López Obrador’s ‘diplomatic pause’ chills relations with the US and Canada

“It is good, but it is on hold.” This is how Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded this week to a reporter’s question about the state of bilateral relations with the United States, after Ambassador Ken Salazar openly questioned the president’s judicial reform. “Pausing means that we are going to take our time,” added López Obrador, who also took aim at the Canadian representative, Ambassador Graeme C. Clark, who was collaterally affected by the controversy.

When Spain refused to apologize for the historical abuses committed in the Americas, López Obrador “paused” contacts in February 2022, and he did the same with Peru in December of that year, after exploding against the government of Dina Boluarte. Although the Mexican executive’s claims are focused on Salazar, the latest pause has put ice on Mexico’s relations with both its two main trading partners, the U.S. and Canada, amid an exchange of statements, accusations of interference and a political context influenced by the upcoming election in the U.S..

More than a formal complaint and less than a definitive break, “diplomatic pauses” have become a recurring tool for López Obrador, used at the president’s discretion in his daily La Mañanera address to highlight Mexico’s differences with other countries. The concept has been at the center of controversy because it has no precedent or basis in Mexico’s foreign policy, nor is it common in the diplomatic praxis of any country. “Diplomatic pauses only exist in López Obrador’s head,” says Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States.

Jorge Schiavon, an academic at the Iberoamerican University, explains that there is already a wide range of options to air the differences between two countries, ranging from diplomatic estrangements and the recall of ambassadors to consultations to the breaking off of relations, in its most extreme version. Each action reflects the degree of the offense and sets the tone for the other country to respond in the same terms, in accordance with International Law. “The pauses have no legal validity, what is sought is to send a political message,” says the specialist. The problem is that since the pauses completely deviate from diplomatic logic, they open up a whole range of possibilities of how those involved can react and add fuel to the shaken trust between both countries.

“Normally, he sets them in motion when he doesn’t have a very clear idea of how things are going to go or a very defined plan of what to do,” says Leonardo Curzio, an academic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The analyst feels that the pauses help the president fulfill three purposes. The first is that “they allow him to cool off without freezing the relationship with the other country.” The second is to gain time for his next strategic move or to avoid immediately entering into thorny issues on the diplomatic front. Finally, they help him to cede the initiative, to “invite the other country to respond” and to define how far he wants to take the disagreement, either to reconsider his position or to escalate tensions.

Spain, for example, left political relations on hold after the 2022 break. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s last official visit was a month after the start of López Obrador’s presidency, and contacts between the two governments have remained cold for years. Deputy PM Yolanda Díaz was not received by the Mexican president in January of this year, although she did meet with president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, and announced that she would attend the latter’s inauguration. There are embassies in operation and stable trade exchanges, despite the chilly relations between the two heads of government.

The case of Peru was completely different. After the pause unilaterally decreed by the Mexican executive, the Andean country did issue a formal response: it declared both López Obrador and the Mexican ambassador personae non gratae. Since then, Mexico has only maintained one chargé d’affaires in Lima, and relations are down to the bare minimum due to the differences with Boluarte, the snubs in the Pacific Alliance and the imposition of visas on Peruvian citizens this year. In other cases, there were no half-measures, such as the clean break with Ecuador after the illegal raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito. Pía Taracena, a researcher at the Iberoamerican University, believes that the pauses are messages for domestic consumption that unnecessarily complicate Mexico’s external scenario and in that sense, they are not so new. “It is very typical of revolutionary nationalism, it does this to win applause from its followers, but nothing is gained in the diplomatic field,” says Taracena.

The tensions in relations with the United States and Canada, however, entail greater risks for Mexico. The president clarified in La Mañanera on Wednesday that the latest “pause” applies only to Ambassadors Salazar and Clark. “Relations with the governments continue,” said López Obrador, although a day earlier he had launched multiple criticisms of the U.S. State Department. “This pause is more surprising than the others,” says Schiavon.

