The view that the U.S. has managed interstate relations, particularly conflict, in Latin America is widespread among security analysts everywhere. The outcome is purportedly regional interstate peace, but internal civil violence directed against those social groups which would oppose either the U.S.’ paramount position in the hemisphere or the economic system which it champions. Hegemonic management of conflict is a myth which dies hard because it is based on such appealing factors as wishful thinking (e.g., Monroe Doctrine); a selective reading of history (e.g., a focus on interventions to overthrow governments with which it disagreed); and a theoretical argument (as the only great power in the region no one can long contest its views on fundamental issues).
This chapter examines the hegemonic management thesis from four different perspectives. Each demonstrates the weakness of distinct versions of the argument and together they provide a resounding rejection for either the benevolent or malevolent hegemonic management thesis. The first section lays out the different ways in which analysts across the political spectrum have conceptualized hegemonic management. The next section undertakes an historical analysis of the periods in which hegemonic management seemed to be on the verge of working, but subsequently collapsed (1920s, followed by the 1930s and 1945-61, followed by 1962-present). In the first period Latin American states tried to utilize the U.S. to settle their own security challenges on favorable terms. When that failed (since the U.S. could not give both sides what each wanted), the Latin American states returned to nationally centered conflict management strategies. A third section presents a quantitative analysis of the impact of regional and systemic polarity on the MIDs which occurred during the past century. The final section examines the hegemonic mismanagement thesis, specifically the claim that the Cold War led to greater conflict in the region.
The conclusion of this chapter finds that the impact of the U.S. on conflict dynamics in this security complex is dramatically overblown by both those who favor and oppose hegemonic management. The dynamics of interstate conflict and cooperation are much too complex to be captured by a perspective that a state powerful enough to be paramount in a region can determine the behavior of states which inevitably have their own interests and national contexts.
As noted in Chapter One, hegemony is a contentious notion in the study of international relations, particularly in the security realm. A hegemon is not just paramount, but is defined by its ability to provide a collective good, in our case, conflict management. Thus the outcome of its power, not its absolute or relative strength, indicates whether the U.S. was hegemonic in Latin America. The relevant metric for discussing hegemony is related to what is necessary to provide the particular collective good in question.
A hegemon in the security arena is thus a state which can effectively limit the escalation of disputes into the use of military force, and when force is used, constrain it before its use proves influential in how a disputed issue is resolved. A regional hegemon is a state which can perform this function for all states in the region. The hegemon’s ability to impose constraints on the use of force by regional states provides the collective good. A hegemon not only enforces the proscription against the use of force, but can exclude recalcitrant states from consuming the collective good: the hegemon imposes punishment in the form of overt or covert intervention, with or without participation by the other states benefiting from the security provided by the hegemon.
It is important to reiterate the distinction made in Chapter 1 between the conflict management schemes of collective security and hegemonic management. a collective security system provides security for each and every member of the community against each and every other member of the community. But in a situation of regional hegemony, no one can protect the regional states against the hegemon. In other words, the regional hegemon provides security for the states in the region against each other, but not against itself.
One may legitimately ask, "What kind of security is this?" The answer depends on the security problematique of the states in question. Great powers certainly would not find any security in this situation; that is why hegemony in the security realm at the global level has been absent in any but a unipolar system. But lesser states may have both fewer options and greater needs. In the context of Latin America’s threefold security problematique (governments threatened by domestic overthrow, coercion by neighbors and intervention by the U.S.), hegemonic management might provide security vis-à-vis the first two issues.
In addition, hegemonic management may resolve the third security issue as well. if regional states have no hope of countering the regional hegemon, they might as well learn to live within the constraints of how the regional hegemon defines good behavior. The security dilemma is eliminated as the subordinated Latin American states trade sovereignty (the ability of a government to decide how it will respond to opportunities and challenges), for peace and prosperity. At least this is the argument of those who see hegemonic management as providing benefits. Other analysts, in contrast, see the imposition of the hegemon’s sovereignty over these states as producing more internal conflict and leading to a narrowly based economic development.
An analysis of the collective good produced by the regional hegemon facilitates identification of the conditions which characterize hegemony in a regional security complex. Regional hegemony is directed towards two sets of actors. For non-great powers physically within the security complex the goal is to have them abide by the rules of behavior set up for the region by the hegemonic state. Rival great powers pose an important challenge to a would-be hegemon in a security complex because they have the ability to contest modes of conflict management. A hegemon’s policy is thus to keep other great powers outside of the security complex, in recognizing that if they establish their own interests here, they can and will contest the rules of behavior reigning in the security complex.
Analysis of the conditions necessary for regional hegemony highlight the difficulty of achieving it. How can a regional hegemon convince other great powers and regional states to cede this authority to it? Hegemony is fundamentally about power and control. Analysts have identified three manifestations of power, each operating at a different level. Direct control is the most obvious and characterized by traditional power politics; it is achieved via the use of targeted sanctions and carrots. A more indirect control occurs by structuring the general context which shapes the rules of the game and incentives faced by states. In this manner states find that to achieve their wealth and security goals they must behave according to the standards embodied in the institutional order created by the hegemon. The hegemon does not act directly, but its preferences structure the rules of the game. The most subtle form of control is the influence over the ideas and ideologies which determine the legitimacy of action in the actor’s own mind.
This third face of hegemony embodies a Gramscian notion of false consciousness. We can note the dominance of the "U.S. way of life" (a middle class material culture emphasizing consumption and individualism) in much of Latin America, but it is extremely difficult to analyze it from a traditional social science perspective. We also know that in the realm of ideas and ideology the U.S., as the first American colony of a European power to attain independence, had a tremendous impact upon an important segment of the Latin American elite. Latin American Conservatives were frightened and appalled by the materialist and Protestant culture of the U.S., but by the mid-19th century they were losing out in most of the civil wars to their Liberal rivals. Liberals throughout the region could look to the U.S. for inspiration and guidance on structuring not only the relationship between state and society, but also the relations among the newly independent states. The idea of an American brotherhood, distinct from European power politics and whose commonalties would provide for hemispheric peace and prosperity, gained ideological sway. Despite abuses of this notion by the U.S. and Latin American states themselves, it would never completely disappear.
