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Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security
David R. Mares, Arie M. Kacowicz
Geopolitics in Latin America, Old and New
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https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315867908.ch2
Detlef Nolte, Leslie E. Wehner
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PART II
Theoretical approaches to security
in Latin America
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33
Introduction
Geography can certainly influence politics, as the complicated topography of South America
with its inaccessible rainforests, deserts, and high mountains illustrates. This topography has
historically made the establishment of communication channels and contacts (including warfare)
difficult, not only between neighboring countries but also between the center and the
periphery within many countries. However, geographic obstacles are not as insurmountable as
recent transcontinental infrastructure projects have demonstrated. Being endowed with natural
resources creates opportunities for action to be taken in terms of exploitation, development
of infrastructure, and securitization. However, political decisions must be made in order for
changes related to geographic spaces and endowments to occur. Geopolitical thinking constructs
narratives at the interplay of territory, geography, and politics, and with regards to how
these elements should shape the interactions of states within a region (Cohen 2009; Kacowicz
2000; Kelly 1997).
Geopolitical thinking and policy-making may have waned in other regions of the world, but
Latin America is still a fertile ground for the development of geopolitical ideas and doctrines.
If we look at the maps included in the different defense White Books (Libros Blancos) of South
American governments, they show the enduring importance of geopolitical markers – maps of
the maritime boundaries, lost and/or reclaimed territories, and territorial projections into the
Antarctic. In fact, the attempts of Latin American governments to construct identities based
on territorial and maritime spaces are deeply rooted in geopolitical thinking (Dodds 1993), as
demonstrated by the ‘Blue Amazon’ narrative promoted by the Brazilian navy since the first
decade of the 2000s. The enduring importance of geopolitics in Latin America is also reflected
in the high number of books, journals, and articles in print with the word ‘geopolitics’ in their
title (whether in Spanish, Portuguese, or English), and in its being a salient component of the
curricula of military academies in this region.
While geopolitics is still important in political discourses and foreign policy in Latin
America, there are only few analyses of current geopolitical thinking. Moreover, most of these
works are rather descriptive or adopt a historical perspective on the development of geopolitical
ideas. While Latin America is a region in which geopolitical thinking is influential and
pervasive, the avenue of ‘critical geopolitics’ – which seeks to unpack the different rationales
2
GEOPOLITICS IN LATIN
AMERICA, OLD AND NEW
Detlef Nolte and Leslie E. Wehner
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Detlef Nolte and Leslie E. Wehner
34
and meanings of geopolitical discourses – is, paradoxically, rather underdeveloped (exceptions
are Cairo et al. 2007; Preciado and Uc 2010; Cabrera 2011) when compared to mainstream
geopolitics approaches focusing on cases outside of Latin America (Dodds et al. 2013). Critical
geopolitics refers to the analysis of the spatializing of boundaries and dangers (the geopolitical
map of the world), and of the geopolitical representations of self and other (the geopolitical
imagination) (Mamadouh 1998: 244).
‘Neoclassical geopolitics’ (Guzzini 2014), however, is the dominant perspective in Latin
America. It is a policy-oriented approach, which conceptualizes foreign policy challenges
and the international politics of a state in light of its geographical features, or its position on
the map. It formulates guidelines for conducting statecraft based on this analysis (van der
Wusten and Dijkink 2002: 20). Therefore, neoclassical geopolitics gives explanatory primacy
to physical and human geographical factors – for example, whether a country is landlocked
or has a large coastline, or whether it is rich or poor with regard to raw materials – which
tend to lead to environmental and structural determinism. This chapter focuses on both major
political and economic developments that have influenced geopolitical thinking in South
America. It also seeks to elucidate the constitutive and basic elements of existing geopolitical
narratives.
Classical geopolitics in Latin America
The reference to geopolitical codes and maps (i.e., on postage stamps; Child 2008) is a pervasive
element of political thinking in Latin America. Thus, the past still has a significant psychological
impact on the current international relations of the region and present-day boundary
disputes (Kacowicz 2000: 84–85).
