Title: Latin American military-civilian relations between World War II and the New World Order


Date: 01/04/1997
Language: english

LATIN AMERICAN MILITARY-CIVILIAN RELATIONS BETWEEN WORLD WAR II AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
THOUGHTS ON TRADITION AND CHANGE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Frederick M Nunn

I believe that tradition and ethos have a very important part to play in today"s modern armed forces. We have to be very careful because ethos once lost can take a very long time indeed to recover.

Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge GCB, 1996


Every era worth a name has a formative period. For the Cold War it was the first decade or so following World War II. Only a few perceived then what the half century ahead would be like; if they did so it was based on past experience. Now, five years after the end of the Cold War, we are passing through a new formative period. We find ourselves in the "post-Cold War," the early stages of what some have called a "New World Order", and we still perceive what lies ahead influenced by the experiences of the past.

We are products of our times, and our intellectual formation is in the hands of those educated by previous generations. It is ever thus. The past has an influence on us, the extent of which we may not be fully aware of. As it is with individuals, so it is with professions. Groups of individuals educated, trained, and organized for a specific purpose that is recognized and legitimized by society are possessed of an ethos, i.e. a group mentality, a world view - mentalité and Weltanschauung are the classic terms for this. Professions are the products of their times, and their formation is in the hands of professionals from previous generations. They are characterized both by tradition and change.

Professional military officers of the post-World War II quinquennium were both products of their times and inheritors of tradition. Their thought and self-perception reflect not only the times but their intellectual and professional formation - their professionalism. We know this from our reading of their literature: memoirs, political testimonials, official histories, and professional journals. [1] Latin American officers of the late 1940s and early 1950s reacted noticeably to the changed world around them based on their professional ethos. May this not be the case in the 1990s as well?

There is a striking similarity between the post-World War II and post-Cold War formative periods. In both cases dramatic events ended an era and made possible a new one whose definition would take some time. There is also a striking difference between these epochs. From a military intellectual standpoint, the contours of the era lying ahead were clearer in 1945, or even 1955: ideological conflict with cultural, economic, political, and social ramifications. In 1991 or 1996 the ideological contours were not so clear. A half century ago Latin American military leaders were more certain of their profession"s mission than they are today. The primary - but not the sole - reason for this is that reliance on the past then was less fraught with uncertainty than it is now.

In various published and presented works I have indicated the importance of professional thought and self-perception in the shaping and justification of political action in South America, and I have pointed out the effects of this action on the profession. [2] The lines that follow borrow from the methodological technique used in such works in order to demonstrate what it was that would shape interpretations of, and actions during, the Cold War - and might still do so after its termination. To do this I have selected from essays in professional journals which, I think, collectively portray the military mentalidad(e) in South America in the early stages of the Cold War, one forged by tradition but adaptable to change, and from recent essays from South America and elsewhere that bespeak a traditional mentality in the Southern Cone, and a changing one elsewhere.

The armed forces of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru (with armies in the van) are the most outstanding examples of Latin American professional militarism in the second half of this century. They were the chief (but not the only) recipients of military professionalism exported from Europe in the first half of the century. Their willingness and propensity to offer solutions to national problems (professional militarism) responded to the Cold War environment of their time, and were steeped in the learning and lore of the past (military professionalism). This past- present relationship is still significant.

Army officers in South America are shaped by history and tradition. They learn from the past. This was as true a half century ago as it is now. For example, a Revista Militar Brasileira article of 1954 recalled at length the days of the French military missions (1919-19é9). [3] This was more than an exercise in nostalgia. A century ago Brazilians and their continental neighbours sought to modernize and professionalize by bringing in Europeans. In each case innovation resulted in European-style armies in non-European settings becoming the norm. In all cases political involvement in the early twentieth century took on an ideological tinge, so that the dichotomy between democracy and totalitarianism that became part of the Cold War would be quite understandable to officers. They often saw democracy"s weaknesses as an entrée for leftist extremism.

This naturally led them to think of their profession as a bastion against communism - against what passed for democracy in some cases. They based much of their self-perception on what Germans had taught them prior to the Great War and on what they had learned from French instructors before and after the 1914-1918 conflict. Their mentors had read Vigny and Clausewitz, Goltz and Lyautey; they were contemporaries of De Gaulle and Seeckt. [4] Theirs was a rich tradition.

