Image Courtesy of iStock
By Luis Bosques Carmona
Structurally, Latin America has found itself in an asymmetrical and dependent position vis-à-vis other regions, and specifically towards global powers. The regional history, in political, cultural and economic terms, has conditioned the region to a subordination that poses difficulties for decision making and the actions of the States regarding these powers, starting from a hierarchical position in the international system.
The paradigmatic development in relation to the Latin American situation has been vast and is raised within a debate between Westernists and Autonomists. The former held a position of alignment and acquiescence towards the United States, granting themselves per se a position of dominated in the international system, as well as inserting themselves within the U.S. zone of influence.
However, in antithesis to Westernism arises Autonomism, which is inserted under a logic of autonomy which "involves expanding the margin of self-decision" of one State vis-à-vis another through the development of policies, principles or practices; or else, to avoid interference or impositions in the domestic affairs of the State in question.
Autonomism – despite its recent conceptualization – has been widely applied and supported in the region, although as a theory and praxis it was mostly concentrated in South America for being in an advantageous geographical position far from the United States and Europe, compared to Mexico and the Caribbean. That is why the focus of this article is an approach to Argentine autonomism in the 19th century.
Autonomy not only seeks to increase room for manoeuvring to obtain its own sovereign space among peers within the international system, but also seeks economic development, the search for peace, the extra-geographic expansion of foreign relations, the restriction of the power of the great powers, and the construction of an equitable international order.
The means to achieve these objectives are "regionalism; the appeal to law; recourse to international organizations; and the use of soft power modalities". Latin American countries have applied these means through a broad grand strategy, defined by David Pratt as an "intellectual construct that guides the international conduct of a country or region in order to preserve or achieve certain interests that are defined as fundamental".
In practice, four "little big strategies" have persisted: soft balancing, diversification, withdrawal and collective unity. However, for reasons of space we will focus exclusively on the first strategy.
SOFT BALANCING
Soft balancing is perhaps a clear example of the position in which the region finds itself within a hierarchical system superimposed on European powers and the United States, but also the capabilities in terms of power held by Latin American states. However, the purpose of soft balancing is not to challenge the hegemony or capabilities of these powers, but to restrict them - including abusive power behaviours and acts of aggression - through softer or gentler means including the use of international institutions or forums, trade-financial blocs, legal and diplomatic instruments.
Between the last decades of the 19th century and 1930, Latin American governments constantly resorted to soft balancing to defend their sovereignty and legal equality through the development of foreign policy doctrines and multilateralism in the face of the threat posed by the United States in the region.
THE CALVO AND DRAGO DOCTRINES
The Argentine diplomat Carlos Calvo (1824 - 1906), developed a series of legal principles framed in his homonymous doctrine based on "national sovereignty, equality between national and foreign citizens and territorial jurisdiction". As a result of personal experiences Calvo developed two principles for his doctrine: States are sovereign and are exempt from interference by third parties; and foreigners have the same rights as the nations of a State, in case of claims the former must exhaust local legal remedies before their State intercedes on their behalf.
These principles are conceived based on the periods of domestic political instability of Latin American States and the interference of European powers, or the fact that the same instability affected the private property of foreign citizens, being "an offense also to the State to which he belonged, and that State had every right to obtain justice in the way it saw fit, including armed force".
The Pan American Conferences served as a platform to align and promote interests, and as part of the soft balance they served to give impetus to the regional recognition of the principles of the Calvo doctrine - especially that of legal equality between nationals and foreigners - through commissions and agreements as seen in the first two Conferences. At the Sixth Conference, the Convention on the Status of Aliens was adopted, which embodied the principle of equality between citizens, while the Seventh Conference adopted the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which contained the principle of non-interference. It was in these two cases that the United States recognized the existence of these principles.
For his part, Chancellor Luis María Drago (1859 - 1921) also put forward a doctrine of soft balance based on the tripartite blockade of Germany, Italy and Great Britain against Venezuela in 1902 for having contracted a debt with these. It should be noted that Drago took up elements of Calvo to develop his own doctrine which, as he mentioned it
Both doctrines set regional and international precedents for the rejection of the use of force as a means of settling disputes, especially those that put developing countries at a disadvantage. Multilateral activism for their codification represented not only the success of Argentine diplomats, but also the need to put an end to the traditional practice of the great powers to assert and protect their interests unilaterally.
Luis Bosques Carmona is a Mexican student at Universidad de Monterrey and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in International Relations and Political Science & Public Administration. He enjoys writing about Mexican foreign policy, international politics, identity and government.
REFERENCES
Briceño Ruiz, J. y Simonoff, A. (2017). La Escuela del Autonomismo, América Latina y la teoría de las relaciones internacionales. Estudios Internacionales, 186, 39-89. https://scielo.conicyt.cl/pdf/rei/v49n186/0719-3769-rei-49-186-00039.pdf
Carranco Paredes, S. (2017). “Soft Balancing” Perspectivas Latinoamericanas. Comentario Internacional, 17, 63-77. https://revistas.uasb.edu.ec/index.php/comentario/article/view/644/593
Convención sobre Derechos y Deberes de los Estados, diciembre, 26, 1933. https://www.oas.org/sap/peacefund/VirtualLibrary/virtualLibrary.html#23
Convención sobre la Condición de los Extranjeros, abril, 1929. http://www.oas.org/juridico/spanish/tratados/a-22.html
Forero, F. (2015). Diversificación y autonomía en la política exterior latinoamericana. Desafíos, 27(II), 291-322. Doi: dx.doi.org/10.12804/desafios27.2.2015.09
La Prensa (2018). A 115 años de la Doctrina Drago, hoy reconocida a nivel mundial. http://www.laprensa.com.ar/460872-A-115-anos-de-la-Doctrina-Drago-hoy-reconocida-a-nivel-mundial.note.aspx
Olaya Barbosa, S. (2007). Autonomía y relaciones internacionales: un análisis de las propuestas desarrolladas en América Latina. Desafíos, 17, 283-328. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/3596/359633162011.pdf
Pratt, D. (2008). Is There a Grand Strategy in Canadian Foreign Policy? Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 10(2).
Russel, R. y Tokatlian, J. G. (2013). América Latina y su gran estrategia: entre la aquiescencia y la autonomía. Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, 104, 157-180. https://www.cidob.org/ca/layout/set/print/content/download/38057/593597/file/157-180_ROBERTO+RUSSELL.pdf
Simonoff, A. 2016. La Escuela Autonomista: Pasado y Presente. Perspectivas, 1, 9-19. https://rephip.unr.edu.ar/bitstream/handle/2133/6602/Simonoff_La%20Escuela%20Autonomista.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Tamburini, F. (2002). Historia y destino de la “Doctrina Calvo”: ¿actualidad u obsolescencia del pensamiento de Carlos Calvo? Revista de Estudios Histórico-Jurídicos, XXIV, 81-101. http://www.rehj.cl/index.php/rehj/article/view/363/343
