The Role of “Diplomatic Culture” in the Preservation of Order in South America

This chapter combines Jack Snyder's classical formulation of strategic culture with Hedley Bull's notion of "diplomatic culture" to advance a new explanation for South America's puzzling long history of peaceful inter-state relations amid persistently high levels of intra-state violence. It offers a preliminary stylized application of this merged concept of diplomatic culture qua strategic culture to the South American case, suggesting a new theoretical explanation for this regional 'long peace' that can avoid some of the common limitations, paradoxes, and dead-ends of the existing theoretical literature. It has been to offer a historical overview of the most relevant trends and developments substantiating the idea of a regional "diplomatic culture" underpinning a South American society of states. Intellectual complacency, more than any menacing army, is today the most dangerous threat to the continued existence of our long, but fragile, regional peace.