Every state has faced, in various forms, the challenge of modernizing, transforming and/or creating intelligence systems aimed at meeting the needs of decision-making processes, with an evident change in terms of their function in the Cold War, which basically centered on identifying and neutralizing internal or external threats. Nevertheless, this process faces political, economic and especially conceptual obstacles in establishing the intelligence system most appropriate for each country. The present article sets forth the characteristics of these systems, which must be coherent with interests, objectives and existing resources under a criterion of democratic consolidation, in which intelligence is one medium operating under strict political and legal controls, but the results of which are aimed at being a fundamental component of the decision-making process of political leadership, either by the head of state and/or by the government.
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Historically, Brazil's legislature has displayed outright disdain in addressing issues relating to national defense. The prerogatives that the new (1988) Constitution confers upon this important segment of the political system have not been fully utilized. The purpose of the present work is to establish how the Brazilian legislative process functions in the post-authoritarianism period within the broad field of security and defense. It compares the impacts of the recent establishment of the Ministry of Defense in Brazil (1999) and of the events of September 11, 2001, in order to analyze issues related to security and defense in our nation. It especially considers Parliament because, as a pluralist and representative entity, we believe that it functions as a synthesis of the nation with respect to society's attention to the topics of security and defense and to its armed forces. In the early 21st century, as we will stress throughout the article, there appear to exist new elements aimed at the social and institutional appreciation of this important field in Brazil, which could result in the maturation and intensification of our young democracy.
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The article has two goals: first, to show how Brazil, when compared to other Latin American countries, represents a successful case of incorporating the military into the new democratic order; and second, to demonstrate that part of this process of subordinating the military to civilian power – and the consequent redefinition of civilian-military relations – can be credited to the way in which Brazil conceived and negotiated political amnesty during the transition to civilian rule. In addition, it will be argued that this success can also be explained by the ways in which the democratically elected governments of the 1990s dealt, in name of the State, with persisting uncertainties about "past scores to be settled."
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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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The latest international developments require changes in the defense policies of any country. In the case of Brazil, this requirement is deeper since the National Defense Policy Document (Documento de PolÃtica de Defesa Nacional- DPDN), from 1996, does not achieve the functions of a real defense policy. In September 20th of 2001, the Brazilian Minister of Defense Geraldo Quintão spoke in favor of specific elements to a new approach for the national defense. The Minister’s pronunciation mentioned the construction of a system of rapid deployment forces (RDF) in conjunction with a regional security structure. The purpose of this paper is to offer statements in support of this new approach. The paper analyzes the differences between the Minister’s defense policy approach and the DPDN of 1996 and also analyzes the United States RDF system. The paper concludes that the Minister’s pronunciation was a real advance in relation to the DPDN in all aspects of a defense policy. It also defends that the RDF system can offer timely conceptual contributions to Brazil. The paper recommends that a Governmental strategic evaluation may be more accurate in order to provide better political parameters to the military action planning of the Brazilian armed forces. Second, just through clear military action planning and a joint command and planning structure, it may be possible to concept a force design that provide the necessary national military capacities.
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A key concept that countries have tried to push forward is that related to the establishment of a set of Defense principles that enable society to understand, support and commit to its needs and goals in defense matters. In the past few years, the traditional gap between the military and civil society grew substantially wider due to the fact that most western nations embarked in a process leading to professional armed forces. Social marketing models that were successfully applied to advance other social causes are extremely useful to raise awareness as to national defense matters and to create a set of international defense principles, a group of values, beliefs, identities, institutions and procedures that support regional Security and Defense policies. This paper examines the potential of social marketing as a catalyst that may be used to disseminate, foster and bring about changes related to the abovementioned set of defense principles, the main stages of their planning process and the basic design elements of such set of principles, as well as the communication strategy to be applied and the contents thereof.
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The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the Ministry of Defense, an institution of critical importance for today's societies, is impacting civil-military relations in Brazil. Ultimately, this translates into a strengthening of civil controls geared toward achieving civil supremacy over the Armed Forces, which are a fundamental tool that the government has at its disposal. The process of establishing and implementing a Ministry of Defense is not linear, but winding. It depends both on the policies adopted by the Ministry of Defense itself and on the relationships established among the military personnel, the Government and the rest of society. After a brief analysis of the problem and of the Brazilian situation, we tried to examine the "hits and misses" of the Ministry of Defense in connection with civil-military relations in Brazil. We also looked at the organization of the defense system in our country. Indeed, Brazil is still far from a situation where civil supremacy is a reality, notwithstanding the fact that major gaps in the "echelons" of civil supremacy are being bridged. Since the creation and implementation of a Ministry of Defense is a process, the decisive involvement of the country?s politicians and of large segments of the civil society become necessary in order to do away with much of the apathy that Brazil is currently experiencing.
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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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The changes that have occurred in the Western world in recent decades have produced many transformations in society. One of the areas that has been most openly affected is the military institution, derived from the redefinition of the State, new non-combat missions assigned to the armed forces, the continuation of traditional militaries and the deepening convergence of civilians and the military. Based on the book "The Postmodern Military" by Moskos, Segal and Allen, the author analyzes in this article, the impact that postmodernity is having on the military arena in Latin America and how the military is acting or reacting to this. In addition, the author analyzes the organizational changes and recommends some skills or traits that the professionals in the armed forces should acquire in the face of this era of change.
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