Introduction
Thank you very much Chairman for a generous introduction. It is a delight for me to be in Chile again and to be received so well by you personally, the Chilean Army, the CESIM and the sponsors to this seminar. I hope that the IISS, a truly international institute, can increase its work on this region of the world, often ignored by the strategic studies community outside of this hemisphere.
Indeed, it is true that for much of the world over the last century or so, Latin America has appeared as a kind of strategic ghetto: a place in which from time to time dangerous things happened, if primarily for Latin Americans, but a place from which little of strategic significance might emerge that would affect, for better or for worse, the rest of the globe. The assertion and later application of the Monroe doctrine by the US was tacitly respected by others. Europeans and Canadians might quibble with US policy in Cuba, but in general would trade and engage with Latin America as a matter of routine, not as a function of strictly strategic interest. The domestic challenges of many Latin American states limited their capacities and appetite for developing wide international policies of their own.
During the Cold War, even though the region was sometimes pushed to the top of global security priorities by issues like the Cuban Missile and Central American crises of the 1960s and 1980s, it never came to be seen as an area of central strategic importance. Where Africa was a place of varied Cold War competition, Latin America was a US backyard in which some good, some mediocre and quite a bit of bad foreign policy was dumped. The Latin American political and intellectual class generally responded accordingly. Latin American politics were self-absorbed, distant from wider international trends. Dependista theories of international relations described an unhappy relationship with the US. Latin American writing and music were widely appreciated, but ideas on the international political, security and strategic order, if ever generated from Latin America had limited positive influence. More recently, the problems of drug trafficking and human rights issues would, from time to time, excite the outside world, but the international strategic agenda was set by the US and was focused in Europe. The Middle East and Asia have given rise to problems and opportunities, viewed as strategic by the Western powers and these regions have correspondingly received much more consistent attention.
All this is potentially beginning to change. There is more interest in Latin America by China and India, the rising powers of Asia, primarily because of the natural resources to which they are aggressively seeking access, but also because of the interest in generating more diverse international political relationships. For their part, several Latin American countries, among them Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile, have made integration with Asia via APEC and the Latin American Pacific Rim Initiative a foreign policy priority. Meanwhile, the new Obama administration in the US seeks a pragmatic relationship with Latin America, as unburdened by ideological pre-dispositions, on both sides, as is possible. The big power of South America, Brazil, has seized on the concept of a territorial power, enjoys its emerging market status encapsulated in the BRIC acronym, and wants to shape the regional agenda more ambitiously, with an eye to gaining global recognition as a key player. Other countries in the region too, have more openly courted foreign connections, Venezuela in particular, seeing relationships with Russia and Iran as ways of ruffling the feathers of the US hawk, while improving prospects for increasing its military capability. Regional participation in peacekeeping operations, particularly in Haiti, but also further afield in Cyprus and former Yugoslavia, has indicated that Latin American countries can play a role as exporters of security.
The prominence of climate change as an international issue has focused more attention on the Amazon and the regional bio-fuels debates. The economic crisis has given the perspectives of the larger Latin American states more relevance because of their positions within the G20. The regional and international links of rebel groups operating in the Andean region have drawn attention, as has the rumoured fund-raising activities of islamist organisations in the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Counter-narcotics policy in Latin America is still the issue that garners the most international interest and concern, and the region as a whole remains on the fringes of the big international strategic debates. But there is a sense that Latin America is coming of age strategically, paying less deference to the US, but also able to engage with it and others on more equal terms.
Over the next several years, it is clear that there is a both an opportunity and a need for Latin America collectively to cater more effectively for its own security. Recent initiatives, not least on the part of Chile, demonstrate that this is amply recognised.
The opportunity exists in part because there is little appetite in the US to get involved in regional conflict management. The US will be very pre-occupied with the specific relationship with Mexico, especially as concerns have mounted, if recently discounted by US Secretary of State Clinton, that the country risks gaining the unhappy status of a failed state, posing not just an immigration challenge, but also a harsh security dilemma. While security co-operation is likely to remain important with countries such as Colombia, strategically, along with Mexico, Brazil will be the most important regional partner and Obama clearly wishes to establish a relationship with the South American giant that recognises Brazil’s growing role. The US relationship with Cuba has also been declared a key priority for improvement.
