Predatory Reactionaries or Modernizing Patriots?

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The Latin American Military: Predatory Reactionaries or Modernizing Patriots? Author(s): Martin C. Needler Source: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 237-244Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/165369Accessed: 13-05-2015 16:37 UTC

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Martin C. Needler Division of Inter-American Affairs The University of New Mexico

THE LATIN AMERICAN MILITARY:

PREDATORY REACTIONARIES OR

MODERNIZING patriots?

Until

quite recently, the study of Latin American politics existed

in a relatively primitive stage. A crude empiricism, occupied with the straightforward description of events or formal institu?

tions, was relieved only by occasional global generalization of an impres? sionistic character about the informal characteristics of politics. However, substantial advances have begun to be made in the last few years in the

direction of more systematic elaboration of theory to account for the

distinctive characteristics of politics in the area, and we have begun to see

the confrontation with each other and with the data themselves of rival

theoretical explanations. Needless to say, this mutual confrontation of

rival interpretations is a healthy sign for the deepening of our under?

standing of Latin American politics. One of the areas in which this process is furthest advanced is the

study of the role of the military. Here one school of thought, whose lead?

ing exponent is Edwin Lieuwen, has taken a point of view frankly hostile

to the intervention of the military in the processes of politics, regarding such intervention as characteristic of a relatively low degree of political

development, which it helps in turn to perpetuate. Professor Lieuwen

writes of military intervention in politics as "predatory," and stresses the

self-interested motives for such intervention.1

1 Lieuwen's views are to be found in his Arms and Politics in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1961); Generals vs. Presidents: Neo-Militarism in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1964); "Militarism and Politics in Latin America," in John J. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries

237

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238 Journal of Inter-American Studies

This point of view, which he calls "traditionalist," has been criticized

by Lyle McAlister as not recognizing that military seizures of power oc?

cur in response to the dynamics of the total political situation; thus they are caused, in this view which McAlister calls "revisionist," not by the

motives of the military themselves, but rather by political events occurring outside the military institution. For this reason, McAlister even eschews

the term "intervention," since he regards the military as an integral part of the functioning political process, not as outside it.2 A position similar

to McAlister's has usually been taken by John J. Johnson, although John?

son's views contain mutually contradictory elements and are sometimes

difficult to categorize.3 And far from regarding military intervention as

reinforcing and perpetuating political backwardness, the McAlister-

Johnson school of thought stresses the potential of the military as a mod?

ernizing force.

Although the basic difference of opinion is over a question of scholar?

ly interpretation, the dispute carries personal and ideological overtones, with the "revisionist" school regarding the "traditionalists" as naive and

moralistic, and the "traditionalists" viewing the "revisionists" as apolo?

gists for the military without commitment to constitutional processes. The issue takes on added significance because of its central relevance

to United States policy in the area. The tendency of United States policy in recent years, a tendency of which Lieuwen has been especially critical, has been to regard Latin American armies as partners in the Alliance for

Progress and to attempt to improve their domestic political "image" by

fostering civic action programs.4

Despite the intensity of feeling that has accompanied expression of

the two viewpoints, however, it is in the present writer's view unwarranted

to regard these two approaches as altogether mutually exclusive. In

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); and "The Military: a Force for Con? tinuity or Change," in John TePaske & Sydney N. Fisher, ed., Explosive Forces in Latin America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964).

2 For McAlister's views, see "Civil-Military Relations in Latin America," Journal of Inter-American Studies, July, 1961; "The Military," in John J. Johnson, ed., Continuity and Change in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964); "Changing Concepts of the Role of the Military in Latin America," The An? nals, July, 1965; and "Recent Research and Writings on the Role of the Military in Latin America," Latin American Research Review, vol. II, no. 1, Fall, 1966.

3 See his The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford Uni? versity Press, 1964); and "The Military as a Politically Competing Group in a Transitional Society," in his The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, cited above.

4 These programs are discussed in Willard F. Barber and C. Neale Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power: Counterinsurgency and Civic Action in Latin America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966).


