Limits of cooperation

The celebrated article of Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma” (1978), has been debated (Glaser, 1997). As already mentioned, the security dilemma predicts potential contradictions between national security and defence policies, and international security, due to the possibility of provoking arms races within a spiral logic of action-reaction. The explanatory model of Jervis was a landmark in the neorealist wave in International Relations theory at the end of the 1970s. Taken from classical realism, and based on the concept of John Herz of “security dilemma” (1950), Jervis rationalised through game theory the problem of international cooperation under conditions of uncertainty and distrust. The principal critics against him come from reflectivism, especially constructivism and the set of so-called critical theories (Wendt, 1999; Krause and Williams, 1997; Farrell, 2002; Mitzen, 2006). The critics point to the mechanistic reduction of complex foreign policy decision-making processes, and also the alleged conflict of interests as a natural and essential part of human interaction. These observations lie on strong arguments taken from the debate between positivism and post-positivism. But reflectivism fails to offer an alternative model that is just as parsimonious and fit for generalisation.

107 Recognising the defects of Jarvis’ model, the paradox of autonomy incorporates analytical utility and assumes the general mechanisms of the security dilemma. This brings us to the limits of security cooperation between central and secondary regional powers in the absence of hegemony. As has been said, regional autonomy could be considered an essential national objective for a central regional power (Mearsheimer, 2001; Nolte, 2010).

This is particularly true in the South American international subsystem, due to the gap in capabilities of Brazil and its potential, but not effective, regional hegemony. In the last four decades, Brazil has surpassed its neighbours in the main indicators, and Argentinian-Brazilian rivalry was reduced to only football a long time ago. Colombia is now the emerging secondary power, but far from “parity” –in terms of power transition theory (Tammen et al., 2000). Like other (re)emerging regional powers – Russia, China, India, Nigeria and South Africa– Brazil has problems in making its relative power a true hegemony. Such powers experience a problem of the extraction and mobilisation of resources, given the interaction of its physical and human dimensions, and its unequal industrial and bureaucratic development, in addition to counterbalancing policies by their less powerful neighbours, anxious to preserve their national autonomies, whether it be through intraregional cooperation or by inviting external powers.

The paradox of autonomy is problematised given that the main condition which facilitates the collective search for regional autonomy is the same that conditions the search for national autonomy: the international diffusion or deconcentration of power. For the majority of South American elites in the early 21^st century, keeping the region out of the direct influence of the US was a shared interest. Brazilian regional hegemony would be unachievable if Washington played a hegemonic role in the sensitive areas of security and defence policy. The limits of regional security cooperation began to become evident with the open opposition of Uribe’s Colombia to the original institutional design of the CDS, based on the special Colombia-US relationship in the defence and security sector (Tickner, 2008).

Less obvious, but not less effective, obstacles were put forward by the secondary powers that embraced the original Brazilian project. Argentina, Chile and Venezuela supported the CDS, and assumed it as part of their political priorities. However, a security and defence agreement openly led by Brazil would have been a restriction on the objectives of the national elites. The delicate balance between regional autonomy and national autonomies plays an important role for South American secondary powers given that

108 national autonomy is a necessary condition for soft-balancing policies towards Brazil (Flemes and Wehner, 2015), and thus, keeping regional hegemony at bay while preserving freedom of action in terms of security and defence. Similarly, the idea of regional autonomy was considered in order to block and soft-balancing US global pre-eminence and its overwhelming hemispheric hegemony.

Another equally important goal for some secondary powers was to pacify border disputes and avoid militarised escalations. This is particularly true in the cases of Chile and Colombia, and more recently Peru, whose economic policy strategies demonstrate clear guidelines for opening and whose governments are liberal democracies, but who bear the weight of unresolved territorial conflicts and have a relatively high military spending as percentage of GDP (SIPRI, 2017b) and important arsenals (IISS, 2017). A regional security agreement is likely to promote regional autonomy and limit the national, taking as a counterweight the reduction of border tensions, which would permit the strengthening of regional integration and redirect part of the national defence budget towards economic and social investment, for example. In this sense, the paradox of autonomy fits in with the old dilemma of opportunity cost, illustrated with the dichotomy of “guns versus butter”

model of the production possibility frontier. Thus, regional autonomy could partially benefit the interests of national elites, although it could negatively affect the primary objective of secondary powers – national autonomy. Hence, efforts to overcome the paradox of autonomy tend to be centred on the institutional design of regional security mechanisms. In the following table, the trilemma of regional powers and secondary regional powers within the paradox of autonomy is proposed.

109 Table 4.3: Complex trilemma within the paradox of autonomy

Non-Hegemonic Regional Power’s Strategy

Fully Cooperative Partially Cooperative Non-Cooperative

Secondary Regional Power (sub-regional power) Strategy Fully Cooperative 1) Consolidated regional

leadership 2) Fully operative regional security intuitions

3) Regional autonomy reinforcement imposing upon national

autonomy

1) Delegated regional leadership

2) Partially operative regional security institutions

3) Regional autonomy reinforcement imposing upon national

autonomy

1) No regional leadership

2) Diminished regional security institutions 3) Coordinated but unlikely successful regional/national autonomy efforts

Partially Cooperative 1) Consensual regional

leadership

2) Partially operative regional security institutions

3) National autonomy reinforcement imposing upon regional

autonomy

1) Unlikely regional leadership

2) Partially operative regional security institutions

3) National autonomy reinforcement imposing upon regional

autonomy

1) No regional leadership

2) Diminished regional security institutions 3) Uncoordinated and unlikely successful regional/national autonomy efforts

Non–Cooperative 1) No regional

leadership

2) Inoperative regional security institutions (if any)

3) No regional

autonomy, and unlikely national autonomy

1) No regional leadership

2) Inoperative regional security institutions (if any)

3) No regional

autonomy, and unlikely national autonomy

1) No regional leadership

2) No regional security institutions

3) Uncoordinated and unsuccessful national autonomy efforts