Air University Review, July-August 1986
We are witnessing the emergence of a new consensus in the intellectual, political, and defense communities within the United States—a belief that the United States must focus sustained attention and resources on the security of Latin America. This new consensus is a consequence of many factors, which include the Central American crisis, the extension of Soviet power into the hemisphere, and the increasing political and economic weight of Latin America in the international community. A friendly southern flank that does not drain U.S. resources is considered to be fundamental to the nation’s ability to project its power and influence elsewhere. Latin America is also perceived to be important in terms of the perception of the effectiveness of U.S. power. The American people, Latin Americans, and much of the world regard the responses of the United States to the challenges at its doorstep as important measures of maturity, confidence, and determination in dealing with complex international issues. At home and abroad, failure would be taken as a sign of declining U.S. power.1 The U.S. policy responses to this point include the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the implementation of aspects of the Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, and the effort to manage the $383 billion debt crisis in Latin America. These have served as a backdrop for the reengagement of U.S. political, economic, and military power to promote security, democracy, social and economic development, and national reconciliation in Central America.
U.S. policy responses must take into account the complex challenges that the community of nations face. Equally fundamental is a new pragmatism that recognizes the global responsibilities of U.S. power and the advantages of having secure, economically prosperous, and politically advanced nations in Latin America as fully participating partners in the world community. As the Reagan administration officials asserted repeatedly in 1984 and 1985, the United States does not want other Cubas, nor does it wish the democratic renaissance under way in Latin America to fail and lead to another round of frustrated hopes, violence, and authoritarian rule. Its differentiated responses to the latest security challenges in the hemisphere indicate that the United States is willing to recognize the North-South dimensions of the problem, particularly when these impinge on its global responsibilities.
Traditionally, U.S. defense planning has given Latin America a limited role in global strategy. The United States currently deploys a limited number of forces in the region—a unified command in Panama (U.S. Southern Command) and a specialized infantry brigade (the 193d) to defend the Panama Canal, to help administer security assistance in Latin America for internal defense and development, and to maintain a military presence for political purposes.2 Other important tasks include assistance in combating the international drug traffic and in conducting disaster relief operations.
This infrastructure is supplemented by naval and air elements located at Roosevelt Roads (Puerto Rico), the Guantanamo Naval Station (Cuba), and various communications and undersea surveillance facilities. The maritime-oriented Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Virginia, shares defense responsibilities with the United States Southern Command. The Atlantic Command has jurisdiction in the Caribbean and the ocean areas around Central and South America, while the Southern Command has responsibility over the land areas of Central and South America. Responsibility for the Caribbean has been delegated to U.S. Forces Caribbean Command, a subunified command under the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command and located in Key West, Florida. Additional forces on the U.S. mainland could provide reinforcements for contingencies in Latin America. By the year 2000, this infrastructure could change drastically, since U.S. defense sites in the former Canal Zone are to be turned over to the Panamanian government. The decision of where to locate the theater command and its supporting forces will require careful planning and will be an important indicator of U.S. commitment to regional security.
The relative security of its strategic backyard traditionally permitted the United States the flexibility to project power and influence to other theaters, practically unconstrained by competing requirements on its southern flank. However, the era of security minimally resourced on the southern flank is clearly over.3 The complex threat includes the growing Soviet air and naval reach into the Central and South Atlantic and into the Caribbean, Cuba's ability to project military power into the Caribbean, the emergence of a militarized and sovietized Nicaragua, the new and much more sophisticated revolutionary warfare in Central America, and other insurgencies in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. The low-intensity conflicts in Latin America are now engaging the attention of strategists as never before. Leaders throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are concerned about the new revolutionary warfare—waged by the Marxist left and backed by Soviet and Cuban power—that feeds on social and economic deprivation. There are at least eight insurgencies at various stages of development. The conventional and unconventional use of Sandinista military power poses threats to neighboring El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The Sandinistas are expanding their defensive perimeter by actively supporting the development of an infrastructure of violence in the region. The Soviets and their allies have also undertaken a long-term program of cultural penetration, which is beginning to yield handsome strategic rewards. Thousands of scholarships are offered to Latin American students for university-level training in socialist countries. This gesture is but one dimension in the development of a sophisticated infrastructure to wage low-intensity warfare in the future.
