One Cuba is Enough

Collective Security in Latin America During The Cold War

Abstract

Despite the contribution of new streams in international law scholarship, the decades of the Cold War remain underexplored in Latin American current historiography. Removing the geopolitical conflict from the centrality of historiographic analysis, the present article aims to understand the operation of international law in the Cold War through Latin American regional dynamics. Through the reading of the articles on “collective security” published in some international law journals during the period of the Cold War (American Journal of International Law and the Mexican Foro Internacional), this article recounts the history of the jurisdictional conflict between regional and universal organizations. It demonstrates that the history of collective security in the hemisphere begins as experiment in formalization of the long and distinct American tradition in international law.  The defense of this tradition served as a basis to formalize or legalize the projection of US power in the Americas. Latin Americans responded to this push first by endorsing the creation of a regional organization and a collective security arrangement, later by using law as a strategy to advance their position. However, as collective security increasingly became a justification for violations of the UN Charter, solidarity among American republics faded and cooperation, despite a regional treaty, became virtually impossible. The regional agreement thus proved to be both an enabler and an obstacle for this strategy. Thus, we conclude that the history of the International Law in Latin American during the Cold War was also the history of the demise of American International Law.

KEYWORDS: Cold War. Latin America; International Law; Collective Security.