This academic paper provides an analysis of the regional concerns and challenges presented in the Declaration of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, as a result of the IX Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas (CDMA) held in Bolivia in 2010. It focuses on the importance of cooperation in defense and security matters in the region, specifically in the advancement of the implementation of measures of confidence promotion and security recently approved by the South American Defense Council (SDC) of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).
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This article discusses the role of nationalism in internal disputes in the Armed Forces that occurred during the years 1964-1979, which period corresponds to the first fifteen years of the Military Regime in Brazil. Over the course of the period that we are studying, issues related to the economic development and foreign policy of the country polarized the debates and conflicts within the realm of the uniformed class, resulting in significant transformations in the strategies implemented by the State with a view toward building a "Great Power." To evaluate the importance of the nationalistic component in the political culture of the military, it was necessary to gather and link the antecedents that gave rise to the convictions and devisions existing in the armed institutions when the 1964 Movement emerged. Next, the military groups that came to compete for the control of the State apparatus are described, examining how the greater influence of one of the other impacted on the decision-making process related to the following issues: nuclear program, arms industry, nationalization of the economy, foreign capital, sensitive technologies, colonization of the Amazon, relations between Brazil and the US, international accords, multilateral forums and foreign trade policy. In discussing this point, special emphasis is given to the pronouncements and declarations made by the officials who were the key players during this period, as the justifications presented by them make it possible to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the measures that were adopted and the nationalism that permeated the political culture predominant in the Armed Forces.
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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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