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Mexico's Foreign Policy as a Middle Power: The Nicaragua Connection, 1884-1986

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

David R. Mares
David R. Mares*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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The field of international relations and foreign policy in Latin America is presently experiencing tremendous institutional and intellectual growth. These developments are increasingly emphasizing economic and political determinants at the national and international levels over the traditional focus on diplomacy and international law. This article will address one of the major theoretical issues in the study of international relations: can structural theories provide anything more than very general predictions of international politics? In addition, because most work using this perspective focuses on great powers, I ask whether structural theories can explain the behavior of lesser powers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 81 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

I want to thank Peter Cowhey, Jorge I. Domínguez, Paul Drake, Jane Milner-Mares, and the LARR editors and reviewers for helpful comments. I naturally take full responsibility for the points of view expressed here. Support for this research was provided by both the Committee on Research of the Academic Senate and the Affirmative Action Faculty Career Development Program at the University of California, San Diego, as well as by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the National Science Foundation.

References

Notes

1. Such growth was already noted in the 1970s. See Jorge I. Domínguez, “Consensus and Divergence: The State of the Literature on Inter-American Relations in the 1970s,” LARR 12, no. 1 (1978):87–126. But with democratization in the early 1980s, new centers of study mushroomed. Examples abound: in Rio de Janeiro, the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) and the Instituto de Relações Internacionais at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (IRIPUC); in Campinas, the Núcleo de Estudos Estratégicos of the Universidade de Campinas; in São Paulo, the group around Antônio Carlos Pereira and his journal, Política e Estratégia; in Buenos Aires, the Centro de Investigaciones Europeo-Latinoamericanas (EURAL) and FLACSO-Programa Buenos Aires; in Santiago, Programa de Seguimiento de las Políticas Exteriores Latinoamericanas (PROSPEL), the group from RIAL (Relaciones Internacionales de América Latina) coordinated by Luciano Tomassini at CEPAL, and FLACSO-Programa Santiago.

2. The Latin American literature on international relations is reviewed in Domínguez, “Consensus and Divergence”; and in Alberto van Klaveren, “The Analysis of Latin American Foreign Policies: Theoretical Perspectives,” in Latin American Nations in World Politics, edited by Heraldo Muñoz and Joseph S. Tulchin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), 1–21; see also Kenneth M. Coleman, “On Comparing Foreign Policies: Comments on van Klaveren,” in the same edited work, 22–29.

3. The general tendency in the literature on Mexican foreign policy is to include variables from all three levels of analysis in the “explanation.” While this approach may be descriptively correct, it represents muddled analytical thinking. On the importance of the comparative method for theory testing, see Arendt Lijphard, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” American Political Science Review 65 (1971):682-93; and Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational Decision Making,” Advances in Information Processing in Organizations, edited by Lee S. Sproull and Patrick D. Larkey (Greenwich, Conn.: Jai Press, 1985), 2:21–58.

4. As late as 1916, U.S. attempts to secure rights to a canal through Nicaragua by means of the Bryan-Chamorro treaty were sufficiently threatening to other Central American countries that the Corte de Justicia Centroamericana collapsed because it could not resolve the dispute.

5. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

6. The perspective that takes the individual as the primary cause of international conflict looks either to general traits of human behavior (such as selfishness, aggressiveness, stupidity) or to specific characteristics of individual statesmen (psychology, personal political beliefs, or other aspects). See Waltz, Man, the State, and War, chaps. 1 and 2. For the purpose of explaining behavior that varies within a case and between cases, the focus on general traits of human behavior is too broad. Rather, individual personality and political beliefs become key factors.

7. Pellicer, “Mexico's Position,” 92; René Herrera Zúñiga and Mario Ojeda, “Mexican Foreign Policy and Central America,” in Central America: International Dimensions of the Crisis, edited by Richard E. Feinberg (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 182.

8. Olga Pellicer, “Mexico's Position,” Foreign Policy 43 (Summer 1981):90.

9. The two events and their impacts on subsequent Mexican politics are not identical. Nevertheless, for analytical purposes, one can abstract out those qualities relating to the logic of the historical lessons perspectives: a prolonged and violent conflict that lays the basis for peace and prosperity by incorporating the politically neglected.

10. The most comprehensive examination of the Porfiriato is Daniel Cosío Villegas's multivolume Historia moderna de México: el Porfiriato (Mexico City: Editorial Hermes, 1960).

