This article sets out to examine the removal of President Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 and the impeachment of President Lugo in Paraguay in 2012. Many comparisons have been drawn between the Honduran and Paraguayan cases, but a full analysis of the similarities and differences is important to show the differences in the Western Hemisphere of perspectives regarding military involvement in political life and constitutional flexibility and interpretation. This article begins by briefly reviewing the concept of coup d'état and its evolution in order to establish a working framework. Before investigating each case on an individual basis, cultural and historical factors are considered. Although legality, constitutionality, and legitimacy of the processes of presidential removal are indeed a significant portion of this investigation, the importance of perspective remains a prominent facet of the analysis.
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Brazil's economic performance, political stability, and search for greatness ensure that Brazil will play a strong role on many global issues and will strengthen regional economic cooperation. US-Brazil relations have evolved from an alliance during and after World War II into a wary but crucial engagement today. The April 2012 meeting of Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Barack Obama deepened cooperation on common interests. Brazil's foreign policy is set by economic factors more often than ideology, and Brazil wants to advance its core interests. The US seeks to encourage Brazil's rise. Nevertheless, differences between the US and Brazil on trade and other issues will not be overcome easily. This paper examines how the shifting balance of power in the world has expanded Brazil's spheres of action while outdated concepts like formal trading blocs prevent Brazil from achieving the narrower goals it set for itself.
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Brazil lives within a regional security context, a “securosphere” that is immensely hard to avoid. Strenuous disagreements among defense and security agencies over approaches to precise methods of identification, measurement, and reactions of living and emerging threats on this securosphere proved their shared ability to be mistaken. This article proposes a national security border system of systems with enough power of discrimination and capacity for integration to address danger or take advantage of changing circumstances across Brazil's borders, tied to appropriate outcomes of the security agents. I discriminate sensible topological differences to lay out interconnection patterns of the various elements defining three specific border environments, using them to plan a more successful action. I also discriminate between subtle similarities among practical operational concepts of the armed forces and the police forces to provide better-analyzed premises, using them to build wholeness of understanding. From a better understanding of the whole, we can infer system requirements for the parts, providing capacity to conduct a disciplined exercise of planning with politically and financially affordable costs.
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If the Jamaican society is to extricate itself from its four decades of economic malaise, the 40-year trend of increasing violent crime and insecurity must be reversed. However, this is only possible with proper and adequate diagnoses of causes and the formulation of appropriate policies and solutions. Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean must adopt (and adapt) relevant crime response policies and approaches to fight all types of crimes and violence, and the authors argue that this is only achievable through coordinated strategies and evidence-based policymaking underpinned by an integrated program of cutting-edge research. By identifying the best program assessment indicators and adjusting policies that are inadequate, a country like Jamaica can turn the tide against the criminal organizations that are holding the formal economy and legal institutions hostage. Through careful analysis of other regional programs and perspectives, it is possible to find workable models for Jamaica to follow.
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The rise and involvement of private security companies in what was hitherto the domain of states has been quite topical, calling the attention of academics and practitioners alike as they debate the practical and conceptual issues relating to this change within what can be described as the sovereignty of states. The purpose of this essay is to conduct a case study of the private security industry in Barbados with a view to understanding its structure, reasons for growth, and relationship with the formal police force. I argue that the growth of the private security companies in Barbados will be a force extension to the state law enforcement agencies and can contribute significantly to the fostering of a safe and stable environment.
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In this article, Dr. Philip Kelly discusses the geopolitics of security concerns between the United States and Latin America. Kelly defines the various schools of geopolitics and, subsequently, the characteristics of traditional geopolitics. By breaking down the Western Hemisphere into three separate Americas—North America, Middle America, and South America—Kelly assesses each region and its unique geopolitical characteristics. Finally, the article addresses a number of geopolitical concepts that represent the structure of current Western Hemispheric security. In conclusion, Kelly suggests that South America ultimately remains a low priority in North American strategic security concerns, and posits that a united and prosperous Latin America isolated from Eurasian connections directly benefits North American security.
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This paper provides a comparative analysis of China's emerging role in international relations and its ties to the United States and Latin America, and China's future impact on the Western Hemisphere. The author discusses the challenges and opportunities inherent to the current China-US relations, such as currency, military, intellectual property, cyber security, and human rights tensions, and the impact those factors will have on the relationship in the future. China's pursuit of closer ties with the countries of Latin America, long seen as within the US sphere of influence, represents a major challenge for the US-China relationship.
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