President Kirchner and minister of Defence, Nilda Garre, have presented a new military doctrine for the Argentine army called “War for resources”. According to an article by the journalist Daniel Gallo, published in La Nación on 25 February: “A conflict for sweet water is the greatest – and possible – threat that the army can envisage for Argentina in the forthcoming decades. That is why, this year, they changed their combat norms by means of a theoretic piece of work that projected the possible threats until year 2025″.

Further on the article informs us that “In practice, this modification of military plans will imply a change in the setting of the commands of the three bodies of the army and the creation within three years of smaller units. The reorganisation establishes the idea that the defence of natural resources will be performed, in case of need, against an enemy force equipped with more advanced technology, with superior numbers of troops and fire power. In case a power has to be confronted, defensive responses are foreseen that – in theory – include even guerrilla warfare so as to harass invading forces (.). The army study guidelines set on the underground reserve of sweet water known as Aquífero Guaraní, stretching over 220 000 square kilometres in Argentine Mesopotamia, over 800 000 square kilometres in Brazil and sectors in Uruguay and Paraguay. From the military point of view, a dispute over this natural resource is the greatest possibility for the country to have to deal with a war.”

As we already know, there are also important reserves in the area of the Andes mountain range and in Patagonia. That is why “the first step was to transfer the head quarters of the II Corps from Rosario to Curuzú Cuatiá. The headquarters of the V Corps will be moved from Bahía Blanca to Comodoro Rivadavia next year and in 2009 the III Corps will abandon their site in Cordoba in order to settle in San Luis.”

Is this the army that will defend our natural resources?

There is no doubt that this “new doctrine” responds to the increasing importance that sweet water acquires in the world and the great reserves of it in Argentina. Now, once this has been said, fundamental questions arise. Is it the same army that is still full of genocides from the military dictatorship, the same army that gave up the boys to be killed and shamefully surrendered in the Falkland Islands, the same army that subscribed the hand-over of our natural resources who will now defend them?

The next question is: if Kirchner was one of the main culprits of the hand-over of our oil to Repsol and company and of the lands where the reserves of water are to be found – in Patagonia, in Mesopotamia, along the cordillera – to the European and American multinationals and multimillionaires, why does he now sign a doctrine for the army to defend natural resources?

In order to answer these questions we must bear in mind a fundamental fact: since the government does not say anything about taking all these resources away from the multinationals and multimillionaires and return them to the State, this doctrine is evidently for the army to defend the control over our natural resources by these companies and these capitalists.

Against whom? By the positions of the new headquarters, it might seem that the “main hypothesis of conflict” would be Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and the “major enemy force”, that is to say Brazil. That alone would be enough to show how much Kirchner’s invocations to the “Latin American brotherhood” are worth.

We, however, believe that the “main hypothesis of conflict” behind all this is that the actual owner of Argentina, precisely the multinationals and the foreign multimillionaires who hold the best land in this country, are worried because anger is seething against imperialist domination in Argentina and the entire world. That is why they need a well organised army and ready to defend “their private property of natural resources” just in case the Argentine people gets the bright idea of following the footsteps of their brother nations, such as the Bolivians and demand the nationalisation of natural resources.

We are convinced that this army and these armed forces, full of genocides as they are, who have always been in the service of delivering the country into the hands of the multinationals and repressing the people, are now to serve precisely for this “hypothesis of conflict”: to defend those who loot on the country from a possible anti-imperialist mobilisation of the workers and the toiling masses in general.

Real defence of natural resources

If the Argentine government really wanted to defend natural resources, they would begin by returning all of them to the State, including water, oil, land and mines instead of leaving them in the hands of the multinationals and multimillionaires.

There is no doubt that in this case we would need armed forces ready to defend the country. We already know that imperialism has no qualms about attacking militarily any country willing to defend its sovereignty. But for that, we have to begin by expelling all the murderers that are in the armed forces and in the police.

A debate would have to start all over the country to change the armed force from top to bottom, based on conscription of soldier who would do their military service in their place of work or study in units closely linked to these centres. The troops and non-commissioned officers would have to be fully entitled to political and trade union organisation and to be prepared to become officers. All those who have any connections with the great corporations that are looting on the country would be excluded form officialdom.

On the other hand, far from posing confrontation with neighbouring countries as “hypothesis of conflict”, we would have to summon for fraternal unity of all the nations of Latin America and the world in order to defeat imperialism.