Latin American geopolitics until the end of the Cold War era was characterized by a focus
on the state – sometimes perceived as an organic entity – as the provider of territorial security
in both its domestic and external dimensions. The state prioritized the need to exert control over
its own territory by trying to provide space for population growth and economic expansion.
However, few connections were made between the internal territorial geographies and topographies
in the field of geopolitics in its old variant – that is, the study of sparsely populated
areas as places from which nonconformist sectors of society (including criminal networks) can
subvert and control the state (Cohen 2009: 36).
The centrality of the state in geopolitical thinking was related to the need to determine
and defend its territorial boundaries. Border disputes are related to the very origins of the
nation-state in Latin America (Parodi 2002). This explains why “territorial disputes embody
the essence of SouthAmerican geopolitics” (Kelly 1997: 135). SouthAmerica has been referred
to as a ‘zone of negative peace’ or a ‘zone of violent peace;’ both phrases reflect the reality of
rivalry of South American states vis-à-vis territory and border disputes. However, these terms
simultaneously attest to the lack of large-scale armed conflicts in the region, despite the existing
rivalries (Kacowicz 1998; Mares 2001).
The authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s tended to emphasize nationalistic narratives
in the face of territorial issues. The geopolitical thinking of the military governments was
closely linked to national security doctrines (Kacowicz 2000). Moreover, geopolitical thinkers
from the military became political protagonists who were able to shape relationships with
other states in the region. A good example is General Augusto Pinochet, who was a professor
of geopolitics but not an important geopolitical author. In contrast, General Golbery do Couto
e Silva, another geopolitical thinker, was able to influence Brazil’s foreign policy as advisor to
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Geopolitics in Latin America, old and new
35
different authoritarian presidents after 1964 (Child 1979; Kacowicz 2000). The predominance
of the military sector in the field of geopolitics is related to the role played by the military geographical
institutes that exist in most Latin American countries. These institutes’ main duties
were to control and elaborate the cartography of the state. However, the same institutes also
played the role of academic centers for geopolitical and military training (Barton 1997: 63).
They were closely linked to the respective national military academies.
While traditional geopolitics perceived the state as a unitary actor, geopolitical narratives
and policies have always been contested. Geopolitics at the domestic level has remained underresearched
in terms of actors, competing policies and narratives, and internal dilemmas regarding
the implementation of one policy over another. The subfield of foreign policy analysis can
illuminate this facet of geopolitics, as it has shown that even in authoritarian contexts policies
can be contested domestically.
Traditional geopolitics in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by the structural frame set
by the systemic variable of bipolarity during the Cold War. The key point is that ideological
and power structures had the upper hand in geopolitics in South America. Geopolitics in Latin
America was thus reduced to Great Power politics management by the United States and the
Soviet Union in developing regions. For instance, the dissemination of anticommunism of the
United States was key for the development of the national security doctrines in Latin America
(Cohen 2009; Child 1979; Kelly 1997).
Further, an overemphasis on border delimitations in the analysis of old geopolitics research
may have influenced the lack of interest in geo-economic issues. While economic issues were
present in existing studies of old geopolitics, they were nested in studies of disputes over territorial
and maritime boundaries without being distinguished from the study of sovereignty
issues. For instance, the maritime treaties signed by Chile, Ecuador, and Peru in 1952 and 1954
were not exclusively driven by the need to delimit sea borders. Rather, economic strategic
reasons were fundamental for the signing of these accords, to exert economic control over
those 200 miles, to protect national fishing industries, and to allow for national economic
development as a whole and in specific geographical zones that could serve as economic poles.
A reexamination of old geopolitics topics in Latin America could lead to new understandings
of concepts and to new perspectives of research, such as the observed but neglected intrinsic
relationship between security and development in this period.
