As an opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge, international experts from IDEA-Usach and Flacso Ecuador met to analyze the regional contingency in light of the new scenarios of the dominant powers in the international system and their influence in Latin America.
On this occasion, the event was honored by the visit of researcher Ernesto Vivares, Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Sheffield, UK, who specializes in international political economy of development, development financing, and Latin American regionalism.
The guest professor, who is also responsible for the International Relations Research Network at Flacso Latin America, participated in the discussion “Projection of US Tension with AMLC due to China's Presence: Impact on Economic, Political, and International Relations,” in which he reflected alongside IDEA-Usach researchers Dr. Evguenia Fediakova, Dr. Fernando Estenssoro, and Dr. César Ross, winner of the 2024 National History Award.
Among some of the opinions expressed by the specialists on the current global context, it was emphasized that, although the idea of a “crisis” of multilateralism and international trade has taken hold in Latin American academia, the evidence shows that countries have not closed their economies or abandoned treaties, so there is no structural crisis comparable to that of the 1930s.
Another idea proposed in the discussion was that the crisis seems to be narrated from the United States, which, facing the hegemonic transition with China and the rise of digital capitalism, interprets its own commercial decline as a collapse of the global system. The paradox is that the United States declares multilateralism to be in crisis, thereby justifying its weakened position, while the rest of the world—including Latin America—continues to operate within the same system with no signs of a real rupture.
Ultimately, the great dilemma for Latin America lies in determining which development model it will adopt in the context of the evolving global geopolitical and economic landscape.