South America Into The 1990s

Evolving International Relationships In A New Era

G. Pope Atkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367287955
• eBook ISBN: 9781000312225
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book undertakes a multifaceted examination of South American international relations, emphasising on the continent's new era of domestic and international politics and the implications of the evolving environment for the policies of the many actors participating in the region's politics.

1
South America in the International Political System

G. Pope Atkins

This chapter presents a general overview of South American international relations, with the aim of coordinating the specialized chapters that follow. It attempts to establish a general framework for analysis and identify the various categories of relationships that are analyzed in the rest of the book. It also provides some historical background so that other authors may concentrate on current trends. The overall focus is on international structures and processes, especially the distribution of international power and influence.

The first part of the chapter defines South America beyond the Circum-Caribbean as an international political subsystem, pointing out its distinguishing characteristics and the essential levels for analysis. The second section is an historical evaluation of the subsystem's progression, noting major events at the various levels previously identified and how they contributed to an increasingly separate South American identity. The third portion summarizes the subsystem's elements as it has entered a new era (the primary subject of this volume), and briefly introduces the chapters that follow.

South America as an International Subsystem

Geographic Scope and Setting

In terms of international politics, the region of South America beyond the Circum-Caribbean includes the actions of states located in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia), constantly involves Brazil as a key actor, and sometimes draws in Ecuador. Thus the northern tier states of Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname are excluded; they overlap with some of the concerns addressed in this book, but the thrust of their international relations are essentially part of the Circum-Caribbean subsystem. South America thus defined, while a part of the larger Latin American region, forms a separate subsystem with a number of characteristics that distinguish it from Mexico and the Circum-Caribbean.

A principal characteristic of the South American subsystem is its relative isolation from the mainstream of international politics. The region has been relatively shielded from the global mainstream of great power politics and, during the twentieth century, largely beyond their spheres of influence. It has a unique political-geographic situation that fundamentally affects both relations with external states and its own intraregional relations. The region's isolated geographic position at great distances from Europe and the United States has combined with other factors, especially the relative strength of the key local states, to exclude the area for the most part from global balance of power rivalries. This is in dramatic distinction from the northern portion of Latin America. Consequently, the Southern Cone states and Brazil have developed a distinct set of relationships with external actors, as well as intraregional structures and processes, largely outside the context of global power politics.¹

Levels of Analysis

The South American international subsystem may be specifically defined on several levels that involve different kinds of relationships. They are categorized as follows:

1. The Local State Level. The leading South American states are, in a relative sense, internally institutionalized and independent in international politics, especially in comparison with most Caribbean countries. They have critical domestic problems, often related to their international environment, but the political systems and decisional outcomes of most of them rely less on personal relationships and more on institutional interactions than do the "crisis countries" of much of northern Latin America. Brazil is the leading nation in Latin America and in the South American subsystem. It stands apart in several respects, to the extent that it could be considered a distinct subsystem in its own right. By several measures of size—territory, population, economy, and others—Brazil ranks in the upper strata of the world's nation-states.²

2. The Extrahemispheric Level. South American relations with extrahemispheric states have been particularly important. Unlike the presence of Mexico and most Caribbean countries in a bilateral U.S. economic network, the Southern Cone states and Brazil form a multilateralized trading and investing area. They also have long-standing cultural and military ties with Europe; the region's recent trade with Europe has included arms transfers. Brazil especially has diversified its economy and developed a broad network of bilateral relationships. Its multilateralized trade structure includes ties in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Japan, in addition to those with the United States. Argentina trades heavily with the Soviet Union. Peru has purchased a large volume of armaments from the Soviet Union and France. South American west coast states see themselves as part of a Pacific Basin trading system; Japan has become an important economic force in the region, notably with Peru, Bolivia, and, especially, Brazil.³

3. The Inter-American Level. Southern Cone states and Brazil have important interactions with the United States and other Latin American states, and have belonged to the Inter-American System since 1889. The United States, by and large, has been one of several competitors in South America, only briefly (after World War II) approaching a position of primacy as in the Circum-Caribbean or Mexico. While the U.S. presence in the subsystem remains important and should not be underestimated, the United States in its Latin American relationships has had the least interest and influence in the Southern Cone (with temporary exceptions), and its leverage with Brazil has declined dramatically over the past two decades. Furthermore, as noted above, these states have important linkages outside the hemisphere that balance U.S. influence.⁴

