the inter-american system

diverging interests

A student at the National War College interviewed me yesterday for an article he is writing. It had been a long, long while since anyone showed any interest in the ‘Inter-American system’ which was my bread and butter in graduate school when I spent a lot of time pondering Latin America, our history with the region, and the future.

I wasn’t sure how much of the history he knew as people so rarely think the ‘system’ predates 1947 when the Rio Treaty, the military document for the region, took form. In fact, the Inter-American system began with pretty different visions and societal values/histories when the Gran Libertador, Simon Bolivar, convened a regional Congress in 1826. Bolivar pointedly excluded the North Americans who were decidedly different from Catholic, Spanish or Portuguese speaking former colonies of the Iberian peninsula. Few of the newly independent southern nations attended while Washington attended in observer status.

Washington made clear its inclinations towards a western hemisphere concept in 1823 when the Monroe Doctrine clarified proprietary feelings about the hemisphere should Europeans, be they Russian Spanish, Portuguese, or anyone else, decide to attempt recolonisation. With the weak condition of the relatively young United States at that point, the Doctrine required the complicity of Great Britain as the Royal Navy could have easily defeated the U.S. ambitions. Latin America was hardly in a position to challenge either the Monroe White House or Britain because the nations in the region were each primarily focusing on domestic nation-building agenda.

The movement towards a regional group took better form in 1890 when Secretary of State James Blaine called for the Pan American Union, the imagery including the states from Tierra del Fuego in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. The Pan American Health Organisation is an artifact of this period. The regional coordination occurring from 1890 through World War II focused primarily on establishing rules for intervention in the sovereign affairs of the region: the region sought to exploit international law to set boundaries which more powerful states would hopefully respect.

The first decades of the twentieth century were wonderful for the United States as it expanded its role around the world under Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Latin America’s experiences were rather different as Britain increasingly withdrew its nineteenth century financial engagement, often exploitative, with the region in the face of the calamity of World War I. The Great Depression devastated Latin America yet also showed the region’s importance of extracting natural resources which industrial states surely did.

World War II also highlighted Latin America’s, particularly Brasil’s, potential geostrategic importance as fears of Nazi expansion from Africa arose. Similarly, the presence of anarcho-syndicalists and socialists, among others, stressed the political differences between the Latin and Anglo-Americans. Fascist dictators Juan Domingo Peron in Argentina and Getulio Vargas in Brasil emerged trumpeting a new Latin America. Strong nationalist movements particularly in Mexico and Cuba reacted to Washington’s tendency to exploit weaker institutions in the circum-Caribbean where the United Sates often ‘sent in the Marines’ to address differences with its neighbours.

The post-World War II era was probably the high tide of optimism as Latin America anticipated an equal status, as a result of the founding principles espoused in the San Francisco Charter, in the United Nations. At the same time, Washington hoped to bind itself to states to prevent them falling under Soviet domination. Indeed, in a world still manifesting many colonies, Latin America constituted the single largest block of sovereign states not committed to either side of the Iron Curtain. Peron, in particular, sought to assume a leadership role as what would become known as a ‘non-aligned’ position rather than becoming bound inextricably to the United States, laissez-faire economics, and the status of a ‘follower’ rather than a leader in the world.

The Inter-American system arose out of two primary documents which still are in force. The Rio Pact of 1947 was a mutual defense treaty within the region while the Charter of Bogota, signed the following year, created the Organisation of American States (OAS). It was here that interests between Washington and the region primarily differed, however, as the former sought to preclude Soviet expansionism in the early years of the developing Cold War. The Rio Pact sought to bind militaries together to preclude expected Soviet pressures. The OAS was a document to establish yet again the norms of relationship between the member states in the region as a partial attempt to control Washington’s proven tendency to ignore international law and sovereignty when it suited. The Organisation also set forth a series of interwoven institutions, often mirroring those of the United Nations, within the Charter’s framework to address issues of importance to the Latins. The overarching interests on both sides thus were clearly quite different from the beginning, as had always been the case in the western hemisphere.

The Cold War included many tensions between 1947 and 1990: Guatemala in 1954, Cuba beginning in 1959, Chile beginning in 1970, and the Central American wars of the 1980s. Latins believed Washington ignored its commitments to respect their sovereignty by overthrowing regimes when U.S. interests appeared threatened rather than because Soviet encroachment was a serious issue. Americans, on the other hand, feared several Latin leaders actually might threaten the United States because Cuban Fidel Castro relied almost exclusively on Soviet aid for its survival. Indeed, the greatest threat the world ever faced from nuclear weapons emanated from the Soviets attempting to deploy nuclear weapons on the island which the Kennedy administration barely eliminated before they became operational in October 1962.

