This Treaty was adopted within the UN framework and was ratified by Argentina through Act 24543. It defines criteria for the international regulation of the various maritime areas according to the coastal nature of each country.
Besides the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone concepts, another important principle is sovereignty over resources within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) up to 200 miles from the baselines, and in the continental shelf, as defined by the Convention. Our country defined its Sea Spaces through Act 23968.
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Chapter 4 - The Defense Legal Framework
While this Convention does not specifically cover defense matters, it deals with issues of great concern for our defense, as it recognizes sovereignty and jurisdictions, among other matters.
The Antarctic Treaty
This treaty has been in force since 1961. At present, it constitutes a System that reserves the Antarctic continent exclusively for peaceful purposes and specifically bans military activities.
However, this does not prevent the presence of military equipment or personnel for logistic purposes and
scientific tasks. It is complemented by the Convention on the Preservation of
Antarctic Living Resources, defined as the
"rational use" thereof, and by the Protocol on Environmental Protection. The latter bans any kind of activities related with Antarctic mineral resources for a fifty-year term, as from its adoption in Madrid in 1991.
"Super Pinna" j \>><:\ I hiin'i'tcr during logistic tusks in an Argentine Bri^c in the Antarctic.
Part II - The National Incentives
CHAPTER 5
efore we outline the national interests that our National Defense should pursue, we will highlight the values underlying those interests, according to the ethics that guide our Defense.
1. Underlying values
The preservation and strengthening of democracy, the fundamental rights and freedoms and the common well being of our people are the prevailing basic values of Argentine society underlying the
interests supported by our Defense. These essential ideas have also been included in our Constitution.
As human beings undertake courses of action in pursuit of their goals, they find that life in society is the adequate context that enables them to develop their capabilities in order to achieve the goals they set for themselves.
Those goals are many and diverse, and life in a community, in liberty and harmony, requires a certain order that encourages their accomplishment: a fair social order, adjusted to the characteristics inherent to human behavior.
Life in society requires the rule of justice as social concept. While preserving the personal values of man (life, liberty, dignity, survival, etc.), the rule of justice should subject individual interests to the common well being of society as a whole.
Society therefore prescribes a set of rules aimed at harmonizing personal goals within a just social order.
When this scheme prevails within the frame of a democratic system, social peace is also achieved.
However, such order must be provided with a coercive capability, and this requires the government to establish a monopoly of the organized force.
All these concepts should not mislead us into thinking that military institutions should play a direct role in maintaining domestic peace. The concepts described in the previous chapter clearly state, that a legal distinction exists between the fields of military and domestic security
institutions. The limitations imposed on the eventual involvement of the military institutions in domestic security tasks were also pointed out.
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Part II - The National Incentives
However, it is important to emphasize that, underlying the
specifically military missions that gave rise to the very existence of the Armed Forces, there is a set of basic values of the Argentine Nation that involve the
Military as part of its society and political life.
The Armed Forces - whose men and women come from such society - have the immediate and specific objective of
providing for common defense and
permanently guaranteeing the sovereignty and independence of our Nation, its territorial integrity and its right to self-determination. They must also support the common well being, which is their ultimate objective, by respecting those basic values of our Nation.
These fundamental values also apply, from an Argentine perspective, to the international arena. We also attach special importance to the maintenance of other societies' democratic systems and of an atmosphere of peace and justice for the well being of their people. These, coupled with the development of close friendship, cooperation and integration with other Nations, in particular with our neighbors in the region, are also some of our goals, since their success will undoubtedly benefit our own.
Our defense policy contributes to consolidate all those values both at a
domestic and international level, to the extent of its specific field of action.
2. Vital interests
Vital interests are those that affect the Nation and its people, and therefore remain mostly unchanged.
For that reason, they have been defined by the highest representatives of the people of our Nation, i.e., by
Congress, in its National Defense Act.
However, due to the implications of those vital interests in situations critical to national security, they become truly vital only when supported by the majority of the society, whenever it is required to preserve them against any aggression.
From this legal reference, vital interests can be summarized as follows:
• Sovereignty and independence of the Argentine Nation.
• Its territorial integrity.
. Its right to self-determination.
• The protection of the life and freedom of its people.
Those self-explanatory interests are therefore closely related to the very existence of the Argentine Nation itself, thus requiring a high degree of attention and priority on the part of the
government and a proper degree of
Chapter 5 - The National Interests
consideration in terms of the political definitions related to our National Defense.
3. Strategic interests
Strategic interests are those that influence in any manner the achievement of national interests. Although they also pose goals to be achieved, their lesser importance compared to vital interests they contribute with, make them less permanent in time, since they relate to such variables derived from the existing strategic scenario and the development of the country's international relations at a certain time.
Strategic interests analyzed in this chapter and the consideration of the security matters mentioned below should not be interpreted as having a direct effect on basic Defense objectives, nor on the development and primary use of the