Mexico’s next president will have to choose between taking up where Calderón left off (i.e. continuing the struggle to defeat the illegal drug trade) and negotiating with the criminal gangs to reduce violence, thereby undermining the progress that has been made thus far, at the expense of so many lives. The choice is the subject of a recent article in Foreign Affairs, “The Cartel Crackdown: Winning the Drug War and Rebuilding Mexico in the Process,” by Robert Bonner, who appropriately advocates that the new president, whoever he or she is, continue the fight against the cartels.

Calderón’s federal police force, while still in need of expansion and improvement, is  nonetheless a remarkable accomplishment. This force has increased from 4,000 to 35,000 officers in the past four years, and now hosts Mexico’s first national crime information system. The judicial reform advocated by Calderón’s administration is also a big step forward for Mexico: Oral trials would increase transparency and modernize the judicial system, and would be a tremendous improvement over the current system, which leaves too much room for corruption and bribery.

The most difficult challenge will be combating the cartels directly. Calderón’s kingpin strategy involves weakening cartel operations to facilitate locating and arresting the leader and his cronies. This strategy, successful in Colombia in the 1990s, is key to preventing Mexico’s descent into a Mafia state, as deduced from Moisés Naím’s Foreign Affairs essay, “Mafia States: Organized Crime Takes Office.” Unlike Russia, in which “the line between government agencies and criminal groups has been irreparably blurred,” Mexico’s government institutions have been reformed, and their progress is the source of considerable pride in the country. Government officials, like law-enforcement officers, are not yet completely immune to corruption, but issues of corruption and rent-seeking have declined dramatically as reforms have been implemented. 

If Mexico’s next president – whether Andres Manuel López Obrador, Josefina Vasquez Mota, Gabriel Cuadri, or Enrique Peña Nieto – does not take up the fight against the criminal gangs, he or she will put more of Mexico’s strengths at risk. Among emerging countries, Mexico has the advantage of a relatively well-educated population, sound fiscal policy, a sophisticated private sector, and an abundance of natural resources. Its economy is forecast to supersede our own by 2030. As a result of these factors, Mexico has been attracting considerable foreign investment – particularly in important industries such as aerospace – despite the repellant forces of gang and monopoly rule. But increasing violence that implies a weak state will eventually discourage even the most enthusiastic investors.

Last November, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes told an audience at the Royal Ontario Museum that violence does not define Mexico any more than the violence of last century’s American mobs define the United States. In doing so, he deftly reminded his Canadian audience of the cynicism and cowardice underlying the view of Mexico as an essentially violent place. To the extent that Canadians and Americans see Mexico’s violence as an unchangeable reality, they abdicate responsibility for feeding that war through demand for the drugs Mexico’s cartels supply. Calderón’s drug war has combatted that view, but if Mexico’s future policies reflect fatigue and defeatism, the rest of the hemisphere will follow suit.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

This Week on OpenCanada

A Post-Afghanistan Military
Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about the F-35. In the first week of our Future of Fighting series, we step back for a moment. Roland Paris and Steve Saideman examine the threats Canada will face in the longterm – and how we should prepare.

OpenCanada at HotDocs
Kim Jong-il liked movies. But there’s a lot more to the connection between geopolitics and film. Anouk Dey interviews the documentarians behind some of this year’s best documentaries on international issues.

Two Priorities for the Canadian Forces
Say good-bye to Uncle Sam. The greatest challenge Canada faces is the transition from a U.S.-led international system to a multipolar one, writes Roland Paris. Fortunately, institutional reform is something Canada is good at.

Towards a Grand Strategy for Canada
We may squabble with Denmark every once in a while, but the real threat to Canada in the Arctic is Russia. Steve Saideman shares some advice on how to counter Putin & Co.

Aid Through Education
Primary education is like hockey: Canada is really good at it. For this reason, Jennifer Jeffs thinks that promoting primary education should be at the centre of CIDA’s agenda.

Rapid Response Question of the Week

What is the biggest lesson Canada can take from its experience in Afghanistan?
Philippe Lagassé from the University of Ottawa says that we learned that amibition alone can’t sustain a military mission. Journalist Don Newman says the Afghan mission proved that fools rush in where wise men fear to read. And Mark Sedra, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, thinks the lesson was the importance of assigning clear and realistic objectives that reflect the local realities.

