Since the return of democracy in 1990, Chilean politics has been characterized by the search for consensus, a mature approach that has undoubtedly contributed to the country’s political and economic stability. The problem is that the consensus doesn’t extend to some fundamental points regarding national identity and, above all, to where Chile belongs in the world.

Most visitors here are soon struck by what the sociologist Jorge Larrain calls the Chilean “fascination with all things foreign.” The novelist Isabel Allende begins her book “My Invented Country” quoting one intellectual saying: “Why don’t we sell Chile and buy something closer to Paris.”

This affinity with the West is coupled with a degree of distain for other South American countries. A Chilean diplomat once told me: “Chileans are in favor of regional integration; we are just not satisfied with the region that geography has bestowed upon us.”

On the other hand, there are many people here with a strong sense of belonging to South/Latin America. The most popular Chilean rock band of all time, Los Prisioneros, articulated the position concisely with two hit songs: “Latinoamerica es un Pueblo al Sur de Estados Unidos” (Latin America is a nation to the south of the US) and “Porque no se Van” (why don’t you go), a defiant call to those fascinated by the West to pack their bags and go there.

Without broad agreement regarding a nation’s identity, and where it fits in the world, it is difficult for a democratic state to forge a coherent international course, and foreign policy becomes a day-to-day exercise in problem solving. Chilean diplomats must in fact dread the “with us or with them” decisions that international affairs are increasingly tossing up.

For many years it wasn’t like that, however, and a central plank of Chilean foreign policy was to stay on the good side of Brazil, the regional bigwig. All that changed in 2003 when Santiago turned its back on Mercosur, the Brazilian led regional bloc, and signed a bilateral free trade agreement with the US.

This Thursday, Chile’s press announced that a recent book about the Brazilian President Lula da Silva, “A Trip with the President,” shows how dim a view Brasilia took of what it perceived as Chile breaking the common front and negotiating alone with Washington. President Lula is quoted in the book as having said privately: “Chile is shit. Chile is a joke. They signed an agreement with the Americans. They are trying to fuck us all, they are shitting on us.”

What probably annoyed Brasilia most was that former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso believed that the election of his close friend Ricardo Lagos to the Chilean presidency would lead to the full incorporation of Chile into Mercosur. Instead, Lagos turned his back on the region and jumped into bed with “the Americans.”

Like Lagos before her, President Michelle Bachelet came to power promising to draw Chile closer into the “Southern Cone family,” only to quickly back peddle. Bachelet’s hopes to forge a “strategic alliance” with Argentina were effectively dashed last month after a tiff with Buenos Aires over gas prices that led the mainstream Chilean media to launch an intense smear campaign against the Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner.

Left without an effective regional policy, the Bachelet government’s plan B was to quickly re-enter the Andean Community, an ineffective trade bloc made up of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, that most analysts have long regarded as functionally dead. This latest Chilean move is unlikely to go down well in Brasilia, where it will be seen as sowing division in South America.

It will, however, please Washington. State Department officials will be glad to see Chile distancing itself from the unholy alliance of Brazil and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Okay, so if you’re not with the Brazilians, how about being with the Americans?

The problem is that Chileans are even more divided regarding what Chile’s orientation toward the U.S. should be. And once again, the lack of consensus in the population translates into a topsy-turvy foreign policy.

Good luck and good management enabled Ricardo Lagos to oppose the invasion of Iraq in the United Nations Security Council, where Chile held a non-permanent seat, and still sign a free trade treaty with George Bush’s administration. (Chile was no doubt aided by Washington being keen to break the united negotiating front that Brasilia was trying to forge in South America.)

But since then Chile has not been the dutiful satellite that the U.S. imagined. Santiago pushed Jose Miguel Insulza as general secretary of the Organization of American States, in the face of stiff opposition from Washington in 2005. It is probable that Chile will further anger the U.S. in October when it backs Venezuela’s bid for a temporary United Nations Security Council seat. Washington has made it clear that it will “simply not understand” if Santiago backs Caracas. Santiago’s own criterion, to vote for the country that garners most support in the region, leaves it with little choice.

Washington will be further angered when, as looks inevitable, Chile ratifies the convention on the International Criminal Court (ST, August 31). Washington is strongly opposed to the international tribunal and has a policy of suspending arms sales to countries that back it. Chile has just purchased nine F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. and could be denied spare parts for these very expensive aircraft if Washington carries through on its threat.

This example sums up in a nutshell the contradictions of a foreign policy that can’t quite decide where Chile stands. In a world of “us and them,” Chile’s failure to align - while arguably a sign of political maturity and the exercise of sovereignty - pleases no one.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that Chile doesn’t have excellent and capable diplomats. On the contrary, statesmen like Jose Miguel Insulza, Juan Gabriel Valdes, and Heraldo Muñoz are amongst the most accomplished foreign policy practitioners in Latin America. Indeed, given the repeated diplomatic crises that arise from Santiago’s fence sitting, they need to be.

editor@santiagotimes.cl