The democratic anarchy and looming marxist menace South American officers saw around them in the 1950s clashed with their sense of order, discipline and hierarchy. Some, like Argentina"s Lieutenant Colonel (S.R.) Roberto A. Wilkinson, saw themselves and their profession involved in a struggle to save Western culture and civilization. In his 1953 essay owing much to Hilaire Belloc"s The Crisis of Our Civilization, Vicar General Wilkinson blamed modern man"s plight on the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century liberalism, and Marxism. [5] From the sixteenth century onwards, Wilkinson argued, man had been deprived successively of Church, Christ and God by intellectual, ideological and political revolts against constituted authority. Only the Church (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church) and the army had the leadership ability and the spiritual qualities to restore integrity, morality, spirituality and harmony to Western civilization.

Traditional military thought and self-perception became inseparable from religion in the development of a professional mentalidad(e). With religion and nationalism fused to professionalism, the "spiritual" officer became the truest image of the patriot. This was a widely discussed idea in the early stages of the Cold War.

Back in 1948, for example, Peruvian Colonel Juan Mendoza Rodríguez lauded the Escuela Militar as his fatherland"s chief source of national unity, love of country, and democratic orientation. He stated that the army was "a synthesis of the national will, made up of wholesome men, formed in the academy of loyalty and duty." [6] Military education, South Americans would continue to tell each other, produced individuals whose values were based on tradition, men who were part of a historical struggle against anarchy, materialism, atheism, foreign influences; men who collectively symbolized nationalism. To be educated in a military school was to be exposed to the gift of leadership or command - don (dom) de mando. That not all citizens were capable of being so honoured became a widespread professional conviction.

The spiritual qualities of the military clashed with what Lieutenant Colonel Manuel A. Estol called a "malaise" rampant in post-war civilian society. There were not enough Quixotes anymore, he added. Argentine officers should allow themselves the luxury of emulating the ingenioso hidalgo. Officers, after all, led "spiritual and austere lives" like those led by medieval knights. Military men "aspired to moral, not material, compensation" for their efforts on behalf of the rest of society; they were living examples of the "honor, austerity, and disinterest" that characterized men of arms historically. [7] If only the world around them would permit them to be more quixotesque, he might have added. Officers would justify much of what they did in late twentieth-century South America in terms similar to Wilkinson"s and Estol"s.

The world around them was not much comfort to would-be Quixotes. In 1948 Peruvians had toppled another civilian president, this one elected with backing from the still dreaded Apristas. Chileans were witnessing an outlawed Communist Party vie with Socialists for control of the left; Argentines were coping with a controversial uniformed populist in the Casa Rosada. Brazilians were experimenting with democracy after fifteen years of authoritarian government, eight of them under the 1937-1945 corporatist "New State".

A decade later Argentines, Brazilians and Peruvians were again experimenting with civilian government. Peruvians would seize power again briefly in 1962, refining the process that began in 1948. Brazilians seized power in 1964, in the first of South America"s "institutional golpes". Chileans still watched the growth of the left. Argentines would be growing more impatient with civilian government, and would seize power in 1966, initiating the institutional process there. Peruvians were back in power two years later. Chileans took control of the government in 1973. In each of these countries disorder, corruption, ineffective civilian government, and military discontent were the norms, and military-civilian relations reflected it.

Through all these years, the professional thought and self-perception forged between 1890 and 1940, and manifest as an ethos in the literature of the early post-World War II years, would grow. Despite a US military presence, early twentieth-century Europeanization of the profession of arms would not fade away. Nor would visions of social, political and cultural roles for armies.

Increasingly in this century, South Americans saw obligatory military service - o povo fardado, la nación en armas (i.e., das Volk in Waffen, la nation armée) - as a nation-building device, a means of "preparation and instruction of all citizens for the hour of sacrifice", [8] in the words of one Brazilian officer. His concept of obligatory service differed little from that of other Latin Americans over the course of an entire century of professional development. History demonstrated the need for preparedness against external enemies; now internal enemies of cherished Western values and national sovereignty threatened South American fatherlands. National armies were uniquely prepared to save their fellow citizens from the collapse of their democratic experiments. Brazilians had this in mind, of course, in 1964.

