Andrés Rozental is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales), and he is currently a foreign policy advisor to the Mexican Government.
Economic Interests
Mexico’s primary interest in the G20 summits has been to ensure that the country sits at the table and is part of the process. Although Mexico has been a member of the G20 since its inception as a body of finance ministers and central bank governors, there was no guarantee that it would continue to be accepted as one of the major players. Even its membership in the G-5 grouping (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) that has been invited during the last few G8 summits to join the major industrialized countries for a short meeting to discuss common global issues such as development assistance to Africa, climate change and poverty, does not in itself constitute a sufficient antecedent to be assured a spot in the “new” G20 at the leaders level.
Mexico has a direct interest as well in the summit discussions on the global financial and economic crisis. As one of the economies most negatively affected by the downturn in the US, Mexico’s overriding objective is to see its neighbour’s economy restored to a pattern of growth and dynamism which, in turn, will allow the NAFTA partner to resume trade and investment flows to levels similar to those existing prior to the crisis.
As a result, Mexico’s participation in the Pittsburgh G20 Summit was centred on the above objective. Issues such as executive pay and bonus caps, greater regulation of the international banking system and higher capital requirements for financial institutions were less of a priority for Mexico than the discussions on reforming the IMF and World Bank, for example.
The results of the Pittsburgh G20 Summit seem to have focused more on the issues that I have described above as secondary to Mexico’s primary interest. Although there was a lot of rhetoric surrounding the supposed “bottoming out” of the global recession, countries like Mexico have not yet seen quantitative positive changes to negative growth, unemployment, drying up of foreign direct investment flows or increased protectionism. Although much of the final statement issued at the end of this summit relates to a resumption of sustainable economic activity, there is still a long way to go before the Mexican economy can begin to show concrete signs of recovery. Little of what was committed to at Pittsburgh would contribute directly to that objective.
As with previous G20 summits, or indeed G8/G5 annual meetings, there is not much public interest in the process, nor has the government made a special effort on outreach to explain the process or the reasons for Mexico’s participation. Media coverage on this occasion was divided between the various other meetings that took place in New York (the Climate Change summit convened by the UN Secretary-General, the Security Council meeting chaired by Barack Obama on nuclear proliferation and the annual parade of leaders who speak at the UN General Assembly). This year was especially active with the US president getting a lot of media attention with his activities and speeches in New York, Presidents Ghaddafi and Ahmadinejad’s appearances at the UN, Iran’s second nuclear processing facility, etc. As a result, coverage in Mexico of the G20 Summit itself was rather subdued and limited to the group photograph and a few of the salient points from the communiqué. President Calderón’s intervention in the Security Council on the importance of addressing global conventional arms flows, in addition to nuclear weapon proliferation, was covered by the local press, but there continue to be too many burning domestic issues that are seen to be much more important to public opinion that the president’s trips abroad.
International Interests
The only change since London appears to be the discussions that took place prior to and during the summit about replacing the G8 with the G20. Although the final statement speaks of an agreement for the G20 to be the premier forum for international economic cooperation, there were considerable differences of opinion on what the ongoing role, if any, of the G8 should be. Canada’s selfish interest in not jeopardizing hosting the next G8 summit in 2010 ensures that this forum will continue to exist — albeit with a questionable mandate — until the French jointly host the G8 and G20 Summits in 2011.
Global Leadership
Mexican public opinion did not focus much on the issue of global leadership (as mentioned above). For those of us in the academic, think tank world, it is obviously of great importance to see Mexico at the table, but the low-profile participation by President Calderón and the very sparse media coverage didn’t contribute at all to enhancing his own global leadership role. As a matter of fact, several issues extraneous to the G20 process (the fact that Calderón has yet to make a state visit to the US after half of his term has passed, his not having addressed the UN General Assembly in any of the years since he has been president and his rather dismal foreign policy) have led to a very low-profile international role both for Mexico, and for the leader himself. Although many observers lament the fact that Mexico has been overtaken by Brazil, Chile and even Venezuela in terms of foreign policy activism, this government does not appear to have any interest in continuing the country’s traditional leadership on global issues.