Playing arbiter between competing foreign policy or security visions in South America is not a desirable ambition for a US that will be consumed with greater foreign policy priorities and economic distress at home. The US will be at pains not to be embroiled in Latin American debates and political disputes that do not pose a direct strategic challenge to the US. The US under Obama will be inclined to be, in foreign policy terms, a ’third way’ actor in Latin America: respectful of desires for Latin American emancipation from a heavily burdened past with America, but willing to strike strong bilateral relationships where these are sought. The relevance of the US as a determinant of change within Latin America is in secular decline. The populist left may persist in identifying the US as centrally responsible for the region’s failings. But increasingly, many citizens are more likely to blame their own governments and the region’s leaders, rather than the US, if good governance is not delivered. In this emerging context, Washington will be more open to persuasion on how it can effectively conduct itself in Latin America by Latin American leaders able to go to the US with their own ideas for a more constructive relationship.
The need for Latin America to cater for its own security derives simply from the fact that there are genuinely more and increasingly complex threats to it. Democratic decay, prospective state failure, transnational organised crime, terrorism and/or insurgency, the trafficking of illegal narcotics and people, resource competition, environmental degradation and the consequential disruptions to social cohesion all pose serial challenges to Latin American stability and constitute impediments to both political and economic development. All these domestic and non-state problems directly impinge on regional relationships. Military expenditure is increasing while the strategic purpose to which strengthened militaries might be put remains in many cases opaque. The nervousness with which some states in the region observe evidence of strategic ambition or desires for military modernisation in other states, the virulence with which some states in the region comment on the domestic politics of their neighbours, and the regularity with which they intervene corruptly in the electoral affairs of others, saps regional confidence and encourages further belligerent or at least undiplomatic rhetoric.
Economic models of development are championed by some leaders not just because, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as justified for the country’s particular circumstances, but because they can then be used in a wider ideological battle with neighbours with whom other differences are held. The sporadic attempts by one country or another to cool tempers, and the ritual calls for regional or continental solidarity, are only reminders of the delicacy of regional diplomatic relationships that can be so easily stirred and become unsettled. The regional institutional norms that have been developed lack an efficient enforcement mechanism, and in any case merit review in light of the differing challenges to regional security.
Latin America is by no means alone in suffering from some of these ills. In Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, various forms of these problems persist, sometimes, much more severely. Where regional institutions exist in these areas to manage these problems, they do not always, or even often, function effectively.
But where containment of conflict has been effective elsewhere, it has been because efforts in regional political reconciliation have been successful, there is an acceptable level of transparency on military and strategic goals of the key countries, outside powers have played a constructive role with sufficient regional consent, the larger regional powers adopt greater regional responsibility for the enforcement of agreed norms, and institutions exist that can provide legitimacy to conflict resolution measures taken either individually or collectively. Progress along each of these fronts is necessary for Latin America to achieve a higher level of security confidence. In achieving this progress, the region will wish to note the increasing interest of a variety of outside powers in Latin American affairs, and its own need to engage more fully with the outside world, while at the same time acknowledging that the only impetus for improving the regional security outlook can come from initiatives taken by key powers within the region.
External Powers
There is now, a greater variety of external powers taking an interest in Latin America. Indeed, there is a sense in which Latin American states have benefited from Washington’s relative neglect in recent times: diversifying trade, investment and diplomatic relations. Competition for influence in Latin America is more naturally rooted within the region, with the foreign policy projects of Brazil and Venezuela vying for prominence and wider acceptance. But more outside powers have seen reason to channel financial and diplomatic energies towards Latin America.
Last year, Russia made a ‘return to Latin America’ after a near twenty year absence since the end of the Cold War. The Russian president visited Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba and the foreign minister both Colombia and Ecuador, while high-level delegations from Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua also visited Moscow. Russia took part in the APEC summit in Peru and this year hosted a BRIC summit with leaders from Brazil, India and China. The national foreign policy concept signed by President Medvedev identifies Latin America as a priority and more attention is now paid to the region or at least to some of its leaders.
In gestures that had more a symbolic than military importance, Russian strategic bombers landed in Venezuela, Russian warships conducted exercises with the Venezuelan Navy and the Russian Navy traversed the Panama Canal for the first time in 64 years before visiting Cuba and Nicaragua. All this was largely directed to the US, whose political engagement in Russia’s near abroad, especially in Georgia, where the Bush Administration had supported a government despised by Russia, had angered the Russian leadership. Wishing to signal that if the US operated freely in its neighbourhood, Russia could to the same in Washington’s ‘near abroad’ Russia’s diplomacy was aimed at showing that it too could garner friends in distant places. Nicaragua’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was momentarily a victory for Russian diplomacy, though a forlorn one, as no one else followed Managua’s example.
