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China, United States and Hegemonic Challenge in Latin America: An Overview and Some Lessons from Previous Instances of Hegemonic Challenge in the Region*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2012

Gonzalo Sebastián Paz
Gonzalo Sebastián Paz
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Abstract

Has China been a hegemonic challenge to the United States in Latin America in recent years? The article explores this question by setting a comparison with historical cases of instances of hegemonic challenge in Latin America, searching for similarities and differences, and looking for makers of rivalry as a way to start to distinguish perception from reality. I stress the instrumentality of framing issues, since they serve for internal mobilization and for control of allies. The article also attempts to illuminate the issue of how the United States has reacted to China's growing presence in an area historically considered within its sphere of interests, or “backyard,” and about the dialogue between the United States and China about the region. It provides insights on the United States, China and Latin American countries’ policy makers’ thinking, collected through off-the- record interviews and closed-door debriefings.

Keywords

perceptionframinghegemonyrisechallengediversificationbackyard
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 209 , March 2012 , pp. 18 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2012

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References

1 For stylistic purposes I will use both hegemonic challenge and HC; the same with power transition and PT; and Hegemonic Stabilization Theory and HST.

2 China or Beijing refers to the People's Republic of China (PRC); Taiwan, Taipei and ROC refer to the Republic of China; Washington, USA and US refer to the United States of America.

3 Most Chinese observers usually consider everything south of the United States as Latin America, including the Caribbean. For a discussion of Latin America as a region, see Price, Marie D. and Cooper, Catherine W., “Competing visions, shifting boundaries: the construction of Latin America as a world region,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 106 (2007), pp. 113–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For an updated debate on hegemony see Clark, Ian, “Bringing hegemony back in: the United States and international order,” International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1 (2009), pp. 23–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding constraints to hegemony see Bobrow, David B. (ed.), Hegemony Constrained: Evasion, Modification, and Resistance to American Foreign Policy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Blasier called hegemony “the dominant theme explaining the United States’ behavior” in the hemisphere, stressing that “United States analysts, and US citizens generally, have been reluctant to recognize” it. See Blasier, Cole, “Security: the extracontinental dimension,” in Middlebrook, Kevin J. and Rico, Carlos (eds.), The United States and Latin America in the 1980s (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986), pp. 523–64Google Scholar. “Primacy” has also been used; however, for the historical relevance of the debate I will use hegemony.

5 See Organski, A.F.K., World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1958)Google Scholar; Kindleberger, Charles, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mearsheimer, John, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (London: W.W. Norton, 2001)Google Scholar; Tammen, Ronaldet al., Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21th Century (New York: Chatham House Publishing, 2000)Google Scholar. For a recent analysis on the current China–United States situation, see Chan, Steve, China, the US, and the Power Transition Theory: A Critique (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

6 The analysis of the possibilities for more autonomous foreign policy of Latin American countries, beyond just the theoretical concern of great power politics, has been always one of my most important concerns. However, a full-fledged treatment of this issue is not possible here.

7 Blasier, one of the most important experts in the US on USSR–Latin America relations, said: “In practice, Soviet activities in the hemisphere have evoked dismay and fear not because they represent a present threat but because they might threaten vital US interests in the future” (italics mine). See Blasier, Cole, The Giant's Rival: the USSR and Latin America (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, revised edition, 1987)Google Scholar.

8 When we speak of “perception,” in international relations, in fact, we mean both “perception” and “misperception.” See the classic book of Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

9 See e.g. Christensen, Thomas J., Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

10 Instrumentality is crucial to understand hegemony, real or perceived. Wallerstein has argued that at “the stage of real hegemony, it is essential for the hegemonic power to construct both an ‘enemy’ and a network of alliances. I would argue that the alliances are not constructed in order to combat the enemy, but rather that the enemy is constructed in order to control the allies” (italics mine). See O'Brien, Patrick Karl and Clesse, Armand (eds.), Two Hegemonies: Britain 1846–1914 and the United States 1941–2001 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p. 360Google Scholar. Two other Wallerstein comments are useful here, the first considering hegemony not as a structure, but as a process with stages à la Kondratieff (p. 358); the second, related to the semantic discussion on hegemony or about one phase (“real”) of it.

11 This need of broad generalization is, in fact, one way of making sense of history.

12 See Whitehead, Laurence, “Debt, diversification, and dependency: Latin America's international political relations,” in Middlebrook and Rico, The United States and Latin America in the 1980s, p. 87Google Scholar.

