We cannot understand the power and role of the military in Latin American public life without a knowledge of the societies within which the military establishments are situated and the forces they control.

Perusing Alain Rouquié’s seminal tome on military economic behavior in Latin America during the 1980s.

Click here to read the online edition of the book.

Diario Perfil reported last week that within the high command of the Argentine military (among them, General Staff Chief Luis Pozzi) there is discontent with Defense Minister Nilda Garré.

The piece adds the military has no qualms about saying it out loud: “In the Ministry of Defence there is total anarchy and the only one responsible is Garré” was heard in a meeting attended by Argentine Ambassador to Colombia and former Army Chief Martin Balza, accused former Army Chief Roberto Bendini, Pozzi, and General Hugo Bruera, including soldiers, reported Perfil.

Moreover, there is major concern in the armed forces about the defense minister over the recent robbery of arms from an armory.  On August 18, FAL rifles, machine guns and 9mm pistols were stolen from the Electronic Warfare Group in the Air Operations Command, prompting the relief from duty of a general.

(Image: Defense minister Nilda Garré along with General Staff Chief Luis Pozzi. By DyN.)

Jojoy was suffering from diabetes and Colombian intelligence was able to intercept guerrilla communication requesting special shoes for the rebel chief and, in turn, shoes with a GPS tracking chip were sent.

The LA Times piece went on to say:

In addition to a spillover from Mexico, trafficking has increased in the eastern Caribbean along with the growth of smuggling out of Venezuela. Officials said drug cartels have developed better technologies, such as new versions of small fast boats that can quickly move narcotics.

The region is patrolled by various navies, including those from the U.S., Canada, France, and the Netherlands. U.S. officials hope that improved integration of the efforts will better combat trafficking through the area.

And the BBC added:

Caribbean leaders say drug traffic in the region is already increasing. The United States says about three-quarters of South American cocaine comes through its border with Mexico.

It says the drugs enter the country after being smuggled along a land route through central America.

The Caribbean leaders believe the drug trade through the islands is already increasing as the US pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the fight in Mexico.

Valenzuela’s response to a question about how does the U.S. State Department see the developing arms race and the attitude of Venezuelan president, who just purchased $5B worth of arms from Russia, claiming that he is under the threat of the United States via Colombia:

All sovereign countries have the right to defend themselves and buy arms. The Chileans have just purchased from the United States an important upgrade  for its equipment. On the other hand, even though in the last couple of years in Latin America there has been a very important tendency to shift from military spending to civil spending. Governments have noticed that unsustainable military spending robs budgets for people. In that sense, we share the position with other governments that are looking for that tendency to decline, I understand that modernization of those equipment is normal.

In regards to an agreement with Brazil, the assistant secretary went on to say: “As with the agreement with Colombia, it was a modernization that we had well before, this does not change a formal substance in relations, what is being done with Brazil is something very similar.”

While Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim and the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will sign a military agreement in the Pentagon tomorrow, which will not incorporate U.S. troops in Brazilian bases but rather facilitate contacts with both militaries and the purchase of armaments.

Negotiations between the Brazilian government and United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) commander Lt. Gen. Douglas Fraser have taken place to create a multinational base in Rio de Janeiro (which was suggested by the Brazilian Federal Police) to control and combat drug trafficking and contraband in the South Atlantic.

The base should be operational at the end of the year which will be located in the Brazilian Navy’s installations and will count on the participation of a specialized staff.  Its objective is to monitor drug trafficking in the region and will be linked with existing bases in Key West, Florida in the United States and Lisboa, capital of Portugal.

On Central and South America, the JOE report opines:

Military challenges in South America and Central America will likely arise from within states, rather than between them. Many internal stresses will continue to challenge the continent, particularly drug cartels and criminal gangs, while terrorist organizations will continue to find a home in some of the continent’s lawless border regions. The power of criminal gangs fueled by drug money may be the primary impediment to economic growth, social progress, and perhaps even political stability and legitimacy in portions of Latin America. The cartels work to undermine and corrupt the state, bending security and legal structures to their will, while distorting and damaging the overall economic potential of the region. That criminal organizations and cartels are capable of leveraging expensive technologies to smuggle illicit drugs across national borders serves to illustrate the formidable resources that these groups can bring to bear. Taking advantage of open trade and finance regimes and global communications technologies, these groups attempt to carve out spaces free from government control and present a real threat to the national security interests of our friends and allies in the Western Hemisphere.

