Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
When the telephone conversation between President Vicente Fox and Cuban President Fidel Castro, known as “Comes Y Te Vas” (Eat and Leave), was made public in 2002, a myth about telephone conversations between national leaders died. Telephone conversations between leaders are indeed recorded. Recording conversations between leaders is an act of State and political seriousness. The recording must exist so that, later on, in the event of confusion or retractions, it is possible to clarify what, how, and when something was said concerning relations between nations, and who, if anyone, did not uphold the agreement that had been reached.
Fox reproached Fidel for publicizing the conversation, but could not deny what he said. There was his voice. During his six-year term, it was the most famous and the lowest point of Fox’s foreign policy. And Mexico’s diplomatic blunder had many consequences, both internal and external.
President Sheinbaum has said no less than five times that her telephone conversations with Donald Trump have been “spectacular, productive, useful, friendly, cordial.” There has been no suggestion of tense, difficult, dangerous, or inconclusive conversations.
These conversations are recorded and will also serve to put pressure on one side or the other. Now, Trump has done to Sheinbaum what Fidel did to Fox in his day. The White House leaked the details of their most recent phone call to the Wall Street Journal.
Before analyzing what was said, it is essential to note the threatening tone of revealing a private conversation. It is similar to what Fidel did to Fox. Revealing the content of the conversation breaks the thin thread of trust, because from now on, the rule is that “everything you say will be used against you.”
A thin thread of trust that could have been established between Trump and Sheinbaum has been broken. Furthermore, Trump has recordings of all his previous conversations with Sheinbaum, where they surely said things and committed to actions that might not be to the liking of Morena’s supporters or former President López Obrador.
Sheimbaum obviously has serious problems with political leadership within her party and with Morena’s legislative majority in Congress. An example of this political weakness and the president’s lack of influence over her party in Congress is her inability to get Congress to approve her security policy, which involves strengthening the Federal Public Security Secretariat under the command of Omar García Harfuch. There is speculation that the Armed Forces and former President López Obrador oppose making Harfuch the key figure in Mexico’s security policy. The reason is simple and profound: Harfuch has established a policy of intense confrontation with drug traffickers that is unpopular with both the Army and the former president. The commitments established between politics and drug trafficking, expressed in the phrase “hugs, not bullets,” are far-reaching because of their implication in the strategic policy of the 4T in Mexico. It does not seem to be an easy task for the president to dismantle what was the central political project of López Obrador’s six-year term. Specifically, his project to create a new ruling and dominant class in Mexico, revolving around three forces: the political force of Morena in the hands of López Obrador (with or without Sheinbaum), the militarized Armed Forces with businesses throughout the country, and drug trafficking, that insurgent army that dominates a third of the country and all the businesses therein.
Does Trump know about Sheinbaum’s weakness in terms of the reach of her media-driven policy on combating drug trafficking? Without a doubt. Perhaps that is why the outcome of the latest conversation between Trump and Sheinbaum was, according to the Wall Street Journal, “tense.” The New York newspaper reports that it was not a “spectacular” or “productive” conversation, much less a “friendly” one.
Instead, it seems to have been a continuation of other conversations in which the president agreed to allow more than 300 soldiers from the US Northern Command, with all their military equipment, to enter the country to train members of the Navy, not the Army.
Perhaps in other conversations, the president agreed to allow the spy ship USS Gravely to dock in Veracruz, just as she held an event commemorating the US invasion of the port of Veracruz more than a hundred years ago.
What was the president’s response to the Wall Street Journal report? In her own words, Sheinbaum says she responded to Trump in the phone call as follows: “I told him: No, Mr. President, the territory is inviolable, sovereignty is not for sale, sovereignty is loved and defended.”
First, she had to accept that the report was accurate and that the conversation was not the “spectacular and productive” event she had previously reported. But it is also not credible that she launched into a Zócalo-style harangue against the US president over the phone: “The territory is inviolable, sovereignty is not for sale, sovereignty is loved and sovereignty is defended!” I don’t believe it. That response is for the public square, but it does not correspond to a conversation between a vulgar, aggressive, and empowered president and a weak president whose country is in flames.
“Cool head” is a political tactic that is useful in the short term to temper Trump. However, it is not a long-term strategy for a country like Mexico. The time is approaching for strategic decisions for the longer term. The country’s geographical position broadly defines its possibilities and limitations. Mexico belongs to North America. Our economy is almost entirely embedded in the US domestic economy. Millions of our compatriots live and work in the United States. Their remittances are vital to millions of households in Mexico. This is our reality.
It is time to define where the national interest lies and to design a strategy to build our specific national interests within that conceptual framework, and then the interests we share with our natural strategic allies: the United States and Canada. After that comes the rest of the world. It is essential to follow this method so that we do not lose our way and allow ourselves to be carried away by fantasies that do not belong to us or by sovereignties that do not exist.
We need to generate a conversation based on inescapable realities and leave the adjectives to others who are satisfied with them, even though they explain nothing.
@rpascoep
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