Yet the American distinctiveness was also tinged with an appreciation for European culture and ideas. Europe was the mother region for Latin American elites, who by and large perceived indigenous cultures as uncivilized. The call for European migration, not only to fill in the land, but to increase the representation of the white race, kept these links alive. Thus in 1889 when the U.S. attempted to insulate the western hemisphere from Europe in an American zollverein, Argentina led the Latin American rejection on the grounds that it did not want to isolate itself from its European heritage.
Each face of hegemony operates differently, but the control inherent in each is used to create and maintain a certain international order. In our case, that order is thought to govern regional conflict management. Thus in this chapter we will examine the resources which allegedly contribute to the U.S. ability to directly manage conflict via the sticks and carrots of military intervention, covert intervention, and economic sanctions, as well as the empirical record of conflict in the hemisphere.
The unilateral doctrine proclaimed by U.S. President James Monroe in 1823, as well as Thomas Jefferson’s prior stipulation of hemispheric security policy in 1808, articulates the ideal security context for a great power: hegemony. The Monroe Doctrine declares that, in the geographic area of greatest vulnerability (the western hemisphere), the U.S. demands that all other powers which could threaten its dominance keep their military forces and political systems out. In return, the U.S. promises that it will not intervene in the zones of strategic importance to those powers. This recently independent country was declaring its global isolation as well as regional domination.
The process of establishing U.S. paramountcy in the hemisphere varied among the three subregions of Latin America, the Caribbean, Central and South America. Variation depended upon the capabilities and interests of the European powers in remaining as well as the capabilities and interests of local states. Great Britain realized in the 1890s that the U.S. was willing to risk war to enforce its claims to hegemony in the region, and in the face of growing problems in South Africa, Turkey and the Continent, was willing to let the U.S. protect British interests in the region. Germany posed a different problem: while the Foreign Office was willing to follow the British lead in acquiescing to U.S. predominance as long as it safeguarded German commercial and financial interests as early as 1901, the Kaiser and his naval planners perceived a war with the U.S. as most likely until 1905. At this point, the realization that Germany would have to fight a two front war in Europe effectively ended German interest in a naval competition in the Caribbean. Thus the U.S. established military dominance in the Caribbean Basin by 1905.
Political, commercial and financial paramountcy took longer. In the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) the establishment of direct U.S. control was swift and more thorough than elsewhere. The United States began its official and direct intervention into the Caribbean in 1898 with the Spanish American War. While the war was ostensibly fought to give the Cubans the independence for which they had struggled for decades, the U.S. seized Puerto Rico for itself and limited Cuban independence after expelling the Spanish. The Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitutional Convention of 1901, which the U.S. insisted upon before it would end its occupation of the island, gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba virtually any time it desired.
The next step in advancing U.S. hegemony came as a result of great power "rights" to unilaterally discipline small powers who infringed upon the rights of citizens of great powers. The security problem this created for the U.S. and Caribbean states was the use of force by European creditor nations anytime they feared that these Latin American states were unable or unwilling to pay their European creditors. The U.S. public and policymakers viewed the specter of British, German, French and Italian warships bombarding Latin American ports and seizing their customs houses as an affront to the security concept embodied in the Doctrine. President Roosevelt’s solution entailed U.S. military intervention to collect the debts and pay the European creditors. The 1904 intervention in the Dominican Republic became the first operation under the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Within a few years the U.S. became frustrated at collecting debts for the Europeans and began a process of replacing European loans with U.S. loans. Now the Marines would be protecting U.S. financial interests when they seized control of customs houses or governments. These treaties and loan agreements provided the "legal" justification for U.S. intervention throughout the Caribbean Basin through the 1920s.
Central America represented a two-fold security problem for the U.S. In addition to the question of financial default came the repeated Central American wars instigated by Guatemala and Nicaragua. Independence had precipitated the creation of a unified Central America, but it broke into five republics shortly thereafter. For the next seven decades the two largest Central American nations, Guatemala and Nicaragua, attempted to recreate the Central American Federation by force of arms. El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica were constantly invaded by one of the two aspiring local powers, provoking the other to come to the rescue of the besieged state.
The key external actors in Central America were Great Britain, Mexico and the U.S. We have already noted the process by which Britain came to accept U.S. hegemony. Mexico, however, was quite active in the region, accepting U.S. military dominance but disputing its political counterpart until incapacitated by revolution in 1910.
Mexican projection into Central America gained new life after Porfirio Diaz brought order and stability to the country in the 1880s. A number of factors contributed to heighten tensions with Guatemala. A disputed border between the two, leftover from the days when Central America formed part of the Mexican Empire, created such antagonisms that Guatemalan Liberals sent aid to a revolt in Chiapas, Mexico and Mexico dispatched troops to the border with Guatemala for a war that the military believed inevitable. Guatemala sought U.S. protection from possible Mexican aggression. A Guatemala-U.S. alliance on its southern borders worried Mexico because the U.S. had despoiled Mexico of half of its national territory in the north a few decades earlier. Finally, Guatemala aggressively sought to recreate a Central American Union under its control; if successful, Guatemala and/or the U.S. through Guatemala, would leave Mexico with a powerful neighbor on both of its territorial borders.
Although Foreign Minister Matias Romero thought a war with Guatemala could lead to territorial expansion, President Porfirio Diaz worried that the U.S. could use such a precedent against Mexico at some future date. Aware that he could not act unilaterally, Diaz searched for allies. He noted to the French and British Ambassadors that European and Mexican interests coincided in denying the U.S. control of a canal through Nicaragua. Diaz appealed for "moral" support in hopes that military aid to Central America would not be necessary. Mexico also attempted to influence the selection of governments throughout the region. But these efforts to defeat U.S. allies in Central America and establish Mexican influence failed.
