Earlier this month, as the US loudly complained
about Venezuela’s decision to purchase arms from Russia, South
America’s ministers of defense came together in Guayaquil, Ecuador and
put the finishing touches on an agreement
to develop common mechanisms of transparency in defense policy and
spending. The agreement, which also calls for the creation of a
multilateral Center for Strategic Defense Studies,
is the most recent example of the growing effectiveness of the Union of
South American Nations (Spanish acronym UNASUR) as a forum for
addressing the most urgent and sensitive issues on the regional agenda.
Though the group remains unknown to most of the US public - and is
rarely referred to by US policy makers - it has, in the space of a few
years, emerged as one of the Western Hemisphere’s leading multilateral
bodies and, in the process, is rapidly undermining the regional clout
of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS).
UNASUR first began to take form in 2004 when South American leaders signed the Cusco Declaration
that committed their governments to creating “a politically, socially,
economically, environmentally and infrastructurally integrated South
American area.” Despite the diverging political agendas of the region’s
governments, the leaders agreed on prioritizing the group’s role as a
geopolitical actor or, in the words of the declaration, pursuing
“concerted and coordinated political and diplomatic efforts that will
strengthen the region as a differentiated and dynamic factor in its
foreign relations.”
In May 2008 UNASUR was officially established with the signing of a constitutive treaty in Brasilia. In September of the same year the group achieved its first diplomatic milestone when it successfully defused
South America’s most serious political crisis of the last five years:
the attempted violent destabilization of Evo Morales’ government in
Bolivia. President Michele Bachelet of Chile, the pro-tempore president
of UNASUR, convened an emergency meeting of South American heads of
state in Santiago that quickly issued a unanimous statement strongly
condemning the attacks against Bolivian democracy and announcing the
creation of a commission of “support and assistance” to the Bolivian
government. Soon afterwards, Bolivia’s opposition groups abandoned
their violent tactics and agreed to enter negotiations with the Morales
government.
Though the US administration has been actively promoting the OAS as
a defender of democratic stability in the hemisphere, that organization
played no role at all in the peaceful resolution of the 2008 Bolivian
crisis, due no doubt in part to the US’ ambivalent position
towards the opposition’s destabilization campaign. In the nearly two
years that have elapsed since UNASUR’s successful diplomatic
intervention in Bolivia, the group has continued to demonstrate its
ability to take on the region’s thorniest issues, independently of the
OAS and Washington.
In August of 2009, a special UNASUR summit
was held in Argentina to discuss a highly controversial agreement that
expanded the US’ military presence in Colombia and was perceived as
threatening to Colombia’s neighbors, particularly Ecuador and
Venezuela. Though tensions have continued to flare over the agreement,
the summit paved the way for dialogue and gave further impetus to
UNASUR’s Defense Council
in which Latin American defense ministries engage in open discussions
on national and regional defense projects. The Council’s latest
achievement was the Guayaquil agreement mentioned above.
UNASUR also adopted a position of staunch opposition to the coup in Honduras, refusing for instance, to recognize the elections
held last year under the de facto government. While Peru and Colombia –
the two UNASUR governments most closely aligned to the US – eventually
joined Washington in recognizing the elections, the rest of the
12-member bloc still refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the new
Honduran government despite the US administration’s best efforts to change their minds. Even Chile’s new right-wing president, Sebastian Piñera, has reportedly backed UNASUR’s official position on Honduras. As a result of this collective resolve, Spain was forced to backtrack
on its decision to invite the Honduran government to participate in a
Latin America-European Union summit held in Madrid on the 17th and 18th
of May.
On May 4th, UNASUR sent another clear signal of its intention to continue charting an independent course with the unanimous election
of former Argentinean president Nestor Kirchner to the post of
Secretary General of the organization. During his presidency, Kirchner opposed the US-sponsored “free trade” agenda in Latin America, rejected
the Washington Consensus and International monetary Fund-led economic
policies, and successfully steered his country out of the worst
economic recession in its history. President Lula da Silva of Brazil welcomed
Kirchner’s designation as Secretary General and said that it would lead
to a further “stage of transformation” for the regional bloc.
Center for Economic and Policy Research
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