The dismantling and weakening of the State that Javier Milei proclaims in Argentina is selective: in certain areas, the far-right president promotes an inverse process of strengthening and expanding powers. Such is the case of national defense. Throughout his first year in office, Milei has indicated on several occasions his intention to vindicate the Armed Forces and has announced the purchase of weapons and military vehicles. Now, with two decrees that allowed him to avoid public debate, he established that the Army, Air Force and Navy can intervene in matters of internal security, something hitherto prohibited. The power to decide how and when the military will act is reserved by the Executive itself, meaning that no control mechanisms will intervene.
These are Milei’s first concrete measures aimed at reversing the distinction between defense and security, a fundamental separation of democratic restoration in the country. After the aberrant crimes of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983), 36 years ago Congress resolved by law that the Armed Forces can only act in the face of “aggression of external origin.” The current Government made an attempt to modify that consensus last August, with a project that did not have support in Parliament and was never discussed. Now Milei returned to the fray with decrees 1107 and 1112, signed last December 18 and 19.
The first decree enables the Armed Forces to guard “objectives of strategic value”, defined without too much precision as “any asset, installation or set of fixed facilities”, as well as “material entities of vital importance for the national State”. The power to summon the military for this purpose—which was previously only provided for exceptionally and required forming a crisis committee or declaring a state of siege—is concentrated in the Ministry of Security. In charge of that portfolio today is Patricia Bullrich, mentor of the measures and who had already promoted them during the Government of the conservative Mauricio Macri (2015-2019).
The second decree is more extensive and, in the form of a regulation, implies a reform of the national defense system. Among other things, it establishes that the Armed Forces must not only intervene in the face of attacks from other States, but also in the face of attacks or threats from “foreign parastatal organizations, terrorist organizations or other transnational organizations.” The scope of action is expanded and covers, in addition to land, sea, river, lake and air spaces, cyberspace and the “electromagnetic spectrum.” The norm enables the military forces to collaborate “in times of peace” with the security forces in surveillance and border control tasks.
One of the most questioned points of Decree 1112 is the one that authorizes those in uniform to exercise police power. Within the framework of their new powers to guard their equipment and facilities, both in the barracks and in transit to exercises or other activities, they can now “proceed to the temporary arrest of people who are found committing crimes.”
“We are prioritizing and strengthening our Armed Forces,” were the words with which the Minister of Defense, Luis Petri, promoted the decrees. He assured that the new powers will allow the military to “intervene in the face of terrorist threats” and will serve to “protect Argentines more and better.”
The political opposition rejected the decrees. A group of deputies from the Frente de Todos (Peronism) expressed “deep concern” about the measures and, in particular, about Milei’s decision to bypass Congress to modify current laws. “Argentina has witnessed the dangers of involving the Armed Forces in internal tasks,” they warned. “Under the pretext of ‘new threats’, such as drug trafficking or cybercrime,” they noted, “these regulations could promote the militarization of problems that require comprehensive and democratic solutions.” The legislators of the Left Front, for their part, presented a project to annul the decrees because – they argued – they constitute “a flagrant violation of the Internal Security Law and an inadmissible repressive advance.”
The risks and fears
Trade union and human rights organizations also warned about the risks involved in Milei’s initiatives. “The Government establishes the possibility that anything be declared an ‘objective of strategic value’ and that, therefore, the Ministry of Security can request the intervention of the Armed Forces. Taking into account that this Government has called protesters, organized workers or indigenous communities ‘terrorists’, trivializing the category of ‘terrorism’, the fear is that these norms will be used to militarize social conflicts,” explains Manuel Tufró, director of the area. of Justice and Security of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).
The expert also points out that the reformulation of the notion of external aggression, extending it beyond its military nature, implies “empowering the Armed Forces to intervene in criminal activity if it is transnational in nature. “The question of external origin becomes what justifies military intervention and no longer the character or magnitude of the threat.”
Anthropologist Sabina Frederic, Conicet researcher and former Minister of Security (2019-2021), observes that, apart from the ideological debate on the role of the military, “there is an instrumental problem. From our history, with the way in which the Armed Forces participated in State terrorism, we all learned that their intervention in matters of internal security can have a very high cost for society and also for the military institution. That is why even the military refuses to get involved in these tasks.” The experience in other Latin American countries leads to the same conclusion, he says: “The consequences were not good for the forces and it was not an effective measure to control organized crime.”
In the case of Argentina, another key aspect is added. “The country today has the highest ratio of police officers per inhabitant in the region: 600 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants. In addition, we have a federal force that intervenes in internal security, which is the Gendarmerie,” adds Frederic. “There is no reason, no diagnosis that justifies the movement of the Armed Forces towards internal security.”
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