To what extent is it possible for less powerful states to influence the behavior of great powers? Do weaker states possess sufficient agency to advance their own objectives? These fundamental questions lie at the heart of Tom Long’s Latin America Confronts the United States. Through an examination of four case studies he finds that, indeed, Latin American states have found success adopting strategies of cooperation with the United States in their efforts to advance their interests. In the process, Long contributes a historical narrative of his selected cases and advances an internationalist framework for understanding U.S.-Latin American relations.
Tag: Latin America
Policy Series: Trump and Latin America: Asymmetry and the Problem of Influence
Despite its proximity and importance, Latin America usually does not receive a lot of attention in U.S. elections. After Donald Trump’s shocking and ultimately successful campaign for the presidency, the region may miss being out of the limelight. Somewhat atypically, many of Trump’s campaign promises related to Latin America. Mexico was, and remains, Trump’s villain of choice from the first day of his unlikely campaign. Mexico supposedly sent criminals as immigrants and bested the United States in the countries’ deep trade relationship; Trump granted the Mexican government a level of astuteness and competence that must have surprised many Mexican citizens. Central American migrants, whose remittances are more important to their home states in relative terms, also came under fire. In recent days, Trump has aimed his Twitter feed at transnational, and U.S.-born, street gangs, casting all the blame on neighbors to the south. Trump’s initially pacific tone toward Cuba soured as the campaign progressed. His anti-trade proposals go beyond renegotiating or threatening to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and abandonment of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), and would cut to the core many Latin American countries’ economic strategies, in which access to the U.S. market is the lynchpin.
Authors’ Response to Article Review 71 on “Soft Balancing in the Americas: Latin American Opposition to U.S. Intervention, 1898-1936.”
We thank Christopher Darnton for his thoughtful and useful critique, and we are in agreement with many of his points. However, Darnton perhaps overstates the goals of our article. Notably, Darnton faults the article for failing to test a “causal explanation of Latin American foreign policy against alternatives.” Our article does not claim to test a fully specified, causal theory of soft balancing; in the prominent literature of the subject, no such theory has been enunciated (as noted on 134). That theory would need to clearly specify external conditions and causes for cross-case testing and delineate observable implications of a causal process for within-case testing. This is an important task, but ultimately not one we attempted. The literature on soft balancing, our article included, is more focused on concept formation. We extend the concept to a new case and to the context of regional unipolarity, while striving not to dilute it.
Article Review 71 on “Soft Balancing in the Americas: Latin American Opposition to U.S. Intervention, 1898-1936.”
Max Paul Friedman and Tom Long argue that Latin American foreign policies, particularly those of Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, constitute a case of ‘soft balancing’ against the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than engaging in issue-specific contestation or bilateral negotiations with Washington, Latin American leaders and diplomats focused on building regional institutions and shaping norms in favor of nonviolent dispute resolution and respect for state sovereignty. The named foreign policy doctrines of Argentine jurist and Foreign Minister Luis María Drago, Argentine diplomat Carlos Calvo, and Mexican Foreign Minister Genaro Estrada not only anchored the arguments of international lawyers and the foreign policies of their countries, but also circumscribed, constrained, and influenced U.S. foreign policy in the Americas. Ultimately, the authors argue, Latin American statecraft generated the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s Good Neighbor Policy, a commitment to non-intervention that reversed more than three decades of North American military practice in the circum-Caribbean (135, 152).
Policy Series: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the Age of Donald Trump
The election of Donald Trump seems to many to mark the death of liberal internationalism. Given the President-elect’s failure to give clear guidelines regarding what he intends to do in so many areas, however, we may be surprised by the things he chooses to do because he has yet to devote much time and attention to thinking about them. But one wonders whether U.S. relations with Latin America will change all that much. Latin America may have remained an area which the United States assumes it can dominate, but in general there has been a lack of a clear direction in U.S. policy for the most part.1
Roundtable 8-8 on Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America
Transitions from rivalry to alliance within bilateral relationships have received considerable attention from historians of U.S. foreign relations. Or, more accurately, some alliances have received considerable attention; it remains unusual for works on inter-American relations to be cast principally as examinations of alliance politics. There are at least two interrelated reasons. First, the vast majority of the literature on the foreign relations of Latin American states analyzes cases where significant asymmetries of power exist. To be sure, vast differentials in political, economic, and military power can be found within alliances. But the alliance framework is more often applied to cases of countries where the imbalance is not dramatic. Second, in the English language literature in particular, relations between Latin American countries have been understudied. The overwhelming majority of the scholarship analyzes the role of great powers such as the United States or Great Britain. Consequently, the factors that have led regional adversaries to become allies have received less attention. U.S.-Latin American relations or Anglo-Latin American relations could, of course, be studied through the prism of rivalries and alliances, but the frameworks of empire and other varieties of hegemony have been more commonly utilized.
Roundtable 3-6 on “The CIA and U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1947: Reforms, Reflections and Reappraisals”
The special issue of Intelligence and National Security, Volume 26, April-June 2011 continues the process of bringing intelligence in from the cold. It is to be hoped that the reviews here contribute to the parallel process of familiarizing diplomatic historians with what is known about intelligence and bringing in two fields closer together. We are still a long way from understanding the degree to which intelligence influenced or reflected international politics during the Cold War, but the reviewers agree that this special issue on “The CIA and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1947” is a significant contribution.
