MEXICAN FOREIGN POLICY: ITS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPALS^*
Alonso GÓMEZ-ROBLEDO VERDUZCO^**

Original Text (Spanish) PDF

SUMMARY
I. Introduction. II. Non-intervention. III. The self-determination of nations. IV. The pacific solution to controversies. V. The proscription of the threat or the use of force in the international relations. VI. The legal equality of the States. VII. International cooperation for development. VIII. The struggle for international peace and safety. IX. Conclusion.

Through decree appearing in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on May 11, 1988, paragraph IX of article 89 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States was reformed.

According to the aforementioned decree, the holder of the Executive Power, in the conduction of foreign policy, should observe the following normative principals:

- Non-Intervention.

- Self-determination of nations.

- The pacifist solution to controversy.

- The banishment of threat or the use of force in international relations.

- The legal equality of the states.

- International cooperation for development.

- The fight for peace and international security.

First we must ask ourselves if a real necessity exists to reform the Political Constitution, to consecrate, in an expressed form, the guiding principals of our foreign politics.

At fist glance, it does not appear that there would be a real necessity for reform because these principles are inserted in a multitude of international instruments, of which Mexico is a part for having subscribed, approved, ratified, and adhered. In order not to cite but rather just to mention, on the one hand, the ratification of our country, November 7, 1945, of the United Nations Charter, and on the other hand, the ratification of Mexico, November 23, 1948, of the Organization of America States Charter (reformed by the Buenos Aires Protocol of 1967, and for the Cartagena of Indias Protocol of 1985).

As much as in the Charter of San Francisco in 1945 as in the Charter of Bogotá in 1948, the guiding principles of our foreign policy are found expressly consecrated in the same principles, purposes and objectives of both conventions. But in addition, they are imbedded —in one way or another— throughout the chapters referring to the rights and obligations of the member States in a form that is clear, precise and legally unobjectionable.

Conforming to the same article 133 of our Political Constitution, these two charters —the UN and the OAS— are international treaties that at their time were approved by the Republic Senate and therefore are "Supreme law of the whole Union".

But also, we cannot ignore that these professed guiding principles of paragraph X of article 89 of our Constitution form part of what is called the "international common law right", that is, the general international right, which obliges equally all the nations, independently of treaties, pacts, agreements, or international conventions.

Thus, if we see carefully the reformed precept about our new foreign policy guidelines, we cannot know if its enumeration is only of declarative character, or if, on the contrary, it is a declaration of exhaustive character, of which in the future could generate delicate problems of constitutional politics and of international politics, of which would surely bring the reformulating of "new principles", and through it, new and problematic constitutional reforms.

However, and this possibly being its greatest merit, to elevate to a constitutional rank the guidelines of our foreign policy permits with it a greater revelation of themselves, a better comprehension of the significance and their reach, and obligates a more careful analysis of them, as much in legal theory, as in practical politics.¹

The extremely multiform character of the "intervention" in international relations provokes in fact that the respect of this principle would be much more fortuitous.

Every State should abstain from applying, fomenting or provoking the use of economic measures, politics or of any other nature, to oblige a third State to subordinate the exercise of their sovereign rights, and to obtain from this, advantages or benefits of all kinds.

All the States should abstain from organizing, helping, fomenting, financing, provoking, or tolerating armed activities, subversive, or terrorist, destined to change through violence the government of a third State, the same as wanting to intervene in the internal battles of any other State.²

The judge of the International Court of Justice, Alejandro Álvarez, in his individual opinion in the case of the Corfu Straight, sustained, regarding the British argument about the abolishment of landmines operation, and according to which this constituted a justified self-defense intervention, when in reality it dealt with a violation of the Albanian sovereignty.

Judge A. Álvarez said that the Court should reaffirm each time that the intervention, as all acts of force, is not permitted under any circumstance nor under any pretext in international relations.³

The non-intervention principle places at risk the right of all the sovereign State to conduct its affairs without any kind of exterior interference.

This principle of non-intervention, even when their infractions are frequent, they form an integral part of the international common law right.

The Court (1986) said that the existence of the non-intervention principle in the opinio juris of the States is strongly cemented in an important and very well established and very important international practice. This principle can be presented as a corollary of the principle of equal sovereignty of the States.⁴

The Hague Court, in a 1986 sentence, expressed with all clarity that the principle of non-intervention is a principle that prohibits a State or a group of States to intervene directly or indirectly in internal or external affairs of another State.

The forbidden intervention should therefore fall over themes and matters on which the principle of sovereignty of the States allows each one of them to decide with absolute liberty.

