By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2       

One the most significant achievements of newly democratized Argentina and Brazil in the 1980s was to defuse their long standing geopolitical competition. For this both nations owe much to the good sense of their first two civilian presidents after military rule, Raul Alfonsin and Jose Sarney. But their close attention to their most important bilateral international relationship paved the way for Mercosul and saved both their nations the expense and the dangers of a nuclear arms race.

It is important to recognise how long the military competition between Argentina and Brazil lasted to fully comprehend the historical importance of this rapprochement. The diplomatic history of Brazil's boundaries is greatly foreshortened if it is only taken back to the days of the Barao de Rio Branco. The Brazil Argentina conflict had much deeper roots and was a legacy of frontier disputes between Spain and Portugal that proceeded the emergence of both Argentina and Brazil as nations.

Brazil's boundaries in fact acquired their huge continental dimension in the eighteenth century, and were recognized in international treaties beginning in 1750, and protected by a network of forts constructed at key strategic locations deep in the interior. Settlements were fortified on the northern bank of the Rio de la Plata and the Amazon respectively with the intention of controlling Oceanic access to the two vast river basins of South America.

Retaining the northern bank of the Rio de la Plata proved elusive, however, and Uruguay emerged as a buffer state. But a long cold war persisted between Argentina and Brazil, and each military saw each other as their principal enemy until Presidents Sarney and Alfonsin diverted discussions away from military competition and towards tariffs, and envisioned a common market dedicated not only to regional economic progress but also to democracy.
These achievements, whatever their vicissitudes over the years, should not be taken for granted. Threats to freedom of expression in Venezuela are a legitimate concern for the Mercosul partners. The nuclear issue is back on the table, or rather under it. And fueled by Hugo Chavez's petrodollars, but obfuscated by his bombast, a South American arms race has clearly begun. However diplomatically inconvenient all these questions maybe they deserve attention and discussion.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.