Research

An Open Call for Research and Commentary
The CIC invites individuals and institutions to contribute their research and commentary to our Natural Resources and Foreign Policy Project. We welcome submissions of reports, papers and essays that respond to the project’s fundamental question: How can Canadians be smart about developing our abundant energy, mineral and forest resources?

Weekly Readings from the World Wide Web

“How the Obama Administration’s Narrative About Chen Guangcheng Unraveled, One Tweet at a Time” by Emily Parker in The New Republic
Has Twitter fundamentally changed geopolitics? Tracing the past week in China-US relations, Emily Parker makes a clear case that it has.

“The Spy Who Came in From the Code” by Matthieu Aikins in The Columbia Journalism Review
When we think of hackers, we think of Anonymous. But authoritarian regimes employ hackers too. On World Press Freedom Day, Canadian journalist Matthieu Aikins reminds journalists of the cautions they must take.

“Harper Needs Fresh Faces in International Portfolios” by Campbell Clark in The Globe and Mail
It’s not because a military helicopter picked Peter MacKay up from vacation or because Bev Oda likes expensive OJ. Campbell Clark explains why Canada needs some new international faces.

“Hollande is Half the Story” by Martin A. Schain in Foreign Affairs
Bonjour, populism! Hollande is getting all the headlines, but Martin Schain says that the real story is about the resurgence of populism in France – and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

“These are the Countries that will Win and Lose in the New Global Paradigm” by Ian Bremmer in Business Insider
First, Ian Bremmer predicted the end of the free market. Now he predicts a G0 world. This may be bad news for the G8 but, for Canada, it’s not quite a zero-sum game.

Events

May 8
Your Navy at Home and Abroad
The Montreal Branch is pleased to invite you to a timely and intimate discussion with Vice-Admiral Paul Maddison, the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy.

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Canada is well-positioned for international leadership in education development. The latest statistics show that Canada already has a record of significant investment in primary education. While countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) spend, on average, 31 per cent more on secondary education than on primary, Canada weighs primary and secondary education more equally, spending only 11 per cent more on secondary. 

Canada’s investments pay off, according to the results of the OECD’s latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) index. Among all OECD countries, Canada’s average scores ranked in the top 10 in all categories – reading, mathematics, and science. Canada also showed a weaker correlation between socioeconomic status and assessment performance than OECD countries did on average. In other words, Canada does a relatively good job of ensuring that wealth and social capital do not monopolize academic success. Canada also continues to lead in higher education: The country’s advanced research programs attract a higher proportion of international students than OECD countries in general.

Successful education results across socioeconomic strata provide an excellent foundation for development programs abroad. But Canadian education policies cannot simply be exported. To raise human capital in developing countries, we must send our human capital to developing countries. CIDA turned a blind eye to this fact when it cut its retired teachers volunteer program last year without explanation.  The program, which was more than 50 years old and partnered with the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, sent retired teachers to work in developing communities in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. As C.D. Howe points out, CIDA’s budget does not reflect the UN’s priority of making primary education accessible to all. Successful Canadian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Canadian Bureau for International Education and Aga Khan Canada have tended to partner with CIDA in areas such as public-sector training and maternal health. While these are both worthy goals, they do not reflect the UN’s broader development mandate and Canada’s particular strength in education.

As the C.D. Howe paper suggests, NGOs specializing in education should not limit themselves to pursuing CIDA’s funds or host governments’ support. They should partner with other non-government actors, both in Canada and in host countries, to build education agencies where public schools have failed for lack of political will. As old aid models of government subsidy give way to new models of pluralistic partnerships, Canada should lead the way.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

This week, Foreign Policy’s Sex Issue published a list of the 25 Most Powerful Women You’ve Never Heard Of. There were no Canadians on it. Had Foreign Policy published a list of the 25 Most Powerful Women You Have Heard Of, it’s still unlikely a Canadian woman would have made the cut (Louise Arbour might be the lone exception).

Getting more women into powerful political positions is a key step in the promotion of women’s rights. Three arguments are usually made in favour of more women in Parliament.

The first argument rightly asserts that Canada is failing to tap into an enormous pool of talent. By making political life undesirable for women, the argument goes, Canada is not served at home or represented abroad by the cream of the crop. More Canadian women than men earn a high school diploma, enrol in college and university programs, and leave these programs with diplomas or degrees. Our best and brightest, it follows, should be at least 50 per cent women. Follow Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s handiwork on the F-35 file and you will no doubt agree.

