An Approach to Peruvian Naval Diplomacy: 19th to 21st Centuries

Siglos XIX al XXI

Abstract

The Peruvian Navy has been used throughout its existence as an instrument of the Republic’s Foreign Policy. Its implicit characteristics—such as the autonomy of its vessels, the flexibility to take on new tasks, the persuasive capacity inherent in a warship, the international projection of its combat platforms, as well as the professional training of its crews—in other words, the assets of Peru’s Naval Power, have been positively valued both by those responsible for directing and those for implementing the country’s Foreign Policy. Based on the work of Christian Le Mière[1], it can be extrapolated to Peru’s historical reality and stated that the non-warfare activities carried out by the Naval Institution in the international arena during two centuries of republican existence fall within the categories of cooperative naval diplomacy and persuasive naval diplomacy (I have not found an example of coercive naval diplomacy). That said, this paper will identify these activities within the temporal context in which they developed in order to highlight the use of Naval Power through naval diplomacy in the fulfillment of Foreign Policy.