Bye Bye, South American Defense Advisory?

Everything indicates that the United States will be able to utilize various military bases in Colombia. The agreement, soon to be passed, has presented itself in Bogota as a continuation and complement to the struggle against the trafficking of narcotics and terrorism. In Washington, it is seen as a substitution for the base in Manta, Ecuador – that the U.S. must abandon this year – as a location to enact “continuing operations, logistics, and training,” according to the language of the Pentagon. Seen from the concrete situation in Colombia, no national opinion exists regarding this topic: the advances of the state in confronting distinct armed actors have been relevant; ideologically antagonistic neighbors have not used nor begun to use force against the country; the more comprehensible neighbors dealing with the internal situation do not confront Colombia nor do they insinuate doing it. The nations of South America have not shown opportunist conduct – advancing their own objectives in disagreement with the nation’s objectives – against Bogota, not previously nor now. The collective hemisphere is not leaving behind the costly dynamic and aggressive memories from the Cold War.

Nevertheless, the new bilateral compromise has the capacity to analyze and evaluate with new perspectives, one of these being the viewpoint of the United States from a geopolitical and regional prism. There is a collection of basic proposals that have not been altered with the arrival of the Obama administration.

In the last two decades – and in particular, since September 11 – a notable imbalance has presented itself among the military and the diplomatic components in the political exterior of the United States. The militarization of international strategy in Washington has implemented a disproportionate rate of defense spending – in relation to any potential adversary or hypothetical coalition of enemies – and in comparison to conventional diplomacy. This has taken an unequal and dangerous bureaucratic dominance in the process of decision making, and an ascending autonomy regarding civility in the public policy of the country.

In this context, since various incomplete projects dating from the 1990s, the Southern Command has been transforming in the military hierarchy of the United States for the Caribbean and Latin America. Stationed in Florida, the Southern Command tends to behave as if it were the principal mediator of the area’s governments and the cardinal articulator of foreign relations and North American defense for the region. The pro-consulate profile of the Southern Command observes itself and verifies itself through the means of empirical analysis of a vast collective pool of initiatives, actions, payments, exercises, facts and manifestations, which design and determine continental relations. The reestablishment of the Fourth Fleet is hardly the final indicator of an ambitious military expansion in the region, and has not been responsible for any questioning from the State Department nor the White House.

In this sentiment, the use of various military installations in Colombia facilitates the Southern Command’s achievement of a part of their pro-consular project: to be facilitating, and to increase the acceptance in the area for a potential growing state in the center of South America. The principal message is for Brazil and not for Venezuela. Beyond the political coincidences in business relations between Brazil and Washington, the United States will look to maximize restriction of Brazil’s capacity in the militarized land and will also seek to increase its own projection of power in the Amazon.

Now, with a simple and diplomatic maneuver the United States has demonstrated that the recently created – due to inspiration from Brazil – South American Defense Advisory has been, until now, a tiger only on paper. South America is a region where lethal threats do not exist towards United States security. There are no countries that proliferate themselves as nuclear powers; they do not support international terrorists that operate against Washington. This makes South America one of the most pacifist regions in the world. With democratic regimes in all of its countries, and a low level of anti-Americanism, no one can discern why Washington needs military bases in Colombia. Nor will Bogota debate the subject – this comes from the disaster of presidential diplomatic bilateralism from the days of Alvaro Uribe. Washington apparently does not need to explain its presence in the region. At any rate, the U.S. national security advisor, retired General James Jones, already visited Brazil and informed the government of President Lula of the U.S.’s decision.

As long as this is the path that South America continues to follow, while creating institutions that cannot deal with the central issues of the region, the result will be an evident level of fragmentation and incapacity to overcome principal challenges that confront the region. Caracas and even Brazil can live with it; but for Argentina this is infuriating. Given that Buenos Aires – which stands in friendly opposition of Washington – does not play a key part and is coming from a strategic vision long since ineffective, it has lost influence in South America and does not support improved regional industrialization. The situation in this country is still very delicate: the failed birth of the (CSD) South American Defense Advisory is very costly for Argentina.