The second argument is one of fair representation. It makes the case that Parliament is democratically elected. Since slightly more than 50 per cent of Canadians are female, then to be representative, Parliament ought to be about 50 per cent female. Underlying this argument is the assumption that all women think similarly.  Though I am reluctant to accept that there is a uniquely female way of reasoning, or that I am more likely to arrive at the same conclusions as Bev Oda rather than Michael Chong, there are certain issues in which, indeed, female experience begets good policy. Consider maternity support services: is it a surprise that Sweden, a country with 45-per-cent female representation in its parliament, boasts one of the strongest maternity support systems in the world?

In many ways, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. More women in Parliament begets stronger maternity support systems, which begets the opportunity for more women to run for Parliament, which begets more women in Parliament…

The final argument contends that women have certain uniquely female traits that make them valuable additions to Parliament. Andrea Horwath made this argument earlier this week, when she was honoured with Equal Voice’s 2012 EVE Award. She cited the female knack for consensus, exhibited in full force in her past week of political negotiating, as one reason why Canada would benefit from more female politicians.

While Horwath clearly has an aptitude for this type of political maneuvering, it is a mistake to employ this rationale in defence of improving the number of women in Canadian politics. Just as the logic “Women have x which makes them good for x” can be used to advance the goal of increased female political representation, so too can that logic be used to argue, “Women have x which makes them good for…” This sentence is too often finished with “communications” – or in Parliament, “social development” and “international co-operation.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with communications, and our ministers of social development and international co-operation are integral to the success of Canada. I would just like to see more Canadian women following in the footsteps of our four female provincial premiers, demonstrating that women can compete on the same playing field as men, and that no uniquely female characteristic positions them well for one role but not another.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Eugene Meyer
Term: 1946-1946
Nominated by: President Harry Truman
Before he was president, he was: A newspaper publisher
The More You Know: Meyer bought The Washington Post when it was going bankrupt and financed it for more than 20 years without profit to improve its quality.

John Jay McCloy
Term: 1947-1949
Nominated by: President Harry Truman
Before he was president, he was: U.S. assistant secretary of war
The More You Know: During the Second World War, McCloy halted plans to help concentration camp prisoners by bombing the rail lines that led to Auschwitz. He later pardoned convicted Nazi war criminals as High Commissioner for Germany.

Eugene Robert Black
Term: 1949-1962
Nominated by: President Harry Truman
Before he was president, he was: An executive at Chase National Bank
The More You Know:  Black had been such an integral part of the World Bank in its first 16 years, it was often at the time known as “Black’s Bank”.

George Woods
Term: 1963-1968
Nominated by: President John F. Kennedy
Before he was president, he was: An executive at the investment bank First Boston Corporation
The More You Know: Wood went to night school in banking after high school only after receiving the encouragement of his employer at the time.

Robert McNamara
Term: 1968-1981
Nominated by: President Lyndon Johnson
Before he was president, he was: U.S. Defense Secretary
The More You Know: McNamara was secretary of defense to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, but left the office after Johnson rejected his recommendations to freeze troop levels and to halt the bombing in North Vietnam.

Alden Clausen
Term: 1981-1986
Nominated by: President Ronald Reagan
Before he was president, he was: An executive at Bank of America
The More You Know: Clausen earned the nickname “Tom” after playing a character with that name in a school play at age 6. The name stuck throughout his life.

Barber Conable
Term: 1986-1991
Nominated by: President Ronald Reagan
Before he was president, he was: A U.S. Congressman
The More You Know: Though Conable was a long-time ally of Nixon, he severed these ties in disgust after the Watergate scandal.

Lewis Preston
Term: 1991-1995
Nominated by: President George H W Bush
Before he was president, he was: An executive at J.P. Morgan
The More You Know: Preston died of cancer during his tenure at the bank.

James Wolfensohn
Term: 1995-2005
Nominated by: President Bill Clinton
Before he was president, he was: A partner in his own investment firm, James D. Wolfensohn, Inc.
The More You Know: Wolfenson competed at the 1956 Summer Olympics as a member of the Austrian fencing team.

Paul Wolfowitz
Term: 2005-2007
Nominated by: President George W. Bush
Before he was president, he was: U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense
The More You Know: Wolfowitz resigned from the World Bank in 2007 after it was discovered that he was involved with Shaha Ali Riza, a senior officer at the World Bank, and had improperly handled her pay increases.