Cuba presents a continuing strategic dilemma. In the context of a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation, Cuba could impede the progress of U.S. military forces unless neutralized either diplomatically or militarily. Since the credibility and the viability of the NATO deterrent posture in Europe depend on timely logistical resupply from the United States, and approximately 60 percent of this resupply would have to transit around Cuba, planners must devote resources to the Cuban problem. Analyzing U.S. and Cuban strategic options, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, writes that " . . . a potentially hostile Cuban force cannot be allowed to threaten the NATO flank during a Central Front War.... U.S. strategy is designed to motivate Cuba toward demonstrable neutrality."4 However, although the Cuban leadership appears to be pragmatic, it would be imprudent for the United States simply to assume Cuba's neutrality and to be unprepared for an overt threat. The Cuban ability to interdict U.S. shipping is formidable and growing: 270 Soviet-supplied jet combat aircraft, an unknown number of Mi-24 Hind-D helicopters, three Foxtrot-class diesel submarines, two Koni-class frigates, Osa/ Komar missile-firing patrol boats, and Turyaclass hydrofoil patrol boats. Cuba is also the conduit for Soviet assistance to the revolutionary left in Latin America. During the past two decades, Cuba has trained about 20,000 insurgents for Latin America, while developing and maintaining a sophisticated apparatus to promote revolutionary violence. U.S. military planners must therefore take into account the relationship of the Caribbean theater of operations to other theaters in the event of conflict between East and West.
The emerging strategic consensus of the 1980s reverses the trend of the 1960s and 1970s. Understanding this history is fundamental to understanding future directions. The decline of U.S. influence has various causes. Some Latin American countries developed national security doctrines that focused on internal social and economic development and national political integration as prerequisites for national security. The Brazilian and Peruvian doctrines and strategies, variously adapted by other Latin American countries, equate social and economic development with national security. The national security doctrines merged with dependency theory to explain Latin America's marginal and vulnerable position in the global distribution of wealth and power. Historically, Latin American concepts of national security have contrasted with the U.S. emphasis on military security. However, as the United States became more keenly aware of the importance of the economic element of national security and regional power, its focus and policies changed significantly.
At the international level, important changes in arms transfers and security assistance patterns affected Latin America directly. In the United States, Congress limited arms sales to Latin America.5 By the early 1980s, the United States was no longer the prime source of armaments, and it suffered a diminished capability to influence military institutions or affect conflict resolution. Moreover, sophisticated indigenous arms industries began developing in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. By failing to respond to Latin America's military equipment and training needs, the United States heightened the insecurity of Latin American leaders and diminished their belief in the United States as a responsible security partner. Moreover, this U.S. stance complicated the defense planning of various states, making them dependent on a variety of foreign sources for equipment. Some Latin American leaders even argued that U.S. unresponsiveness jeopardized the security of their nations.
The human rights policy of the Carter administration may have also accelerated the decline of strategic consensus. The human rights emphasis followed closely upon congressional legislation that limited the projection of U.S. power into the Third World. For example, provisions inserted into the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976 and subsequent amendments prohibit security assistance to governments found to be conducting "gross" violations of human rights. The linkage of human rights records to U.S. security assistance resulted in either Latin American government- or U.S.-initiated withdrawal from U.S. military assistance programs. Consequently, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Nicaragua were denied access to U.S. security assistance programs.
