Summit Declaration

President Obama has just written an op-ed for over a dozen newspapers throughout the Americas, in the eve of the Fifth Summit of the Americas that is about to take place in Trinidad & Tobago.

This is significant.  I care deeply about the Latin America and the rest of hemisphere, and wanted to write about the upcoming Summit.  Yet until now what we had was a draft Summit "Declaration" which the country leaders and their (Foreign Ministerial?) teams had been belaboring for a couple of years.

That draft "Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain" is a travesty.  It is interminable and practically devoid of concreteness or substance.  It would be funny if we wouldn't be in the midst of a major economic crisis, one which is expected to hit South America particularly hard in the coming months.  Andres Oppenheimer has commented on that draft, labeling it as a joke.