The Latin American Military 239

the present article the writer will instead argue that the perceptions of the

causality of military intervention held by representatives of the two schools

of thought are actually complementary aspects of a single truth: that even

though military intervention in politics occurs in "patriotic" response to the requirements of the functioning of political system, it nevertheless

does reflect military self-interest. On the related question of the putative

modernizing role of the military, however, the evidence suggests that

military intervention contributes to the retardation of the processes of

political development rather than to their promotion.

II

The examination of military intervention in politics, as expressed at

its maximum in the military coup d'etat, appears to show that the coup develops out of the complementary interaction between pressures ex? ternal to the military and the predispositions of the military themselves.

Complementarity in this sense is frequently met with in studies of causality in any field; the onset of many diseases, for example, is most reasonably explained as resulting from both an environmental factor, such as infec?

tion, and a constitutional weakness or predisposition to the disease in the

organism. In the case of the military coup, external pressures on the military

to intervene are generally present, which come to a head in propaganda in favor of intervention. Many examples of such campaigns preceding recent coups d'etat can be cited.5

This incitement of the military to intervene can follow one of sev? eral strategies?although in any given instance all are usually employed in combination. The primary technique is to work through the persua? sion of individual military officers of importance through direct face-to- face contact. The second is to mount what John P. Harrison has called, referring to the Argentine situation, "a consistent and conscious effort by the mass media." 6 The third technique, which supplements the other

two, is to manipulate the political situation itself, by means of fomenting strikes, manifestations, simulated terrorist attacks, and so on, to create

5 See Juan Bosch, The Unfinished Experiment, Democracy in the Dominican Republic (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. xi; M. C. Needier, Anatomy of a Coup d'Etat: Ecuador, 1963 (Washington: Institute for the Comparative Studies of Politi? cal Systems, 1964), p. 15; John J. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Military in Under? developed Countries, cited above, p. 124; A Report to the American Academic Com? munity on the Present Argentine University Situation, special publication of the Latin American Studies Association, Austin, 1967, p. 17.

6 A Report to the American Academic Community on the Present Argentine University Situation, cited above, p. 17.



the impression of a situation in which there is no solution other than a

military assumption of power. At the same time, this external stimulus to a military coup must be

matched by an internal readiness to stage the coup on the part of the

military for the desired result to be achieved. The fact that the military

may be reluctant to intervene, no matter what the provocation provided

by the external political situation, is suggested by the fact that in some

Latin American countries such external situations have developed with?

out leading to military coups. This is true not only of countries with an

established tradition of civilian control of the military, such as Chile and

Uruguay, but also of countries such as Venezuela, which does have a tra?

dition of military intervention in politics, but in which the military has

nevertheless not intervened in recent years, despite considerable provo? cation. Clearly, the internal predisposition is necessary, over and above

the external stimulus.

In Generals vs. Presidents1 Lieuwen argued that the major factor

predisposing the military to intervene in the present era was their self-

interest in the sense of concern for the preservation of the military institu?

tion, especially in the light of attempts, successful in Cuba but aborted

elsewhere, to reduce or eliminate entirely the traditional army, replacing it with a popular militia. In research conducted independently of Lieu-

wen's, but about the same time, the present writer found this to be a critical

factor in the Ecuadorean coup d'etat of 1963, 8 and other observers

have independently discovered the same phenomenon elsewhere.9 More?

over, the much-vaunted programs for the training of Latin American

officers by the United States seem to have had as one of their major results the stimulation of anti-Communist ideology in the Latin Ameri?

can military, along with the implicit message that United States ap?

proval of any action taken in the name of anti-communism will be

forthcoming. But what the Latin American officer understands by "com?

munism," or at least as its most salient feature, is precisely the replace? ment of the traditional army by a popular militia. As general Alfredo

Ovando Candia, the Bolivian Commander-in-Chief, put it in a news?

paper interview: He did not think that Paz Estenssoro (the President he

7 New York: Praeger, 1964. 8 Anatomy of a Coup d'Etat, cited above. 9 For example, David J. Finlay explained the overthrow of Nkrumah in

Ghana thus: "Also, Nkrumah had decided to form a 'people's militia' as a supple? ment to his own 'presidential guard.' The existence of such a large private army would threaten the autonomy, the professionalism, the well-being, and indeed the very existence of Ghana's 10,000-man army. The army rose against the government to defend its own existence ..."