New geopolitics in Latin America
The main factors influencing geopolitical thinking in Latin America since the 1990s can be
summarized as follows: (1) LatinAmerica has become geopolitically less marginalized in international
politics, and as a side effect the geopolitical perspective and room to maneuver have
become broader; (2) geopolitical thinking has moved from the national to the regional or continental
level, giving room to geopolitics of integration; (3) as part of this development South
America has been constructed as a new geopolitical region, with Brazil as its major regional
power; (4) the United States has lost centrality in South America, and extra-hemispheric actors
such as China have become major players in Latin America; (5) as a result of global power
shifts and the new international positioning of Latin America both the Pacific Basin and the
South Atlantic (including the Antarctic) have become more important in Latin American geopolitical
narratives; and (6) natural resources have again turned out to be a central issue in Latin
American geopolitical thinking, leading to their increasing securitization and to new territorial
disputes, especially related to maritime borders.
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Latin America as a geopolitical region
In the 1980s Latin America was a “zone of marginality within the world power structure,”
(Cohen 2009) and at the end of the 1990s geopolitical analysis still emphasized the peripheral
role of South America in international politics (Kelly 1997: 183). A decade later, however,
South America had become an independent geopolitical region with balanced ties to the United
States, Europe, and Asia (Cohen 2009). There are now new interregional dialogue forums with
Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Arab countries. As a result of this, Latin American countries have
been able to take more independent positions – for example, as temporary members of the UN
Security Council (as during the Iraq crisis of 2003 or with regard to Iran’s nuclear program).
Brazil is a constitutive part of the networks of rising powers like IBSA and BRICS. Mexico
(1994) and Chile (2000) entered into the OECD, and Colombia is currently in the accession
process. Moreover, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are part of the G-20 of leading economies.
States from this region are also important partners in global governance forums such as climate
summits; in this way, LatinAmerican countries are increasingly shaping the global architecture.
Geopolitics of integration
The early 1990s represented a period of change characterized by a sequence of different
regional cooperation projects. These projects were manifestations of divergent geo-economic
and geopolitical interests. Historically there has been always an overlap of intraregional cooperation
(Latin America) and inter-American or hemispheric cooperation (Hurrell 1992). In
the 1990s the idea of the Americas as a political and economic geographical space was in
vogue. The Americas project was a reaction to contemporary major global geopolitical and
geo-economic trends, such as the fear of an exclusive regionalism in other parts of the world.
Mexico, the United States, and Canada consolidated a common geo-economic space with the
creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. At the same time,
the U.S. government promoted the idea of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) stretching
from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego; the preparatory process started with the first Summit of
the Americas in Miami in 1994, although it never materialized. For a short time, the so-called
Washington Consensus unified the region behind the same economic model. Moreover, Canada
joined the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990 to convert it into a genuinely allencompassing
continental organization of the Americas.
Liberalization within the framework of the Washington Consensus facilitated economic
cooperation projects in Latin America under the premise of open regionalism. Observers identified
a positive transformation from geopolitics to geo-economics (Kacowicz 2000). However,
the dream of creating the (neo)liberal Americas under benign U.S. leadership lasted
only a decade; it crumbled in the face of other harsh geopolitical and geo-economic realities.
The EU started to court Latin America, organizing regular European–Latin American and
Caribbean summits (since 1998) – giving way to a competitive summitry (Legler 2013) –
and offering free trade agreements to the Latin American countries. While extra-hemispheric
actors have won influence, the United States has lost economic and political leverage in Latin
America. Russia is displaying a renewed geostrategic interest in Latin America (Blank 2009).
Other important newcomers in the region are China and, on a minor scale, India (Malamud
and García 2014). From the U.S. perspective, the ‘dragon in the backyard’ is perceived as a
threat to the geopolitical position of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, in
some South American countries China has already displaced the United States as their most
important trading partner.
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37
In the shadow of declining U.S. influence and perceiving the FTAA as a threat to its own
geostrategic interests, Brazil has been developing its own geopolitical project in South America.
At the same time, in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez (in office 1999–2013) used oil
revenues to create his own Latin American networks from which to project power such as
ALBA, Petrocaribe, and Petroamerica. The idea of trade in the Americas via the FTAA lost its
appeal for a number of South American countries, illustrated by the fate of the Summit of the
Americas (Legler 2013). The 2005 Mar del Plata summit completely buried the hemispheric
project of the FTAA. In contrast to the previous three summits, there was no reference made
to hemispheric integration in the summit declaration. Moreover, the next two summits in Port
of Spain (2009) and Cartagena (2012) ended without the approval of a common declaration,
revealing a rift between the United States and many Latin American governments.
