Di Tella en los medios
Buenos Aires Herald
16/03/15

Opinion: foreign policy during the Kirchnerite era

Por Roberto Russell y Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

Some victories achieved but coupled with a tendency to overreact

The Kirchner couple played a fundamental role in redefining Argentina’s national identity and, therefore, in redefining its ties with a number of key countries. Just like (former president Carlos) Menem once insisted in the need of recovering the “Western” identity of Argentina, the Kirchners defined the country as a constitutive part of the “Patria Grande” (Greater homeland), a nation increasingly “Latin/South American” an less “Western/European.”

Hyper-presidentialism had two other important consequences in the definition of a foreign policy: it favoured a certain tendency to overreact and contributed to projecting an image of dispersion and volatility. As for overreactions, the most notorious case was the February 2011 incident with an US Air Force plane which landed in Buenos Aires. While the problem originated as part of a legitimate concern by the national government regarding the contents of that airplane, the controversy resulted in an exaggerated intervention of Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, encouraged by the Government House. Another example in that sense was the measure taken by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner when she decided not to appoint anybody for two years at the Argentine Embassy in London, expressing a way of conducting foreign policy that Todd Hall calls “diplomacy of anger.” As Hall explained, this form of diplomacy may be an effective resource in the way one has the means to support it. But despite having put the Mal-vinas issue at the centre of its foreign policy, the Kirchnerite governments were unable to change London’s position in the least: expressions of anger followed each and every accomplished fact by the UK — with very little effectiveness.

The Malvinas issue
The handling of the Malvinas issue gives us one of the clearest examples of inconsistent policies — which can be attributed, for the most part, to hyper-presidentialism. During the Menem administration, the country turned to the West, reestablished its ties with the UK and developed a strategy of “seduction” toward the islanders, with the goal of opening up spaces to facilitate bilateral negotiations over sovereignty with London. By contrast, during the Kirchner era, Argentina has not identified the West as an essential reference, openly confronted the UK, sought a more assertive support for their claims in Latin America and cut all contact with the islanders as part of a strategy aimed at increasing the “maintenance costs” of the Mal-vinas for the British government. All this in order to put pressure on the British Foreign Office and try to force a discussion on the sovereignty of the islands.

Relations with the US, Europe
Distance and reciprocal disdain constitute the best synthesis of the link with the United States. The negative turning point in bilateral relations occurred on the occasion of the Fourth Summit of the Americas that took place in Mar del Plata in November 2005. President Néstor Kirchner not only loudly opposed Washington’s last attempt to promote the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), but also the “archaic visions” and policies promoted by the US to deal with the problems faced by developing nations. For Washington, the summit was a foreshadowed failure, while for Kirchner it was a clear victory widely supported at home: in fact, the Argentine society showed throughout the decade the highest rates of anti-US sentiment in Latin America.

US-Argentine relations combined in a disorderly way some few areas of consensus and closeness where, to different degrees, convictions and conveniences merge (e.g. the humanitarian missions in Haiti, support for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, cooperation in matters of intelligence in the Triple Frontier between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, nuclear nonproliferation and satellite development), with other areas of distancing and disagreement that bring together different doses of ideology and pragmatism (e.g. the recognition of the Palestinian state, the future of hemispheric security, the attitude toward a neo-coup d’état mentality in the region, ways of combating drug-trafficking and organized crime, the sudden attempt at dialogue between Argentina and Iran concerning the attack against the AMIA Jewish community centre, and the degree and scope of the regulation of the international financial system).

The relationship with Europe was also marked by bilateral differences that arose from the re-nationalization of European companies in Argentina (the emblematic case is the expropriation of the Spanish oil company Repsol), the freezing of rates charged by public utilities owned by European companies, the payment to bondholders of the defaulted public debt, and the recurrent postponement of the negotiation of Argentina’s external debt with the Paris Club until 2014.

(*) Roberto Russell is the president of the Vidanta Foundation. He has a PhD in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of of Johns Hopkins University. Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is director of the department of political science and international studies at the Torcuato Di Tella University. He earned a doctorate in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University school of advanced international studies. Their essay is included in the book ¿Década ganada? (Won Decade?), edited by Carlos Gervasoni and Enrique Peruzzoti and published by Debate.