The US Southern Command and the Militarization of US-Latin America Foreign Relations

Security issues have been a structural pillar of US-Latin America relations. Apart from brief moments that raised expectations about a presumed disposition from North American counterparts toward a more cooperative and positive agenda, such as during the Obama presidency (2009–2017), post-Cold War U.S. administrations have kept a consistent pattern where security concerns have overshadowed the social and economic dimensions. More recently, a growing body of International Relations (IR) literature has pointed out that even when they are considered, social, economic, and political problems have also been interpreted through security and military lenses (Isacson, 2004; Tokatlian, 2015; Milani, 2021), provoking the militarization of hemispheric relations.

In this commentary, I argue that US-Latin America relations in the 21^st century have been dominated by military perspectives and instruments because not only non-military issues—such as drug-trafficking and migrations—were militarized overtime but also military agencies as the Department of Defense and its subsidiaries became one of the leading faces of U.S. foreign policy for the region. More specifically, I will debate the role played by the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) in this process, particularly after the 9/11 attacks.

To do that, I will trace brief remarks regarding the history of the enhanced presence of the Southcom in the region, its main missions and functions, and the role played by the agency in delineating U.S. threats-perception toward the hemisphere, which will be analyzed through the content of the posture statements annually delivered by the combatant commanders at U.S. Congress.

Following the reflections raised by Isacson (2004) and Tokatlian (2015), I understand that the militarization of hemispheric relations produces a paradoxical situation where the military measures prove to be ineffective to solve their allegedly aims, since they don’t address the root causes of the regional problems, such as poverty and inequality. On the other hand, the overreliance on military and security means contributes to distort civilian–military relations in the region and to increase the power in hands of those who control the coercive apparatuses leaving the door open to state repression and human rights violations.

Although the analytical aims of this commentary are focused on the Latin American case, it is important to stress the fact that militarization has been a structural and historical feature of U.S. foreign policy, and its causes are connected to domestic and external sources. Regarding the domestic realm, it is possible to outline, for example, the imbalances perceived in the politics of U.S. foreign policy which tend to reward the actors positioned in the defense sector with large amounts of material resources. As argued by Adams and Murray (2014), the defense “distributive effects” and the pressures from the military industrial complex make the investment in military agencies politically more attractive than the civilian bureaucracies. In addition, the military instrument has been perceived to be more effective in achieving the most impactful foreign policy results.

On the other hand, in the external field, the militarization process can be attributed to the increasing frequency and duration of U.S. military interventions abroad, particularly in the first decades of the 21^st century. As will be discussed in the next pages, the post-conflict scenarios in Afghanistan and Iraq aggravated the tendencies observed since the 1990s regarding the accumulation of new roles and functions played by the military in humanitarian and diplomatic activities. These demands have amplified the contacts between the armed forces and the political actors in the field, especially through the channel created by the presence of the combatant commanders in the decision-making process.

The choice for the case of the Southcom is justified by the fact that the Unified Combatant Commands (COCOMs) are large military structures responsible for coordinating U.S. military troops stationed in different regions of the globe, the so called “areas of responsibility” (AOR). Normally, the figure of the combatant commander symbolizes the link between the field activities and the decision-making bodies in Washington D.C., since the commander is the one in charge to deliver and submit the posture statements to U.S. Congress once in a year. These documents usually contain budgetary considerations and assessments regarding the priorities and threats-perception in every region, according to the commander´s views on his or her AOR.

As I have argued elsewhere (Forner, 2020), this privileged double-edged connection between the field and the domestic politics, not to mention their usually abundant material resources, turn the COCOMs into powerful political and securitizing actors that may influence decisions concerning military matters and the foreign policy agenda.

The Southcom was established in 1963, replacing the Caribbean Command headquartered in Panama, then the military unit responsible for covering the areas encompassing the Central and South Americas. Since its inception, the Southcom self-attributed AOR was defined as being the Americas, south of Mexico (Milani, 2021). Differently from its counterparts in Europe and Asia, namely, US Eucom and US Pacom ¹ , the AOR represented by the Southcom was not perceived as a priority in the context of Cold War. This way, during its first years of existence the command received the smallest portions of budget and troops, being sometimes pejoratively called as the “sister CINC” ² (Priest, 2003).