The Carter effort to promote greater respect for human rights, laudable in many respects, may well have been counterproductive, in both the short and long term. In countries with serious internal problems, particularly in Central America, reductions or suspensions of security assistance weakened the confidence that governments had in the U.S. commitment to their national security. They also reduced U.S. access to the host country's military, thus surrendering a capability to affect decisions made by the military, which ultimately affected the political development of these countries, increased their sense of insecurity, and thus perhaps contributed unwittingly to greater human rights violations. This apparent decline in U.S. concern may well have enhanced the confidence of leftist insurgents and their foreign supporters. Moreover, the general reduction in U.S. transfers did not reduce the arms expenditures by countries of the region, nor was it emulated by other suppliers, such as France, Israel, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. Indeed, it also accelerated the search for military technological autonomy among the more industrially capable countries, such as Brazil and Argentina.
Finally, the general decline in security assistance also resulted from doubt about its value in advancing U.S. global interests. There are two distinct schools of thought on this issue in the United States. Security assistance optimists stress a variety of benefits: regional stability, professionalization of recipient institutions, and increased U.S. influence over decisional elites. Pessimists, however, warn that the definition of professionalization is a function of culture and that influence is itself a difficult value to measure. Both agree, however, that to be effective, security assistance must be an element of a comprehensive bilateral relationship that ought to exist between the United States and the recipient country, a relationship balanced by economic and political components. As is amply demonstrated by the efforts in Central America, no amount of security assistance can bring a society out of the injustices of underdevelopment. Security assistance will simply buy time for the necessary reforms to take place.
In a significant departure from Carter's policy, the Reagan administration adopted a more pragmatic approach to security assistance and arms transfers, tying its policy more directly to the requirements of U.S. national security, but within the broader context of democratization.6 Human rights laws were not abandoned. Unquestionably, the coming of the Central American crisis aided this pragmatism and its gradual acceptance by Congress and the American people. The demonstrable success of a carefully developed program of economic and military assistance to El Salvador has diminished both political and moral misgivings about the use of such instruments of power.
The sweeping Carter assessment of the role of human rights in foreign policy must be seen as deeply rooted in what Samuel P. Huntington calls the conflict between American ideals and institutions.7 This conflict is as old as the American republic and was intensified during the height of the American effort to promote democracy in the Third World in the 1960s and 1970s—at the same time that bipartisan foreign policy consensus ceased to exist in American society and the Congress. Congress was asserting greater influence in foreign policy. By attempting to limit the abuse of American power, it also limited the projection of American power abroad. It was the time of a national reassessment of political conduct in the United States that once again found an expression in foreign policy.
We may also better understand the Carter policy and its impact in Latin America through what Huntington and others call the American people's view of the just war. Americans frequently perceive the insurgencies and low-intensity conflicts typical of Latin America as involving the use of force by governments, often military in nature, the political legitimacy of which they regard as dubious. Thus, they perceive the counterinsurgency effort of those governments as illegitimate. Consequently, American power in the form of military and economic assistance must be negotiated through the American political process on behalf of recipients of dubious legitimacy. President Reagan's search for consensus support for his Central American policy exemplifies this difficulty.
Latin American understanding of the domestic constraints on American power is poor, and American comprehension of the policy process in the Latin American nations is no better. Consequently, it is not surprising that many Latin American leaders view American initiatives on arms transfers, security assistance, and human rights as morally selective, strategically shortsighted, and unworthy of a great power. Some argue that whereas the United States is concerned about individual human rights, it is not concerned about the individual and collective rights of societies at war with Marxist guerrillas or at war with the oppressive forces of underdevelopment and social injustice—the true enemies of human rights. Moreover, many Latin American leaders see the real purpose of the human rights policy to be the restoration of foreign policy consensus in the United States and the need to generate leverage against the Soviet Union at the expense of the powerless Latin Americans, a replay of a familiar theme in U.S. relations with Latin America. Given the traditionally marginal role of Latin America in U.S. strategic thinking, they argue that the United States could assume this posture with relative impunity. Going even further, some friends and enemies may have read these initiatives as being tantamount to American disengagement from Latin America. An excellent case could be made that the United States disengaged its economic, political, and military instruments of power from Central America in the 1970-80 decade.
