Five years ago, when we began conducting the first, one-of-a-kind Survey of Perceptions on Foreign Policy and National Security along with the pollster Ipsos, the data showed that Chileans’ main concern was drug trafficking and organised crime, followed by the porosity of borders and the increase in irregular immigration. Today that seems obvious; there is no survey that says otherwise. Even Chilean universities are conducting research on the topic and creating related centres.
More importantly, those who denied the relevance and even the validity of the concept of national security for years now evoke it as a response to the problems that Chilean institutions are facing in enforcing the rule of law throughout the territory.
For AthenaLab, the survey is a source of tremendous pride, because at the beginning of the decade it helped us guide our own research into precisely such challenges that require urgent solutions, like the need to create a State-level security architecture, reform of the intelligence system, improvement of border security, control of illicit economic activities, protection of maritime interests, and geopolitical updates regarding Chile’s most distant territories to exercise effective sovereignty. Today we have documents that not only offer a diagnosis for all of these issues, but also advance in proposing solutions.
Therefore, after five years, we can affirm that some trends have consolidated themselves among Chileans, such as the desire to be a proactive country in international matters, and the perception that our main partners – and the models of development to which we aspire – are outside Latin America. The United States and New Zealand are now recurring names in the responses.
This time in particular, we wanted to look more closely at Argentina, due to the beginning of President Javier Milei’s administration and the fact that it will be the 4th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with that country, a document that did not put an end to our territorial disputes.
We hope that the 2024 survey, a publication highly anticipated by local authorities, embassies, academics and journalists, will be useful for those interested in Chile, its foreign policy and, above all, in the search for security.
