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copied from Drago Doctrine

The Drago Doctrine was announced in 1902 by the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis María Drago in a diplomatic note to the United States. Perceiving a conflict between the Monroe Doctrine and the influence of European imperial powers, and raising attention to the principle of sovereign equality which the United States had long supported, it set forth the policy that no foreign power, including the United States, could use force against a Latin American nation to collect debt. In 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary was issued by the United States in response to the Drago Doctrine.

The Drago Doctrine itself was a response to the actions of Britain, Germany, and Italy, who in 1902 had blockaded and shelled ports in response to Venezuela's massive debt, acquired under governments previous to president Cipriano Castro. Secretary of State John Hay was taken aback by the reference to the Monroe Doctrine, and delayed six weeks before responding by quoting Roosevelt's 1901 annual message to Congress: "We do not guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducts itself." Roosevelt himself—although he would lavish praise on Drago's doctrine in later years—had earlier written in his capacity as Vice President to the german diplomat Hermann Speck von Sternburg that "if any South American State misbehaves towards any European country, let the European country spank it".

A modified version by Horace Porter was adopted at the Hague in 1907, adding that arbitration and litigation should always be used first.

The Drago Doctrine was used by Venezuela as a rationale for their vote in support of Argentina at the Organization of American States meeting discussing the Argentine debt crisis involving NML Capital.

Origins

In 1899, Mexico and the United States attended the Hague Convention in order to participate in a discussion regarding the peaceful settlement of international disputes. At this convention, three standard means of dispute settlement were established until the next conference in Rio de Janeiro, where the council of countries involved addressed just one issue: the extent to which a country can use military force to collect public debts from foreign powers.

This concern came after two events in particular in which one or more countries entered into a military conflict with the purpose of settling and collecting a public debt. The first instance came in 1861, when France, Great Britain, and Spain intervened in Mexico, and the second instance which initiated the discussion leading to the Drago Doctrine came in 1902 when Germany, Great Britain, and Italy established a blockade around Venezuelan ports in an attempt to collect the debt owed. However, that attacking countries claimed that the reason for intervention was to demand a response and resolution to the wrongdoings inflicted upon European citizens in Venezuela and that Venezuela received multiple opportunities to comply before the blockade but refused to do so. Watching the events unfold in front of him, Luis Drago, the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, drafted a document that addressed the idea that public debts could no longer put collected in a forceful manner in order to avoid future conflict between the nations in question. This idea was drafted into a document that became the Drago Doctrine.

Calvo Doctrine

In his book, Derecho internacional teórico y práctico de Europa y América, Carlos Calvo writes about his ideas on the interactions of European powers and more vulnerable Latin American countries. In an attempt to ensure sovereignty in South America, Calvo introduced the concept that when a financial claim is made by a European power in a Latin American state, the two countries in question must first exhaust all possible judicial resources of the debtor-state before the matter can be settled through international diplomacy. The foreign investor must furthermore submit to local jurisdiction and commonly must submit to being regarded as a national of the landholding country in the eyes of the law, nulling any legal protection from the borrower's native country, in order to protect the rights of the landholding country in cases of expropriation and international dispute . Drago found the doctrine too ambiguous, thus drafted and narrowed the original assertions into a document known as the Calvo Doctrine, which became a strong basis and influence to the ideas behind the Drago Doctrine

Drago Doctrine in International Law

In the eyes of South Americans, the European blockade imposed on Venezuelan ports seemed to be a clear effort to get rid of the Monroe Doctrine that had been established to prevent powerful European countries from asserting their influence in Latin America in the form of colonies and puppet states. This caused a large amount of concern and made the Drago Doctrine a particularly hot topic within international law. On December 29, 1902, Luis Drago officially pronounced the Drago Doctrine and, in 1906 at the Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro, the formal consideration of the instituting the doctrine into international law began. Finally, the doctrine reached its most important time of discussion in 1907 when it became the most important document discussed at the Second Hague Conference. After the Drago Doctrine was announced, the Europeans then became skeptical and outraged in that they believed that the Latin Americans were attempting to evade the payment of the public debts that they owed the Europeans.

Effects

Roosevelt Corollary

After having established the Drago Doctrine, Luis Drago confronted the United States about recognizing the principle that European nations would not be allowed to use military force to collect debts from Latin American countries. President Franklin Roosevelt responded in his big-stick message with overwhelming approval and then, in 1904, Roosevelt implemented the Roosevelt Corollary as an addition to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary established that the United States would intervene if there were European claims in Latin America in order to determine their legitimacy and if the claim required action.