Security competition and the South American community: theory and criticism

Abstract

Thus far, during this century, those groups of countries that have managed to sustain stable and regular cooperation relations all face the same dilemma: security competition among members is frequent and this impedes further progress in creating the conditions necessary for more intense cooperation. This is true in South America where UNASUR and its Security Council seem incapable of turning this situation around. The notion of a “security community”, commonly accepted in official discourses and in academia as a goal to which to aspire in order to create a space of lasting peace, is one of the most common approaches to the analysis of security relations in this region and in the evaluation of the performance of mechanisms of cooperation in these matters. However, this approach does not provide a satisfactory explanation, either in the field of action or analytically, as to why competition continues to occur. This text proposes an alternative, systemic approach which answers this question and, in addition, explains why regional security cooperation through specialized (intergovernmental) bodies has not yet been able to resolve this issue.