Military Intervention and Withdrawal in South America

Abstract

This article deals with the politics of military intervention and withdrawal in South America. The main argument is that a situation of "military structural unemployment" is at the root of both the military interventions in South American politics and the problems involved in the recent "liberalization" tendencies which are appearing among authori tarian military governments in that part of the continent. It is our contention that the doctrine of internal national security has given the military the ideological justification for taking over and retaining power for more than a decade, but also that it has failed to give them the instruments for institutionalizing a new social and political order in which they could find a clear identity. The military in several South American countries communicate more and more with each other, establishing, better than any other elite group, linkages across borders in political terms.