Mike Pence to sub for Donald Trump at Summit of the Americas

Buenos Aires | Latin American leaders tried to make the best of President Trump’s last-minute cancellation of his trip to the Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru, later this week owing to the crisis in the Middle East, but Mr. Trump’s absence is already dampening expectations the meeting of hemispheric leaders would bring decisive action on Venezuela, one of its key agenda items.

Peruvian President and summit host Martin Vizcarra told reporters in Lima he regretted Mr. Trump’s decision to remain in Washington but that the decision to send Vice President Mike Pence showed continued U.S. commitment to the regional forum.

But among the collateral effects of Mr. Trump’s absence will be a delay in a widely expected face-to-face meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, perhaps the most vocal critic of embattled Venezuelan socialist President Nicolas Maduro, which had been scheduled to take place Saturday on the sidelines of the summit.

“It’s going to be a lost opportunity for the United States to shore up its relations with Latin American countries,” Harold Trinkunas of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation said in an interview.

“We’ll see if Vice President Pence can make up the ground, but the fact that President Trump will not be there is a pretty strong signal of where Latin America ranks … in his overall view of the world,” Mr. Trinkunas said. “Venezuela is definitely going move to the back-burner of the summit.”

Hours before the White House announcement, Mr. Macri had reiterated his deep concerns about the situation in Venezuela, where Mr. Maduro is consolidating power amid an economic crisis that has flooded neighboring states with refugees. Mr. Macri insisted that Argentina would not recognize the results of Venezuela’s much-criticized presidential elections set for May 20 “however much Mr. Maduro insults me.”

For Peru’s Mr. Vizcarra, who has been on the job for just three weeks following the resignation of his predecessor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, on corruption charges, Mr. Trump’s cancellation added to what had already been a rocky lead-up to the triennial talks.

“The presence of President Trump would have been beneficial and important,” Mr. Vizcarra said at Lima’s presidential Palace of Pizarro. “But [Mr. Pence’s attendance] means that the United States ratifies the importance to participate in the summit.”

The Peruvian leader again tried to calm fears that Mr. Maduro, who was not invited to the summit, will crash the gathering and spark a protocol meltdown in the way the Venezuela’s then-foreign minister had done at a Buenos Aires meeting of the Mercosur trade bloc in 2016.

“Any Venezuelan citizen can enter the country. [But] in the specific case of Venezuela’s president, he simply hasn’t been invited to participate in this summit,” Mr. Vizcarra said. “And for the summit to be successful, there are so many other topics and things we need to dedicate time to.”

But for the more than 30 government leaders at the table, Mr. Trump’s absence may make it even more difficult to agree on a common course for the hemisphere’s biggest challenges, or even so much as come up with a joint communique.

“In Panama, in 2015, [and] in Colombia, in 2012, there was no agreed-upon declaration,” Mr. Vizcarra recalled. “We will make every effort that there be one in this instance, but it’s not easy.”

Some on Capitol Hill expressed unhappiness with Mr. Trump’s decision to forgo the trip.

“Every time we say we want to focus on the Western Hemisphere, something emerges in the Middle East or somewhere else that distracts our attention,” Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican said Tuesday at a hearing called to discuss the summit.

New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Mr. Trump’s decision “shortsighted.” “The hemisphere is facing serious challenges, including the crisis in Venezuela, and the U.S. void will be deeply felt,” he said.

The Syrian crisis may have spared Mr. Trump some uncomfortable moments in Peru — and in Colombia where he was supposed to make follow-on trip. His hardline immigration and trade policies have led to tension with Mexico and other Central American states, and Mr. Trump will now not be forced to consider whether and how to greet Cuban President Raul Castro and other leftist leaders who will be in Lima.

“That he was going to be subject to a lot of criticism from leaders that he had sit around the table with,” Mr. Trinkunas observed, “probably didn’t make this a trip that the president was looking forward to.”