In the second half of this century few institutions perceived the need for economic development more clearly than the military profession. Where development was the norm, in Europe and North America, say, military leaders expressed their views in ways that did not define institutional mentality. But in developing areas, officers often faulted civilian politics and government, as well as internal enemies, for the lack of development. Since early in the century, in fact, South American officers had argued that national defence was not possible without economic strength, so reiterations of this line merely continued a tradition. In the early stages of the Cold War, as part of professional thought and self-perception, this would serve to encourage political action in the name of national security.

Chile"s Major Benjamín Videla wrote in 1947, for example, that the army was the ideal institution for socio-economic development. Exploitation of natural resources for Chile"s - not foreigners" - benefit would be possible only if a national labour service were established permanently. Videla cited pre-World War II German schemes (Arbeitsdienstpflicht) as good examples for post-war Chileans to emulate. The twelve-month military service obligation could be lengthened by as much as twelve more months, thus providing Chile with renewable cadres of disciplined, skilled workers. These would constitute no threat to private enterprise, he insisted. [9] On the contrary, they would provide the country with a rich labour pool from which entrepreneurs could benefit. Videla"s ideas went nowhere, but they were consistent with army thinking on this important subject so soon after the end of a world conflict and in the initial stages of a new kind of struggle.

Not only could a conscript army help a country develop and defend its economic potential, but military service also fulfilled a social role. Among many examples of rôle social advocacy (the term was Lyautey"s and finds its way into military literature throughout Latin America), is the 1952 Peruvian essay, "La funciGn social del ejército". In this piece, published as an editorial, the author plumped for a military mandate to transform the "vegetating mass" that was Peruvian society into a literate, productive collectivity. The author claimed that an army was any country"s most civic-minded, "national" democratic, representative institution. Military service educated, trained, civilized, and "nationalized" all men. Military service could insulate the lower classes from political extremism. The army"s mission was a misión civilizadora. The extraordinary thing about this essay is that it was first published in 1933. Its reappearance nineteen years later is testimony to the perduration of traditional professionalism and its adaptability to Cold War conditions. [10] Application of its theories on a grand scale characterized the 1968 Revolución de las Fuerzas Armadas del Perú.

Tradition and history, culture conflict and nationalism, spirituality and vocation, social and economic roles - these all permeated the South American military ethos in the early Cold War years. They have permeated official publications since the founding of military journals to this day. References over the years to political action are based in part on these values. Despite resort to seizure of power in every decade, references to politics have always been guarded, often after-the-fact justifications, sometimes few and far between in a national context. One of the most direct, hence controversial, references appeared in Chile over twenty years before the rising of 11 September 1973 that toppled Socialist Salvador Allende.

In Ningún cuerpo armado puede deliberar, a title based on a clause in the 1925 Constitution, Captain (and lawyer) Fernando Montaldo Bustos argued that deliberación was necessary if orders were to be properly carried out. If the Constitution meant that officers were not supposed to think, he reasoned, then it should be amended. If officers had no right to deliberate the unconstitutionality of political or governmental actions, then they had fewer rights than civilians. No professional officer could fulfill his duties to state and society without the ability and the right to deliberate. [11] Twenty years later Montaldo"s colleagues were deliberating heatedly on the unconstitutionality of Allende"s marxist-coalition government.

Now, what I have offered above is but a sampler for the early Cold War years. The samples are representative in every claim and detail. They are a distillation of professional thought and self-perception, of the professional ethos. There are hundreds more examples both from the countries selected and from others in the region. I have not struggled to find evidence; I have limited myself to a minimum of citations to buttress the argument stated at the outset of the essay: South American army officers - other Latin Americans as well - would be confronting the Cold War as well as new institutional demands and orientations with an ethos already shaped. In the case of the South Americans this ethos had a half century and more of shaping. Not all Latin Americans boasted a European cachet, but all relied on some national tradition and historical role in defining the profession.

Every profession has its lore. For what we call the profession of arms this lore consists of trans-generational knowledge, much of which is the product of the military mind. In South America officers transmit this lore from promoción to promoción, promoção to promoção in classrooms, in practice, and in print. Vigny and Clausewitz, Goltz and Lyautey, De Gaulle and Seeckt all contributed to this lore. So did the South Americans cited herein. So have others like Benjamín Rattenbach, Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, Nelson Werneck Sodré, and Tobías Barros Ortiz, [12] now legendary South American military authors whose careers and works span most of the twentieth century.