"The Ghana Coup ... One Year Later," Trans-action, May, 1967, p. 18.



had helped to overthrow in 1964) was a Communist, "but some of the

leaders of his party are, as they showed during their time in office that

they armed militias, wanted to put an end to the army, and sponsored Communist movements." 10

It would be naive to posit an opposition between this type of self-

interested motive and a concern for the national interest. Johnson falls

into this trap when, in criticizing a paper presented by Lieuwen at a

1964 West Point conference, he says: "I feel that Professor Lieuwen is

perhaps unduly severe when he holds that officers are concerned only with the welfare of their institutions. Certainly there is too much self-

interest in the military as there is among civilians, but it is also true, I

believe, that there are many officers who are dedicated to the welfare of

their countries the same as there are civilians who are so dedicated." X1

What this attitude misses is that to the military officer the well-being and preservation of the military institution is conceived of as a necessary aspect of the national interest, since the mission of the military is to

defend the nation against its foreign and domestic enemies. The point that Johnson wanted to make, that there are many public-spirited

military officers concerned to defend national interests, is prefectly cor?

rect; but it remains true that for many of them the defense of national

interests begins with the defense of the military institution?the two

concerns are not mutually opposed but are synonymous. Nor does the fact that military intervention can be regarded as a

function of general political processes mean that one is precluded from

assigning praise or blame to the actions of individual military officers or

groups. Knowledge of the circumstantial factors contributing to produce certain types of behavior does not exempt individuals from responsi? bility for their actions. On the philosophical plane, one can handle this

problem in a variety of ways, as the problem of reconciling free will and determinism, or in terms of refuting the reductionist fallacy, but in

any event it remains impossible to deny the legitimacy of assessing in? dividual responsibility.

Ill

In opposition to the "traditionalist" conception of the military as a conservative or reactionary force, exponents of the "revisionist" ap? proach have urged the view that the modernization of archaic social, economic, and administrative structures can come about during an au-

1(> La Opinidn (Los Angeles), April 1,1967. n The West Point Conference on Latin American Problems, 15-17 April 1964:

Final Report, p. 70.



thoritarian military interlude, when a military government does not have

to face obstruction from civilian politicians. The army is of course for

modernization, the argument goes, since it is concerned with technical

training and with developing a sophisticated industrial base that can

provide high-quality arms, and also because its concern with the pos?

sibility of foreign war induces a desire to have the nation function at its

maximum efficiency, to generate the maximum in national power. The

concept of the "modernizing military" clearly has a solid base in African

and Asian experience, President Nasser being a common example for

citation by this school of thought. It is certainly true that many of the military figures active in recent

coups d'etat have the modernizing orientation, and the manifestos is?

sued by new military juntas nowadays invariably cite the need to reform

traditional structures, along with the more conventional anti-Communist

rationalizations of the coup. Nevertheless, despite the great number of

seizures of power by military forces in which people of this tendency have figured, the only plausible example of a modernizing military in the

recent history of Latin America that has actually accomplished anything

permanent is that of El Salvador.

The modernizers rarely get a chance to achieve permanent struc?

tural changes for a variety of reasons. In the first place, the modernizing

tendency is only one element in the coalition of a variety of military fac?

tions that organized the coup. In the second place, the drive for moderni?

zation itself is broken up among several schools of thought when it be?

comes necessary to translate a generalized desire for modernization into

concrete legislative programs. In the third place, the technicians to whom

the military innovators turn for advice in the drafting and implementa? tion of reformed proposals are often conservatives inherited from pre? vious governments, who exaggerate the difficulties involved in bringing about change. Fourthly, structural change is normally opposed by the civilians who allied themselves with the military in bringing about the

coup, since in general these represent conservative and oligarchic forces.