Robert Zoellick
Term: 2007-2012
Nominated by: President George W. Bush
Before he was president, he was: Vice Chairman of  Goldman Sachs
The More You Know: Zoellick was one of the signatories of the 1998 letter to President Clinton from the Project for a New American Century advocating military action against Iraq. Later, as Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush administration, he was a leading voice for ending the violence in Darfur.

This Week on OpenCanada

Rage Against the Machine
It’s not just the French. Across the western world, voters are deserting the centre ground of politics for fringe parties and populist movements. John Hancock explains why.

The Sex Issue
Foreign Minister John Baird has committed himself to the promotion of women’s rights abroad. But what about at home? Canada ranks 40th in the world when it comes to women in political office and that’s a problem, writes Anouk Dey.

Better Know Your World Bank Presidents
Past presidents of the World Bank came from Golman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and the Bank of America. Dr. Jim Yong Kim is a Korean-born university president. A chart showing just how different Kim is from his predecessors.

Rapid Response Question of the Week

Who is the most innovative thinker on Canada’s place in the world today?
Building Markets founder Scott Gimore says Mark Carney and Elissa Golberg. Former U of T President Rob Prichard says Michael Ignatieff. Former High Commissioner to the U.K. Jeremy Kinsman says Robert Lepage. And John McArthur, Senior Fellow with the UN Foundation, takes the opportunity to issue a wake-up call to Canadian thought leaders on foreign policy.

Weekly Readings from the World Wide Web

“Why Do They Hate Us?” by Mona Eltahawy for Foreign Policy
The revolution hasn’t begun until it shifts from the presidential palaces to the home, writes an Egyptian-American journalist sexually assaulted by Egyptian police in Foreign Policy’s much-discussed Sex Issue.

“‘Seriously, Guys!’ How (Not) to Write About Gender and Foreign Affairs” by Charli Carpenter for The Duck of Minerva
Foreign Policy’s Sex Issue claimed to take gender seriously. Yet, plastered across its cover was a nude women with black body paint suggesting a niqab. Charli Carpenter takes the old boys club of foreign policy to task.

“A Clunky Cyberstrategy” by Rebecca MacKinnon for Foreign Affairs
President Obama says that the Internet and mobile technologies should “empower citizens, not suppress them.” Yet American companies are providing the software authoritarian regimes need to monitor their citizens. Rebecca MacKinnon tackles the paradox.

“Keeping Cool on Nuclear Heat” by Gareth Evans for Project Syndicate
Mitt Romney says that Obama isn’t tough enough on American foreign policy. But Gareth Evans, former head of the International Crisis Group, thinks the President is acting just right on Iran and North Korea.

“Bureaucrats against the Holocaust” by Charles Krauthammer for The National Post
In marked contrast to Gareth Evans, Charles Krauthammer blames President Obama for lack of will.

Events

May 1
What Are the Military and Foreign Policy Lessons of Afghanistan?
A live, online conversation with Steve Saideman and Roland Paris, moderated by Philippe Lagassé, at 2pm est on Tuesday. Part of Strategic Studies Working Group series in partnership with the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute.

May 2
Building Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway: Open Skies and Efficient Border
The Vancouver Branch will host Tony Gugliotta discussing how to make Vancouver International Airport (YVR) the gateway of choice between the Asia-Pacific and the Americas for both travellers and airlines.

May 2
Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sovereignty, Security and Stewardship
The Toronto Branch, with the generous support of Cisco Systems, are pleased to host a special Munk-Gordon Speaker Series Event: the official book launch of Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Stewardship.

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We are delighted that OpenCanada.org is expanding rapidly. Our community is growing internationally, our content moving into new in-depth series and live events, and we have embarked on a series of partnerships, beginning with The Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. Last week, we launched our Weekly Dispatch, which will replace our monthly newsletter, and include notes from the editors, highlights from the site, as well as selected international affairs readings from around the web. In the inaugural Weekly Dispatch, launched the week NATO met to discuss the future of Afghanistan and Australia announced it was prematurely withdrawing its troops, the focus was… Afghanistan. Highlights include five expert takes on what Canada got wrong in Afghanistan and an excerpt from Noah Richler’s new book on Canadians and war.

This Week on OpenCanada

What went wrong in Afghanistan?
Blame Canada? Blame Karzai? Blame Pakistan? We ask Bill Graham, Margaret MacMillan, Roland Paris, Eugene Lang, and Bob Bothwell to identify the culprit behind Canada’s longest ever military commitment.

The Three Bad Decisions Made in Afghanistan
Counter-insurgency is like baseball. Steve Saideman examines the three strikes that doomed the Afghanistan mission.

