Security in Latin America

“Rethinking Regional Security in Latin America: Back to the Future”

Alejandro Bendaña
Centro de Estudios Internacionales
Managua, Nicaragua

One spoke of “new” security challenges in the context of the post Cold War period. Characteristic of that period were innovative approaches where western development agencies and “new” democracies challenged the old security paradigm by stressing new concepts such as human security in which development and governance constituted key entry points. The emphasis was on extending the notion of democratic governance into the security sector, injecting notions of transparency, accountability, legal oversight with the increasing participation of legislatures and civil society in all aspects of the security sector particularly its policy-making.

The attack on the twin towers and the US-led “global war on terror”, embraced by its chief allies, dealt a critical blow to the “new” security sector thinking and practice closing one era and opening up another. The global security paradigm increasingly enveloped national state-centric ones, in various regions in varying degrees, as indeed the notion of national democratic governance became increasingly sacrificed on the altar of the “new” global security demands. Demands defined chiefly by the US not only for itself but for others inasmuch as US security now was said to begin at other peoples’ borders and not simply its own. Antiterrorism-driven security policies have undermined security sector governance approaches, if not democratic governance itself as the traditional pendulum between security and democratic liberties swung decidedly in the direction of security.

National security is not the sole product of national considerations. And not simply because of the proverbial “threats” of transnational crime and the like but because of power relations. In a world where some are decidedly stronger and others more dependent, where ruling governing elites North and South have a way of homogenizing outlooks and interests, Washington’s decision to go to war enlisted governments and security establishments the world over, sometimes by conviction and other times by threats. While not denying that terrorism is and always has posed a threat to modern societies, there were misgivings in the post 9/11 world as to the adoption of universal measures in response to another nation’s perceptions and definitions of terrorists—yet such was the unilateral premise as Washington and NATO demanded integrated operations with armed forces and multinational cooperation among security apparatus.

Of course, police, border control and intelligence agencies have always cooperated across national lines to confront international organized crime and the like, but security sector governance was all about insuring that such activities did not come at the cost of civil liberties, nor removing the emphasis on development and democratic control of the armed forces and of their budgets and influence in society. In many senses, traditional security concerns as well as the pre 9/11 oversight trends were being sacrificed as a greater focus was placed—and was demanded—on tackling “terrorism” linking such cooperation to development assistance as a carrot or to sanctions as the stick. “Efficiency” and “professionalism” and indeed “security sector reform” are taking on new meanings in response to the shifting political and global context, as the spaces for “national policy ownership” including civil society participation once again seem to contract.


Latin America and the Caribbean: No End of History

Nowhere more than in Latin America does the “war on terror” bring back gruesome memories of the “war on communism”. This spells more continuity than change in inter-hemispheric relations when as far back as the Monroe Doctrine (1823) Latin American and the Caribbean was told they belonged to the US sphere of influence, particularly in security matters. Neocolonialism is another word that comes to mind. Nearly 200 years later, it would not be outrageous to argue that security and insecurity in Latin American and the Caribbean is, once again, intimately tied up with how the US defines its own security. “Regional” security and regional security threats are now largely defined by what the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. This is at the heart of many “regional” security schemes, including the reshaping of the security services in various Latin American countries, including those that are attempting to escape from the Northern embrace (and become an alleged security threat to others hemispheric countries in the process).

Political analysts and “security” experts, particularly from the Southern Cone, uniformly bristle at the suggestion that US concerns—and reactions to US concerns—are much different in Southern South America than, for example, than in the more Northern Latin American latitudes, including the Andean region. Somehow the security establishments of the southern region (Paraguay excluded!) are said to be more reformed and permeable to democratic governance. This assumes that US policy is disaggregated ideologically or subsumed to geography, which is not the case, or that there are no specific territorial areas where counter-terrorism and US military operations are underway. For example the US has targeted the broader Amazon region, the “ungoverned” spaces in Colombia, the Triple Frontier area between Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, as key strategic zones susceptible to “terrorist” influence and control, pushing local militaries to extend their operations and lend facilities to the US military. One adds US mistrust of the governments in Venezuela and Bolivia which merits, in Washington’s opinion, a “regional” responses, as do developments in Paraguay on account of its geopolitical importance in heart of the continent. Military exercises combining US troops which were down to 9 in 2001 had doubled by 2004.

