Antonio Navalón
One of the significant advantages that the 4T will have had, but above all, the unique and particular vision of President López Obrador is that from beginning to end, he sustained and put into practice his mentality that the best foreign policy is domestic policy. The allegations against interference in our sovereignty, the maintenance, and defense of our energy independence, the offense that could be made against us simply because of the idea that at some point we could become more dependent on someone – for example, the United States – than on ourselves, have been the main elements of President López Obrador’s policy.
Following this line, this administration has managed to exchange globalization for nationalism and localization, missing a unique opportunity for the development of our country. And the fact is that when the whole world – and this is no longer the case – was moving towards the breaking down of borders, towards the uniformity of systems, and partially towards the conception, not of a single way of thinking, but of standard technology, President López Obrador isolated and encapsulated us in an absolutely unredeemed and unattainable ideal. That is to say, the president conditioned us to conform to the idea and the fact of the Mexico that could have been contrasted with the Mexico that is.
We are in America. We are the second largest and most important country in North America. We are also the support – up to here, although less and less every day – of the generational renewal of North America. We are also the most logical and natural point of business expansion in the application of CUSMA/USMCA/TMEC and the explosion of nearshoring. But, above all things, we are a democratic country, even though we have our singularities, such as, for example, the fact that we are supporting Cuba – in an irreverent way – having a political system, defense, equality and facilitating the understanding of phenomena such as chavismo or any leftist movement, totalitarianism or similar. Little by little, we have been configured as a country that only wants to have something to do but does not get fully involved in any cause.
Economic thinking has not changed because, just as López Obrador understood – with overwhelming forcefulness – that when you are a leftist, you either hit or you get hit, he also understood that reassuring and strengthening the relationship with the main economic actors was a pivotal piece to consolidate the success of the 4T.
This is the day when one talks to the leading players and the funds and banks in Europe, for example, one realizes that Mexico continues to be a promising country to which opportunities and investments must be directed to continue growing. That is to say, none of what has happened and all that we have experienced under that singular way of applying politics, being formally impeccable in the treatment of discipline and economic orthodoxy and absolutely liberal and conformist in the sense that here we only support not those who need it most but those who with very little support can always be on our side, we have created a sense of hope in which – today and it is necessary to accept it – sooner or later investments will come to our country.
Despite the policy of international isolation carried out, despite not wanting to make more than a few necessary State visits, and despite focusing mainly on internal development – completely neglecting international relations – it must be acknowledged that Mexico continues to be one of the primary and most attractive investment destinations for the future. I do not know if this can or should be attributed entirely to the work done – or not done – by President López Obrador’s administration, but there are times when the facts speak for themselves.
Today’s world is nothing like the one that welcomed President López Obrador with open arms and hope for real change that night of December 1, 2018. Today, the world is at war. A world in which World War III is part of the conventional pleadings. It is also a world in which threats to use tactical or nuclear weapons have become part of our daily lives without anything getting out the door. It is a world in which, despite the relative triumph of the U.S. economy, it would seem that Donald Trump would occupy the White House despite the dozens of criminal and civil proceedings against him if the elections were held today. Admittedly, due to the flood of information via social networks and the fact that we are on the verge of a possible generational failure, the world to which we belong is worryingly different from anything we have seen in the past.
I don’t know if it was the air, fed-upness, or the way of doing politics in the United States that, in the first instance, caused Donald Trump to be elected as the forty-fifth American president, but what this character has managed to do in what is supposedly the largest democracy in the world, is worthy of a thorough analysis. Not only has he succeeded in establishing lying as a way of governing and exempting it from any consequences, but he has also called into question the entire judicial apparatus of his country. The simple fact that a citizen with criminal and civil proceedings against him could have a great possibility of becoming the next president of the United States, is something that makes us question everything we have been doing or not doing in recent years as societies.
Europe was in a latent war when Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration began. Today, it is a declared war. The minor one is the one between Ukraine and Russia; the major one is the one proclaimed by the Muslim world against Western culture. In countries such as France, the Muslim population is increasing, and Islam has become the second religion in the country. But what is more worrying is that, despite having been initially welcomed in different parts of the European continent, the feeling that nests in the Muslims is not one of gratitude or pride but of retribution and, above all, a sense of struggle. It seems they will never forgive the efforts and actions made to seek to change the life system and their religious beliefs.
With North America, Europe, and the Americas as they are, it is necessary to recognize that – deep down – this isolation from which we have come and which we have practiced during the last few years is not the worst thing that could have happened to us. Another thing is how a nation is educated, how ambitions are generated, and how aspirations are created in a country where thinking differently is frowned upon and makes you worthy of disqualification to be a good citizen.
It remains to be seen what the consequences will be of having had a social leadership as absolutely marked, definitive, and enclosed as the one we have had during the 4T. For the past six years, it is as if the world has simply disappeared for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his administration. However, Mexicans – who are known for being able to get along with anyone wherever we go – are not willing to remain alone or isolated from what is happening beyond our borders. Whoever finally wins, the new government will have to live breaking barriers and discovering that the era we come from is one of globalization, and no matter how hard you try, there is no way to get them to let you live in your own little shop in peace.
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