Colombia’s success against the FARC, drug cartels, and paramilitary death squads is notable. The assault by the drug cartels on the Mexican government and its authority over the past several years has also recently come into focus, and reminds one how critical stability in Mexico is for the security of the United States and indeed the entire region. Mexico has the 14th largest economy on Earth, significant natural resources, a growing industrial base, and nearly free access to the biggest export market in the world immediately to its north.

The U.S. and Mexico must continue to cooperate to cut off the shipment of drugs into the United States and the flow of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico. In addition to conventional bank transfers, syndicates import between $8 billion and $10 billion in bulk cash each year. As traditional land routes for smuggling drugs into the US have been shut down, in most of the US there has been an increase in drug price and a decrease in drug purity but as in any conflict, the enemy has adapted, and now the maritime routes have become critical to smugglers. For Mexico the end game is based on:

• Mitigating the violence
• Changing the problem back from a national security problem to public security, law and order problem
• Raising the opportunity costs of doing drug business in Mexico

As Mexico becomes successful, the drug problem will expand into a greater regional problem, so a holistic approach is needed. The economics are shifting as well, with the United Kingdom and Spain now the most lucrative markets and the problem spilling into Japan, Russia, and China.

The Mexican government will remain severely challenged as its primary focus is its fight against these formidable non-state groups. A continuous cooperative effort by the U.S. to both minimize demand for illicit drugs and to defeat criminal elements involved within its borders will be pivotal to Mexico’s success in confronting lawlessness and

corruption.

South America’s improving economic situation suggests that the region could be in a better position to deal with these problems. Brazil, in particular, appears set on a course that could make it a major player among the great powers by the 2030s. Visionary investments in biofuels as well as the discovery of massive oil deposits off the Brazilian coast will increase its energy independence, while a growing industrial and service-based economy mean that the next several decades will see Brazil’s economic and political power grow. Chile, Argentina, Peru and possibly Colombia will also most likely see sustained growth, if they can continue prudent economic policies in the face of the difficult economic headwinds of the global financial crisis.

The potential major challenges to the status quo at present are Cuba and Venezuela. The demise of the Castros will create the possibility of major changes in Cuba’s politics. The future of Venezuela is harder to read. The Chavez regime is diverting substantial amounts of its oil revenues to further its anti-American “Bolivarian Revolution,” while at the same time consolidating his regime’s hold on power by distributing oil wealth to his supporters. By trying to do both, it is shortchanging investments in its oil infrastructure which have serious implications for the future. Unless Venezuela’s current regime changes direction, it could use its oil wealth to subvert its neighbors for an extended period while pursuing anti-American activities on a global scale with the likes of Iran, Russia, and China, in effect creating opportunities to form anti-American coalitions in the region.

Click here to read the rest of the study (pdf).

Hugo Chávez under arrest in Turiamo during 2002 coup attempt. Image: Wikimedia.

Political scientists David Pion-Berlin and Harold Trinkunas presented their research “on military responses (or lack there of) to mass protests against elected governments during moments of constitutional crisis in democratic states,” in a paper (“Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America”), delivered last June at the annual Latin American Studies Association International Congress.

Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas demonstrate in their analyses military postures taken in a moment of a presidential crisis where they examine less than a handful of Latin American states having traversed this experience in the last decade. The following are some observations of this phenomena in three nation-states (Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela) they examined with distinct outcomes:

Military shirking defined and preoccupation with influence

• Thirteen of the fifteen non-constitutional transfers of power that we have observed in the region between 1990 and 2004 have been the result of civilian ‘coups’ rather than military actions.

• The concept of military shirking derives from principal–agent theories of civil-military relations. Within the civil-military hierarchy, the principal is the president who delegates authority to military subordinates, his agents. The commander in chief assumes that his subordinates will use their authority to faithfully fulfill his orders.

• The Latin American military no longer convincingly wields the threat of coup d’état as it had in the past. The professional and political costs to doing so are greater than ever. Militaries are less oriented toward regime overthrow and more preoccupied with retaining some influence within the democratic order. In a convergence with norms that once pertained only to developed countries, militaries of Latin America are more prone to respect political leaders as legitimate principals and accept their own subordinate agent status. However, military shirking persists.