While the USG may have more influence in some countries more than others in the region, none can escape the linkage made between security and economic policy—discussed forthwith—and the increasing resort to hard security responses to social discontent, hardly a measure of superior levels of democratic governance.
By and large, security assessments or risk planning among Latin American militaries pays only lip service to “force on force” scenarios—with the possible recent exception of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, where US decidedly supportive of Colombia and where the internal war in Colombia could, according to some, become internationalized. There is talk of the “Israelization” of Colombia interpreted as the use of proxy armies to destabilize third countries, or the “Colombianization” of Chiapas referring to the increased use of paramilitaries by the those in power. As paramilitaries become involved in cross border operations from bases in Colombia, the internal Colombian conflict can acquire sub-regional dimensions particularly as numerous human rights organizations have documented the ties between paramilitaries and the Colombian government and members of the government.

New anti-terrorists laws are being approved allowing new and sometime dangerously vague definitions of who or what may be considered “terrorist”. When this is coupled with social protests over unemployment, food and transport prices, the basis is laid for new waves of violent conflict. Many recall with pain the invocation of “communist threat” and the campaigns to defend “democracies” led to the creation of undemocratic national security states. Ironically, the movement for security sector transformation had its roots in the democratic struggle against the murderous militarism of the Cold War era. However, to gauge by the meetings of security and army chiefs, Washington is steadily pushing for the creation of what it calls “new architecture of hemispheric security” to “integrate” the region’s security forces more tightly into the US military’s command structure and global policy. Washington pressed Latin American armies to do more domestic policing and establish control over what it called “ungoverned spaces,” ranging from shantytowns to coastlines to rural areas where the civil state has a limited role. Haven’t we been here before?

Under the new US national security guidelines, the lines between police and military, on one side, and among guerillas, drug traffickers, and criminal gangs on the other are all dangerously and sometimes intentionally blurred. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned the 2004 meeting of the Defense Ministers of the Americas, to be aware of the “anti-social combination that increasingly seeks to destabilize civil societies.” James Hill, the head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command was more explicit: “Legal boundaries don’t make sense anymore given the current threat.”

To ignore the global counter-terrorism context is to apologize for it—and dealing with Security Sector Reform can be a double edged weapon if it is molded by the US counter-terrorist agenda. Reform or transformation may take place in the wrong direction—away from a genuine human security perspective and the rule of law, including the rollback of the right to dissent.


Remilitarization of the State?

State militarization has reached unprecedented levels in Mexico as the Armed Forces are called in against the state itself, that is, sectors of the government (such as the police) earlier perceived by the US to be under the control of the drug cartels. Today the US is providing massive support to President Calderon’s counter-narcotics initiative, but the program is being criticized on both sides of the border for its secrecy and faulty evidence. In December of 2007 Washington announced a three year 1.4 billion USD aid package for Mexico. Known as the Mérida Initiative, the plan encompasses “counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and border security” with real time intelligence integration capacities.

A group of Washington-based critics complained that “Congress is being asked to approve a major shift in foreign policy without really knowing what kinds of military training and equipment for the Mexican and Central American militaries might accompany the package in the defense bills”. For its part, Human Rights Watch urged the US Congress not to approve the plan unless there were specific provisions to end abuses by Mexican military forces who are leading the drug war. Army counternarcotics operations are responsible for a series of human rights abuses, including the beating of municipal policemen and the sexual abuse of women. According to Human Rights Watch, the ability to investigate abuses and bring the accused to justice are undermined by the fear of retaliation.

As in Colombia, security cooperation with the United States seems to go hand in hand with the insecurity of many people. And in both countries, the drug war has been turned over, with dubious legality, to the military. The stated objective: to standardize “strategic plans and practices”, and while some intelligence-sharing is necessary, there is an undermining of the emergence of legitimate national security agendas broadly defined in conjunction with civil society and in a sovereign manner.

While Mexican officials insist they will not allow US troops to operate on Mexican soil, this would not exclude in principle the appearance of private contractors. If the plan can indeed reduce the corruption in Mexican law enforcement, enhance its professionalism, end the drug cartel wars (Mexico’s top law enforcement officer was gunned down in May, 2008), reduce the number of deaths along the Mexican border where there in 2006 alone, according to the Economist, there were 2,100 drug related deaths perpetrated by Mexican gangs, then a less skeptical note may be warranted in the future.

