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Latin America: the useless resource of armaments
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Infopuntual, Aug 5 2010.

The arms purchases in Latin America are, lately, salient news. Brazil has acquired 36 Rafale aircrafts from France. Chile and Venezuela as well have realized important military purchases. The needs and real motives that justify these acquisitions are unclear facing other regional priorities.

Though the issue of security perceptions of a State is a complex and delicate matter that sometimes is more suited for psychoanalysis than for diplomacy and defense, it would appear that, in the particular case of Latin America, conventional arms purchases would be more related with appearances or paralypsis than with any hypothesis of a concrete conflict.

No one could seriously think of an extra regional threat. The only one that could face that hypothesis is Argentina that has part of its territory under a colonial situation. And in that case, it made clear its intention to solve the sovereignty dispute through diplomacy. Consequently, it is one of the few countries of the region that has not made any arms purchases although, before an unsolved matter, it could easily justify it from a theoretical point of view.

If any State perceives an intraregional threat, the level and type of armaments in the acquisition process does not relate in any form with a wise hypothesis. The history of the region regarding the extent, length and scenarios of the armed clashes show how reduced the military use of such material is. Skirmishes like the one that was about to happen between Argentina and Chile are only conceivable within the absurdity of the dictatorships of that time. The same could be said today about the perils of a military conflict between Colombia and Venezuela. It would be absurd if it took place since there exist wide margins so as that the mutual accusations, independent on who might be right, might be solved reasonably within the diplomatic terrain.

These considerations do not pretend to undermine the importance of defense policies. They are only trying to point out that these policies should reflect the realities of the neighborhood and should ensure that the legitimate defense interest do not create unnecessary situations that affect the regional stability.

The spiral of arms purchases is often a Darwinian process where there will always be a technologically superior armament. Moreover, it is a proved fact that the main military powers reserve the monopoly of the last generation military material destabilizing nature.

The purchases announced by Chile, Brazil and Venezuela are very varied and important, both in number and quality of the equipments. However, as we can imagine in no case it relates to what is technically defined as last generation, not even Brazil’s acquisition of a nuclear propelled submarine, because the reactors that act as their driving force can be produced by a number of technologically capable States, potentially including Argentina.

Regarding aeronautics, the fifth and fourth generation aircrafts, the Su-30 or 35, the F-22, the Mig 29 or 35 or even the Eurofighter, are, for now, reserved for the exclusive use of the main powers and, in some cases, their allies. The Rafales or the F-18, on the other hand, are third generation and are already to the disposition of those willing to incur in the expenditure of the chronic replacement as it is the case of Brazil. What is really important is not the skeleton, but its orchestration. The same could be said about eh T72 tanks acquired by Venezuela from Russia that showed their limitations in Iraq. Here, as well, the electronic supply varies according to what the State acquires. That is why the escalations in the purchases always have a relative and ephemeral military value even so in the field of appearances.

What strengthens more the perception of security of States is transparency, confidence-building measures, regional integration and, mainly, democratic institutionalism. It is time to work more intensely in those fields and discourage the excessive arms purchases in order to allocate those funds to purposes more related to the region’s needs and to avoid falling into unnecessary militarist illusions as transient.

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