ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the roles of the ministries of defense and the armed forces in dealing with the challenges of democratic civil-military relations. Instead, the principal objective has been the subordination of the armed forces to civilian control. Though considered experienced in counterinsurgency, in 1998, it was suffering humiliating battalion-size defeats inflicted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and losing territorial control. Since the late 1990s, repeated cycles of planning, budgeting, and working with the armed forces to implement military strategy engendered mutual learning and improved the professional capacity of the players in national defense. It handled administrative tasks, such as purchase orders and retirement funds, and had nothing to do with strategic plans and budgets or command of the armed forces. At the other end of the spectrum, bankrupt Venezuela was armed to the teeth, having assembled one of the largest military stockpiles in the Western Hemisphere.