The Mérida Initiative has also been dubbed Plan Mexico on account of its similarity to Plan Colombia. Initiated in 2000, Plan Colombia encompasses a seven year programme to combat both drugs and the guerilla movements in that country, without bothering to make much distinction between the two. US military advisors are present in considerable numbers in Colombia which features the largest US Embassy in the world, after Iraq. Aid to Colombia reached some 756 million in 2007 with US and Colombian officials claiming huge successes (alleged drop of the price of cocaine in US markets), as the US Drug Enforcement Agencies steps up its presence in the region. And as in Colombia, the US is working with Mexico to build a central command to coordinate the work of the various agencies involved in the “war on drugs”.

Security in the region would be better served if more attention were placed on the supply side of arms and the demand side of drugs. Critics say that what is really required is the reduction in demand in the United States where some 35 million people abuse illegal drugs. As the Economist noted, “Many Mexicans will no doubt think that it is about time that their rich neighbor helped to clean up the mess caused by a drug habit that prohibition has failed to eliminate. The American Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Centre estimates that each year between $8 billion and $23 billion in illegal drug proceeds flow south, much of it to the gangs in Mexico.”
Others point to the need for more action to stop US and foreign arms dealers from supplying the drug cartels. One study estimated that around 2,000 guns enter Mexico daily from the US, where gun registration is easily evaded. The argument is simple: No weapons, no violence. Even the Mexican government has protested uncontrolled illegal arms shipments coming over its borders from the US.

Markets and SecurityWhile trade and security have always been linked in the history of expansionist powers, the US reaction to 9/11 gave a huge boost to that connection. The National Security Strategy document of 2002 dedicates an entire section positing a new relationship between “free markets” and US national security. A causal chain is assumed between the capitalist free trade model, economic development and national security. For example, the recent trilateral (US-Canada-Mexico) Security Prosperity and Protection, according to one analysis, “makes the relationship between the US trade and security agendas explicit, under the pretext of greater integration. Its accords mandate border action, military and police training, modernization of equipment, and adoption of new technologies, all under the logic o the US counter-terrorism campaign”.

Parallel to the myth that free market development produces security for all, recent crackdowns seem to prove the failure the same model to improve conditions for workers and poor that take their grievances to the streets (or to the United States in the form of immigration). As it also helps explain the booming private security business to protect wealthy elites in their fortresses. In the generalized climate of fear and social protest, it does not take much for organizations opposed to the status quo to be branded as “terrorists” no matter how absurd it may seem.
Similarly, in the wake of the consolidation of power of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, assisted by the US-backed failed coup attempt in 2002, the US is pushing new trade and security agreements so as to retain both business and geopolitical influence in the region. As Chávez promotes new forms of economic and energy security for Latin America, the US government’s views new trade agreements as critical to balance Venezuelan advocacy of a new regional security model for the region. According to the 2007 US State Department report on hemispheric relations, “In 2008, we will continue our efforts to secure congressional approval of pending trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. Once implemented, these three agreements [counting those approved with Mexico, Central America and Peru] will complete an unbroken chain of trading partners stretching from Canada to Chile”. (2009 however may be another story as the leading Democratic Party candidates have both come out in favor of renegotiating NAFTA and opposing FTAs with Panama and Colombia.) As Laura Carlsen concludes, “The use of the territorial image again demonstrates the geopolitical importance attached to FTAs within a hemisphere increasingly divided between perceived allies and renegades.”

Security and economic doctrines as well as the tools to implement them are being “harmonized” throughout the Americas, including Canada, particularly since the attack on the Twin Towers. The US, Canada and Mexico—the North American Free Trade Agreement members-- now have the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership, also termed NAFTA on steroids on account of its militarization implications. This “deep integration” project is developing without public debate although it reaches into every aspect of every day life for the whole of the populations, permitting the US security apparatus to “integrate” approaches and “coordinate security with its neighbors and allies.”

As NAFTA constitutes the most advance experience of US-led free trade model, its expansion into the terrain of security – the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)--constitutes a warning that the “free-trade” model being pushed globally is not simply a commercial proposition. The coherence however is only on the US security side as revealed by the contradiction between the freedom being given for merchandise exchange on the one hand, and the criminalization of immigrants and the building of border walls. In fact, however, the United States is “pushing its borders out” in an ever-expanding security perimeter, with US security agencies interweaving with those of Mexico, Canada and Central American
Nor is “economic cooperation” divorced from “security” considerations. Free market economic policies generate indirect violence—producing unemployment and marginalization, forcing people to emigrate. Borders are increasingly militarized and the persecution of migrants extends to the Mexican authorities charged with stopping Central and South Americans presumably on their way illegally to the US. Economic necessity driving undocumented immigration is falsely conflated with US security.

