STUDY | Proposal for a New Security Architecture for Chile

AthenaLab, in its effort to suggest ideas and public policies to improve the study of international relations, national security, defense, and public safety, has been working for several years on how to enhance the security of the country, considering the overarching structure of the State. While the study of these phenomena—individually by the working team—can be traced back one or two decades, in August 2019, this think tank proposed a document titled “Proposals for a New National Intelligence System”, which was complemented by other subsequent documents, notably the one from August 2022, concerning “The Security of the State of Chile”.

These efforts aimed to establish the basic ideas to equip our State with an architecture or institutional framework that, through a more widespread discussion, would help address the global, regional, and local security situation, with better tools to recognize and identify risks, threats, and opportunities.

This is due to the observed progressive deterioration of global, regional, neighborhood, and national security levels. In other words, the proposal and the work to be deepened aimed to leave us in better conditions—as a State—to face these challenges and achieve adequate levels of security, development, and well-being for all citizens. Consequently, the team dedicated itself to creating a proposal for a national security architecture. This initiative seeks to be the highest level of integration and coordination of the State to anticipate and confront the main challenges and threats at the highest authority of the State. However, this task would not be complete without a robust national intelligence system to address today’s challenges and primarily those of the future.

Having processed and quality information will allow the State, and the current government, to better resolve the main issues that may affect national interests. Therefore, given the urgency of first addressing the challenge of public safety, efforts were made to propose general considerations for a public safety strategy, which, in the national case, does have an architecture to carry this out, such as the Ministry of Public Safety. There is full awareness that the country will require a national security strategy and its own national intelligence strategy, but it is estimated that first, the institutional framework must be established, and then the respective document can be created. In other words, strategies do not function in isolation; they are part of a structure that guides them. First, the foundation must be laid, and then the strategy can be developed.

Finally, the three detailed proposals are the result of the teamwork of our senior researchers, Pilar Giannini and Marcelo Masalleras, and the current acting executive director of AthenaLab. For us, it has been very beneficial to address these issues, which are now made available to the national community, with the hope that they will serve to continue working for the security of Chile, as well as for its development and well-being.

John Griffiths Spielman
Acting Executive Director of AthenaLab