What Went Wrong in Canada?
Canadian troops withdrew from Afghanistan exactly 50 years after Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous military-industrial complex speech. Anouk Dey thinks it’s more than just coincidence.

A Brief History of Canada and the International Criminal Court
On the 10th birthday of the ICC, we celebrate Canada’s involvement – and wonder why it has waned in recent years.

Rapid Response Question of the Week

Was the first decade of the ICC a more just one?
On the International Criminal Court’s 10th birthday, War Child founder Samantha Nutt, Brookings’ Bruce Jones, Concordia University’s Kyle Matthews, former ambassador Jeremy Kinsman, and author Erna Paris face off on whether the world is a more or less violent place. But are these experts even answering the right question: does justice necessarily mean less violence?

Weekly Readings from the World Wide Web

“Joseph Kony: Trouble in South Sudan,” by Alexis Okeowo for The New Yorker
Everything was supposed to be okay after the referendum. But, according to the New Yorker, all is not well in South Sudan.

“Cairo’s Candidate Shuffle,” by Jeff Martini for Foreign Affairs
Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même. A few reasons why the forthcoming Egyptian election is no different from those that came before the revolution.

“The G-20 Is Failing,” by Edwin M. Truman for Foreign Policy
Canada should be proud of being a G20 country right? Not so, according to Edwin Truman: the G20 simply isn’t what it used to be.

“War Games,” by Noah Richler for The Walrus
In an excerpt from his forthcoming What We Talk About When We Talk About War, Noah Richler argues that, today, Canadian heroes are soldiers, not peacekeepers.

“Human Capital,” by Beth Haddon for The Literary Review of Canada
This year, three Canadians have published books about their kidnapping ordeals in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Maghrib. Which ones to read, and which ones not to read.

“Pictures at a Revolution,” by Luke Allnutt for Foreign Policy
Who needs international relations theorists, when you have data visualization? An overview of how data is being used to explain revolutions.

Events

Louise Arbour: Truth To Power
On Thursday, April 19, OpenCanada.org live streamed a dialogue between Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and UBC President Stephen Toope at UBC. Don’t worry if you missed it. You can still watch the conversation online, which touched on the ICC, the War on Terror, the rights of prisoners, and Canada’s diminished position in international affairs.

April 24
Corruption, Diplomacy and International Sport: Two Game Changers
The National Capital Branch is honoured to host two outstanding warriors for sports integrity, Declan Hill, author of The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime, and Dick Pound, former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

April 25
Inside Syria: A Conversation with Glenn V. Davidson
The Halifax Branch will be holding a roundtable discussion with Glenn V. Davidson, Canada’s ambassador to Syria between 2009 and 2012.

April 25
The Canadian Forces and OP Mobile: The Operation in Libya 2011
The Calgary Branch will be hosting Lieutenant-Colonel Normand Gagné, the Canadian Deputy Air Component Commander charged with helping enforce the No-Fly Zone as part of the mission in Libya.

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Two decisions, in particular, provide evidence of the war in Afghanistan’s assault on Canadian democracy:

May 17, 2006:

The Conservative government, still fresh off its win, held an emergency debate on extending Canada’s military presence in Kandahar through 2009. It was clear that the NDP would vote against the motion, as then-leader Jack Layton had objected to the initial redeployment to Kandahar a year earlier. The Bloc (remember them?) faced anti-war pressure from Quebec, and was also unlikely to support the motion. This left the Liberals holding the balance.

Bill Graham, interim leader at the time, allowed Liberal MPs to vote according to their individual preferences. The result was a split: The majority of the party, including leader-to-be Stéphane Dion, voted against the motion, while the rest, Ignatieff and Graham included, voted for it. Six hours later, the final tally registered 149:145 in favour. In other words, had two Liberals swung to the Dion side, the Conservatives would not have gotten their way.

According to Ignatieff, the Conservatives viewed the Kandahar decision strictly as a “wedge operation” – an opportunity to divide the opposition. As the former Liberal leader put it, the closed-door discussions that day hardly referred to the relevant evidence: the mounting violence in southern Afghanistan, the Canadian military’s counterinsurgency experience, the increasing interference from Pakistan, etc. Instead, the evidence deemed relevant focused on the internal dynamics of the Liberal party.

If this is true, then Eisenhower’s warning is all the more powerful. Following this vote, Canadian casualties continued to mount. In fact, reading through the list of casualties from the point at which the Canadian mission moved to Kandahar, one is struck by their frequency: one every two or three days.

