“It's a mistake, AMLO is mixing things up”: Agustín Basave on Mexico's stance on Russia's attack on Ukraine

A month and a half after Russia began its bloody attack on Ukraine, a tragedy that has so far left hundreds of fatalities, a large part of the international community has pushed as far as it could to stop this conflict. Led by the United States, many countries and the United Nations (UN) itself have canceled Vladimir Putin's government. From the economic sphere to its withdrawal from global treaties and conventions. The last of these was the UN Human Rights Council, from which Russia was expelled. But, on this situation, Mexico's position has caused great controversy. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has been neutral at all times. So much so that, although he said he condemned the attack, he chose to abstain from that vote.

“It seems like a mistake to me, things are getting mixed up that shouldn't be mixed up. It seems that President López Obrador does not want to fight with Russia,” Agustín Basave Benitez (Monterrey, 1958), a Mexican diplomat and politician with a PhD in Political Science from Oxford University, told Infobae. “In particular, he does not want to be complacent with the United States and that has led him to say that he is not going to participate in economic sanctions, to abstain from this vote. In general to say that it is not going to get into the conflict in any sense, beyond the original condemnation”.

For the former Mexican ambassador to Ireland, beyond the core of the conflict in Eastern Europe, the Mexican position follows a kind of message that AMLO seems to want to send to his counterpart Joe Biden.

“This Russian invasion of Ukraine is taking place at a time of friction with the US government. A moment when the bilateral relationship is straining, which is leading López Obrador to make these mistakes, trying to send a message to that country. He considers that what he does for Ukraine is a concession to the United States,” he said, “as if the Ukrainian people have no rights, as if the thousands who are dying in that war do not have human rights.”

The Mexican diplomat insisted that, at times like the current one, it is vital to take positions beyond international negotiation, “the Russian invasion of Ukraine is indefensible, we cannot remain silent before this”. He also recalled that historically the left has always sided with the oppressed, “well, here the oppressed is Ukraine and the oppressor is Russia.”

The former PRD director recalled that at the international level, among those who have avoided speaking out against Putin, two reasons influence: those who are not with him but are determined to prove that they are not “on the side” of the United States either, and those who feel a kind of nostalgia for socialist Russia of the last century. “There is a tsarist left supporting Putin, who has absolutely nothing left.”

“We live in the era of anger of, what I call, post-rationality,” Basave recalled, adding that in previous administrations Mexico always spoke in tune with its neighbor to the north, although with some room for maneuver that allowed him to be on good terms with opponents such as the Castro regime in Cuba. “But there was an unequivocal alliance stance,” he said, recalling the case of President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940) during World War II, when he sided with the allies (Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States).

The diplomacy expert considered that the contradiction that on Wednesday the Mexican representative to the UN, José Ramón de la Fuente, pointed out that his country condemned the attack on Ukraine, but on Thursday he abstained from voting to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council, suggests “a game of balances”, as if they were saying “if already we condemn, so far, we are not going to do anything else.”

And more now, he stressed, that the relationship between the governments of AMLO and Biden is becoming increasingly strained as a result of other conflicts, such as the one generated by the Mexican impulse to his electricity initiative, since it weighs the state body over private investors, most of them American. “The president is mixing that up.”

Agustín Basave concluded that, although in the conflict over the Russian attack in Ukraine, Mexico “does not look much”, the real impact of the decisions being made will be reflected in its relationship with the United States, which is key in many ways, starting with remembering that it is its main trading partner.

“(Mexico) has an incoherent foreign policy, it is not clear in any way, not even with regard to the country most important to us, the superpower, the neighbor. You don't perceive a long-term strategy... a little bit the style of the house.”

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