Chilean Asia policy: What’s missing?

There is no doubt that Chile's policy on Asia has had its ups and downs. Fortunately, it has enjoyed a solid consensus and the relevant FTAs have been adopted almost unanimously. And although the president of Peru has stated that his nation will compete with Chile as an Asian platform in South America, much remains to be done on both sides of the border.

What can we do to strengthen our Asia policy? To begin with, we can make it official State policy, thereby making relevant initiatives available for approval by Congress. This does not, however, mean that the executive branch will no longer lead on foreign policy matters. There will always be emergency measures on which the Executive must act, not to mention presidential addresses to the Lower House or Senate. Legislative involvement does not signify a decrease in Executive prerogative. Rather, it often translates into a better understanding of said leader’s foreign policy. Another option involves the certain foreign policy measures being restricted to review by the Lower House’s Foreign Relations Committee. This option would not require Senate review.

In my opinion, more needs to be done to improve relations with the sanctioned Asia-Pacific embassies in Chile. This means more Foreign Ministry officials attending events to which they have been invited. And these attendees should be the highest-ranking available (Secretaries, Ministers of State). Given their Confucian philosophy, authority and verticality are extremely important to Asians. When they visit us, they observe these norms. As an example of this, last year's visit by Singapore’s Prime Minister. This visit unfortunately caused the cancellation of the president of Korea to Chile. We sincerely hope this trip will be rescheduled for some day soon.

It is also necessary to monitor our Asian FTAs implementation process. In terms of exports, the Korean and US FTAs have undoubtedly benefitted us the most (i.e., fruit, forestry, farming and livestock sectors). The services portion of the FTA with China has been strengthened, too. In the Southern American Pacific region, the Mexican FTA most notably benefitted our dairy. Now we need to get more out of our FTA with Canada which, despite the global crisis, offers many interesting opportunities for Chilean meat, wine and frozen fruits (e.g., raspberries) exports.
It would also be useful to increase the budgets of our diplomatic missions in the most significant Asia-Pacific nations and India, prioritizing by relevance (China, Korea, Japan, India), and pursuing FTA talks with ASEAN, which have successfully integrated themselves with the three most important powers in Asia.

It behooves Chile to have a coordinated Asia policy, especially in light of the recently proposed Office of the Undersecretary for Foreign Trade. This cabinet-level post would be the perfect entity to monitor and implement our FTAs, among other issues. It should definitely maintain close ties to Chile’s export trade associations, to the Foreign Ministry, and all those institutes and organizations that can help design a long-term official State policy for one of the most dynamic in the world. The crisis is no excuse for dropping our guard.

We also need to make inroads on the issue of our national image campaign. By this I mean going further than a simple a Republic of Chile “trademark”. This involves more than simply equating Chile with its export products (wine, salmon, copper, fruit, etc.) It means letting the world know what Chile has always been. Chile is a Western-oriented nation that has a deep vocation for the Pacific. It also has values in common with Asia, at least as regards business interests; all this, in spite of problems which may exist in Latin America.

We need continuity in diplomacy (developing more Asia experts), academia and business. Chile should raise awareness and, wherever possible, sensitize public opinion to these three areas because of their long term relevance to the future of the world.

The current crisis has shown that the world is not unipolar. Asian countries, though suffering, are, on the whole, better able than others to address its challenges. As such, Asia is of vital interest to Chile when developing its foreign policy.