President Bharrat Jagdeo had met Brazil’s Minister of Defence Nelson Azevedo Jobim in Georgetown only in April 2008. He agreed, at that time, for Guyana to support the formation of the Conselho Sul-Americano de Defesa (South American Defence Council) – the military coordinating component of União de Nações Sul-Americanas.
Before coming to Georgetown, Nelson Jobim had met President Hugo Chávez in Caracas where he explained the concept of the South American Defence Council. Pointing out that any problem affecting one South American state affected the whole region, he said “We are going to make it so that the strength of South America is born of the union of our peoples…It is impossible to talk about problems in isolated form. We should resolve the problems in conjunction and in unity.”
Jobim made it clear that “the intention of the Council is not to form a classical military alliance.” He was quick to explain his notion of “dissuasive defense” adding that it is important for countries to acquire arms and maintain [for] their militaries “in order to have and to project a capacity for dissuasion.” Although he specified that “there is no operational intention [and] there is no expansionist pretension,” he advised that the Council would aim at dealing with what he called “low-intensity conflicts that may spread out of control.”
He envisaged the Council as promoting joint military training, defense bases and “military industrial integration” in order to “ensure the supply of the necessary elements for defense.”
President Jagdeo, along with eleven other South American presidents, signed the Constitutive Treaty to formalize the Union at the Summit of Heads of State of South America in Brasilia the month after Jobim’s visit. The states that now form UNASUR − Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Equator, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela − UNASUR were inspired by the Cuzco Declaration of December 8, 2004, the Brasilia Declaration of September 30, 2005 and the Cochabamba Declaration of December 9, 2006. The Treaty provides for the establishment of a permanent headquarters, which will be located in Quito, Ecuador; a Parliament which will be housed in Cochabamba, Bolivia; and the Bank of the South to be located in Venezuela.
According to the Constitutive Treaty, UNASUR has among others, the specific objectives of strengthening the political dialogue among member states to guarantee a space for consultation in order to reinforce South American integration and the participation of UNASUR in the international arena; coordination among specialised bodies of the member states, taking into account international norms, in order to strengthen the fight against corruption, the global drug problem, trafficking in persons, trafficking in small and light weapons, terrorism, transnational organised crime and other threats as well as for disarmament, the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and elimination of landmines.
Guyana, as part of the South American landmass, has been vulnerable to all of these transnational crimes which are on UNASUR’s agenda. In particular, gun-running and narco-trafficking − the sources of which most likely are Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela − have contributed to the surge in violent crime over the past decade. Guyana’s involvement in UNASUR is an imperative obligation. Further, President Jagdeo noted, part of Guyana’s foreign policy mandate was committed to partnership with Latin America.
The Summit of the Heads of State of South American countries was first held in Brasilia in August 2000. The major issues discussed at that forum included the Initiative for the Integration of South American Infrastructure where it was felt that the weak infrastructural links between South American countries hindered the advancement of the initiative to create the ‘common South American Space’ and the promotion of sustainable economic growth in the region as envisaged by the Leaders. Continental security crises over the past decade, however, seem to have outstripped the development concerns in their urgency.
The relative speed with which the Union was established among the twelve states was a testimony not only to the personal prestige of the President of Brazil and to the efficacy of Brazilian diplomacy. It was also a realistic response to the deterioration in the security of the South American continent and the need to avoid dangerous crises in international relations.
An event of strategic importance was the two-day attempted golpe de estado against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez in April 2002 for which the United States was blamed in part. To the extent that the USA and Colombia strengthened their close relations, therefore, Venezuela’s security anxieties heightened.
It was in the aftermath of the military and diplomatic confrontation that fractured diplomatic relations between Colombia, on one hand, and Venezuela and Ecuador on the other, that UNASUR’s strategic importance became evident. That confrontation had erupted after the National Army of Colombia entered the territory of Ecuador on March 1, 2008 to raid elements of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia −FARC − without the approval of the national government. The Venezuelan National Armed Forces mobilised ten battalions on the Colombian border.
The crisis ended only after the memorable summit of the Rio Group in the Dominican Republic in which participants emphasised the importance of multilateralism in foreign policy. Brazil, afterwards, pushed to concretise the Council as an institution capable of working for peace and improving political relationships among South American states. Brazil – probably the only state on the continent with the prestige and power to act and to build consensus in such a situation – launched the South American Defence Council to create space for diplomatic dialogue and a forum to discuss a common, continental security strategy. Just in time, it seemed, as another crisis soon erupted.
The USA and Colombia signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement in August 2009 that aggravated tensions mainly between Colombia and Venezuela. Most continental states had misgivings about it. The Agreement, which will allow the USA to utilise five air and two naval bases in Colombia, had the effect of dividing the continent into three camps – one comprising Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela which criticised the Agreement outright; the second comprising Colombia and Peru which supported the Agreement; and the third, led by Brazil and including Chile and Argentina, which expressed apprehensions but took a moderate position and promised to promote constructive dialogue with the United States to resolve the crisis.
Most South American states are wary of the deployment of US troops on the continent. They are uncomfortable with large US military units on the continent and want guarantees that the Colombian bases will not be used for USA’s offensive or intrusive military operations against South American states. Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim stated cryptically that “Colombia may not yet totally have understood the degree of discomfort it has caused in other countries…Maybe that’s why it hasn’t yet agreed to the necessary guarantees as strongly as we would like.”
Tension was still thick when President Jagdeo attended President Rafael Correa’s inauguration on August 10 last year in Quito that coincided with UNASUR’s third regular presidential summit. On that occasion, Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed their concerns about the USA-Colombia Agreement which they felt would pose a grave threat to the continent’s security.
President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, conspicuously, was absent from Quito. The summit therefore agreed to convene an extraordinary session in Bariloche, Argentina on August 28 to examine the issue further with the Colombian president. That meeting was rancorous and argumentative but inconclusive. UNASUR’s Defence and Foreign Policy Ministers then met in September 2009 in Quito to discuss security issues including the USA-Colombia Agreement among other things. Manzoor Nadir, Minister of Labour, Human Services and Social Security, represented Guyana at that critical security meeting.
Guyana’s forthcoming chairmanship of UNASUR must be seen against the backdrop of this evolving strategic scenario. It is clear that the South American Defence Council, as an agency of UNASUR, has much work to do. Guyana has to have a sound understanding of these profound security issues and respond energetically to events in the continent if its tenure is to be effective.
South American states expect UNASUR to fill a need none of the existing organisations did − that of providing a space for political argument and a place to discuss and analyse a common defence strategy. UNASUR has already started to develop policies for military cooperation, humanitarian action, peace-keeping operations, education and training.
It may be possible for the South American Defence Council to expand its role by developing initiatives for the security of all of the South American countries.
UNASUR and the SADC can be honed into diplomatic instruments for coordinating peace processes and actions rather than a resort to military force.