The election of Ronald Reagan (1981–1987) and the rise of the “War on Drugs” changed the picture and rekindled the scope of the Southcom’s mission. As discussed by Tokatlian (2015), as the drugs issue won public and media attention, Reagan took several measures that expanded the role played by the military in the fight against drugs. The Public Law 96-97 amended the Posse Comitatus Act—the legal device that impeded U.S. military forces from being deployed in domestic law enforcement activities—to authorize the indirect participation of the armed forces in counterdrug efforts. In 1986, the presidential directive 221 presented drugs as a threat to U.S. national security, consolidating the securitization of the drugs policy.

The focus on the countries perceived as the centers of drugs-production brought Latin America and consequentially the Southcom to the forefront of the debate. Eventually, the command was moved to Florida, in 1997, as a recognition of its renewed relevance, and had its missions, autonomy, and budget considerably increased (Tokatlian, 2015). In the 1990s, the end of the Cold War sharpened the political discussions on how to adapt U.S. armed forces to the new international environment, in the absence of the Soviet enemy. Despite reducing the size and the budget of the military services, Bush senior and Clinton presidencies expanded the role of U.S. troops in activities of “military engagement” as well as in missions of peacekeeping, law enforcement, humanitarian assistance, counterinsurgency, among others.

As the fight against drugs became part of the so called “military operations other than war” (MOOTW), the Southcom consolidated itself as the first COCOM to combine traditional military assignments to non-traditional ones, including the provision of humanitarian assistance and military training for security forces in the region. This place would only be debunked in 2008 by the creation of U.S. Africom that finally institutionalized the “combatant command plus” hybrid format (Forner, 2020), by adding civilian-to-military channels of cooperation to its organizational chart and by officially turning its attention to non-military subjects, for example, development and humanitarian reconstruction.

This picture combined to the budgetary and personnel downsizings experienced by the civilian outposts (State Department and USAID) stationed in Latin America and Africa, reinforced the perception of relative neglect of both regions in U.S. foreign policy (Isacson, 2004; Adams & Murray, 2014). In addition, according to Isacson (2005), in the early 1990s, security assistance amounts surpassed the economic assistance destined for the hemisphere for the first time, since the Kennedy administration. That also raised a flag about the potential for militarization because the armed forces, COCOMs especially, were fulfilling the voids.

In this context, the beginning of the global war on terror declared by President George W. Bush (2001–2009) after the 9/11 attacks only aggravated those tendencies. On the one hand, the fact that Latin America was not perceived to be the priority for counterterrorism efforts kept the inertial strategic pattern that, in practical terms, meant less resources for the civilian face of North American presence in the region. On the other hand, the security agenda for the Americas was also framed in terms of the fight against terrorism: the activities of drug cartels in the region were labeled as “narcoterrorism,” particularly in the Andean region. According to Isacson (2004) and Milani (2021), Colombia became the top recipient of U.S. security assistance, thanks to the renewed relevance attributed to Plan Colombia. The paramilitary groups in the country, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELC), were added to the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. In the Southern Cone, the Triple Frontier between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil was also perceived as a vulnerable focal point to the actions of terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

In 2002, the advancements of the so called “Pink Tide” represented by the elections of left-leaning governments in the region led the Washington Times to publicize a “warning” concerning the formation of a “Latin Axis of Evil,” composed by Cuba (Fidel Castro), Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), and Brazil (Luis Inácio Lula da Silva) (Pecequilo, 2011). These discursive associations between terrorism and Latin America were also gradually incorporated to the Southcom’s posture statements, as indicated in the speech delivered by combatant commander James T. Hill to Congress, during the audience regarding the Department of Defense appropriations for Fiscal Year 2005 (FY 2005):

The narcoterrorists in Colombia remain the largest and most well-known threat in our region and have continued their illicit activities […] Most observers now understand that these groups are narcoterrorists rather than romantic guerillas crusading for the downtrodden. While a few might retain some of their founding ideology, by and large these groups consist of terrorists and criminals who operate outside the rule of law in pursuit of illicit profits rather than political Revolution. […] Beyond narcoterrorist and gang violence, branches of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations conduct support activities in the Southern Command area of responsibility. Islamic radical group supporters, extending from the Caribbean basin to the triborder area of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, conduct fund raising activities (Hill, 2004: 1358).

