EL PLANEAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO MILITAR EN ARGENTINA (2003-2013): REFLEXIONES EN TORNO AL GOBIERNO POLÍTICO DE LA DEFENSA

Abstract

The national defense policy of Argentina has experienced advances and regressions since the democratic return in 1983. This result has been connected to the dynamics that civil-military relations have inherited from the dictatorial period. The necessity to subordinate the Armed Forces dominated the defense agenda during most part of the democratic period, constituting the core problem of this jurisdiction.The democratic governments implemented various initiatives that underpinned the civil control of the Armed Forces and that also caused, from a normative point of view, what has been characterised as a “basic consensus”. These measures restricted the autonomy of the men in uniform, whether through the demilitarization of civil functions or through the specific delimitation of the martial responsibilities.The habilitation of the spaces required for the exercise of the political administration of the jurisdiction did not necessarily implied, however, that civilians have fully developed this task. The performance of the democratic authorities in the area of defense had its ups-and-downs. At times, these deficiencies were associated to the very restraints of the domestic political conjuncture; at others, they resulted from the planning of the specific agenda of the sector, though.This paper studies the performances of the Ministry of Defense demarches during 2003-2013. The analysis focuses on the conduction of the strategic dimension of the sector; punctually, on the relative responsibilities of the military strategic planning. In this frame, the demarches of ministers José Pampuro (2003-05), Nilda Garré (2005-10) and Arturo Puricelli (2010-13) are resorted to.The temporal cutout of the study object assumes that a battery of unprecedented measures were implemented. For the first time since the return of democracy, for example, an effective debate on the conduction of the strategic dimension of the defense policy was addressed. Nevertheless, for reasons that are object of analysis during this article, the empowerment process of the political conduction survived along with ambiguities and retrogressions that, during the same period, made the absence of solid consensus regarding the results of the sectorial agenda evident.