The end of the ‘Americas project’ illustrates that Latin America has become more independent
and self-confident. Yet, it has also become more heterogeneous and segmented, both
economically and politically. In fact, in Latin America there is a proliferation of regional and
subregional organizations that serve to delineate and consolidate geographic (sub)regions.
While these organizations give the geographic regions an identity (or ‘actorness’), as a social
construct they can also lead to a drifting apart of countries belonging to different regional organizations.
Thus, when Mexico, the United States, and Canada signed NAFTA, Mexico became
more dependent on the United States and more separated from the rest of Latin America, especially
South America.
Unlike Latin America, South America is a relatively new social construct – its creation was
strongly influenced by Brazilian foreign policy strategies designed to demarcate that country’s
sphere of influence (Spektor 2010; Malamud 2012). Regional cooperation and integration
was made possible by Argentine-Brazilian rapprochement, seen as a geopolitical turning
point (Kelly 1997). The move from geopolitical rivalry to cooperation was fundamental for the
creation of MERCOSUR in 1991 and the emergence of a security community in the Southern
Cone (including Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) (Hurrell 1998).
From a geopolitical perspective, Brazil can be seen as a ‘core state’ that facilitates the deepening
of integration (Rivarola 2011). As early as the 1990s, Brazil envisioned a free trade area
focusing exclusively on South America (SAFTA), but it was not until 2000 that a first summit
of South American presidents took place in Brasilia. Brazil also led the push to establish the
South American Community of Nations (later renamed the Union of South American Nations,
UNASUR) during the third presidential summit in Cuzco (Peru) in 2004, whose constitutive
treaty was signed in 2008. UNASUR has since facilitated SouthAmerica’s becoming a political
and economic entity with increasing international actorhood (Rivarola 2011). The creation of
UNASUR is both a part of Brazil’s strategy to consolidate a South American autonomy vis-àvis
the United States (Brands 2010) and an instrument for the integration – both physically and
in terms of energy resources – of South America. Thus, the emergence of Brazil as a regional
power with a global projection capacity has strengthened South America’s role as an independent
geopolitical region (Cohen 2009: 147).
The process of South American integration has been underpinned by a current of strategic
thinking branded the ‘geopolitics of integration,’ which links geography, integration, and
development thinking with the objective of creating and consolidating South America as a
new continental geographic unit (Rivarola 2011). Moreover, the (re)construction of regions is
also a topic of critical geopolitics (Preciado and Uc 2010), and it is linked to the idea of more
‘geopolitical autonomy.’
From the beginning, the idea of expanding South America’s physical and energy infrastructure
was a central element of ‘positive integration’ in the region, as it encouraged political
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consensus-building, promoted regional interdependencies, and increased cooperation in nontrade
issues (Sanahuja 2012). Consequently, one of the first concrete results of the 2000 South
American presidential summit was the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional SouthAmerican
Infrastructure (IIRSA), which was later integrated into the UNASUR structure. IIRSA is
a geopolitical project constructing a new regional territorial space in order to strengthen the
interdependence of the South American countries (Perrier Bruslé 2013).
The Pacific and South Atlantic as geopolitical markers
The economic promise and market projection into the Pacific Basin was already present in the
traditional geopolitical thinking with regards to the Pacific Ocean. In these narratives the South
American countries, which have a coastline on the Pacific, constituted a separate regional
subsystem (Kelly 1997: 7–10, 30–31). However, for most of the 20th century Latin America’s
most important trading partner was the United States; second most important was Europe.
So the ‘Atlantic Triangle’ was more important than the Pacific Basin. With the rise of Asian
economies and especially China’s upsurge in the 21st century the geo-economic parameters
have changed, and the Pacific Rim (including the Western parts of the United States) have
become more important.
