Global Geoeconomic Patterns ^{( 3 )}

The shortcomings of post-hegemonic regionalism create a puzzle when applied to the most recent case of South American security regionalism. If we want to show with data that there has been a process of displacement of the relative power and influence of the US, as a causal condition of regionalism, it is necessary to use data such as that presented in Figures 1 and 2, in which the relative US (broad) national and economic capabilities facing South America. In this context, it is possible to see the stability of the gap in terms of composite material capabilities.

Figure 1 Comparative CINC: South America vis á vis the US 

Evidence suggests stability in the distribution of power. The void remains exposed once an analysis of the evidence of the effective transformation, or not, of the inter-American system has been undertaken. As for the concentration of wealth capabilities, the pattern shows that international system experiences a sharp de-concentration during 2001-2008. Notwithstanding this change, an approximation to the concrete reality of the Western hemisphere demonstrates that the deconcentration could have had perceivable effects (^{Jervis 2015}), but that regional patterns have barely changed. Even stronger is the result of the quantitative analysis of data related to national capabilities in general, in which there is evidence of a progressive re-concentration of capabilities in the hands of a few powers, to the detriment of the majority of states in the international system. This asymmetry is particularly marked in the Americas.

Application of CON formula demonstrates that during 1980-2013 trends in gross economic capabilities of the states of the world passed through two clearly definable stages. The first was high concentration, which is to say an increase in inequality, between 1980 and 2001, and the second of a rapid deconcentration, between 2002 and 2013 with a particularly high speed until 2008, in which the capability to attract wealth spread in the international system.

What explains the marked differences between one period and the other was the super-cycle of commodities. During 2000-2014, the general trend was an increase in the prices of raw materials stimulated by the demand from emerging markets (^{Radetzki et al. 2008}; ^{Erten and Ocampo 2013}; ^{Jacks 2013}). From 2003, with the US intervention in and military occupation of Iraq, and the dramatic effect of the armed separatist revolts in the Niger Delta, together with the oil strike of the Venezuelan state-owned PDVSA, fossil fuels added strongly to the commodities push. This slowing the growth of highly industrialized economies, strengthening industrialization processes in the biggest emerging markets, and accelerating growth in the raw materials most dependent economies. Those events deconcentrated the global economy, favoring perceptions of parity, promoting the idea of multipolarity, and in some extreme cases, of non-polarity (^{Kupchan 1998}; ^{Haass 2008}; ^{Bremmer and Roubini 2011}). In this context of catching-up and power parity towards power transition, the revision of the international system based on ever more autonomous foreign policy strategies appeared plausible.

However, the analysis of global economic concentration does not match that of military capabilities. Although subject to debate, it is difficult to counterargue that the pairing of economic and military capabilities continues to be a central piece in the definition of hierarchies of power in international politics. Even soft power theorists admit that hard power continues to be a fundamental instrument of global politics, as is shown by the development of the concept of smart power, based on the alternative and progressive use of instruments of soft and hard power (^{Nossel 2004}; Nye 2009). Thus, economic and military capabilities still playing a leading role in analyses of international power relations.

Applying the same formula to variables of gross military power obtained from the Composite Index of National Capability (CINC)⁽⁴⁾ (^{Singer et al. 1972}), a distinct pattern becomes evident. Economic capabilities are only a part of the story in international politics, since power must consider military capabilities, then the results presented in Figure 2 represent a challenge to the definition of international polarity.

Figure 2 Patterns of world concentration of GDP and CINC (1980-2013) 

In late 20^th century, Samuel Huntington affirmed that the world was experiencing a uni-multipolarity, or a game of multiple boards on which capabilities have different distribution and forms by sector (Huntington 1999). His analytical model, usually described with the metaphor of a three-dimensional chessboard, could be a solution to the apparent contradiction of economic deconcentration and the concentration of global military capabilities, at least as a global explanation but with potential deficiencies in regional analysis. However, uni-multipolarity is not a parsimonious explanation of world politics, due to its global perspective and its interest in explaining the system as a whole, as bipolarity did it during the Cold War. This is not feasible in a “world of regions” (^{Katzenstein 2015}).

The differences between the patterns of concentration of economic and military capabilities are real, but the contradiction is apparent analyzing the global political reality from the angle of regions. To Katzenstein, global dynamics have been abandoning their dominant global character to adapt to a world of open and porous regions. Similarly, important IR scholars have been writing about these processes of regionalization in international security and international political economy (^{Buzan and Wæver 2003}; ^{Acharya 2013}).

