The Dominican Crisis: An Inter-American Dilemma

Abstract

From whatever standpoint it may be viewed, the decision of President Johnson to order the Marines into the Dominican Republic on April 28, 1965, was bound to provide a focus for controversy. However, the essentially political nature of that act and its ostensible and concealed motivations have tended to shroud the impact of the Dominican crisis upon the legal mechanisms of the Inter-American System, outlined in the basic documents and developed in the practice of the Organization of American States. This is not to suggest that the problems of Latin America in general and of the Dominion Republic in particular are reducible to a statement of principles of international law. Indeed, it is the present writer’s contention that the Latin American members of the Organization have demonstrated that they are far too servile towards what they deem to be the basic norms of American international law, and that this attitude coupled with the equivocal political manœuvres of the United States has produced a form of institutional schizophrenia which deflects attention from the basic problems of contemporary Latin America and the pressing need for their solution. The main purposes of this comment are to examine the Dominican crisis in the context of fundamental stresses in Latin American society, to evaluate the roles of the United States and the O.A.S. in terms of their reactions to this case, and to make some general comments on how the Inter-American System may be rendered more meaningful in dealing with the political, economic, and social priorities of the region.