Drago Doctrine

The Drago Doctrine was announced on December 29, 1902 by the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs during the second presidency of Julio Roca, Luis María Drago, in response to the resignation of the United States to execute the Monroe Doctrine during the naval blockade against Venezuela. This legal doctrine establishes that no foreign state can use force against an American nation for the purpose of collecting a financial debt.

History

Such doctrine came from the ideas of Carlos Calvo, in Theoretical and practical international law of Europe and America. The Calvo doctrine proposed prohibiting diplomatic intervention when there were disputes between parties from different countries, until local resources were exhausted.

The Drago doctrine turned out to be a response to the actions of the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, who imposed a Naval Blockade on Venezuela in late 1902, in response to Venezuela's large foreign debt that the newly arrived president Cipriano Castro took on. refused to pay.

Faced with this combined attack, the United States replied that, as a country, it would not support an American state that suffered war attacks in response to the refusal to pay its debts, claiming that the Monroe Doctrine would only apply when said country suffered war attacks. European powers motivated by the intention to recover American territories and colonize them. This is how this Drago doctrine emerged, as a protest on the part of Luis María Drago against the actions of the United States. Finally, on January 13, 1903, the agreement was signed in Washington D.C. by which, under pressure from the North American country and the Venezuelan invocation of the Drago Doctrine, the European occupiers withdrew from their positions.

Legacy

A modified version by Horace Porter was adopted in The Hague in 1907. He added that arbitration and litigation should always be used as a method of resolving international conflicts rather than resorting to military force.