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Security in Latin America

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Security in Latin America hurrell 8/6/98 4:18 pm Page 529 Security in Latin America ANDREW HURRELL This article provides an overview of recent trends in Latin American security but also seeks to probe and unsettle three of the common assumptions that underpin both academic analysis and recent policy debates. The first assumption is that the support and promotion of political democracy is not only a valued end in itself, but also one that will contribute towards regional stability and security. This view draws on the liberal academic claim that democracies do not fight each other and on the commonsense view that the military governments of the s with their harsh national security doctrines and their rhetoric of geopolitical struggle and conflict were self-evidently problematic for regional security. In reality, democratic peace theory encounters many difficulties when applied to the region. It provides a very partial and often misleading guide to understanding the history of interstate conflict and cooperation in Latin America and therefore an incomplete foundation on which to ground future policy. The second assumption, which also reflects a deep-rooted strand of liberal thinking on international relations, is that economic liberalization and regional integration feed naturally and positively into the creation of a stable and secure regional order. In contrast to the strong claims of democratic peace theory, the links between economic interdependence and peace have always been more elusive and difficult either to demonstrate or to refute with any precision.The argument here is that, while there are certainly cases, most notably within Mercosur and the Southern Cone, where economic integration appears to have reinforced rapprochement between erstwhile rivals and assisted the creation of a more stable regional environment, at the same time successful economic regionalization can also be a significant potential problem for regional order and a source of negative security externalities which, if unmanaged, are likely to become more serious. Democratic peace theory has become central, not just to debates in international relations theory but also to regional security analysis.Take, for example, Gerald Segal’s claim:‘By far the most important factor for inter- national security seems to be the emergence of pluralist (democratic) political systems’, in ‘How insecure is Pacific Asia?’, International Affairs : , ,p.. For a good overview of the debate see Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller, eds, Debating the democratic peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ). International Affairs , () – hurrell 8/6/98 4:18 pm Page 530 Andrew Hurrell The third assumption is that the agenda of regional security should be broadened to include issues such as drug trafficking, drug-related violence and criminality, migration and refugees, environmental degradation, and worsening public order in the face of different forms of internal violence. It is certainly the case that the most serious security problems and threats to regional order are domestic and transnational in nature. And yet the increasingly pervasive rhetoric of the new security agenda disguises or even obscures many complex and contested issues. Divergent understandings of the meaning, nature and implications of the new security agenda have important policy implications and are likely to impede effective regional responses. Since the end of the Cold War regional order and security have increasingly come to be defined in terms of the collective defence of democracy and the promotion of liberal economic reform and regional integration. These processes will, it is hoped, provide the foundations for the creation of a stronger sense of regional community and the establishment of a set of political structures within which specific security threats, both traditional (e.g. old-style border conflicts) and non-traditional (e.g. the privatization of violence, drugs, migration) can be tackled. I do not argue here that this liberal orthodoxy is wholly wrong. But I do suggest that it needs to be subjected to a much more critical analysis than has been common hitherto. This article concentrates on the nature of the regional security order in Latin America. Delimiting this region as a security entity is difficult and cannot be done by definitional fiat. On the one hand, recent writing has increasingly stressed the greater social and economic heterogeneity of Latin America today and the widening degree of differentiation in the kinds of security challenges facing governments. Thus it is obviously the case that problems of widespread social violence, drug-related criminality and insurgent challenges are more pressing and serious in the Andean region than in the Southern Cone. Even within large countries there is immense variation in the capacity of state structures to cope with new security challenges. On the other hand, as I will argue below, one of the results of regionalization and of economic integration is to make neighbours more vulnerable to instability across their borders and to increased levels of political interdependence. Some would like to resolve this issue by appealing to an objective or quasi- objective definition. Security complex theory argues that a regionally based security complex can be defined as a ‘group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from one another’. The hard side of strategic For a survey of such arguments see Mark Peceny,‘The Inter-American System as a liberal “Pacific Union”’, Latin American Research Review (LARR) : , . See e.g.Augusto Varas,‘From coercion to partnership: a new paradigm for security cooperation in the Western hemisphere?’, in Jonathan Hartlyn, Lars Schoultz and Augusto Varas eds, The United States and Latin America in the s: beyond the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, ). Barry Buzan, People, states and fear, nd edn (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, ), p. hurrell 8/6/98 4:18 pm Page 531 Security in Latin America interdependence (range of missiles, vulnerability to conventional attack, even material spillovers of refugees, drug-related violence or insurgency) can perhaps be assessed in a reasonably objective way. But the degree to which states and social groups come to understand regional problems in security terms is the outcome of complex political processes and varying political construction.As I will argue, it is often specific combinations of state power and interests or the involvement of an NGO, rather than any objective measure of importance, that determines why certain issues achieve political salience; why some groups are able to achieve voice, exposure and perhaps protection while others suffer in silence. More importantly,it has always been very difficult to define a Latin American security complex in a way that excludes the United States. Historically, the United States has reacted in many different ways to insecurity in the region. It has never consistently opposed the use of force in the region. It has sometimes chosen to remain disengaged from international tensions (as with the conflicts between Peru and Ecuador in – and between Chile and Argentina in the s). On other occasions Washington itself has been willing to use military force, or to support or actively promote the use of force by others (as in Central America in the s). Equally,although it has sometimes promoted multilateral security arrangements, it has steadfastly resisted any institutional constraints that would curb its traditional unilateralism and hegemonic presumptions. Irrespective of the policy actually chosen, its very presence and the possibility of US action have always been factors in the minds of Latin American governments. It is in the nature of hegemony that actions and reactions will be influenced by expectations of what the United States may or may not do.The US role in the security of the hemisphere provides the perfect illustration of the old adage that intervention and non-intervention are two sides of the same coin. The remainder of this article is divided into four parts.The first gives a brief overview of the historic pattern of and recent trends in traditional interstate security, and considers the role of democracy and democratization in understanding this picture. The second section considers the various ways in which regionalization and economic integration may pose problems for regional stability. The third discusses some of the major issues that arise regarding so-called new security challenges.The conclusion draws out some of the implications of the analysis for the management of regional security. Patterns of interstate conflict For the first half-century following independence, the region was beset by persistent and widespread wars of state formation and nation-building, both internal and external. In this as in so many other ways, Latin America foreshadowed the pattern of subsequent post-colonial conflicts, and by no stretch of the imagination could be viewed as constituting a security hurrell 8/6/98 4:18 pm Page 532 Andrew Hurrell community or a zone of relative peace. However, from the late nineteenth century both the number and the intensity of interstate wars between Latin American states were remarkably low—despite the existence of large numbers of protracted and militarized border disputes, many cases of the threatened use of force and of military intervention by outside powers, high levels of domestic violence and political instability,and long periods of authoritarian rule. It is also worth highlighting the degree to which armed conflict came increasingly to revolve around limited border conflict: the use of force, not to seize large areas of territory or to ‘win’ in a Clausewitzian sense, but rather as a diplomatic instrument to push the matter at issue back on to the agenda and to facilitate the winning of concessions at the diplomatic negotiations that, as both sides knew,would inevitably follow.There was, then, a clear willingness to use force; but this was a limited conception of force within a strong diplomatic culture.
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