Abstract

VITELLI, Marina Gisela. ARGENTINA'S STRATEGIC IDENTITY AND THE BRAZILIAN RISE. THE IDEATIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF A COOPERATIVE DEFENSE POLICY. rev.relac.int.estrateg.segur. [online]. 2016, vol.11, n.2, pp.271-289. ISSN 1909-3063.  https://doi.org/10.18359/ries.1879.

In reference to the recent academic debate about the responses of South American secondary powers to the Brazilian rise, this article addresses the question of why Argentina did not counter-balance Brazilian's increasing power. Specifically, we analyze Argentina's active involvement in the creation and functioning of the South American Defense Council, bearing in mind that this organism was considered as part of Brazil's strategy of regional leadership building, in its military-strategic dimension. We argue that Argentina's cooperative defense policy is explained upon the existence of a political consensus, built by parliamentary actors who influenced defense policy from the return of democracy in 1983. In this way, we relativize existent research which tries to explain the absence of an Argentinean counter-balance strategy towards Brazil using variables such as political instability and party system weakness. In order to support our claim, we develop a detailed account of defense politics in democratic Argentina, their interactions, both domestic and regional, as well as their ideas in relation to national defense and cooperation, going beyond existent analyses.

Keywords : Argentina; Brazil; congress; defense; power balance.

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