This is so because today the coup is most often directed against an in?

novating government of center-left orientation, which was overthrown in part because it was possible to ascribe to it Communist tendencies.12 These difficulties are accentuated as the military government attempts to devise and implement solutions to the various problems that face it, at each step of the way alienating influential groups both inside and out? side the military junta.

12 Martin C. Needier, "Political Development and Military Intervention in Latin America," American Political Science Review, vol. LX, no. 3, September, 1966.



Finally, the problems of the military government reach a climax

over the issue of the maintenance of public order in the face of the

limitation of public political activity invariably imposed by military gov? ernments. Typically, students demonstrate aganst the regime, and the

military, dedicated to preserving "order" and understanding only the

use of force, break up the demonstration violently, leaving one or two

martyrs whose funeral occasions an even bigger demonstration, more

violence, the alienation of the moderates from the military government, and its eventual confrontation by a unified civilian opposition that ranges all the way across the political spectrum. Sooner or later the spiral of

repression and resistance reaches this point and sooner or later the

military government is overthrown or forced to resign. The only way of foreclosing this outcome is for the military leader?

ship to yield power before issues have been brought to this extremity. Sometimes power is yielded only to a military president formally com?

mitted to carrying on the programs of the junta, such as Costa e Silva or

Barrientos; while this sort of result may conceal the fact that the goals of the junta have been defeated and abandoned, clearly the institution?

alized rule of a modernizing military is at an end, and a new president,

although professionally a military man, is subject to the same type of

situational pressures that would weigh on an elected civilian president, and he functions more or less as such a president would. Thus it is

highly likely that the only abiding result of the coup and the succeeding

period of military rule is the removal of the president against whom the

coup was directed. Typically, therefore, the only element to benefit by the coup is the conservative oligarchy that incited the military to stage the coup in the first place, fearful of the left-wing tendencies of the

president against whom the coup was directed.

If one wants to minimize the autonomous role played by the in?

tentions of military leaders, and instead regard their behavior as simply a function of general political processes, he is brought to the view that

in intervening in politics the military is "objectively" acting as a tool of

the oligarchic forces in society, despite military desires for moderniza?

tion; and that despite its public spirit and its concern for modernization, the intervention of the military in politics normally has the effect of

delaying the country's attainment of political maturity. Thus, although the stress on situational imperatives that charac?

terizes the writings of what McAlister calls the "revisionist" school adds

a dimension of sophistication to the oversimplified view of the behavior of military officers as determined solely by their will, this approach can?

not today be realistically combined with a conception of military inter?

vention in Latin American politics as a progressive or modernizing force.



The modernizing tendencies are those of mass participation and the

shift in political power away from the oligarchies. The policies of those

who cater to the newly politicized masses may be demagogic; they may be economically ruinous and hurtful to good relations with Western

Europe and the United States; modernization may be a painful and

turbulent process, and justifications for military intervention can be

devised with this in mind; but it would be a denial of the evidence of the

last thirty years of Latin American history to argue that today military intervention in Latin American politics represents on balance a moderniz?

ing force.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle Contentsp. 237p. 238p. 239p. 240p. 241p. 242p. 243p. 244Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 173-344Front MatterFundamentos Para Uma Poltica Educacional Brasileira [pp. 173-185]Economic and Political Aspects of Development in Brazil--And U.S. Aid [pp. 186-208]Oliveira Lima and the Catholic University of America [pp. 209-222]Trpico e Desenvolvimento [pp. 223-236]The Latin American Military: Predatory Reactionaries or Modernizing Patriots? [pp. 237-244]The Relevance of Latin America to the Foreign Policy of Commonwealth Caribbean States [pp. 245-271]Hostos y Su Pensamiento Militar [pp. 272-285]Castro: Economic Effects on Latin America [pp. 286-309]El Pensamiento Filosfico de Augusto Pescador Sarget [pp. 310-316]A Latin American-African Partnership [pp. 317-327]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 328-330]Review: untitled [pp. 330-332]Review: untitled [pp. 332-334]Review: untitled [pp. 335-337]Books Received [pp. 338-341]Center NotesTitle [pp. 342-344]Back Matter

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Predatory Reactionaries or Modernizing Patriots?