Intervention, International Law, and the Inter-American System

In: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Volume 3, Issue 2, p. 249-271

Abstract

The growing frequency of conflicts in the Caribbean and Central America reveals some new and significant aspects of the old problem of intervention. Failure to recognize these new and significant aspects accounts for much of the confusion evident at the Meeting of Consultation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American States held at Santiago de Chile, in 1959.A number of strains have been placed upon the principle of nonintervention and it is important at the outset to note the forces behind them. Two developments which have been proceeding in opposite directions are basic here. The first of these is the mounting exactitude and breadth of the non-intervention doctrine itself. It has been applied to collective action as well as action by individual states; to indirect action such as diplomatic protests and economic pressure as well as to more direct action.