Argentina's Foreign Policy

Edward S Milenky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367021009
• eBook ISBN: 9780429727269
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The crises of industrialization and nation building have produced varying foreign policies and associated domestic images in Argentina. Classic liberals see the country as a Western, European society whose difficulties will be resolved through fuller and more effective participation in world affairs. Statist nationalists see a dependent, developing

Chapter 1
Argentina in World Affairs

Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1976 Argentina’s President Maria Estela Martinez de Perón adjourned a cabinet meeting at Government House in Buenos Aires, ascended to the roof of the building, and boarded a helicopter for what was supposed to have been a short flight to the Presidential residence in suburban Olivos. However, the pilot acted in accordance with instructions given earlier in the evening and delivered her to a committee of representatives of the Army, Navy, and Air Force waiting at Jorge Newberry Airport a short distance away. There Mrs. Perón was arrested, placed on board the presidential jet, and flown, along with two suitcases she had apparently prepared in advance, to house arrest at Villa Angostura in the lake district of Neuquen Province, nearly 1000 miles from Buenos Aires.¹

A Junta composed of Army commander General Jorge Rafael Videla, named President, Navy commander Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, and Air Force commander Brigadier General Orlando Ramon Agosti declared that it had assumed all power, dissolved all civilian political institutions, and suspended all political party activity. On March 31 President Videla told the nation that intervention by the armed forces had been the only alternative to a total breakdown, given the power vacuum in the national government, overall mismanagement, and corruption.²

Few observers were surprised by the armed forces’ fifth coup d’état since World War II. Fewer still expressed any regret or opposition. During her eighteen months in office Mrs. Perón, widow of Juan Domingo Perón, had presided over a near civil war which had left thousands dead. Inflation had soared. The Central Bank had nearly suspended all international payments. On the day of the coup thousands of workers were on strike or were cutting production with stoppages and rallies. Argentina’s international prestige and influence had suffered a drastic decline. The new government faced the massive reconstruction of foreign and domestic policy, the national economy, and the country’s self-respect and confidence.

Argentina was moving sharply in a new direction. In place of Peronism’s alignment with the Third World the Junta identified with the Western world. Where Peronism had relied upon the state to play a dominant role in the national economy, General Videla and his new Minister of Economy, José Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, expressed faith in private enterprise. Foreign investment would be welcomed. Economic growth and recovery would take priority over the redistribution of income.³

The March 24, 1976 coup d’état demonstrates that Argentina has at its disposal two foreign policies, each distinct from the other in world view, self-image, and interpretation of the nation’s ongoing interests in international affairs. The transformation of the hour was the latest in a series of alternations between a statist-nationalist foreign policy and a classic-liberal foreign policy. Because Argentina’s role in world affairs is a product of this cycle an analysis must begin here.

Fundamental concerns include the conceptual and ideological foundations of the statist-nationalist and classic-liberal approaches, the nation’s diplomatic tradition and the general national goals it has produced, and the national situation—the country’s location in time and space and the problems thereby created for policy makers. These factors also interact with national power potential, instrumentalities open to decision makers, and the policy-making process itself to produce concrete actions and continuing strategies.

Conceptual and Ideological Foundations

Each of Argentina’s alternative foreign policies is a set of conceptual and ideological interpretations, propositions, and assumptions. Both seek to locate the nation spiritually and politically in world politics and to address problems of economic development, political stability, and national status. Each proposes an overall strategy for the conduct of international affairs, and related aspects of domestic policy.

A weak sense of nationalism has contributed to the split in the national self-image. Argentina’s location at the extreme end of the South American continent has made it psychologically and physically peripheral to the international system and reduced external threats which might have forged unity out of diverse immigrant elements and a tradition of family-centered loyalties. As a result Argentine nationalism is a recent product of the twentieth century and is largely directed against perceived foreign economic exploitation.⁴

