Latin American National Security Doctrines: Hard and Softline Themes

Armed Forces & Society

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 1989, Pages 411-429

  Pion Berlin, David ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84970660522     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X8901500305     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. This position can be found in the following important works on the subject: Joseph Comblin, The Church and the National Security State (New York: Orbis Books, 1979); Genaro Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico de los militares (Santiago, Chile: Centro de investigaciones socioeconómicas, 1981); Roberto Calvo, “The Church and the Doctrine of National Security,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 21 (February 1979): pp. 69-88; Alfred Stepan, “The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion,” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal and J. Samuel Fitch, 2d ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986), pp. 134-150; Jorge A. Tapia Valdez, El Ter-rorismo de estado: La Doctrina de la seguridad nacional en el cono sur (Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1980). Though this list is not exhaustive, these scholars have been acknowledged as leading interpreters of the NSD.
2. See George A. Lopez, “National Security Ideology as an Impetus to State Violence and State Terror,” in Governmental Violence and Repression: An Agenda for Research, ed. Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987); and also Comblin, The Church and the National Security State.
3. The sparsity of works on this subject has also been noted by John Markoff and Silvio R. Duncan Baretta, “What We Don't Know About the Coups: Observations on Recent South American Politics,” Armed Forces & Society 12, 2 (Winter 1986): pp. 230-231; Stanley E. Hilton, “The Brazilian Military: Changing Strategic Perceptions and the Question of Mission,” Armed Forces & Society 13, 3 (Spring 1987): p. 329.
4. See authors mentioned in footnotes 1 and 2.
5. For further elaboration of these causal elements, see David Collier, “Synthesis and Priorities for Future Research,” in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, ed. David Collier (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); Guillermo O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Institute for International Studies, 1979); and Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979).
6. See Lopez, “National Security Ideology.”
7. Joseph Comblin, “La Doctrina de la seguridad nacional,” Mensaje 25 (January/February 1976): pp. 96-104; Tapia Valdez, El Terrorismo.
8. Kjellen's views can be found in Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico, and in Golbery Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica de Brasil (Mexico: El Cid Editor, 1978).
9. See Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica, p. 47. Kjellen took exception with the founder of geopolitics, Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who said that the organic metaphor is imperfect and must be so, since states include individuals whose existence could never be reduced to a dependent part of an organism. A contemporary proponent of Kjellen's strict organic view is Gen. Augusto Pinochet; see his book Geopolítica (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Nacional Gabriela Mistral, 1968).
10. Geopolitics forms the link between the organic state and the NSD. The importance of geopolitics is underscored by the frequency with which the Latin American military invokes the concept and relates it to security themes. Arriagada Herrera makes a similar point in El Pensamiento politico, pp. 116-120, 124-127. Also see various issues of Geopolítica (Argentina), Política y seguridad (Chile), and books on the subject by Augusto Pinochet, Juan Guglialmelli, Golbery Do Cuoto e Silva, and Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, to name a few.
11. See Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico, p. 122.
12. Res., pp. 117-118; Comblin, “La Doctrina,” p. 98.
13. Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica de Brasil, p. 48.
14. Gustavo Leigh, “Discurso en la facultad de derecho de la U.C.,” Revista de la fuerza aerea de Chile 33 (April/June 1974): p. 9.
15. Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico, pp. 203-207.
16. Tapia Valdez, El Terrorismo, pp. 117-119.
17. Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds. The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), p. 177.
18. The softline state is captured in Peruvian literature, particularly that of the CAEM. For an excellent summation of some of the religious origins of the organic state, see Stepan, State and Society, pp. 26-55.
19. Republica de Chile, Declaración de principios del gobierno de Chile (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Nacional Gabriela Mistral, 1974), p. 15.
