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United States-South America Relations (4/26/04)

Javier Corrales

The countries of South America have a peculiar geographic relation to the United States. They are not as close to the United States as are Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, but they are not that far from it either. (Seven capitals (Lim, SCL, EZE, BSB, MON, ASU, LPB) are farther from Miami than LAX).Consequently, South America has not experienced the recurrent and profound U.S. interventionism that is typical of U.S. relations with its closer neighbors, nor has it been as neglected as many countries in Central Asia and Africa have been.

This combination of reluctant attention followed (or accompanied) by semi-neglect is a salient feature of U.S.-South American relations. There have been exceptions, such as the heavy-handed efforts by the United States to change the foreign policy of the first Peronist administration in Argentina in 1946, to undermine the socialist administration of Salvador Allende in Chile between 1970 and 1973, and to block drug trade in the Andes since the mid 1990s. (more on this later). But for the most part, South America has not felt the impact of U.S. interventionism as heavily or consistently as other regions of the world. This is one reason that political regimes in South America have seldom been as intensely pro-American or anti-American as one often finds in the CaribbeanBasin. In the jargon of international relations theory, “balancing” and “bandwagoning” vis-à-vis the United States have been less pronounced in South America.

Yet, episodic and inconsistent attention by the United States creates, not only confusion, but also acrimonious polemics in the region. South Americans are often divided between those who feel that the United States is too involved in the region, and those who feel that it is too distant. Positions on this topic depend on one’s own opinion about the desirability of contacts with the U.S. Those who like U.S. involvement tend to regard the United States as too neglectful of South America; those who dislike the United States regard it as too meddlesome, or at least, regrettably uncommitted to the values that the esteem to be important. The range of opinions about the United States among South Americans thus ranges widely.

There is far less variation of opinions in the United States. At least at the level of policy-makers, there seems to be a consensus that, except during moments of exceptional security crises, South America matters little to the United States, certainly not as much as South Americans feel they ought to matter.

Episodic, inconsistent, and mild interventionism until the 1930s

Early in the 19th century the United States made two declarations that gave reason to think that it would take all of the Western Hemisphere seriously. The first was the No Transfer Resolution (1811), in which the United States stipulated that it would not see, “without serious inequitude,” the passing of any territory in the Western Hemisphere to European hands. The second was the Monroe Doctrine (1823), in which the United States declared that any effort by Europeans to extend their system to this hemisphere would be seen as “dangerous to our peace and security.” The few South Americans who noticed the Monroe Doctrine tended to welcome it, thinking that it foretold a close alliance between the United States and the fledgling Hispanic republics.

However, in South America, the United States ignored either principle during most of the 19th century, even when there were explicit European attempts to “extend its system” into the continent. U.S. policy toward South America during most of the 19th century remained exactly as it was during the Wars of Independence: the United States wished them well, but did not wish them to become close partners of the United States.

At the beginning of the 19th century, some South American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and possibly Peru might have been able to keep up with the United States, at least in terms of GDP per capita, if only they had achieved rapid economic growth... Like the United States, these countries had fertile lands, links to the international economy, and republican constitutions. But by the 1870s, such hopes were dashed. Most South American nations stagnated or grew less rapidly thandid not grow as fast as the United States. In less than 60 years, South America fell deeply behind the United States, leading to a pronounced economic asymmetry that has lasted to this day. actually gotten worse since then.

This asymmetry gave rise to serious resentments toward the United States from both sides of the political spectrum. For instance, conservatives such as the Brazilian Eduardo Pardo and the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó argued that. Conservatives in. Conservatives the United States had too “shallow” a culture to deserve such wealth and prestige, whereas the left worried about the imperialist appetite of the giant to the north. Like the United States, the largest South American nations pursued territorial expansion in the 19th century, and they often at the expense oftook territory away from their weaker neighbors. But because the United States was by far the hemisphere’s most powerful nation, the title of the new imperialist nation was bestowed ongiven to the United States.

With the rise in the military and economic power of the United States and the expansionrise of commercial opportunities in South America toward the end of the 19th century, the United States could no longer afford to take the region for granted. The United States helped U.S. firms penetratetake advantage of commercial opportunities in South American markets. Nevertheless, the main focus of U.S. nited States incursions was not South America, but Mexico, the CaribbeanBasin, and Asia. Between 1898 and 1932, the United States deployed troops 15 times in 8 Caribbean basin countries (including Mexico) and wagedhad a war to subjugate the Philippines. It did not intervene militarily once in unstable South America.

Fighting Totalitarianism (1939-1989)

This complacency with South American politics came to an end with a major structural change in world politics starting in the 1930s: the rise of two great powers embracing totalitarian, anti-liberal ideologies—Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. These powers posed the most serious security threat to the United States since perhaps England in the early 19th century, prompting the. TheUnited Statesto deploydeployed a worldwide policy to contain Germany in the early 1940s and the Soviet Union after 1948. This forced the United States to pay a bit more attention to South America.