4. The South American Intraregional Level. The regional states have important sets of international issues and patterns of interactions among themselves. The South American region has long been an area of local conflict, with roots in the colonial period. The legacy includes a long list of territorial boundary disputes, national power struggles that have led to warfare and threats of war, and claims of sovereignty and competition for resources. They have been defined and shaped by regional conflicts with minimal reference to outside great power influence. Relative isolation in global politics has allowed important local rivalries and ambitions to operate. Indeed, those processes have largely been the consequence of the fact that outsiders have rarely played the role of local policeman. Isolation of the small states from extraregional influences, however, has increased their dependency on local great powers. The three weak states in the Southern Cone—Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia—have been caught up in rivalries between Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru; "buffer status" has been accorded them in the subregional game of power politics.

Subregional international politics have resulted in strategic components to several local states' foreign policies, and they have developed geopolitical and balance-of-power thinking toward their own region.⁵ The espousal of geopolitical strategic perspectives further distinguishes the South American subsystem from the rest of Latin America. Particularly ominous is the introduction of nuclear questions into intraregional international relations, with advanced capabilities on the part of Argentina and Brazil. On the positive side, Argentine-Brazilian rapprochement since 1979, and successful Argentine-Chilean efforts to settle territorial disputes, have established a cooperative mood in intraregional politics.

5. The South Atlantic-Antarctic Level. Several of the subregional states extend their international concerns beyond the South American continent to the South Atlantic Ocean and to the Antarctic. From their perspectives, the issues in their own subregional interstate rivalry are linked to competition for resources in the sea and seabed and territorial claims in the South Atlantic and Antarctica. The South Atlantic zone includes the special case of Anglo-Argentine conflict over the Falkland/ Malvinas Islands and other insular territories. The Antarctic involves a broad array of states around the globe; it has been regulated by a treaty regime since 1961. The South American states often interact in the South Atlantic and Antarctica from geopolitical perspectives; many local geopoliticians define the Southern Cone to extend to these contiguous zones.⁶

6. The Transnational Level. Nonstate actors—especially multinational corporations (MNCs), international labor organizations, transnational political parties, and churches with transnational linkages—are important components in South America's international relations. In certain economic, political, and social areas they are possibly becoming more significant than the external states, both in relations with their South American counterparts and with South American governments. This is true more for European-based entities than for those headquartered in the United States, with the exception of MNCs (especially commercial banks). U.S. labor is conservative and protectionist; U.S. political parties are not organized on international bases; and U.S. churches (including the Roman Catholic Church) have focused on Central American issues. European actors, on the other hand, have historical ties and increasingly intimate relations in the current era.⁷

7. The International Economic System Level. Special considerations of economic policies and interactions form a layer of analysis that relates to but cuts across the other levels. Although South America is politically isolated in global terms, external economic penetration has been intense. Foreign trade and investment are crucial to the well-being of all regional states and comprise a salient element for the policies of the external states. South American foreign policies, in all cases, aim to maximize export opportunities, protecting and expanding markets as best they can. Economic policies tend to be highly pragmatic; many external relations revolve around economic needs, which in turn temper ideological positions and nationalist sensibilities. Current economic debilities bearing on the South American states, with much of their debt owed to U.S. banks, have raised suggestions of a new dependency relationship on outsiders, especially the United States. At the same time, South Americans have purposely developed a multiplicity of external economic interactions aimed at diversifying their dependency.⁸

Evolution of the South American System

The South American international subsystem has passed through five general historical stages or phases. Transitional periods involved events that signalled the end of one era and initiation of the next phase.⁹

Phase One (to 1860)

Although independence came in Spanish South America between 1808-1825, and to Brazil in 1822, the South American subsystem did not emerge as a coherently formed unit in world affairs until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Many of its elements, however, were evident in earlier times. The roots of the subsystem lie in the colonial and immediate post-independence periods, and further in events during the early national experience.

In domestic politics, most of the new South American states were characterized by disunity and fragmentation. Unlike Spanish America, Brazil escaped destabilizing post-independence dislocations when a member of the royal Braganza family joined with Brazilian nationalists, gave up his claim to the Portuguese throne, and, as Pedro I, ruled as Brazilian sovereign from 1822-1831. He was succeeded by his son, Pedro II, who reigned until 1889. They were effective constitutional monarchs who played the role of "moderating power" above partisanship, forcing political parties to alternate in office. Chile was the first Spanish American state to work its way out of chaos, and did so relatively soon after independence in 1818. In the early 1830s, Chile entered a two-decade period of consolidating "oligarchical democracy" in which suffrage was limited but leaders were chosen through the electoral process and the armed forces were subject to civilian authority.

