Cooperation as Craftwork: US Military Missions in Latin America, 1903-37

• In Event: The Historical Roots of 20th Century Global Governance

Abstract

When and how did the United States learn to act like an ally to the weaker states in its home region, against whom it had recurrently used the weapons of empire? United States-Latin American relations after the 1898 Spanish-American War are arguably the epitome of perforated sovereignty and recurrent hegemonic intervention, of the strong doing what they will and the weak suffering what they must, from the “big stick” and gunboat diplomacy, to a protectorate in Cuba and a “punitive expedition” in Mexico (Peter Smith, Talons of the Eagle; Brian Loveman, No Higher Law). Existing research suggests that this dynamic only changed in the 1930s, with the spread of reciprocity and collective security institutions under the aegis of FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy, though scholars disagree about its causes: constructivists highlight an epistemic community of lawyers and diplomats discussing changing norms about sovereign debt collection (Martha Finnemore, Purpose of Intervention; Tom Long and Max Friedman in International Security), while realists emphasize the White House’s realization of increased costs posed by resistance to protracted military occupations in the Caribbean (Alan McPherson, The Occupied; cf. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power), the Depression, and escalating global threats posed by the Axis (John Child, Unequal Alliance).
This paper contests both the assumed periodization and the causal mechanisms of these accounts. Drawing on organizational politics theories, I argue that the practice of military hegemony was in part self-correcting, and that there was an early, ad hoc, strictly military origin of reciprocity and cooperation. Organically, and often driven by mid-ranking officers in the field rather than by leaders in Washington, the US learned to behave like an ally, systematically increasing other countries’ military capabilities (“efficiency” in the language of the day) at their request. Overseas commitments had unintended consequences that boosted interactions with neighbors; missions in one country created a template for working with others; and limited interactions by isolated personnel built trust and enabled cooperation on a larger scale. The Good Neighbor Policy, the Lend-Lease Act, and World War II systematically proliferated, further institutionalized, and more intensively resourced these relationships, but did not invent them. Empirically, the paper draws on extensive archival research with declassified US military records, focusing on the files of “downrange” (overseas) units and commands (particularly naval and military attaches, naval and military advisory missions, and the several organizations based in the Canal Zone), contextualized with contemporary periodicals and government publications.
This paper would fit well with panels on imperialism, alliance politics, security assistance and cooperation, the armed forces, US foreign policy, Latin America, or archival and historical methods.

Author

• Christopher Darnton, Naval Postgraduate School