Diplomacy: Most summits are mush-mouthed affairs full of pleasantries. Tuesday's "Three Amigos" summit was different: a litany of how President Obama has alienated our neighbors.
You wouldn't know this from reading the mainstream media, which reported the disastrous summit with anodyne headlines like: "Obama talks trade, energy with Canada, Mexico leaders at Summit" (Associated Press) and "Obama, Mexico's Calderon vow more drug crime cooperation" (Reuters).
Obama's neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who's out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren't being reported.
Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada's National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they're "on life support."
Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.
The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama's de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.
Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That's about to change.
Canada has also all but gone public about something trade watchers have known for a long time: that the U.S. has blocked Canada's entry to the eight-way free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an alliance of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, Chile, and Singapore. Both Canada and Mexico want to join and would benefit immensely.
U.S. media dutifully reported Obama's false claim that Canada, our top trading partner, is too protectionist — for whom, we don't know. Malaysia maybe? — even as it's good enough for NAFTA, the trillion-dollar trade treaty that is the world's largest.
"Every country that is participating is going to have to make some modification," Obama told the press.
Canada's take was far more blunt: "Our strong sense is that most of the members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would like to see Canada join," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in essence revealing that it's the Obama administration alone that is blocking Canada, and suggesting that payback on energy was coming.
So much for Obama's early claim that he was going to clean up the "mess" President Bush left with our allies and make friends with the world. One amigo muscling another out of a trade alliance isn't friendly.
Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting.
Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.
The mainstream U.S. press has kept those questions out of the official press conferences, while Obama has feigned ignorance to the Mexicans and hasn't even apologized.
In short, the summit was a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. and its relations with its neighbors north and south.
It should have been the easiest, most no-brainer diplomatic task Obama faces.
Instead, it underscored the Obama administration's indifference to anything more than its own political interests.
It's a shame the American media didn't tell us. Instead we had to learn of it in the foreign press.
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