Both approaches are also the product of a sense of lost status and national crisis stemming originally from the nation’s political and economic collapse at the beginning of the Great Depression, but compounded by the inability of subsequent governments to adjust to radically changing global economic and political circumstances. Prior to 1930 Argentina was regarded as one of the world’s most developed nations. However, since 1930 economic instability, a lower relative and absolute growth rate, and the emergence of greater inequalities among all members of the international system have cost it status and influence. Since the coup of General José Felix Uriburu in 1930 the country has also labored more or less continuously under less-than-constitutional or legitimate government, with periodic resort to emergency powers, coup d’état, or controlled elections from which one or another political group was excluded. Therefore, the majority of Argentines has come to regard the pre-1930 era as a sort of golden age characterized by rapid economic growth, relatively stable political institutions, and a more influential role in world affairs.⁵

Classic-liberals stress Argentina’s identity as a nearly developed Western nation. They blame internal causes, such as economic mismanagement, political instability, and a failure to give priority to industrialization for the country’s failure to achieve its potential, a living standard equal to Europe’s. More efficient production, renegotiation of existing international economic relationships, a relatively open national economy, and reliance on market forces are the solution. Historically the classic-liberal position has been associated with priority for exports of agricultural products and relatively free trade, the conditions for national prosperity prior to the Great Depression. In its recent manifestations this approach favors foreign investment, export-oriented industrialization, and a modest role for state planning. While classic-liberals are not interested in imitation of U.S. policy, they tend to be anticommunist but independent, and generally cool toward revolutionary regimes. Some supporters of the classic-liberal approach have identified with conservative Catholic nationalism.⁶

Surveying the wreckage of the economy and foreign policy in mid-1976, the Videla government appeared to be turning toward the classic-liberal approach. Economy Minister Martinez de Hoz described Argentina as a developed country whose political instability and economic mistakes had caused it to lag behind Australia and Canada, both of which it had surpassed thirty years earlier. Economic growth, capital accumulation, and production were to be stressed. The state was to cooperate with private enterprise in managing the economy. State monopolies on the purchase and sale of agricultural products were to be ended. Agriculture and agricultural exports would be offered new incentives. Foreign markets would be sought without reference to ideological barriers. Foreign investment would be encouraged. An immediate renegotiation of the nation’s $10 billion foreign debt would be undertaken. The government promised a pragmatic program stressing economic recovery.⁷

The Videla program had ample precedent and support. Similar policies were followed during the 1966–1970 government of General Juan Carlos Ongania. Conservative nationalist writers, such as Mario Amadeo, Foreign Minister in General Eduardo Lonardi’s government which followed the overthrow of Juan Domingo Perón in 1955, have identified Argentine nationalism as support for traditional Catholicism, strong government, Hispanoamericanism, and close links to Spain. Writing two weeks before the March 1976 coup a commentator for the English language Buenos Aires Herald, an influential voice of the Anglo-Argentine community, said bluntly that Argentina was “too rich and too white to be Third World.” La Prensa, one of the country’s oldest newspapers, was highly critical of Mrs. Perón’s government for paying close attention to trade and cultural links with the Soviet bloc, Cuba, and Afro-Asian neutralists at the expense of more natural links with the West.⁸ More generally the classic-liberal posture is rooted in the belief that Argentina can best manage its foreign and domestic economic relationships by adopting the fiscal and monetary tools of advanced industrial nations, and its foreign affairs by following its historical and cultural roots.

By contrast, the statist-nationalist approach to foreign policy identifies Argentina as a non-aligned, predominantly Latin American or Third World advanced developing country. Its position in the world economy as a subordinate supplier of raw materials to a succession of imperial powers, culminating with the United States, denies Argentina great power status and retards national development. State-directed development aimed at creating an autonomous industrial base combined with a purge of foreign influences are the solutions. In international economic matters statist-nationalists favor more diversified trade patterns, greater control over foreign investment and the terms for the transfer of technology, and a drive to export manufactured products. Industry is valued as a symbol of status and independence from a colonial economic relationship, for its alleged greater growth.potential, and its stability in export earnings as compared to agriculture.⁹

Marxist and neo-Marxist interpretations of the Latin American condition provide one source of the statist-nationalist perspective. After World War II a group of economists and political scientists associated with the Economic Commission for Latin America and university centers in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina popularized various versions of these approaches.¹⁰

