The organization was created during the harsh years of transition to democracy in Argentina, shortly before the last military uprising, and the idea originated from a group of politicians, military personnel, and academicians who agreed on the need to create a forum for a mature dialog between the sectors they represented. Such dialog required the immediate creation of a language common to all three groups that could succeed in overcoming the problems that had hindered a productive and sound relationship between them.

For that purpose, it was fundamental to preserve such forum from the fluctuations of politics as well as from any opportunistic political use. This would allow a candid debate to blossom for the discussion of the actual problems affecting both national defense and the reinsertion of this issue in the country's new institutional life.

We thus organized an ongoing seminar called "Towards the Armed Forces of the Year 2000", which involved a number of meetings -conducted on the basis of a fairly strict academic mechanism. At first, about thirty people from the above-mentioned sectors attended these meetings, and a number of diplomats, Congressional advisors, reporters, technologists, etc. soon joined the list of participants.

All these activities were enthusiastically supported by a national senator who was at the time Chairman of the Senate Defense Committee, Mr. Eduardo Vaca.

The methodology used was key to the success of the process thus started, based on the principle that participants agreed to speak on their own personal behalf, i.e. as citizens, and their views or comments would not be deemed to represent the view of any institution, political party, or university.

After two years and more than twenty meetings held --many of them attended by international experts--, a decision was made to transfer all the riches of these proceedings to society at large, an objective to be attained through the publication of a journal. To this end, the group had to acquire legal status and so, SER en el 2000 was created with the characteristics mentioned above, and Senator Vaca as its first president. He held the position till his death in 1998.

Beginning in 1993 activities were expanded mainly in two directions:

One, by emphasizing all the actions taken up to that moment such as:

• the development of research projects with national and international support;
• the creation of a Database accessible through the Internet, specialized in security and defense issues;
• the arrangement, jointly with Congressional Defense Committees, of a number of national and international seminars on the defense budget, social communication of defense issues, oversight of intelligence agencies, and so on;
• the general coordination of the First and Second Meeting on Strategic Studies in Argentina;
• the regular meetings of the Permanent Seminar, with sixty meetings already held; and
• the publication of our journal titled SER en el 2000.

The second direction of our efforts has a regional scope, where we have mainly promoted meetings with groups of similar characteristics, first from Brazil, then from Chile and Uruguay and finally, from Paraguay.

By way of example, we can mention five conferences held with the Brazilian Institute for Strategic Affairs, or several meetings organized jointly with Flacso Chile. As a result of these activities, we became the academic counterpart for said University, within the frame of the Argentine-Chilean Permanent Security Committee (COPERSEG, for Comité Permanente de Seguridad). Also worth mentioning is the cooperation agreement in force with the University of Chile. Over the past few years, SER directors also took part in many meetings on civil-military relations in different countries of the hemisphere, such as Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, USA, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

In sum, as regards publications and services, SER en el 2000 has already published eleven issues of the journal titled after the organization's denomination, it has co-edited with University of Quilmes a book on Brazil's defense policy, it manages and maintains the Defense and Security Database (http://www.ser2000.org.ar), with upwards of ten thousand files to be found through its homepage, and, with the support of a grant from the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), it has created another Internet Database on the promotion of Confidence Building Measures in the South Cone.

All these activities, including those previously undertaken and those going on at present, have been governed by two guiding principles.

Firstly, the idea of promoting civilian participation in subject matters that historically had seemed to be the exclusive territory of the Armed Forces, thus really fostering democratic governance in Argentina. At the same time, a group was formed of civilian thinkers, who have gradually specialized in these issues with the resulting strengthening of civil-military relations in our country.

The second guiding principle aims to promote the development of a strategic thought of our own and to disseminate it among the sectors participating in the institution's activities. We believe to be, in this way, contributing somehow to the strengthening of our leaders' capabilities to handle the new challenges posed to society in the current environment.

Finally, we are working hard to consolidate the links between the above mentioned leaders within the scope of MERCOSUR countries. Those links must be really strong for the very reason of the integration process.

Web site: http://www.ser2000.org.ar