Latin America eyes defense pact

SANTIAGO, Chile - For most of Latin America, the days of dictatorships and civil wars are largely over, but security is still elusive. Historic border conflicts continue, democracy is fragile in many countries, and new internal and external threats have emerged.

To face these new threats, and to increase the region’s influence, an age-old idea has taken on new strength among the region’s defense ministries. In recent months, reluctant leaders have been talking seriously about building a collective regional-defense community, along the lines of the European Union’s.

Talks began in earnest at the Special Conference on Security held in Mexico City last October. There, leaders agreed that security must be seen as multidimensional — including threats from poverty, drug trafficking, AIDS, natural disasters, environmental abuses, terrorism, illegal migration, and other issues not usually considered part of security.

Such threats often cross national borders: Colombia’s drug problem spills over into neighboring countries, for instance. As a result, leaders at the Mexico City gathering discussed the need for a broader solution that would involve countries cooperating in an integrated body to face these common threats.

“Subregional and regional integration processes contribute to stability and security in the Hemisphere,” reads the Declaration on Security of the Americas, approved by 34 leaders at the Special Conference on Security.

Regional integration has been a dream since Latin America struggled for independence from Spain in the early 1800s. Simon Bolivar had hoped to create a United States of Latin America. But today, it’s a tall order in a region with such diverse threats and vast cultural and economic differences, not to mention active border conflicts.

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met in Geneva on Jan. 30 to talk about international security, from poverty to defense, with leaders like French President Jacques Chirac and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The search for regional security partners has new appeal after the war in Iraq. Chile and Mexico were among the nonpermanent members of the U.N. Security Council that backed France’s opposition to the U.S. resolution.

Faced with unilateralism in Washington, Chile and others have been searching for like-minded allies, and finding them mainly in Europe and among their neighbors.

“It is necessary and urgent that the countries of South America equip themselves with the means to build a collective and regional security policy,” says Alfredo Valladao, a Brazilian academic at Sciences Po university in Paris. “If we don’t have this, we will continue to be the dogs barking on the side while the caravan passes.”

Mr. Valladao said most Latin American countries realize that, individually, they carry little weight in international circles. To have some influence, they practically have to belong to a larger group. But joining a group means learning to sing in tune.

“The basic condition for having a voice that counts in the international debate about the hemisphere’s defense institutions and new realities is to be able to speak with one voice,” he said.

Mr. Valladao was among a few dozen academics, diplomats and senior officials who met here in Santiago in the last week of January to discuss Latin American security at a conference organized by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), an independent think tank.

At the conference, Chilean Defense Minister Michelle Bachelet said real integration of the region’s militaries has already begun. For example, a Chilean unit is embedded in an Argentine peacekeeping battalion now serving on Cyprus. A Uruguayan unit will soon join the battalion, and there is talk of sending a Peruvian contingent.

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