A Peacetime Military Strategy for Latin America

Abstract

Abstract : It seems clear that the world is evolving into one characterized by a new and more competitive multipolar international order. We are likely to see a return to the concept of zones of relative influence as no one nation can expect to enjoy in the twenty-first century the monopoly of power held by the United States for much of the twentieth. Explosive population growth and rapid technological advance ensure that competition for the world's limited natural and financial resources -- as well as markets for the production into which those resources are transformed -- will become ever more acute. The United States and Canada, the European Community, and Japan, the three ma^or economic power centers of the next decade and beyond, may find themselves increasingly intertwined in a three-way struggle for economic, political, and perhaps even military advantage. Continued instability to be sown by a militarily powerful but economically and politically weakened Soviet Union on the one hand, and by developing countries frustrated by poverty or regional rivalries on the other, will complicate the security picture. In such circumstances, international relations will once again be at least partially characterized by even sharper geographic zones of influence. It is almost inevitable that Latin America and the Caribbean would continue to fall within the U.S. zone, but we must nevertheless be prepared to consolidate our historical primacy in this hemisphere to ensure that our long-term political and economic interests are not undercut in an increasingly competitive, multipolar world.