Joseph S. Tulchin

t is an exaggeration to insist, as many have done, both in the

United States and elsewhere, that the world changed forever

after September 11, 2001. In the case of the United States, for

example, the administration of George W. Bush, which took office

at the beginning of that year, was unilateralist and isolationist

before the attacks on the Twin Towers and it remained unilateralist

and isolationist after the attacks. What changed in U.S. foreign

policy is that terrorism, and, by implication, other non-state and

intermestic threats, replaced traditional state-based threats as the

nation’s top priority. In addition, the response to this threat

became military and aggressively imperialistic while remaining

unilateral.

Sadly, from a Latin American perspective, the attacks

appeared to push the U.S. to revert to an older mode of strategic

thinking that had dominated the period of the Cold War, in which

the hemisphere was decidedly less important than other regions of

To be in the world

STUDIA POLITICÆ Número 04 ~ primavera/verano 2004.

Publicada por la Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales,

de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Córdoba, República Argentina.

Texto de la conferencia pronunciada por el profesor Joseph S. Tulchin, en la

Universidad Católica de Córdoba, en ocasión de las 2ª Jornadas Internacionales

de la Agenda Regional frente al Contexto Global - “Seguridad regional como

factor de estabilización”, organizadas por la Facultad de Ciencia Política y Rela-

ciones Internacionales, los días 26 y 27 de agosto de 2004.

In her testimony before the 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004, Condeleezza Rice,

the National Security Adviser to President Bush confessed that she, personally,

had been preoccupied with traditional state-based threats at the time of the

attacks.

STUDIA POLITICÆ

04 ~ primavera/verano 200412

the world. In addition, the attacks reinforced the historic tendency

of the U.S. to impose its agenda on the rest of the hemisphere,

and to insist on a Manichean zero-sum posture of “with us” or

“against us.”

In this sense, the terrorist attacks on the U.S. were profoundly

significant in Latin America. They stopped the process of change

in hemispheric affairs that had begun with the end of the Cold

War in which the nations of the hemisphere —with the

participation, or at least the acquiescence, of the U.S.— moved to

form a community of shared values. And, with the subsequent

unilateral decisions by the U.S. to fight terrorism with military

forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Latin America lost a considerable

portion of the relevance it had begun to achieve in U.S. foreign

policy over the course of the 1990s. Worse, because of a long

tradition of passivity in their actions, most of the nations in the

hemisphere appear to be losing relevance in global affairs as well.

My principal argument is that Latin America still has —as it has

had since 1990— a unique window of opportunity to expand its

autonomy in the international system because the bipolar

competition of the Cold War no longer exists. In the absence of a

clear enemy, of an “other” to be feared and opposed, the U.S. was

disposed to rely more on its ability to persuade and to share its

political and cultural values, what Joseph Nye has called “soft

power.”

The majority of the nations in the hemisphere, newly

democratic for the first time in history, were, in turn, disposed to

be persuaded by an appeal to democracy, human rights, the rule of

law, and a market economy, and to use their own commitment to

these values as their soft power. However, it is necessary for the

nations of the hemisphere to seize the opportunity. To do so, the

nations of Latin America have to learn to think strategically and to

become proactive in hemispheric and global affairs. To maximize

their role, their opportunity, they have to appreciate first how

they could participate at different levels of the international

Joseph S. NYE, Soft Power – the Means to Success in World Politics (NY:

Public Affairs Press, 2004).

community, and how to recognize and use the stock of soft power

they have. They have to learn how to “BE IN THE WORLD.”

While the U.S., under the administration of George W. Bush, has

been following a unilateralist and hyperrealist foreign policy, it

nonetheless remains clear that, with the exception of very

narrowly defined, short term military objectives, the U.S. with all

of its sophisticated hard power and its remarkable stock of soft

power, is incapable of achieving its foreign policy objectives and

protecting its national interests without the collaboration of other

nations and without the active involvement of multilateral

agencies, whether they be the UN or the WTO. This is for two

quite different reasons. The first has to do with the nature of all

non-traditional threats in the international community – something

true even before the Cold War ended – that they cannot be

managed or eliminated by a single nation-state, no matter how

powerful. The second has to do with the fact that you cannot

impose values on others, you must persuade them of their virtue.

And, in the current global environment, the best way to convince

others is to create a community in which those values are shared.

Unilateralism simply is counter-productive. To put it another way,

soft power is most effective in a multilateral, consensual

framework. Peacekeeping and nation building, as well as dealing

with terrorism, are only effective as community efforts. The case

of Haiti is paradigmatic.

For both of these reasons, then, it remains true that the

opportunity for proactive involvement in rulemaking is still

available to the nations of the Western Hemisphere. The key to the

answer is to understand the linkages between soft power and hard

power in U.S. thinking and to see the historic ties between values

JOSEPH S. TULCHIN

The concept of international community has been a matter of debate for

centuries. Until the 20

century it was generally limited to questions of

international law or Kantian categories. Beginning in the 20

century, a concern

for norms in international relations was referred to as “idealism.” Today, among

scholars, it is referred to as the English school of international relations. See Ian

ALL, “Review article: still the English patient? Closures and inventions in the

English school,” International Affairs, 77, Nº 3 (2201): 931-42.

