Latin America: Nuclear Capabilities, Intentions and Threat Perceptions

Three key states are relevant in considering future nuclear proliferation in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Argentina and Brazil are critical because of their relatively advanced nuclear capabilities. For historical and geopolitical reasons, neither Argentina nor Brazil is likely to reactive nuclear weapons programs. Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chávez, has repeatedly demonstrated interest in developing a nuclear program, yet Venezuela lacks any serious nuclear expertise. Even if it had the managerial and technological capacity, the lead-time to develop an indigenous nuclear program would be measured in decades. Acquisition of nuclear technology from international sources would be difficult because members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group would insist on safeguards, and potential non-Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) suppliers are highly surveilled, risking the exposure of such a program before Venezuela could put a deterrent into place. While South American states have historically opposed nuclear weapons, their acquisition by Brazil and Argentina would lead to little more than diplomatic condemnation. Brazil and Argentina are both geopolitically satisfied powers that are deeply embedded in a regional security community. On the other hand, Venezuela under President Chávez is perceived as a revisionist power seeking a transformation of the international system. Venezuelan acquisition of nuclear weapons would be met with alarm by the United States and Colombia, and it would prompt nuclear weapons development by Brazil and possibly Argentina, more for reasons of preserving regional leadership and prestige than for fear of a Venezuelan threat

The crisis in Venezuelan civil-military relations: from Punto Fijo to the Fifth Republic

For many who thought of Venezuela as a consolidated democracy, the 1992 coup attempts came as a complete surprise. Those familiar with the deterioration of its democratic regime, in contrast, were more surprised that the coups did not succeed. This article provides an institution-centered explanation of the puzzle of why the 1992 coups attempts occurred, why they failed, and why the Venezuelan military has remained quiescent in the years that followed. Institutions of civilian control created during the post-1958 "Punto Fijo" period, particularly those based on fragmenting the officer corps, prevented the collapse of the democratic regime in 1992. These same institutions allowed civilians to regain authority over the armed forces duting the Rafael Caldera administration and have ensured the subordination of the armed forces to the elected authorities to the present. It is also argued that the istitutional basis for civilan control has been dismantled during the Fifth Republic, heightening the likelihood of future civil-military conflict and threatening regime stability

The use of ontologies for effective knowledge modelling and information retrieval

© 2017 The dramatic increase in the use of knowledge discovery applications requires end users to write complex database search requests to retrieve information. Such users are not only expected to grasp the structural complexity of complex databases but also the semantic relationships between data stored in databases. In order to overcome such difficulties, researchers have been focusing on knowledge representation and interactive query generation through ontologies, with particular emphasis on improving the interface between data and search requests in order to bring the result sets closer to users research requirements. This paper discusses ontology-based information retrieval approaches and techniques by taking into consideration the aspects of ontology modelling, processing and the translation of ontological knowledge into database search requests. It also extensively compares the existing ontology-to-database transformation and mapping approaches in terms of loss of data and semantics, structural mapping and domain knowledge applicability. The research outcomes, recommendations and future challenges presented in this paper can bridge the gap between ontology and relational models to generate precise search requests using ontologies. Moreover, the comparison presented between various ontology-based information retrieval, database-to-ontology transformations and ontology-to-database mappings approaches provides a reference for enhancing the searching capabilities of massively loaded information management systems

Brazil's Rise: Seeking Influence on Global Governance

Latin America Initiative Foreign Policy at BrookingsWhen President Dilma Rousseff first took office in 2010, Brazil’s future looked exceptionally bright. The country had benefited from Asia’s enormous appetite for its commodities for nearly a decade. With this economic tailwind, Brazil quickly recovered from the global financial crisis in 2008, and it became an attractive destination for foreign capital. Global powers—particularly the United States—acknowledged Brazil as an important country whose voice deserved to be heard

Book Review by Harold Trinkunas of The Soldier and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas

Book review by Harold Trinkunas of: The Soldier and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. By Zoltan Barany. Princeton University Press, 2012. 472 pp.By titling his new book as he has, Zoltan Barany consciously evokes Samuel P. Huntington’s seminal 1957 study on civil-military relations, The Soldier and the State. Whereas Huntington focused on great powers and had in view militarism and the role that it played in the twentieth century’s two world wars, Barany aims to explain civil-military relations following democratization. His goal as an investigator—to examine the conditions that are most likely to produce democratic civil-military relations across a wide range of transitional settings—is ambitious. As a theorist of civil-military relations and democratization, however, Barany’s aims are more modest. Eschewing a general theory of how new democracies achieve control over their militaries, he instead offers to scholars and practitioners of democracy the wisdom that can be gained from his case studies

Venezuelan Strategic Culture

The following Venezuela Findings Report, authored by Dr. Harold Trinkunas, is the product of a working group held in Miami on June 5, 2009, which included 11 prominent academic and private sector experts in Venezuelan history, culture, geography, economics, politics, and military affairs.At first glance, it is difficult to see the strategic culture of Venezuela in action since it has not fought a war with a foreign adversary since its independence from Gran Colombia in 1830. However, by looking at a broad concept of strategic culture that includes non-military sources of national power, we can detect a pattern across time in Venezuela’s engagement with the international system. The essential elements of Venezuela’s traditional strategic culture are an inward focus on political stability and an outward focus on peace. The legacy for Venezuelans of the wars of independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, in which their troops played a key role across northern South America, is a sense of nationalism, a desire for an autonomous role on the international stage, and a conviction that Venezuela can be a positive force for regional integration and freedom.1 Its role as a leading oil exporter contributes to a belief that Venezuela is a wealthy country that has the potential to accomplish great things. This sometimes produces an overestimation of its capabilities to accomplish change on the international stage. However, the legacy of political turmoil in the nineteenth century is a concern for both internal stability as well as the sense that the main threats to security are civil wars rather than external conflict

What is Really New about Venezuela's Bolivarian Foreign Policy?; Strategic Insights, v. 5, issue 2 (February 2006)

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.5, issue 2 (February 2006)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

A Crisis in Civil-Military Relations in the Andes?

Paper prepared for the 2001 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC, 5-8 September 2001.Almost all countries in the Andean region have experienced increased civil-military conflict during the last decade. Venezuela has elected a former coup leader as president who has swiftly militarized public administration, placing over 170 active duty and retired military officers in senior ministerial and vice-ministerial positions (Machillanda 2001). Ecuador witnessed a coup d’etat in January 2000 that led to the deposal of a legitimately elected president and his replacement by his vice-president (Weidner 2000). Peru led the region in this area, experiencing a civilian-led self-coup in 1992 by President Alberto Fujimori, and a transition to democracy from a deeply corrupt civilian semi-authoritarian regime in 2001. A thoroughly complicit military played a leading role in both events (Garcia Calderón 2001). Even Colombia, which has made substantial progress towards democratic control of the armed forces by establishing a civilian Ministry of Defense, has dealt with civil-military tensions over its internal conflict. Over 200 officers were recently dismissed for their suspected links to right wing paramilitary organizations. Even Bolivia, were former dictator, Gen. Hugo Banzer, had served as an elected president, has witnessed some military tension over internal conflicts between the state and indigenous communities over coca policy (Weidner 2000). Taken together, these events suggest that the Andean region may be experiencing a crisis in civil-military relations