The security environment in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to evolve, driven in part by dramatic underlying changes in the broader global dynamics. Latin American security forces, constrained by a combination of resources and administrative and political factors, struggle with varying degrees of effectiveness to adapt. This paper describes some of those interdependent changes in the strategic environment, and those reactions. It argues that the long-discussed imperatives of globalization themselves are evolving, with dramatic implications for the region.
The Evolving Global Context
The changing character of global interdependence shaping the security dynamics of Latin America begins, but does not end with, the intensification and change in the nature of connectivity. The later includes flows of data and ideas, goods, money, and people.
Those flows, and the way in which the conditions and events of one part of the world rapidly and significantly affect the other are evolving and strengthening in some areas, even as they break down in others.
As global connectivity has expanded through the movement of goods, finance, ideas and people, and the physical and digital infrastructure which sustains them has grown, illicit activities have also become increasingly global, including drug movements, money laundering, migration, and the spread of ideas, including for terrorism and the use of technology in criminal operations.
Beyond crime and insecurity, the COVID-19 pandemic, which begun in Wuhan, China and ultimately killed between 13.3 and 16.6 million people, 1 shows how, through flows of people and ...