Mexico's foreign policy is unambitious and erratic

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Nov 16th 2023

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Mexico City

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico's president, is no globetrotter. His trip to San Francisco on November 15th to attend the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, an economic club of 21 countries, was only his seventh foreign jaunt in five years in office. Before going, he said: "I won't go the whole time. It's going to be, like, you arrive a day before, sleep, participate, eat—and come home." Since becoming president, he has not visited a single country outside the Americas.

Foreign policy has never been easy for Mexico, squished as it is between the dissimilar regions of North America and Latin America, each of which tends to view Mexico as part of the other. Close ties with the United States limit its relationship with China. A lack of internal bodies to discuss foreign policy—there is only one think-tank focused on it in Mexico—means individual whim looms large. Even so, past administrations managed to carve out international roles for themselves, on disarmament, free trade and climate policy. "Until López Obrador [Mexico] had a very strong voice in multilateral organisations," says Shannon O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank in New York.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Missing in action"

From the November 18th 2023 edition

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