13 For the theoretical underpinnings of this kind of analysis see Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a masterful and classic example of this type of analysis see Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Gilpin's chapter on “The rise of American hegemony” in O'Brien and Clesse, Two Hegemonies. Gaddis posits the US “understood the advantages of hemispheric hegemony long before it began to think about global hegemony.” Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 177Google Scholar.

15 For updated scholarship on informal empire sees the excellent book edited by Brown, Matthew, Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Fergusson, Niall, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (London: Basic Books, 2002), p. 243Google Scholar.

16 Friedberg argues about this limited military capability as crucial to understand the end of Britain's hegemony and the rise of that of the US. See Friedberg, Aaron, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988 [2010 edition])Google Scholar. For a constructivist account see Feng, Yongping “The peaceful transition of power from the UK to the US,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 83–108Google Scholar.

17 See Jisi, Wang, “China's search for a grand strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 2 (2011), p. 72Google Scholar.

18 Paz, Gonzalo Sebastián, “Rising China's offensive in Latin America and the US reaction,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2006), p. 107Google Scholar.

19 The author has conducted several off-the-record interviews with US diplomats and officers and Chinese diplomats and academics to try to reconstruct the content of these meetings, including four with very high-ranking officers in the Western Hemisphere Affairs office during the Bush administration in 2008 and 2009, and two during the Obama administration in 2010; a meeting with a George W. Bush administration former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere Affairs in 2008 and a high officer in the same office during the Obama administration in 2011; and a visit to US South Command in July 2011. I also met over 20 Chinese diplomats: high officers at the Chinese embassy in Washington DC who have dealt with OAS since 2006; high officers at the Latin America Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing in 2008; several interviews with Chinese scholars at CASS-ILAS, at Beijing University, the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, Fudan University and Shanghai Institute of International Studies in 2008, as well as many Chinese ambassadors in Latin America from 2004 to the present. I also visited several Latin American embassies in Beijing in 2008.

20 The attempt to shape China's actions is the cornerstone of most Washington's initiative and strategy in recent years (closed-door debriefing in Washington, DC, with members of US delegation for the fourth round of dialogue with China in Beijing, 2010). Also see Christensen, Thomas J., “Shaping the choices of a rising China: recent lessons for the Obama administration,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2009), pp. 83–104Google Scholar.

21 Paz, “Rising China's offensive in Latin America,” p. 109.

22 Concerning this case, see e.g. Vogel, Ezra F., Japan as Number One (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollerman, Leon (ed.), Japan and the United States: Economic and Political Adversaries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Vogel, Ezra F., “East Asia: Pax Nipponica,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 4 (1986), pp. 752–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Hobson has argued that the lack of military capability prevented Japan from establishing a Pax Nipponica. See O'Brien and Clesse, Two Hegemonies, p. 319. According to Hollerman the policy debate between Japan and the United States “has increasingly assumed the attributes of an adversary proceeding.” See Hollerman, , Japan and the United States, p. xvGoogle Scholar.

24 See “Japan, Latin America, and the United States: prospects for cooperation and conflict,” in Purcell, Susan Kaufman and Immerman, Robert M. (eds.), Japan and Latin America in the New Global Order (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), pp. 121–45Google Scholar. According to Stallings and Székely this year had already had “the largest source of capital for the region”: see Stallings, Barbara and Székely, Gabriel, Japan, the United States, and Latin America: Toward a Trilateral Relationship in the Western Hemisphere (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Whitehead, “Debt, diversification, and dependency.”

25 Stallings and Székely, Japan, the United States, and Latin America, p. 3.

26 Smith, Peter H., “Japan, Latin America, and the new international order,” Visiting Research Fellow Series, No. 179 (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1990)Google Scholar.

27 Paz, “Rising China's offensive in Latin America,” p. 104.

28 See Mitchell, Nancy, The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 2Google Scholar.

29 Prisco, Salvatore, “Vampire diplomacy: Nazi economic nationalism in Latin America, 1934–40,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), pp. 173–81Google Scholar.

30 See Blasier, Cole, The Hovering Giant: US Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Blasier studied German influence in Mexico in both World Wars. For Snyder, Mexico was always the “ultimate domino”: see Snyder, Jack, “Introduction,” in Jervis, Robert and Snyder, Jack (eds.), Dominoes and Bandwagons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 3–19Google Scholar.