Privileging the regional perspective does not imply forgetting phenomena at the global level, but rather incorporating that in the context of the studied region. The contradiction presented in the types of capabilities, which cannot be fully resolved through the analytical model of uni-multipolarity is an apparent contradiction in the international system, but not necessary in regional systems. For a better understanding of regional dynamics, we should consider elements of the dominant political culture, patterns of cooperation and conflict, but principally the geopolitical criteria. Regional studies are mainly geopolitical analysis, since their spatial logic with respect to the incidence of global trends in spaces distinguishable as regions. This does not deny the ideational or behavioral dimensions of regions, but rather defends the relevance of the physical and structural condition for the definition. Seen in this way, we must reconsider the contradiction presented in Figure 2 and stop viewing it in the global context, to begin to see it from regional angles.

The geopolitical focus on regional realities brings us from a non-regionalized global perspective to a regional perspective, which considers the global. The pursuit of national objectives through the mobilization of ample resources in the form of a grand strategy (^{Liddell Hart 1967}; ^{Kennedy 1992}; ^{Christensen 1996}; ^{Gaddis 2002}; ^{Russell and Tokatlian 2013}) or the management of geopolitical objectives through geostrategy (^{Brzezinski 1997}; ^{Walton 2007}) across geopolitical realms. The form in which states of different capabilities react to others geostrategies, conditions the meaning given to them and, as a consequence, the courses of action they follow. The inclusion of this type of analytical approach adds the possibility of a dynamic interpretation, which would explain later processes, such as institutional performance.

Global Geostrategic Patterns

Drawing on the historical analysis applied to the study of international politics, an important missing link in the explanation of the new regionalism is the US geostrategic over-orientation toward Eurasia since 2001. This change is evident in 2002 NSS, and had an important impact on the international perception of South American governments. This was because, on one hand, the global conditions of hierarchy did not change; the system continued to be unipolar. On the other, the overstated geopolitical interest of the administration of George W. Bush in the Middle East and Central Asia opened an extraordinary window of opportunity for left-wing autonomist South American forces. Those demonstrated resistance to the globalization promoted during the Clinton era, and had growing financial resources derived from the super-cycle of raw materials.

It is impossible to separate the effect of South American autonomy from the geostrategy of the US. Prior to the most recent wave of South American regionalism, Zbigniew Brzezinski identified the strengthening of economic and military positions of occupation and influence in three key peninsulas of Eurasia, Europe, the Arabian Peninsula, and South-East Asia, as a great US geostrategic imperative (Brzezinski 1997). Meanwhile, Christopher (^{Layne 1997}) cautioned against the convenience of offshore balancing in Eurasia as a replacement strategy for the primacy approach, which the US could not sustain in the face of slow but progressive decline. There has been continuity among US realist scholars in calling for offshore balancing, driven by an efficient use of power with the aim of avoiding a single or collective hegemony across Eurasia (^{Mearsheimer 2001}; ^{Innocent and Carpenter 2009}; ^{Pape 2010}; ^{Walt 2011}; Mearsheimer and Walt 2016).

The geopolitical importance of Eurasia was reemphasized by Brzezinski in drawing on the work of Halford (^{Mackinder 2004}) on the geographical pivot of history. Thus, Eurasia occupies a central position at the base of original geopolitical thought, implying the displacement of the importance of other regions, especially those without a great power. This explains the marginal position of South America in dominant geostrategic calculations, including those of a neighboring superpower such as the US.

For the geostrategy of the US, the most salient event after the geostrategic proposals of Brzezinski and Layne were the 9/11 attacks. These brought a reconsideration of US foreign policy priorities and national security, with the Western hemisphere virtually disappearing. The national security apparatus over-focused on Central Asia-Afghanistan since 2001-and the Middle East-Iraq since 2003-(^{Feffer 2003}; Layne 2007). The accumulation of capabilities and the development of conventional combat skills from the time of the Cold War gave to the US its global military superiority. However, these capabilities and skills did not correspond to the multidimensional challenge of the War on Terror (^{Posen 2001}), which consumed treasure and attention by the entire national security apparatus (^{Sloan 2008}; ^{Cohen 2004}).