South Americans of the early Cold War years read each other"s works, and would continue to do so. [13] They had read the Europeans. And these once had been the beneficiaries of military lore first set down centuries ago in works emphasizing a spiritual, missionary or social role such as Ramón Llull"s Liber militiae saecularis (1275); Leonardo Bruni"s De militia (1421); Erasmus"s Enchiridion militis Christiani (1503); and Francesco Sansovino"s Origine de cavalieri (1566). [14] Professional thought and self-perception were no modern phenomena a half century ago, hence should not be viewed as such today. Convictions that men in uniform are uniquely qualified to act in the name of the society of which they are a part, yet are apart from, have characterized military lore for centuries, not mere decades. They still do. The question is not for how long but under what circumstances and within what kind of military- civilian relationship. An answer to that question depends on the relationships between tradition and change arising from the post-Cold War paradigm.

This new era, called by some the New World Order, is a yet undefined paradigm in which civilians and military alike search again for certainties in their relations with each other. For four decades the Cold War and US military hegemony had made for a relative balance between the two sectors in Latin America. Indeed, in most of the "Unwest," i.e. that vast portion of the earth beyond the sphere of NATO and direct US influence, the military and civilians dealt with each other most obviously through politics and control of governments. Social and economic relations, cultural relations, too, were more in the background, but were nonetheless defined by the Cold War paradigm.

In Latin America, "Western" but less developed, therefore unique, relations between 1945 and 1990 were carried on most overtly in shifts of power from civilian to military and back again, with intermittent stops in between. These shifts and stops culminated in what I have called the "time of the generals", the quarter century or so beginning in 1964. During this time the major historical military powers of South America were under military or military-sanctioned rule. Most of the rest of the region also endured military experiments in governance.

Sudden termination of the Cold War did not cause an end to military interest in Latin American politics any more than had the end of World War II. Indeed, nearly a decade before the Berlin Wall tumbled down in 1989, the signing of the Paris accords of 1990 "officially ended" the "War," and the Persian Gulf conflict of 1991 ushered in the "Order", the Latin American military had begun to cede power to civilians in one of the shifts just mentioned. There should be no tolerance of proleptic fallacies regarding the end-of-world ideological conflict (cause) and restoration of civilian rule (effect) in Latin America.

The end of the Cold War did take the professional military by surprise - more than the termination of World War II had done. Its suddenness deprived them of their now traditional raison d"être: defence of the patria against the sinister forces of the internationalist "red menace". Within the space of a few years civilian political systems (all putatively democratic, of course) were relieved of the stigma of being "carriers" of subversion owing to tolerance of extremist opinions, antidemocratic opportunities, and observance of human rights - to one degree or another, of course. Democratic polities were thus no longer threatened by Marxism-Leninism in its traditional form, and the military could be viewed as something less than a bastion against a threat no longer perceived. Nationalism was no longer associated with protectionism and import-substitution policies. Cultural importations were no longer linked to subversion of national values - at least not by civilians eager to get on with business and government.

All this encouraged the military to adopt a precautionary stance in the early 1990s, as civilians everywhere began asking questions about the need to maintain costly national security mechanisms based on a collapsed paradigm that had become irrelevant to a present still being defined. The question that urgently confronts military and civilian is: Will relations in the future be anything like what we already know, or will they take on a new formí This is a question that needs to be attended to by policy makers and military professionals, and it is being asked in one form or another throughout the world. [15]

âBearing in mind Nils Bohr"s oft-repeated aphorism that "prediction, especially when it concerns the future, is risky", [16] I now want to turn to thoughts on issues important to the future of military-civilian relations in Latin America in the post-Cold War/formative New World Order period. Whereas specific reference is to Argentina, Brazil and Chile in the last decade, I also want to propose some hypotheses via extrapolation and comparative textual analysis of military literature originating in these countries and from Bulgaria and Canada - two purposely selected examples from beyond the region - for Latin America as part of the "world system". [17] Variation of terms available for reference to what remains of the pre-twenty-first century era reflects what I trust is judicious uncertainty as to its exact characteristics as a historical paradigm.