These mutual misunderstandings increased under a foreign policy that sought to reduce contacts with the very military institutions with which the United States needed better communication. The United States has lost contact with the younger generations of military officers in some of the key countries of Latin America. The reductions in security assistance during the mid-1970s also made it difficult to justify resuming that same assistance on an expanded scale in 1979-81, when the Central American conflict reached crisis proportions. Though the Reagan administration in its first years deemphasized human rights, it later discovered that the defense of human rights has pragmatic advantages as a policy lever.8 As an enduring feature of American domestic and foreign politics, human rights will continue to affect U.S. relations with Latin America, particularly the sensitive security dimension. The democratization now under way may make security and economic assistance more politically palatable to the U.S. Congress. Yet, there are a number of countries, such as Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, beset with either latent or manifest low-intensity conflicts that could complicate not only their domestic politics but also relations with the United States. At the very least, the new revolutionary warfare waged by the radical left is intended to intensify these conflicts in order to disengage U.S. support from the targeted governments. The strategy of the Central American revolutionary left clearly seeks the delegitimation of those governments as a critical step in disengaging U.S. support.
Domestic constraints are an important consideration in developing defense relations. An equally important constraint is the Latin American fear that U.S. power could once again be used against them or that U.S. security commitments are transitory and not to be trusted. Thus, many Latin American leaders view instrumentalities, such as the Treaty of Rio (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) and the Organization of American States, "not primarily as an alliance against an external threat but rather as an elaborate juridical and moral structure to limit U.S. intervention in the hemisphere."9 While these views may appear to overstate fears about American power, it is critical to underscore that Latin American leaders, including the new Marxist revolutionaries, have always perceived a need to limit that power. Moreover, they want to channel that power in directions useful to their domestic and foreign policies, directions that may do little to enhance the interests of the United States.
What appears to be the "Central Americanization" of foreign policy risks distracting the United States from the larger strategic interests in Latin America. Unless Sandinista Nicaragua becomes a fully sovietized and militarized state, subordinating its national interests to those of Cuba and the Soviet Union, promoting "the revolution without frontiers" in Central America, and allowing the installation of Soviet and Cuban air and naval power on its territory, Central America may not remain the focus of American strategy.10 By early 1986, it seemed that the combined pressures of the democratic opposition and the United States, together with the increasing isolation of Nicaragua within the international community, were having some impact on Managua. Whether any fundamental change in the strategic relationship with the Soviet Union and Cuba or in the Sandinistas' Marxist-Leninist domestic and foreign policies will occur is uncertain. It is important to note that Nicaragua is not an island that can be sealed off from regional influences, as Cuba is. Important sectors of pluralism have survived in Nicaragua, despite the increasingly totalitarian superstructure. These attributes may ultimately modify or defeat the Sandinistas totalitarian predispositions, but it may be a long twilight struggle for Central America and the United States.
As regards El Salvador, since neither Democrats nor Republicans want to "lose Central America to communism," U.S. political, economic, and military support for a government in El Salvador that makes progress in its reforms and counterinsurgency will probably increase. By April 1985, El Salvador was showing indications of becoming a success story for U.S. policy. The 31 March election had been an important victory for José Napoleón Duarte, for the supporters of evolutionary change, and for the proponents of the political center in Washington and Central America. The Salvadoran government was gaining an important edge in the struggle for legitimacy at the same time that the battlefield performance of its army improved. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)—beset with battlefield setbacks, desertions, and the loss of international allies—switched its strategy to smaller operations and urban terrorism. Joaquín Villalobos, the leading strategist of the FMLN, emphasized the importance of prolonging the war beyond 1988. There is no question that the insurgent leadership can conduct acts of violence and economic destruction for years to come. The Salvadoran struggle and indeed the entire Central American crisis will require a long-term commitment by the United States, as the Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America clearly states. Building responsive and effective national institutions takes time.