20. Osiris Villegas, Políticas y estrategías para el desarrollo y la seguridad nacional (Buenos Aires: Editorial Pleamar, 1969), pp. 31, 48.
21. Villegas, Políticas y estrategías, p. 48.
22. Loveman and Davies, Politics of Antipolitics, p. 211.
23. Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica de Brasil, pp. 33-34.
24. Cited in Lopez, “National Security Ideology.”
25. President of the Republic, General Augusto Pinochet, “Address Delivered on Third Anniversary of the Government,” 11 September 1976, p. 46.
26. Roger Trinquier, Modem Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), p. 49.
27. Villegas, Políticas y estrategías, pp. 104-108.
28. Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 149.
29. Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, Ensayos (Lima: Ministerio de Guerra, 1974), p. 156.
30. Res., p. 118.
31. Philip L. Kelly, “Geopolítical Themes in the Writings of General Carlos de Meira Mattos of Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (November 1984): p. 449.
32. Res., pp. 455-458.
33. Villegas, Políticas y estrategías, p. 109.
34. In his 284-page book on security and development, Villegas stresses the objective perils, devoting only 3 pages to the topic of Communist subversives: see Villegas, Políticas y estrategías.
35. Some of these specific conditions are mentioned in Res., p. 107.
36. Comblin, “La Doctrina,” p. 99. The term was first used by Gen. Erick von Ludendorff, La Guerra total (La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial Renacimiento, 1941).
37. Res., p. 99.
38. Here, Do Cuoto e Silva, in Geopolítica de Brasil, p. 178, quotes Ludendorff quite critically.
39. For more on this, see Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico, pp. 195-196.
40. Jorge R. Videla, “Directive 504/77,” Diario del Juicio 28 (3 December 1985): p. 530.
41. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87.
42. Clausewitz, quoted in Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories and His Times (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 380.
43. Donald Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Em: U.S. Doctrine and Performance from 1950 to Present (New York: Free Press, 1977).
44. Res. Another important source of this idea was the manual used by the U.S. Army itself: Department of the Army, Field Manual 31-16: Counterguerrilla Operations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1967).
45. For instance, Liddell Hart's thoughts on strategy are cited numerous times in Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica de Brasil.
46. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Strategy of Indirect Approach (London: Faber and Faber, 1941); Andre Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy, trans. R. H. Barry (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 24. Moving away from the classic yet constricted definition of strategy as the art of employing military forces, Beaufre, in An Introduction, broadened the definition to the “art of applying force so that it makes the most effective contribution towards achieving the ends set by political policy” (p. 22).
47. See Jarrín, Ensayos, p. 101.
48. Beaufre, An Introduction, p. 125.
49. Do Cuoto e Silva refers to this form of strategy in Geopolítica de Brasil, pp. 181-184.
50. The strategic pyramid is detailed in Beaufre, An Introduction, pp. 30-31.
51. Do Cuoto e Silva, Geopolítica de Brasil, p. 182)
52. Res., p. 178.
53. Jarrín, Ensayos, p. 182.
54. Strike activity is computed from data found in Elizabeth Jelin, “Conflictos laborales en la Argentina: 1973-1976,” Estudios sociales 9 (Buenos Aires: CEDES, 1977), p. 48, and Arturo Fernandez, Las Prácticas sociales del sindicalismo (1976-1982) (Buenos Aires: Centro editor de America Latina, 1985), pp. 140-141. On military intervention, also see Fernandez, Las Prácticas sociales, pp. 111-112.
55. Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 66, 182-193.
56. Res., pp. 254-255.
57. Col. Mario Horacio Orsolini is quoted in Arriagada Herrera, El Pensamiento politico, p. 186.
58. See Henning and Korholz, Introducción a la Geopolítica (Buenos Aires: Editorial Pleamar, 1977), pp. 226-230.
59. See David Pion-Berlin, “The National Security Doctrine, Military Threat Perception and the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina,” Comparative Political Studies 21 (October 1988): pp. 382-407.
60. Loveman and Davies, Politics of Antipolitics, p. 193.
61. Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 47-54.
62. For the direct influence of the Economic Commission for Latin America and CAEM on the military, see Jane S. Jaquette, “Revolution by Fiat: The Context of Policymaking in Peru,” Western Political Quarterly 25 (December 1972): pp. 648-666; Victor Villanueva, El CAEM y la revolución de la fuerza armada (Lima: Campodonico Ediciones, 1972).
63. A point confirmed in Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, pp. 48-54.