Latin America
Militaries In The Region
Tilting Left Against U.S.
By Douglas Farah
Miami Herald, September
19, 2013, p. 13
As concern grows over the
declining ability of the United States to influence events in faraway places
such as Syria, little attention has been paid to a significant loss of
influence much closer to home — South America, where there is a concerted
effort by radical populist governments to erase any trace of U.S. military doctrine.
The U.S. influence is
being replaced by a lethal doctrine of asymmetrical warfare, inspired by
authoritarian governments seeking perpetual power and nurtured by Iran.
The most recent step of
the Venezuela-led “Bolivarian” bloc of nations came in Argentina in June.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner carried out a little-noticed but
significant purge of the armed forces, forcing out some 30 senior officers and
replacing them with loyalists and specialists in internal intelligence.
The Argentine purge is
only the latest phase of an historic break with the U.S. military, long an
overriding objective of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and a goal
that remains dear to his successor and his main allies, primarily Iran and
Russia.
The Venezuela-led
Bolivarian alliance — including Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Suriname and
others — is replacing the U.S. influence with a toxic mix of anti-democratic
values, massive corruption and a doctrine that draws on terrorism and
totalitarian revolutionary models, including the justification of the use of
weapons of mass destruction against the United States.
During the Cold War, the
United States tolerated human-rights abusers and supported bloody dictatorships
across the region. But over the past two decades its military doctrine and
training have focused on human-rights training, respect for civilian governance
and the rule of law. In the process it helped transform Latin American
militaries away from their coup-prone and authoritarian past to national
defense institutions. Colombia is a vibrant example of that change.
In the Bolivarian bloc,
this progress has been reversed. Special counter-narcotics units have been
disbanded, joint training halted, and those with links to the United States
forced into retirement. Argentina’s new army chief, Gen. César Milani, is loyal
to the most militant and anti-U.S. wing of the president’s party and will
remain as head of intelligence.
Rather than building
militaries under civilian control and subject to the rule of law, the
Bolivarian leaders are building militaries in the Cuban and Iranian molds — as
instruments of their increasingly authoritarian revolutions, to be used against
any “counterrevolutionary” dissent, including peaceful democratic protests.
Once the military
leadership is deemed loyal, they are given large parts of the national economy
to profit from. Like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Venezuela’s
Military Industry Company (CAVIM) is now active in economic spheres far outside
the military’s normal purview. At the same time, the narco-corruption in the
militaries under the sway of the new doctrine is pervasive.
According to its own
literature, the new Bolivarian military doctrine rests on the concept of
fourth-generation asymmetrical warfare in which a U.S. invasion is the
hemisphere’s primary security concern. The doctrine explicitly advocates the
use of weapons of mass destruction to defeat or deter such an attack. The model
for resistance is Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy operating across Latin
America.
Iranian influence is
palpable. The Islamist regime is helping fund the new Bolivarian military
academy in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the joint doctrine is being developed.
The curriculum draws on the work of Jorge Verstringyne, a Spanish academic who
praises al Qaida, Hezbollah and suicide bombings while advocating the use of
WMD against the United States; Illich Sánchez Ramirez, better known as Carlos
the Jackal, a convicted terrorist serving a life sentence, who converted to
Shia Islam in prison and wrote Revolutionary Islam, arguing that the Shia
Islamic and Marxist revolutions were natural allies; and Ernesto “Ché” Guevara,
the Argentine-Cuban Marxist who fought alongside Fidel Castro.
This little noticed but
radical shift of posture of the Bolivarian militaries and their growing ties to
Iran and drug corruption pose significant challenges to United States and
represents a historic break with traditionally friendly allies. It also
presents an enormous obstacle to the return of democratic institutions and the
rule of law in Venezuela, Argentina and beyond.
Douglas Farah is the
president of IBI Consultants, a national security consulting company and a
senior non-resident associate of the CSIS Americas Program.
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