Cuba, too, will remain a long-term problem. Barring any change in the orientation of the leadership in Havana, no great improvement in Cuban relations with the United States and Latin America is foreseen. Despite the increasing sovietization of Cuba—in its economy, politics, and military—a more pragmatic generation of Cuban leaders may steer Cuba back to the Western community of nations. Even in his dotage, Fidel Castro may not surrender his revolutionary pretensions, the anti-American thrust of his foreign policy, and efforts to spread communist revolutions in Central and South America. The loss of Grenada, through the self-destruction of the New Jewel Movement and the U.S. military action in 1983, was a serious defeat for Cuban foreign policy, emphasizing once again Cuba's ties with the Soviet Union. In early 1985, Fidel Castro, perhaps tiring of the costs of the peculiar alliance with the Soviet Union, appeared amenable to improved relations (on his own terms) with the United States. Maintaining a confident manner, in the face of continued contradictions in his foreign policy and rejection by a number of Latin American leaders, he once again spoke optimistically about the inevitability of revolutionary conflict in Latin America and the legitimacy of Cuban support for revolution.11 The United States will seek ways to neutralize Cuba either politically or militarily in the event of a NATO-Warsaw Pact contingency. Cuba's ties to Marxist-Leninist groups in the region and its efforts to nurture and exploit other revolutionary opportunities bear watching.
It is with the larger powers—Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Colombia—that the United States has important long-term interests at stake. Developments among these states are having an increasingly critical impact on the United States. The larger Latin American states are becoming better integrated and more active participants in the international system. This international emergence coexists, however, with the dilemma confronting all developing countries: maximizing economic productivity, improving social and political participation, and distributing the benefits of growth more equitably while simultaneously minimizing the tensions that erode the support base of government. Moreover, this political challenge must be met as these countries face an overwhelming financial liquidity crisis. These weaknesses will seriously reduce the chances that these nations will contribute to regional defense more actively. Moreover, the competing demands for welfare and security will have a dramatic impact on civil-military relations in the emerging redemocratization of the region. Democratization in such countries as Argentina, Guatemala, Uruguay, and El Salvador (and also, prospectively, in Chile) must also heal deep wounds between the civilian leadership and the military. The military has a central role to play in making democracy viable.12 Furthermore, it is in its institutional interest that democracy succeed. To be true to its own values and to promote civil-military peace, the United States must forge new military relations that enhance military support for democracy.
In the interest of regional security and sharing the defense burden, some strategists have proposed that the United States develop a coalition defense strategy with key powers—for example, with Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Chile. While this proposal may appear to be a promising direction for security cooperation, prudence recommends a cautious approach. Ambiguity may be more appropriate than certainty, as shown by the examples of Brazil and Mexico.
In recognition of Brazil's importance in world affairs, the United States agreed to conduct high-level consultations on matters of mutual interest—the Brazil-United States Memorandum of Understanding of 21 February 1976. These data underscore Brazil's importance: the largest and most populous country in Latin America and sixth in the world (130 million people); the eighth largest economy in the world; an expanding and sophisticated industrial base; the largest aggregate of armed forces in South America; and, by one ranking, the sixteenth in the world in military capabilities.15 Brazil also has an advanced nuclear power program. Some Brazilian strategists see the need to expand Brazil's maritime surveillance and control capacity in the strategic chokepoint known as the Atlantic Narrows.
For the United States, there are dangers in assigning Brazil a power status that it does not have and a strategic role that it may not want. Brazil's pragmatic foreign policy stresses the importance of remaining linked to the Western community while holding to what the Brazilians call an "ecumenical" approach with the rest of the world in order to pursue its national interests.