Washington also turned a blind eye, except during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, to brutal military governments which ousted elected civilians officials for fear the latters might open the door to communism and destroying the patria, or essence and history, of these countries. The ‘Dirty Wars’ between 1964 and 1990 in Brasil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, included massive human rights abuses and technocratic plans for reengineering these states. Various leaders in the United States issues tepid criticisms, if any, because the Dirty Wars espoused erasing communism in the region.

Things seemed to change dramatically when the Cold War ended with the dismantling of the Iron Curtain between late 1989 and 1992 when the Soviet Union ended. Latin Americans no longer saw the Soviet model of state-centered economic policies as any potential competitor with the laissez-faire model and civilian-led governments which became known as the Washington Consensus. Washington’s role as a paradigm for these states’ future led many in the western hemisphere to expect the ultimate culmination of an Inter American system. The 2000 elections of Vicente Fox, a Coca Cola executive who spoke English and ‘understood’ the Yanquis, in Mexico along with Texas Governor George W. Bush, who had a Mexican sister-in-law and was acutely aware of Mexico’s problems because they were on his border, seemed to auger hope for a regional interplay which had never happened in the past.

Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 ended that dream. Latin America found it was no more important to the United States than the rest of the world. Indeed, the commitment to ending a long-simmering civil conflict in Colombia under the auspices of ‘Plan Colombia’ fell substantially and immediately after the terrorist attacks reoriented Washington’s concerns towards Afghanistan and later Iraq. A Colombian journalist sourly quipped a few days after the attack that perhaps Latin American needed to attack the United States to receive the immediate attention that Kabul received. The U.S. view was that the Inter American system, with the long-standing mutual defense agreement of the 1940s, should support U.S. needs in a time of profound danger while Latin America felt sympathy, frustration, disappointment, and fear for the future.

The next decade marked another turn for the Inter-American system as China became an increasing presence in the region. Latin American nations prdominantly shifted diplomatic recognition from Taibei to Beijing between 1970 and 1980, abandoning their Cold War links to the Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. But, the more confident, adventuresome, and global People’s Republic exercised a decided interest and greater show of precence in the region as Washington’s interests pivoted elsewhere. In 2005, the Chinese leader toured the region to garner support for and through trade and investment. China began deploying a multitude of instruments to build links to a portion of the world almost always assumed within a U.S. ‘sphere of influence’.

As we enter the second month of 2023, the U.S. and Latin appreciations of the Inter-American system have diverged again, as has happened so often over the generations since its launch. Washington talks about its interests and shared values with the western hemisphere, yet visits by senior officials, except the U.S. Southern Command, are infrequent. Ambassadorships, subject to the U.S. partisan fights, often remain unfilled, signalling the truth that the region isn’t really nearly as important as Latins wanted to believe decades ago and despite goodwill proclamations to the contrary.

The Inter-American system is an extinct dinosaur of another era. There are attempts to coordinate policies, such as on immigration, counter-narcotics, trade, and climate change but the interests of the two parts of the world, with notable exceptions, diverged a long while back. Latin America will likely always believe in a far greater role for the state in the economy, with its history of a Spanish and Portuguese colonisation. History is not determinative, of course, but it certainly conditions behaviour and appears hard to completely throw off even after more than half a millenium.

Washington, with its global ambitions and responsibiliites, increasingly struggles with balancing the cultural factors which make this such a complex nation. Despite genuine intentions at times and convenient self-deception at others, the United States simply does not see Latin America as a potential partner to the level the region so long desired.

China is a current partner for the region but not one of the same level nor with deep-seated shared values. Latin America, even after more than two centuries of independence, craves better infrastructure, trade webs, and other goals that Beijing currently seems more willing to provide than is the United States but the geographic gulf between the Middle Kingdom and the eastern Pacific is vast and geography still matters. Many reasons still exist for Latin America to reject Beijing’s entreaties and visa versa. And Latin America learned a long while back that big powers promising things that might be too good to be true usually do not deliver on those promises.

The Inter-American aspiration has been replaced by a realistic understanding that the future within the hemisphere will be less lofty and more transactional than in the past. Perhaps this is more appropriate for both sides. It is fascinating that perhaps Bolivar’s ambitions for a regional approach without the English-speaking part of the hemisphere may in fact provide a future path. Latin America is far from a monoculture nor a monopolitical approach but it is more integrated than it has been for its history.

Perhaps the failures to create a true Inter-American system forced the two parts of this hemisphere to a more accurate assessment of the current conditions, hopes, and ties. Then again, the repeated experiences of long-sought promises do seem to reappear.FIN