Conceptional crises

• During constitutional crises, the incumbents are vulnerable. They have lost significant amounts of popular support, their legitimacy has been questioned, and they have seemingly lost the ability to negotiate with their foes.

Strategic alternatives for militaries during constitutional crises

• Three strategic alternatives: quartering, repression or rebellion. Of these, quartering is the dominant (or safest) strategy for militaries to choose in such moments because the alternative strategies (rebellion or repression) carry higher risks.

• Based on recent trends in Latin America, our analysis suggests that the dominant strategy for the military should be to sheathe the sword.

Quatering in Argentina

• If by a slim chance De la Rúa had survived, the military reasoned that by staying put, it could avoid internal divisions which had ripped the institution apart in the aftermath of the Dirty War, and avert future reprisals from a judiciary that had pursued human rights charges in the past, and could do so again. The military calculated correctly. No harm would come to them with succeeding administrations.

Repression in Bolivia

• The Bolivian case is one of a military that resorts to repression on orders from the president, with deadly consequences for the opposition and harmful results for the institution itself.

Rebellion in Venezuela

• The Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002 showcases why militaries choose non-dominant strategies such as rebellion, and why these strategies fail. On April 11th, 2002, the Venezuelan military high command refused to obey orders from President Hugo Chávez to implement “Plan Avila,” a long standing military plan to seize control of the capital in the event of insurrection.

Conclusion

• The effects of military shirking are Janus-faced. On the one hand, defiance of presidential orders in the face of massive civilian uprisings can set two dangerous precedents. The first is to weaken the principle of civilian control. The second is to encourage civilian rebels in the belief that they can, through heavy-handed street tactics, undo elected officials at will. Heads of state must know that they can rely on their security forces when needed, while the public must know that their votes count, that those they elect to power can complete their terms of office. Both of these principles have been placed into doubt.

Perhaps a future update of this analysis will include what occurred in Honduras last year. Nonetheless, Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas’s research gives the reader a greater understanding to what alternatives Latin American militaries may pursue to sustain institutional influence and prestige in a constitutional crisis facing a democratic state and its executive.

Here are the command’s salient points on hemispheric challenges:

• Military spending on a per capita basis remains lower in Latin America and the Caribbean than anywhere else in the world. The likelihood of conventional 20th Century military threats also remains low for the foreseeable future.

• Perhaps the single factor contributing most to unrest, insecurity and instability in our region is the pervasive nature of poverty.

• The confluence of money, power and the ability to breach the integrity of national borders makes the illicit trafficking problem a significant security challenge for nations throughout the Americas.

• The blurring of the lines that used to separate terrorists from narcotics traffickers can be seen in groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru. These entities define a category of “narco-terrorists” and they derive a majority of their funding and power from their involvement in the illicit drugs industry.

• A close corollary of the spread of illegal trafficking is the alarming growth of criminal violence in the region. Rising crime, coupled with corruption, exacerbates the conditions of poverty and inequality, hampering development efforts and reducing an already fragile economic growth environment.

• Populism, socialism and democracy are all now prevalent ideas within the region. Money, trade, and other interaction from expanding players like China, Russia and Iran exist in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are also beginning to see a renewed polarization in the region.

• We have also noticed a marked increase in military-to-military and technology-based relations between China, Russia, Iran and the region. China is conducting more military training and educational exchanges, entering into a larger number of technology transfers agreements, and selling sophisticated defensive military items such as air surveillance radars and military aircraft.

• Russia has followed suit, with arms sales and a naval tour of the Caribbean. Russia has publicly stated that improving relations with Latin America is a top priority, focused primarily on Cuba and then Venezuela. They have also increased their outreach to other countries in the region as evidenced by signing a military and scientific bilateral agreement with Peru, offering increased support to Bolivia‟s counter- narcotics operations, and seeking a Free Trade Agreement with Chile.

• Iran, too, is strengthening its ties to the region, focusing primarily on Venezuela, while developing relationships with other nations, as evidenced by opening 11 new embassies with a 12th expected to open in the Caribbean later this year.

Click here to read the full statement (pdf).