The growing importance of third world countries in the international system brings their potential for conflict and cooperation to the forefront. Given the fact that the East-West conflict tends to intensify the North-South conflict, a general tendency toward more warlike antagonisms is becoming evident within the Third World. In view of this trend, Latin America as a region becomes particularly interesting; conditions here have always led to conflict situations between the various countries, but specific historical factors seem to have kept these conflicts from erupting to the same extent that they have in other regions of the Third World.

Conflicts between two states do not suddenly occur. Their virulence rather gradually develops from a mixture of border conflicts, historical animosities, economic disputes, differences in political systems, arms races, and certainly, the influence of the big powers.

In a March 1980 address to the Venezuelan Congress, President Luis Herrera Campíns stated: “Effective action by Venezuela in the sphere of international affairs must take into account certain key facts: Economics—we are a producer-exporter of oil; politics—we have a stable, consolidated democracy; and geopolitics—we are at one and the same time a Caribbean, Andean, Atlantic, and Amazonian country” (Venezuela Up To Date, 1980: 8). President Herrera's statement reveals a Venezuelan interest in geopolitics; at the same time, it outlines the difficulties in achieving a coherent geopolitical strategy.

The existence of a relationship between foreign military assistance, domestic military spending, and the political activity of the armed forces in developing nations is a widely assumed yet little documented phenomenon. This article explores the association between these three variables in Argentina and offers a model which could be used for the analysis of their relationship in other nations.

Prior studies have largely focused upon the correlation between the first two variables and the incidence of military takeovers (the classic golpe). The model presented here examines less discernible activities which have not been analyzed previously, although many observers have suggested that they may constitute significant measurements of the military's involvement in politics.

Many communally divided postcolonial states rely almost exclusively upon an effective machinery of control to ensure political order. This has stemmed from two factors: (1) unrestrained communal competition for votes; and (2) inheritance of a highly centralized state apparatus. The first condition has tended to politicize sectional cleavages, exacerbating distrust (Premdas, 1972: 19-20). Without a body of shared values in the state, protection of a communal group's interest is perceived to reside on the capture of the government. The second condition under such circumstances facilitates “effective domination of one group over another” (Smooha, 1980: 257). Apart from a consociational arrangement, democracy in deeply divided societies is elusive, rendering authoritarian control seemingly necessary to prevent protracted communal conflict and political disintegration (Lijphart, 1969: 207; Milne, 1975: 413; Norlinger, 1972). As a legitimator of domination, stability is a controversial value, especially in the face of cynical and brutal abuses of human rights.

Crisis, breakdown, and disintegration have become operative concepts in journalistic, academic, and official assessments of contemporary affairs in Central America. The radicalization and Cubanization of the Nicaraguan revolution, the resurgence of revolutionary messianism and continuing violence in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the increasingly active and direct role which regional powers and European countries are playing in the region have turned Central America into a salient, global confrontational arena.

A systemic view, however, would miss important political processes continuing with surprising strength but unnoticed regularity in some Central American nations indirectly affected by revolutionary conflict and thus partially insulated from the region's high level of violence.

El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, share a common border divided by the channeled and weakly flowing Rio Grande. The twin cities, with a combined population of over a million, are located in a valley between two mountain ranges. They share a common air shed, mutual sources of water supply, and the ever-present threat of disease which, of course, does not recognize the artificial national boundary dividing the two cities.

How have the sister cities and their respective governments at the local, state, and federal levels attempted to solve their common health and environmental problems? This paper will briefly review the efforts to resolve and to solve common health and environmental problems between the two cities. What is necessary at the outset is some type of analytical framework to better understand the relations between the two cities.