Concretely, the Court says, that liberty is reflected in the free election of the political system, economical, social and cultural of each State, and of the formulation of its foreign affairs.

The intervention will be illicit when regarding matters such as the above mentioned, that should remain in total liberty, by utilizing compulsory or urgent means.

These urgent means or coercion are the constitutive elements of the intervention that are forbidden precisely —shaping it's own essence— and this is particularly evident in the case of intervention, utilizing force, either direct through military intervention, or even through indirect means such as support of armed, subversive or terrorist activity in the interior of a third State.

The Court says that these forms of action are illicit in the light of the principle of the use of no force as with the principle of Non-intervention.⁵

Most of the international doctrine and jurisprudence are in agreement to consider the part of the United Nations Charter that adopt the notion of self-determination transforms itself into a key principle of contemporary international common law.

Among the purposes of the United Nations is included "to encourage friendship between the nations based on the respect of the principle of equality of rights and the principle of self-determination of nations" (Article 1, paragraph 2).

In a similar way, the Charter establishes in article 55 that "with the purpose to create the conditions of stability and well being necessary for pacific and friendly relations between the nations it should be based on the respect of the principles of equality of rights and of the self-determination of nations. The organization will promote: a) higher levels of life…, b) solution to economic, social and sanitary international problems…, c) universal respect for human rights".

The resolution 1514 (XV) adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 14 of 1960, is considered the true base of the process of decolonization that is translated precisely from the creation of numerous States, which will be adding themselves gradually to the international organization.

In conformity with such Resolution 1514 (XV) (89 votes in favor, 0 against and 9 abstentions), a non-autonomous territory could reach it's full autonomy in different ways:

a) Becoming an independent and sovereign State.

b) A free association with an independent State.

c) Integrating to an independent State.

One should recognize that this "Declaration Concerning the Concession of the Independence of Colonial Countries and Nations" was proposed initially by Khrushchev, was not sufficient to provide the right to nations for self-determination, a principle accepted and universally obligatory for the international law.

However, we should recognize that the legal evolution subsequently permitted to place this right to the self-determination at the same level than other principles, such as the relativity of prohibition of aggression or of the pacific arrangement of controversies.

At the doctrinal level, there were always two principal currents. The first group of authors sustained that if the right of self-determination of nations consecrated itself as a conventional instrument in use, like the Charter, it entered ipso facto to form part of the positive international right, and one could not continue to consider it as a mere principle of political order, and therefore the States were legally obliged to their respect and observance. This could implicitly be interpreted also like an existing right of the nations to succession and independence.

The other principle current sustained that in reality the UN Charter, while consecrating the right of self-determination, it did it as a finality that was desirable to reach in the future, as a political ideal, but never like a true legal obligation.⁶

However, as we mentioned previously, history and international practice would take charge of granting a full legal value at the beginning of the self-determination of nations, in a parallel fashion to its unquestionable political value in order to refer itself to a democratic ideal.

This process of reaffirmation of the legal principle of self-determination would have more development and greater reach with the adoption by the general assembly of the "Relative Declaration to the principles of International Law about the Cooperation and Friendly Relations between the States According to the United Nations Charter" of November 4, 1970 which was unanimously voted by all the member States.

This resolution 2625 (XXV) stipulates that the creation of an State sovereign and independent, "the free association or the acquisition of any other political status, freely decided by a nation constitute a valid mean to exert it's right to self-determination".

The International Court of Justice, in their Opinion Consultative about the Occidental Sahara, after to reaffirm again the legal validity to the right to self-affirmation sustained that this principle, understood as answer to the need to respect the will freely expressed by the nations; it has not been found diminished by the fact that in certain cases the General Assembly has not believed necessary to demand the previous consultation with the inhabitants of whichever territory. The Court said that these exceptions are explained, whether it be for the consideration of a certain population that does not constitute a "nation" with the capacity to aspire to self-determination, or for the conviction that a consultation would have be unnecessary in reason of the particular circumstances.⁷

On the other hand, there is no doubt that in the multiple declarations and resolutions that the UN has emitted one cannot find a precise significance and one singular connotation that should be given to the term "nation".

The principal reason for this appears to reside in the fact that this "right to self-determination" is not in principle connected to the characteristics or the particular traits of one collectivity, otherwise to the situation specific to which it is found. In this sense, the "nations" that can enjoy a right such as this would be incipiently those that are subjugated by a foreign domination or exploitation.

Here surfaces precisely another of the many problems that are found overlapped in this theme. We refer to the phenomenon of secession. This problem is of one of peculiar importance in regard to the new States, where we often find with a heterogeneous population and with a political power of weak or null effectiveness and international presence.