To contain fascism, the United States invested diplomatic efforts to obtain South American cooperation with the Allies during World War II. As during World War I, Brazilclosely cooperated. But most South American nations remained neutral until 1945, in contrast to Mexico and the Caribbean Basinnations,, all of which declared war on the Axis by 1941. Reticence to go along with the United States was clear.

As some Realist theories of international relations would predict, the most difficult country proved to be the richest and most up-and-coming nation—Argentina. In 1946, unrepentant about Argentina’s long delay to join the War, newly-elected President Juan D. Perón entered into a high-profile political fight with the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden, who exaggerated the fascist threat emanating from Argentina. This conflict was both an ideological dispute as well as an effort by a South American nation with bigger aspirations to assert its independence vis-à-vis the United States.

Once fascism receded as a global security threat to the United States, the focus shifted toward fighting Communism. The first U.S. policy instrument to fight communism in South America was a series of military pacts against external aggression, which most South American nations signed gladly. Then, in the early 1960s, the United States experimented with another tool—expanding economic aid, which many South American had been longing for. , which had never been too substantial in South America.The idea came from SouthLatin American leaders themselves. They proposed offering more aid to democratic regimes in return for agrarian and social reforms. The John F. Kennedy administration quickly signed on to the idea.

The Alliance for Progress, as this program came to be known, only lasted “1,000 days,” as per the count of Arthur Schlesinger, one of its promoters in the United States [Kennedy administration].. The Alliance proved to be too controversial in South America. Conservatives in South America resented the conditionalities, and radicals were unimpressed by the extent of social change expected. Participating governments thus faced formidable domestic detractors from both sides of the both political spectrumleft and the right, and this weakened them.

Inspired by the radicalization of the Cuban Revolution between 1959 and 1961 or Mao’s peasant-based revolution in China in the 1940s, radicals in South America intensified their pressure against these weak, U.S.-supported democracies, often turning to violence.. Conservatives panicked, and contributed to a rash of coups followed that established so-called “bureaucratic-replaced the existing democracies with authoritarian” regimes throughout South America, except in Venezuela and Colombia.. The United States was shockedsurprised. The antidote to Communism that worked so brilliantly in postwar Europe—cash disbursements in return for reform—turned out to be served asdestabilizing in South America [in the context of polarized, inequality, heavy-handed states]the region.

The Alliance for Progress was quickly replaced bywith the Mann doctrine, named after Thomas Mann, main advisor to Latin America under U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Mann advocated called for granting U.S. aid to Latin America while remaining neutral on questions of social reform, in effect jettisoning the Alliance’s principle of aid-for-socialdemocracy. tied to democracy of the Alliance for Progress. The Alliance inaugurated one of the darkest periods in U.S.-South American relations. The United States unabashedly came to prefer authoritarian regimes to any other regime, whether democratic or not, that seemed pro-Soviet. The United States often adopted a policy of complacency toward, and some would even argue, promotion of human rights abuses.

The Mann doctrine inaugurated one of the darkest periods in U.S.-South American relations. The United States came to tolerate, sometimes prefer, authoritarian regimes. They were considered preferable to unstable democracies because the latter were deemed too vulnerable to communist influence.

Based on recently declassified documents, Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archives, has revealed in the early 2000s that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) wasmore involved in destabilizing the leftist government of Salvador Allende (1970-73) in Chile, and more collaborative with Augusto Pinochet and other South American dictators, than originally thought. At the same time, research in the 1990s by Robert Pastor showed that the U.S. Congress often acted as a counterweight, demanding the Executive branch to pay more attention to human rights and blocking some counterinsurgency initiatives. U.S. policy toward the region during the Cold War had two contradictory faces, each stemming from different branches of government.

But even here, the policy of the United States was not entirely consistent. While the United States made enormous efforts to destabilize the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile between 1970 and 1973, to give one example, it proved quite willing to reach an entente with the socialist military regime of Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru, which nationalized firms, nationalized U.S. multinationals, and purchased tanks, supersonic fighter bombers, and weapsons from the USSR. The U.S. also showed little hysteria when the military regime in Brazil established close contacts with Marxist regimes and movements in lusophone Africa. And after defending military regimes in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States suddenly began to support pro-democracy opposition forces against many former U.S. authoritarian allies in the early and mid 1980s, including Chile. Variation in the degree of U.S. interventionism against “communist threats”—or tolerance for risk—in South America has been far greater than is often recognized.

But even at the peak of the Cold War, actions by the U.S. Executive branch were not consistent. While the Richard Nixon administration became obsessed with destabilizing Allende, it reached an entente with the socialist military regime of Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru, which committed “sins” that the United States presumably would have found unforgivable (e.g., agrarian reform, nationalizations of U.S. multinationals, purchases of tanks and supersonic fighter bombers from the Soviet Union). The United States also avoided hysteria when the Brazilian military junta established close contacts with Marxist regimes and movements in lusophone Africa. And after condoning military regimes in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States in the 1980s suddenly began to support pro-democracy opposition forces against authoritarian rulers, including Pinochet in Chile. Variation in U.S. interventionism against “communist threats”—or tolerance for risk, if you will—has been far greater in All the while, South America than is often recognized.

