Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVIII, International Economic Development; International Debt; Foreign Assistance

39. Paper Prepared in the National Security Council¹

Washington, undated

CANCUN SUMMIT: DYNAMICS OF THE MEETING AND U.S. APPROACH

The U.S. requires not only a sound, substantive program to present at Cancun, but also a strategy to deal with the political dynamics of the meeting, including tactical issues such as what communications to initiate before the Summit, what bilaterals to hold at the Summit, etc. A separate pager has been prepared outlining the policy framework and inventory of issues to guide decisionmaking concerning U.S. substantive relations with developing countries (see U.S. Policy Framework and Inventory of Issues for Relations with LDCs).² The present paper focuses on the participants and political interplay to be expected at Cancun. It assumes that the United States will present a number of significant, substantive initiatives before or at Cancun. It also assumes a fairly active role on the part of the President. If this is not the case, the entire burden of the U.S. approach to Cancun will fall on tactics; and stronger measures than suggested in this paper may be necessary.³ It may also be desirable, in this latter case, to limit the President’s personal role.

Dynamics of Cancun

U.S. objectives include:

— sticking to the agreements reached at the Foreign Minister’s preparatory meeting on the open, unstructured and nonconclusive nature of the Summit meeting;

— avoiding the appearance or reality of confrontation with the developing countries at the Summit;

— avoiding U.S. isolation and placing the U.S. in a positive, constructive posture toward the legitimate concerns of the developing countries;

— shifting attention to the extent possible, even if only marginally, from the procedural and institutional issues (e.g. Global Negotiations) to the substance of relations with developing countries and thereby initiating the possibility over time that Global Negotiations will become increasingly perceived as irrelevant to the more meaningful action taking place in the specialized agencies.⁴

The key to achieving these objectives is to prevent the developing countries participating in the Cancun Summit from rallying around issues which would divide the meeting along North-South lines or alternatively would isolate the U.S. The issue that is most likely to do this is Global Negotiations. The other participants are presently united on the need to reconvene the preparatory process and to launch the Global Negotiations as soon as possible. We succeeded in keeping this issue from being placed directly on the Cancun agenda, although the framework of discussion recalls that a main objective of the Summit, as expressed in the letter of invitation, is to facilitate agreement with regard to the said Global Round of Negotiations. We achieved success in this instance, however, chiefly because the developing countries participating at Cancun (now the G–14) were divided.⁵ They met in New York before the Foreign Minister’s meeting, and Algeria with lukewarm support from a few others was the only country advocating GNs as an explicit item on the agenda.⁶ Algeria was isolated for three reasons, among others:

1. the perceived change in the U.S. position on Global Negotiations at Ottawa, raising expectations that the U.S. will return to Global Negotiations in any case;

2. the realization that Cancun is an unprecedented event, making countries reluctant to approach it as just another normal, UN-type conference; and

3. the unusual caution of Foreign Ministers when their heads of government are involved.

To ensure a successful outcome at Cancun, it is imperative that the G–14 remain divided on the Global Negotiations issue as well as other potential, surrogate issues. We should expect that Mexico, at least at the Foreign Minister level, and several other developing countries (Algeria, Bangladesh, India, Brazil) will try between now and Cancun to find issues around which the developing countries can unite. (A recent New York Times article, subsequently denied by the Mexicans, reported that Mexico and Austria as cosponsors intended to “circumvent U.S. objectives to a formal agenda by discussing key topics with other participants before the meeting in October . . .”)⁷ Once these countries achieve unity among themselves, they find it easy to persuade Europe and Japan to fall in line (usually by arguing that industrial countries must respect G–77 or in this case G–14 unity). The U.S. is then isolated.

Castaneda recently initiated a letter to the other Foreign Ministers which may represent a first attempt to find such an issue around which the G–14 can unite. The letter, expected to arrive at the State Department the last week of August, asks Foreign Ministers to submit six weeks ahead of time the topics that their heads of government will address at Cancun.⁸ Castaneda claims that this measure was agreed upon at the Foreign Minister’s meeting. In fact, our detailed transcript reveals that it was rejected. Nevertheless the Austrians have agreed to co-author the letter (asking only that a response to the request be made voluntary), and the Mexicans may hope through this process to identify more detailed topics well before the meeting and then to proceed to prepare background papers, identify an order of speakers, and otherwise structure what is supposed to be a free-flowing meeting. If the U.S. does not respond to this request and is the only one, the developing countries may have found the issue on which to restore and then press forward their unity. This unity may then snowball to embrace other issues, including the key issue from their perspective of securing a firm commitment from the U.S. to participate in Global Negotiations.

