Crafting constraints: Latin American support for humanitarian-intervention norms

Abstract

This article explores why, by 2005, most Latin American countries supported the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a doctrine modifying limits on the use of force to address atrocity crimes. I group existing explanations of why Latin American countries apparently changed their long-standing defence of non-intervention following the main explanatory factor they focus on: power asymmetries, government preferences or coalition politics. I find that these accounts downplay a fundamental dimension informing the approaches of Latin American supporters: how to limit interveners. Drawing on Republican security theory (RST), I argue that Latin American supporters faced a dilemma in the R2P debates, especially after the intervention in Iraq in 2003. Latin American supporters favoured crafting solutions to humanitarian problems that simultaneously addressed crises and prevented arbitrary uses of force. I use the Brazilian and Chilean case studies to explore this argument. Brazilian and Chilean governments concluded that their conventional interpretations of limits on the use of force did not offer answers for both humanitarian emergencies and arbitrary uses of force. As a solution, they modified but did not abandon their diplomatic traditions. These governments calculated that humanitarian-intervention norms could be constraints, even if imperfect, on interveners arbitrarily using military force.

Keywords:

• Latin America
• humanitarian-intervention norms
• responsibility to protect
• multilateral negotiations
• United Nations

Acknowledgements

For their comments on earlier drafts, the author thanks Élodie Brun, Steven David, Daniel Deudney, Margaret Keck, Valerie de Koeijer, Tom Long, Carsten-Andreas Schulz, Matias Spektor and Christy Thornton. Three external reviewers and the editors at Third World Quarterly provided invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. The author thanks the Center for International Studies at El Colegio de México, the Political Science Institute at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the School for International Studies at the Fundação Getulio Vargas for their intellectual support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For examples of literature in these groups see Harig and Kenkel (2017), Stuenkel (2016b) and Serrano (2016), respectively.

2 Daniel Deudney is the leading author behind RST. He explains the main components of this theoretical framework in Deudney (2007), especially in chapter 2.

3 I retrieved the Chilean and Brazilian statements related to R2P, and I conducted semi-structured interviews with scholars and members of the delegations of each country. I established the claims elites made during the negotiations. Then I distinguished the characteristics of the forums where the debates took place. Finally, I organised these data into sequences of interactions to compare their approaches and actions. To achieve this, I followed the methodological advice of Nexon (2009, 26–27).

4 I conducted informal interviews with policymakers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico from March to August 2019. The Johns Hopkins University Homewood Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviewed study number HIRB00008343 in November 2018. It determined that this research did not qualify as federally regulated human subjects research and therefore did not require IRB approval. All interviewees provided appropriate oral consent.

5 Arredondo 2011 distinguishes between supporters with eclectic and inter-American positions; Salgado Espinoza 2016 differentiates between Latin American proponents and those with positions between support and rejection; Serrano (2016) contrasts supporters and moderates.

6 See Saltalamacchia and Covarrubias (2011, 9–18), and chapters on Chile and Brazil.

7 The crises during the 1980s and 1990s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala forced Latin America to cooperate with extra-regional actors to bring peace to the isthmus. After regional plans paved the ground for pacification processes in Central America, multilateral organisations played a critical mediating role in the 1990s (Serrano 2016, 440–441).

8 van Klaveren, A. 2019. Interview. Former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. June 20.

9 Chile had a non-permanent seat in the UNSC in the 2002–2003 period. Chile was part of a group on the Council, together with France and Mexico, that resisted authorizing an intervention in Iraq.

10 Portales, C. 2019. Interview. Former Managing Director of Planning and former Director of Foreign Policy in the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Relations. July 3.

11 Labbé, A. 2019. Interview. Former Director of Foreign Policy in the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Relations. July 12 and August 14.

12 Patriota, A. 2019. Interview. Former Minister of Foreign Relations of Brazil. April 12.

13 The G77 is a UN grouping of 134 developing countries, designed to help these states coordinate their positions to increase their negotiating capacity at the UNGA.

14 Labbé, A. 2019. Interview.

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 Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. His research studies how the Global South builds limits on the use of force in international law and organisation. He focuses primarily on the negotiations to codify humanitarian-intervention norms, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation mechanisms, and rules for cyberspace. He holds a PhD in political science from the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Before starting his PhD programme, he was a junior advisor to the Mexican Vice-Minister for Latin American Affairs, working on international security and cooperation.