South American governments learned to take advantage of U.S. inconsistency. They figured that as long as they could demonstrate commitment to fighting communism at home (something that was not difficult to do), theUnited States would tolerate greater latitude in their policies. And so, South American governments, both democratic and authoritarian, began to diversify their international contacts and domestic economic policies (e.g., increasing trade with the Soviet Bloc, reestablishing relations with Cuba, joining the Non-Aligned Movement, supporting efforts to create a New International Economic Order, voting against the United States in international fora, nationalizing firms, tightening trade restrictions). South American governments were trying to balance U.S. hegemony in the free world, not through fruitless confrontation, but through the diversification of its foreign relations, and in some cases (e.g., Venezuela 1970s), through friendly criticism. In the words of political scientist Peter Smith, they were trying to find “a third way” between extreme pro-Americanism and anti-Americanism.

The turn to authoritarianism in South America fueled a change in society-to-society relations between the United States and South America. Progressives in the United States, shocked by human rights abuses in South America, became more attentive to the region and pressed the U.S. government to change policies. Progressive intellectuals from South America, facing repression at home, sought asylum in the until-then vilified United States. Many found jobs teaching at U.S. universities.

The influx of South American intellectuals into the U.S. university system in the 1960s and 1970s had a symbiotic effect. U.S. universities began to offer more courses on the region. Simultaneously, South American exiles became more appreciative of the U.S. political system. A good example is Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a Marxist Brazilian sociologist who was forced to leave his native Brazil in 1964. After spending time in exile, which included teaching positions at U.S. universities, Cardoso underwent an intellectual evolution, softening his anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. In 1994 and again in 1998, Cardoso was elected president of Brazil, and became a leading promoter of market reforms and good relations with the United States.

From Democracy Promotion to Assuring Governance (1980s to the present)

Since the 1980s, U.S. political relations with South America have focused on promoting and consolidating democracy. The only experience that the United States had with successful democracy promotion was postwar Europe. But compared to Europe, South America had many disadvantages in its struggle to democratize in the 1980s: very high levels of economic underdevelopment and inequality, a very entrenched tradition of military involvement in politics, very weak civil society, and a very recent history of U.S. support of non-democratic right-wing forces. In many ways, the task of promoting democracy seemed harder in South America than it ever was in Western Europe.

On the other hand, the United States acted.S.was smarter this time. around. The U.S. government did not try to monopolize the process by restricting efforts exclusively totoe state-to-state initiatives. Instead, the U.S. government encouraged pluralistic and multi-channel transnational contacts between the United States and South America. Legislators, academics, labor leaders, pollsters, party leaders, military officials, U.S.AID staff with more diverse training and sensibility to social issues, state department officials, journalists, religious groups, in addition to White House staff, worked with their counterparts in South America to bolster democratic institutions. They helped allay apprehensions about the United States and their political adversaries.

U.S. efforts to promote democracy in South America in the 1980s American were more diplomatic than economic, considering how little economic aid was earmarked foroffered. But this purpose. However, this tradeoff was not entirely unfortunate.lamentable. One positive result of U.S. attention to diplomacy was to U.S. diplomatic efforts convince South American South American leaders that the defense of democracy required relaxing absolute notions of sovereignty. To prevent electoral fraud, it helps to have international observers [however injurious this might seem to traditional notions of sovereignty]. AndIn order to deter potential coup-plotters, democracy-promoters argued that it helpswas necessary to create a mechanism of automaticthe conditions for an immediate international condemnation, and maybe even international intervention, in the event that of a coup gets underway.. But accepting these prescriptionsthis mechanism essentially meant abandoning traditional conceptionsthe absolute version of sovereignty that ban interventions under any circumstances, a well entrenched notion in international law that actually was widely promulgated by other nations should19th-century South American jurists themselves (Chilean Andrés Bello and Argentine Carlos Calvo). By the lateearly 1980s, with the help of the United States, Latin American leaders were persuaded to embrace the notion of collective defense of democracy. this notion and accept a system of international condemnation. This paved the way for the historic Resolution 1080 of June 1991, which instructs the Secretary General of the Organization of American States to call for an immediate meeting of the Permanent Council in the event of any interruption of democracy among member nations. In December 1992, the General Assembly of the OAS agreed to amend the Charter and insert a new article giving the Assembly the power to suspend from membership by a two-thirds vote any government that overthrows a democratic regime. All South American nations approved it. In September 2001, the OAS approved a historica Democratic Charter, which authorizes the OAS to undertake diplomatic initiatives in countries where there is a constitutional crisis. Furthermore, “When the special session of the General Assembly determines that there has been an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state, and that diplomatic initiatives have failed, the special session shall take the decision to suspend said member state from the exercise of its right to participate in the OAS by an affirmative vote of two thirds of the member states in accordance with the Charter of the OAS. The suspension shall take effect immediately.The policy of defending democracy became multilaterilized and institutionalized.