On March 1, 2004, Chilean president Ricardo Lagos informed the nation of the decision to send troops to Haiti as part of a multinational peace mission (MINUSTAH), under the mandate of the United Nations. This decision made Chile the first country in Latin America to join the United States, Canada and France in a stabilization force in the Caribbean after the fall of Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide and it is Chile's the largest deployment in its long history of support for peace missions. In Chile, this initiative generated intense political debate in international analysis and defense circles concerning the suitability of sending this deployment on a mission such as MINUSTAH. It is the purpose of this document to discuss the conditions that led Chile to take part in this mission and its context and to offer a documented assessment of an issue that is still new within the country and of the participation of Chilean forces in missions under Chapter VII.
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Departing from a series of concepts referred to as "the bankruptcy of the States", a perspective taken from Frenchman Philippe Delmas (1992), the author confronts the concepts of lawless areas and empty spaces, stating that they obey two different models of States, that is, unsuccessful States and weak States. Examining the bibliography, Garay discusses the autonomy of the weak states/empty spaces relationship from the unsuccessful states/ lawless areas pair, then applies them to the analysis of Latin America. Under the author’s supposition, the austral zones of Chile and Argentina can be analyzed using the weak states/empty spaces concept rather than the concept of unsuccessful states/lawless areas. An empirical examination permits us to postulate that empty spaces are conflicted spaces for human presence, which weakens the presence of the state, and given that the resources of the aforementioned states are scarce, that which is produced is a presence that is weakened from the police system, but not by the absence of law, which is why it would not be pertinent to extend this typology to the Southern Cone, as is normally done when analyzing the Tri-Border area.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the involvement of civil police forces in peacekeeping operations. The theoretical background of civil police forces, as well as their characteristics and specific elements, will be examined. This paper also contains a discussion of the participation of the Chilean police forces in peacekeeping operations.
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Are arms races and military arms modernization programs the same thing, in other words, a competition for military supremacy? This is an important question, as some countries in South America have acquired and are currently acquiring high-tech arms systems. The criteria for a military arms modernization program differ from those that characterize a traditional arms race. Not only are the variables that lead to and condition the outbreak of an arms competition fundamentally dissimilar from arms modernization programs, but the contextual framework within which this phenomenon occurs is essentially different. That said, to what extent can these arms modernization programs generate perceptions of insecurity?
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The analysis of military expenditures in Latin America is made difficult by lack of homogeneous, coetaneous information for the different countries. This paper seeks to identify the publicly available information about the process of resource allocation to the Chilean Armed Forces, and based on this, to suggest a methodology for assembling of a set of indicators designed to elevate the quality of public information regarding this expenditure, while at the same time allowing the comparison of Chilean military expenditures with those of other countries of the continent, were the methodology adopted by them. This article is part of a larger effort sponsored by the Ford Foundation, to arrive at a common methodology of measurement of military expenditures in the Southern Cone, which has included Argentina, Chile and Peru in its first phase. This paper discusses, first, the institutional elements that condition the allocation of resources to the armed forces, the characteristics of that allocation process and, finally, the main methodological themes that affect the construction of a set of defense expenditures comparable internationally and over time. On the basis of the restrictions that this imposes, a group of indicators of the evolution and characteristics of a country?s defense expenditures is defined.
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This article reviews the current status of obligatory military service in Chile and the current discussions regarding the transformation of the Armed Forces to an all professional force. The author discusses not only the current status in Chile, but also the reforms underway in Argentina and Peru, as well as broader global tendencies in the beginnings of the 21st century. The author argues that the Chilean reform is not as visionary as reforms taking place elsewhere. Instead of eliminating obligatory military service altogether, the Chilean reform is looking to replace obligatory military service with some sort of obligatory social service so that Chilean youth can fulfill their obligation to society. The article presents some possible directions the Chilean reform might take, and concludes that in order to reform the military service, Latin American countries need to first assess the type of armed forces they require today and in the future.
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The article analyzes the regulatory legal framework of the relationship between the Armed Forces and Congress, and the role of the Ministry of Defense. This analysis considers the cultural and political factors that make up this framework. The analysis concludes that the authority of the President of the Republic has been, and will continue to be an element of utmost relevance in the conformation of the standards that regulate the relationships of power, affecting the influence and authority of the Congress over the Armed Forces. Nevertheless, the study shows the existence of series of standards that allow for a fluid relationship between the Legislative Branch and the military, at least in terms of establishing information and communication channels for carrying out legislative oversight and investigation. These norms, however, limit the work of Congress in budgetary matters, and in the organization and composition of the military force. Finally, this article proposes to advance toward greater institutionalization of this relationship, strengthening the advisory function of the authorities called to participate in these, as well as creating procedures so that the Ministry of National Defense may participate effectively in this relationship.
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