Free to Fight
Despite the best efforts of groups like the Organization of American States and the United Nations, the 21st century has already witnessed outbreaks of armed conflict in five Latin American border disputes. But what if these long-standing quarrels escalate because of — rather than in spite of — efforts by these kinds of international bodies? ...
Despite the best efforts of groups like the Organization of American States and the United Nations, the 21st century has already witnessed outbreaks of armed conflict in five Latin American border disputes. But what if these long-standing quarrels escalate because of -- rather than in spite of -- efforts by these kinds of international bodies? So argues Harvard University political scientist (and FP contributing editor) Jorge I. Domínguez in "Boundary Disputes in Latin America,” a United States Institute of Peace report released last September.
Despite the best efforts of groups like the Organization of American States and the United Nations, the 21st century has already witnessed outbreaks of armed conflict in five Latin American border disputes. But what if these long-standing quarrels escalate because of — rather than in spite of — efforts by these kinds of international bodies? So argues Harvard University political scientist (and FP contributing editor) Jorge I. Domínguez in "Boundary Disputes in Latin America,” a United States Institute of Peace report released last September.
International mediation has proved so reliable in preventing border wars that it has fostered a peacemaking ethos whereby Latin Americans simply "do not expect their countries to go to war with each other." Yet this expectation, writes Domínguez, has created a moral hazard problem, encouraging governments to ramp up their border rhetoric and transforming military mobilization into simply another bargaining tactic for states. Domínguez argues that politicians may feel little compunction about deploying force when they trust that international mediators will eventually intervene to prevent a full-scale war.
This moral hazard encourages weak states to challenge stronger ones in hopes of extracting concessions in the mediation process. For example, Ecuador (the weaker state) repeatedly challenged Peru (the stronger country) with military action during these nations’ border skirmishes in the second half of the 20th century. Similarly, Nicaragua militarized its border disputes with its two neighbors during the late 1990s. With actual war a remote possibility, then Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Alemán seized on border disputes to burnish his nationalist credentials whenever his domestic popularity declined. (Perhaps a new border dispute could help today, as the ex-president awaits trial on corruption charges.)
Domínguez concludes that "[i]nternational arbitration and mediation are not automatically good things." Neither are international treaties, apparently. The author also notes that border disputes among Caribbean states often involve poorly defined maritime boundaries. Why? Try the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which, "[by] extending zones of economic and environmental jurisdiction out to two hundred miles, created the need to draw these boundaries and provoked fresh disputes."
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