Latin America has been defined as much by what it is not as by what it has been since the late fifteenth century - by contrast and comparison with the rest of the Atlantic World. With respect to military-civilian relations, Latin America is certainly not Europe and probably never will be. Nor since 1945 did a successful replication of the US military-civilian relations model occur there. But Latin America has not been identical enough to other non-Western areas to be conveniently lumped with them - beyond theoretical and comparative schemes.

Important to the future of military-civilian relations in the region is the fact that if it is no longer a bastion against anarchy or Marxism, much of the Latin American military does remain the last bastion of old-style continental European military professionalism. No other part of the world retains such affinities for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European culture. As this kind of bastion, the military profession in Argentina, Brazil, Chile (and Peru) still clings as tenaciously to tradition - to a selective historical view, to an idealized past - as it did after World War II. Ideas of armies being "purest images of the state" and "nations in arms", of vocation and calling, and of the "gift" of command still pervade South American military literature. Such ideas have lost most (not all) of their currency in Western Europe and North America, where sociocultural change coupled with the 1989-1991 shift have led military writers to ponder the future with less attention to the past.

In Latin America a kind of nationalistic Darwinism based on national, not natural, selection still characterizes a historic struggle for regional influence between nations that have different degrees of fitness for adaptation to times of change. The end of the Cold War may yet revive this kind of nationalism in Eurasia and the Balkans too. Western Europe and its transatlantic NATO partners appear immune to a recurrence of the international rivalries characteristic of a century ago. But Germans still do worry about Russia"s ambitions and frustration, Russians fear a powerful united Germany, and Christians again fight Moslems in the Balkans. Religious and ethnic conflicts mark military-civilian and international relations in Africa and Asia.

A historical need for threats to national survival is noticeable in the Western hemisphere beyond Latin America. The history of the United States, for example, is characterized by the need for an other, a counter-definition: a frontier full of human barriers to civilization and culture, European monarchy, the Central Powers, the Axis (including Japan), the world communist conspiracy in its various manifestations, the disorder of the New World Order. This same disorder weighs upon Latin American military thinkers as they ponder their relations with civilians and foreign powers. It could conceivably encourage them to perceive new threats to national survival, threats of a non-ideological nature.

So Western Europeans ride the new wave"s foamy crest, with the Gulf War, Bosnia, NATO"s as yet undefined mission, Russia"s as yet undecipherable potential, and the US"s ambivalence in confronting the new international alignments making the ride all the more interesting. Europeans have moved farther from thinking of themselves as leaders and closer to seeing officers as "man-managers" than have South Americans. [18] North Americans are somewhere in the middle. Beruf and Rittertum, rôle social and mission civilisatrice have given way to career path, unionization, and managerial skills in those countries that once inspired Latin American uniformados to strive rapturously to achieve don (dom) de mando. These are a few of the contrasts between former mentors and pupils that need to be taken into account.

All the newness of the last few years notwithstanding, the thought and self-perception of the officer corps still retain a great deal of lo tradicional in South America. And so my first hypothesis is this: Professional military thought and self-perception will retain much their traditional essence in the face of the need for innovation and modernization, new civilian regimes, and an international scene devoid of the confrontational style imposed after World War II. It will take more than what we see transpiring in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, I think, to relegate the past to the past the way it has been relegated in Western Europe. This was the case during the Cold War, and I do not yet see evidence that it should not continue thus.

There was a time when national security doctrines dominated military-civilian relations. Their validity is now, however, bound to international security - stability, peace, economic growth, all associated with the status quo of the New World Order - in a non-ideological way. But the strength of Western European and North American democratic institutions is not matched by those of South America or Eurasia. This brings to mind at once a second hypothesis: National security doctrines will continue receiving attention based on traditional priorities and definitions in South America and Eurasia more than they will in Western Europe and North America. In Europe historical concepts of security as well as Eurasian events of the present will enforce a blending of national and international security policies more intense than the New World Order can enforce in South America. [19] I think this is easily explainable.

In Argentina, Brazil and Chile the military still sees itself as apart from as well as a part of national society, with emphasis on the former. In their usual low-pressure manner Brazilians apply the intrinsic value of the military to the achievement of independence and republican status, to the defence of the free world in World War II, and the maintenance of Brazilian sovereignty during the Cold War. Army authors emphasize these ideas.

