Unasur Defence Council has to protect the region’s vast and strategic resources
The Union of South American Nations, Unasur, has among the objectives of the recently created South American Defence Council protecting the natural resources of the region which include 25% of the world’s drinking water and proven oil reserves estimated in 123 billion barrels of oil.
This week Unasur member countries Defence ministers and representatives met in Argentina for the official opening of the Defence Strategic Studies Centre, CEED, the first permanent body of the Unasur Defence Council which will have its offices in Buenos Aires.
“The region (South America) has assets of growing strategic significance and need to be preserved and protected”, said Brazil Defence minister Nelson Jobim one of the several speakers at the special inauguration seminar
Jobim mentioned among those assets 25% of the world’s drinking water reserves in aquifers and 123 billion barrels of proven oil deposits.
The seminar was attended by over 200 people including Unasur Secretary General and former Colombian Foreign Affairs minister Emma Mejia, Defence ministers, military experts, academics and diplomats.
“Out of the region are attempting to create strong discrepancies in a region that is the most peaceful strategic space on earth”, added Jobim.
Ecuadorian Defence minister Javier Ponce said that “with Unasur, it’s the first time the region is working on a regional defence strategy outside the tutelage umbrella from the United States”.
He added it was time we dismantle the TIAR (Inter American Reciprocal Assistance Treaty) brain child of Washington and which has as its main purpose impede out of the region aggression and if that is the case, the rest of the continent would come in support.
But it failed when the Argentine military dictatorship was defeated by a British Task Force sent in 1982 to recover the Falklands/Malvinas Islands which had been taken by force in early April that year.
Washington then openly supported its main NATO ally, the UK.
The ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires was the first major event the Unasur Defence Council with the inauguration of the Defence Strategic Studies Centre for the defence of the twelve members of the group
The DSSC will function at the ‘Nestor Kirchner’ Big House of the Motherland and will be fed with contributions, reports, papers elaborated by professionals from the 12 countries with the purpose of helping draft and outline strategic policies to be implemented by the Council.
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I just hope all south americans can enjoy this......soon. Will be a real pleasure see the invasor out of region.
And I have a low opinion of politicians. They'll have lots of meetings, lots of lunches, filling lots of very well appointed hotel rooms with expense accounts and yet they'll achieve very little, very slowly !
So-Far (good?) - you are unlikely to live long enough !
LatAm has not always been “too unstable”, and neither is political instability the main culprit for the “forever region of the future” epithet. From 1930 to 80, Latin America grew a lot - perhaps more than any other region in the world. (It was in the 70s that Latin America began to be known as the “region of the future”, though the “and forever will be” had not yet been added.) The problem is that, to finance their development projects, the governments of the region took loads of foreign debt. This isn't quite unusual. Except for the developed East Asian nations - Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan - all other industrialized nations have walked the path to their current position by borrowing from foreign banks. The problem is that, in the 80s, US and European banks began to increase their interest rates as a strategy by central banks of the region to curb high inflation. Latin American government who had become indebted to those banks thus lost their ability to borrow more or to pay off existing debt: thus the Third World sovereign debt crises and the reason the 80s were a lost decade for the region.
The 90s were again a lost decade, but this time for a different region: LatAm governments began to buy the US-promoted dogma that the government shouldn't have much of a role in boosting industrialization and that development could be achieved by opening capital markets. This was not what happened, and deregulated markets in fact led to a series of financial crises in LatAm (and also in Asia and Russia): mainly currency crises.
I bet that by countries who are sabotaging their own development, you mean Argentina. But Argentina is in fact one of the countries who has best learned its lesson. More than any other country in SA, Argentina has intervened in markets to keep the currency at a competitive level without fearing being tagged as anti-market by speculators and the outlets that defend their interests (virtually all of the US and European press).
Here is a few links that might help them make their job easyer, if they really mean to protect Latin America. www.facebook.com/#!/ctargentina
www.irna.ir/ENNewsShow.aspx?NID=30402635&SRCH=1
Both, today should also learn from iceland, but unfortunately, it's not happening. Iceland is doing the same thing as Argentina did..just default
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