It is not difficult to comprehend that a consolidated nation and well rooted, with a same millenary history, strong as much to the interior as to the exterior, could in a concrete case tolerate the secession of an ethnic group that has not been able to assimilate to the rest of the social group. But the result will be completely diverse when it deals with the States that are found composed of twenty or thirty different ethnicities and possibly hostile between themselves. If the State, in this hypotheses, admits the secession of one of the groups or ethnicity, runs the risk of being involved in a secessionist whirl, that soon will it reduce to at it's own disappearance as subject of the international law.

It is without a doubt that the right to self-determination that commonly has been exerted by "nations" inserted or integrated within a sovereign State, question and by then puts in danger the notion of a real or supposed national unity or of a territorial integrity.

Conforming to various resolutions of the United Nations, a nation submit to the domination of a foreign potency, as we have seen, in its right to make itself independent, but on the other in these same resolutions the idea is found that that pretended "domination" would not exist, in case that the State in question would be endowed a representative government (if) of the whole nation pertaining to itself. This is precisely where one can see with clarity the series of ambiguities, contradictions, and fluctuations that can envelop this controversial and thorny theme of self-determination.⁸

Independently from the above mentioned, the diplomatic practice demonstrates that a determined "nation" that is endowed with an organization that is sufficiently structured to be able to carry out an autonomous international action, and that enjoys the wide recognition from the inside of the international community, can and should be considered as an international actor, being based fundamentally on the principle of effectiveness.

If one examines the United Nations' practice one can think that the Organization has adopted grosso modo, the conception in which the self-determination should be considered as a principle of anti-colonialism and antiracism, or like a principle of liberty against the oppression of a foreign State.

In spite of this, the same practice would seem to indicate also that the principle of "self-determination of nations" does not cover or envelop the rights of minorities or nationalities that inhabit inside of a sovereign State.

In this last sense one says that the "principle of territorial integrity" of the States is going to play a fundamental role in itself because it becomes as a type of barrier that the principle of self-determination is not authorized to ignore, except for in the cases of a colonial dominant or racist government.

The process of de-colonization produced the shaping of a great number of new States, but in which an absolutely dramatic internal condition of sub-development was immersed.

The international action of the States and in particular their action in the General Assembly of the United Nations would give birth to a new branch of the law called "international law of development", with the purpose to conquer an economic and cultural independence in a parallel way to the political independence already achieved, with the wish to built a new international economic order.⁹

In the last few years and at the root of the fall of the communist model, the secessionist movement was gaining control in what was the Soviet Union. Sometimes, the Republic members of the Union proclaimed their full international sovereignty. In this way, they decided it. For example, the parliaments of the following republics: Federation of Russia, June 12, 1990; Ukraine, July 16; Azerbaijan, July 27; Byelorussia, July 27; Carelia, August 10; Armenia, August 23 and Tajikistan, August 24.

On other occasions the process consisted in that the republics proclaimed the principle of their supremacy of their Constitution and their particular laws, above the federal Constitution and the soviet laws. To this process the republics of Georgia recurred, June 20, 1990; of Turkmenistan, August 23, and of Kazakhstan, October 26 of the same year.

The last events have been a loyal sample in which in multiple cases "the principle of non-intervention" has confronted the "principle of self-determination".

This was exactly the ideological formulation of the dilemma in Yugoslavia. If the third States rejected the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, this would constitute at the same time a rejection to the intervention in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia and to the contrary, to provide recognition implicated the reconfirmation of the principle of self-determination. For that reason, one always took into account the fact that the demand for recognition would surge from the same republics, and that this would be the authentic expression of the popular will.

Mexico has proclaimed, in an almost constant and uniform fashion throughout history, the right of the nations to their free determination, and it is without a doubt one of their principles that has regulated the conduction of its foreign policy.

Aside from this, Mexico has affirmed and ratified international conventions of great transcendence where such principle is consecrated, as is the International Pact of Economic Rights, Social and Cultural and the International Pact of Civil and Political Rights of 1966, both legally connected to Mexico since 1981:

1. All of the nations have the right of self-determination. In virtue of this right, all nations establish freely their political condition, and they provide for themselves their economic, social and cultural development.

2. For the success of their ends, all of the nations can arrange freely of their wealth and natural recourses without harm of their obligations that are derived of the international economic cooperation based on the principle of mutual benefit such as that of international law. In no case would it take away to deprive a nation of its own means of subsistence.¹⁰

If one analyzes the fundamental principle of the "pacifist solution to the controversies", it is no doubt that it exceeds the frame of the member States of the United Nations.