As the developing countries maneuver to restore their unity, some industrial countries will continue to pressure the U.S. to respond to this unity, especially on the question of Global Negotiations. Canada, which takes considerable credit for the favorably perceived outcome of the Ottawa Summit on Global Negotiations, will continue to emphasize to the U.S. that the other countries, including the EC countries, are now united in their support of Global Negotiations. This is the tactic which Trudeau pursued in the preparations for the Ottawa Summit through his prior travels to the developing countries and to Europe. In part as a result of Trudeau’s stirrings, the European Community is now committed by its pronouncement at the end of June to seek an impetus toward Global Negotiations at both Ottawa and Cancun. France can be expected to become a much stronger advocate of developing countries at Cancun than it was at Ottawa. This will become apparent already at the Conference on the Least Less Developed Countries, which takes place in Paris in September.⁹ Mitterrand will address this conference, and it is rumored that he will propose a doubling of French aid targets and an EC plan to extend the commodity stabilization program of the Lome Convention (Stabex) to many of the least developed countries. The French emphasis on concessional aid and commodities is in many respects directly opposed to U.S. preferences for more reliance on private trade, investment and finance and less market intervention. The U.K. and Germany, while sharing U.S. skepticism about Global Negotiations, find themselves constrained by the EC commitment. Germany is also constrained by its own internal party politics and by its desire to maintain close relations with Socialist France. Japan cannot be counted on to resist developing country demands; and Sweden, which did not participate in Ottawa, can be expected to add even more pressure on the U.S. to yield to developing countries demands. Austria, the other non-Ottawa country participating at Cancun, is constrained by its cosponsorship role.

U.S. Approach

In these circumstances, the U.S. approach to the dynamics of Cancun must seek two tactical objectives:

1. to do nothing to ease the division among the developing countries that manifested itself at the Foreign Minister’s meeting, and

2. to develop a counter-thrust, based on a substantive program to be presented by the President shortly before Cancun, that will indirectly compound G–14 problems of unity, deflect pressures from Canada, France, Sweden and others to yield to developing country demands, and begin to shift attention away from GNs to initiatives in the specialized agencies.

The key to both of these tactical objectives may be to initiate and develop early, continuing contacts in the preparations for Cancun with several critical developing countries. Such bilateral contacts would contribute to the perception that the U.S. approach to developing countries is mellowing and will be constructive (without running the risk of multilateral contacts in New York that might start us down the slippery slope of GNs).¹⁰ These contacts can be made confidently the more forthcoming the U.S. expects to be in its substantive initiatives. As long as the developing countries are given no reason to unite, the U.S. has a better chance of weaning the more pragmatic advanced countries, particularly the U.K., Germany and perhaps Japan, from the Canadians, French and Swedes. Establishing some early direct communications with key developing countries would also diminish the role of intermediary which the Canadians, French and Swedes like to play. In his visits to developing countries, for example, Trudeau was eager to give advice to his hosts about how they should deal with Ronald Reagan (see Attachment I, paragraph 4, for Nyerere’s account of Trudeau visit).¹¹ To the extent that the U.S. outflanks Canada and other intermediaries through direct contacts, it undercuts this rather presumptuous role on the part of Trudeau or others.

The most critical developing countries for early bilateral contacts include India, Nigeria, Yugoslavia, Mexico and Brazil. Developing countries playing somewhat lesser but nevertheless important roles include Saudi Arabia, The Philippines, Bangladesh, The Ivory Coast and Tanzania. Algeria, Guyana and for the specific purposes of the Cancun Summit, China are likely to be far less amenable to direct U.S. influence and should not be counted on to provide significant assistance.

The approach to these countries could include, among other things, the following steps:

— early communications at the Foreign Minister’s level;

— letters or telephone calls from the President prior to the Cancun Summit itself;

— early and more lengthy bilateral meetings with the leaders of these countries at Cancun;

— invitations to these leaders to visit the U.S. after Cancun, sometime next year;

— visible steps to improve bilateral relations with these countries and careful, low-key efforts to relate these bilateral steps to the expectations of closer cooperation in multilateral diplomacy.

