Argentina, Brazil and defense in South America:

strategic identities and regional security

Abstract

Existent analyses on the creation of the South American Defense Council (CDS) are based on power-related variables, which stress Brazilian leadership and an increasing power asymmetry regarding Argentina. This article questions those variables in view of their limitations and instead highlights ideational factors that intervened in the construction of a regional security model. Using constructivism and epistemic community conceptualization the article analysis the influence of ideational variables on Argentina’s and Brazil’s national interest formation on regional defense cooperation, identifying how, since democratization, the ideas of a set of actors shaped strategic identities. To this end, respective processes of defense policy formulation are reconstructed, with an emphasis on the actors involved in each country and the dialogue between them. The central argument is that, in order to understand both CDS creation and characteristics, the coincidences between both strategic identities must be taken into account: Argentina’s strategic identity based on the defensive model and cooperative security and Brazilian one, built on the deterrence model and the global player international role.