The first edition of this useful collection of documents covered the application of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the Rio Treaty, from 1948 to 1956. The present edition includes the documentation of the first edition but carries the application of the treaty to 1964 and presents the material in two volumes, the second and smaller volume beginning with cases that arose in 1960. The new edition contains also a concise and highly valuable survey of the historical development of the Organization of American States and a discussion of the procedures of consultation under the Treaty and under the Charter of the Organization of American States. In addition, the survey gives the rules for voting in the two types of consultation and considers the relationships of the Treaty and the Charter of the Organization of American States with the Charter of the United Nations in the general area of international peace and security. Although the survey is not extensive and is mainly descriptive, it identifies the possible conflicts that could arise in the applications of the regional and world systems.
The documentation includes basic materials concerning the thirteen cases in which the Rio Treaty has been applied from its first invocation by Costa Rica against Nicaragua almost as soon as it went into effect in December 1948 to the allegation of Panama in January 1964 that it had been the victim of an armed attack by the United States. The method of presenting the materials is to provide what may be called the absolute minimum of explanatory or background data in each case and to present the relevant documents in chronological sequence with appropriate headings. An appendix to volume I contains the text of the Rio Treaty, the reservations made at the time of signature by some states, and a map showing the region of the treaty as set forth in Article 4. Volume II has an appendix showing the applications of the treaty in convenient summary form.
Students of Inter-American relations will be grateful for this unusually inexpensive new edition of basic materials which cannot be found so conveniently anywhere else. It is to be hoped that the Pan American Union intends to keep this collection up to date as new cases in the application of the Treaty arise. Without intending to imply a criticism of the work in any way, it may be proper to suggest that whenever a new edition is prepared a select bibliography after each case would be welcome.
