This article examines the often contentious role that human rights promotion has played in US foreign policy in Latin America. As a longtime interloper from the North, the United States has employed many different strategies, often resulting in the election to participate in foreign countries' domestic conflicts in aid to one side or another. With regard to human rights, the fact of the matter is that the United States has failed to adopt as many human rights treaties as many other South or Central American nations have. In a globalized world more closely linked than ever before, nations are adopting human rights practices that promise to prevent injustices from occurring as they did in the past, a welcome break from the violent past in Latin America. For myriad reasons, including domestic pressures and belief in "American Exceptionalism," the United States has dodged full participation in many international legal and human rights documents, but this practice has already started to harm international cooperation with and perception of US goals abroad. The author concludes his analysis by suggesting that the United States reconsider its earlier defiance against making human rights a fully fledged tenet of its foreign policy in favor of a new, more cooperative stance.
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Does US military aid buy recipient state compliance? In this study, we systematically investigate the effects of U.S. military assistance on recipient state behavior toward the United States. We present and test three different models—Arms for Influence, Lonely Superpower, and Reverse Leverage—that might capture the relationship between military aid and recipient state cooperation. Using innovative events data that measure cooperation between the United States and recipient states between 1990 and 2004, we test seven hypotheses using a combination of simultaneous equation, cross-sectional time series, and Heckman selection models. We find, with limited exceptions, support for the Reverse Leverage model: increasing levels of US military aid significantly reduce cooperative foreign policy behavior with the United States. U.S. reaction to recipient state behavior is also counterintuitive; our results show that recipient state cooperation is likely to lead to subsequent reductions in US military assistance, rather than proving the theory of success based on a carrot and stick approach.
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Democratic security policy, whose original purpose is to guarantee the security of citizens and the rule of law, institutional order and the strengthening of the state, together with the guarantee of the exercise of democracy through security, has had a notable national, regional and global impact. It has placed the Colombian fight against terrorism on the international stage at many moments and several of its actions have been manifested in international scenarios. The Democratic Security Policy (DSP), implemented since 2003 by President Álvaro Uribe Vélez during his two terms in office, has become the symbol of his administration and the cornerstone of his successes. In the quest to return the country to order and bring security to the Colombian people, it has gone from being a government policy to a pillar of the Colombian State's action and has become an essential element of the Executive, to the point of being one of the common elements of continuity in the proposals of almost all the presidential candidates and of the new government, elected in June 2010.
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This work proposes a conflict-analysis methodology, supported by a solid conceptual framework for formulating security policy and strategy. The differential in the methodology, already successfully applied in several countries, lies in a sophisticated deconstruction of the decision-making environment along seven axes of analysis and its subsequent reconstruction, while simultaneously developing trend projections, to identify the critical dynamics of areas of insecurity. The methodology was developed to be applied collaboratively by specialists in the various fields of expertise connected with security, and is easily adaptable to each country's specific policy and strategy-making practice.
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The author analyzes the evolution of Ecuador's security agenda from its historical roots to its most recent development during the conflict with Peru and the effects of the conflict on the Colombian border. The author maintains that Ecuador's security agenda was historically focused on the hypotheses of a conventional conflict with Peru and was based on its military forces playing a guardianship and social integration role, which helped the general populace identify with issues of security and defense. For these reasons, Ecuador's military forces sought to be essentially dissuasive against the military superiority of the country's neighbors. However, the conception of Ecuador's security and defense was to change direction in the late 1990s, as it turned its attention to the threats represented by the rise of Colombia's internal conflict on Ecuador's border. The weakness of the President Uribe Vélez' democratic security strategy on the Colombia-Ecuador border and the influence of the United States government will be fundamental in the formation of this new security agenda. Paradoxically, however, becoming involved in the Colombian conflict can have negative consequences for Ecuador's security. Although Ecuador denounces the detrimental effects of the Colombia plan for Ecuador's security, it seeks to simultaneously benefit from the Andean Regional Initiative that has similar purposes. The Ecuadorian state seems to have traditionally focused its security agenda on external threats, while the country's great internal, political and economic instability is perhaps the more significant source of insecurity that has also hindered the establishment of a policy for a coherent and lasting defense.
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It is the tragic events of September 11, 2001 what set a before and after in terms of hemispheric and international security. This long anticipated "catastrophic or massive terrorism" showed up in the one country that rules international security. From then on, there has been an accelerated development of reflections or thoughts that have been shaping a true long-term Grand Strategy with such significance that it has been compared to the ones developed during the early days of the Cold War. The destabilizing mix of "terrorist governments" and "villains", international terrorist networks, and their tactical or strategic partners, whether at regional or national levels, and the non-conventional weapon proliferation have become a main concern for many coming decades. Under such context, the National Security Strategy (NSS) provides a sharp and sophisticated review of the interaction and cooperation between international terrorism and organized crime, as well as the need to limit the spread of "ungoverned regions or areas" and "weak governments" where this non-governmental actors may be based. Given the nature of these threats, any bilateral and multilateral cooperation efforts for security purposes, defense policies and any funding and goods flows acquire crucial significance. Under such context, the Rule of Law and strength of a democratic government, together with its institutions, become strategically important for any non-governmental enemies that regard such "weak governments" and "non-liberal democracies" as fertile ground for their actions.
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This article provides a general introduction for the so-called intelligence activities. Intelligence means the collection, analysis and dissemination of information needed by policy makers and decision takers. But it does not include all kinds of information or data in general, since intelligence is part of a conflict dealing with denial of knowledge and secrets. The unique methods, procedures, technologies and techniques of intelligence make it more relevant in some fields than others. National defense, foreign policy and law enforcement are the main users of intelligence. The article also addresses the tensions between intelligence and democracy and the expected impacts of the intelligence in peace and war.
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