Elsewhere, Spanish American difficulties included church-state disputes, financial dislocations, factionalism among the ruling elites, regionalism, violence, and caudillismo (a system of regional strong men with private armies and political ambitions). In addition to internal strife that prevented the creation of stable polities, unclear national boundaries and chaotic public finances produced conditions that invited conflict with neighboring states and intervention by European states. Argentina did not become a unified nation until after 1861; until then it was characterized by extreme regionalism and caudillismo. From 1829 to 1852, the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas imposed an artificial "unity" on Argentines, although the regional caudillos enjoyed considerable autonomy. Peru was slow to consolidate as a nation after achieving independence, not doing so until the mid-1890s. After independence in 1822, Ecuador until 1830 was a part of the larger entity of Gran Colombia with Colombia and Venezuela; it then followed a path similar to that of Peru. Both states were characterized by political fragmentation, regionalism, disunity, and authoritarianism until near the end of the century. Bolivian politics were similarly dominated by caudillismo, a system surviving there until about 1880. After Paraguay gained independence in 1811, its political life was dominated by authoritarian personalist strongmen: José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia was appointed "ruler for life," and so acted from 1816-1840; Carlos Antonio López then ruled from 1844-1862. Uruguay was born as a nation out of warfare between Brazil and Argentina, and was subject thereafter to their constant meddling, a situation exacerbating severe internal political strife involving considerable violence.

The new South American states played passive roles in international politics and were subordinate to the outside powers. Their independence from Spain and Portugal stimulated rivalry among the other European powers to gain regional influence or control. Chaotic conditions in Spanish South America raised serious questions in the minds of Europeans as to the viability of the new nations. As Harold Davis points out, the first priorities of the South American governments in their extraregional relations were to make peace treaties with their respective former colonial states, secure international recognition of other countries, and adjust their relations as Roman Catholic nations with the Holy See on church-state relationships; these problems persisted for many years.¹⁰

Great Britain was the primary external power. Its merchant fleets and superior naval force dominated the Atlantic, supported British commercial objectives, and denied expansion to other external states. France had imperial as well as commercial designs, but its attempt to recolonize Spanish America in the 1820s was frustrated by British opposition. Spain sought to recover its former colonies from time to time, but it was then a minor European power and did not figure prominently in regional affairs. The only post-independence territorial acquisition by an external state was Great Britain's Falkland Islands Colony in the South Atlantic, taken from Argentina in 1833.

British preeminence characterized Brazil's foreign relations. While Great Britain emphasized commercial interests, its attempt to suppress the international slave trade was an important factor in its relations with Brazil. All of the South American states, but Brazil especially, had to confront the questions involved in the abolition of the international slave trade, an issue inescapably raised by the independence movements and by British nineteenth century policy." Brazilian relations with the United States were friendly, on the whole, and involved no really serious issues. The United States had been first to recognize Brazil's independence.

Relations among the subregional states were essentially conflictual. They found themselves continuing the old colonial territorial rivalries between Spain and Portugal, at the same time that they were determined to establish independent polities. The Spanish American states had to agree among themselves about national boundaries, indeterminate within the old Spanish empire, and to recognize the independence of new states. The intensity of the problem was dramatically illustrated by Chile's boundary and territorial disputes with all of its neighbors, and by the failure of the Viceroyalty of La Plata to achieve unity as a single nation. Brazil had borders with all of the new Spanish American states except Chile, a situation giving rise to numerous conflicts.

Intra-South American conflict also arose from rival ambitions for subregional leadership. This rivalry often drew in European involvement. The competition between Argentina and Brazil for dominance in the Rio de la Plata region revolved around conflict over Uruguay, a continuation of the prior contest between Portugal and Spain, which was in turn resisted by Uruguayan patriots. An indecisive Argentine-Brazilian war broke out in 1825 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• About the Contributors
• 1 South America in the International Political System
• 2 South American Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy
• 3 The Status of South American Geopolitical Thinking
• 4 Brazil and the Southern Cone Subsystem
• 5 U.S. Interests in South America
• 6 Extrahemispheric Interests and Actions
• 7 The Political Economy of South American Debt
• 8 European and South American Perspectives
• Index