UNASUR founds a Center of Strategic Studies of Defense
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The director of the new South American Center for Strategic Defense Studies, Alfredo Forti, speaks at the Center's inauguration.
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On May 27, 2011, the South American Defense Council (SADC) presented its Constitutive Treaty at an event in Buenos Aires hosted by Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In attendance were the General Secretary of UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), María Emma Mejía, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, and the defense ministers of all UNASUR member countries. The SADC, whose pro-tempore presidency is currently held by Peru, was created in 2008 with the aim of consolidating South America as a zone of peace, creating a South American “defense identity,” and generating consensus to strengthen regional defense cooperation.
At the official event, President Fernández stated that “defense” is not only military; on the contrary, in her view, the primary defense of a country is the economic development that allows for the social inclusion of all its citizens. The military part, then, should accompany this. As an example, she reminded everyone of the role the armed forces played in Argentina’s development by creating state companies that produced strategic equipment and materials.
In addition, the Argentine President stressed that the SADC is the initial step in the creation of defense organisms that seek to preserve natural resources. In effect, Fernández emphasized that since natural resources will be a key strategic issue in the 21st century, defense mechanisms will have to be created to defend water, oil, gas and arable land coveted by other nations.
She also pointed out that the great powers have always been paternalistic towards developing countries, “telling us how to solve conflicts,” when in reality South America has been able to face and solve its own problems.
Fernández’s comments were echoed at a later event held that same afternoon to launch the Center of Strategic Studies of Defense (CEED for its Spanish acronym), which attained definitive status after the SADC’s Constitutive Treaty’s presentation that morning. The CEED was introduced by Argentina’s defense minister, Arturo Puricelli, to an audience that included the defense ministers of the region and María Emma Mejía. The CEED will depend of the SADC and will be established in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It will be headed by Alfredo Forti, current Secretary for Strategy and Military Affairs of Argentina’s Defense Ministry. Article 12 of the CEED Statute maintains that it will be made up of up to two delegates from each member country of the SADC, appointed by their respective ministries of defense.
Puricelli and Forti addressed the main goals of the center, as stipulated in the Statute. Some central points can be taken from their presentations. First, the CEED will produce analysis and discussion of common elements to build a shared South American view in defense matters. In this sense, it will work to identify challenges, risk factors and threats, opportunities and relevant scenarios for defense and regional and global security.
Second, it will promote the exchange of information and analysis on regional and international defense dynamics and situations.
Third, the center will aim to articulate a shared vision that allows joint approaches to defense and regional security issues, challenges, risk factors and threats, opportunities and previously identified scenarios, so that the South American countries can adopt joint regional positions in multilateral defense forums. The challenge here, according to Jose Manuel Ugarte, will be to try to unify the conceptual divergences about, and different approaches to, defense and regional security that prevail among all the member countries.
Puricelli added that the idea is for the center to be a generator of regional strategic thinking, placing diagnoses and other products at member countries’ disposal. Furthermore, Argentina’s defense minister stated that the Center will help build a South American identity in terms of defense. Likewise, Forti stressed that the center will be the first permanent and collective body of the continent’s twelve defense systems, created to study, analyze and propose to the SADC and UNASUR policies pertaining to a genuine, solely South American, geo-strategic thinking.
Unasur’s Secretary General, former Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia, also spoke at the event. She indicated that until recently, the region depended on others for its defense doctrine. She added that bringing transparency to military expenditures, implementing confidence-building policies, and having a democratic clause (requiring members to be democracies) are all important contributions to world peace, which will help to define South America’s own doctrine.
Following President Fernández, Puricelli and Forti discussed natural resources in defense terms. Puricelli stated that in light of the growing global scarcity of natural resources, and considering that South America is a huge reserve of such resources, the challenge is to provide capacities so that the region’s defense instruments are in a condition to protect them. Forti added to this that the abundance of strategic natural resources, an immeasurable wealth in biodiversity, water, energy, food and strategic minerals, is what defines South America in the world. Quoting an expert on natural resources, Forti explained that for those states that have natural resources, it is strategic to have control over them while for those states dependent on such resources it is strategic to assure access to them.
In light of this, speakers insisted that it is important for the CEED to address the resource issue, because talking about the region’s capacities and potentialities as nations and as a region cannot be done without addressing natural resources’ strategic value and implications for defense. Forti noted that sources of information on this are currently found overseas and not within the region; they are governmental institutions, multilateral agencies and private organisms in places like London, New York, Stockholm, Washington and Beijing.
The ideas exposed at these events indicate that UNASUR and SADC are proving to be a dynamic engine for South American integration and cooperation. This, especially in defense and security, is a goal worth pursuing and crucial to avoid armed conflicts. In that sense, the SADC and its scholarly center seem to be adequate steps in that direction.
However, South America has had difficulty in the past carrying through with integration schemes and achieving permanent, lasting regional institutions. Can it be different this time? For that to happen, political will and resources are needed. South America seems to be at a good moment, both economically and politically, to achieve this.
It is also worth noting that, although the approach taken to present the CEED contained a hint of anti-imperialism (whether against the US or against the European countries), it is still commendable that one of its goals is to create independent organisms and independent and original thinking. It is a fact that for years, the realm of defense and security studies has mainly been dominated by first-world countries. Hence, it is an important objective that South America develops its own thinking and doctrine on defense and regional security.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that the natural resource issue was a major and recurring theme on that day in Buenos Aires. South America seems to consider that future conflicts may arise because of natural resource scarcity. Given the wealth in natural resources that the countries in this region have, it seems appropriate that they are thinking along these lines. On the other hand, this can also be indicative of the absence in the region of more traditional threats and conflicts. Either way, studying this issue is a positive thing; militarizing the natural resource issue is not. Hopefully, the CEED will succeed in building knowledge on how to avoid – and not to prepare militarily for – conflicts over natural resources.