Interview with Andrés Rozental, Founding President, Mexican Council on Foreign Relations

Interview

Andrés Rozental, former deputy foreign minister of Mexico, works primarily on global governance issues, U.S.-Mexico relations and international migration. He served for many years in Mexico’s diplomatic corps. Founding President, Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.

Interview

Andrés Rozental, former deputy foreign minister of Mexico, works primarily on global governance issues, U.S.-Mexico relations and international migration. He served for many years in Mexico’s diplomatic corps. Founding President, Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.

- What projects are you currently running? Which of them do you find to be your priorities?

- We deal with very varied topics. We work a lot on US-Mexico bilateral relations. We also have some individual topics, for example migration, security issues, drugs and organized crime, and also regional issues, issues within the Latin American-Caribbean region. That’s one stream of a lot of different things that we do.

We are also working on G20 issues during the G20 Mexican presidency, which will end in December, and Russia will take over. So, financial and economic issues related to the financial crisis, international governance issues, reform of the international financial institutions are also on our agenda during this year.

We do things on the United Nations and our regional organization – the OAS – and other regional bodies. We have run a number of projects on relations with Cuba, especially as concerns the United States’ relationship with Cuba and our own relationship with Cuba.

We are very much like RIAC in the sense that we are looking to educate public opinion on international foreign policy issues: the role of Mexico on the global scene, the influence of global players and actors on Mexico.

- In what form do you prefer to educate public opinion?

- We do it either with open sessions or we have discussions, panel discussions.

We also have a student part of our organization. Until the age of 30 you are a member of the “Young Co-Mexia”, as we call it. So, there are about one hundred members in this organization. And then, when they reach the age of 30, they can apply to be ordinary members of the institution.

Moreover, we do a joint venture with the Foreign Affairs, where every two month we publish an addition called “Foreign Affairs. Latin America”, which is in Spanish, and half of the content is translated from the Foreign Affairs issue in the States and half is original content done in Latin America, mainly in Mexico, of course.

Photo: Mexican Council on Foreign Relations

- Are your members engaged in any sort of research?

- Well, they can be members but membership does not necessarily involve research, yet, some of them are academics, some of them work in universities, some of them work in the Foreign Ministry, some of them are diplomats posted abroad. So, the membership is academic, business, political, former and current government officials, and people from the civil society who are just interested in foreign policy and international affairs.

- How do your decisions and recommendations influence the Mexico’s foreign policy?

- That’s one of the biggest challenges of any institution like ours. I don’t think it’s different from yours as you want to have influence. It depends. In some of the topics we deal with, I think, we have been quite successful in influencing not only our own government, but also, for example, the US government.

One of the examples of that is the project we started about three years ago, and which we ended this year, - on studying the US-Mexican border, the infrastructure, the way it operates and so on. And making recommendations on how to improve the flow of goods, services, and people across the border because we have a border which has an infrastructure that I would call “19th century infrastructure in the 21st century reality”.

That was a joined research we did with the Pacific Council on International Policy that’s based in Los Angeles, and I was called to chair it together with an American who then was named as Comissionary on Border Protection and Customs.

Another way of influence in our possession is current serving government officials among our members. They participate, they are a part of debates, they have their points of view and they listen, especially to what’s being said. So, they pick up things that we say and that we do, and they can use them or not use them depending on what they are interested in.

- Do you work on special reports for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

- We do not do work for the Ministry, but if the Ministry tells us they have an interesting topic that they would like us to work on, then we do. But in Mexico we have a lot of different organizations that can do what I would call this type of contract work for the Ministry, if they are interested, academic institutions, especially.

And then for the US-Mexico relations we have a specific centre for US studies in Mexico, in one of our private universities, and they do contract work for RAND Corporation. If the Ministry tells them they want something done for them, they pay them to do it.

- And the last question. You have already partially answered it. You do collaborate with some other Councils of international affairs, yet, not with us.

- No, because, first of all, I didn’t know about you until now. There are two things in which we will try to find cooperation. One is the issue of migration. The other is the topic of drugs and organized crime, which is a very important issue for us in Mexico because we are neighbors to the US, the biggest drug consumer in the world, and we have now become both production, transit and consumption country.

I’m coming back in December to Moscow because we have several meetings here. There will be a meeting called “The Council of Councils”, which is organized by Richard Haas, the council of foreign relations in New York. Then, there is also a meeting that the Russian Government is organizing of all the peripheral discussion groups of the G20. So, there will be a meeting here of the Youth 20 and Several Society 20, something we started with the Mexican presidency of the G20, it is a“think” 20, which is a collection of think-tanks.

We do not have any resident scholars, we partner with different institutions depending on what the issue is and mostly we partner with the institutions in the US, in Britain, some in Latin America and, hopefully, now with Russian Council as well.

Interviewer: Timur Makhmutov, RIAC Deputy Program Director, Daria Khaspekova, program assistant