And conversely for Latin America where Free Trade Agreements occasion security concerns: in Peru and Guatemala crackdowns and killing of protesters were characterized local governmental reactions to protests over the impending treaties. US-supported trade and investment model entails security considerations across-the board, from sovereign implications to the question of how to deal with protests generated by the treaties. Many farmers feel trade questions are matters of life and death. Trade Agreements with the US provoked reactions that unseated cabinet members and even governments, as center left candidates came won elections and came into office in Ecuador and Bolivia (and almost in Mexico in 2006).
The trade-security equation, or what Carlsen terms the geopolitics of trade policy, came to the fore as the Bush Administration endorsed the March 1st Colombian excursion into Ecuador. The White House immediately demanded that its legislature approve a pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia terming it “pivotal to America’s national security”. By the same token, Congressional opposition prevailed citing assassinations of labor leaders in Colombia, government ties to paramilitaries, and human rights violations.

Persecuting Protesters

In her recent book, “The Shock Treatment: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, Naomi Klein argues that Northern economic and military policies impose a ‘shock doctrine’ upon people in the Third World. Latin American, and Chile in particular, witnessed its birth when 1973 the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet overthrew, with US government and corporate complicity, a democratically-elect government and proceeded to unleash brutal repression—including detention, disappearances, torture and murder—against its critics.

Debates on security sector reform in our region should not be naïve and ignore history. Indeed the extent of democratic security sector reform should be measured by who a regime deals with dissidents and whether it criminalizes them. Under the guise of the war on terror, in many parts of Latin America (including some deemed ‘left’), labour and social activists, militant priests and community leaders are under governmental attack for attempting voice and organize the discontent towards the government and the prevailing economic policies.
Actors seem to change but the methods do not: military regimes that persecuted “communists” give way to civilian-led governments tolerant of military, security and paramilitary forces waging counter-insurgency once again. And not simply security establishments, but much of the elite media and economic oligopolies have interpreted the “war on terror” as a license to get-tough policies.
For example:
• On August 29, 2008 demonstrators in Chile who tried to pass a police blockade in downtown Santiago met with unspeakable police violence where dozens were beaten, including a Senator. According to some observers, the Chilean government reaction could have the potential to unravel democratic gains in that country

• In El Salvador, in September last year, the military clashed with civilians in Suchitoto as 13 protestors were arrested for blocking the road in protest against the government’s plan to privatize water services in that community. Police alleged that the hundreds of local residents and social activists engaged in “acts of terrorism,” in violation of the Law Against Terrorism. Many of those arrested served nearly 3 months in jail before their case was thrown out by Salvadoran courts who found no evidence to support the charges. As in other countries, the special anti-terrorist legislation fails to provide an exact definition of terror allowing the government to freely label and punish even minor crimes as terrorist ones. Washington, of course, is pleased with the toughness of the provisions which includes 25 to 30 years of possible imprisonment .anyone participating in “taking or occupying, in whole or in part” a city, town, public or private building, or a variety of other locations. The law would be activated when weapons or “similar articles” are used to “affect the development of the functions or activities” of its inhabitants.

• In Paraguay, with the development of the soybean industry in Paraguay, hundreds, if not thousands of rural poor are being forced from their land, resulting in a growing number of movements of protests. The new social activists are targeted under a new penal code and Anti-terrorist Law Juan Martens, a lawyer with the National Coordinator of Human Rights in Paraguay said, “The law is so lax that anyone could be considered a terrorist….A lawyer giving a workshop, a journalist doing an investigation or an international NGO providing financial support could all be accused of promoting terrorism.” The election of Fernando Lugo, a former priest, in April, 2008 may put an end to such practices.

In the light of multiplying episodes of repression, the question posed is whether how much the United States Government is involved. Are we witnessing the re-starting Latin America’s Dirty Wars in the light of a new wave of US-supported militarism? During the 1970s and 1980s, various South American military regimes collaborated with each other and the US employing kidnapping, torture and murder to eliminate dissent and opposition.