STUDIA POLITICÆ

04 ~ primavera/verano 200414

on the one hand and security policy on the other.

These linkages,

together with the transnational nature of new threats in the

international system mean that every nation, no matter how small

and “weak” in traditional terms, has some leverage, some

legitimacy, and some credibility in the international community.

And, as soft security threats, or non-traditional security threats,

such as terrorism, assume greater salience, the potential roles for

weaker countries —and the nations of Latin America— may be

taken to fall into this category —are actually more accessible and

important than they were before 9/11.

To understand how the nations of Latin America can exercise their

influence in the international system, it is useful to see security as

occurring or existing on several levels.

If we were to deconstruct

terrorism into its component parts, we could see that it consists, in

addition to its spectacular, violent acts, such as the destruction of

the Twin Towers or the bombing of Atorcha train station or the

destruction of the Jewish Community Center, of illegal acts that

begin as local criminal behavior and then extend outward

territorially to include international criminal behavior, such as

money laundering, arms smuggling, and the misuse of information

technology. Seen in these terms, security is an intensely local

phenomenon and extends to national, sub-regional, regional,

Robert LITWAK, “The New Calculus of Pre-emption,” Survival, The

International Institute for Strategic Studies, Vol. 44, nº 4, Winter 2002-2003.

“Soft security threats” is the current phrase used to describe what during the

1990s the academic literature referred to as non-traditional threats, see John

Ikenberry and Michael W. D

OYLE, eds. New Thinking in International Relations

Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), James N. R

OSENAU, “Stability,

Stasis, and Change: A Fragmenting World”, The Global Century. Globalization

and National Security, Vol. 1, eds. Richard Kugler and Ellen Frost (Washington,

D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1993), Ellen F

ROST, “Globalization and

National Security: A Strategic Agenda,” The Global Century. Globalization and

National Security, Vol. 1, eds. Richard Kugler and Ellen Frost (Washington, D.C.:

National Defense University Press, 1993), and Jessica M

ATTHEWS, “Power Shift:

The Rise of Global Civil Society,” Foreign Affairs, 76-1 (January/February

1997).

Raul Benítez MANAUT, The five levels of security (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow

Wilson Center, 2004).

hemispheric and global dimensions. At each and every level, the

nations of Latin America potentially have opportunities for action,

for protagonism. Each of these potential or hypothetical op-

portunities must be explored as part of national strategic planning.

The ease of seizing these opportunities will vary from level to

level and from country to country. Some might find space in the

national context, or, at the global level, but not at the hemispheric

level, for instance; or, at the sub-regional level and not at the

hemispheric level.

An easy way to observe how each level or way opens the way to

quite different opportunities and challenges, and offers different

costs and benefits, is to study trade and trade policy. As we have

explained in our recent volume, trade is a series of multilevel non

sero sum games. The success of each country in trade policy is a

function of its ability to reconcile internal sectoral differences and

deal with dynamic situations.

Overwhelming hard power does not guarantee success in seeking

policy objectives in trade negotiations or national security in

general. More important for Latin America, relative weakness in

terms of hard power does not mean a nation is barred from the

table of rule makers. Take the case of how to deal with terrorism

in hemispheric affairs. The U.S. wants to understand all

hemispheric cooperation in terms of its own agenda with reference

to terrorism. Terrorism is the number one priority. Latin American

nations are uncomfortable with that. The only effective response

to this idea fija is for the Latin Americans to draft an agenda that

suits them and that takes U.S. priorities into account. That

shouldn’t be too hard. Terrorism is, in fact, an international issue.

Working to protect the entire region from terrorism should not be

too controversial. The problem is how to join together to make the

U.S. listen to Latin American priorities. That is difficult because

never in their history have the nations of the region collaborated

JOSEPH S. TULCHIN

Vinod K. AGGARWAL, Ralph Espach, and Joseph S. TULCHIN, eds., The Strategic

Dynamics of Latin American Trade (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,

2004).

STUDIA POLITICÆ

04 ~ primavera/verano 200416

to achieve collective security goals. They have collaborated on

occasion to oppose the U.S.; but, they never successfully have

collaborated to achieve sub-regional or regional ends.

The recent episode in Haiti may prove to be a starting point in

building an hemispheric agenda that can be “sold” to the U.S., the

reverse of the usual flow of influence. Haiti is important because

of the role played by a number of nations, such as Chile, and,

later, Brazil, and even later, Argentina, in the peacemaking, and

because of the unity among the Anglophone nations of the

Caribbean sub region in opposition to the U.S. and in defense of

democratic processes. The key motivating factor behind Chile’s

decision to send troops to Haiti is to prevent another bloodbath.

The Ruanda case and the failure of the international community to

respond is what drove the response of the UN in the Haitian case.

And, it was the action of the UN that drove the Chilean decision.

Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz, as Chile’s representative to the

OAS, more than ten years earlier, played a decisive role in getting

the hemispheric organization to pass the Santiago Declaration in

support of democratic government. In that declaration, the OAS

stated that democracy was a value shared by all members of the

organization. Sending troops to Haiti is one way to demonstrate

that Chile, for one, is prepared to defend democracy with

something more than words. It isn’t clear in the Western

Hemisphere how to compel compliance with the rules of the game

at the hemispheric level. For Muñoz, the task today and in the

future is the implementation of the standards articulated by the

international community.

Developing a Latin American agenda should not be that difficult.

Muñoz had no difficulty ticking off the key items of that agenda

are: implementation of existing human rights standards; defense of

the right to democratic governance; promotion of post-conflict

Heraldo Muñoz’s recent speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center

for Scholars, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2004.

Heraldo MUÑOZ, op. cit.

reconciliation; and reduction of inequality and poverty in the

region. These are all elements of soft power. In addition to

differences of opinion among the countries of the region, there are

important differences between the OAS and UN on these issues

and that each of the organizations has a comparative advantage in

some, not all. For example, in the area of human rights, the OAS

has the advantage because it has a regulatory or supervisory

organization that operates through the mechanism of a group of

independent, private actors, while the UN works through a

commission whose members are states, including some members

who are notorious violators of human rights. On the other hand,

the OAS does not have anything to match the Security Council of

the UN, and the OAS is paralyzed in the search for mechanisms

to enforce compliance with the rules of the game. Those

mechanisms that do exist are left over from the Cold War and

cannot be used without total dominance by the U.S., which other

member states cannot accept. That is not the case in the UN.

But soft power has its disadvantages. Values are ambiguous and

hard to measure. Another development since September 11,

2001, that has reduced Latin American influence in world affairs

is the institutional deficit that has struck several countries, like

some sort of plague. To make use of soft power and to become

rule makers, it is important for the nations of the region to deal

with their democratic fragility, corruption, organized crime, ju-

ridical insecurity, no development strategies, high levels of un-

employment, poverty and y inequity that difficult the interna-

tional responsible participation that is central to the use of soft

power.

Another feature of responsible international behavior necessary to

maximize the effect of soft power is consistency and accountability.

Nations must become predictable. That is the lesson to be drawn

from the behavior of Argentine president Néstor Kirchner, whose

government came to power in October 2003 insisting that defense

of democracy and human rights were the pillars of its foreign policy

and then proceeded to make Havana one of the first stops on the

foreign minister’s first trips, without bothering to talk about

human rights with the Castro government or with groups of

JOSEPH S. TULCHIN

STUDIA POLITICÆ

04 ~ primavera/verano 200418

dissidents on the islands. Small wonder that Argentina under

Kirchner has not been able to consolidate a global role as a

spokesman for human rights.

It is entirely possible that the autonomy for which the nations of

the hemisphere yearn may be more easily achieved at either or

both of the sub-regional and global levels than at the hemispheric

level. It would be an historic irony if any of the nations of the

region, and Chile is a strong candidate, become legitimate rule

makers at the global level while they are unable to achieve close

relations with the U.S or with their neighbors. It is highly

probably, to take another example, that, in the short run, Brazil

will become more of a rule maker at the sub-regional level

through the success of Mercosur and at the global level, at least in

matters of trade, than at the hemispheric level. In fact, that may

become the center of Brazil’s strategic policy. Brazil took the lead

in negotiating a trade treaty between Mercosur and the European

Union. But, as Chile learned when it suffered the wrath of the

U.S. for not voting in the UN Security Council in support of the

U.S. position against Iraq, it is not sufficient to be a global player

only in trade. Global players are global players and they are

expected to move on the world stage in more than a single

dimension. Until Brazil succeeds in finding dimensions of its

global role to complement its action as a leader of a trade block,

its power will be limited to blocking action by others. It will be

difficult to become a rule maker. The Brazilian experience at

Cancún and after is a model of this success/failure.

The most difficult part of the international scenario for Latin

America is collaborating among themselves to define a Latin

American security agenda. It is not central to the effort that the

agenda be for or against the U.S. The crucial challenge in to

achieve a way of understanding the world—a way to be in the

world—that is consistent with their collaboration among

See, “Cuba: el gobierno ratificó la abstención,” Diario La Nación, April 15,

2004.

Jeffrey DAVIDOW, El oso y el puercoespín (Mexico, D.F.: Grijalbo, 2003).

themselves with or without the support of the U.S. The starting

point for such an effort should be the shared community of

values that binds together the entire hemisphere – respect for

democracy, human rights, and the rule of law and the desire to

reduce poverty and inequality. The methodology should be the

understanding that security exists on multiple levels and that

cooperation can begin at any level and can be built by dealing

with traditional or non-traditional threats to security. The best

news of all is that autonomy in the international community

begins at home. Soft power – influence – can be increased

merely by strengthening the rule of law, by reducing poverty and

inequality, or by buttressing democratic institutions – all of

which depend on the political will of democratic leaders. As

Shakespeare might have said had her read Nye or Keohane or

Tulchin, rule makers are made, not born.

JOSEPH S. TULCHIN