Zone of Peace in South America

By Augusto Varas

English translation by Yenni Castro (Valestra Editorial)

After thirty years of the Ecuadorian Peruvian conflict in the Cenepa River basin and in the current global and Latin American strategic context, the regional proposal for a Zone of Peace in South America has reappeared on the regional political agenda. For a better understanding of this initiative, it is necessary to distinguish between the proposal and the regional reality.

Proposals

This initiative dates back to resolution 41/11, "Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic", adopted at the 50th Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in October 1986. From that year to date, nearly twenty declarations and equivalent commitments (regional and subregional) have been formulated by various multilateral (Latin American and subregional) and high-level governmental (presidential and foreign ministers' meetings) bodies. In fact, in 1999, the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay agreed to declare Mercosur, Bolivia, and Chile as a Zone of Peace.

The main issues around which these agreements have focused relate to the non-use of chemical, biological, and mass destruction weapons; denuclearization; the prohibition of foreign military bases; arms control and disarmament; the development of mutual confidence-building measures and regional cooperation for peace; the expansion and systematization of information provided by the countries of the region to the UN Register of Conventional Arms; and the establishment of a standardized methodology for reporting military spending to increase transparency and confidence-building.

These initiatives also emphasized the development of a culture of peace. Thus, the 2003 OAS resolution urged member states to conduct seminars, courses and studies on the creation and implementation of peace and cooperation zones in the region, and to exchange experiences from these academic events. Specifically, in July 2004, the Declaration of San Francisco de Quito on the "Establishment and Development of the Andean Zone of Peace" highlighted the importance of assessing the education on Andean history and the proposal to have mechanisms and procedures to transmit a common vision through the instructional texts at the elementary and secondary levels.

Meanwhile, there is a series of regional treaties and conventions that constitute enabling factors for broader and deeper peace regimes, such as the Biological and Chemical Weapons Convention, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Tests.

One of the regional advances, which was not pursued further, was the work commissioned to ECLAC on a methodology for comparing military expenditures between Chile, Argentina and Peru. In 1998, a common standardized methodology for measuring defense expenditures was launched and presented to the governments of Argentina and Chile. In 2001, another study prepared by ECLAC in coordination with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, included Peru.

In December 2008, the Heads of State and Government gathered at the III Ordinary Meeting of UNASUR went further by recommending the strengthening of South American actions in a wide range of areas: defense policy, military cooperation, humanitarian actions, peace operations, as well as education and training.

South American defense identity                                           

A year later, in the Santiago Declaration, March 9-10, 2009, of the Ministers of Defense of the South American Defense Council, these proposals advanced substantially, agreeing to: build a South American defense identity that contributes to strengthening the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean; generate consensus to strengthen regional defense cooperation; create a network to exchange information on defense policies; hold a seminar on modernization of the Ministries of Defense; and providing transparency and sharing information on defense expenditures and economic indicators.

It was also proposed to identify risk factors and threats that may affect regional and world peace; create a mechanism to contribute to the articulation of regional common stands in multilateral forums on defense; establish a mechanism for consultation, information and immediate evaluation in situations of risk to peace in the region, in accordance with the UNASUR Treaty; plan a joint disaster relief operation in case of catastrophes or natural disasters; organize a conference on lessons learned in peace operations; draw up an inventory of the defense capabilities that countries offer to support humanitarian actions; and exchange experiences in the field of humanitarian actions.

The list was completed with the elaboration of a diagnosis of the defense industry of the member countries, identifying capabilities and areas of strategic association, to promote complementarity, research and technology transfer; to elaborate a registry of defense academies and study centers and their programs and create a South American network for defense training and education; and to propose programs for teacher and student exchange, homologation, evaluation and accreditation of studies, recognition of degrees and scholarships among existing institutions, in defense matters. The dissolution -in practice- of UNASUR between 2018-2019 suspended the development of these initiatives.

An expression of this new vision of regional military relations was the creation in 2005-2011, between Argentina and Chile, of the binational peacekeeping force Cruz del Sur for peace operations.

In the case of Chile, the Zone of Peace was belatedly incorporated into the country's defense policy. In the Libro de la Defensa [Book of the National Defense of Chile], 2010, and based on the identification of objectives of the UNASUR Defense Council, it was mentioned as one of its first priorities to "Consolidate South America as a Zone of Peace, basis to the democratic stability and to the integral development of our peoples, and as a contribution to world peace" (Libro de la Defensa, 2010:164). The 2017 version of the Libro directly linked the national defense policy with the Zone of Peace as a project under construction: "Chile has oriented the international activity of its Defense Policy to work on cooperation systems with the purpose of contributing to global peace and security. Likewise, it has focused on strengthening cooperation institutions at the sub-regional, regional and inter-American levels to consolidate Latin America as a Zone of Peace" (Libro de la Defensa, 2017:72).

The reality

A series of events have brought denuclearization and regional involvement in extra-regional tensions back to the forefront, renewing the need to reinstate and update the South American Zone of Peace project.

These include the military presence and/or weapons supply from Russia, Iran, Turkey and China; the establishment of the Chinese satellite base in Neuquén; the construction of the nuclear submarine in Brazil; the approval by the full Peruvian Congress of U.S. military access to its territory; and the intention of President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador - after a decade and a half of the withdrawal of the U.S. base in Manta - to allow international military installations to combat the growing influence of criminal groups in the region.

In nuclear matters, although the Treaty of Tlatelolco allows nuclear tests "by mandate of third parties", the declarations of Argentina and Brazil interpreting this norm as an authorization for "association with third parties" should be analyzed considering the current presence of nuclear powers in the region.

It is necessary to materialize the long-declared but never achieved desire to establish South America as a Zone of Peace. To this end, it is essential to take into consideration the political-strategic developments at the global and regional levels, the international geopolitical reconfiguration, and the political, economic and social situation of the region. Likewise, the existence of a substantial accumulation of regional peace mechanisms and agreements, the set of existing peace proposals at the highest political level, and the appropriate experiences and methodologies for the development of mutual confidence-building measures make this initiative viable. The United Nations Secretary General's Report, "Our Common Agenda" (2021) proposes 12 measures for global peace, which should also be considered.

Today, more than ever, it is necessary to clearly distinguish intentions from reality, given that declaring Latin America as a zone of peace -since no inter-state conflicts have arisen in three decades- is only a strategic objective. Instead, it is necessary to prioritize existing proposals, include them under an updated approach, and put into practice, beyond rhetoric, the regional multilateral mechanisms that will effectively make this possible.

About the Author

Augusto Varas Fernández holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and is the former director of the International and Military Relations Area at FLACSO-Chile. He has served as the Representative of the Ford Foundation in the Andean Region and the Southern Cone, as well as an advisor to the Ministry General Secretariat of the Presidency (1990–1992) and the Undersecretary of Defense (2015–2016).

He has worked as a professor in Chile, the United States, and Spain, and is the author of numerous books and articles on the Armed Forces, national defense, international relations, and democracy in Chile and Latin America. His notable works include La democracia frente al poder: Chile, 1990–2010 (2012), El gobierno de Piñera, 2010–2014 (2014), Legitimidad del monopolio y uso de la fuerza en Chile: Fuerzas Armadas y Carabineros en la nueva Constitución (2021), and Las Constituciones del miedo: Chile, 2019–2023 (2024).

He currently serves as the executive president of Fundación Equitas (Chile).

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