For a decade and more, chastened and chagrined Argentines have borne up under the fallout from the Falklands/Malvinas fiasco, the guerra sucia, budget reductions, an end to conscription, and role redefinition. But there will always be the likes of Muhammad Alí Seineldín, and democracy is still on trial. The post-guerra sucia presidencies have not yet provided enough "insurance" for the future. Increasing internationalization - of the economy, of culture, and of politics - has an effect on society. Still in search of their identity and struggling for a new relationship to a culture and a society in flux, Argentina"s armed forces are a haven for old-fashioned nationalism. The army is a good example of this.

Across the Andes, nationalism shows no signs of abating among those who proudly wear the uniform. All the old geopolitical issues crop up in military literature, just as they do in Argentina. Chileans assert a tutelary role based on constitutionalized national security functions rooted in Cold War thinking, and they did leave government before paradigm"s end, after all. The epiphenomenonal éclat of 1973-1990 economic policy and its post-1990 direction does little to detract from military assertions of having led the way in modernizing the country. The military"s stake in the present, thus, is a big one. And that is just the point: the armed forces wield influence still. This being the case, Chilean uniformados view the system as their creation, as something in which they are duty-bound to participate. Therefore they should have a say, they believe, in maintaining Chile"s national security long after they had helped define it under the old paradigm. Theirs is a strong argument.

As observed, military-civilian relations in Latin America have rarely been compared properly or precisely to those of Africa or Asia, somewhat more effectively to those of North America and Western Europe. Whereas the military has more often than not been caught up in "civilization clashes" in Africa and Asia, it is modernization per se that has affected Latin Americans. This means that the focus on national security can be sharper, more intense. Lack of intensity in the clash of civilizations (Latin Americans being within the Judeo-Christian tradition, after all) ought not to be seen as a mitigating factor, but as an intensifying one where Darwinistic nationalism is politicized. US-Latin American relations stand as evidence, especially those with Southern Cone countries. Indeed modernization, as much as it appeals to Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean militares, can also be perceived as tantamount to destabilization of "national values", i.e. of those values that have assumed traditional status in the eyes of the military.

Latin American military authors have a sense of history that is not always in synchronization with that of civilians, be they historians, politicians, or no. To the military, history is cataclysmic: conquest, independence, pacification of indigenous groups, wars with limitrophe states, struggles against internal enemies often abetted from without. History is a Darwinistic struggle for geopolitical survival of nation-states; governments and administrations are transitory phenomena. References to the institutional heritage from the Cold War era are few, those to the pre-war or European age of professionalism more plentiful. [20] A selective view of history will continue, I think, suggesting a third hypothesis.

The New World Order will force Latin Americans, South American military professionals in particular, to revise their vision of the past in order to take into account the recent past, for this is now the status qo ante. Revisionism is serious stuff. For miliary professionals it is often agonizing. In the face of civilian political systems, the new international situation, and economic and cultural transnationalism it promises to continue so. Military opinion makers may be led toward rediscovery of an idealized past via revisionist views of the recent one. This may lead them, in turn, to re-examine their relations with the US. [21] Rediscovery of an idealized past, one in which European professionalism played such a major role, may revalidate old ideas, the very ones concomitantly being discarded by Western Europeans.

âIn future assessments of military-civilian relations, I think it will behove scholars and policy makers to carefully think about the historical perspectives they use. For example, we are approaching the end of the twentieth century now; [22] we are about a century past the golden age of European military professionalism, associated often with other major national achievements in South America; about three quarters of a century away from the assumption of a hemispheric hegemonic role by the US; about a half century from the assumption of military tutelage; we are merely thirty years away from the beginning of the time of the generals, eight years away from the inauguration of Chile"s first freely elected president since 1970, five years from the Columbian quincentennial.

Ahead of us, in fewer than a handful of years, lies the millennium, and in less than a decade the bicentennial of the Latin American independence movements. These are historic times in which national and hemispheric reference points have the potential of becoming as telling as are the events between 1989 and 1992 that have shaped our new paradigm. It will be interesting to see just which events figure most significantly as hitos and marcos in South American military appraisals of relations with the civilian sector, international relations, national security, and the mission and needs of the profession. Reliance on an idealized past and fear of an uncertain future to make an uncomfortable present more tolerable - or justify actions to make it more acceptable - may well continue to characterize military literature. This would not be much of a change from the Cold War era.