In the same vein, the rise of “radical populism” was identified as a threat to regional democracy alluding to the strength acquired by the “Pink Tide,” that according to the General Hill’s words mobilized the “Anti-American sentiment” to “[…] distract the populace from their own shortcomings” (Hill, 2004: 1358). Materially, resources and responsibilities in the region were transferred from the civilian agencies to the Southcom. As pointed out for Isaacson (2004): “Southcom has more people working on Latin America – about 1100 – than most key civilian federal agencies combined, including the Department of State, Agriculture, Commerce and Treasury” (Isacson et al., 2004: 5). Infrastructure and medical assistance were equally affected, since many projects funded through the Southcom´s Humanitarian Civic Assistance were directed to the region (Isacson, 2005).

These growing imbalances were reinforced by the complexities in Afghanistan and Iraq theaters which contributed to change the American military doctrine. In 2005, DoD launched the 3000.05 directive that equated stability and combat operations in terms of priority and relevance. This meant that the military strategies would include not only the conflict itself but also the post-conflict reconstruction, previously led by civilian agencies. To some extent, this process was legitimized by the civilian institutions that, in many instances, demanded a bigger participation for the American military to compensate the perceived inefficiencies of non-military agencies and to achieve faster and more impactful results in the battle for “hearts and minds” (Forner, 2020). In Latin America this had been the case since the beginning of the war on drugs, as the Department of State was one of the voices encouraging the increased presence of DoD in Latin America (Tokatlian, 2015).

When President Obama was elected, his main proposals were the reduction of the unilateral interventionism and the corrections of the imbalances presented in the civilian–military inter-agency programs. With the “3Ds” motto (diplomacy, development, and defense), Obama intended to reinforce the “whole of government” approach and the role played by civilian agencies in U.S. international relations (Adams & Murray, 2014). His administration also started the troop drawdown in Afghanistan and Iraq, establishing withdrawal schedules.

Despite reducing military presence overseas, Obama extended the security aid and reconstruction programs under DoD’s leadership. The main alleged purpose of these initiatives was to use security cooperation to reinforce security capabilities and political institutions of the countries that received them. In Latin America, the impacts of the Southcom remained relevant, especially in Central America and the Caribbean (Hauggard, 2015).

When it comes to threats-perception, Milani (2021) points out that even though there were no substantive transformations between the Republican and Democrat administrations regarding the use of force against organized crime and terrorism, it is possible to identify a shift in Southcom’s posture statements: beyond terrorism, references to the growing presence of rising powers in the region, such as China, Russia, and Iran, became more frequent. The approach seems consistent to the new strategy proposed by the Obama administration, namely, the “rebalance” to Asia. Notwithstanding, foreign policy for the hemisphere kept focused on military terms and continued subordinated to the country’s interests in the other parts of the globe.

Donald Trump’s presidency did not add significant ruptures to these trends, except for the larger room occupied by migration in Southcom testimonies. At the same time, the references made to Russia and China became more aggressive, as indicated in the posture statement submitted in 2019 by Combatant Commander Admiral Graig Faller. The countries are painted as “malign actors” (Faller, 2019), enabling the spread of authoritarian regimes in the region, represented by Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Iran’s presence is also worthy of note, keeping the issue of terrorism at the agenda.

The malign actor-language remained present in subsequent statements until 2021, the year that marked the beginning of the first term of Joe Biden’s presidency (2021-present). The COVID-19 pandemic also became another military preoccupation in Latin America, due to its connections to economic fragility, opening a larger margin of influence for China and Russia: “The PRC and Russia are taking advantage of the pandemic, deploying medical diplomacy and disinformation campaigns” (Faller, 2021: 3). In addition, climate change has been also included in DoD’s top priorities for the hemisphere.

In conclusion, in last decades the Southcom became an important player in US-Latin America relations both in material and ideational terms. The organization managed to fulfill the voids left by the reduced presence of civilian agencies in the region over the years and has been working as one of the main securitizing actors when it comes to the formulation of US threats-perception to the hemisphere. The fact that the military became one of the leading interpreters of U.S. policies to the region and that the list of securitized issues keeps getting bigger, including drug-trafficking, terrorism, global health, and so on, can be understood as part of the militarization process that gained a new breath after the 9/11 attacks.

In 2002, Combatant Commander Gary Speer defined the Southcom as a channel “to provide a role model for the proper conduct of a military in a democratic society” (Speer, 2002). By militarizing its ties to the hemisphere, Washington has done the exact opposite, confusing civilian and military roles and ultimately contributing to the perpetuation of the structural violence that sets the region apart from the substantive democratic ideals and practices.