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From antagonistic autonomy to relational autonomy: A theoretical reflection from the southern cone
Latin American Politics and Society, Spring 2003 by Russell, Robert, Tokatlian, Juan Gabriel
In summary, the realists of the periphery constructed a normative theory oriented toward political action. With a high degree of optimism and a certain naivete, they firmly believed in the possibility of significantly increasing the region's autonomy, understood as a condition. This conviction and case of wishful thinking was inspired by Latin America's asymmetric relationship with the United States, and it gained adherents during each cycle of detente between East and West.
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In the 1980s, the normative theory of "realism of the periphery," a name coined in the Southern Cone, faced two different fates. It was partly taken up by authors who analyzed the Andean region, while it was also categorically rejected by another equally normative theory known as "utilitarianism of the periphery." The latter's most conspicuous representative is the Argentine Carlos Escude, who calls his theory "peripheral realism" (Escude 1992). Although this author availed himself of the realist school's contributions to IR, utilitarian philosophy predominates in his writings. The optimization of happiness, understood exclusively as the attainment of material well-being; insistence on the notion of utility as the criterion for evaluating what generates dividends; emphasis on a rational strategic cost-benefit analysis based on personal interest to comprehend both human motivation and action; vindication of an ethics of consequences over and above an ethics of principles; rejection of speculative, idealistic thinking; an understanding of politics as an activity for the sole purpose of selfish economic gratification-all constitute substantive elements of utilitarianism and permeate Escude's work.
Escude proposes a reformulation of autonomy.
Autonomy is not equivalent to freedom of action. The freedom of action of nearly all medium-sized states is enormous, reaching the limits of self-destruction, and is therefore useless as a definition of autonomy. [The latter] is measured in terms of the relative costs of making use of said freedom of action .... [In turn,] it is important to know how to distinguish between autonomy in itself and the use that is made of it. Said use can be conceived of as an investment of autonomy when it aims (successfully or otherwise) at nourishing the power base and/or the welfare of the country, or as the mere consumption of autonomy, when it aims at an exhibitory demonstration to show that one is subject to no one. (Escude 1991, 396-97).
From this viewpoint, Escude recommends that a country like Argentina (impoverished, highly vulnerable, and of little strategic value to a superpower like the United States) implement a foreign policy strategy designed to eliminate political confrontations with the great powers, reducing the sphere of external confrontations to those material issues directly linked to the country's welfare and power base (Escude 1991, 396). Thus, foreign policy should unfold not only on the basis of "a rigorous calculation of material costs and benefits, but also in terms of the risks of contingency costs" (Escude 1991, 397).