This principle is found inserted in the majority of international instruments concerning to the maintenance of peace and security; therefore, beyond its conventional proclamation —within conventions and agreements—, the common law value of a general principle of international law that obliges all of the States; this is not equivalent to being able to also attribute a value of imperative norm of jus cogens.¹¹

The States are obliged to resolve by pacifist means their international controversies. In order to escape this obligation, the States can pretend that the conflictive situation to which they find themselves confronted, and that can become in the use of the force, it does not constitute a "dispute", o even admit that exist a controversy, but it does not constitute a controversy of international character.

This principle is, undoubtedly, historically prior to the principle of the prohibition of employment of force. Beneath this precise aspect of the search for solutions to the disagreements between States was subscribed the Convention of The Hague of 1907, with the purpose of preventing, as much as it was possible, the recourse to force in international relations.

The notion of "dispute" implies a sufficient object circumscribed, in contrast to the "situation", that is more diffused, and almost always previous to the birth of a controversy.

But the notion of "dispute" also implies the notion that there be "parts", between which has surged a divergence of points of view; and as the dispute is international, said parts are not others if not the States.

From here that an international dispute supposed that the parts recognize in a reciprocate way the quality of the legality of state entities. While not existing any obligation of recognition, it is frequent that one of the parts maintains its position, attempting to find a more favorable compromise.¹²

All of the procedures used for the solution of controversies are in international law "voluntary means", in this sense they cannot be put in motion without the existence of, previously and forcedly, the agreement of the noninvolved parts. In this sense, it could well be said that a contradiction between the general obligation of arrangement of controversies and the eminently facultative of each one of the means and the procedures that will permit the concreting of the general obligation.

For that reason, for this contradictory situation diverse techniques and procedures permit the States to compromise in advance in order to eventually submit to a dispute in the frame of the already negotiated instrument.

This is precisely the object of what is called "mediating clauses" of the treaties of arbitrage; of the agreements of conciliation, or also of the famous "facultative clause" of obligatory jurisdiction", through which the States recognize as obligatory ipso facto and without agreement especial, the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, regarding any other State that has accepted the same obligation (article 36 of the Statute).¹³

Now, the distinction between the "diplomatic means" and the "jurisdictional means" is a classic distinction and essential in international law.

The "diplomatic media", like good occupations and mediation, or those tributaries of "parliamentary diplomacy", within international organizations, are the means that can be utilizable and appropriate for any type of dispute, whether it be of the nature that it be, and without the decision being foreseen out of obligatory force.

On the contrary, the "jurisdictional means" can not be used any more than for juridical disputes; they imply an arrangement or solution born from a constituted organ so that, at the conclusion of a process, a binding decision dictates on the base of the law.¹⁴

The principle of the prohibition of the threat or use of force is probably the central hobble of the safety mechanism of the United Nations: "The Members of the Organization, in their international relations, will abstain from appealing to the threat or use of the force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any incompatible form with the Intentions of the United Nations" (article 2, paragraph 4).

Nevertheless, this "principle of principles" endures limitations and ambiguities that have been allowed to be glimpsed throughout the history of international relations.

The limitations arise, before all else, out of the fact that the resource to the use of force is not prohibited any more than in the frame of international relations, and only in reason of its end, this is, that it is taken in opposition to the territorial integrity and the political independence of any State, or of any other that may be incompatible with the intentions of the United Nations.

Of all evidence, the above means —this way being implicitly—, that the resource to the use of force can be a legitimate resource inside certain circumstances, or in view of certain ends or aims.

The principal exception to the prohibition of the resource to the use of force is in "the right to legitimate defense", whether it be individual or collective.

Though it be indisputable, the need for its insertion as a fundamental exception, its practical scope is considerable, and its application bears a problem of extreme difficulty, as says M. Virally, that is not more nor less than the relative of the definition of "aggression", which will manage to justify or to legitimize the right itself of defense.¹⁵

One of the problems which article 2, paragraph 4, has always faced is that of determining if the prohibition of force is only qualified as "military man", or, since Latin-American countries have always fought, that the prohibition of the article 2, paragraph 4, covers all of the manifestations of force, including the political, economic and different pressures (the different political and economic pressures).¹⁶

It is important to indicate that in the Convention of Vienna of 1969 in the Law of Agreements, ratified by Mexico in 1974, and in effect since 1980, it is stipulated in its dispositions 51 and 52, that the coercion upon the representative of a State to obligate himself through an agreement will lack any juridical effect (absolute nullity), and on the other hand, that equally null, ab initio, will be any agreement to which celebration has been obtained by the threat or use of force, in violation of the principles of the Letter of the UN.

