My Take | After China, Mexico gets the US squeeze
- An isolated Washington is angry at a long-time sidekick, which is trying to assert independence over the Ukraine war, even though most of Latin America has refused to join the US-led economic war against Russia
How would the United States respond if China or Russia tried to extend its military to Mexico or Canada? The US political scientist John Mearsheimer asked this rhetorical question in his 2015 lecture, “Why is Ukraine the West’s fault?”, which has notched up more than 23 million views on YouTube.
We all know how the US would respond in a similar situation; the Cuban missile crisis, anyone? But no one would dare go to such extremes to provoke the US nowadays. Consider the warnings given to Mexico last week just for trying to stay neutral over the war in Ukraine.
Pointing to his lapels with the symbolic flags of Mexico, the US and Ukraine, in an address to a group of Mexican lawmakers, US ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar sounded a not-too-subtle warning. Speaking in Spanish, he said: “We have to be in solidarity with Ukraine and against Russia. The Russian ambassador was here yesterday making a lot of noise about how Mexico and Russia are so close. This, sorry, can never happen. It can never happen … When a family is attacked, the family comes together … Between Mexico and the United States there can be no difference, we have to be the same.”
Salazar’s angry comments referred to the formation of a pro-Russian group in the Mexican Congress where the day before Salazar’s attendance, the Russian ambassador, Víktor Koronelli, was invited as a guest of honour.
And, as reported by El País online, General Glen VanHerck, the chief of both the US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defence Command, complained before the US Senate that Chinese and Russian intelligence agents were actively operating in Mexico and nearby regions to infiltrate the US. As the El País report noted, it was a barely disguised warning to Mexico and its Latin and Caribbean neighbours.
Understandably, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was incensed.
