| High levels of insecurity and violence have posed two questions for Latin American military security missions: which missions are appropriate, and how civilians in government can ensure that the military perform only those missions, in a region known for military insubordination. This study examines the Peruvian and Ecuadorian armies and their evolving missions, which present interesting challenges to the scholarly understanding of how armed forces behave.;Analysts have expected the armed forces to prioritize their salient, traditional security work, as a means of increasing the military's overall resources and to maintain professionalism. However, the Peruvian and Ecuadorian armies did not conform to this expectation during the 2000-06 period. Governments emphasized the importance of the salient, traditional missions---counterinsurgency in Peru and border defense in Ecuador. Yet the Ecuadorian army focused on salient but nontraditional missions such as 1 antinarcotics and protest control, and the Peruvian army focused on the traditional but nonsalient mission of training for external war.;These unexpected outcomes are explained in terms of (1) army beliefs about what missions are appropriate, beliefs that are a legacy of the early years of democracy, and (2) contradictions within each army's salient, traditional security mission. Drawing on contingency theory, the analysis shows that above all else, the armies prioritized maintaining predictability for the work of army patrols, i.e., for that part of the organization that performs the army's core function. For each army, the contradiction in the army's salient, traditional mission suggested anything but predictability for troops on the ground, making the "mission impossible." Given the armies' resistance to the government-defined missions, in different ways they took on security work for private actors. The analysis therefore finds that in both countries resources and professionalism mattered, but in a more complex way than suggested by prior research. |
