Civil-Military Affairs and Security Institutions in the Southern Cone: The Sources of Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Cooperation

This paper analyzes the conditions in which the governments of Argentina and Brazil founded security institutions in the early 1990s, while they were democratizing. It advances the hypothesis that international cooperation in the security field is often linked to the evolution of civil-military rela...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Latin American politics and society 2004-12, Vol.46 (4), p.29-60
Main Author: Sotomayor Velazquez, Arturo C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agreements
Argentina
Armed forces
Brazil
Civil-military relations
Defence policy
Defense Policy
Democracy
Democratic theory
Economic liberalism
Hypotheses
Institutionalism
Institutionalization
International Cooperation
International relations
Latin America
Latin American politics
Military Civilian Relations
Military strategy
National security
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear weapons
Political institutions
Political leadership
Political systems
Politicians
Presidents
Regional security
Regional studies
Security
South America
Third World
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Summary:This paper analyzes the conditions in which the governments of Argentina and Brazil founded security institutions in the early 1990s, while they were democratizing. It advances the hypothesis that international cooperation in the security field is often linked to the evolution of civil-military relations. Civilian leaders in both countries established institutions and sought international participation deliberately to achieve civilian control and gain leverage over the military establishment, which they sorely distrusted. The need to stabilize civil-military relations at home was therefore the prime motivating force behind the emergence of security institutions in the Southern Cone. Three mechanisms were at work: omnibalancing, policy handling, and managing uncertainty. These mechanisms are derived from three different schools of thought: realism, organizational-bureaucratic models, and theories of domestic political institutions. Besides explaining the sources of nuclear bilateral cooperation, this argument also serves as a critique of two prominent theories in international relations that attempt to explain cooperation and peaceful relations among democracies: neoliberal institutionalism and democratic peace theory.
ISSN:1531-426X
1548-2456
DOI:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2004.tb00292.x