Non-Intervention, Territorial Integrity, and Peace in the Americas

• In Event: The Changing Nature of Interstate Territorial Conflict and Its Management

Abstract

How have states in the Americas avoided war over the last century? To investigate this question, we update and employ a proprietary measure of interstate militarized dispute (MID) severity, which shows that conflict severity in the Americas has consistently declined since the Chaco War (1932-1935)—the last notable war in the Americas. We then track two factors that often lead to interstate violence in previous eras: territorial disputes and the intervention of great powers. The evidence suggests that international norms related to both factors shifted markedly in the 1930s and then subsequently consolidated—a trend we call the Saavedra Lamas Peace. Finally, we use the possibility principle to identify dyads that could have gone to war due to territorial disputes (e.g., Ecuador-Peru) or great power intervention (e.g., US-Cuba) but did not. These efforts illustrate counterfactually how the two norms of interest, as well as the actors enforcing them, prevented potential wars.

Authors

• Luis L Schenoni, University College London

• Gary Goertz

• Andrew Owsiak, University of Georgia

• Paul F. Diehl, Independent Scholar