The lack of clarity about the implications of the “pause” and to whom it was directed caused the governments of the United States and Canada to acknowledge receipt. Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere of the State Department, backed Salazar and made it clear that the ambassador’s “concerns” about the risks to Mexican democracy by weakening the judiciary are those of the entire U.S. diplomatic apparatus, and are reflected by the nervousness of investors in that country.

“There could be a significant escalation of tensions,” Schiavon warned. “I would not be surprised if there were another ‘pause,’ but this time in investments coming from Canada and the United States,” he anticipated. Following the positioning of the Joe Biden Administration through Nichols, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement that “certain constitutional and legal reforms currently proposed by the Mexican government – in particular, the judicial reform and the proposed elimination of independent regulatory agencies – risk undermining the rule of law and the guarantees of protection for business operations in Mexico. The agency also said the reforms “put at risk Mexico’s obligations under other international treaties to provide all with the right to a competent, independent, and impartial judicial system,” thus undermining the confidence of the country’s main source of foreign direct investment.

Democratic and Republican senators, despite being locked in an electoral battle, also joined together to reject the proposal. “It is a direct and unavoidable message, which was initially formulated by the ambassador in a very friendly manner, but which came directly from Antony Blinken’s office with Biden’s blessing,” says Curzio. “The advantage that López Obrador gives himself with the ‘pause’ is to say ‘I already told you that I was on pause and I will return to the subject at the time that suits me.’”

Sarukhán sees, instead, an attempt by Washington to de-escalate the “war of words” because Biden needs Mexico’s cooperation on the immigration front, one of the thorniest issues of the presidential campaign and of his own presidency. “The real problem is that the president creates a climate that makes the bilateral relationship gallop backwards to decades prior to the Free Trade Agreement,” he says. For Taracena, another variable to consider is whether Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will take up the issue in the campaign. “The Democrats’ strategy has been patience, dialogue and diplomacy. It is clear that this is not Trump’s strategy,” he points out.

Another element that has made the atmosphere more rarefied is that López Obrador did not announce any pause during Trump’s presidency. Not after his xenophobic and anti-immigrant speeches, nor after launching threats to raise tariffs and bury the Free Trade Agreement, nor after the most recent attacks of his campaign. Schiavon points out that, in addition to the closeness between both presidents, Trump proposed a quid pro quo: not to get involved in Mexico’s affairs, if it met his expectations in containing migratory flows.

“Trump’s game is much more ruthless than that of Biden or Salazar, in which Mexico clearly yielded,” Curzio agrees. Despite the threats, López Obrador seemed to be more comfortable without open criticism like that launched by the Democrats. He was also much more cautious during the first half of his term in the management of foreign policy: the differences with Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Spain, the United States and Canada are all the product of the last two years. Sarukhán warns, however, that the Democrats’ patience is finite. “The big question is how much longer the president is willing to stretch the rubber band with a farce like the pause,” he says.

The last point of controversy is the moment at which the cooling of relations with the United States and Canada is taking place: just as Sheinbaum is getting ready for her inauguration. “The president is limiting the path and the wiggle room of the president-elect in the design of her agenda and her bilateral relationship with the United States,” says Sarukhán. Curzio’s interpretation, on the other hand, is limited to domestic politics: the long chain of confrontations between López Obrador’s executive and the judiciary, and the plan he has for succession. “The president is clearly setting the tone and the time of this symphony,” he says.

“It has made things quite complicated,” adds Taracena, who sees Sheinbaum already attempting to cushion the turbulence of the last few weeks, such as with her request that the judicial reform not be fast-tracked by Congress. Schiavon, finally, sees an opportunity in the “pause”: the incoming president will be able to decide to reactivate the relationship after assuming the presidency, most likely with the appointment of another ambassador. “In short, patience: the matter will be resolved almost automatically through the electoral and political channels of both countries.” The course of the next few days will determine whether the bilateral relationship will come out of the refrigerator or be brought to the freezing point.

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