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Foreign Policy
Theory
in Menem's Argentina
by Carlos Escudé
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this Book now
Carlos Escudé explains the rationale for dramatic changes in
Argentina's foreign policy following the inauguration of
President Carlos Menem in 1989. After decades of confrontation
with the West, Argentina has abandoned an intermediate-range
ballistic missile project, left the nonaligned movement, thrown
in with the U.S. in the Gulf War, reestablished friendly
relations with Britain, and undertaken a course of unilateral
disarmament.
Escudé argues that these changes reflect Argentina's recognition
that citizens of poor and vulnerable nations are asked to pay the
price of attempts to engage in power politics and that those
attempts often endanger the nation’s citizens and increase
its subordination in world affairs. Moreover, he argues that
mainstream international-relations theory tends to obscure such
processes by dealing with states as if they were individuals
whose ultimate priority is "survival," or political
independence. The state-as-person fiction generalized in I-R
discourse obscures the fact that in a democracy the citizens and
not the state are paramount. Following this distinction to its
logical consequences, Escudé undertakes a thorough
deconstruction of I-R theory from a "citizen-centric"
perspective--the perspective, he argues, that has inspired the
Menem government's dovish foreign policies.
This project was written under the auspices of the Center for
International Affairs, Harvard University.
Carlos Escudé is professor of international
relations at Di Tella University and the Argentine Foreign
Service Academy and was advisor to the foreign minister of
Argentina on matters related to foreign policy strategy. His
publications include Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos y la
Declinación Argentina, 1942-1949; El Fracaso del Proyecto
Argentino: Educación y Desarrollo; and Realismo
Periferico.
1997. 232 pp. 6 X 9.
1 table, notes, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1493-X
Cloth, $55.00
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"Readers rarely come as close as they do here, or as soon after the fact, to Latin American foreign policy making. This study is one of few scholarly works by Latin Americans on international relations theory, and even fewer by policy-makers close to government decision-making." -
International History Review
"A
sophisticated challenge to mainstream international relations
theory . . . defines the theoretical bases on which governing
elites in the Third World, especially democratic elites, could
sustain effective and development-oriented foreign
policies."--Juan M. del Aguila, Emory University
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