As a manifestation of the emerging ‘Pacific Consensus’ – the movement in terms of trade
and investment toward the Pacific geo-economic region (Vadell 2013) – three Latin American
countries (Chile, Mexico, and Peru) became members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) in the 1990s. Other countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama
are also interested in joining the organization. Moreover, Chile and Mexico – as APEC members
and having multiple FTAs with Asian states – have cast narratives of being gateways for
trade between both regions (Wehner and Thies 2014).
In 2012, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico created the Pacific Alliance, a regional project
that seeks to create a free trade zone between its members and make connections to Asian
economies. Later, Panama and Costa Rica also applied for membership. However, this economic
project had additional, significant political consequences, furthering the fragmentation
of Latin American economic integration, as the Pacific Alliance became a counterweight to a
more statist MERCOSUR and the anti-neoliberal ALBA project (Briceño-Ruiz 2014).
The idea to link the Atlantic and Pacific through bi-oceanic corridors – as part of the IIRSA
project – is both a recognition of the growing importance of the Pacific Basin and a reaction of
Brazil to this development. IIRSA is thus an instrument to counter the centrifugal forces of a
Pacific and an Atlantic South America by strengthening the South American core.
Moreover, from a Brazilian viewpoint, the ‘widerAtlantic’is of strategic importance (Alcaro
andAlessandri 2013), wherein the SouthAtlantic has become an area of strong geopolitical and
strategic competition (Lesser 2010). Brazil, which has by far the longest South Atlantic coastline
(4,350 miles), believes this border is vulnerable – especially following the discoveries of
large oil and gas deposits within the pre-salt layers of Brazil’s continental shelf. Moreover, the
Brazilian government is promoting a redefinition and extension of its continental shelf by way
of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which would expand
Brazil’s maritime space and exclusive economic zone.
More than 90 per cent of Brazilian trade is shipped via Atlantic sea routes, and the country
has a major strategic interest related to the security of the main sea lines of communication
(SLOCS) crossing the South Atlantic (Reis 2012) and any possible choke points therein. Of
importance for sea transport (as mentioned in the 2012 National Defense White Book) are the
‘Atlantic Gorge’ between northeastern Brazilian and West Africa, the Strait of Magellan (as an
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alternative to the Panama Canal, especially for large ships), and the Cape of Good Hope, which
links the Southern Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, as an alternative to the Suez Canal. There is
also growing attention being given to new, nontraditional security threats related to the South
Atlantic, such as smuggling, the transatlantic drug trade (especially with West African countries),
illegal immigration, environmental crimes, terrorism, and piracy.
In this context the Brazilian government has securitized the South Atlantic and clearly
defined its position both in the 2008 National Strategy of Defense and in the 2012 National
Defense White Book. In the middle of the first decade of the 2000s the Brazilian navy launched
the ‘Blue Amazon’campaign – a new geopolitical concept whose objective is to foster the idea
that South Atlantic resources within Brazil’s exclusive economic zone (an area equal to 52 per
cent of the country’s continental land mass) are of vital interest to all Brazilians. The securitization
of the South Atlantic is in line with the strategy taken up by other regional powers in
the world to give ‘their’ region a maritime perimeter (Abdenur and Marcondes 2014a). As a
consequence, Brazil started a naval modernization program that included the construction of
nuclear-powered submarines (in cooperation with France), vessels that are particularly suited
to long-distance patrols in the South Atlantic.
For the Brazilian military, the South Atlantic is an area of power projection (Reis 2012),
whereas the African coast is perceived as part of the Brazilian defensive perimeter. Since 2007,
Brazil has revitalized the ‘zone of peace and cooperation of the South Atlantic’ (ZOPACAS,
following the Portuguese acronym) created by the UN General Assembly in 1986 as a multilateral
negotiation mechanism between West African and South American countries. ZOPACAS
(specially mentioned in the 2012 National Defense White Book) is comprised of three South
American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) and 21 African countries. ZOPACAS
seeks to address regional issues without outside interference and to keep the South Atlantic
out of geostrategic Great Power games (Kornegay 2013). The main concern is that NATO will
expand its influence to the South Atlantic and establish new partnerships beyond the North
Atlantic. From the Brazilian perspective there is also a critical appraisal of British postcolonial
possessions – a string of islands stretching from Ascension Island to Saint Helena and Tristan
da Cunha, ending in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands – and military bases in the South Atlantic
(Costa 2012). From these islands positioned between Brazil and Africa it might be possible to
control maritime transport and sea-lanes in the South Atlantic. Moreover, there is the challenge
of territorial claims and power projection by the United Kingdom into the Antarctic (Reis
2012), where Brazil and especially Argentina and Chile have their own geopolitical interests
and cooperation mechanisms (Gómez 2005). Since 1982 Brazil has run an Antarctic program
with a research station and sees its Antarctic policy as a way to legitimize its status as a major
international player (Abdenur and Neto 2014b).
