Brazil & Southern Cone - April 2009 (ISSN 1741-4431)

On 10 March the 12-member South American Defence Council (Consejo de Defensa Suramericano, CDS), the defence arm of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), held its constitutive meeting in Santiago, Chile.

The CDS was first proposed by Brazil's President Lula da Silva in the wake of a tense regional trilateral crisis in March 2008 between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela over a Colombian military raid on a Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia camp inside Ecuador.

The most notable element in the constitutive 'Santiago Declaration' was its express support for the principal of sovereign territorial integrity and inviolability, which Ecuador interpreted as giving it the high moral ground in its extended stand-off with Colombia.

The summit host, Chilean defence minister José Goñi, said that the new council would allow the region to create a new South American “defence identity" to boost stronger regional co-operation on defence and national security policies.  The CDS is not a classical operational military alliance along the lines of the North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) but rather a method of safeguarding peace and asserting the primacy of civilian over military power in the region. In effect it would preclude the need for appeals to the Organization of American States (OAS), under which any intervention in intra-regional conflicts inevitably has to include the US.

According to the Brazilian vision, the CSD would also involve South American countries uniting and, eventually, integrating their defence policies. Brazil argues that by encouraging members to co-operate on national defence issues, the CDS should be able to prevent a situation like the Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela crisis.

The CDS will not have an operational mandate, but may facilitate joint military training sessions between member states and could send combined units to participate in regional emergencies such as natural disasters, or international UN peace keeping missions. Largely at the behest of Brazil, which has a growing defence industry, the council is also aiming for better integration between national defence industries in South America.