Contemporary humanitarians: Latin America and the ordering of responses to humanitarian crises

Abstract

Latin American foreign-policy elites defend the principle of non-intervention to shield their countries’ autonomy. By 2005, however, most Latin American foreign policy elites accepted the easing of limits on the use of force in international law. They supported the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which regulates the use of force to protect populations from mass atrocities. The paper presents a comparison of the Brazilian, Chilean, and Mexican positions in the R2P debates to understand why they supported this norm. During the debates leading to the emergence of R2P, these elites questioned a central premise of liberal internationalism: the idea that great powers would restrain their use of military force as part of their commitment to a liberal international order (LIO). Using Republican international political theory, I argue that these Latin American foreign-policy elites viewed a restricted humanitarian-intervention norm as a new defence against great powers interfering in developing countries. Instead of trusting that great powers would restrain their actions, these elites advocated for a humanitarian-intervention norm that would prevent uncontrolled humanitarian interventions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This strategy is not new for Latin Americans. In this special issue, Long, Schulz, and Scarfi trace how Latin American international lawyers embraced non-intervention and multilateralism to protect political freedom in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

2 Analysts identify four preconditions for the Latin American acceptance of R2P: powerful actors supporting the norm (Harig and Kenkel 2017; Kenkel and Cunliffe 2016; Stephen 2014); democratic governments adopting liberal agendas after democratic transitions (Serrano 2016); working alongside multilateral organisations to face regional problems (Serrano 2000); and acting as a group in the R2P multilateral negotiations (Serbin and Serbin Pont 2015).

3 See Arredondo 2011, Salgado Espinoza 2016, and Serrano 2016. Supporters were R2P proponents (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay), moderates (Ecuador and Mexico), or sceptics (Bolivia and Brazil). After assessing the participation of different Latin American countries, I selected Chile as an example of proponents and Mexico as moderates to compare with Brazil, a sceptic.

4 Scholars studying international norms distinguish phases in norm life cycles, identifying the different dynamics dominating each stage (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). The paper analyses the R2P life cycle up to the September 2005 agreement, a turning point in the R2P life cycle, crystallising the norm’s emergence. After this year, R2P entered a different stage of its normative development, with different dynamics driving the norm’s refinement and application. Future work can delve into the subsequent phases of the R2P life cycle, each of which presented different dynamics than during its emergence (Labonte 2016).

5 I followed the advice in Slater and Ziblatt 2013 on controlled comparisons.

6 See Linklater and Suganami 2006, ch. 2, for a historical and programmatic explanation of the English School.

7 The UN system embraced elements of the League of Nations, the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact), and the Geneva General Act for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes enforcing the renunciation of war. The signatories of the UN took this responsibility one step further by committing their countries to “settle all disputes, without exception, peacefully” and by making war illegal (Weller 2015a, 13).

8 See detailed accounts on specific country cases in Saltalamacchia and Covarrubias 2011. In parallel to the human rights regime, Latin American governments crafted multilateral mechanisms to share best practices to promote and safeguard their incipient democratic regimes (See Emmons in this special issue).

9 The Rio Group was a Latin American and Caribbean regional forum created on 18 December 1986. In 2011, the countries in the Group decided to dissolve it and replace it with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

10 The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised against seeking a non-permanent seat in the UNSC, arguing that Mexico could end up risking its relationship with the US over themes that were not essential for Mexican interests (Ojeda 1981; Pellicer 2010).

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges financial support from the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University through a Nicole Suveges Fieldwork Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

J. Luis Rodriguez

J. Luis Rodriguez is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Through a mix of qualitative methods, his research examines how developing countries influence the origins and development of limits on the use of force in international law, focusing on nuclear, humanitarian, and cyber governance. Correspondence to: J. Luis Rodriguez, Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, USA. Email: [email protected]