Three factors contributed to the failure. European great powers did not see Mexico as a sufficiently credible ally with which to contest the U.S. in the region. In addition, Guatemalan nationalists were able to withstand Mexican diplomatic pressure as well as a show of military force on the border, because the U.S. continued to view Guatemala as the key to a unified Central America in which it could have great influence. When Guatemala appealed to the U.S. for support in the face of Mexican pressure, the U.S. sent the Mexicans a veiled warning by reassuring Guatemala that, although Mexico had legitimate interests in the area, the U.S. was confident that it would not resort to force. Finally, Mexico felt severely constrained in what it could offer Costa Rica, Nicaragua and even El Salvador. Costa Rica appealed for a secret alliance with Mexico to thwart Guatemala's continued efforts at union. But Mexico rejected such direct action because the U.S. might perceive the alliance as an indication of Mexico's intent to dominate Central America.
The failure of indirect domination and renewed U.S. interest in the region led Mexico to change its approach to Central America. Although U.S. Secretary of State William Blaine's desire to set up an arbitration mechanism for disputes throughout the hemisphere failed, he was able to impose it in Central America. In 1890 the U.S. decided to arbitrate the conflict between Guatemala and El Salvador. Mexico insisted that it be included as an arbitrator and the U.S. accepted. From the events of 1906-1907, on which more documentation about the collaboration between the two exists, it appears that Mexico's interests lay in limiting U.S. intervention by requiring that it be seconded. The U.S. interest in Mexican collaboration lay in using its presence to help convince the Central American nations that U.S. intervention could be fair despite its preferences for Guatemalan leadership in the region.
Mexico attempted to ally with Nicaragua in limiting U.S. hegemony in the region. Like his Mexican counterpart, the Liberal dictator Jose Santos Zelaya had used his political control and European financial ties to bring peace and prosperity to his country. From that domestic base Zelaya was able to compete for influence in Central America commensurate with the country's geopolitical quality (a large [for the area] country, in the middle of the region, with an ideal location for a transisthmusian canal). By the early 1900s Nicaragua's problem was not so much Guatemala, but the United States’ intent to secure sole access to a canal and implement the Roosevelt Corollary in Central America.
Zelaya objected to both these goals. He was a nationalist who wanted Central America for the Central Americans, with himself as leader. In 1894-95 he had appealed for U.S. support against British efforts to keep him from exercising sovereignty over Mosquito lands in the country's Atlantic region. But the U.S. did not thereby control Zelaya. In 1901 canal negotiations between the U.S. and Zelaya broke down when he refused to accept any U.S. sovereignty over the zone. He also initially refused to accept the right of the U.S. to arbitrate in Central America in 1906, and refused to trade his European loans for U.S. loans guaranteed by a Customs House treaty.
In 1906 war between Guatemala and El Salvador was renewed and, after an unsuccessful mediation attempt by the U.S., Mexico proposed joint leadership of a regional peace conference. Zelaya initially rejected the idea because of U.S. participation. Instead he invaded Honduras, installing his own allies in office. But the preparations of Guatemala and El Salvador to attack and Diaz’ appeals convinced Zelaya to attend the conference.
The 1907 Conference set up the neutrality of Honduras and called for a regional peace pact in Central America. At this latter meeting Zelaya attempted to persuade Diaz to support a Central American Union, but failed. Instead, a general peace and friendship treaty was signed and the Central American Court of Justice (with one Justice from each country) was established.
Because the conference failed to resolve the underlying issue of who would dominate Central America, intrigues continued. Guatemala and El Salvador fomented rebellion in Honduras to decrease Nicaraguan influence. Nicaragua continued to provide a haven for political opponents of other Central American governments to plot revolt. And El Salvador and Guatemala themselves were on the verge of war. The U.S. attempted to mediate without Mexican participation, but Mexico insisted on its rights in the region and the U.S. hesitated to break openly with Mexico. In 1909 Mexico sent gunboats to the region in a joint effort with the U.S. to keep peace.
By 1909, however, the U.S. decided that the political and financial situation in Central America required implementation of the Roosevelt Corollary. This meant that Zelaya had to go. The U.S. pressured Mexico to participate in a new regional treaty which would exclude Nicaragua and give both the U.S. and Mexico the right to intervene unilaterally. Mexico perceived a new intensity in U.S. policy and initially sought to limit the scope and degree of potential intervention by convincing the U.S. that Diaz could persuade Zelaya to abandon his aggressive Central American policies.
Although Zelaya accepted Diaz' suggestion that he expel active political refugees from Nicaragua, the U.S. continued to see Zelaya as an obstacle to its plans for the region. In this context, Nicaraguan Conservatives saw an opportunity to regain power. With the help of Guatemala and of the U.S. consul in Bluefields, the Conservatives revolted. Zelaya's troops quickly routed most of the rebels, but Zelaya ordered the execution of two U.S. mercenaries. Seizing this pretext, the U.S. severed relations and the President informed congress that U.S. direct military intervention was probable.
Mexico was quite alarmed at this turn of events. Diaz himself telegrammed the U.S. State Department offering to get Zelaya out of Nicaragua and asking the U.S. to keep its Marines out of Nicaragua. Diaz also sought to replace Zelaya with another Liberal, as a counterweight to Conservative control of Guatemala. Diaz sent a special envoy to Washington to discuss asylum for Zelaya in Mexico if the U.S. did not object. Zelaya recognized that he might be winning the military battle only to lose the political one, so he ordered hostilities to cease and attempted to initiate conversations with the U.S.
But the U.S. now saw a way to eliminate its regional competition with the nationalist Liberals and their Mexican allies. It rejected negotiations and protected the remnants of the Conservative forces with U.S. warships and Marines. With help from the U.S. and Guatemala, the Conservatives emerged victorious in the civil war in 1910. The State Department presented the new government with the conditions for U.S. recognition. Among those conditions was acceptance of a U.S. loan guaranteed by a Customs House treaty giving the U.S. the right to intervene in Nicaragua, i.e., acceptance of the Roosevelt Corollary.
