This paper focused on the origin, structure and roles of the military of Belize, an arm of the state of the only English-speaking country in Central America. The key tasks that were undertaken by the Belize’s military were both external and internal. It is shown that Belize is the only country of the English-speaking Caribbean in which armed forces are used primarily for defense. This is so to deter the Guatemalan army from marching into Belize and to control the infiltration of its borders by illegal immigrants. However, Belize’s military has become increasingly involved in "police" operations, including the combating of drugs and maintaining domestic order, thus leading to a blurring of the roles of the police and the military, as well as the provision of relief during natural and other disasters. Finally, Belize’s military engaged in self-help programs and provided assistance to a number of civilian projects as a way of fostering improved civil-military relations.
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There is a new civil-military pragmatism in the region defined by armies that engage in internal, role expansive missions at the behest of democratically elected officials. In the past, the armed forces would exploit such missions for their own political gain, while revising doctrines to make role expansion a permanent feature of military orientation. Instead, today’s armies have undertaken missions for purposes of helping civilian leaders fill vacuums and resolve specific problems that could not otherwise have been adequately dealt with. Military cooperation in this regard is dutiful but not altruistic; the military’s objective is to parlay these ventures into a justification for greater defense budget shares, salaries, and equipment. But role expansion is not inherently threatening to civilian control so long as soldiers remain decision-takers not makers. This they have, as brief case studies of Argentina and Venezuela make clear.
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Both the phenomenon of terrorism and our conception of it depend on historical context—political, social, and economic—and how the countries, groups and individuals who participate in or respond to the actions we call terrorism related to the world in which they act. The causes and effects of terrorism are comprehensible only in terms of political conflicts in specific historical periods. The current gap between Latin America and the United States on the conception of terrorism and the policy guidance that will establish a common anti-terrorist strategy in the Western Hemisphere respond to the unpredictability and dynamic of this phenomenon. Therefore, in order to reduce this present gap we require an effective guide to anti-terrorist policy formulation in Latin America and the United States under a common, clear, and prospective strategy that will be able to establish, enforce, and continually refine a holistic political-military plan and generate consistent national and international support.
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Despite early recognition of the importance of military institutions for understanding social organization and social change, sociology established no strong research tradition to study the military until after World War II. This paper explores the origins of this sub-field by focusing on the pioneering contributions of Morris Janowitz. Relying on a comprehensive review of primary source documents, it provides a history of the first twenty years of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS), an organization Janowitz founded in 1961 to support, extend, and routinize sociological study of the military as a social institution. Special attention is paid to the relation between the development of this institution and Janowitz's intellectual biography and to the strains resulting from the IUS's attempts to pursue multiple and sometimes conflicting goals.
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Since Independence in the early 1960s, there have been considerable changes in the international and regional environments, many of which have tremendous implications for the security of the countries of the Caribbean. Associated with some of these changes are the problems of increased trafficking in guns and drugs, the development of transnational organized crime, increased violence and the corruption of key institutions of state including the criminal justice systems. Despite these changes and the new security challenges associated with them, there has been little effort to actually revise national security policy and to accordingly reform, indeed reconfigure and transform the security services to meet the real priorities of the post-colonial era. This paper presents an outline for a more rational reconfiguration of the Jamaican security establishment. A case is made for a fairly radical structural transformation of the security forces and system of policing that would yield more effective crime control results, a more just treatment of the citizenry and make better use of the limited resources available for national security.
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This article discusses the conceptual approach to security in the Caribbean, examines the nature of the security landscape in the region, and suggests areas of public security that warrant further attention. In relation to the first issue, it argues that the traditional Realist approach to security, with its focus on the military variable, the state as the unit of analysis, and external threats, is not applicable to the Caribbean region. Rather, an appropriate paradigm is one that goes beyond Realism, taking account of economic and political variables, both state and non-state actors, and external as well as internal threats. In relation the security landscape, it considers the security threats and challenges to include territorial disputes, drugs, political instability, and crime. The work emphasizes that the issue of drugs is not one-dimensional, but involves production, trafficking, abuse, money laundering, corruption, and local and organized crime. Attention is also paid to terrorism, showing the impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Caribbean. As regards areas for further attention the article suggests the need for distinctions in use of the terms "national security," "national defense," and "public security." Moreover, it calls for more theoretical and policy oriented work on public security actors and responses, and on crime, private security, and the security implications of HIV/AIDS.
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In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack to date, many are discussing how best to fight what some call the new war of the 21st century. Amb. Javier Ruperz comments on how the world must respond to the September 11 events drawing on lessons learned from Spain's 30 year struggle with terrorism. He argues for overwhelming and efficient international action against terrorism in all its forms, and wherever it occurs. In this action, he insists that democratic governments must uphold the rule of law, for if society does not maintain its moral superiority in this war, it will make itself an easy victim of future terrorist acts.
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Canada's armed forces have a unique policy of openness and accessibility, implemented in 1998 to restore flagging public confidence in the country?s military after a series of debilitating public relations failures in the mid-1990s. These were largely the result of incidents of bad behaviour among troops on a UN deployment in 1992. Although the policy is welcome, it has not removed some of the old difficulties which reporters typically experience when trying to get information from government departments.
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