increased at an outstanding pace
7
. Not only has trade boomed and are investment flows
higher than ever within the region, but also those states are becoming increasingly
interdependent in security sensitive areas
8
. Given a relatively stable distribution of power
within the region, a balance of power perspective is ill suited to explain these trends.
Democratic Peace theory would seem to account for these recent trends, if it were not for
the paradox that the only two instances of actual military conflict in the Southern Cone in
the last few decades involved the pioneers in the process leading the region back to the rule
of democratically elected leaders: Ecuador and Peru. When these countries first engaged in
military hostilities in 1981, one could have argued that the lack of those normative
restraints which are supposed to be a prerogative of democratic regimes when dealing with
one another was due to the fact that, at the time, both regimes were new-born democracies
9
.
Peru and Chile, in turn, settled in 1999 several issues pending since the Lima Treaty of 1929.
7
For instance, trade between Argentina and Brazil increased threefold between 1990 and 1993.
Brooke 1994.
Additionally, “The Presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay signed the Tratado
(Treaty) de Asunción on March, 1991, establishing the Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR), a
common market of the South”, aimed to achieve a free circulation of goods, workers, services and
financial resources among those countries, as well as to coordinate their macroeconomic policies.
The Economist Intelligence Unit 1993/1994, p.39.
8
“States do not willingly place themselves in situations of increased interdependence. In a self-help
system, considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest”.
Kenneth Waltz 1979, p.107.
Although the intensity of the security dilemma can change under different circumstances, “A
dilemma cannot be solved; it can more or less readily be dealt with. Force cannot be
eliminated”.
Ibid., p.187.
This should be particularly true about cooperation in security sensitive areas: one would expect that
states would be reluctant to rely on potential contenders for their supply of goods and services upon
which their military and logistic capabilities depend. Thus, Chile would rather import oil from the
Persian Gulf than from its neighbor, Argentina (as it actually did in the past).
However, contravening those expectations, Argentina now supplies Chile with half of its
petroleum needs, as well as an important part of its natural gas imports through a 750 mile pipeline
built for that purpose. Argentina is also Brazil’s second largest supplier of imported oil, and
supplies 75% of Brazil’s imports of wheat.
Brooke 1994, p.3.
About half of Peru’s electric energy supply is now distributed by Chilean companies, and a growing
proportion of it is also being generated by Chilean companies.
9
“norms take time to develop. (...) Thus if violent conflict between democracies do occur, we
would expect them to take place between democratic states that are relatively young in terms of
tenure of the democratic regime”.
Convention