The Conference of Vienna of 1969 passed, forming a part of the final record, a declaration for which the resource is condemned to the threat or use of pressure, in all its forms, whether it be military, political or economic, for a State, "in order to compel another State in order that she realizes an act relative to the celebration of an agreement in violation of the principles of sovereign equality of the States and of the freedom of the assent".¹⁷

The principle of the "legal equality of the States" has as its first significance, which nevertheless, the differences of power, of progress or of industrialization of the States, any State as a subject of international law is a holder of the same rights and of the same capacities, at the same level as any third State.

We find this postulate among the fundamental principles of the United Nations, as one of the key ideas for the realization of the purposes of the organization: "The Organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members" (article 2, paragraph 1).

For its own part, the Letter of the Organization of American States recaptures the same principle, but in a more detailed way: "The States are legally equal, enjoy equal rights and the equality of capacity to exercise them, and have equal duties. The rights of each one do not depend on the power which she prepares to assure her exercise, but on the simple fact of her existence as a person of international law" (article 9).

Possibly, it would have been more suitable to speak about "sovereign equality", since the Letter of the UN does, since in strict rigor the independence comes to be a corollary and the manifestation makes "sovereignty" concrete.

The right of a State to push any interference back is precisely the direct consequence and the translation makes its sovereignties concrete.¹⁸

Of this principle of the legal equality of the States stems, in the concrete area of the theory of immunities, the first and essential right, consisting of that no State can be located before an internal foreign jurisdiction if the express grant of its assent does not necessarily occur.

Of the previous right it follows as a corollary that one cannot engage in an action of individual initiative against any state, whichever this may be, in opposition to its goods, rights and property, sites in a foreign territory. In other words, the latter, the immunity of execution, comes to complement its immunity of jurisdiction, which, we can say, is in relation of cause-effect.

In the very important Resolution 2625 (XXV) of the UN General Assembly (1970), called "Declaration on the Principles of International Law Relating to the Relations of Friendship and to the Cooperation between States of Conformity with the Letter of the United Nations". One speaks equally about the consecration of the principle of "sovereign equality" of the States.

All of the States enjoy sovereign equality. They have equal law and equal duties and are equally members of the international community, weight to the differences of order economic, social, political or of another nature. Especially, the sovereign equality includes the following elements:

A) The States are legally equal;

B) Every State enjoys the rights inherent to full sovereignty;

C) Every State has the duty to respect the personality of the other States;

D) The territorial integrity and the political independence of the State are inviolable;

E) Every State has the right to choose and to choose it advances freely its political, social, economic and cultural system;

F) Every State has the duty to expire fully and of good faith its international obligations and to expire in peace with the other States.¹⁹

In general, the most representative doctrine agrees to accept that this Declaration has been one of the most important declarations adopted by the international community, and that has had an impact and a much greater influence than what was believed, regarding the development of international law.

The Declaration of 1970 does not try to amend the Letter of the UN, but it does try to clarify the legal basic principles contained in article 2 of the Letter, and in some other aspects, placing among the demands of lege lata, and the pressures for the recognition of an emergent normative body of lege ferenda.

A declaration of this nature approved unanimously seems to be difficult, as Jiménez de Aréchaga was saying, who should can be denied to it the legal weight and the authority of a declaration in its double facet: first as a resolution, recognizing that that the members themselves of the United Nations think that it constitutes the existing procedure of common law, and in its second facet, recognizing it as an interpretive instrument of the Letter for subsequent agreements and for posterior practice of all its members.²⁰

In spite of the primacy that is granted in the Letter of the UN to the specific problems of international safety, economic and social cooperation occupies an important place, not at all contemptible.

International cooperation that should, before anything else, allow creation of the conditions of stability and well-being necessary for the pacifist and friendly relations between the nations based on the respect of the principle of the equality of rights and of the free determination of peoples, since it devotes itself in article 55 of the Letter.

Though it is evident that the final aim is of political nature, there are defined equally diverse aims of economic nature, between which they stand out to promote "higher standards of living, permanent work for all, and the conditions of progress and economic and social development" (article 55, clause a).

These aims, that would be gradual but systematically developed, first across the resolutions and decisions of the UN General Assembly, were supported on the conviction that the phenomenon of underdevelopment was presenting a world character, which prepares disturbing consequences, not only for the directly interested countries, but for the entire world, which would be threatened with grave instability, for the fact of the strong economic imbalance that one was presenting.