It is not clear whether blame lies with the Conservative party, or whether other parties would have acted similarly if faced with analogous circumstances. What is clear, however, is that Canadian institutions were not equipped to deal with the war in Afghanistan. Rather than treating it as a war to be fought, they treated it as an issue that had to be dealt with.

Mar. 13, 2008:

As mentioned, Canadian casualty rates in Kandahar were very high – higher, in fact, than the casualty rates of all other NATO troops operating in Afghanistan. In addition, in the year following the May 2006 vote, the initial allegations of abuse of Afghan detainees began to surface. As popular discontent about the war surfaced, other parties began to make stricter demands for withdrawal.

When time came to renew the mission to Afghanistan, the prime minister’s main goal, according to Ignatieff, was to keep the issue off the political radar. Going through the Hansard record from this period, one is shocked by how rarely “Afghanistan” comes up. 

Consciously or not, the Conservative government relieved itself of ownership of the war in two ways. First, it appointed the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan (the Manley Committee) to issue a set of recommendations, which it promised to follow. Whether or not it was politically motivated, the decision to solicit expert opinion was a good one. Second, on the Manley Committee’s suggestion, the Conservative government positioned Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan as a training mission (as opposed to a military engagement), with the goal of withdrawal. In doing so, the Conservatives situated themselves as the dramaturges behind the denouement of an unpopular war begun by the Liberals.

Again, the issue here is not the way the Conservatives behaved. (As in May 2006, another party in a minority position may well have acted in the same way faced with similar circumstances.) The more pertinent issue is whether Canada’s democratic institutions are capable of dealing with a war like Afghanistan. Was it in the Canadian national interest for a war that cost Canadian taxpayers more than $18 billion – and invaluable lives – to be swept under the rug so that a minority government could stay in power? Handling a war, it seems, should never mutate into handling a minority government.

As we reflect on Canada’s decade in Afghanistan, the question may not be, “What went wrong in Afghanistan?” but rather, “What went wrong in Canada?” We must begin to consider what reforms to Canadian institutions will ensure we avoid another May 17, 2006, and Mar. 13, 2008. Eisenhower had the courage to demand this conversation from the American population. Perhaps, today, Canada’s leaders should follow suit.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Despite their apparent escape from the financial turmoil experienced in Europe and the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean remain among the regions with the highest economic inequality levels in the world. In Colombia, the host country of this year’s summit, per capita income of the richest 10 per cent of Colombians is 25 times higher than that of the poorest 40 per cent. While widening differentials are explained by the fact that increases in wealth far outpace increases in poverty, it remains true that, although recent growth in the region has benefited the poor, it has benefited the rich more.

To achieve long-term economic sustainability, Latin America needs to confront the challenge of maintaining economic gains while addressing the persistent high levels of poverty and inequality. Commodity price fluctuations are inevitable, but reliance on natural resource revenues, even as they ebb and flow, tends to stymie investment in the human capital needed to further develop the economies of resource-exporting countries. Meantime, as inequality persists or increases, the potential for social, political and economic disruption escalates, dampening the appetite of international capital for that country that may be buoyed in times of high commodity prices, but quickly evaporates when prices fall.

Traditional production structures in the economic systems of natural resource-endowed developing countries make it difficult for those industries to move up the value chain. Without the significant investment in education and technology it would take to develop the economies of many Latin American countries, gaping inequality threatens to remain a feature of many of the region’s resource-based economies.

Leaders meeting this weekend in Cartagena would thus be wise to address two of the summit’s key challenges – inequality and access to technologies – in tandem. Summit participants, from the business forum to the civil society groups, should consider the importance of integrating value and production chains in order to develop a variety of industries – high-tech to community based – that work in relation to natural resource industries, raising demand for human capital in resource-related services.

This year’s Summit of the Americas – Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity – offers a practical, logical and convenient forum for discussing co-operation, partnership and integration tactics that would take advantage of today’s revenues from natural resources to relieve future vulnerabilities caused by inevitable commodity price fluctuations; invest in human capital while creating programs for worker training and education; and develop science, technology and research partnerships that bring the resources of wealthier countries together with the ambition and enterprise of less developed ones.

Creating programs that design frameworks for integration and co-operation that are flexible and anticipate change, development and evolution of societies throughout the Americas is the route to connecting the Americas in partnership for prosperity.

This essay originally appeared in the Globe and Mail. Photo courtesy of Reuters

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