And what of Mexico? Faced with outright U.S. aggression against Nicaragua in 1909, Mexico broke with the U.S. on joint security efforts. It was reported to have sent arms and money to back the Liberals' fight against the U.S.-favored Conservatives. But in August, 1910 the Nicaraguan Liberals lost the civil war and in November Mexico itself fell victim to revolution. While the U.S. became bogged down in the quagmire of Nicaraguan Conservative politics, Mexico's attention was forced inward.
The collapse of the Nicaraguan and Mexican governments permitted the U.S. to firmly establish military, political and economic dominance in Central America and the Caribbean by 1910. U.S. Marines arrived in Nicaragua in 1912 and would remain until 1925, leaving briefly only to return in 1927 until 1933. The U.S. Navy took control of Haitian sovereignty in 1915 (and would hold it until 1934), and Dominican the following year (until 1924). The Platt Amendment guaranteed direct intervention in Cuban politics until rescinded in 1934.
The achievement of U.S. paramountcy in South America took longer and was never as complete as in Central America and the Caribbean. Military domination was the easiest to gain. The U.S. stood aside in the War of the Pacific, despite its displeasure with Chilean aggression, partly because its navy was inferior to the Chilean navy. By 1890, however, it could coerce the Chilean government into rendering honors to the U.S. flag under pain of bombardment by the U.S. fleet. Vis-à-vis European great powers, the U.S. could also exercise decisive influence in Venezuela by the 1890s. But the British military presence in South America was still formidable (they even established a new coaling station in Peru during W.W.I), Germany was very active militarily and diplomatically, and even the French and Italians were active in training the armies of lower South America. German defeat in W.W.I and British withdrawal of their fleet in 1921 effectively gave the U.S. military domination in the region.
U.S. economic leadership in South America was the result of a result of W.W.I. The war had two fundamental impacts in this area. European trade and financial relations with the region collapsed as the war demanded a diversion of resources, including ships for transport. In addition, new U.S. strategic thinking developed as the result of wartime experience. The U.S. came to see domination of communications infrastructure (cables), petroleum and bank loans in South America as security matters.
Table 3.1 provides a glimpse of the evolution of South American economic relations after W.W.I. Britain’s stagnation stands in stark contrast to the dramatic gains made by the U.S. The difference is even greater when we consider that one country dominated British-South American economic relations (i.e., Argentina received 1/2 of all British investment in the region), while the U.S. -South American economic relationship was dispersed throughout the region. Nevertheless, it is clear to see that the U.S. had a competitor in this arena; hence we should note U.S. leadership rather than paramountcy in economic relations.
Source: calculated from Krenn, U.S. Policy toward Economic Nationalism pp. 2, 8,
During the 1930s the U.S. confronted an economic rival in southeastern South America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) it had assumed vanquished: Germany. While German trade with this region lagged far behind British and U.S. at the start of Hitler’s rise to power, by 1938 it had dramatically closed the gap. Bilateral trade agreements which tied these South American countries to the German mark promised to catapult Germany into the number one position in the near future.
Political relations were even less dominated by the U.S. Brazil believed it had constructed a "special relationship" with the U.S. at the turn of the century and consistently followed the U.S. lead in hemispheric affairs. It hoped to use that relationship to be "first among equals" in Latin America, but was repeatedly frustrated when neither Europeans, Spanish Americans, nor the U.S. effectively recognized it as such. But other South American countries were much more circumspect in their recognition of U.S. political leadership in the hemisphere after W.W.I.
World War once again brought dramatic changes to the hemisphere. After 1945 U.S. military domination reached new heights as it became the chief source for training and arms. In addition, Latin American governments could no longer toy with balancing the U.S. with other great powers, as Argentina did with Britain and Germany, because the only rival great power (the communist Soviet Union) was itself opposed to most of these Latin American governments. Economic relations continued to be diversified enough so that we must refer to U.S. leadership rather than domination in this sphere. Political relations, however, took a new turn with the creation of the Organization of American States and development of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty). If the U.S. were ever paramount in South America, it would be in this period.
We thus come to the questions at the core of the hegemonic management thesis. Did the U.S. have the resources to act as a hegemon in the security realm? Did the U.S. provide the collective good of peaceful resolution of conflict to the region? In other words, did the U.S. manage security relations in Latin America enough so that we can attribute either a lack of conflict or the occurrence of conflict to its handling.
The analysis so far suggests that in the Caribbean and Central America the U.S. had attained paramountcy in the military, economic and political arenas by 1904. In South America its position does not appear as dominant in all of the arenas until after W.W.II. Military paramountcy came first with the withdrawal of the British fleet in 1921, while economic leadership was established quickly after W.W. I. and political paramountcy was not achieved until 1945. In short, the resources upon which the U.S. could draw to provide hegemonic management of conflict were significantly different in the two subregions. We can now turn to the empirical record to see if we can find support for the claim of hegemonic management in either the entire security complex or by subregion (Caribbean and Central America compared with South America).
Advocates of the benefits of hegemonic management in Latin America can point to a number of cases in which a U.S. coercive or mediative role correlates with a dispute not escalating or being rapidly contained upon escalation. Bryce Wood makes the strongest qualitative argument for the U.S. hegemonic management thesis. In Wood’s analysis the dependent variable is not militarized disputes, but rather large scale violent conflict. Wood asks why there had been no large scale wars in the half century since the end of the War of the Pacific and suddenly there were three in the 1930s. He points to the influence of great powers in general, as the cause.
According to Wood, until W.W.I, European and U.S. mediators and arbiters diffused intra-Latin American conflict. European great powers ostensibly lost the respect of Latin America because of the slaughter in which they engaged during W.W.I, so the burden of leading Latin Americans toward peaceful resolution of conflict fell to the U.S. For a time the U.S. was willing to provide diplomatic leadership, economic incentives and military interventions to maintain peace, but the costs proved too great and the U.S. retreated behind the Good Neighbor Policy after 1933. Because Latin Americans had not been able to create hemispheric institutions to carry out the role played by the U.S., wars broke out.