None of this activity appears yet to weigh heavily on Latin American internal strategic relationships. The military balance in the region will be largely unaffected by Russian activity of this kind. However, it would be unfortunate if the tendency for megaphone diplomacy in the region were further magnified by the infusion of Cold War style competitive ideological rhetoric introduced by outside powers.
More practically, Russia has engaged in new energy diplomacy in Latin America. Gazprom has signed agreements with Bolivia to develop its gas reserves and has expressed interest in the construction of a major trans-continental pipeline. Five leading Russian oil companies are establishing a consortium potentially to work in Venezuela. As often in the international politics of oil, it may be that Russia is able to conclude energy arrangements with Venezuela unavailable to companies based in other countries because of the special nature of the political ties it, perhaps temporarily, enjoys. For the moment it would be impossible to conclude that this special Russian engagement with Venezuela, or others it may develop, has a material geo-political impact. However, in this sphere too, it would be excellent to find a mechanism to ensure that investments made by outside powers in the Latin American energy scene did not hamper the development of an effective regional energy market.
The same principles would hold true for the two Asian states, China and India that have also demonstrated substantial interest in investing in Latin America. So far China has focused heavily on Latin American natural resources. This is principally to be seen as part of its international campaign to secure maximum access to needed energy resources to fuel its growth. Increasing trade is also vital, famously encapsulated by Hu Jintao’s expectation, expressed in 2004, of 100 billion dollars worth of bilateral trade with Latin America in the following ten years, a figure actually achieved in 2007. Still, the levels of China’s direct investment remain low, and some countries are concerned that the nature of Chinese government support shown for state industries in friendly countries deprives those countries of serious privatisation options.
China has direct military-to military relations with at least half a dozen countries in Latin America and has co-operated with Brazil on satellite technology. But there is little evidence that China’s military diplomacy is strategically problematic or that serious attempts are being made to transfer arms to illegal buyers. Moreover, the reduction in tension between China and Taiwan has resulted in both announcing a diplomatic freeze, by which each would avoid engaging in further competition for diplomatic recognition internationally, a decision that has helpful implications for Latin America given that it was in the past such an important theatre for the political competition between China and Taiwan.
India, too, is more active in Latin America. In the Caribbean, it takes advantage of ethnic links to build political relationships. In South America, it is fiercely interested too in energy and natural resources exploitation. On balance, a greater amount of Indian investment is led by private companies rather than the state alone. Jindal’s 2.1 billion dollar investment in the Bolivian iron ore industry is the biggest from the private sector in India, while India’s Reliance has been involved in oil concessions both in Peru and Colombia while importing crude from Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador. India’s BRIC status reinforces a natural South-South tendency in its diplomacy. Yet the reluctance of India to sell arms within Asia has inspired it to sell in Latin America. India signed its first defence export agreement with Ecuador in 2008 for the sale of advanced light helicopters and with Russia is marketing its supersonic cruise missile in the region. Like Brazil, India is hopeful of one day gaining a permanent seat at the UNSC and the nature of its diplomacy in Latin America can be also be seen as related to that ambition.
Overall, the broad assessment must be that the diplomatic, economic and military interests of outside powers in Latin America do not pose the sort of geopolitical challenge that could have a major security impact. While natural resources and the economic realities of globalisation have drawn more countries to Latin America, perhaps reducing the relative isolation of Latin America from the rest of the world, it is fanciful to read into this a prospective ‘great game’ for influence and control. The need for the region to defend against an external threat is not there in a way that should seriously affect defence policy or the sizing of armed forces.
However, insofar as outside powers newly interested in Latin America are there for natural resources and given the domestic sensitivities and regional disputes over energy issues, the interest such outside powers show can become problematic elements in domestic policy. Moreover, satisfactory regional co-operation can be stalled by politically charged outside links that are forged by states in the region to balance relations with neighbours rather than for their intrinsic merit.
Tying such external interest into more multilateral formats, could be helpful diplomatically, if the right forums and structures could be found.
Threats Internal to Latin America
So to what kinds of internal threats should attempts to improve regional security be directed? Regional international relations appear frequently to be dominated by the politics, diplomacy, economics and posturing over natural resources, mingled with disputes over governance styles, borders, transnational crime, terrorism and drug issues. Some of these issues require more direct efforts at political reconciliation. Others could be amenable to structured co-operation within an agreed security framework.
