Trump’s plans to build a wall at its south border, deport millions of undocumented immigrants and renegotiate NAFTA force Mexico to reconsider the friendly relation it used to maintain with the U.S. The Obama era is gone and the cooperation narrative that existed between the two countries is being challenged. Mexico needs to defend or create new narratives to confront Trump, and win allies in the United States to help Mexico defend its interests.
The importance of having a narrative goes beyond communicating a nice speech. It is more about creating a paradigm for a conducive relationship. In this sense, Mexico needs a paradigm of cooperation with the U.S. in order to help the two countries facilitate negotiations, create alliances, influence public opinion and build a regional vision.
During the Obama administration, Mexico promoted two narratives that accompanied the implementation of its foreign policy priorities. President Felipe Calderon talked about “shared responsibility” to tackle issues on security and migration. After current President Peña Nieto took office, a “common prosperity” narrative was set in place to highlight Mexico’s economic ties with U.S. and communicate the benefits from the integration with North America.
These two narratives survived because Mexican and American interests converged into economic integration. Arguably, the success of these narratives could be seen on the reciprocity from U.S. government officials during high-level visits and regional summits. Additionally, Mexico’s public diplomacy efforts were key to spread the narrative by doing alliances with key actors in the bilateral relation and disseminating information about the benefits of trade.
Narratives are also a mean to generate soft power, the power based on attraction rather than coercion. Coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye, soft power claims that values, principles and policies are a source of attraction when perceived as legitimate or with moral authority. Nye argues that universal values are more attractive than parochial values, because States are likely to reinforce shared values among each other.
Mexico is a middle power that shares common values and principles of liberal democracies. It is precisely by speaking more about these values that Mexico should generate and use soft power as a resource to challenge Trump’s discourse. Thus, amid Trump’s threats of using protectionist and unilateralist measures, Mexico should be more assertive about the principles of free trade and regional integration, which the country embraced since it started to open itself to commerce in the 90’s. Mexico’s advocacy for free trade and regional integration should be a main component of its narrative to help the efforts of American companies defending NAFTA and echo the stances of those in Congress opposed to NAFTA renegotiation.
Similarly, Mexico should respond to Trump’s discriminatory and xenophobic discourse by being more vocal about the country’s commitment for human rights, diversity, migrant and refugees’ rights and gender equality. Many of these causes, which are highly valued by wide sectors of the American people and currently perceived under threat by Trump’s executive orders, are already being championed by Mexico in multilateral forums. For example, Mexico has strongly advocated in the United Nations to stop criminalizing migration and see migrants as agents of change and development. Yet, as Nye argues, it is not enough to proclaim values without translating them into actions. Hence, Mexico’s most urgent challenge should be addressing human rights violations.
Lastly, the power of a narrative has also been discussed as a tool that states wield to impose their will on others. As argued by scholar Janice Mattern, states can force another state into agreement by verbally fighting over a reality or point of view with the use of blunt, non-negotiable threats. Mattern considers verbal fighting is a communicative form that shows the hard face of soft power and uses the example of the U.S.’ narrative on the war on terrorism, arguing that the U.S. promoted it as the righteous and only logical response to 9-11, promising harm to several states that did not abide to the American viewpoint.
As a country that lacks hard power to challenge the U.S., Mexico should look more into soft power strategies to earn the respect that it’s demanding from Trump. In this sense, it is worth exploring the potential moral authority that Mexico can earn from adopting a more aggressive stance, particularly when the responses of the Mexican government have been perceived as not strong enough.
This does not mean that Mexico should adopt a warmongering, chauvinistic rhetoric, but rather to think how to appeal to global, shared values and when to give blunt, non-negotiable responses whenever Mexicans in the U.S. and the country’s economic interests are compromised.
Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric put Mexico under the world’s spotlight in an unprecedented way. As an aggravated country, Mexico’s claim for respect is a legitimate demand in the eyes of many. Mexico should see it as a soft power opportunity and harness the context to build moral authority.