In late 2021, at a time and place still to be determined, the US president will for the first time in a generation host a meeting of his western hemisphere counterparts. The last one, hosted by Bill Clinton in 1994 shortly after the end of the Cold War, set the stage for work toward a still unrealised Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Inter-American Democratic Charter approved on September 11, 2001.
That date, of course, was also when post-Cold War optimism gave way to the ‘Global War on Terror’ and US foreign policy in the region was once again subordinated to other priorities. Two decades later, amid an increasingly difficult and uncertain effort to maintain global dominance, the US is now seized by a new Cold War with China.