Note that this explanation also accounts for the lack of large scale conflict in Latin America between 1884 and the establishment of U.S. hegemony after W.W.I. It remains a great power management explanation, just not a hegemonic one. For purposes of evaluating Wood’s thesis, therefore, only the latter two periods (1919-1931 and 1932-1954) become relevant. For Wood the 1920s is essentially a hegemonic period because European great powers play no role. In the 1932-54 period of the Good Neighbor Policy, according to Wood, the U.S. ceased military intervention and diplomatic interference in Latin American affairs and hence, the use of force to resolve disputes gained ascendancy. Table 3.- does illustrate the empirical reality of less conflict in the U.S. hegemonic period than in the Good Neighbor era, but it also demonstrates a fair amount of conflict in the great power management period.
To discern whether there is any causal relationship behind these correlations we need to look at the historical record in more depth. The interrelated territorial disputes of Colombia-Peru, Peru/Bolivia-Chile, Ecuador-Peru and Bolivia-Paraguay can help us evaluate the contribution of hegemonic management to conflict resolution. The question we want to ask is whether hegemonic imposition/incentive or the Latin American states’ own evaluation of incentives derived from domestic or non-hegemonic international factors caused the resolution/mitigation of conflict in the 1920s. Examination of the renewed outbreaks in the 1930s allows us to explore whether a decline in U.S. leadership or a reevaluation of the gains and losses by Latin American actors is responsible.
After W.W.I Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru believed that the U.S. was hegemonic in the area and that they could profit by its hegemony. They looked to the U.S. to solve territorial conflicts in which they were the weaker party because they believed that the U.S. could obtain a "just" settlement, i.e., one that would give the weaker party more than bilateral negotiations would. Domestic factors also proved fundamental in Peru and reverberated throughout the continent. The dictator Augusto Leguia (1919-1930) believed that the existence of territorial disputes would keep foreign capital away, thereby limiting the opportunities for development and corruption. He worried, however, that a nationalist backlash might topple him if he sought to make concessions to Colombia and Chile to resolve the border disputes. If he could convince his compatriots that he was a nationalist who, in order to save the nation, had reluctantly given in to demands from the all powerful U.S. he might have his cake and eat it too. Hence, Leguia looked for the U.S. to behave rhetorically as a hegemon, although the initiative would come from him.
Chile and Argentina worried that the U.S. might establish hegemony over the region. For Chile, the danger lay in the possibility that the U.S. might impose a solution to the Peru-Bolivia-Chile dispute which would give Bolivia an outlet to the sea and return both Tacna and Arica to Peru, i.e., deprive Chile of the fruits of victory in the War of the Pacific. Argentina, in contrast, perceived a twofold danger: the U.S. could finally block Argentine aspirations to Latin American leadership and might even help make Brazil its stand-in for South America.
The period began with a war scare, as Peru was becoming increasingly frustrated by Chile’s refusal to hold the plebiscite which would determine whether Tacna and Arica would return to Peru or become Chilean. While the Treaty of Ancon had provided for a plebiscite to decide the future of these two cities Chile had opposed holding one because, as former Peruvian cities, they would likely vote to return to Peruvian jurisdiction. Chile attempted to colonize the cities and expel as many Peruvians as possible, but could not be certain that it had achieved enough electoral strength to win a plebiscite. At the same time, Peru worried that Chile had sufficient control in the territory to manipulate an election in its favor. On the grounds that the League opposed territorial annexation by force, Bolivia and Peru asked the League Assembly in 1919 and 1920 to revise the Treaty to return not only Tacna and Arica, but also Tarapaca to Peru and provide Bolivia with an outlet to the sea. This action proved extremely popular in Peru’s 1919 Presidential election campaign which brought Leguia to power. In addition, the two countries asked U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to apply his Fourteen Points program to Latin American disputes.
While the League dragged its feet considering the two requests Chile and Peru mobilized their armed forces. The U.S. opposed the use of the League to resolve Latin American disputes and Leguia withdrew the petition. Rumors abounded that the U.S. would intervene to resolve the dispute. Chile worried and Peru happily expected that U.S. interest would provide Peru with a diplomatic victory. Chile tried to head off U.S. intervention by reopening bilateral negotiations but Peru successfully held out for U.S. mediation. Peru, nevertheless, failed to gain what it sought in the mediation-turned-arbitration. the U.S. refused to help President Leguia overcome domestic opposition to his cooperative stance by officially asking Peru to participate in the process. The U.S. subsequently ruled in favor of a plebiscite (which Peru feared the Chileans would rig), rather than simply turning the disputed territories over to Peru. U.S.-Peruvian relations were spared a crisis when in 1926 U.S. election supervisors concluded that the Peruvians were correct, a fair plebiscite could not be held in Chilean controlled territory.
The U.S. contribution to the resolution (temporary as it turned out) of the Tacna-Arica dispute turned out to be minor. The U.S. preferred solution, elections, could not be implemented because of the threat that the Chileans would kill and intimidate prospective Peruvian voters. Next the U.S. Secretary of State suggested that the disputed territories be turned over to Bolivia, with that country making indemnity payments to Chile and Peru. While this proposal pleased Bolivia, Peru and Chile rejected it. In 1929 when Peru and Chile agreed in bilateral negotiations to split the difference (Peru got Tacna, Chile Arica), Chile was able to persuade Peru to agree to a clause which indicated that if Chile were to give Bolivia an outlet to the sea through this territory Peru would need to accede. Such a clause would forever pit Peruvian nationalists against Bolivian aspirations, and Bolivia protested to the U.S. If Chile were tempted to grant Bolivia a sovereign outlet it would obviously use territory on its Peruvian border rather than divide Chile in two. But Peruvian leaders would find it politically difficult to justify accepting the transfer to another country of territory which Chile had taken by force. The U.S. asked the two countries to strike the provision from the treaty, but they merely turned it into a secret protocol. Bolivia thus lost, and Chile gained, an important ally in this territorial dispute.