At the same time, Brazil clearly understands its defense vulnerabilities. The "impossible war" between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands in 1982 exposed Brazil's shortages in military technology and preparedness and urged President João Baptista Figueiredo to declare the need for enlarging the armed forces, but budgetary constraints make this expansion difficult in the short term. As it seeks greater military technological autonomy, Brazil is exporting sophisticated equipment, such as aircraft and armored personnel carriers, to Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Diplomatically, it has the means but perhaps not the disposition to be a spokesman between the Third World and the industrialized nations.
It is imperative for the United States to maintain a cooperative relationship with Brazil as Brazil's self-confidence and its world role increase. President Reagan's trip in 1982 established binational work groups to study the feasibility of cooperation in weapons production, nuclear energy, science and technology, aerospace activities, and economy and finance. The 1984 U.S.-Brazil Memorandum of Understanding on Industrial-Military Cooperation is designed to advance cooperation on arms production. From the Brazilian perspective, the technology transfer is critical to its interests, or, as the prestigious Sao Paulo daily O Estado de São Paulo stated, "it complements Brazilian technology in producing various types of military equipment without affecting the plans to nationalize the weapons industry or the goal of self-sufficiency in supplying weapons to the armed forces."14
While these considerations appear to justify a closer military relationship with Brazil, the United States must be sensitive to Brazil's posture, to its aspirations for autonomy, and to its aversion to automatic alignments. Brazil's foreign policy stresses that the bloc division of the world aggravates international insecurity. From this view emerges a reluctance to promote military relationships that might intensify rather than diminish the potential for conflict. Accordingly, the United States ought to be cautious in assessing a possible Brazilian security role in the South Atlantic or in continental South America. Even if it wanted to, Brazil is very unlikely to have projectable military forces for a long time, except possibly a maritime surveillance and coastal control capability.15 For the United States and Brazil, strategic ambiguity—a relationship wherein both sides retain flexible options—is preferable to an articulated and structured alliance. An alliance with Portuguese-speaking Brazil would also endanger relations with the Spanish-speaking countries. Brazil's aspirations for autonomy will grow.
Similar advice applies in U.S. relations with Mexico. Mexico has traditionally avoided any connotation of a security role in the subregion. Its foreign policy, consistent with the requirements of its domestic policy, has always emphasized nonmilitary approaches, such as espousal of nonintervention and self-determination. It employs revolutionary rhetoric in foreign policy for the purpose of domestic tranquility. In short, Mexico prefers co-optation to confrontation. Besides attempting to maintain a delicate balance between revolutionary ideology, political pragmatism, and the primacy of domestic politics, Mexico must balance the primacy of its relationship with the United States. The spillover potential of international conflict in Central America, especially the installation of militarized communism in Nicaragua, is having an impact on Mexican national security concerns, not only because it brings the East-West conflict much closer but because of its potentially destabilizing impact on domestic Mexican politics, particularly in its contiguous southern region.16 The conflicts in Central America are, in an important sense, a constant reminder of Mexico's own internal weaknesses.
The most useful role which Mexico could play is that of moderating conflict in Central America through the use of the political and economic instruments most congenial to its own political requirements. Moreover, the exigencies of domestic politics do not allow Mexico to surrender its foreign policy autonomy to the United States. Mexico can play a limited role in the pursuit of development, democracy, and security in Central America and the Caribbean area.
The cautious approach with respect to Brazil and Mexico also applies to defense relations with the smaller countries. The United States is a partner in coalition defense with Panama, El Salvador, and Honduras, respectively. Each one of these partnerships responds to a strategic imperative—defense of the Canal, support for the Salvadoran counterinsurgency, and thwarting the Sandinista menace to Honduras. Yet, in very fundamental ways, the United States must goad reluctant and weak allies to cooperate among themselves to fight the common enemy—communist insurgents aided by the Sandinistas, Cubans, and Soviets. One U.S. field commander intimately familiar with El Salvador and Honduras quoted Simón Bolívar's famous phrase about "plowing the seas" in describing his own efforts in getting those two countries to put aside their differences and cooperate militarily. This comment illustrates that confident and effective democracies that represent the interests of their people can make better contributions to regional defense and to their own defense than can weakly based governments presiding over fragmented nations with prostrate economies and unjust social structures. The formidable challenge for the United States and Latin America is to fashion a strategy that unlocks the creative energies of the nascent democracies of Latin America. Only when their internal vulnerabilities are eliminated can they become effective defense partners.