With time, the accuracy of this type of appraisals began to become more evident.

The division between industrialized countries and countries not industrialized, left the above mentioned to the margin of the resultant advantages of the progress of science and technology; it is much graver and of more lasting effects, than the famous divisions of ideological type.

The ideological oppositions, as Michel Virally says, can weaken, since they do not constitute in themselves the same impassable obstacle in order that a fruitful collaboration is carried out, since it can be warned by each and every one of us.

On the contrary, the abyss that manages to separate the developing countries introduces, says M. Virally, an element of fundamental imbalance in the bosom itself of the world economy, with which political consequences in the long term are unpredictable and of high risk, and that might not be suppressed or weaken, but by means of a substantial improvement of the development of the economies that present the great one I leave behind, opposite to the highly industrialized ones.

The ideology of de-colonization estimated together with the ideology of the development they constituted in its time and, no doubt, the most powerful driving unit in the bosom of the system of the United Nations for the countries with precarious economies and highly unstable ones.²¹

Equally with Dumbarton-Oaks's propositions, the United Nations' Letter postulates the maintenance of peace and safety, as the first and principal "intention" of the Organization.

The peace which is mentioned is peace in international relations, that is to say, the maintenance of "international peace".

This appears to mean that the intention expressed is not —except incidentally and resulting from problems of an international type— the one about preserving peace in the interior of the States or the one about intervening in warlike conflicts of internal order.

Taking in account the previous observation, there is no doubt that this international principle of the maintenance of peace and safety is simultaneously an intention and a basic aim of the organization, simply because in absence of this difficulty it is possible to reach the purpose of other principles, or of the creation of basic conditions for the attainment of other aims and intentions fixed by the Letter.

Now then, it is clear that the Letter of the United Nations does not offer a magic formula, capable of facing all kinds of situations in which one sees threatened international peace and safety. The Letter offers only a specific frame for its application; it awards to each and every one of the Member states a series of rights and obligations to act out collectively and in concert, whenever any of them is subject to a threat against peace, to a violation of peace or to an act of aggression.

The safety system itself is going to be based on a mechanism of cooperation so that a victim of aggression is able to act in joint form in the defense of the State. Simultaneously, its proper or improper functioning is going to depend on the cooperation itself between the permanent members of the Council of Security, and in general on the global efficiency that this latter organ demonstrates.²²

Another aspect that is important to emphasize of this principle relating to the international maintenance of peace and safety is the fact that to achieve its full accomplishment, the States must manage for pacifist means "the adjustment or arrangement of controversies or international situations capable of driving to a rupturing of the peace" (article 1, paragraph 1).

Independently of warning the degree of links and interdependence of the principles of international politics, it is also important to realize that though it would be utopian to think that any dispute can be solved by traditional means, nevertheless, as the former president of the Court of The Hague, Manfred Lachs, used to say there is always the possibility of "adjusting" international situations in the interest of the interested parties. The arrangement of the controversies is a more ambitious operation, whose objective is to finalize litigation. Nevertheless, both the "adjustment" and the "arrangement" aim at preventing a rupturing of peace.²³

Finally, it is necessary to state that though the system of collective safety defined by the Letter of the UN was characterized from a beginning by its realism; it is also true that this it was also characterized by a great ambition. The implementation of the military device that used to constitute the key piece of the system through "special agreements of article 43", undertaking to place at the disposal of the Security Council the armed forces necessary for the purpose of supporting peace and international security, never managed to be honored, and therefore the building was condemned to collapse.²⁴

At the conclusion of this succinct examination of the governing principles of our international politics, elevated to the constitutional range, and without stopping to take into account the considerations emitted at the beginning of the work; there is no doubt that its elevation to the constitutional plane allows for a greater diffusion and propagation of these, which must produce a better understanding, deepening and strict attachment to the same ones.

In a similar way, we must have full conviction that for a country such as Mexico, international law cannot be a mere secondary way of expression of international politics.

We cannot give ourselves the luxury of wanting to possess a foreign politics moldable according to the circumstances of the moment; a mere structure made according to the needs that are presumed to be high-priority within such-and-such political conjuncture.

International law has to be our fundamental instrument to maintain a position of political independence, and this is "pure realism", and not "legalistic" positions.²⁵

Good sense has always demonstrated that a weaker country must always look for the restoration of a system that does not allow more powerful ones to arrogate a total freedom of interpretation of the law, directly proportional to the capacity of its military and economic power.