U.S. paramountcy probably did have an impact at two points, although their contribution to the outcome is not clear. Chile’s military dictator, General Carlos Ibanez (1927-29) attempted to enlist first Britain, then Japan, in a trade of Easter Island for armaments and diplomatic support for Chile’s position on Tacna-Arica; but neither extrahemispheric great power was interested. This time Leguia was able to get the U.S. to accept responsibility for the final terms of the agreement, thereby providing him with a justification for ceding "national" territory. But he was overthrown within a year, and the new government denounced his subservience to the U.S., as exemplified in the cessation of national territory.
The Peruvian-Colombian border agreement of 1922 also originated in domestic concerns and left neighboring Ecuador feeling that the agreement had been made at its expense. In 1916 Ecuador recognized Colombian rights over disputed territory in the Amazon, expecting to gain an ally against Peru. But Leguia subsequently offered Colombia a better deal: sovereignty in the disputed area north of the Amazon river in exchange for Peru gaining the previously ceded Ecuadorian territory south of the Putumayo River. Colombia would now have settled borders with Ecuador and Peru (so it believed), leaving it with disputes only with Nicaragua and Venezuela. Brazil was also interested in the treaty, as it potentially affected the settlement of its Amazonian frontier with Peru.
The U.S. does not seem to have played a role in Peru and Colombia’s decision to negotiate the Salomon-Lozano treaty, but supported it. As the treaty confronted problems along the way to ratification, the U.S. played a fundamental role in insuring its confirmation. First, Brazil was brought in after Secretary of State Hughes let the Brazilians know that "he would be pleased" if they could support the treaty. Leguia subsequently began to get cold feet about the nationalist backlash if he submitted the treaty to Congress for ratification. Although he was a dictator, his hold on power could not long survive nationalists joining with other opponents of his regime. The U.S. successfully exerted enormous pressure on Leguia to have the Congress ratify it, which it did in 1928.
The claim for U.S. success in conflict management in the two cases is misplaced. Bolivia had expected the U.S. to use its hegemonic power to regain an outlet to the sea, and instead was confronted with its old ally, Peru, now in a position in which it could define its interests in opposition to Chilean territorial cessation to Bolivia. A similar situation occurred with Ecuador, which severed relations with Colombia once the terms of the Solomon-Lozano Treaty became known and lamented "In times of crisis the weakest is sacrificed, since this is the easiest way out." Finally, Peru’s dictator was not successful in convincing the army and nationalist civilians that the U.S. had forced these agreements upon him. Opposition to him would thus include the charge that he had sold out the national patrimony.
Because these alleged "successes" of U.S. hegemonic management failed to address fundamental problems, disputes were renewed in the late 1920s early 1930s. They begin with the renewed confrontation between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Chaco and access to the Paraguay River, and along with it, an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean for Bolivia. The two countries had disputed this largely uninhabited territory since 1878. In the 1920s both sides began colonizing and fortifying the area and stockpiling arms. The U.S. successfully opposed mediation by the League of Nations, claiming the dispute should be settled by American nations. Argentina unsuccessfully mediated a border skirmish in 1927 and a major confrontation occurred in 1928. After the Chile-Peru agreement of 1929 the Bolivian Vice President told the U.S. charge d’affaires that this was the "final blow" to Bolivian prestige and that it would not be allowed to happen again.
The ensuing Chaco War (1932-35, with a final peace settlement in 1938), was the bloodiest of the 20th century Latin American wars. It was prolonged by competition between Argentina and the U.S. for leadership of mediation efforts, with both leading parallel groups until the U.S. realized that Argentina would undermine any settlement it did not lead. Rather than seek a quick end to the conflict, Argentina sought to mediate an agreement which would confirm its leadership in Latin America.
Another blow up came after Leguia was overthrown. In 1932 nationalists and opponents of the new government seized the town of Leticia in the territory previously ceded to Colombia. Col. Sanchez Cerro’s government initially opposed the action, but when it proved popular, especially among the Army and the Civilist Party which supported him, seconded it. Colombia appealed to the U.S. for diplomatic support, but found that it had to rely on its military force to push the Peruvians out and on the League to provide a forum in which a resolution could be negotiated.
Colombia’s military successes contributed to an arms build up in the region and gave Peruvian militarists and nationalists another defeat to nurse. As a result, when Ecuador began to make incursions along its disputed frontier with Peru in the late 1930s, Peruvians saw the opportunity to not only resolve a territorial issue, but also put to rest a history of defeat. In 1941 they swept across Ecuador in a blitzkrieg and the U.S. accepted the results on the battlefield.
In sum, Wood is correct in pointing out that the 1930s became a bloody decade unlike any other since the end of the nationalist wars of the 19th century. But nuanced U.S. leadership (intervention and interference produce peace, nonintervention and noninterference produce war) was not the key difference; indeed, the U.S. was a distinctly secondary actor in the 1920s as well. National interests, both domestic and territorial, produced the context in which the U.S. could broker some agreements and serve as a shield for others. But because the disputes were linked in ways unappreciated by the U.S., although clearly seen by the Latin Americans, the "solutions" of the 1920s upset the status quo without resolving the fundamental problems or leaving any of the actors with an increased sense of security. Thus they lead directly to the military confrontations of the 1930s.
The alleged U.S. "success" of the 1920s proved hollow, in light of the impact of the diplomatic maneuvering of the time on the conflicts in the 1929-41 period. In addition, the indicators of success are the result of mistaking correlation for causation (the U.S. had intervened in the 1920s, it did not in the 1930s). Wood’s argument did not apply to Central America and the Caribbean, so I left it aside in this qualitative analysis. In turning to some quantitative evidence we go beyond Wood’s analysis and thus can incorporate Central America and the Caribbean.
This quantitative approach to the argument will facilitate our evaluation of the hegemonic management thesis by enabling us to incorporate MID experiences across almost the entire time period of our study, 1884-1993 (the data base does not extend to 1995). We can also arrange the data in a slightly different way, which should strengthen the hegemonic management thesis by controlling for some factors which may be affecting the impact of hegemonic management. These modifications separate the period of hegemonic management into two, according to systemic polarity, and split the region in two, South and Central America (the latter including Mexico and the Caribbean). We therefore create a best case scenario for the hegemonic management thesis and thereby demonstrate the robustness of our argument against the hegemonic thesis.
