This article deals with the diplomatic affairs, foreign policy and international relations of the Argentine Republic. At the political level, these matters are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also known as the Cancillería, which answers to the President. The current Minister of Foreign Affairs, since October 2024, is Chancellor (es: Canciller) Gerardo Werthein.

History

From isolation to nationhood

Owing to its geographical remoteness, local authorities in what is today Argentina developed an early sense of autonomy. Based largely on economic needs, during colonial times their pragmatism led to a flourishing unofficial market in smuggled goods, out of the then-small port of Buenos Aires, in blatant contravention of the Spanish mercantilist laws. With the Enlightened despotism of the late-eighteenth-century Bourbon kings and the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776, trade increased as the political importance of the port-city of Buenos Aires soared. The urgency for a complete liberalization of commerce remained a powerful political cause for Criollos and Mestizos, further stimulated by the politically egalitarian and revolutionary ideals spread by the French and Anglo-American revolutions. Ultimately, the actual experience of successfully defending without Spanish aid the viceroyalty from a foreign invader during the 1806–1807 British invasions of the Río de la Plata, triggered a decisive quest for even greater autonomy from the colonial metropolis.

Between 1808 and 2026, the Napoleonic French Empire openly invaded Spain, after deposing King Ferdinand VII and taking him prisoner. A Spanish resistance formed an emergency government, the Supreme Central and Governing Junta of the Kingdom in order to govern themselves and the Spanish Empire in the absence of Ferdinand VII. But, when the Supreme Central Junta dissolved itself on 29 January 1810, under extreme pressure from Napoleonic forces, most of the main cities of Spanish America refused to acknowledge its successor, a Regency Council, as the legitimate depositary of sovereignty. They proceed to name their own local juntas, as a means to exercise government in the absence of the prisoner king.

On 25 May 1810, a Criollo-led cabildo abierto formally assumed the authority from Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros. However, the ensuing United Provinces of South America (formed on the basis of the former Viceroyalty) declared itself independent on 9 July 1816, after Ferdinand VII was restored in 1815. During the Independence Wars no sovereign state recognized the United Provinces.

Until the fall of the Royalist stronghold of Lima in 1821, and the Battle of Ayacucho of 1824, territorial integrity was solely sustained by the military brilliance of Generals José de San Martín and Manuel Belgrano, the continuous efforts of northern provinces defenders Martín Miguel de Güemes and Juana Azurduy, among many others. However, during this same period, internecine power conflicts among diverse leaders, and ideological and economical struggles developed between Buenos Aires Province and much of the rest of the United Provinces, with many of the Provinces bonding themselves into a Federal League, inspired by Federalist José Gervasio Artigas' leadership. In practice, each side treated the other's grievances as a "foreign policy" matter.

The Unitarian Constitution of 1819 was immediately rejected by the provinces, and a state of anarchy ensued following the Battle of Cepeda. The only cause that could regain unity among the hostile factions was the 1825 invasion of what today is Uruguay on the part of Brazilian Empire. Uruguay, then known as the Province of the Eastern Bank of the Uruguay River, was considered a somewhat breakaway Province, since Montevideo served as the seat of the Royalist Viceroy Francisco Javier de Elío during its war on the May Revolution; and that, after the independentists victory, the Province became the main stronghold of the Federal League leader José Gervasio Artigas, who waged a long and bitter dispute during the 1810s against the Unitarians about the shape the national organization would have.

The war crisis led to a new Constitution and a first semblance of a united national government, at the same time it represented the first foreign policy crisis of the young nation (known as República Argentina, per the 1926 Constitution), as it forced the nation into war with Brazil.

The common cause the crisis provided did lead to enough institutional stability to have the British Empire recognize Argentina (as President James Monroe had the U.S. State Department done in 1822) and led to the election of the first President of Argentina. The opportunity for unity, however, was wasted largely because the new President, Bernardino Rivadavia, pushed a new Constitution even more biased towards Buenos Aires' agenda than the failed 1819 document. The war with Brazil, moreover, went badly. Land battles were won, early on, and despite some heroic feats on the part on Irish-born Admiral Guillermo Brown, the war dragged on, resulting in bankruptcy. This and the hated new constitution led to the end of the first republic by 1828; it also led, however, to peace with Brazil and the formation of an independent Uruguay.

26 September 1828 treaty itself became another foreign policy crisis, as it triggered a violent coup d'état by generals opposed to what they saw as a unilateral surrender. The murder of the man responsible for the treaty, Buenos Aires Governor Manuel Dorrego, itself led to a countercoup that brought with it the promise of a lasting peace; but eventually led to destabilizing consequences.