Right wing militarism in Latin America has always reached out to the United States, be it by way of counter-insurgent training or, more recently, the participation in joint exercises with the US. As US troops conduct various operations and joint training, critics in Paraguay and Nicaragua, for example, claim that so called “Medical Readiness Training Exercises” include “observation” operations aimed at developing a “type of map that identities not just the natural resources in the area, but also the social organizations and leaders of different communities.”


Social Cleansing

Parallel to the political persecution of protesters, a new form social warfare is being waged against youth. Failure to produce jobs and social support systems has meant an increase in delinquency and the targeting of youth, with the media and powerful business groups giving the security forces a green light to react with an “iron fist” or “mano dura” and “super mano dura”, particularly in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Sadly, polls indicate that broad sectors of the population support brutal suppression, along with political candidates for office campaigning on such platforms.

Youth gangs clash with each other and with the security forces with stepped up levels of violence which, no doubt, are also the product of repressive policies. Thousands of youth become victims or aggressors while “zero tolerance” policies leading to more human rights violations and even greater levels of citizen insecurity. By all accounts, the streets of Guatemala City or San Salvador were much safer during the 1980s war than they are today. Much of the social cleansing is carried out by paramilitary bodies, linked to the police and armies, who carry out operations forcing gangs to go underground lest they are “disappeared” in unaccountable urban counter-insurgency raids. Repressive military structures which pitted armies against insurgents during the war are now substituted by police and para-police bodies confronting gangs. Police are out of control in Brazil as they wage virtual wars with gangs in the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo.
Human rights bodies in many countries of the region insist that what is needed is true police service and not social cleansing units. Would security sector reform not have to begin with recognition of the fact that corruption, drug trafficking and delinquency are frequently protected and even practiced by the very security bodies to reformed and sometimes enlisted in the war on terror? Youth requires interlocutors, channels of communication with the civic and police authorities, and particularly clear differentiation between youth groups and criminal gangs. Policies of prevention and different police models have worked in Nicaragua where similar levels of poverty and exclusion have not resulted in a gang phenomenon evident in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Of course, the fact that the security forces did not suffer radical reconversion during the post-war period stands out as a causal factor in comparison with the Nicaraguan forces that were born with the 1979 revolution. As elsewhere, European ‘donors’ have invested considerably in SSR in Central America, as elsewhere, but their own NATO ties seem to preclude criticism of the intrusion of US counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operational modalities.

With the Global War on Terror came the doctrine of pre-emptive war and unilateral military action against perceived terrorism anywhere. Until March, 2008 Latin America had not suffered the implications of the doctrine. However, justifications provided by the Colombian government for its illicit March 1st military incursion into Ecuador mirror those provided by the US to “rationalize” the illegalities of anti-terrorist operations. As the Ecuadorean government and others pointed out, the new “national security” rationale poses a threat to stability and democratic self-determination in the region, setting a grave precedent loudly denounced by most Latin American and Caribbean governments.

Similarly, opposition Congressmen in Mexico protested the dutiful passing of a new counter-terrorism law warning that the failure to differentiate between something called “international terrorism” from the recognized crime of terrorism: “We don’t want to be immersed in a cycle where the enemies of other nations are automatically put forth as our own enemies.”

Anti-terrorism laws are approved criminalizing social protest and establishing decades of prison for participating in “terrorist” activities. Para-military movements are formed, connected to large agribusiness and landowners, taking the law into their own hands and repressing the local population. In Paraguayan paramilitary groups are calculated at some 9,000 as compared to the 13,000 members of the military. In Colombia, the banana company Chiquita Brands was penalized in US courts for making equal payments to the paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Force of Colombia, designated by the USG as a terrorist organization. In Mexico, paramilitaries are supplied and organized by the government and local elites to create confrontation among the indigenous communities, creating displacement and with it the grabbing of land and resources.

US intelligence agencies have stepped up operations in Central America and Bolivia, while the Pentagon reactivated its IVth Fleet (in mothballs since the 1960s) to secure its naval presence in hemispheric waters and support military exercises . Pentagon reassertion in the region and elsewhere of restructured geographic commands to give the US military greater role in coordinating US civilian agencies’ activities. The US Southern Command, for example, issued a new “Command Strategy 2016” envisioning a role for itself in coordinating other US agencies, including non-military ones, operating in the region. Setting key civilian accountability principles aside, the Southern Command has assumed, according to US critics, “that it can make dramatic changes in its mission, structure and focus without any change in legislative authority” allowing the military, instead of the State Department, to decide on military training and equipping of foreign armed forces, and with circumvented legislative oversight.