Thus, the geopolitics of the South Atlantic is closely linked to the geopolitics of the Antarctic,
which will continue to be a contested area. There is no prospect in the foreseeable future
that Argentina will renounce its claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (the Falklands),
especially if substantial oil and gas resources are found in the surrounding waters. The Malvinas
issue has also been framed as a struggle against European colonial practices (Benwell and
Dodds 2011) and has been raised in regional forums like UNASUR or the newly created Community
of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
From the British perspective, the Falkland Islands are considered a ‘strategic gateway’ to
both the Antarctic (the British Antarctic Territory) and the South Atlantic (Dodds 2012). The
Falkland Islands, as well as the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, are along with
the British Antarctic Territory (the southern part of which was named Queen Elizabeth Land
in 2012) all part of the British Overseas Territories. After the Falklands War (1982), the United
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Kingdom increased its economic stakes and its military presence on the islands. In this context,
the Mount Pleasant Airbase in East Falkland is of geostrategic importance, where around 1,300
members of personnel are stationed and which is linked by an air bridge to the U.S.-British
airbase (Wideawake Airfield) on Ascension Island. The British government created an exclusive
fishery zone and a fishing-licensing regime in the late 1980s, which altered the economic
livelihood of the islanders. Moreover, it is expected that gas and oil resources will be found in
the seabed around the islands, which increases the importance of these territorial possessions
for the British government.
Natural resources: protection and power projection
The abundance of natural resources has always been an important element in Latin American
development and underdevelopment, continually attracting the interest of foreign companies
and countries. The region is a major participant in the global production and reserves of copper,
silver, selenium, gold, zinc, manganese, tin, boron, antimony, nickel, molybdenum, bauxite,
lead, iron ore, niobium, and lithium (CEPAL and UNASUR 2013). Further, Latin America also
boasts a rich biodiversity, as well as important freshwater reserves.
Since the turn of the century, natural resources have again become an important geopolitical
and geo-economic factor. Both Latin American politicians and scientists use the concept
of geopolitics in relation to natural resources. The rising demand for minerals – especially
from Asia – along with increasing prices has recently made Latin America wealthier and more
independent, and it gives the region strategic leverage (Bruckmann 2011). Some governments
claim the right to exploit natural resources for national development (critics speak of neoextractivism)
and take a negative view of international NGOs, which are perceived as instruments
of foreign interests that seek to undermine national sovereignty (García 2012). Other
governments use the earnings from natural resources for regional power projection (as in the
case of Venezuelan oil) or as a foreign policy instrument (as in the case of the Bolivian refusal
to sell natural gas to Chile). Natural resources may change the economic and political weight
of a country, as in the case of Bolivia (which is rich in gas and lithium), or of Brazil (which is
becoming a net exporter of oil).
In Latin America, natural resources are both an aspect of integration (including infrastructure
projects) and of conflict over territories where resources were expected to exist. Already
in the 1990s, maritime geopolitics changed, turning away from sea-lanes and choke points to
fishing resources and exploitation – which made the maritime frontiers a major concern of
South American geopolitics (Kelly 1997: 45). Moreover, the change in international maritime
law (the aforementioned UNCLOS of 1982), the extension of maritime economic and environmental
jurisdiction out to 200 miles, and the discovery and development of new technologies
to exploit marine and seabed resources raised the salience of many territorial disputes (Domínguez
et al. 2003) – which, in contrast to other ongoing border disputes, are not a legacy from
colonial times but rather linked to the more recent interest in drawing or redrawing maritime
borders.
