba. Participants condemned the upcoming summit of the Americas for excluding some countries for political motives, saying that the unilateral decision of the United States had caused a serious setback in multinational relations in the Western Hemisphere.
The statement adopted at the meeting pointed out that such exclusive meetings as the summit of the Americas would not help solve the challenges and threats facing the region and the world. The United States is trying to create division in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to serve its hegemonic interests.
The Bolivarian alliance summit was initiated by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2001. Once a year, it has been held for 21 times. The summit included ten Latin American countries and four observer countries. In this discriminatory invitation against the US Latin America summit, these countries basically issued boycotts to the us to varying degrees. For example, the presidents of Honduras and Antigua announced that they would not attend the meeting, and other Member States signed their names in the statement protesting against the United States.
In fact, the most important thing for the United States is Mexico. As one of the most important neighbors around the United States, it is an indispensable link in the U.S. industrial chain. If Mexico does not cooperate with the U.S. plan for Latin America, the Latin American summit will eventually become another farce, which is similar to the results of last year’s’ global democracy Summit ‘, and cannot form a favorable result for the U.S. to restore its national strength and eliminate inflation.
Even Britain, a loyal ally of the United States, said in its financial times that “this is the decline of the United States’ diplomatic influence in Latin America.” However, the financial times is worthy of being the mainstream media in the West. After finishing this evaluation, it added sourly, “this is a good thing for China.” Although the words are very sour, they are not unreasonable, because at present, as Taiwan’s so-called “diplomatic countries”, Latin America is one of the few large stock areas, and the reason why Taiwan can obtain so many “diplomatic” stock countries in Latin America is inseparable from the influence of the United States. After the Latin American summit, if the United States fails to reach an outcome that preserves the dignity of the United States, then there will inevitably be more and more de stocking incidents against Taiwan in Latin America. Originally, everyone did this only because of the prestige of the United States. Since the prestige of the United States is no longer there, what worries do you have? After all, inflation in the United States is like a flood. Once it spills out to foreign countries, Latin America, which is a place full of small countries, has absolutely no resistance, and can only watch the flood drown itself. Whether the United States is willing or not, and whether it has the ability to be especially gracious to Latin American countries and bypass them, depends on Biden’s ability. Or not, but can it be something Biden must face up to.
However, the Latin American summit is just a reflection of the current reality of the world. Its bleakness makes us see a trend in the world, that is, under the background of the decline of American influence, potential crises in all major regions of the world are sprouting, and more and more countries are beginning to consider their own future.
The most obvious manifestation is naturally the anti American and anti western war launched by Russia. However, it is not necessarily Russia that gains the most. For example, Turkey has been getting along well during this period. We all said this before, but we won’t say it today. We also said Japan’s caution the day before yesterday, but today it is still worth saying. For example, Shinzo Abe, an old but not dead man, has been enjoying himself recently.
At present, the most active direction for Abe to hop around is the Taiwan Strait. Why the Taiwan Strait? I don’t think this is Shinzo Abe’s unwillingness to look for China’s pain, but he truly foresaw that the situation in East Asia might change dramatically with the declining influence of the United States. What should Japan do? This is what worries him. After all, he has established his position in the history of Japan. He absolutely does not want the history of Japan to change dramatically after him, turning him from a “tough” and “great” prime minister to a clown prime minister who needs to take responsibility for the crisis in Japan.
Why do you say that? If China rises in the world due to the decline of American influence and successfully solves the Taiwan Strait issue, Japan will be in a very awkward position. It will be difficult for the United States to get along with China. Moreover, more importantly, because of the damage to China Japan relations caused by Abe’s second term of office, in fact, it is impossible for Japan to get a corresponding good position behind the rising China. Before that, in the ten years after 2012, China and Japan still hope to cooperate in the mode of leading and deputy leaders. But now, with the trend of China Japan relations getting lower, [basically because of Abe’s no bottom line Pro US policy], with the improvement of China’s industrial system after the Sino US trade war, Japan has fewer and fewer chips to cooperate with China. Therefore, Abe must hope that China will sink rather than rise. The rise of China means that Abe made a wrong choice, and he may become a sinner rather than a hero of Japan. This is the reason why Abe refused to take good care of his illness even after he left the field, and he still worked hard outside.
However, through Abe’s hopping, we should be able to feel a clear signal that the settlement of the Taiwan Strait issue may have entered the countdown stage. I often say that although our international analysts have seen numerous news stories and verified their judgments on numerous occasions, compared with the leaders or former leaders of a large country, the information we have obtained and the horizons we have cannot be compared with them. They must know more than we do, although the choices they make may not be right. Therefore, Abe’s repeated voice on the Taiwan issue must be something his dog’s nose smells.
Abe said recently that he asked his allies to stop China’s actions in the Taiwan Strait and never let Chinese Mainland solve the Taiwan Strait issue. It should be that he smelled the development of this situation, and the reason why he called for allies should be that he saw the more united actions of European countries in the war against Russia and Ukraine. He naturally hoped that the entire Western system could be used to counter China’s potential actions. However, European countries have little interest in the Taiwan Strait, just as we have high interest in Russia and Ukraine, but we do not have any immediate concern about it. Therefore, Abe’s expectation is bound to fail. European countries will never be willing to go to Asia to compete with China for Japan’s sake. Taking this as a bargaining chip to extort benefits from China, they will certainly do it, and they will never do anything desperate.
Therefore, another intention of Abe is to encourage the United States to form regional alliance groups, such as South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and other countries. However, the United States has been doing this without the encouragement of Japan. It is just powerless.
Looking at Shinzo Abe in such a hurry, we should be able to predict that this matter may already be on the line. It is not a question of whether it will be issued, but a question of when it will be issued. Only in this way can we understand Abe’s stupid and restless mind.