Latin America and Great Power Rivalry: Historical Patterns and Precedents

SCARFI, JUAN PABLO

Virtual Convention

Congreso; LASA 2022 Congress; 2022

Latin American Studies Association

As an historian of international law and (historical) IR scholar, my work addresses the question of great power rivalries in Latin America through the construction and institutionalization of doctrines and legal ideas, norms and institutions. In my own work, I have explored how doctrines of diplomacy and legal norms, such as the Monroe Doctrine and principle of non-intervention, have been deployed and redefined to regulate Latin American international autonomy and self-determination in relation to great European powers and the rise of the United States as an hegemonic power in the region since the late nineteenth century up to the late twentieth century. My interdisciplinary approach to this subject has helped me to grasp and make sense of the relevance that great power rivalries had in Latin American international history and in particular how it shaped the construction of hemispheric and regional norms. For instance, the Calvo and Drago Doctrines were direct responses to great European power interventions in the region for the collection of public debts. The US and Latin America have developed a specific tradition of legal diplomacy, which emerged and developed very much in response to great power rivalries among European nations and the so-called standard of civilization. My approach to this topic combines intellectual history (of key legal, diplomatic and public figures from the region and the rise and consolidation of legal ideas, doctrines and norms) with the study of US-Latin American relations in a historical and conceptual perspectives (exploring the transformation of continental languages, norms and institutions with a special emphasis on Pan-Americanism, American and Latin American international law and the so-called Inter-American System broadly understood). As shown in my book The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas (2017), my theoretical framework has consisted in constructing an hemispheric intellectual history approach to this topic, examining the origins and development of diplomatic doctrines and legal norms and the continental and regional debates and doctrinal transformations they provoked when discussed within Latin America, as well as across the Americas. Through my research and work on this topic, I have shown that great power rivalries among European nations and between European nations and the United States have proved to be decisive in the formation and consolidation of continental and regional legal traditions, norms and institutions in Latin America.