Notes
* Translated by Diana Hernández Holtzman.
** Researcher at the Legal Research Institute.
1 In this sense, see Rabasa, Emilio O., "Nota introductoria", Los siete principios básicos de la política exterior de México, Comisión Nacional de Asuntos Internacionales (National Commission of International Affairs), 1993, p. 13: "The opened possibility of en framing constitutionally our international doctrine, the new norm could not contain the fundamental and perennial principle if Mexico in this matter. Moreover, perhaps it would the medium so that each president establish his preferences of the moment in this matter".
2 See Ouchakov, "La compétence interne des États et la non-intervention dans le droit international contemporain", Rec Cours Ac. H., 1974. Article 2, paragraph 7, of the United Nations Charter that prohibits intervention in "affairs that are essentially of the internal jurisdiction of the States"; it figured already in the Pact of the Society of Nations in its article 15, paragraph 8, but it left to the Council or the Assembly of the Society of Nations, all the latitude in order to execute mediator or conciliator functions. In itself, the OAS Charter consecrates this principle of non-intervention used in its article 18, excluding all type of intervention or of "tendency to attempt of the personality of the State". See Cançado Trindade, A. A., "The Domestic Jurisdiction of States and the Practice of the UN and Regional Organizations", ICLQ, 1976, pp. 715-765.
3 See Affaire du Détroit de Corfou (fond) "Arret du avril 1949", Recueil des Arrêts, Avis Consultatifs et Ordonances. Opinion Individuelle de M. Álvarez, p. 45, point VIII.
4 See "Affaire des Activités Militaries et Parmiliataires au Nicaragua et contre Celui-ci" (Nicaragua c. États-Unis d' Amerique). Fond, Arret du 27 juin 1986, Recueil des Arrêts, Avis, Consultatifs et Ordonnances, CIJ, p.106, numeral 205.
5 Ibidem, pp. 107 and 108, numeral 205.
6 See S. Calogeropoulos Stratis, Le droit des peuples à disposer d'euxmêmes, pref. of René Cassim, Brussels, Bruyalant, 1973, p. 388.
7 Recueil des Arrêts, Avis Consultatifs et Ordonnances, 10-16-59, paragraph 59.
8 See Suceda Irgo, A., The Evolution of the Right of Self-determination —A study of the United Nations Practice—, A. W., Sijthoff-Leiden, 1973, p. 397. With all reason, Suceda points out that: "After all, self-determination started off as an individual right, and became a collective right because it was thought that individual rights could be better exercised within a demonstrably coherent human group". Ibidem, p. 356.
9 See Gómez-Robledo Verduzco, Alonso, La soberanía de los Estados sobre sus recursos naturales, Mexico, UNAM, 1980.
10 Article 1, part 1, of any of both international pacts.
11 See Gómez-Robledo, Antonio, El ius cogens internacional, Mexico, UNAM, IIJ, 1982 (historical-critical study). "Ius Cogens is a necessary component of any legal order color": definition of the soviet jurist Alexidze, cited by Gómez-Robledo, Antonio, op. cit., p. 227.
12 See Charpentier, Jean, Cot et Pellet, Charte des Nations Unies, pp. 103-112. The Arab-Israeli conflict is illustrative of the legal quality of being a State and the right of its existence, so that some time afterward it would be the same Hebrew State who would reject recognizing the OLP as valid interlocutor and representative of the Palestinian State. Ibidem, p. 108.
13 Article 33 of the UN Charter says: "The parts in a controversy whose continuation is susceptible of placing in danger the maintenance of peace and of international security will attempt to look for a solution, before all, between the negotiation, investigation, mediation, conciliation, arbitrage, and the judicial arrangement, the recourse to organisms and regional agreements or other pacifist means of their choice". This article 33 of the UN Charter finds its regional counterpart in article 24, Chapter V of the OAS Charter, in quasi identical terms.
14 Thierry, Hubert, "Le règlement pacifique des différends et l'ajustement des situations conflictuels", in Thierry, Combacau, Sur, Vallé. Droit International Public, 3èeme edition, Paris, Précis Domat, Éditions Montchrestiens, 1981, pp. 555-601. Up until today, there have been three jurists of Mexican nationality who have been judges before the Court of The Hague: Isidro Fabela (1946-1952), Roberto Córdova (1955-1964) and don Luis Padilla Nervo (1964-1973). Equally, it is necessary to highlight that Mexico until today has not been a part in any contention before the court. Nevertheless, our country participated, together with other countries, in the Consultative Opinion of 1996, requested by the UN General Assembly in the Case of the Licéit, de la Menace ou de l'Emploi d'Armes Nucleaires, in which it supported the Court 11 votes in favor and 3 against that "Neither