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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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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The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the policy of Ad Hoc alliances or "coalitions of the willing" in the Bush administration in connection with the war on terrorism. The emergence of such represents an international-level policy designed to effectively combat the threats that disturb the global scenario as a whole, but that also generate divisions within the international community at the time that they are defined and, therefore, create dissension when it comes time to consider the best way to combat them. This paper concludes that Latin America should move toward participating and extending its participation in coalitions of the willing, due to the fact that permanent regional multilateral efforts are difficult to achieve, because of the wide scope of the existing threats and because of the increasing polarization existing in the region regarding the US
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This text analyzes the positive impact of force design methodology on Brazilian Navy planning process. It presents the lack of force design as the current major weakness of the Brazilian national defense. It centers its analysis in the Brazilian Navy, considering its loss of effectiveness and the probable decrease in budgetary resources in the near future. It also defines the so-called force design environment, which is marked by legality, legitimacy and transparency, and identifies force design as an essential tool for national defense budgetary planning, relating its non-existence to a low rate of efficacy and efficiency in public resources management. The text relates force design to the issue of interoperability and confirms that force design is of paramount importance to provide a link between political decisions and execution in the area of national defense. In conclusion, it confirms that implementing force design methodology deserves a high priority in the Brazilian national defense policy.
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The essay examines the impact of military assistance on the levels of state violence against civilians during civil wars. Azam and Hoeffler argue that outside funding raises the levels of counterinsurgent brutality. This essay claims that this may be true for development assistance, but not for military aid. Using data from Peru and El Salvador, it is suggested that military aid may sometimes be inversely related to the levels of violence against civilians. This is explained by two factors. First, development aid only increases the funding of brutal regimes, whereas military assistance can also induce them to abandon brutality. Second, while traditional military aid programmes have been driven mostly by strategic concerns, those implemented in Peru and El Salvador also incorporated human rights considerations.
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In Latin America, as in every other part of the world, entrenched political corruption has proven to be extremely resistant to change, despite manifold efforts of legal reform and criminal prosecution. This paper proposes an explanation of this powerful resistance in terms of four interlocking vicious cycles. Once started, each cycle perpetuates itself and reinforces the other three. These vicious cycles involve (a) the informal economy, which drains income from the state treasury, (b) lack of transparency in international negotiations, (c) organized crime, which corrupts the judicial system; and (d) the patronage system of political appointments. Based on an examination of the dynamic behavior of the entire system we propose an explanation for why most reform efforts fail, and how a successful strategy can be constructed. Almost all of the insights reported in this paper were gained from the NationLab series of national strategic seminars in eight countries of Latin America.
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This paper analyzes Uruguay's involvement in peacekeeping missions and how they are linked to the political transition that the country is going through. In this paper, we will show how important this type of mission, in its various aspects, is for Uruguay, while, at the same time, we will also show the difficulties that the country is having in connection with the political management of national defense, due to the lack of conceptual definitions and clear rules regarding the limits and responsibilities of such political management, which provides the framework for the task and missions of military institutions.
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This paper covers a part of the post-doctoral research conducted by the author at UNESP-Franca in 2005. It is an analytical comparison between the military-naval education models developed in Brazil and Argentina within the context of the post-authoritarian regimes that are current nowadays. Also, two main aspects regarding professional training in both countries is dealt with within the context of any regional cooperation agreements and the Mercosur.
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The attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 changed dramatically the dynamic and nature of North American relations, igniting interest in closer cooperation among the three countries, especially on issues relating to security, border patrol and immigration. This renewed interest in strengthening collaboration in North America has crystallized into a call for the establishment of a "North American Security Perimeter." The three North American countries have taken several significant steps to strengthen collaboration on security matters. In effect, security cooperation within the continent has never been as strong, and it has in fact been institutionalized between Mexico and the US on some levels. Nonetheless, despite this new level of continental security cooperation, this article advances the argument that we are still far from the establishment of an international regime that would resemble anything close to a security perimeter. Instead, it is argued that what we are witnessing is the emergence of an informal North American security system that has unfolded along the two traditional axes that have historically characterized North American relations: the US-Canada relationship and the US-Mexico relationship.
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