As a consequence of their importance to national development, most Latin American countries
have securitized their natural resources – such as energy, water, the Amazon rainforest
(as in the Brazilian National Strategy of Defense), and agricultural land (to prevent ‘landgrabbing’).
Natural resources were, from the beginning, part of the agenda of UNASUR. It
is significant that the creation of UNASUR was announced during the first South American
energy summit, held in Isla Margarita (Venezuela) in 2007. There is a growing consensus
within UNASUR that regional cooperation is also a means of protecting natural resources from
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41
exploitation by external forces. Thus, the South American Defense Council assigns high priority
to the safeguarding of biodiversity and strategic natural resources.
Conclusions
Latin America in general and South America in particular are fertile areas for neoclassical geopolitics.
While geopolitical thinking no longer has the same prominence that it did during the
era of military regimes in LatinAmerica, it is still influential in the foreign and security policies
of states in this region. While traditional geopolitics in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced
by the structural frame set by the Cold War, new geopolitical thinking at first responded to the
‘unipolar moment’ and to the U.S. dominance regarding the Americas and the FTAA project in
the 1990s, and later came to reflect the growing multipolarity and the waning of U.S. influence
in the first decade of the 21st century. Territorial boundaries are still important in the relationships
between Latin American states. However, new geopolitical narratives deal with border
issues in a more nuanced way, as they are not an issue exclusive to security politics but are also
of importance for geo-economic interests. In fact, maritime border conflicts have become more
prominent in new geopolitics, because they are linked to economic interests such as the exploitation
of natural resources. Geopolitical narratives have also become less nationalistic. For
instance, Latin American and especially South American integration is now an integral part
of geopolitical thinking. Traditional geopolitics was mainly limited to the continental space
and its coastlines, whereas the horizon of geopolitical projections has become wider and even
transregional in its new variant, as the inclusion of the South Atlantic and the Pacific Rim in
geopolitical narratives demonstrates.
Geopolitical narratives construct links between geography and politics. Geopolitical
analysis should unpack these narratives. In Latin America there is lack of critical geopolitical
analysis. One may speculate that the lack of critical analysis of geopolitical discourses is
related to their association with military thinking and a burdened past. However, geopolitical
terms and narratives are also part of the vocabulary of analysts located on the left of the political
spectrum in this region.
Most of the geopolitical writing is affirmative and follows a geographic determinism. However,
certain geographical factors, such as whether a nation is landlocked or has a long coastline
or a particular geographical endowment (such as prized resources), do not necessarily determine
a specific foreign policy, as political actors still enjoy a high degree of latitude in making
and advancing decisions and adopting geopolitical narratives to justify their policies.
This chapter’s purpose was to present an overview of geopolitical thinking in Latin America
that will hopefully inspire further research on geopolitical topics and narratives along the subsequently
sketched-out thematic corridors. First, each country’s geopolitical reality and narratives
should be analyzed in order to compare their different historical trajectories. Second,
a new geopolitical research agenda should also focus on the reasons why and when actors
resort to geopolitical narratives and should study whether these are reactions to political crisis
or whether they reflect an identity crisis over the foreign policy roles of a state. Third, further
systematic research on geopolitics in Latin America should also consider the role of new geopolitical
narratives as the result (or not) of a changing international status of states, as the case
of Brazil indicates.
Afuture research agenda on geopolitics might also explore the reasons why geopolitical narratives
are still so popular in Latin America. One aspect that should be dissected and analyzed
surrounds the producers, propagators, and drivers of these narratives, as well as the existing
types of audiences involved. Another course of investigation may focus on the mechanisms
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Detlef Nolte and Leslie E. Wehner
42
of dissemination of geopolitical narratives. Further, there is an academic void with regard to
the study of the consequences and outcomes of existing geopolitical discourses on the foreign
policy and behavior of different states. While geopolitical narratives may instigate interstate
conflicts in Latin America, they may also function as a way to promote regional cooperation
and integration.
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