We have as yet no corpus of literature that serves to define a contemporary mentalidad(e). But we need to start somewhere, so let us look at works published in military journals in the last ten years or so in order to see what evidence there is. In this way we may survey the ground ahead, mark a path to the future study of military-civilian relations in Latin America, at least in South America. I want to do this by borrowing again from the methodological technique described at the outset of this essay: content analysis, in an international professional context of selected recent essays published in military journals, three from South America and, for the sake of world context, one from a Western hemisphere NATO member, and one from Europe beyond NATO.

The closing of the Cold War paradigm has compelled armed forces, especially those from the Euro-Atlantic world, to rethink internal and external roles. In Latin America internal roles have led to tutelary ones, cut short by the return to civilian control of government in the 1980s. Argentines made the return trip in 198é, a year after they had returned from the Falklands/Malvinas, and seventeen years after the initiation of the institutional golpe process (1966-1973, 1976-1993) that plunged the country into the guerra sucia. No Latin American military establishment has played a more pronounced internal, or a more unsatisfying tutelary role. But just a few years after relinquishing power, if they had not known better, readers of the army"s Revista Militar might have wondered if all had changed.

For writers were still urging officers to think of themselves as members of monastic orders, telling them they really ought to be constitutionally empowered to participate in internal matters, advising them that "internationalism" leads to devaluation of the armed forces, warning them that material progress devalued religiosity (here hewing to the Hilaire Belloc-influenced line introduced to the military years before), encouraging them to be wary of subversive elements in their midst that sought to destroy "historical truth", and reminding them that the army was the essence of the fatherland. [23] By the early 1990s all this was cast in less strident terms, but officers could still read of their indispensability with regard to regional conflict, the negative effects of too much live media coverage of their activities, their comparability with other officer corps, and their primary role as guarantors of Argentina"s historical continuity. In short, despite democratization and the new international climate, Argentines still read about themselves the way their superiors and predecessors had done decades before.

Just two years after the Argentines relinquished power to politicians, their Brazilian colleagues ended a negotiating process that provided for transition to civilian rule. Their reputation tarnished by their own conduct in government and their country"s economic uncertainties, Brazilians were, nevertheless, more highly regarded than post-1982 Argentines. Brazilian military essays reflect this. From 1985 onwards readers of the Revista do Exército Brasileiro were treated again to homages to World War II"s Força Expedicion)ria Brasileira, recapitulations of the basic attributes of the military profession and the importance of vocation, arguments for better reserve training, definitions of the differences between leadership (chefia) and man-management, homages to Tiradentes and heroes of the Independence movement, and still more homages to leaders of the 1889 Republican overthrow of the Empire. [24] To the end of the Cold War, then, the emphasis was clearly on history and the profession, but without the bluntness with which Argentines discussed these important subjects.

About a month after the Berlin Wall had come down, elections in Chile gave the presidency to a leader of the centre-left, and three months later he became president for a four-year term. Elsewhere I have dealt in depth with the Chilean military response to the 1980s and democratization, [25] and here I merely want to note its coincidence with those 1989-1991 events that propelled us all into "future think" with barely time enough to appreciate the present. The points made with blunt sophistication in the Memorial del Ejército de Chile were that the armed forces helped to create the conditions under which the national economy could expand and compete, that the polity could shift to civilian control, and that society could benefit from both political and economic change. Chileans may not have expected the results of the 1988 plebiscite, but they have indeed taken pride in having participated in the transition to a political system they themselves helped to shape. And having done so, Chilean uniformados emphasize in their recent writings fulfilment of their mission, their continuing value to society and state, their historical role in creating and defending Chile, their technological expertise, and their value as guarantors of traditional national values. [26] Chileans are convinced of the value of their interactive and tutelary role.