In the next decade, the United States must adjust to Latin American security concerns and recognize the correlation of economic development and security. The agenda for action will require pragmatism in the United States and in Latin America, an outlook that stresses the long term over the short term, accommodation over confrontation, and consensus over scapegoating. There is evidence that this type of approach is already developing as the United States and Latin American nations search for solutions to the economic crisis and revolutionary violence confronting various governments and strive to strengthen democracy. On the other hand, Latin American countries must demonstrate sensitivity to U.S. global responsibilities and to the limits of U.S. power, while adopting measures to share the burden of regional security.
The South Atlantic conflict of 1982 brought to the surface serious questions about the utility of the inter-American security system. Indeed, some advocated fashioning a Latin American defense system excluding the United States. This view reached a particular stridence in Venezuela, Peru, and, understandably, Argentina.17 However, the cause of peace, security, and developing in the western hemisphere is not advanced without U.S. participation and will not be advanced well without a greater Latin American contribution. A sophisticated view of security will recognize that all nations of the region have mutual interests, such as resolving the debt crisis that threatens the liquidity of the international financial system and strengthening fragile democratic structures. Revolutionary movements in Central and South America, reinforced by the Cuban-Soviet role in destabilizing regional security, require that there be a careful balancing of the East-West and North-South approaches. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. The very ambiguity and immensity of challenges that are simultaneously East-West and North-South make it difficult for the United States to develop a coherent relationship with Latin America, one that is sustainable within the American political process and at the same time responsive to the security needs of Latin America. Short-term ad hoc crisis responses will no longer suffice in dealing with the complex security challenges. They only postpone and perhaps intensify the problems.
These are then the strategic imperatives on the inter-American agenda as the year 2000 nears. The system of institutions is flexible enough to permit a prudent and pragmatics dialogue in the search for common approaches. Unless the current generation of leaders seizes the initiative, the next generation may have a much narrower range of options to choose from.
Notes
1. For this interpretation, see Robert Kennedy and Gabriel Marcella, "U.S. Security on the Southern Flank: Interests, Challenges, Responses," in Western Interests and U.SPolicy Options in the Caribbean Basin, edited by James R. Greene and Brent Scowcroft. Report of the Atlantic Council’s Working Group on the Caribbean Basin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1984), pp. 187-241. For a European view, see the articles by Socialist Fernando Moran, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Alois Mertes, Minister of State in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany in Third World Instability: Central America as a European-American Issue, edited by Andrew J. Pierre (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1985).
2. The Southern Command is composed of the headquarters at Quarry Heights, the 193d Infantry Brigade, the U.S. Air Force Southern Division (which also operates the Inter-American Air Forces Academy), and the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command (which monitors the operation of the U.S. Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School). The definition of U.S. security interests and objectives in Latin America has not varied substantially over the years. See, as examples, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense, International Security Affairs, U.S. Policies toward Latin American Military Forces, 25 February 1965; and U.S. National Security Council, Interdepartmental Group for Inter-American Affairs, Review of U.S. Policy toward Latin America, March 1971. It is the intensity of those interests which has recently increased.
3. For an elaboration of this view, see Kennedy and Marcella, op. cit.
4. Admiral Wesley L. McDonald describes Cuba’s options in a European war scenario as follows: open belligerence, overt neutrality, covert belligerence, overt neutrality/deferred belligerence, true neutrality, or switch in sides. Also see McDonald,"Atlantic Security—The Cuban Factor,"Jane’s Defense Weekly, 22 December 1984, pp. 1107-11.