Up to now we have had a rather simple view of regional hegemonic management because we have focused only on the power distribution within the region. But while the regional hegemon may effectively isolate the region from the international system, it itself remains but one of the great powers in the global arena. As a consequence, the regional hegemon is playing in two games, the regional and global. While not significantly constrained by regional states (this is after all the core idea in a hegemonic management thesis), the regional hegemon is interacting with other powerful states at the international level. Consequently, the dynamics of its role in the global system may affect its ability and preferences for policing the region.
For Realists, the polarity of the international system will affect a great power’s behavior. whether the world is multi or bipolar will affect the costs and benefits of policing or otherwise managing the region. The chief effect of systemic polarity on regional hegemonic management should be to restrain unilateral action during multipolarity relative to that exercised during a period of bipolarity. The costs of diverting resources (e.g., in Mexico just as the U.S. was becoming involved in W.W.I) and the potential for provoking an intense search for great power balancers (e.g., Mexico with Germany in 1938, Argentina with Great Britain during W.W.II) should be higher in a multipolar than bipolar world. Consequently, militarized dispute occurrence and escalation should be highest in a pre-regional hegemony period and lowest when systemic bipolarity reigns. Regional hegemony under conditions of systemic multipolarity should produce an indeterminate but intermediate level of MIDs and their escalations.
Not all hegemonic management advocates, however, believe that systemic polarity affects the regional hegemon’s ability to regulate interstate relations within the region. These analysts focus on the power disparity between the regional hegemon and other regional states. Regional hegemony means there is no ability to balance against the regional hegemon with another great power, no matter the polarity of the international system. Thus the regional hegemon confronts regional states on the basis of the distribution of power within the region. For these analysts the difference in regional MID behavior is between when there is or is not a hegemon.
We now have two sets of hypotheses for the regional hegemonic management thesis, differentiated by whether or not systemic polarity matters. Each set has three components covering number of MIDs, use of force and escalation to war. Hegemonic management advocates disagree whether the impact of hegemony should be stronger in Central America and the Caribbean than in South America. We can, however, organize the data to reflect such a split and see if any variations across subregions emerge.
Evaluation. Table 3.3 presents the MID data for the two periods distinguished simply by whether the U.S. was hegemonic in the region. We have used the MID I data base because we are interested in whether disputants utilize military force in their disputes, and MID II does not record hostility level by disputant. The original MID set only goes up to 1976, so our analysis will have to end at that time. Since Central America has been in a hegemonic region throughout the period represented by our data base, we cannot test the hegemony hypothesis for it and are limited to South America.
*Force is defined as having a hostility level of 4 or greater in the MID data set (using rather than merely threatening or showing force).
a. MID I counts the same Argentine-British dispute in 1947 twice. For the purposes of this discussion, I also only count a MID once, no matter how many participants are involved.
b. The MID data set does not classify the 1941 dispute between Ecuador and Peru as a "war" (hostility level of 5), but it does record a hostility level of 6 (more than 999 battlefield deaths). Peru invaded Ecuador with planes, paratroopers and tanks, seized control of 40% of what Ecuador claimed as national territory and held other Ecuadorian territory hostage until Ecuador officially signed a peace treaty. Given the deaths and behavior of Peru, I take the hostility level to be incorrectly coded and classify it as a "war".
Source: MID I data set.
The hypothesis that hegemony per se leads to a decrease in MIDs is rejected, as the average number of MIDs in a year increased from 0.89 to 1.03. The use of force by both initiators and targets did decline marginally, by 5.6 and 3.6 percentage points, respectively, thereby providing weak support for Hypothesis 1B. Regional hegemony seems to have an impact in this area of militarized interstate disputes, although not as dramatic as many analysts and U.S. policymakers assert since over 3/4 of all MIDs begin with the active use of force. Hypothesis 1C, concerning escalation to war, is contradicted, as there were no wars in the pre-hegemonic period analyzed and wars did occur in the hegemonic era. (If the data set extended to 1982 the Malvinas/Falklands War would also have been included.) Simple hegemony, consequently, seems to have only a partial and small impact on interstate conflict behavior in South America.
Perhaps disaggregating hegemony by the international constraints on the hegemon may provide more support for the hegemonic management thesis. Table 3.4 presents the data for both Central and South America. South America provides three periods (no hegemony, hegemony within a multipolar world, and hegemony in a bipolar world) while Central America provides only the two hegemonic periods.
Table 3.4 indicates that the distribution of power internationally and regionally has no systematic impact on the occurrence of militarized interstate disputes in the western hemisphere. There are variations across time periods and South and Central America differ in their conflict behavior.
For South America, hegemony in the hemisphere combined with a bipolar international structure dramatically increases the yearly rate of MIDs compared with that under a multipolar international structure or no regional hegemony (1.38 compared with 0.62 and 0.89, respectively). In Central America, regional unipolarity in a bipolar world correlates with more MIDs (1.19 yearly average under bipolarity and 1.05 during multipolarity). Thus we reject Hypothesis 2A because a less constrained hegemon correlates with more rather than fewer MIDs in both subregions of the Latin American security complex.
Hypothesis 2B postulates that states will use force in their disputes more often when the hegemon is occupied with a multipolar world. South and Central American behavior diverges on this point, but in ways which still do not support the hegemonic management thesis. In South America variations in systemic polarity do not affect the use of force by initiators (75% under both bipolarity and multipolarity). Also in contrast to the Hypothesis, in Central America initiators use force significantly more often when the hegemon is less constrained (half the time under multipolarity, but 71% of the time under systemic bipolarity). Targets in South America behave partially in line with the hypothesis (responding with force 68.8% of the time under multipolarity, and only 28.2% under bipolarity), but still significantly more violence is used during regional hegemony in a multipolar world than in the absence of hegemony. In Central America the behavior of targets during hegemony is the reverse of that in South America. Central American targets are more likely to resort to force (42.1% of the time under bipolarity and in only 19.1% of their MIDs in a multipolar world). Hypothesis 2B is thus also rejected.
