In 1989 The Inter-American System will celebrate its centennial anniversary, tracing its lineage to the International Union of the American Republics formed at Secretary of State Blaine's Washington convocation in 1889. Over the years the mantle was passed, first, to the Pan American Union, and then to the system's present incumbent, the Organization of American States (OAS). It has been a century of unprecedented achievement and unremitting frustration, of great triumphs and repeated failures. Given the present state of the system, however, the major question is whether the system can endure, much less match the rhetoric and aspirations of its members, in its second century.

International cooperation is a political decision in search of a framework. The Organization of American States is the attempt to express and enhance that cooperation among the nations of the Western Hemisphere. It is, and can be, no better than the underlying relationships among the nations.