ABSTRACT
Argentina’s effectiveness in pursuing its foreign policy goals is a function of its capabilities and available instrumentalities. The Videla government has invited foreign participation in petroleum exploration to promote national self-sufficiency. Argentine farms are less mechanized than their foreign counterparts, use less fertilizer, and have been slower to adopt improved soil conservation techniques. Argentina lags behind all peer countries in the size of standing military forces. Moreover, they lack the foreign combat experience of the Italians, Australians, Greeks, and Brazilians. Argentina’s power capabilities determine the means at its disposal for implementing foreign policy. Its principal instrumentalities include trade, investment, aid, diplomatic activity, and a very limited level of military pressure on its immediate neighbors. Most generally the Argentine government has used state control over foreign trade to marshall all locally available resources in support of foreign policy.
