Unfortunately, this opportunity – with all it portends for economic prosperity, sensible immigration policies and a common front against the hemisphere’s radical Left – could be squandered if Mr. Calderón yields to pressure to make the same mistake as his predecessor, Vicente Fox. That will be the effect if the new president of Mexico restores to office Mr. Fox’s first Foreign Minister, Jorge Castañeda.
As a new analysis by Fredo Arias-King just released by the Center for Security Policy (available at http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/PDF/Castaneda.pdf) makes clear, Castañeda and his team (including such figures as Mexico’s former consul in New York, Arturo Sarukhan, Castaneda’s controversial half-brother Andres Rozental and Ricardo Pascoe, former Mexican ambassador to Cuba) are themselves radical leftists who did grave harm to U.S.-Mexico relations the last time around – and will surely do so again if given the chance.
For example, they were instrumental in withdrawing Mexico from the decades-old mutual defense pact known as the Treaty of Rio, a decision announced ironically just days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. They seemed determined to find occasions to work at cross-purposes with the United States – notably, in connection with our effort to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to various Security Council resolutions.
Most troubling, however, was the Castañeda cabal’s efforts to convert the initially pro-U.S. Fox and his government into friends of the hard left throughout Latin America.
Castañeda personally engineered closer ties to the Castro apparatus in Cuba, encouraged the narco-terrorist FARC in Colombia and strove to rehabilitate Danny Ortega and his Sandinista Party in Nicaragua. It is not hard to assign responsibility for these initiatives since they were abandoned immediately after Castañeda left the foreign ministry.
As a result not only of their ideological bent but their incompetence, Castañeda and his team blew the opportunity afforded when the newly inaugurated George Bush assigned top priority to what he called a "special relationship" with Mexico and traveled there as his symbolic first trip abroad. Mexico dropped in the priority list for Washington, even before 9/11, and has never recovered since.
The possibility that the likes of Jorge Castañeda might return to power is especially dangerous for both Mexico and the United States at a moment when Ortega may triumph over a divided democratic-right in Nicaragua and the Chávez-Castro axis is making inroads in so many other places. Under Castañeda or his cabal, it is unimaginable that the Mexican government would play the constructive role it might otherwise perform in the post-Castro transition in Cuba.
It would be a tragedy if, at this critical juncture – and despite the preferences a majority of Mexicans expressed at the ballot box, Felipe Calderón were to squander the chance for Mexico to serve as a bulwark against the combined dangers of Chavismo and Fidelismo and to enjoy a strong, constructive and mutually beneficial relationship with the United States. It is in the interests of both of our countries that President Calderón’s vision of a freedom-loving and -supporting Mexico be represented at the Foreign Ministry, not that of Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Jorge Castañeda.