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August 6, 2008 The Defence Ministerial of the Americas will meet in Banff, Alberta this September 2-6, 2008. It is the eighth time the group has met since 1995, when civilian and military leaders from the Western Hemisphere gathered in Williamsburg, Virginia to discuss “a broad range of security issues in an atmosphere of open dialogue and mutual confidence,” according to the U.S. State Department website. But it will be the first time the ministerial has happened in Canada. The military ministerial was a complement to economic integration talks happening through the Summit of the Americas, which brought 33 hemispheric leaders together in Miami the previous year. In Williamsburg, several principles were spelled out to guide future discussions: * Uphold the promise of the Santiago Agreement that the preservation of democracy is the basis for ensuring our mutual security * Acknowledge that military and security forces play a critical role in supporting and defending the legitimate interests of sovereign democratic states. * Affirm the commitments of our countries in Miami and Managua that our Armed Forces should be subordinate to democratically controlled authority, act within the bounds of national Constitutions, and respect human rights through training and practice. * Increase transparency in defense matters through exchanges of information, through reporting on defense expenditures, and by greater civilian-military dialogue. * Set as a goal for our hemisphere the resolution of outstanding disputes by negotiated settlement and widespread adoption of confidence building measures, all of this in a time-frame consistent with the pace of hemispheric economic integration, and to recognize that the development of our economic security profoundly affects our defense security and vice versa. * Promote greater defense cooperation in support of voluntary participation in UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operations, and to cooperate in a supportive role in the fight against narcoterrorism. Since that first meeting, the defence ministerial has met roughly every two years in a different country.
Military cooperation and regional pacts frequently come up for discussion, as in Nicaragua two years ago, where participating countries agreed on “The will to strengthen the [Organization of American States] Committee on Hemispheric Security and to further promote bilateral and sub-regional agreements on security and defense that contribute to the development of the Inter-American Security System, recognizing the sub-regional strategic contexts of the hemisphere.” And during the 2002 summit in Chile, former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld proposed “a program that would integrate specialized national capabilities into larger regional forces,” according to the American Forces Press Service. “Defense officials said the United States would specifically like to explore the idea of building a force from several states that could take part in international peacekeeping forces as a region.” For a detailed backgrounder on the semi-regular defence summit, see the State Department’s web post here: http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/71001.htm. You can also find descriptions of the proceedings from most of the meetings there. According to Luiza Savage’s Maclean’s blog, the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Council of the Americas, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies are holding a panel discussion about the defence ministerial on Wednesday, August 13, 2008. Major General Doug Langton, Canada’s defence attaché to the United States, will be one of three panelists. “The DMA seeks to advance regional security cooperation, increase civilian defense expertise, encourage democratic civil-military relations, and reinforce the civilian leadership in security affairs,” says a description of the August event posted on Savage’s blog. “This discussion will focus on the current state of hemispheric security and also the DMA process from 1995 to the present.” You can see the CSIS description of the event here.
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