This article seeks to identify the attitudes that the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the United States and Mexico have adopted toward the redefinition of the concept, and of the institutions of hemispheric security that are being developed in the Hemispheric Security Commission (HSC) of the Organization of American States (OAS). Based on the documents from the April 20-21, 1999, and March 20-21, 2000, sessions of the HSC, the article established the positions of these countries regarding five questions: their evaluation of the current state of security in the Americas; those phenomenon that each country considers to be a so-called "new threat," or "non-traditional threat" to hemispheric security; the proposals the countries make about the conceptualization of inter-american security; the evaluation and proposals of reform of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance and the Inter-American Defense Board; and, the role that each country believes the OAS - specifically the HSC - in the process of redefining the Inter-American security system. Finally, the agreements and disagreements between these countries on these issues are analyzed.
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The article discusses the concept of national security and the problems generated by the political tensions between individual security and state security in the contemporary world. Even recognizing that the modern state is simultaneously a source of threats as well as a source of security to individuals, it seems that the very nature of the international system and national societies renders collective security incompatible with individual welfare. This requires us to live as best as we can with the inherent tensions of the concept of national security. To demonstrate that these tensions are real political problems and not just semantics, the article analyses the liberal tendency?based on legal positivism?to legally define situations in which governments could allege reasons of national security, as well as more recent tendencies to substitute the concept of national security with the notion of individual security. In conclusion, I provisionally adopt the perspective of the "theory of security complexes" as an alternative to the authoritarian, liberal and post-modern positions in the analysis of security matters.
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