Energy differences between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, between Brazil and Bolivia, and between other combinations of states sour regional relations hugely, but despite occasional energy summits, these tensions are not resolved. There is much energy devoted to energy politics but little serious debate about energy integration. It is difficult for countries to collaborate on energy integration because of the problems of contested borders in the region and the existence of ‘ungovernable areas’ where national writs do not run. Yet formulating policies on energy security is important precisely because differences easily assume a strategic dimension.
Historical disputes over borders persist and the anxieties over past territorial losses are still fresh and intense. Any visitor to South America would be forgiven for thinking that the Guerra del Pacifico involving Chile, Peru and Bolivia ended in 1993 not 1883. Too many Latin American states are weak, in many cases with incomplete control over their national territory. That weakness in turn makes these states more vulnerable to transnational threats and their leaders more jealous of the residual sovereignty that they perceive as possessing. Still, there is an obvious requirement for more co-operation on border security. Information needs to be shared on cross-border threats, including those created by insurgents that use weakly governed areas to challenge other governments.
A number of threats that are publicly spoken about are of course more perceived than real, and turn on interpretations of strategic motives that are rooted more in the distant past than in present ambition. That is why more transparency and clarity is needed in the discussion of defence and military policy. Other threats are very real even if they take on a principally rhetorical form, as in the nationalist posturing of autocratic leaders who want to animate in other countries the revolutionary fervour that they have led in their own.
The general risk to Latin American security turns on the reluctance to admit the dramatic differences that exist: to allow the desire for cordial relations between heads of state to trump clear-eyed mediation of ideological and other disputes, and to see the need for a successful summit as more important than the ultimate development of a common strategic culture.
The range of political, economic, and cultural factors that impinge on national and regional security in Latin America is therefore wide, and these can principally be solved by the application of better national governance. Most security problems can be attenuated by good politics. They are not uniquely dependent on military action or defence consultation for their resolution. Nevertheless, good national governance also needs to have a multilateral dimension to be effective in an age of transnational threats. Better strategic dialogue and multilateral co-operation are needed to prevent domestic insecurities from travelling from one country to another. That is why even more care has to be taken to acknowledge overtly the resolutely transnational nature of so many Latin American security dilemmas and to modernise and make more relevant to current threats existing regional security institutions and norms.
Latin American Security Norms and Conflict Management
To this day, regional security co-operation in Latin America is weak. The Organisation of American States (OAS) has made some steps forward in developing through confidence building measures. Central America has organised more co-operation among its armed forces. South America through the establishment of UNASUR and the accompanying South American Defence Council, has now taken its own steps to address continental security. Yet there are huge gaps in the institutional architecture.
In the Andean region, the absence of any kind of systemic approach to the handling of transnational security threats is striking despite past attempts to develop this within the Andean Community (CAN). The Colombian conflict continues to show how difficult it is for the region to develop any kind of shared response to terrorist issues, as neighbouring governments prefer not to assume the costs of effective counter-insurgency or seek to use the conflict in Colombia to their own strategic advantage. Divergent politics and a lack of useful precedents for the cataloguing of illicit organisations in shared 'lists' on which common action can proceed, also complicate this issue. It is in the Andes, where the non-state and interstate security challenges intersect most dangerously. Recent security cooperation between Colombia and both Brazil and Peru indicates that like-minded states may be able to craft acceptable common approaches, but it would be best if they could one day do so within an institutional context.
In the Southern Cone states, the public rhetoric on defence expenditure and policies can be quite disturbing in light of the border disputes, energy security issues, and the historical animosities that colour regional relationships. It is excellent that Brazil and Argentina have put aside their prior interest in nuclear military power; that Argentina and Chile have come to an accommodation over their border and that intense exchanges between most of the southern states keep tensions from spilling over into a major crisis. But it remains the case that border and energy disputes regularly consume the detente that is achieved through careful diplomatic inter-action.
Against this background, what is the place of UNASUR and the South American Defence Council in the growing panoply of regional organisations in Latin America?
The specifically South American situation at present has some analogue to the Asian experience. Rather than draw models from Europe, South America might more fairly wish to compare its security development to the Asian experience of the last 40 years. NATO is an irrelevant model for the South American security establishment. There is no external threat to South America remotely similar to the threat posed to North America and Western Europe by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The European Union may appear a compelling example, but its emergence was possible because of an extraordinary process of political reconciliation that the EU reinforced but did not in itself create. That political reconciliation, crucially between France and Germany, was solidified through membership in NATO and common policies towards the clear external threat both faced. These parallels simply do not exist in South America. Slightly more relevant to the South American experience is the varied Asian experimentation with the apparatus of regional security mechanisms.