international common law, nor international conventional law, did not endure complete and universal prohibition of the threat or use of nuclear weapons such as these", Avis Consultatif, CIJ, 7-08-96. On the contrary, Mexico, throughout history has used international arbitration on several occasions; on the one hand, in a report in numerous mixed commissions of claims of the 19th century and 20th century, and on the other hand, in all three famous cases submitted by Mexico to arbitration in 1902, it is understood that: the "Case of the Piadoso Fund of the Californias", trumped by the Permanent Arbitration Court in 1902; "the Case of Clipperton Island, Passion or Dunes" of 1931, submitted to the king of Italy, Víctor Manuel III; and "the Case of the Chamizal of 1911" trumped by a court of arbitration constituted by the Convention of Arbitration of 1910. For the analysis of these three famous arbitrations, see Gómez-Robledo, Antonio's exhaustive work, México y el arbitraje internacional, Mexico, Porrúa, 1965, p. 412.
15 See Virally, Michel, "L'article 2: paragraphe 4", La Charte des Nations Unies, pp. 113-125.
16 On the other hand, it is true that contrary to how it appears, as says Virally, the famous resolution 3314 (XXIX) on the definition of "aggression" as adopted by the UN General Assembly of 1974. It does not solve the problem itself that it wanted to solve. Ibidem, pp. 115 and 116. See The Concept of Aggression in International Law, Foreword by Charles O. Galvin. Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1972, p. 114. These authors support, in relation to the aggression of economic type, the following: "Perhaps the definition should include and combines both meanings. i. e. Illegal economic measures employed by a state against another state so seize to I forced the sovereign will heard the latter and to deprive it of economic resources or to disturb its economic life, thereby jeopardizing its security", ibidem, p. 92.
17 See Conference of the United Nations on the Law of Agreements, Official Documents, A/CONF.39/11/Add 2. This important Declaration was more than the countries in process of development could achieve; obviously, for being a part of the final record of the Conference, it does not enjoy legal binding force.
18 See Lachrrière. Guy, "L'influence of l'inégalité de développement des Etats sur le droit international", Recuiel des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International, vol. II. 1973, pp. 227-268. It is necessarily to know clearly that, in the area of facts, it is precisely because the States are not equal that the proclamation of a principle of equality is necessarily required.
19 See resolution 2625 (XXV), A. G. des Nations Unies, Octobre 24, 1970, Droit et relations internationales, textes choices par Hubert Thierry, Paris, Montchrestine, 1984, pp. 545-550.
20 See Jiménez de Aréchaga, E. "International Law in the Past Third Century", Recueil des Cours de l'Academie de la Haye, 1978, vol. I, num. 159.
21 See Virally, Michel, L'Organisation Mondiale, sous la direction de Rene-Jean Dupuy, Paris, Colin, 1972 (Collection U). Especially, see title III of the 2nd part, where the UN is analyzed carefully as an instrument of development, pp. 353-407. See also Sohn B, Louis, Cases on United Nations Law, 2nd ed. rev., Brooklyn, The Foundation Press, 1967, p. 1072.
22 See Goodrich M., Leland et Eduard Hambro, Commentaire de la Charte des Nations Unies, Neuchatel, Suisse, ed. établie par André-Marie Guymat, Éditions de la Baconnière, 1948, pp. 119-122, and Lachs, Manfred, "Article 1, paragraphe 1", La Charte des Nations Unies, cit., pp. 31-38.
23 See Lachs, Manfred, op. cit., note 22, pp. 34 and 35.
24 See Virally, Michel, L'0rganisation Mondiale, op. cit., note 21, Chapter 21, pp. 468-482. While the Military Staff Committee does not work, according to the terms of the Letter of the UN (article 45), and while it does not place at the disposal of the organization permanent armed forces and the logistic necessary means, the United Nations will depend on the powers capable (of?) always serving as its secular arm. See Smouts, Marie Claude, "Le Conseil de Securité", Aspects du Système des Nations Unies dans le cadre de l'idée d'un nouvel ordre mondial, Paris, Pedone, 1992, pp. 61-69 (Colloque d'Aix-en-Provence, Yves Daudet).
25 See Castañeda, Jorge, "México y el nuevo orden mundial: actualidad y perspectivas", México y los cambios de nuestro tiempo, Mexico, UNAM-CONACULTA-FCE, 1992, vol. III. pp. 263 and 264. The same jurist when analyzing relations with the United States, in plain language holds that: "...In relations between the two countries, there is no credibility to a good will on the part of the United States inopportunely discovered or rediscovered... The great powers always act as great powers", ibidem, p. 264.