ABSTRACT

The dominant discourse for scholars of Latin American security studies is about interstate peace, trust, and regional institutions that are producing a ‘zone of peace’ or ‘positive security.’ Yet living in peace with one’s neighbors surely must mean that a state does not expect a verbal threat from a neighbor, much less a threat accompanied by military mobilizations and actual military violence. Indeed, the American Treaty on Pacific Settlement (Pact of Bogotá 1948), one of the region’s earliest confidence-and security-building mechanisms (CSBMs), stipulated that signatories “agree to refrain from the threat or the use of force, or from any other means of coercion for the settlement of their controversies, and to have recourse at all times to pacific procedures” (U.S. Department of State, emphasis added).