Ramdin's challenges at the OAS
The new secretary general must balance consensus building with action, all while keeping an eye on the DOGE budget chainsaw.
Yesterday, the OAS elected Suriname’s Foreign Minister, Albert Ramdin, as its next Secretary General. The good news was that a tough and contentious race ended smoothly and with apparent unity across the hemisphere in support of Ramdin. There were scenarios in which this election turned ugly and divided the hemisphere. The OAS avoided that outcome for now.
The way in which he was elected represents Ramdin’s biggest strength and his biggest weakness: Secretary General Ramdin represents an older school of diplomacy within the OAS that values consensus.
Consensus sounds great until you ask “consensus at what cost?” The cost is often a lack of action or relevance. A secretary general who insists on unanimous or near unanimous policies will end up only pushing forward resolutions that don’t do very much.
Take the issue of Venezuela. Idealistically, in my view, the hemisphere finds a consensus in which all of the countries in the OAS take a unified stand against Maduro’s dictatorship. However, my preferred policies aren’t necessarily shared by the nearly three dozen countries voting in the OAS. Some want aggressive sanctions, some want cautious diplomacy, and some think the concept of sovereignty means the organization and its member states have no right to involve themselves in Venezuela’s internal affairs at all. The most recent votes on Venezuela at the OAS have been nail-biters that have divided the organization, with outcomes sometimes favoring Maduro and sometimes favoring his opponents.
On Venezuela, a major critique of former Secretary General Almagro was that he was too eager to push his own agenda whenever he could get to the correct side of a 51-49 split. The concern about Ramdin is that he will choose inaction over attempting the votes in which one side will win and the other will lose, waiting for a unified consensus that never arrives.
This same split will define the highest profile issues the OAS faces. On election monitoring, how can the organization deal with future elections that are stolen or in dispute? How does the organization manage to support security policies that fall in line with democracy and human rights in an era where so many leaders tilt towards security populism? How can an organization so dependent on US funding and support manage a hemispheric response to the perceived threat that many countries feel from the current US administration’s policies?
That last challenge may come to haunt Ramdin’s term. The Trump administration was unusually diplomatic and graceful in how it responded to the election of Ramdin, who was not their preferred candidate. Kudos to them. I’m doubtful about how long that diplomatic attitude lasts. The Musk-Trump chainsaw cutting all funding for any foreign spending that falls even remotely out of line with their ideology is coming for the OAS when the organization does not follow the US’s preferred agenda. Ramdin’s desire for hemispheric consensus is going to crash right into a US that is going to be quite demanding on getting its way. While it would be noble to stand up for the OAS as a body that is independent of the US and not a Cold War era puppet, the fiscal reality of doing so could drag down many of the quiet and unsung successful programs at the organization.
Ramdin’s brand of quiet, careful, consensus-building will struggle in an era of social media and polarized politics. I’m hopeful he succeeds because the hemisphere needs effective institutions, but I’m also realistic about the challenges he’ll face in doing so.