In Asia, as in South America, the proliferation of regional organisations and security forums is often an indication itself of insecurity. The Asia-Pacific is replete with overlapping security architectures: ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN plus 3 arrangements, the East Asia Summit all offer numerous opportunities for dialogue and confidence building. Actual dispute settlement is a much more ad hoc affair, and true defence consultations delicate and elusive. (A number of Asian defence ministers have told me that the first time that they ever met each other was at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, an informal institution that the IISS established in 2002, bringing together all the defence ministers of the Asia Pacific and the key outside powers in which Chile has recently participated.) Delicate territorial disputes in the South China Sea cannot easily be mediated through any existing formal regional security institution. No Asian security institution has been able to assist in building confidence across the Taiwan straits, seen by China as a resolutely internal matter. The proliferation dilemmas of North Korea have been handled through the Six Party Talks involving key outside powers; yet the aim to convert this into the base of an East Asian security structure is still an elusive goal.
ASEAN is perhaps the most successful regional organisation after the EU. However, even after 40 years, its members find it difficult to co-operate on defence. The key problem remains the lack of a deep political accommodation between the members. There are still suspicions and even enmities deriving from historical, ethnic and religious factors, not to mention extraordinarily diverse political systems and a paucity of shared values. Efforts at confidence-building through these formal institutional arrangements takes time, and true defence co-operation will only take place when the political accommodation is strong enough to permit it. Conflict resolution has been very difficult through ASEAN, though under the chairmanship of Singapore this year, the group was able to get Thailand and Cambodia to take reasonable approaches towards the resolution of their border dispute.
At present, there is one unique feature of the geo-politics of South America that might permit the creation of more effective regional security architecture in this region. The fact that Brazil, the biggest country in the region and Chile, a smaller Southern cone country, share the goal to build more effective mechanisms for regional co-operation is a potential security asset. Indeed, as Brazil is viewed with less suspicion in its own region than is China in Asia or Russia in Europe, the prospects for congenial great power leadership in South America to advance security co-operation is high. In Asia, a very small country, Singapore, has provided a good deal of the intellectual and diplomatic energy behind the modernisation of ASEAN and its efforts to engage the larger East Asian powers.
The comfortable relationship between Chile and Brazil offers the prospect of a small country of the Southern cone, in tandem with the continent’s largest power, framing more productive security arrangements that could have wider regional acceptance. However uncomfortable such ambitions of leadership appear, they are what the continent needs to accelerate security co-operation and avoid the inevitable tendency to craft good communiqué language that has little practical results.
The Santiago Declaration of March 2009 was a good start to this brand new defence organisation, containing as it did a four part plan of action in the fields of defence policy, military co-operation, defence industry and training. However, the Defence Council needs to go further to recognise the importance of transnational threats to regional security and to acknowledge that meeting these threats requires intra-regional co-operation, that itself will have a cross-border element to it.
Emphasis on external security may be diplomatically convenient, but less strategically relevant than developing better co-operation on continental security dilemmas. What, then, could be some of the steps next taken by the Defence Council of UNASUR to begin building the bases of better regional security co-operation?
Future Work of UNASUR and the South American Defence Council
In general, the Defence Council must pursue a serious and long-term agenda. Member states must not allow that agenda to be hijacked by the sub-regional and often single-issue concerns of the most vocal governments. The overall effort must be to seek convergence among the member states on the nature of the security challenges, and the norms that must govern their management so as to foster a more common strategic culture.
Specifically, and to accomplish these goals, I suggest that the South American Defence Council of UNASUR should address more directly seven important issues.
First, the Defence Council should encourage the more regular publication and updating of Defence White Papers. Chile was the first Latin American country to publish a defence white paper (in 1996) and the importance of this exercise, since followed by a number of other countries, was underscored when the OAS in 2002 drafted guidelines on developing national defence policy and doctrine papers. The South American Defence Council could seek to establish a schedule by which all 12 of its members were to produce Defence White Papers, pressing those who have done so to update them, and those who had not yet done so to produce ones for the first time. These Defence White Papers should then be open for discussion at expert-level meetings of the Defence Council, where concerns could be addressed. Creating more transparency in the discussion of strategic issues should become a primary activity of the
Defence Council.
