Military Business in Argentina

Abstract

This chapter deals with the final outcome of the long history (1922-90s) of the military-run arms industry and military-run civilian industries in Argentina. Argentina presents a good historical case study in which the uniformed class assumed ‘leadership’ in the area of state enterprises, long before state intervention became fashionable with civilian governments. Originally this occurred because the soldiers had the organizing ability and patriotic drive to implement it, whereas civilian state agents did not. The military assumed a role that was not then perceived as an appropriate function of government. They did so for pragmatic reasons, either because the First World War had left them bereft of arms suppliers (England and Germany), or because the war meant a shortage of imports in other strategic industries. Moreover, the military also did so because local private industrialists were not investing in these sectors (oil, aviation, and later steel). This idea of an expanding functional role for government arrived only in the 1930s (with fascism and Keynesianism). The local military, however, perceived it at an earlier date.