Beyond the actual event, September 11^th occurred in the midst of a large-scale economic process with the potential to lead to a transition of power: the material rise of China. The possibility of this power transition has been widely debated, with no agreement on the real prospects of a peaceful or conflictive transition (^{Zhu 2006}; ^{Tammen and Kluger 2006}; ^{Lebow and Valentino 2009}; ^{Mearsheimer 2010}; ^{Allison 2017}). What is certain is that China presented impressive numbers, which reinforced the hypothesis of US decline and forced Washington strategists to take more seriously the necessity of maintaining presence and influence in Eurasia. The development of this geostrategy did not stop with the end of the Bush administration, extending into the Obama administration and achieving its climax in 2011 with the “Pivot to Asia” doctrine (^{Campbell 2016}).

Additionally, Russia experienced a resurgence driven by two factors: the oil boom, and the rise of the assertive leadership of Vladimir Putin (^{Stuermer 2008}). The Russian awakening reactivated the dynamics of geopolitical competition with the US. The relationship of energy cooperation between China and Russia was only part of the joint strategy to displace the US in Central Asia (^{Klare 2002}). The process of security cooperation, started in 1996 with the creation of the Shanghai Five forum, including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, led to a bilateral border demilitarization measure between China and Russia in 1997 (^{Tsai 2003}). The Shanghai Five evolved into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001, including Uzbekistan (^{Marketos 2008}; ^{Frost 2009}). The strategy of regional access-deny was clear. Brzezinski’s warning points to the possibility of cooperation between three Eurasian powers. China and Russia were the most important because of their material capabilities and long history of rivalry with the US. The third power is Iran. Because of its dimensions and capabilities, Iran is not in the same league as China or Russia, but the oil boom, and the antagonistic leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) compounded its central position in Eurasia. Encouraged by the advantages afforded by high oil prices, Ahmadinejad implemented a balancing strategy toward the West (^{Ansari 2007}). This confrontation reached the point of sanctions against Iran for the secrecy in its nuclear program. While there is no evidence of an alliance between China and Russia with Iran, the first is the principal buyer of Iranian oil (British Petroleum 2017), while the latter is its principal supplier of arms, with China second (SIPRI 2017). These geopolitical links appeared to close the Brzezinski’s Eurasian triangle, threatening the interests and influence of the US in the super-continent.

That situation does not account for any serious US decline in terms of quantifiable capabilities. On the contrary, the geostrategic maneuvers of China, Russia and Iran, together with US military efforts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stimulated an increase in US military spending and thus the concentration of capabilities. What declined was US interest in hemispheric matters, whose importance paled in comparison to the hot spots of the national security agenda on the other side of the world. Even the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) initiative, indirectly associated with national security policy, suffered the disinterest of its main promoter, opening the doors for a greater demonstration of post-hegemony in South America. A successful parallel summit of resistance to the FTAA in the framework of the IV Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, on November 4-5, 2005, in which Néstor Kirchner and Hugo Chávez declared the agreement’s death.

The geostrategic over-orientation to Eurasia appears in the US NSS documents of the (^{Bush 2002}; 2006) and (^{Obama 2010}) administrations. The first abandoned any reference to the previously mentioned FTAA and drastically reduced the consideration it had had of anti-drug policies. As for the geographical focus, already scarce reference to Latin America was further reduced as an area of critical interest for the US national security strategy. From the point of view of doctrine, an aspect that shows the greatest change with respect to the NSS document of 1999 (^{Clinton 1999}), the thesis of preventive war was presented as the basis of the fight against terrorism. The 2006 NSS overstated the importance of Iraq as the greatest concern for national security, and barely mentioning Latin America. By 2010, the NSS timidly abandoned the Middle East and Central Asia, but to increasingly focus on East Asia.

Other relevant piece of evidence of the geostrategic reorientation of the US is the relative weight of the GCCs (^{Watson 2011}). The GCCs respond directly to US geostrategic imperatives, giving its strategists the possibility of having a structure of command, control and communications which responds to the specificities of each regional security cluster in the international system (^{Buzan and Wæver 2003}; Watson 2011). The first two commands have their origin in the Second World War, and are associated with the principal theatres of operations, namely Europe (EUCOM) and the Pacific (PACOM). During two distinct stages of the Cold War the US created the one for Latin America (SOUTHCOM) in 1963, other for the Middle East (CENTCOM) in 1983, extended to Central Asia after the Soviet breakdown. Since 9/11, and within the War on Terror, the two latest commands were established: that of North America (NORTHCOM) in 2002, and the command for Africa (AFRICOM) in 2007 (Watson 2011). See Map 1.