Second, the Defence Council should consider placing energy security and natural resources questions as part of its standing formal agenda for all meetings. The aim would be to have defence ministers consult on the risks of interruption of supplies or the use of energy as a diplomatic weapon in the relations between states. Energy security should be a subject formally introduced into regional security discussions, and not left to energy ministers alone to address. This may be controversial, but insofar as energy competition and security are such important realities in the southern hemisphere, and create poisonous political disputes, it is the responsibility of those charged with national security to address these questions head-on.
Third, the Defence Council should consider developing norms for how cross-border activities to deal with transnational threats are to be conducted. The Santiago Declaration insisted on territorial sovereignty and the inviolability of frontiers. But, as non-state actors refuse to accept these norms, states have to come to understandings on how to deal with transnational tensions. The Council should openly discuss the manner in which sovereign territory is used by non-state actors to threaten other states, and the potential need for ‘hot pursuit’ of terrorists across state frontiers. International co-operation in poorly governed areas partly occupied by terrorist groups is beginning to take place across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It would be right for defence ministers in South America to consider formally under what circumstances such co-operation could take place in their own region.
Fourth, and linked to this, the South American Defence Council should invite each member state to deposit with UNASUR information on the strengths and activities of non-state actors they consider to be involved in illicit transnational activities such as crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. Obligating member states to put forward their assessments of the non-state actors operating on their territories would in the first instance foster disputes over the alleged strengths and strategic objectives of these groups. But insisting that these be deposited with a multilateral organisation could take some of the sting out of the bilateral tensions that public discussion of these organisations often inspires.
Fifth, the Defence Council could encourage or even require the use of satellite technology and other means through which states might efficiently monitor border areas. Cross-border security arrangements could be agreed and the Defence Council charged with monitoring compliance and forcing consultation in the event of breakdowns of important agreements.
Sixth, the Defence Council could develop a range of potential sanctions that would be applied to make fully enforceable important principles of the Defence Council’s evolving Charter and operating practices. Such collective action would, of course, require stronger co-operation than now exists between member states, but to become respected, the norms of the Defence Council need to be seen to be enforceable.
Seventh, and finally, the Defence Council of UNASUR should work to co-ordinate participation of the member states in extra-regional security arrangements consistent with generally declared political aims, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). States could consider undertaking joint exercises to test their capacities to participate in such international regimes. While each state would naturally wish to reserve the right to join such structures, efforts to agree views on participation in such extra-continental regimes would have the effect of harmonising security perspectives and strategic outlooks. This, in and of itself, would be a useful confidence-building measure within South America.
This seven part agenda on defence transparency, energy security, legal norms of transnational co-operation, information-sharing on non-state actors, border security, the development of enforceable regional sanctions and the harmonisation of security outlooks is hugely ambitious. Real advances along this path will require high levels of political reconciliation among countries with radically differing governing styles. But it is a necessary, if long-term agenda, because it is related to the true security threats to which South America is subject, and because it offers opportunities for South American states to make a stronger collective contribution to international security.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is a complex security agenda in Latin America and specifically in South America. Reliance on the established formulas of diplomatic communication and on outdated legal constructs is insufficient. More ambitious goals need to be set for the region’s defence and security institutions. The process requires leadership, tact and imagination.
Chile is a small country that has traditionally been diffident about adopting a leadership role within the continent, far less beyond it. But it is a successful country and success, as much as power or ambition imposes obligations. There is every reason why Chile should in time make more overt efforts to shape the regional environment in which it finds itself, developing ideas for more advanced regional security co-operation, enlisting the support of the region’s larger powers, especially Brazil, and inviting constructive engagement in South American security from a wide array of outside powers.
Ideas are an important element of power. The continent now needs sensible but bold ideas for deepening regional confidence building, doing away with the paranoia of the past, and working towards pragmatic resolution of disputes. I suggest that Chile’s leaders should encourage a national public debate on how Chile might take on a larger regional role to encourage the creation of a genuine 21st Century security dialogue in South America, in time to include all of Latin America.
This seminar is part of that debate.
The IISS as the leading organisation focused on international security, defence and strategy from an international perspective, would be delighted in time to support elements of this process in co-operation with regional states. Our experience in organising the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain and the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, through which we provide each region with an informal institution for the conduct of defence diplomacy suggests to us that informal institutions can sometimes spur needed advances in formal regional institutions. We would be happy to play that role in this region. Perhaps Chile could one day be our host for such an enterprise here in Santiago. The opportunity to contribute to the advancement of defence and security consultations in Latin America is one the IISS would relish. We congratulate the Chilean Army, the CESIM and the sponsors on the initiative of this seminar. I personally look forward greatly to learning from the distinguished participants that have been gathered here.
Thank You.
