Multilateralism: You are surely the most adored new concept in American defense thinking these days.
You are an ingenue who took her place on the world stage once the Cold War unexpectedly ended, replacing the old battle-ax divas of operatic conflict.
But never have I heard the security siren call of creating a brave new world under multilateral defense structures more penetrating than at this year’s top-level meeting of American and Latin American military and diplomatic officials here.
One opening speaker, in open and bold retreat from Simon Bolivar’s famous quote that Latin America was “ungovernable,” went so far as to call the Americas a “hemisphere of peace” existing in a “time of renaissance.” Economics and trade have replaced traditional defense relations. Defense Secretary William Cohen saw “nations sending envoys, not convoys, and, in the palm of the new serenity, we see poverty giving way to democracy.”
And Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, the leading American diplomat for Latin American affairs in the State Department, told the group of 250 that we are “living in an absolutely unique moment in the history of this hemisphere,” a moment in which there is for the first time finally “agreement on issues of transcendental importance” (democracy and solving problems on a transnational basis).
Few will be surprised to learn that the idea of multilateral action–where states work, plan and fight together more or less collectively, instead of under the authoritative direction of one strong country–has been taking hold over the last 10 years. The Gulf War exemplified multilateralism, and the Clinton Pentagon and White House carried the concept to the defense equivalent of a revival meeting.
But Latin America, that area of the hemisphere where ideas of “sovereignty” have been so predominant?
There are good reasons to be skeptical. On the larger scale, with these romantic new ideas of defense that are sweeping much of the U.S. military with dreams of eternal peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, do they really believe that violent conflict is a thing of the past in the world, that human nature has really changed so much?
(The newest disturbing conflict in Latin America is already taking place on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Right-wing death squads, leftist guerrillas and illegal immigrants from Colombia, all inspired by the drug traffic, are clashing daily with Venezuelans, including Venezuelan marines sent out by the central government. The problems are overflowing daily into Panama. Now there is a kind of multilateralism for you.)
An admittedly cynical speculation: Does our multilateral obsession (check Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, none of them great successes and all weakening our real, war-fighting defensive capability) suggest that American officials do not really relish or have the vitality to lead or fight anymore?
On a purely hemispheric scale, one is hard-pressed to tell, even at an intellectually stimulating gathering like this one, on “Hemispheric Cooperation in the 21st Century” (now sponsored annually by the U.S. Southern Command in Panama and the National Defense University in Washington) how much enthusiasm there is among Latin American thinkers for really working together.
In the more private discussion groups, for instance, there was still a lot of grumbling about “asymmetry,” or the fact that the United States is so big and strong, admittedly not an easy factor to ameliorate. Still, there were impressive Latin American speakers such as Guatemala’s foreign minister Eduardo Stein Barillas, who averred that “the old order is still here, but the new order–not yet with us–is coming.”
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Toward the end of the provocative two-day conference, participants became more precise. How can multilateralism be “institutionalized” in a hemisphere historically short on institutions? Should the recent process of summit meetings of the presidents of the Americas take precedence over the historical hopelessness of the Organization of American States?
Caesar Fereseres of the University of California at Irvine, always the most practical and provocative rapporteur, asked everybody–if they were truly interested–to get busy working on present problems like the multilateral drug-control center in Panama. (Nobody has yet volunteered.)
Is it all real? Can we turn the imbalance of power between north and south around, or pretend it doesn’t exist? Are the liberal gringo dreams right or foolish? Are we facing new Latins or old ones?
Perhaps the best answer came from Erik Kjonnerud, professor at the National Defense University in Washington. “I see a new generation coming in Latin America,” he said. “The younger officers are less interested in sovereignty. They are watching NATO and its experience very carefully. They see what NATO has done for European societies and they are trying to see what the concept can do for them.”