The President’s Role

The President’s performance in Ottawa has already created something which is being referred to as the “Reagan effect” (see Attachment II).¹² It refers to the candor, openness and friendliness of the President’s style. It has generated the expectation that the President is a man with whom one can hold serious and frank discussions, that he is someone whom leaders instinctively like, and that he has little tolerance for the aimless rhetoric and political showmanship that characterizes the usual UN and North-South discussions. In one sense, this “Reagan effect” benefits from the very negative initial impression which so many countries have of U.S. policy and of the President’s personal views on relations with developing countries. While not encouraging these negative views, we should not be overly disturbed by them. Ironically, they enhance the “Reagan effect” once these leaders deal with the President and find him open, concerned, candid and firm.

We should seek to exploit the “Reagan effect” in preparations for Cancun. This can be done in several ways:

— by emphasizing the dramatic leadership exercised by this President in the United States, especially with the Congress (would be enhanced even more if the Administration succeeded in getting its FY 82 foreign aid budget through Congress before Cancun);

— by suggesting that President Reagan looks to other leaders to deal forthrightly with their domestic problems and policies, just as he is trying to do, making it clear that he has little respect for leaders who blame their domestic problems entirely or primarily on international economic causes;

— by having the President give a major speech on his approach to developing countries shortly before (about one week) the Cancun Summit, thereby focusing everyone’s attention on his program and his candid commitment to wrestle with the issues;¹³

— by making effective use of the President’s capacity to convey a sense of respect and prestige toward leaders of the developing countries, as he has done for example in his relations with Lopez Portillo.

The President’s speech shortly before Cancun is the cornerstone of this strategy. Hence, it must be started now in connection with policy directives (enumerated in the earlier paper on policy framework and inventory of issues) to move the bureaucracy toward decisions on U.S. substantive programs for development. Secretary Regan will address the World Bank meeting in late September. Secretary Haig will address the UN General Assembly and is also planning to make a major North-South speech.¹⁴ The draft of the latter speech is well advanced. There should be an early decision as to whether and in what sequence various speeches will be made on Cancun-related subjects. It will probably not serve our interests to play our hand too soon. Yet the World Bank and UNGA speeches are givens. We need to consider carefully what and how much should be said.

The “Reagan effect” can be brought to bear most directly at the Cancun Summit itself. This will require careful thought about bilateral or small group meetings which the President may wish to hold. We should decide early on, in the context of the broader tactical approach outlined in this paper, the leaders with which the President should meet personally at the Summit and what the relevant emphasis should be among these various meetings. Decisions on the President’s schedule are critical to the success of the meeting, and these decisions should be taken in light of the overall strategy and approach to the Summit, not just out of a sense that he must meet with each leader for the same amount of time or under the same circumstances.

1. Source: Department of State, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, Investment Policy Files, 1981–1984, Lot 85D193: Cancun Summit—“Cancun Cabinet.” Top Secret; [handling restriction not declassified]. Allen sent the paper to Haig, Regan, Meese, Baker, and Deaver under a September 2 covering memorandum. The paper printed here is Tab A to the September 2 memorandum.
2. Not attached. See Tab A to Document 35.
3. An unknown hand placed a question mark in the right-hand margin.
4. An unknown hand wrote: “accomplished by bilaterals” in the right-hand margin next to this point.
5. An unknown hand circled “G–14.”
6. See footnote 12, Document 32.
7. See Alan Riding, “Sponsors of Rich-Poor Talks Try to Bypass U.S. Objections,” New York Times, August 7, 1981, p. A6.
8. In telegram 11257 from Mexico City, August 27, the Embassy transmitted the text of the letter, dated August 18, from Castaneda to Haig. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D810402–0933)
9. See footnote 10, Document 32.
10. An unknown hand wrote “contacts in Sept—UN ie Ivory Coast” in the right-hand margin next to this and the previous sentence.
11. Not attached.
12. The words “Attachment II” were crossed out.
13. An unknown hand placed a checkmark in the right-hand margin next to this point. For information on the speech, see footnote 2, Document 38.
14. Haig’s address, given before the General Assembly on September 21, focused on international development and outlined five principles for a “strategy of growth.” For the text of Haig’s address, see Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. I, Foundations of Foreign Policy, Document 63.