Three domestic political groups provided a further impetus. Juan Perón produced the first version of the statist-nationalist model while in power in the 1950s and elaborated on it from exile. Civilian “developmentalists,” most prominently Arturo Frondizi, president from 1958 to 1962, and his supporters, first as the Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente(UCRI), the Intransigent Radical Civic Union, and later as the Movimiento de Integración Desarrollo(MID), the Movement for Integration and Development, have supported in theory but not always in practice, a foreign policy built around autonomous industrial development and hostility to foreign investment as the key to national sovereignty and independence.¹¹ In the March and September 1973 elections for president, which respectively placed Hector José Campora and then Juan Domingo Perón in office, the MID joined the victorious Frente Justicialista de Liberación (FREJULI), the Justicialist Liberation Front, a multiparty bloc dominated by the Peronists.

Military counterparts to the civilian develop-mentalists emerged in the early 1960s. They were members of the Consejo Nacional de Seguridad(CONASE), the National Security Council, a long-range planning group advising military governments during the 1966 to 1973 period, which produced the Plan Nacional de Seguridad y Desarrollo 1971–1975, the National Plan for Security and Development, released in December 1970. The plan linked heavy industrial development to national security and independence from foreign pressures. Elements of this perspective survive in the armed forces’ continued interest in arms production and industrial projects such as steel and aluminum.¹²

During their years in power from 1973 to 1976 the Peronists drew upon the statist-nationalist approach. Juan Perón had long maintained that Argentina had accepted the colonial position of supplier of raw materials in place of his program of industrialization. However, the nation’s rightful mission in world history could be restored under Justicialism, which he described as a third position between communism and capitalism. He identified with the struggle of developing countries for a new international economic order.¹³

A specific blueprint appeared in the December 1973 Plan Trienal, the Triennial Plan, or Plan for National Reconstruction and Liberation. Plan Trienal attempted to mandate both rapid economic growth and social justice, economic independence and economic integration with Latin America. New international markets, especially for manufactured products, were to provide a secure foundation for internal planning and an independent foreign policy. Strict controls over foreign investment, the “re-Argentinization” of firms which had come under foreign control, and major investments in heavy industry were to restore the economic independence allegedly lost after Perón’s overthrow in 1955. The role of the state in foreign trade was to increase. In general the plan aimed at the creation of an integrated industrial economy, an increasingly central role for the state, and massive spending on social welfare.¹⁴ Agriculture, still the prime source of export earnings but associated with the upper class opposed by the Peronists, was all but ignored. Even with this omission corrected the plan’s growth and welfare targets—a 7.5 percent per year increase in GNP and a 35.5 percent increase in personal income within three years—far exceeded Argentina’s capital resources.

Limited aspects of the Plan Trienal were implemented. The Peronists did succeed in diversifying markets and expanding exports of manufactured products. Under a November 1973 law all foreign investments were to be screened for their relationship to national priorities and impact on the balance of payments. New investments in defense-related industries, public services, insurance, domestic banks, the media, advertising, sales, energy, fishing, agriculture, livestock, forestry, mining, or in areas reserved to state firms was banned. Foreign companies were also denied access to the domestic capital market or portfolio investment in shares of Argentine-owned firms. New legislation also strengthened a registry system for contracts on the transfer of technology and forbade any agreements which restricted exports or required local licensees to purchase supplies and equipment from specific sources.¹⁵

As the Argentine economy declined in 1974 and 1975 the government’s dedication to the statist-nationalist model flagged. By January 1975 Mrs. Perón’s second Minister of Economy, Alfredo Gomez Morales, was trying to reverse a virtual halt in foreign investment by telling U.S. businessmen that the legislation was flexible, and that Argentina sought selective high technology projec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• 1 ARGENTINA IN WORLD AFFAIRS
• 2 CAPABILITIES AND INSTRUMENTALITIES IN FOREIGN POLICY
• 3 THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESS
• 4 ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED STATES
• 5 DIPLOMACY BEYOND THE HEMISPHERE
• 6 ARGENTINA IN LATIN AMERICA
• 7 MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY
• 8 ARGENTINA IN WORLD AFFAIRS: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
• APPENDICES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• NOTE ON SOURCES
• LIST OF ACRONYMS