Map 1: U.S. Geographic Combatant Commands 

Source: Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (2018).⁽⁵⁾ Own elaboration.

Figure 3 U.S. Geographic Combatant Commands budgets (in millions US$) 

In comparative terms, the budget of the SOUTHCOM was lower than the average of others GCC (see Figure 3 above), and its role in the NSS remains stable (^{Watson 2011}). Although the military budget data of the United States prior to the creation of the CDS are not categorized by GCC, in the transcript on the issuance of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, the Congressman Ike Skelton, Chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, before the imminent withdrawal of US forces in Iraq, he said:

General Petraeus [Commander of the CENTCOM], you and General Odierno [Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq] will have to deal with the potential instability caused by the formation of the new government and the reduction of the United States force levels simultaneously. Admiral Olson [Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command], your forces in-country will be faced with a reduction in support from the general purpose forces, and General McNabb [Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM)], TRANSCOM with CENTCOM, will be carrying out one of the largest moves in military personnel and equipment in decades. (U.S. Congress Committee on Armed Services 2010, 1-2).

Skelton's words suggest that between 2003 and 2011, the CENTCOM forces were formidably large. In 2007 these forces in the heart of Eurasia increased because of the emerging strategy devised by Petraeus (^{Simon 2008}). This coincides with the period of the rise of post-hegemonic regionalism and, very specifically, with the birth of the CDS.

The emergence of the SOUTHCOM in 1963 is suggestive, as it coincides with the Missile Crisis in late 1962. It served as the politico-military structure of diffusion of the National Security Doctrine for Latin America, which privileged the thesis of the internal enemy and trained the armed forces of the region in communist containment (^{Comblin 1989}; ^{Leal Buitrago 2003}). Its relative weight was lost with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new threats. Accordingly, SOUTHCOM assumed a predominant role in the War on Drugs of the 1990s. However, and following the trajectory drawn in the NSS documents, 9/11 events drastically changed US strategic priorities.

The creation of NORTHCOM in 2002 suggests that for the first time the NSS saw North America as a scenario of potential external aggressions and strategic deployment. War arrived in American soil. Nevertheless, the most significant change was the CENTCOM increase in budget and military capabilities. In the period of the rise of South American post-hegemonic regionalism, this command came to occupy a privileged position in the NSS, as the center of geostrategic attention. The marginalization of SOUTHCOM reached historically low levels after 2007, with the creation of the AFRICOM, reinforcing (^{Mackinder’s “world island” thesis 2004}). The reconfiguration of PACOM from 2011, with the “Pivot to Asia” doctrine, added to the attention paid to the Greater Middle East and Africa. This process of a decade of very low geostrategic interest in Latin America allowed the rise the CDS.

Leaders adjust their discourses and agendas to their expectations, which can be grouped into fears and desires (^{Jervis 2015}, 356 et seq.). Accordingly, decision-makers perceive in the international political reality what they expect, or fear, to see and/or what they want to see, as perception is not a passive action but an active one, in which the subject that perceives does not receive stimuli objectively, but rather recreates the perceived reality based on their expectations. South American left-wing leaders perceived that the relative contraction of geopolitical interest from the US in their region was evidence of the decline of the superpower. Despite never having experienced military intervention by US troops, unlike Central America and especially the Caribbean islands, tension related to the regional presence of the US has persisted in South America. Continuity of the Rio Pact (1947) and SOUTHCOM, in addition to the formal activation of the South Atlantic IV Fleet since 2008, stimulated leaders such as Lula Da Silva, Hugo Chávez, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández, along with Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, and Fernando Lugo, to push for a South American mechanism of collective defense and/or deterrence.

However, it was not only the fear of losing autonomy that motivated the emergence of security regionalism. Expectations of US decline spread rapidly the academic sphere in the first decade of the 21^st century (^{Wallerstein 2003}; ^{Haass 2008}; ^{Ikenberry 2008}; ^{Zakaria 2008}; ^{Acharya 2018}). Similarly, in the plans and declarations of emerging powers and revisionist leaderships the term “multipolarity” appeared in its different meanings, both as a diagnostic and as a desirable objective by Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela (^{Mijares 2017}). The rise of BRICS countries, reinforce the perception of US decline.

