Speaking of Disarmament

Greg is absolutely right in this post with this comment:

It is depressing to see more and more countries circling around Latin America, looking for good conventional weapons markets. There just aren't real threats--even when Hugo Chávez blustered about sending tanks to the Colombian border, no one took it seriously. In addition, the global economic crisis is hitting developing countries quite hard, and this money should be channeled elsewhere.

I also want to extrapolate on the point that Greg makes with regard to the copper law in Chile. Specifically, it provides for 10% of the earnings of the state-owned copper company, CODELCO to be earmarked for Chile's military. You read right: it's earnings, not profits.

This is a Pinochet-era holdover, yet it remains. With the stench of corruption still emanating from the revelations of Pinochet's ill-gotten riches, one would think that the government would be eager - along with the public - to put an end to this.

They ought to do so - and soon.

Comments

[Tambopaxi]

Latin America still struggles to break the incestuous and insidious grasp of the military on the levers of political power in the region. Admittedly the grasp is weaker, and we have no military governments extant at the moment, but the guns and the gun buyers are still around, and they still have influence, as witness Chile, Colombia, Ecuador (yesterday, Honduras) etc. Part of the problem stems from the cultural role of the military in regional political economies, but a lot of the problem is due to weak and squabbling civil government institutions that concede undue power to the military and in some cases, actually use that power to subdue or intimidate each other.....