Brazil's economic performance, political stability, and search for greatness ensure that Brazil will play a strong role on many global issues and will strengthen regional economic cooperation. US-Brazil relations have evolved from an alliance during and after World War II into a wary but crucial engagement today. The April 2012 meeting of Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Barack Obama deepened cooperation on common interests. Brazil's foreign policy is set by economic factors more often than ideology, and Brazil wants to advance its core interests. The US seeks to encourage Brazil's rise. Nevertheless, differences between the US and Brazil on trade and other issues will not be overcome easily. This paper examines how the shifting balance of power in the world has expanded Brazil's spheres of action while outdated concepts like formal trading blocs prevent Brazil from achieving the narrower goals it set for itself.
Read more
In this article, Dr. Philip Kelly discusses the geopolitics of security concerns between the United States and Latin America. Kelly defines the various schools of geopolitics and, subsequently, the characteristics of traditional geopolitics. By breaking down the Western Hemisphere into three separate Americas—North America, Middle America, and South America—Kelly assesses each region and its unique geopolitical characteristics. Finally, the article addresses a number of geopolitical concepts that represent the structure of current Western Hemispheric security. In conclusion, Kelly suggests that South America ultimately remains a low priority in North American strategic security concerns, and posits that a united and prosperous Latin America isolated from Eurasian connections directly benefits North American security.
Read more
This paper provides a comparative analysis of China's emerging role in international relations and its ties to the United States and Latin America, and China's future impact on the Western Hemisphere. The author discusses the challenges and opportunities inherent to the current China-US relations, such as currency, military, intellectual property, cyber security, and human rights tensions, and the impact those factors will have on the relationship in the future. China's pursuit of closer ties with the countries of Latin America, long seen as within the US sphere of influence, represents a major challenge for the US-China relationship.
Read more
This article examines the often contentious role that human rights promotion has played in US foreign policy in Latin America. As a longtime interloper from the North, the United States has employed many different strategies, often resulting in the election to participate in foreign countries' domestic conflicts in aid to one side or another. With regard to human rights, the fact of the matter is that the United States has failed to adopt as many human rights treaties as many other South or Central American nations have. In a globalized world more closely linked than ever before, nations are adopting human rights practices that promise to prevent injustices from occurring as they did in the past, a welcome break from the violent past in Latin America. For myriad reasons, including domestic pressures and belief in "American Exceptionalism," the United States has dodged full participation in many international legal and human rights documents, but this practice has already started to harm international cooperation with and perception of US goals abroad. The author concludes his analysis by suggesting that the United States reconsider its earlier defiance against making human rights a fully fledged tenet of its foreign policy in favor of a new, more cooperative stance.
Read more
Some cases related to the fight against terrorism, among others, have challenged some of the categories of international law on the use of force, generating a constant confrontation between what is considered legitimate and what is legal. The invasion of allied countries in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the incursion of the Colombian state into Ecuadorian territory to attack a FARC guerrilla camp have put the existing legal regime to the test and highlighted some of its limitations, questioning the treatment given to concepts such as "legitimate defense," "armed attack," "necessity," and "proportionality." There are alternatives to overcome some of the main problems, including the possibility of revising the composition and decision-making procedure within the UN Security Council. The doctrine of the use of preventive force, which has been resorted to to a greater extent by states in the fight against terrorism, is a dangerous path that threatens to undermine rights and infringe on freedoms. Historically generally rejected, it is not advisable for the doctrine to be strengthened as an institution of public international law.
Read more
