Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations

Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century?

Jorge I. Domínguez, Rafael Fernández de Castro, Jorge I. Domínguez, Rafael Fernández de Castro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317552802
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Drawing on the research and experience of fifteen internationally recognized Latin America scholars, this insightful text presents an overview of inter-American relations during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This unique collection identifies broad changes in the international system that have had significant effects in the Western Hemisphere, including issues of politics and economics, the securitization of U.S. foreign policy, balancing U.S. primacy, the wider impact of the world beyond the Americas, especially the rise of China, and the complexities of relationships between neighbors.

The second edition of Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations focuses on U.S. neighbors near and far —Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Each chapter addresses a country's relations with the United States, and each considers themes that are unique to that country's bilateral relations as well as those themes that are more general to the relations of Latin America as a whole. The book also features new chapters on transnational criminal violence, the Latino diasporas in the United States, and U.S.-Latin American migration. This cohesive and accessible volume is required reading for Latin American politics students and scholars alike.

1 The Changes in the International System since 2000

Jorge I. Domínguez

DOI: 10.4324/9781315731711-1

In what way does the structure of the international system create opportunities and constraints that affect the foreign policies of states? What are the key elements of the international system and what are the consequences of fundamental changes in these elements for the international behavior of states? How has the international system changed in the current century and how do these changes mimic, or differ from, similar major shifts in international system structure in the past?

In this chapter, I first characterize the major elements of three moments of change in the structure of the international system over the past two centuries in order to focus more sharply on the important features of the most recent systemic changes. Then I examine five key features of the changes in the international system in the twenty-first century. These are the opportunities created for Latin American states by the rise of China in world markets; the enhanced capacities of Latin American states vis-à-vis major powers and international financial institutions as a consequence of the international commodity boom of the century’s first decade; the disruption of the international system caused by U.S. foreign policy at the start of the twenty-first century and the consequent endeavor to balance against U.S. power; the breakdown in the inter-American ideological consensus that had emerged in the 1990s, generating thereby wider normative heterogeneity in state behavior; and the intensified securitization of bilateral relations with the United States, especially for states in Latin America’s northern half.

Three International Systems Break Down

The Tsar of Russia never recovered … the dominant position which was his at the moment of Napoleon’s abdication … He believed that he alone among monarchs was the interpreter and champion of the principles of Christian liberalism … [and] he imagined that the rocks of national interest could in some way be melted … by the unguents of his volatile benignity. ¹

So wrote Sir Harold Nicolson, diplomat and historian, in 1946 in order to draw lessons for his times from the preceding most similar moment in the history of restructurings of the international system, namely Europe in 1814. Upon Napoleon’s defeat:

• An anchor state of the international system had been thoroughly defeated.
• A powerful empire had fragmented.
• The structure of the international system turned sharply asymmetrical, to the benefit of the winning coalition.
• International history had been the history of national interest. Now, that history had ended. The newly hegemonic coalition affirmed the universal validity of its ideology as a basis for legitimacy, as the standard to seek the compliance of others, and as a rationale to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries. This exercise of power would be portrayed as benign and good even for the country targeted for intervention.
• The behavior of the leading victorious power undermined its triumph soon after victory. The volatility of the new leading power’s behavior contributed to its loss of primacy.

At the end of World War I, the first three observations listed above were also in evidence but, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, there was no ideological consensus to follow that war to provide a new ordering principle for the international system or justify consensual intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries. The behavior of several of the winning states did, however, contribute to their loss of influence soon enough. The post-World War II world also differed from post-Napoleonic Europe in that there was no one ideological consensus to reorder the international system; instead, there would be two competing ideologies, each to be deployed to justify cross-border interventions. Nicolson wrote before the crystallization of the Cold War; thus, the split of the post-World War II victorious coalition had yet to occur, but it soon would. Nicolson’s 1946 resembled 1814, and 1991 resembled both.

In 1991, the Soviet Union had been thoroughly defeated, even though no world war had preceded its defeat. The Soviet Union fragmented into its hitherto constituent republics. The structure of the international system turned sharply asymmetrical, to the benefit of a coalition led by the United States. One difference from 1814 and from 1945, however, is that in 1991 the United States held undisputed primacy even within and above its own coalition. In that sense, the salience of the United States at the start of the 1990s was unparalleled in the history of the modern international system.

As in 1814, the winning side affirmed the universal validity of its hegemonic ideology as a basis for legitimacy, as the standard to seek the compliance of others, and as a rationale to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man ² argued that liberal democracy had triumphed and that there was no longer a useful, laudable, or universally accepted alternative basis for domestic political legitimacy. Concepts such as the “promotion of democracy,” “humanitarian intervention,” or the “responsibility to protect” the victims of violence or abuse sought to justify the deployment of force in the internal affairs of other countries for the sake of a superior universally applicable common good.

The changes in the international system generated a second ideological shift as well. The collapse of communist regimes in East Central Europe was important because it not only restructured the international system in power terms but also propelled the triumph of liberal-democratic and market-oriented ideologies onto the world stage with a force and persuasiveness that they had not attained. These European countries had shaken off the grip of the Soviet Union and had also embraced new ways of thinking, justifying, and arranging their domestic economic and political ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgement
• List of contributors
• 1 The Changes in the International System since 2000
• 2 U.S.–Mexican Relations: Coping with Domestic and International Crises
• 3 The United States and Cuba: Intimate Neighbors?
• 4 U.S.–Argentine Relations: The Years of Cristina and Obama
• 5 The Unsettled Nature of U.S.–Brazilian Relations
• 6 Chile and the United States: A Cooperative Friendship
• 7 Colombia and the United States: The Path to Strategic Partnership
• 8 U.S.–Peruvian Relations: Cooperation within the International System of the Twenty-First Century
• 9 U.S.–Venezuelan Relations after Hugo Chávez: Why Normalization Has Been Impossible
• 10 Latino Diasporas, Obama’s Executive Action Strategy, and U.S.–Latin American Relations
• 11 Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Criminal Violence in U.S.–Latin American Relations
• 12 U.S. Immigration Policy: Politicization and Impasse
• Index