Foreign Policy and Regional Integration in Argentina: A Long and Winding Road
Argentinean economic and (particularly) foreign policies are often described as erratic. Indeed, the appointment of more than 50 ministers of foreign affairs between the mid-1940s and the late 1980s surely contributes to that view.1 Pundits explain this ‘erratic’ positioning as a fluctuation between contradictory poles, such as ‘Western alignment’ or the formulation of populist nationalist and non-alignment policies (Vacs, 2003, p. 289). What is erratic is, of course, a relative matter, both concerning variables of reference and in the (inevitable) comparison with other countries. However, with regard to regional integration there seems to be an established opinion that the ‘erratic pattern’ is less prominent. In fact, in this area, many pundits seem to agree that pro-integration polices have been an anomaly, even during periods when the lines of action were distanced from Western powers. Argentinean foreign policy had a more autonomous positions vis-a-vis big powers.
Las fronteras del Gobierno de Kirchner: entre la consolidación de lo viejo y las aspiraciones de lo nuevo
Resumen es: El presente articulo analiza las dimensiones politicas y sociales del Gobierno de Nestor Kirchner, a fin de evaluar las rupturas y continuidades del pr...
Brazilian Diplomacy and the Washington–Rio de Janeiro “Axis” during the World War II Era
TmH era of the Second World War had a profound impact on Brazilian foreign policy. Relations with Germany, Brazil's leading European trade partner, reached their twentieth-century nadir. Britain's financial and commercial role in Brazilian affairs weakened still further, continuing the decline initiated by the Depression. Among the great power rivals for influence in Brazil, the beneficiary of wartime circumstances was the United States. Indeed, the unprecedented intensification of relations with that country was one of the most significant chapters in modem Brazilian diplomacy and an historical phenomenon pregnant with implications for not only wartime but postwar hemispheric relations. This article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the Rio-Washington "axis" by reassessing two of its key aspects: the nature of Brazilian diplomacy and the character and objectives of American policy toward Brazil. The major statement on wartime Brazilian-American relations is Frank D. McCann's The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937-1945. According to McCann, Brazil was a somewhat passive victim of stronger, domineering powers. Berlin's goal in Brazil was "conquest and domination to fulfill the Fuehrer's dream of world dictatorship," and Roosevelt's United States was surprisingly not essentially different from Hitler's Reich in this regard. The New Deal trade program, for example, insofar as it concerned Brazil, was aimed at establishing American "economic and political hegemony" over that country. During the war, moreover, Washington would play "a two-faced game" with Rio de Janeiro, continuing to seek "domination" of Brazil at the same time that it formulated plans for a program of postwar military assistance to Latin America in which the importance of Brazil to hL-le United States "was reduced, if not eliminated." The Getulio Vargas