China and Soros in Latin America

I'm having a Tom Friedman moment. The New York Times columnist is always smart but often repetitive about the world being flat, China and India coming on strong at our expense, yada, yada, yada. After a brief trip to Uruguay to speak at a meeting of the Organization of American States, I'm beginning to understand his obsessions.

Here's the story: I got invited to speak at an OAS meeting of governmental spokespersons, the flaks for the leaders of the Western hemisphere nations. It was a fun and interesting meeting with lots of talk about freedom of the press throughout the hemisphere. What was most telling, I thought, was who was there and who wasn't.

No one from the White House press office attended the meeting. I gather the U.S. embassy in Uruguay sent someone but they had no one at the table where the conference was taking place. When the U.S. misses something like this, everyone notices. And guess who helped pay for the conference? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. China, of course, isn't even an OAS member but they know it's in their interest to pay attention to Latin American affairs and they obviously have the money to court good will. The conference was also financed by George Soros's Open Society Institute. What a combo!

Look, I don't mean to exaggerate the importance of this one episode. it's not the end of the world if the U.S. misses a conference and, to be fair, the Canadians and Mexicans also seemed to be missing, too, while smaller nations like Dominica and Guyana--as well as giants like Brazil--were represented. Still, seeing the Chinese diplomats hover at the meeting and finance one that the Americans essentially skip n our own hemisphere makes me wonder what in the world is going on. All the talk of China's growing soft power suddenly became very real to me in a Friedmanesque way. More on this tomorrow....