31 “Fundamentally, the United States saw World War II as a battle between good and evil.” They aptly added that “uncooperative nations were seen not as opponents with their own interests, but almost as traitors.” See Leonard, Thomas M. and Bratzel, John F., Latin America During World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), p. 1Google Scholar.

32 See Walton, Look Lai and Chee-Beng, Tan (eds.), The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean (Leiden: Brill, 2010)Google Scholar.

33 Mitchell, in the The Danger of Dreams asked the following questions: “What did Germany do in Latin America and what did the United States think it did?”

34 Niblo, Stephen R., “Allied policy toward axis interests in Mexico during World War II,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2001), pp. 351–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Friedman, Max Paul, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against Germans of Latin America in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Frye, Alton, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Leitz, Christian, “The Nazi regime and the American hemisphere,” in Leitz, Christian, Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–1941: The Road to Global War (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 105–22Google Scholar.

36 E.g. Argentina.

37 For a synthetic yet useful treatment of the Cold War in Latin America in a global context, see Hanhimaki, Jussi and Westad, Odd Arne, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 379–411Google Scholar. For a full account and updated scholarship on the subject see Brands, Hal, Latin America's Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Atkins, G. Pope, “The Soviet Union and after: Latin America in Soviet policy,” in Atkins, G. Pope, Latin America and the Caribbean in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press (4th ed.), 1999), pp. 121–28Google Scholar.

38 See Millet, Richard L., “US perceptions of Soviet strategy in Latin America,” in Mujal-León, Eusebio, The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 91Google Scholar.

39 Gaddis, We Know Now, p. 178.

40 See Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press (revised and expanded ed.), 2005)Google Scholar.

41 In Snyder, “Introduction,” p. 3.

42 See Gaddis, We Now Know, for an excellent summary, pp. 260–80. The classic account is Ellison, Graham, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little Brown, 1971)Google Scholar.

43 Possible current Chinese engagement in these former Soviet intelligent important facilities in Cuba has been subject to intense speculation, although diplomatic and academic Chinese sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Institute of Latin American Studies in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences interviewed by the author in Beijing in 2008 rejected categorically any strategic implication. A high officer of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told me in Washington, DC, in 2009: “something is going on there, but nobody will tell you.”

44 In Latin America, Cuba was the first country to recognize the People's Republic of China, on 28 September 1961. Allende's Chile was the second, on 15 December 1970.

45 Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 286.

46 See e.g. Schoultz, Lars, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 332–48Google Scholar.

47 See López-Alves, Fernando, “Soviet insurgents in Latin America,” in Varas, Augusto (ed.) Soviet-Latin American Relations in the 1980s (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

48 See Blasier, The Giant's Rival, p. 6.

49 Blasier's description of Latin American countries’ interest during the Cold War was very accurate, and still has value for the current situation: “Many Latin American leaders are not necessarily admirers of the Soviet system, its foreign policies, nor of the local Communist parties whose programs many believe are contrary to their country's interests. Even so, they welcome ties with the Soviet Union, first and foremost as the right of an independent state. Second, such ties give them room for maneuver and bargaining leverage in disputes with the United States. Finally, relations with the USSR can bring material benefits.” See ibid. p. 158.

50 Several of my interviewees from Latin America (particularly a senior advisor in Cuba and diplomats from Venezuela) emphatically asserted that, as one of them put it, “Los Estados Unidos no la van a poder parar a China” (“the United States will not be able to stop China in Latin America”). However, in my view US strategy emphasizes not stopping but shaping China's actions and options, embodied in the bilateral dialogue started in 2006, which implicitly acknowledges the increasing weight of China's presence in the region.

51 In recent years there has been a strong development on scholarship on anti-Americanism. See e.g. Katzenstein, Peter J. and Keohane, Robert O. (eds.), Anti-Americanisms in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. For a more detailed account of anti-Americanism in Latin America see McPherson, Alan (ed.), Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

52 If ideology is not an important element of Chinese presence in Latin America, soft power concerns are. About China's diplomacy and soft power see Yiwei, Wang, “Public diplomacy and the rise of China's soft power,” The Annuals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, No. 1 (2008), pp. 257–73Google Scholar.

53 Teng, Chung-chian, “Hegemony or partnership: China's strategy and diplomacy towards Latin America,” in Eisenman, Joshua et al. (eds.), China and the Developing World: Beijing's Strategy for the Twenty-first Century (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007)Google Scholar.

54 Glaser, Charles, “Will China's rise lead to war?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2011), pp. 80–91Google Scholar.

55 See Shirk, Susan L., China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.