Far away from Buenos Aires, Brasília and Santiago, caught between a disintegrating USSR to the east and Yugoslavia"s holocaust to the west, Bulgarians seek to democratize their country, depoliticize their army, and stabilize their foreign relations. The legacy of ideological control over defence policy and the military profession, coupled with the newness of theoretical democracy, not to mention its practice, make for interesting times in Sofia"s power corridors - and urge comparisons and contrasts with what is going on in Latin America. The Bulgarian Military Review, a multilingual publication since 1993, provides us with a view of issues that every well-read Bulgarian officer should be familiar with. Officers and civilian leaders alike stress Bulgaria"s readiness for participation in the Partnership for Peace, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, peacekeeping initiatives, NATO, and regional (i.e. Balkan) agreements. The army"s historical role as defender of sovereignty, the need for modernization of military education, relations with Russia and Serbia, and the liabilities of democratization also grace the pages of the Review. [27] Bulgarians are well aware of the dangers inherent in reliance on external forces and linkages for the wherewithal to achieve, and for the legitimization of both democracy and civilian control over the military, something that makes them comparable to South Americans. Absent for obvious reasons in the internationalist effervescence of the early 1990s, military nationalism of the South American type may become a result of too much New World Order too fast in democratizing Bulgaria and neighbouring states. National and international factors make Bulgarian military-civilian relations worth monitoring.

It would be both foolhardy and unscholarly to assume such for Canada based on the same criteria. Full participants in collective security mechanisms of the last half century, major partners in NATO, Canadians have neither an authoritarian nor totalitarian legacy, nor a record of political action to influence their appraisals of relations with civilians. Indeed, while readers of Canadian Defence Quarterly know that to "stand guard for thee" always has its limitations, the role of the armed forces is principally one of regional and collective security. Without them there can be no national security. This is closer to the Bulgarian view than to that of the Argentines, Brazilians or Chileans. The Canadian view of present and future is comparable to NATO partners in its commitment to multinational action, long-term planning, preparedness, military-civilian interaction as regards defence and security policy formulation, concern for overlapping jurisdictions in peacekeeping activities (e.g. UN and NATO relations in Bosnia), Canada"s international responsibility as a peacekeeper beyond Europe, leadership and man-management, and opportunities arising from the unfolding international scene. [28] Canada"s is an overlooked hemispheric military-civilian relationship, one that may prove more acceptable to Latin Americans in the future than it now seems.

Based on this selective initial glimpse of recent military literature it is easily as possible to forecast (not predict) the future of military-civilian relations in parts of Latin America now as it was back in the 1940s and 1950s. If Argentina, Brazil and Chile are in any way examples, we may expect perduration of military nationalism (akin to, but not identical to, the Darwinistic nationalism of the past) under varying circumstances. South Americans, especially, will be wary of too much internationalism too fast. Some may relate first to regional and domestic exigencies, only then to extraregional opportunities. Regional co-operation may be seen as less important than national security in new guises. The revivification of early twentieth-century sociopolitical dilemmas in a new international setting encourages this, I think. Extracontinental peacekeeping activities will be popular insofar as they do not strain national defence budgets - it is a long way from the Southern Cone to the Balkans without outside help. Attraction to tutelary roles in some countries may lessen for the nonce, but it could revive in the face of political problems which are unsolvable in a democratic context.

Once each of the four most widely discussed experiments in professional militarism (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru) has been succeeded by two freely conceived constitutional transmittals of authority (i.e. following Chile"s in 2000) we should be able to adequately compare and contrast Latin American military thought and self-perception representative of the post-Cold War era. For now, military-civilian relations in most of Latin America languish somewhere between those characteristic of NATO"s Canada and one of democracy"s neophytes, Bulgaria. In the case of the Southern Cone countries discussed herein, this begs a fourth and final hypothesis: It appears much has changed in relations between the military profession and civilian society, but perhaps not much has changed after all. Or, as Antoine de Saint Exupéry said in the early stages of the Civil War in Spain: "Rien n"avait changé, tout était changé." [29] It will be some time yet before the New World Order becomes fully paradigmatic for Latin American uniformados the way the Cold War used to be. In the meantime their outlook on military-civilian relations shows superficial signs of profound change. Tradition and ethos have not vanished from professional military thought and self-perception. Their disappearance might be more dangerous to democracy than their retention.


Source:
UNISA Latin American Report
Vol. 13 nº1, January-June 1997
UNISA Centre For Latin American Studies