The impact of new challenges in security and defense has made it clear that there is a need to establish measures of mutual trust between countries and within those countries themselves. In the mid-1990s, several countries in Latin America addressed this need, publishing their Defense White Papers, in which they stated their positions on the subject of Defense. Central American countries, after ending their internal armed conflicts, began a process of reconciliation, which included the subject of the relationship between armed forces and society. Consequently, the White Papers in these countries, more than just being instruments for implementing measures of trust with neighboring countries, served to establish these measures among the various sectors of society, indicating that the process of political leadership required changes in order to be compatible with existing determinants. This article describes these initial processes in each of the countries and how, from different perspectives, they achieved progress in political-military relations, although with a certain degree of military influence predominating.
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In Latin America, the purchase of military equipment has experienced increasing complexity and difficulty, due to the dizzying technological advances that have been incorporated into the means of war. Because of the complexity and sophistication of equipment and materials, we are dealing with an integrated arms system that must necessarily interact with other systems. The greater amount of technology that has been incorporated makes it possible to increase the lethal capacity of arms systems and, therefore, increase the military capacity of a military force. In addition, this greater sophistication has increased, all the more, the technological gap between industrialized countries and developing countries, such as in Latin America, where the process of purchasing such equipment is more common. Faced with this situation, the most likely materiel to be purchased must be meticulously evaluated and analyzed, in order to prevent inefficiencies and fruitless expenditures, since funds are always scarce. This is the reason why it is so important to structure efficient methodologies, in order to evaluate the technical effectiveness of arms systems and the costs associated with them.
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Up to now there has been no multinational or joint doctrine in Latin America for the participation of its armed forces in United Nations peacekeeping operations. However, most of the countries are actively participating in peacekeeping operations, as part of multinational contingents, such as the MINUSTAH. As the result of this situation, there has arisen a need for developing a common doctrine for the employment of military and police forces and civil contingents in this type of operation. This article presents a brief description of the three existing doctrinal models: UN, NATO and USA, with a critical analysis of the challenges that arise in generating a unique model adapted to Latin American realities.
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This presentation analyzes the subject of secession, establishing its characteristics and proposing, as a hypothesis, that these theoretical considerations could be taking shape in the Bolivian reality of today. The author makes a qualitative assessment of the country's most serious problems as a function of the aforementioned hypothesis. The presentation seeks to identify the underground forces undermining territorial cohesion in Latin America today, and emphasizes ethnoindigenism as an explanatory variable. The author utilizes historical examples of secessions in other parts of Latin America, and in Bolivia itself, with the idea of establishing similarities and differences with the case under study. The objective is to demonstrate that centrifugal dynamics have already taken shape, which are currently having repercussions on the stability and governability of this regional space and which, put into a comparative perspective with empirical evidence, could be irreversible in nature.
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This paper analyzes the process of integration designed by the Presidents of the Republic of Cuba and Venezuela, based on the doctrinaire socialist ideology of the two leaders, through the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, aimed at promoting and fomenting the progress of their respective economies and obtaining reciprocal advantages, and of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which agreement expands on and modifies the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement. It constitutes an alliance whose purpose is to establish Latin American-Caribbean leadership through international cooperation in various sectors, and to change the correlation of international forces, establishing a multipolar world and creating a new international political order in which the interest of the people prevails. With this purpose in mind, the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean and their position as a swing vote in international decision-making, which will make them sovereign in their decisions and masters of their own fate, is being sought. In addition, substituting products from the region for products from outside countries, and the use of petroleum as a negotiating tool, is proposed.
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This analysis goes into detail on the situation and reflects on three fundamental factors. The first is an abstraction regarding the new threats, and the definition, perception and impact of such on the societies involved. The second relates to the mission that the various Latin American constitutions assign to Armed Forces and police personnel. The third and last is the model adopted by the EU, and offers a critique of the Central American Framework Treaty on Security, with two extreme poles in the focus that we have undertaken. It ends with a series of conclusions that could serve for reflection or guidelines for at last characterizing the role of Latin American Armed Forces in the fight against the new threats.
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We note that an increase in transnational drug trafficking activity, through the Mexican cartels, is threatening, to varying degrees, the national security of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. As a result of this, in Andean subregional security policy, with the support of the United States, a new multilateral antidrug strategy must be formulated that can successfully confront the new levels of drug trafficking and criminal violence practiced by stateless transnational players, such as the Mexican cartels in the Andean region.
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Scholars have analyzed participation by civilians in defense ministries in Latin America from a dual perspective: as part of a civilian-military integration and as an instrument of civilian control of the sector. These practices have been adopted in a context of democratic consolidation and, in the governmental sphere, of a demand for rationalization and greater efficiency and effectiveness in the conduct of government. The case of Chile is a good example of this. Since the restoration of democracy (1990), the inclusion of civilians in the Ministry has been a constant. All of the ministers have been civilians, as have all undersecretaries; however, because the Ministry does not have a permanent staff of civilian professionals, an Advisory Committee has gradually and inorganically developed within the Ministry, which brings in people who provide advisory services on political, politico-strategic, budgetary, international, communications and auditing issues.
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This presentation addresses the subject of the war against terrorism and the implication that the Armed Forces in it is a topic that is itself polemic. However, it is possible to argue in favor of a moderate and contained insertion from a theoretical basis that, departing from M. Creveld and M. Kaldor in terms of the new types of armed violence, suggests that the concept of war can be applied post- September 11 to a series of conflicts that were being profiled from before that event, linked to large-scale political violence. It is a subject of defense entities inasmuch as it influences or disrupts security, but it has fewer armed implications under conditions of institutional stability if the action concentrates on the nature of the economic action that supports terrorist and criminal activities. The author postulates that weak states can define a supranational strategy that will coordinate and produce a strangulation of illegal funding sources, given that the illegal financing circuits are the same for terrorism as for transnational organized crime, which are not certainly the same thing, but represent threats of new nature for the region's states.
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The explicit objective of this work is to make some contributions toward assessing the current situation, and taking a look at the future, of the MERCOSUR, with regard to Defense, based on an historical-theoretical and practical development, starting from the premise that shows that the strengthening of cooperative action, with a view toward developing an integrated Defense system in the region, would be the most appropriate response to the challenges that have been posed in the field of International Security.
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