Security sector reform and the definition of what constitutes a “threat” is not, therefore, an exclusively nationally-generated proposition. Policy is discussed with an elephant in the room. Latin Americas perceive the choice to train and equip foreign militaries as a US endorsement of those security establishments—which in turn undermines ongoing security reform initiatives. Conversely, in countries were the militaries are not particularly US-friendly, US support for “reform” becomes politically tainted and indicative of selectiveness. Furthermore, US association with a particular military (as in the case of Colombian) affects the security concerns and balance of power in the entire region, and within the country, particularly where that same military is engaged in human rights violations.
US influence over the region’s security establishments can scarcely be over-stated: between 1999 and 2006 the US Defense Department funded 77,313 military and police personnel from the Western Hemisphere (65 percent of the 119,837 total international trainees) along with the provision of some 2 billion USD in military and police aid to the region (30 percent of the 6.4 global total during those years). A new Counter-Terror Fellowship Program (with provision for lethal training as of 2004) provided training for 3,262 students from Latin America and the Caribbean between 2003 and 2006. As regards police training, after more than three decades of it being banned due to human rights violations committed by US trained forces, the State Department is now authorized to make exceptions and has approved transferring that authority to the Pentagon.

A South American Defense Council?

Within hours of the outbreak of the Colombia-Ecuador skirmish, President Lula of Brazil reactivated its bid to create a South American Defense Council. Years earlier Venezuela floated such an idea and in January Chávez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega proposed a joint military force with Bolivia, Cuba, and Dominica, which are all members of the regional cooperation scheme called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Unsurprisingly, the security perceptions of Venezuela and its allies, centered as they correctly are on US historical behavior, were clearly different from those of the Brazilian government and the Chavez bid was shelved.

But in its own way, the Brazilian initiative also addressed the objective problem of how to diminish Washington’s influence over the definition –and response to--“regional” security concerns, where several countries in the region felt that the US was the real threat. Washington however could not publicly reject the Brazilian initiative—given the strategic alliance between the two countries on the bio-fuels/ethanol initiaves. "I not only have no problem with it, I trust Brazil's leadership and look forward to coordination with it," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim asked the U.S. to keep its distance from a South American Defense Council and for the US to ``watch from the outside and keep its distance.'' Following a meeting with Venezuelan President on April 15, Jobim restated “we have no obligation to ask for a license from the United States to do this," and emphasized that the council could help South America “acquire a very strong presence in the concert of world relations." Jobim clarified that distinct from NATO, “the intention of the council is not to form a classical military alliance,” specifying that “there is no operational intention,” and “there is no expansionist pretension.” The defense council would promote joint military trainings and defense bases, and “military industrial integration” in order to “ensure the supply of the necessary elements for defense,” the minister clarified. “Dissuasive defense” would be the aim, he continued, adding that it is important for countries to acquire arms and maintain their militaries “in order to have and to project a capacity for dissuasion.” This in no way constitutes an arms buildup, Jobim insisted. He said those who have made public statements suggesting that a Latin American arms race is taking place, such as the U.S. government, “are mistaken” and “want to impede South American unity.” The formation of the CDS would be the headstone of a region-wide military alliance that, according to Jobim, would not be the classical military alliance as it would not involve operational units.
On a more lofty note, President Lula stressed that the Council was “founded on common values and principles such as respect for sovereignty, self-determination, territorial integrity of states, and non-intervention in internal affairs.” Its objective was to “deepen our South American identity in the area of defense,” Lula said, assuring that “our armed forces are committed to the construction of peace.” Given, however, the present behavior of Brazilian and UN troops in Haiti, the creation of yet another force for international interventions is no step forward. A South American Defence Council seeks to increase the Brazil’s international weight, its bid for a permanent seat at the UNSC, building a South American security system at the expense of the post World War II “Interamerican” system.
In any case, President Chávez swallowed his pride and signaled support for the Council in recognition perhaps of Brazil’s commanding military strength in the region. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela - agreed to establish a task force to present a revised proposal within three months, tracing out the role, mission and mandate and workings of the Council. Brazil said it was determined to launch the formal initiative by the end of 2008.
Backed by the United States, the Colombian Government said it would not participate in the creation of the new regional defense council. Bogotá claimed the war against “terrorists” FARC would not be subordinated to quaint legal obligations of any government to respect another’s country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. According to a government spokesperson, Colombia “cannot become part of the [council], given the threats of terrorism and known derivations”. In opposition to the Brazilian proposal, President Uribe argued that the organization already had the OAS (Organization of American States), and pointing to differences with neighboring states—among them Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela—on the classification of illegal armed groups like the FARC as “terrorists.”

