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The North–South divide and security in the Western Hemisphere: United States–South American relations after September 11 and the Iraq war

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Abstract

This paper examines the economics–security nexus in US policy toward South America, and the implications for South America of the ‘securitization’ of US foreign economic policy during the Bush administration. There has always been a tight linkage between the US foreign economic and security agendas but the real issue is the degree of ‘tightness’ at a given point in time. After the Alliance for Progress lost its way the United States tended to pursue its economic and security interests in South America in separate tracks, even if preventing Soviet intrusions in the region remained in the background. Yet after the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in 2004 a US strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ through bilateral trade deals has been accompanied by a ‘securitization’ discourse and there are some indications that it may ‘securitize’ as a new threat the social movements and neopopulist regimes that oppose neoliberal economic policies. The paper discusses the limits of the securitization thesis. The conclusion examines the future of US–South American relations and argues that the United States needs to renew its commitment to genuine multilateralism and re-engage the region to establish an effective and lasting partnership for dealing with common economic and security challenges in the twenty-first century.

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Notes

  1. 1 It is beyond the scope of this paper to engage the scholarly debate on securitization theory in the IR literature. An excellent analysis of the potential and limitations of securitization theory appears in Williams (2003). (See also Phillips, 2007; McSweeney, 1996; Huysmans, 1998; Jutila, 2006).

  2. 2 During the democratic administration of Raul Alfonsin (1983–1989) Argentina's military expenditures were dramatically cut down. In the 1990s, Menem's Argentina formally renounced nuclear weapons by joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), deactivated the Condor II missile project and continued the downsizing of the armed forces. According to Hirst (1998, p. 115), Brazilian policy makers thought that Argentina was taking its policy of unilateral disarmament too far, ‘generating an inconvenient situation of disequilibrium in the area.’

  3. 3 This military base will be closed in 2009 because the Rafael Correa administration has refused to renew the military access agreement signed with the United States in the early 2000s.

  4. 4 No Ecuadorian president has completed his term in office since the election of Abdala Bucaram in 1996. Between 2002 and 2005 Bolivia suffered annual popular uprisings, resulting in the resignation and replacement of democratically elected presidents, until the landslide victory of Evo Morales in the December 2005 presidential election.

  5. 5 In contrast, there has always been a tight linkage between the US foreign economic and security agendas in Central America and the Caribbean, the real ‘backyard’ of the United States.

  6. 6 Interestingly, despite the military linkages between the United States and Ecuador and Colombia, both countries dropped out of bilateral free trade negotiations with the United States in November 2005, complaining about US ‘inflexibility’ (see Mercopress, 2005). Colombia finally signed an FTA with the United States, but Ecuador did not, and President Rafael Correa has declared that Ecuador intends to close the US military base located in Manta when the treaty for the base expires in 2009.

  7. 7 The hegemonic presumption, the US conviction that it has a ‘natural right’ to achieve and exercise hegemony in the Americas, goes back to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and Theodore Roosevelt's ‘big stick’ policy of military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean that would continue until 1933 (see Lowenthal, 1976).

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  1. Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, MSC 165, 700 University Blvd, Kingsville, 78363-8203, Texas, USA

    Mario E Carranza

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Carranza, M. The North–South divide and security in the Western Hemisphere: United States–South American relations after September 11 and the Iraq war. Int Polit 46, 276–297 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2008.38

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