In this scenario of perceived (or desired) US decline, not only the rivals of the superpower and South American revisionist governments diagnosed post-hegemony and the need for a multipolar world. Conservative and moderate governments, such as those of Colombia, Chile, and Peru, agreed to be part of the process of post-hegemonic regionalism, despite their good relations with the US. The discrediting of the US government under George W. Bush was the first condition for the reduction of its regional diplomatic influence. The change of administration in 2009, and the arrival of Barack Obama, made clear that Latin America was not among the priorities of the national security agenda of Washington. In the 5^th Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, Obama’s speech (2009) projected the idea of a horizontal relationship with Latin America.

In the specific case of the relationship of security cooperation between the US and Colombia, the country with the most reluctant government in security regionalism, two factors coincided. The first brought a critical juncture: the Operación Fénix (March 1, 2008) in which, through an unauthorized bombing in Ecuadorian territory, Colombian armed forces destroyed a camp of the FARC, killing Luis Édgar Devia Silva (a.k.a. Raúl Reyes), spokesman and commander of the secretariat of the guerrilla group. The operation resulted in a diplomatic crisis with Ecuador and Venezuela, with whom there was a militarized dispute, and the cutting of diplomatic ties with Quito and Caracas. Pressures from South America compelled Colombia to submit the CDS project, avoiding the escalation with Venezuela as well as the regional isolation (^{Ardila and Amado 2009}).

The second factor relates to the cooling of relations between Washington and Bogota after the arrival of Obama to the White House. The “special relationship” of the US and Colombia (^{Tickner 2008}), forged in the presidencies of Andrés Pastrana and Bill Clinton with the “Plan Colombia”, were deepened in the Uribe-Bush era. Both shared a similar security vision, and Colombia abandoned the term “narco-guerrilla” to use instead that of “narco-terrorism” in order to labelling insurgency (^{Felbab-Brown 2009}). With Obama, the approach to hemispheric relations was partially de-securitized and the relative importance of Colombia in the national security agenda of the US was reduced.

Geopolitical Dynamics in South American Regionalism

While the previous two factors analyzed correspond to global effects on the region, this final factor originates in South America itself. Although the CDS does not have any institutional rival that duplicates its functions, its belonging to a larger project, UNASUR, has caused the geopolitical divisions in South American regionalism to compromise its cohesion. The failure of Brazil to consolidate its leadership in South America (^{Malamud 2011}) meant that the geopolitical divisions of the regionalist projects should not be overlooked.

Initially, UNASUR and its CDS appeared capable of heading a different, and therefore successful, project. Post-hegemonic regionalism appeared capable of replacing the liberal regionalism of limited commitments. This was especially true of what was the definitive decline of the CAN, uncertainty about MERCOSUR, and the limitations of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. But the development of UNASUR, and its CDS, has suffered from fractures within South America. The biggest of these is the tension between Atlantic and Pacific. On the one hand, MERCOSUR has been experiencing disruptions due to the end of the super-cycle of raw materials and internal political tensions that have meant the end of governments affiliated with the Sao Paulo Forum, primarily in Brazil and Argentina. On the other hand, although also associated with the processes just mentioned, the political and economic crisis in Venezuela has posed a difficult challenge for MERCOSUR to overcome. Incapable of forcing Caracas to adopt the trade regulations and democratic principles of the Ushuaia Protocol, the decision made was to suspend Venezuela on August 6, 2017. For its part, the AP has manage to consolidate itself as a mechanism of economic integration that brings to mind liberal regionalism.

While the Brazilian and Argentinian governments of Michel Temer and Mauricio Macri had a markedly orientation to economic liberalization, their predecessors, Dilma Rouseff and Cristina Fernández, were the heirs of more statist models that also tolerated the authoritarianization of Venezuela. Meanwhile, the South American governments of the AP demonstrated a trend to economic opening and a democratic record which, on average, exceeds that of MERCOSUR, above all if Venezuela is included. MERCOSUR and AP are not in open opposition. Indeed, in the Southern Cone, Chile and Argentina encourage the possibility of convergence between those two regional blocs (^{Bernal-Meza et al. 2018}). This became probable while Venezuela remains suspended from the former. However, Brazilian political instability and polarization did not allow progress in that direction, maintaining the geopolitical fracture in South America. This geopolitical division broken UNASUR, even before its dramatic split in 2018 (^{Mijares and Nolte 2018}). This hindered even further the security dialogue between its members and affecting the performance of the CDS.

The combination of global geoeconomic and geostrategic patterns with geopolitical dynamics of South American regionalism, offers a structural analytical complement to the explanations that up to now have been given about the CDS.