In the face of major global conflicts, Ibero-America has consistently failed to adopt a unified and coherent stance. Whether in response to NATO’s interventions, the war in Ukraine, or tensions in the Middle East, Latin American countries tend to fragment into divergent camps. This chronic disunity not only reflects internal ideological differences but also undermines the very idea of regional integration and sovereignty.

Two primary causes explain this phenomenon: the absence of genuinely national political movements and the historical divide between external ideological frameworks—namely capitalism and communism—that have overshadowed any project of civilizational unity.

Unlike civilizational states such as China, India, or even Russia—where national identity, historical continuity, and a clear geopolitical vision form the basis of political discourse—Latin America has never consolidated a long-term national or civilizational project. In these civilizational states, foreign policy is seen as an extension of internal cultural, historical, and strategic imperatives.

Latin America, by contrast, has largely oscillated between imported ideologies. During the Cold War, the region became a battlefield between capitalism and communism, with nations aligning with Washington or Havana-Moscow according to ideological or geopolitical convenience. This legacy persists today. Many Latin American governments still react to global events through the prism of left versus right, rather than from the standpoint of their own national interests.

This lack of a national worldview—rooted in history, values, geography, and culture—explains why Latin America remains vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers. Political elites often adopt foreign narratives wholesale, whether neoliberal or anti-imperialist, without grounding their positions in a deep reflection about their own civilizational role in the world.

As a result, responses to global conflicts are improvised, reactive, and inconsistent across the region. One group of countries may condemn Western interventions, while another praises them—each side echoing a different global actor’s script.

If Ibero-America wants to avoid repeating this pattern of fragmentation and subordination, it must first undertake a process of political and cultural change and articulate a new Latin American synthesis. Such movements must be capable of producing independent analyses of global conflicts, rooted in a continental vision of Latin America as a unique cultural and geopolitical entity.

Second, the region must cultivate strategic consensus through new regional institutions that promote long-term thinking, defense cooperation, and coordinated diplomacy. A common foreign policy will only emerge when Ibero-American countries recognize themselves as part of a shared civilizational space—not merely as fragmented republics reacting to external pressures.

The task is not easy. But as multipolarity reshapes the global order, the price of inaction will be continued irrelevance. Latin America must rise not as a follower of a globalist or liberal agendas, but as a sovereign actor with its own voice—clear, united, and anchored in a civilizational project of its own making.