Arms race ... in Latin America?

Is Latin America gearing up for conflict? Some regional commentators certainly fear that a handful of countries are teetering on the edge of a full-blown arms race they can ill afford - either financially or diplomatically...

Firstly, Brazil confirmed on 7 September that it will buy four Scorpene attack submarines from France, and will build 50 EC-725 transport helicopters under licence. It has also opened negotiations with French company Dassault for a large order of Rafale fighter aircraft.

Then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned last week from a successful shopping trip to Moscow, with T-72 main battle tanks and an unknown quantity of air defence systems in the bag.

Both countries are ramping up military expenditure to levels not seen in decades...

Mr Chavez - whose military doctrine is founded on a hypothetical US invasion from Colombia to seize his lucrative oilfields - has used the US-Colombia agreement to justify his new Russian hardware... For the moment, at least, arms acquisitions by Mr Chavez continue to be a mix of both nationalistic pride and sabre-rattling...

Elsewhere on the continent, fears of an arms race between neighbouring Chile and Peru - which have contested a maritime boundary since a war in 1879 - resurface periodically...

So an arms race in Latin America? Not yet, not quite. As with much of the region's tempestuous politics, the rhetoric continues to outpace the reality.

But even so, recent developments suggest that while the world is preoccupied with conflicts on other parts of the globe, the seeds are quietly being sown for the increased militarisation of a region that arguably should have its budgetary priorities elsewhere.