On 15 December 1978, three days after the Foreign Ministers of Argentina and Chile met in what could have been the final peaceful attempt to resolve the Beagle Channel crisis, both countries were ready for large-scale military action in four potential theatres of operation, including northeastern Chile, the Andes Mountains close to Santiago (the Maule region) as well as the Beagle Channel–Cape Horn area. Argentina’s armed forces were prepared to initiate hostilities over the Beagle Channel if Chile would not make substantial concessions at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers on 12 December. All warships stationed at Puerto Belgrano—the main Argentine naval base—were already at 24-hour readiness. Final Argentine army deployments were to begin during that week with combat units from its four corps to be positioned along the border and in the disputed area; six new regiments of conscripts and recently trained reservists were activated.
This massive deployment of force could mean that Argentina was making a tactical move to hold down Chilean military forces along the Andes border while it would attack one of the Beagle islands or smaller islets (i.e., Evout and Barnevelts Islands) near Cape Horn. Argentina’s intention was to acquire both islands as dry-land points for demarcation of maritime boundaries. The country also would try to obtain part of Horn Island to establish a dry-land point for the Cape Horn Meridian. Clearly, Argentina was prepared, either as a primary or a secondary move, to occupy Chilean territory outside of the Beagle area as well. 1
On the other hand, Chile continued to make final military preparations. The country had placed its army, navy, and police units on full alert; had closed some border crossings; and had ordered its combat ships to move southward from the main port of Valparaiso to the Beagle Channel area. Admiral Merino was eager to attack; President Pinochet was cautious. Chile was anxious to avoid armed conflict and was taking pains to prevent junior commanders from escalating the situation. The Chilean riposte to a localized Argentine attack most likely had been a limited military countermove with heavy reliance on quick international pressure to end the hostilities. Both countries’ armed forces were at a high state of readiness. Fortunately, however, this was not to be the scenario. But how did both countries reach this level of military tension?
Setting the Stage
In 1971 Argentina and Chile submitted to British arbitration their dispute over the ownership of three small islands: Picton, Lennox, and Nueva (PLN) in the Beagle Channel south of the Tierra del Fuego; the countries agreed to accept an Award as final and legally binding. An International Court of Arbitration, appointed by the British government, on 2 May 1977 awarded all three islands to Chile. What made this decision so unpleasant to Argentina was not so much the loss of all the islands as the consequence of Chilean projection into the Atlantic and ownership upon the delimitation of maritime boundaries between the two countries. Argentines felt this was to breach of what they claimed as a fundamental principle of Argentina–Chilean relations—namely, “oceanic division”: Chile is a Pacific power and Argentina an Atlantic power. Despite being bound by the Treaty to accept it, the Argentine government declared the Arbitration Award ‘null and void’ on 25 January 1978.
A negotiation process began immediately with a view to solving the dispute bilaterally. The principal agreement, the Puerto Montt Declaration, set the date 2 November 1978 for the conclusion of the negotiations. Nevertheless, talks between the two delegations broke down on 16 August as a result of Argentine insistence to discuss the sovereignty of the islands (i.e., PLN) in dispute. The Chileans had maintained throughout that sovereignty—that is, the Court’s Award of the islands themselves to Chile—was not negotiable; however, they were prepared to discuss the consequent problem of maritime limitations. Unfortunately, the crisis increased dramatically during the following months until a third actor intervened: the Vatican.
Thus, this book is concerned with the end of the long-standing dispute over the Beagle Channel between Argentina and Chile. It examines the path that led from conflict—almost resulting in war in 1978—to settlement of the dispute in 1984. As stated previously, in 1978 Argentina and Chile seemed only days away from a military confrontation. Only six years later, in 1984, they signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship. The Beagle Channel crisis (1977–1984) unfolded in a global political context; it was never solely a bilateral matter between Argentina and Chile, as many commentators have treated it.
International arbitration, the participation of a third actor (i.e., the Vatican), the role of the United States (US), the complicating effects of the South Atlantic conflict, and the relationships between each party and the United Kingdom (UK), all bear witness to the pronounced regional and international dimensions of the Beagle crisis. Domestic structures and international conditions affected Argentine and Chilean foreign policies unequally. Foreign policy decisions varied in the degree of interaction between domestic constraints and international factors. Accordingly, the central research question of this book is: How to explain the path from conflict—almost war—in 1978 to amity just six years later.
The chapters here seek to reveal various nuances in the negotiation process in both countries, especially when analyzed over a specific period of time and encompassing domestic and international frameworks. The research therefore aims to contribute to the existing International Relations (IR) literature that focuses on small and medium powers. Furthermore, this book may be useful material on Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and in support of new theoretical approaches in the field of negotiation behaviour in Latin America. The focus on FPA is to understand processes and decisions within Argentina and Chile during the Beagle crisis. The aim is thus to identify actor motivation during the crisis by adopting an actor-specific approach. In brief, an emphasis on agency means ascribing significance to process, or the way group decisions are made and executed.