5. For an insightful analysis of trends in arms transfers to Latin America in this period, see Norman M. Smith, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Latin America," Military Issues Research Memorandum, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, August 1977.
6. Thomas O. Enders and Richard R. Burt, "U.S. Arms Transfer Policy toward Latin America," Department of State Bulletin, December 1981, pp. 72-75. As an example of its application, see the justification of the F-16 sale to Venezuela, which breached the self-imposed U.S. limitation on the transfer of high-performance aircraft to Latin America.
7. See Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), especially pp. 221-62.
8. On the Reagan administration’s human rights policy, see Elliot Abrams, "Quiet Diplomacy Advances Human Rights," Washington Times, 6 September 1984, p. 5D.
9. John Child, "Alliance Theory and the Organization of American States," unpublished paper, 1974, p. 8, in The U.S.-Latin American Strategic Relationship, collection of papers, 1965-77, at the U.S. Army War College Library.
10. U.S. Department of State, "Revolution beyond Our Borders: Sandinista Intervention in Central America," Special Report No. 132, September 1985.
11. Max G. Manwaring, "Brazilian Military Power: A Capability Analysis," in Brazil in theInternational System: The Rise of a Middle Power, edited by Wayne A. Selcher (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1981), pp. 65-98.
12. There is a growing awareness among the military institutions, long the arbiters of national politics, that they must support democratic change. The theme of the sixteenth Conference of the American Armies held in Santiago, Chile, 11-16 November 1985, was "The Role of the Army in a Democratic Society." The presentation by the delegations of Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil, among others, are excellent expressions of current thinking on democracy and how the military can strengthen it. A civilian perspective that is becoming increasingly popular argues that the militarization of Latin American politics has had pernicious effects on democracy. See, as examples, Juan Somavia, "Notas sobre la Cooperación Política Regional para la Democracia," paper presented at the International Seminar on Regional Political Cooperation for Democracy, 16-18 August 1985, Montevideo, Uruguay; Augusto Varas, "Democratization, Peace, and Security in Latin America," Alternatives, vol. 10, no. 4, 1985, pp. 607-23.
13. Manwaring, op cit.
14. O Estado de São Paulo, 27 December 1983, p. 5, as reported in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (Latin America), 19 December 1983, pp. D1-D2.
15. For additional insights on Brazilian security views, see Alexandre Barros, "Percepciones Brasileñas sobre Seguridad Regional," paper presented at the International Seminar on Regional Security and Peace in Latin America, Viña del Mar, Chile, 19-22 November 1984; Robert J. Branco, The United States and Brazil: Opening Up a New Dialogue (Washington: National Defense University, 1984), pp. 73-92.
16. For some recent rethinking of Mexican strategic perceptions, see Olga Pellicer de Brody, "National Security in Mexico: Traditional Notions and New Perceptions," in U.S.-Mexico Relations: Economic and Social Aspects, edited by Clark W. Reynolds and Carlos Tello (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 181-92.
17. For more information on the impact of the South Atlantic War on U.S.-Latin American relations, see Gabriel Marcella, "The Malvinas/Falklands War of 1982: Lessons for the United States and Latin America, "Strategic Issues Research Memorandum, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1983. For a Peruvian view of the United States as an irresponsible security partner, see Jorge Hesse Ramirez, "Una Nueva Perspectiva sobre la Dependencia y los Mercados de Armas," Defensa Nacional (Peru), December 1982, pp. 115-21.
Gabriel Marcella (B.S., St. Joseph’s University; M.A., Syracuse University; Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Third World Studies and Director of Regional Appraisals at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He has been an instructor at Temple University, University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University and has been a member of the Atlantic Council Working Groups on Western Interests and U.S. Policy Options in the Caribbean and Combating International Terrorism: U.S.-European Cooperation and Political Will. Dr. Marcella has written extensively on inter-American security. He is a graduate of the Inter-American Defense College.
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The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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