The postulated impact of systemic polarity on conflict escalation to war also lacks empirical support (Hypothesis 3B). There are so few wars that it would be hard to make a strong argument about their correlation with anything. But the data clearly show that in both South and Central America war happens when the U.S. is hegemonic and the world is either bi- or multipolar. Hypothesis 3B is also not supported in South America because regional multipolarity corresponds with 0 wars!
In sum, the argument for a positive theory of hegemonic management of conflict in Latin America’s security complex fails to provide any insight into the pattern or dynamics of interstate conflict.
There is also a hegemonic mismanagement thesis. Managers seek to make their "team" produce their product as the manager understands it. But managers may undermine the group’s ability to perform by dissipating its energies in side issues which may be more important to the manager than to the group. In the business world, this manager gets replaced for failing to deliver the goods. But in an owner-operated firm, no one may be able to replace the manager if she is incompetent and the company would fail. Under conditions of anarchy and hegemony in a regional security complex, the hegemon has "job security" and thus may run the "company" into the ground.
For some analysts, U.S. management of conflict in the Americas is a case of mismanagement. Rather than produce security for all Latin American nations vis-à-vis each other, the manager (U.S.) promoted distrust and conflict as it forced Latin American states to contribute to the enforcement of its vision of security in the complex. Rather than police the security complex on its own, the U.S. utilized Latin American elites and nations to do its own enforcement.
There are two versions of this thesis, one focusing on nationalism and the other on anti-communism. The basic point is the same: the U.S. saw it (nationalism or communism) as a threat to its own interests in the security complex and moved to sanction and eliminate it. Had it acted on its own, it would have been implementing a unilateral security agenda which would have punished the "offenders" but kept the other nations secure from the conflict. (Note the discussion in the introduction to this chapter.) But by forcing Latin American countries to become involved in the conflicts between the hegemon and a recalcitrant state, the U.S. subjected those allies to conflicts that were not in their own interests.
The hegemonic mismanagement thesis expects conflict in the Latin American security complex to increase under hegemony. We will test both the nationalist and anti-Communist versions. The evidence for the nationalist version is the same for the simple hegemony version of the pro-hegemonic management thesis, except that now we expect MIDs to increase rather than decrease. Once again, we cannot test this hypothesis for Central America and the Caribbean since there were only a few years between the end of the nationalist wars and the establishment of U.S. paramountcy. Reviewing Table 3.3 we find that in South America the frequency of MIDs did increase, but the level of violence by both initiator and target decreased slightly. There were two wars in the hegemonic period, but hegemonic mismanagement does not explain either the Chaco nor the Peru-Ecuador war of 1941.
The anti-Communist mismanagement thesis presents some new possibilities for analyzing the data. According to the anti-Communist version, we expect militarized conflict to increase in the period in which the U.S. was hegemonic after the Russian Revolution in 1918. We can make some modifications in the analysis done so far in order to get a better handle on the mismanagement thesis. MID II extends up to 1988 (the year before the end of the Cold War), and thus is more appropriate for investigating the impact of U.S. anti-Communism on interstate conflict management. As noted earlier, using this data set precludes distinguishing between the use of force by the initiator and target, but we can still ascertain whether a conflict became militarized up to the use of force (4 or 5 in the MID data set). In addition, we can ask how many states participated in the MIDs, an important consideration for an argument which claims that the hegemon pushes other states into disputes which are otherwise irrelevant to them.
Table 3.5 analyzes the data in terms of four categories: total Latin American participants in MIDs; the average number of disputants per year; whether force is used in the conflict; and the number of Latin American participants in regional wars. South America presents us with four cases, the pre-Communist years of 1884-1918 and the anti-Communist period of 1919-1988, also separated by whether we utilize military or a complete paramountcy (military, economic and political) to claim hegemony. The Central American cases are more straightforward in that all three circumstances occur together. Pre-Communist hegemony should thus correspond to 1908-1918 with Anti-Communist hegemony covering 1919-1988.
Evaluation. Table 3.6 provides some empirical support for the hegemonic mismanagement thesis. In South America, whether one uses the strictly military or multi-factorial definition of paramountcy, slightly more Latin American countries participate in MIDs during the periods of U.S. anti-Communism. (From 2.60 to 3.23 disputants per year, and 2.76 to 3.27, respectively.) In addition, South American conflicts are somewhat more likely to utilize force during this period: 4% more violent MIDs when examining the military version of U.S. paramountcy and 10% more MIDs becoming violent when we incorporate political and economic paramountcy.
The table also indicates that Latin American countries are more likely to participate in regional wars during the periods of alleged U.S. hegemonic mismanagement. But these numbers are not very convincing. There are so few participants in wars that the difference between the military and full versions of anti-Communist hegemony is 1 participant (from 2 to 3 total participants). In addition, neither the Chaco nor the Ecuador-Peru war of 1941 can be attributed to anti-Communism. Consequently, only 1 Latin American participant in a war during the 1919-88 period could conceivably be related to U.S. anti-Communism: the virulent anti-Communist military regime in Argentina during the Malvinas/Falklands War in 1982.
In Central America and the Caribbean, the average number of disputants per year declines dramatically with U.S. anti-Communist hegemony, from 3.18 to 1.75. This contradicts the hegemonic mismanagement thesis. But the use of violence in those disputes increases significantly (doubling from 37.5 to 75% of the cases), and the number of participants in regional wars also increases (from 0 to 3), thereby supporting the mismanagement thesis. Nevertheless, the Central America figures are problematic for evaluating the hypothesis because of the vast disparity in time periods analyzed: 11 years for pre-Communist hegemony by the U.S. and 81 years for the anti-Communist period.
The results of this analysis provide at best only weak empirical support for the argument that interstate conflict dynamics are affected by U.S. mismanagement. Combining the analysis in this section with previous ones in this chapter strongly suggests that the paramount state does not provide the collective good of security for subordinate states in Latin America. Neither does the establishment of U.S. paramountcy produce a new pattern of interstate relations in the region. If we want to understand interstate conflict and its management in the Latin American security complex we need to move beyond the myth of hegemonic management.