In any case, this book intends to be not just a historical case study between two Latin American countries. Indeed, the contribution of it is meant to show a new approach to understanding how concepts (e.g., status, autonomy, and group decisions) have affected foreign policies in small and medium powers, and the extent to which FPA theories can help to explain other frontier and political disputes within the region in this day and age (i.e., Bolivia–Chile, Chile–Peru, Argentina–Uruguay, Guatemala–Belize, Colombia–Venezuela, and Colombia–Nicaragua).
Research Design and Road Map
The focus on individual and group-based analyses does not deny that interstate and regional dynamics also played their part in the resolution of the Beagle crisis. Rather, by making a link between a system-level analysis (e.g., Bull’s worldviews) and the implementation of a foreign policy, what is here promulgates a more solid explanation for the end of the crisis. Combining these mid-range theories rather than restricting analysis of the Beagle crisis to a single level allows this author to more easily achieve the book’s aim: to understand the case at hand. The reality was more complex, thus various levels of analysis must be integrated in order to understand the interaction between domestic and international variables.
There are certainly tensions between structure and agency, domestic and foreign, and conflict and cooperation. The argument assumed here, then, is that an inexpungible flame of idealism justified the belief in agency against the weight of determinist views (i.e., structures) on politics. On the other hand, without a touch of naivety, routes of coercion (the US’s) and persuasion (the Vatican’s) aimed at creating cooperation between nations were vindicated. In other words, this book deals with the fact and recognition of structural conditions that shape states’ behaviour. 2
In summary, this author’s aim is to make it clear that the domestic political and institutional framework represents an important part of what shapes international coercive bargaining outcomes. The goal is to determine the extent to which foreign policy provides opportunities for states (and leaders) to exercise political agency, given the powerful constraints imposed by the multiple structures of the international system. In this sense, the resultant juxtaposition of foreign and domestic policies reveals the constant interplay between actors and context, and it is through this interplay that negotiation behaviours generated the path from conflict to cooperation between the two countries.
Various theoretical frameworks have been used to understand the Beagle crisis. This case has been studied and used previously as an instance of coercive diplomacy, geopolitics, and security dilemmas; international norms; rational actor–game theory; and the role of third actors in bilateral disputes. For instance, scholars have explained Argentine–Chilean cooperation as the result of international norms embedded in a regional diplomatic culture. 3 More so than other regions of the world, South America’s diplomatic system is imbued with legal norms and a ‘culture’ of legalism. One of the main characteristics of this subregion is ‘the large number of multilateral and bilateral treaties and charters that impose obligations for the peaceful settlement of conflict.’ 4 According to Kacowicz, the impact of international legal norms is felt in two parallel and interconnected ways. On the one hand, international norms directly shaped the foreign policies of Argentina and Chile because ‘they were motivated by considerations of reputation and prestige in their international relations through processes of socialization and emulation. On the other hand, in an indirect way, international law affects foreign policy through the internalization of norms, which in turn affect foreign policy through the domestic political process.’ 3 The region has been seen as a special area where ‘there has been always a clear willingness to use force but there has been a limited conception of force within a strong diplomatic culture.’ 5
Another prominent perspective in the literature is that of foreign policy and conflict resolution. When such a perspective is brought to bear, scholars have tended to focus on a specific aspect such as frontier disputes between two countries. 6 From a rational actor perspective and in large-N studies, the work of Goertz and Diehl 7 and Huth and Allee 8 has tried to explain the Beagle crisis within a broad number of cases of frontier disputes. Using a game theory and militarized bargaining model, David Mares 9 analyzed the use of military force in interstate disputes. In this case, Mares conducted a small-N study with only two cases: Argentina–Chile (i.e., the Beagle crisis) and Ecuador–Peru (i.e., the conflict over the Amazonas).
The argument developed here is that although these approaches do indeed contribute to understanding the Beagle crisis, they are insufficient for explaining the puzzle. Even as each of the existing studies represents a fundamental source of information on this period, a more complete understanding of the crisis from the angle of bilateral relations is still lacking, especially considering their intermestic character. The study in this book aims at bridging this gap in the literature, attempting the first broad analysis of the Beagle crisis since the period in which the agency was active.
There are gaps to fill. This book’s author believes that research in this area should be conducted at various levels of analysis (agency) and focus on the incorporation of new variables (i.e., the role of internal and external actors). Furthermore, large-N studies on frontier disputes, or using rational models, are required to clarify the limits of the theory that explained the decision to end the conflict by international norms. The goal here is to explain an observable va...