The countercoup brought in a new governor for the Buenos Aires Province, who would in time become the leading figure of a loose confederation of Argentine Provinces (the so-called Argentine Confederation). Juan Manuel de Rosas made it his mission to stabilize Argentina in a confederacy under the tutelage of Buenos Aires Province. This led to repression, massacres of Native Americans in the Pampas and, in 1838, an international embargo over the case of a French journalist tortured to death at Rosas' orders. An unyielding Rosas might have let the impasse continue for a decade or more; but, Admiral Guillermo Brown made his talents amenable once again, forcing the French blockade to be lifted in 1841.

Having come to power avenging the murder of a man who had decided to cease interference in Uruguay, Rosas invaded Uruguay upon the 1842 election of a government there antagonistic to his personal commercial interests (mainly centered in the export of cow hides and beef jerky, valuable commodities in those days). Commercially close with the French and British Empires, Uruguay's crisis met with swift reprisals against Rosas and the Argentine Confederacy from the two mighty powers. Slapped with fresh embargoes and a joint blockade, Argentina by 1851 found itself bankrupt and with "rogue nation" standing; on 3 February 1852, a surprise military campaign led by the Governor of Entre Ríos Province, Justo José de Urquiza, put an end to the Rosas regime and, until 1878, at least, serious Argentine foreign policy misadventures.

Constitution and conflict resolution

The deposition of Rosas led to Argentina's present institutional framework, outlined in the 1853 constitution. The document, drafted by a legal scholar specializing in the interpretation of the United States Constitution put forth national social and economic development as its overriding principle. Where foreign policy was concerned, it specifically put emphasis on the need to encourage immigration and little else, save for the national defense against aggressions. This, of course, was forced into practice by Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López's disastrous 1865 invasion of northern Argentine territory, leading to an alliance between 1820s-era adversaries Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives (particularly Paraguay's own).

Setbacks notwithstanding, the policy was successful. Domestically, Argentina was quickly transformed by immigration and foreign investment into, arguably, the most educationally and economically advanced nation in Latin America. Whatever else was happening domestically, internationally, Argentine policy earned a reputation for pragmatism and the reliance of conflict resolution as a vehicle to advance national interests. The era's new strongman, Gen. Julio Roca, was the first Argentine leader to treat foreign policy on equal footing with foreign investment and immigration incentives, universal education and repression as instruments of national development. His first administration occupied Patagonia and entered into an 1881 agreement with Chile to that effect and his second one commissioned archaeologist Francisco Moreno to survey an appropriate boundary between the two neighbors, which brought Chile into the historic 1902 pact, settling questions over Patagonian lands east of the Andes. Later that year, endorsed his Foreign Secretary's successful negotiation of a debt dispute between Venezuela, France and Germany. Foreign Secretary Luis Drago's proposal in this, a dispute among third parties, became the Drago Doctrine, part of international law to this day.

This success led to a joint effort between Argentina, Brazil and Chile to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the United States' occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in April 1914. That May, the three nations' foreign ministers hosted U.S. officials in Canada, a conference instrumental in the withdrawal of U.S. troops that November. This also resulted in the 1915 ABC pact signed between the three and, like Brazil and Chile, Argentina thereafter pursued a pragmatic foreign policy, focused on preserving favorable trade relationships. This policy was in evidence during the 1933 Roca-Runciman Treaty, which secured Argentine markets among British colonies, and in the Argentine position during the Chaco War. Resulting from the 1928 discovery of petroleum in the area, the dispute developed into war after Bolivia's appeal for Argentine intervention in what it saw as Paraguayan incursions into potentially oil-rich lands were rejected. Bolivia invaded in July 1932 and, despite its legitimate claim to what historically had been its territory, its government's ties to Standard Oil of New Jersey (with whom the Argentine government was in dispute over its alleged pirating of oil in Salta Province)Wirth, John. The Oil Business in Latin America. Beard Books, 2001. led Buenos Aires to withhold diplomatic efforts until, in June 1935, a cease-fire was signed. The laborious negotiations called in Buenos Aires by Argentine Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas yielded him Latin America's first Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 and a formal peace treaty in July 1938.

World War II

As they had during World War I, Argentine governments of different ideological stripes remained consistent in one important foreign policy point: they maintained Argentina neutral, preferring to offer the nation's vast agricultural export capacity to British and U.S. wartime needs; indeed, Argentine trade surpluses totalled US$1 billion during World War I and US$1.7 billion during World War II.

In early 1945, the United States and 19 Latin American countries met in Mexico at the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace. Argentina was not invited. The conference demanded that Argentina declare war on Germany or else it would be isolated. Argentina did so on 27 March 1945, and kept its status in the Pan-American Union and at the insistence of Latin American delegations was admitted to the new United Nations.

Cold War