Former foreign minister: Chile becomes synonymous with instability and incoherence

The writer, former ambassador, and former foreign minister of Chilean President Piñera, Roberto Ampuero, comments on the criticism received by the foreign policy during the government of Gabriel Boric.

“Let us not blame only the Foreign Ministry (Minrel) or the Chancellor for this partial disappointment. The President is providing the holistic disappointment,” he says.

Diplomatic sources say Chile has never made so many mistakes in foreign policy since the return of democracy. How do you evaluate the Foreign Ministry during Boric’s government?

Remember that in Chile, there is no foreign policy “of the Chancellor” but that of the President, who directs it, and that the Chancellor executes it. That is why the bulk of this string of errors in foreign policy is rather a constituent part and an extension of the repeated mistakes of the government in other areas of its administration.

The Foreign Ministry has indeed stumbled at times due to sloppiness, but mostly because it has to act in a world that is in epochal change mode and that poses unprecedented challenges that require combining tradition with an eye to the future.

At the same time, the Foreign Minister is obliged by law to apply the guidelines of a President who, unfortunately, despite his youth, is inspired by the President, by a Rousseaunian vision of Latin America, a nineteenth-century idealization of its unity and global influence, a 1960-70s Cepalian distrust of world trade and an inability to appreciate what Chile has advanced in more than 30 years.

Ignorance of one’s own history and the fears and desires that drive countries is a blunder in politics. To this, we must add that the government is in a vertical fall in popularity and has several souls in conflict, a scenario in which it is evident that the continent’s most disciplined and hierarchical party is prevailing.

I am not here to advise the Chancellor, but I would tell her that any foreign policy is blurred if it is tied to the leadership desires of its President, either because he is seeking reelection or the transit to international organizations.

I would tell him that although foreign policy is the last priority of Chileans, according to surveys, it is a fierce battlefield because it seduces a variety of interests and keeps in force those of us who are called to retire.

Chancellor Antonia Urrejola is an expert in Human Rights. Do you think she has made mistakes in other areas, such as foreign trade?

There is a cause-effect phenomenon here. We see the results of a script written before March 11: The person in charge of Subrei is known for his academic criticism of free trade agreements (FTAs) and distrust of world free trade, the axes of Chile’s modernization and prosperity in recent decades.

He is doing what was expected of him; he has been consistent even in his faux pas and slips. Strictly speaking, the problem was created by those who nominated him. Subrei needs Rodrigo Yáñez, “the Czar of vaccines”, or Mario Marcel, who initially aroused many hopes in the economic actors.

One of the most criticized aspects has been the management of Undersecretary Ahumada, known for his opposition to international agreements. How can this anti-free trade attitude affect Chile’s position?

It is already affecting Chile dramatically. Let’s think about the advantage taken daily from the country by our competitors that have already integrated the TPP 11 (Trans-Pacific Partnership Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement), in force since December 2018, a market of more than 450 million people and the most dynamic area of the world economy.

Or let’s think about the astonishment and bewilderment of the Europeans when Chile delays the signature for the Modernization of the Association Agreement with the EU (market of 447 million people).

Note well: it is not the gigantic EU that dodges and delays the procedure, but Chile, with its 19 million inhabitants, the country that awaits a seat in a club of privileged.

It is not only that we are going backward, but at the same time, top countries in this matter continue to advance at an accelerated pace. And the unusual thing: the government announces that it will review documents already reviewed by teams of European and Chilean experts, which implies opening a Pandora’s Box from which anything can come out.

And it is also unusual and arrogant to imagine that the whole world is waiting for Chile and to ignore that the difficult thing is to enter into FTAs like these and get markets and investments.

That is how Chile’s image suffers: it ceases to be a solid, predictable, and constant partner and joins the large group of countries that become synonymous with instability and incoherence.

At that moment, Chilean diplomats are forced to go out and try to give explanations and appease the situation not to scare off investors or weaken the presence of Chilean products abroad.

The government is making many mistakes that it is crowning by apologizing and asking for forgiveness.

This strategy does not work in international politics, a slippery field like an ice rink where mistakes are paid for in the long term (remember Bolivia’s lawsuit in The Hague, where the team led by Claudio Grossman scored a resounding victory for Chile), and the course correction is as slow as that of the aircraft carriers.

The Foreign Ministry, according to its critics, has let many career diplomats go, favoring people close to the Frente Amplio. Does this trend complicate the quality of our foreign policy?

It is a delicate issue, and I will not judge every step taken by our Foreign Minister. The crucial criterion is that those who enter for political reasons should be qualified and aware that the Foreign Ministry treasures history, tradition, and considerable knowledge and that it should be listened to, taken into account, not replaced.

