Marco Rubio seeks to forge conservative Latin American alliance. Will it work?

Andres Oppenheimer

Get ready for major changes in U.S. policy toward Latin America: President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Florida’s Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio, wants to forge a coalition of conservative leaders to counter the region’s leftist tide.

Rubio has already proposed such a group, which he suggested could include the presidents of Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Costa Rica and Guyana.

Judging from the triumphant entry of Argentina’s president Javier Milei at Trump’s gala dinner at the Mar a Lago club on Thursday, and the fact that he was the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since the Nov. 5 elections, Argentina may play a key role in it.

Before we get into whether such a coalition has a chance of becoming a powerful political force in a region where some of the biggest countries — such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — are ruled by leftist leaders, let’s take a look at what we know so far about the proposed right-wing alliance.

Rubio — who was born in Miami, speaks fluent Spanish and has long championed hard-line U.S. policies against Cuba and Venezuela — publicly called for the creation of such a group of conservative countries earlier this year.

In an April 23 article for the conservative National Interest magazine, Rubio wrote that China, Russia and Iran have made significant inroads in Latin America, and that “building a coalition against such influence is, therefore, obviously desirable.”

Rubio wrote that “we must draw inspiration from the new generation of potentially pro-American leaders in the Western Hemisphere.” He cited, among others, the cases of Argentina’s Milei and Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña, who he said have “a distaste for socialism.”

Rubio wrote that when he met with these presidents, they expressed “a strong desire for greater economic collaboration with the United States.” He added, “It is in our national interest to reciprocate this willingness.”

Pro-American presidents in the region now are at the helm of more than 120 million people, and of economies that together amount to more than $1 trillion, Rubio wrote.

Argentina’s Milei has been one of the region’s most outspoken Trump supporters, since long before the U.S. elections.

Before his meeting with Trump on Thursday, the two had held an 11-minute telephone conversation shortly after Trump’s election victory. Milei told a radio interviewer afterward that “Trump told me that I was his favorite president.”

It won’t be easy for Rubio’s proposed conservative alliance to stop the leftist tide in Latin America because, among other things, China has made major inroads in the region in recent decades while Washington has largely ignored it.

Just last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Perú and inaugurated a megaport to increase trade with Asia, one of many China-financed infrastructure projects in the region. For most South American countries, China — a major buyer of soybeans and other commodities — is their biggest export market.

In addition, Trump’s proposed mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants and his plans for higher import duties for foreign goods could create tensions even with some of the Latin American leaders who are eager to work with Trump.

My guess is that the success of Rubio’s proposed conservative coalition will depend on whether Trump respects the rule of law once he takes office on Jan. 20, or behaves like an elected autocrat.

If it’s the latter — and Trump cracks down on political opponents and independent media at home and keeps praising dictators such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — the proposed coalition of freedom-loving countries will have no moral authority to preach democracy in Latin America.

The fact that Rubio is likely to pay greater attention to Latin America than any secretary of state in recent memory is great news. And his idea of giving greater U.S. support to Latin American countries that oppose leftist dictatorships should also be welcome.

But I’m worried that Trump’s disregard for democratic norms — his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss, his vow to pardon the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and his stated admiration for Putin, among other things — may hurt the proposed coalition’s standing as a force for basic freedoms.

Also, I wonder whether El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who despite his sky-high popularity has dubious democratic credentials after he changed the constitution to stay in power, belongs in a coalition to fight dictatorships in the region.

Rubio’s proposed anti-leftist coalition will be a great idea if its member countries respect the rule of law. Otherwise, it will be morally weak, and ineffective.