There were rumblings in Washington about the new Council as it constituted a historic step: Latin America’s first military alliance without the United States. Over and above the US alliance with Colombia, the greater geopolitical reality was that US participation in the new Defense Council would undercut the carefully consulted Brazilian bid for leadership of a regional security model that excluded the US but was not anti-US. Obviously, a Venezuelan-led alternative would have contesting US influence as a key driving force. Brazilian military circles for their part believed that the alliance notion is a means of placing a check on Chavez, reign in his military spending and growing economic and military ties with countries such as Russia, China and Iran, among others. Chavez for his part could not easily pull out of the alliance without becoming isolated, a key US policy objective in Latin America.
In any case, the Council may be better placed than the OAS to deal with the growing regional implications of the internal conflict in Colombia. This is not simply a matter of possible FARC operations outside Colombian territory, but similar movements by the Colombian paramilitaries. No serious analyst precludes the possibility incidents in an area with Venezuelan and Colombian troop presence on a shared border known to be, in large swathes, FARC-controlled territory. In a dense forest, where a gunshot could come from any one of the four groups, causing an immediate reaction. Add President Chavez’s strident foreign policy and military acquisitions from non-Western manufacturers in order to upgrade the rather chaotic status of his armed forces, or President Correa’s determination to respond firmly to Colombia, and the makings are there for a major crisis. Chavez has stated he would prevent the United States from setting up a military base near Venezuela's border “whatever the cost”. He has also warned that US support for demands for separatist demands in eastern Bolivia could lead Venezuela to intervene in support of the government there.




It is an open secret that the Defense Council formed part and parcel of the Brazilian bid to attain a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council. Jobin stated that the South American Council could coordinate military exercise but also promote a “collective” participation in UN peacekeeping missions. Already Brazil headed the UN military mission in Haiti preferring to project the operation as a Latin American more than a US-led undertaking. The question in the air is whether the new scheme can accommodate the security perceptions of Venezuela and Brazil (and the United States)—all state centric. In social movements discussions, however, the perception is that what the regions does not need is yet another regional military force to carry out Haiti-like anti-popular “stabilization” operations.
Securitization of Democracy
There are those that continue to argue that insecurity in the form of crime relates more to effectiveness of public security policies and legitimacy than to the structural characteristics. While much remains to be done to enhance the quality, legitimacy and effectiveness of public security policies—the framework for such efforts cannot be the War on Terror but rather a war on poverty and inequality, much of it internationally generated. Crime control and crime prevention strategies alone may reach geopolitical and elite-defined objectives even at the expense of hard-won struggles for the enhancement of political and economic rights by way of sovereign democratic policies. Given the weakness of democratic institutions in diverse countries in the region, security sector reform strategies that require the fighting the war on terrorism will simply increase the risk of police and privatized security forces abuses, undermining the pretence of legitimacy among citizenries deeply distrustful of the military and police, but also the criminal justice system. Crime prevention and community-generated efforts will only take as so far—what is required is the democratization of the economies and of institutions as a whole, and not simply law enforcement agencies.
Clearly, economic and social development is a long term proposition, but citizens suffering from insecurity lose patience with the long term. The danger is that afflicted societies will support aggressive, zero tolerance crime control policies, with little understanding of the enormous political and economic cost entailed by the expansion of the power and resources allocated to the police and the military.
One can and should conceive alternative economic policy instruments that enhance security by decreasing the social economic divide. Democratic movements are being built on that premise and thanks to them governments are appearing that may deal more effectively and democratically with both traditional and non-traditional security threatening the daily lives of people. One hopes that domestic efforts in this direction would find support in European governmental agencies, but that presupposes standing up to Washington by insisting that democracy is the first precondition of democratic security sector transformation—and that there can be no democratic transformation (or holistic security) outside of international law and the principle of self-determination. A counter-terrorism policy that redefines security sector reform at the expense of human rights and political reform is not the way to support adherence to justice and law. Preaching democratic governance to national governments and tolerating impunity on the global level is as ineffective as it is hypocritical and even dangerous.