11. For an introduction into the complexity of Mexico's political economy since the Revolution, see Roger D. Hansen, The Politics of Mexican Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).

12. For a good review of this position, see Wolf Grabendorff, “Mexican Foreign Policy: Indeed a Foreign Policy?” and Jorge G. Castañeda, “Don't Corner Mexico!,” Foreign Policy 60 (Fall 1985):88–90.

13. Grabendorff reviews such arguments in the article cited in the preceding note.

14. See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).

15. Bruce Bagley, “Mexico in the 1980s: A New Regional Power,” Current History 80, no. 469 (Nov. 1981):353–56.

16. At least one work views the Mexican Revolution as heavily influenced by U.S. attempts to wrest control of this petroleum source from the British. See M. S. Alperovich and B. T. Rudenko, La Revolución Mexicana de 1910–1917 y la política de los Estados Unidos (Mexico City: Ediciones de Cultura Popular, 1960).

17. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), esp. chap. 5. Critiques of Waltz's theories abound, but the most interesting are collected in Neo-Realism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

18. Waltz recognizes the difficulty of definitional precision on the issue of determining capabilities. He hedges his definition by first noting that it is a combination of seven elements (population, territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability, and competence). He then argues that the importance of each element varies over time, that “common sense can answer it,” that common sense may be wrong, and finally that only a rough sense of relative ranking is needed. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 131. The last argument is the most important point for Waltz because his concern with the theory is to understand the behavior of the chief powers in the system, and as a result, he needs to know only if there are one, two, or many powers.

19. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 91.

20. This goal can be achieved by threatening to defeat the aggressor militarily or by inflicting costs in victory great enough to offset the gains. See the discussion in John Mearscheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), chap. 2.

21. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (Jan. 1978):186–214.

22. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, chap. 6; Robert Jervis, “From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation,” Cooperation under Anarchy, edited by Kenneth A. Oye (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 58–79; and Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Note that the balance of power does not require that power be divided equally, only that it make the costs of aggression unacceptable to potential aggressors.

23. One example of this perceptual argument is the concern with international reputation. Here a state invests resources in projecting a certain perception that it expects to influence the future behavior of other states. For an attempt to develop a formal model of the relationship between international reputation and foreign policy, see James E. Alt, Randall L. Calvert, and Brian D. Humes, “Game Theory and Hegemonic Stability: The Role of Reputation and Uncertainty,” paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Meetings, Chicago, 10–12 April 1986.

24. The classic work applying this game-theory concept to international relations is Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960).

25. This typology is adopted from Robert O. Keohane, “Lilliputians' Dilemmas: Small States in International Politics,” International Organization 23, no. 2 (Spring 1969):291–310.

26. The most favorable conditions for coercion to succeed in creating alliances were found to be the times when the target states are small countries with very weak governments. Stephen Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9, no. 4 (Spring 1985):18, 33.

27. The fact that an individual state may acquiesce to being absorbed by another does not undermine the point that most states, and all great powers, seek to maintain independence. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 93–97.

28. Compare Robert O. Keohane, “The Big Power of Small Allies,” Foreign Policy 2 (Spring 1971):161–82.

29. For an example, see Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pt. 1.

30. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 154. Woodward provides no citation for this affirmation. Cosío Villegas, writing fifteen years earlier in a meticulous and voluminous work on Mexico's foreign policy from 1871 to 1910, claims that no confirming evidence has been found. See Historia moderna de México, vol. 5, El Porfiriato: vida política-exterior, part 1, p. xxiii.

31. Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided, 152–55.

32. Cosío Villegas, Historia Moderna de México, xxiii and 174–83.

33. Ibid., 395.

34. Ibid., 404–14.

35. Ibid., 424–26.

36. Ibid., 444–68; 502–3.

37. Ibid.

38. Mexico also came to El Salvador's defense against Guatemala when asked. Ibid., 565.

39. Ibid., 473–81.

40. Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954), 74–81; and Gordon Connell-Smith, The Inter-American System (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 39–42.

41. Robert John Deger, Jr., “Porfirian Foreign Policy and Mexican Nationalism: A Study of Cooperation and Conflict in Mexican-American Relations, 1884–1904,” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1979, 220–21.

42. On U.S. interests, see Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900-1921 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), 147.

43. For the Roosevelt Corollary, see ibid., 65–111.

44. Woodward, Central America, 187; for U.S. interests in this episode, see Walter La-Faber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984, 7th printing; orig. pub. 1963), 218–29.

45. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 41.

46. Ibid. The customs house treaties were the means preferred by the United States for implementing the Roosevelt Corollary.

47. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 635–58; and Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 151.

48. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 152–55; Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Area (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1934), 195–202; and Whitney T. Perkins, Constraint of Empire: The United States and Caribbean Interventions (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981), 23.

49. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 687–97.

50. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 165–66.

51. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 699–703.

52. The consul was most likely acting on his own, rather than under orders from the State Department. See Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 25–26; and Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 174–75. Nevertheless, incentives from Washington encouraged this kind of behavior. If independent action failed to produce benefits for the United States, the consul rarely seems to have paid a price; and if such actions brought benefits, Washington was very happy to accept them.

53. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 705–7; Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 175–77; and Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 26.

54. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 707–31; and Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 179.

55. Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna, 708–23; and Munro, intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 182–83.

56. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 181.

57. Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1943), 202–10.

58. Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 106–14.

59. Ibid., 115–16.

60. Henry L. Stimson, American Policy in Nicaragua (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), 56.

61. Ibid.; on the negotiations, see 55–77.

62. Standard works on Sandino include two laudatory works by Gregorio Selser: El pequeño ejército loco: operación México-Nicaragua (Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, 1960); and Sandino: general de hombres libres (Mexico City: Editorial Diógenes, 1978; English version published by Monthly Review Press, 1981). See also Neill Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967; reissued by Duke University Press in 1985); and Eduardo Crawley, Nicaragua in Perspective (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), a revised version of his earlier work, Dictators Never Die (1979).

63. Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 151.

64. Karl Bermann, Under the Big Stick: Nicaragua and the United States since 1848 (Boston: South End Press, 1986), 200.

65. Selser, Sandino, 122–36; Crawley, Nicaragua in Perspective, 66–69; and Bermann, Under the Big Stick, 211. All fail to mention Sandino's break with the Communists in their discussions or his visit to Mexico. For the problems between Sandino and the Communists, see Macaulay, The Sandino Affair, 157–58, 114.

66. Crawley claims in Nicaragua in Perspective that Sandino was as strong as ever in January 1933 (p. 78). But even Crawley notes that Sandino's forces were very poorly armed and that Sandino was only able to offer Sacasa six hundred armed men against a possible coup by Somoza (p. 84).

67. Castañeda, “Don't Corner Mexico!,” 80.

68. Mario Ojeda, “Mexican Policy toward Central America in the Context of U.S.-Mexican Relations,” in The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the U.S. and Mexico, edited by Richard R. Fagen and Olga Pellicer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983), 141–44.

69. Carter's policies are described in Bermann, Under the Big Stick, 261–74.

70. Even before the current Iran-Contra scandal became public knowledge, much evidence pointed to the Reagan administration's desire to circumvent U.S. Congressional restrictions in order to bring about the overthrow of the Sandinistas. For a collection of evidence, see Central America Crisis Monitoring Team, In Contempt of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1985); and Wayne S. Smith, “Lies about Nicaragua,” Foreign Policy 67 (Summer 1987):87–103.

71. Jorge I. Domínguez and Juan Lindau, “The Primacy of Politics: Comparing the Foreign Policies of Cuba and Mexico,” International Political Science Review 5, no. 1 (1984):89-90, 94; Bagley, “Mexico in the 1980s: A New Regional Power,” 354, 176–79; Herrera Zúñiga and Ojeda, “Mexican Foreign Policy,” 176–79; Olga Pellicer, “Mexico in Central America: The Difficult Exercise of Regional Power,” in The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the U.S. and Mexico, edited by Richard R. Fagen and Olga Pellicer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983), 120–21.

72. See “Arms Shipped to Salvador Rebels, Nicaragua Admits,” Los Angeles Times, 25 June 1987, pt. 1, p. 15.

73. Mario Ojeda, “Mexican Foreign Policy toward Central America in the Context of U.S.-Mexican Relations,” 143–44; on the Contadora negotiations, see Castañeda, “Don't Corner Mexico!,” 84–87.

74. Rosario Green, “La política exterior de México hacia Centroamérica: un informe sobre el proceso de Contadora,” lecture given at the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, University of California, San Diego, 13 Feb. 1985.

75. Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Neo-Realism and Its Critics, 158–203.

76. See Waltz's discussion of the recurrence of balances of power, Theory of International Politics, 102–28.