If they had listened to the deep Minrel, I believe they would not have sent the cultural attaché to Barcelona but to Madrid, as I imagine they will end up doing; and the President would have been spared the embarrassment before King Felipe VI at his inauguration.

They would have withdrawn some time ago the nomination of an ambassador to Brazil that the government rejects, or they would have recommended the President’s partner not to sit in La Moneda with her feet on the chair before an elected dignitary from another country (can you imagine the scandal of the left if in Washington, Brussels, or Berlin they received with that “protocol” high representatives of the State of Chile? )

Why was someone like Mariana Durney blocked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? What role did the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Ximena Fuentes, play?

I do not know why a luxury, executive, efficient, and outstanding official with a solid national and international background as Mariana Durney, one of the most brilliant, together with the former Undersecretary Carolina Valdivia, whom I met in Minrel, was blocked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I remember Ximena Fuentes as a high and competent Minrel official, always cheerful and good-humored, smiling, with excellent working relations with President Piñera, and very attentive to detect previous oversights or shortcomings in her area of borders and limits.

In your administration, there was criticism of the influence that an advisor from the Second Floor (Benjamín Salas) had on foreign policy decisions. Do you see a similar risk today with Lucía Dammert intervening from the Second Floor?

Between the presidential foreign policy advisor on the Second Floor of La Moneda and the Chancellor of the Republic, there have been and still are often exhausting and Kafkaesque tensions in Chile.

Extenuating because they complicate and stress the Chancellor, who is the one who in the end puts the face for what he does and what is done to him, and Kafkaesque because it is undoubtedly absurd that a president, who in Chile, chooses and defines his Chancellor, empowers at the same time by action or omission a wannabe Chancellor who harasses the Chancellor.

And this is aggravated if the wannabe Chancellor is encouraged by the obsession to appear in the media. It is incredibly harmful to the head of diplomacy, the Foreign Ministry, foreign policy, the image, and the best interests of Chile.

One of the most praised aspects of Piñera’s government was vaccination. How has the process against monkeypox been carried out?

I don’t know the details, but I imagine that the current Subrei and Minister of Health must be in regular consultations with former Subrei Yáñez and former Ministers Mañalich and Paris, and former Undersecretary Daza since they were successful and efficient in their management of the epidemic, the procurement of vaccines and the vaccinations themselves.

I trust that the government values the work of these internationally recognized professionals and promotes the continuity of good practices that favor the health and safety of the country.

The Argentinean Foreign Minister, Santiago Cafiero, agreed with his Chilean counterpart to continue “working on the clarification” of the flights from our country detected in Argentinean airspace without the corresponding permits. How has this case been handled?

I prefer to share the following: it is essential to maintain close, fluid, and trustful communication between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defense.

With the then Minister of Defense, Alberto Espina, we communicated and consulted permanently, at any time and day, and we solved many executive issues because we cultivated a strong relationship, which facilitated quick coordination on several fronts.

You were ambassador to Mexico; what signal is the government giving by not appointing an ambassador to that country yet?

Mexico is a great and enormous country, and its main partner is, by far, the United States. Still, Mexico has historically maintained a rich and original relationship with the rest of America, and Chile is part of that framework.

In Mexico, I have always felt affection for our country and admiration for our stability, democracy, and development and our successes in the fight against poverty, integration into world trade, and diversification of our international trade.

Let us agree that it is appropriate to have an ambassador in the country with which diplomatic relations are maintained. Still, it becomes an absolute must in countries of the stature of Mexico and Brazil.

There is speculation that the ambassador will emerge after the cabinet change in September. But beyond the fact that today’s situation is not desirable, many Chilean entrepreneurs are coming to Mexico because it is an ideal country to export and position themselves in the huge market of the USA and Canada.

In these cases, for example, the ambassador can make a difference with a close accompaniment.

You also headed the Chilean legation in Spain. Do you think the Chilean foreign service has problems treating the Catalan issue?

We should recover our senses. Let’s agree that it is not sensible to send as cultural attaché of our Embassy in Spain, located in Madrid, a Chilean and at the same time Spanish citizen, who professes publicly and through the RRSS Catalan pro-independence convictions, precisely to Barcelona, in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia.

And less sensible is to forget that before making the announcement, the citizen must renounce his link with Spain and that it does not look good that the seat of the office is moved to the city where the future attaché resided before.

I do not doubt that what should prevail will prevail in the end: the attaché’s office should be established in our Embassy in Madrid. True diplomacy is silent, effective, and heavy.

Do you think the Foreign Ministry’s management has been one of the great disappointments of Boric’s government?

Let’s not blame only the Foreign Ministry or the Chancellor for this partial disappointment. The holistic disappointment is being offered by the President, his national and international governmental management, and the fact -an immeasurable mistake- of becoming the generalissimo of the current project of the new political constitution.

With information from Ex-Ante