More on Bolivia

There is already speculation that the United States is hoping to prompt the Bolivian military to overthrow Evo Morales. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some strategy, but for now the evidence remains scanty. The U.S. is withholding some military aid because Bolivia won’t provide waivers for U.S. citizens with regard to the International Criminal Court. The NYT article is loaded with innuendo, like “the cut holds the potential to anger Bolivia's powerful military establishment, which has been responsible for a long history of coups.” But elsewhere, the head of the U.S. Southern Command said publicly that the U.S. could and should work with Morales.

It is hard to imagine the cuts leading to a coup. Although militaries across the region remain quite politically active, there is not much appetite for trying to overthrow an elected government and then attempt to establish a military regime—in Bolivia it would require considerable and sustained violence. Further, if the military acted according to Stepan’s “moderator” model, overthrew Evo Morales, and then handed power to some other civilian president, who would that be, and how could that person possibly govern?

I just hope I am not being too optimistic (and in my own work I’ve rarely shown optimism about Latin American civil-military relations).