The Minister of Defense, Jorge Taiana, spoke at the presentation of the book “Perón and National Defense”, on the occasion of the 69th anniversary of the speech delivered by the three-time President of the Nation at the National War School on November 11, 1953.
“The publication of this book is interesting because there are some important reflections that are obviously current through the sieve of the passage of time,” Taiana said at the presentation, which was also attended by the leadership of the Armed Forces.
When commenting on the book, the minister stressed that “Perón highlighted a concept of the time that war was inevitable and, despite the fact that we believed that this had been overcome, now we see that it is not so,” referring to the war conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“For Perón, war is not only provided by an army, but by an entire nation. For this reason, he later adapts it to that concept and says that there is no possible national defense if there is no society that develops with strengths,” since “there is no there is an army that fights separated from its society,” he said.
At that point, he mentioned the concept of “nation in arms”, he considered it a topic quite present in Perón’s approaches to defense issues and said that what is expressed with this notion is “a war that is not waged only by Armed Forces, but it is waged by an entire country”.
“At a time of change such as the one we are experiencing in the world, reflect on some points, on the meaning of national defense, the meaning of integration, the link between a society and development and its Armed Forces, as well as on the strategies of defense, the political-diplomatic resources and the military resources, is very, very topical,” Taiana remarked.
And in another passage of his dissertation he said that “Perón was concerned about issues that were not on the agenda at the time and he was decades ahead with the problem of food and population growth.”
“It is a book that shows Perón’s ideas that are still very current today. It is not only a tribute to Perón, but we use it to debate our present and future”, valued the minister.
In his presentation, the head of the Defense portfolio cited conferences, public classes and speeches such as an exhibition at the National University of La Plata (UNLP) in 1944 when creating the Defense Chair, as well as an intervention in the National Council Postwar, but also addressed classics such as the Argentine model and the doctrine of continentalism in matters of foreign policy.
For his part, the rector of the National Defense University (Undef), Jorge Battaglino, made a historical journey between the founding of the National War School and the creation of that house of studies in 2008, a fact that he defined as ” the institutional crowning of a process” whose first and main objective was “to provide civil servants from all branches of the State with basic knowledge on national defense issues”.
The meeting was held in the UNDEF San Martín room, on the eve of the 8th anniversary of its creation and on the 69th anniversary of the speech given by Lieutenant General Juan Domingo Perón at the National War School on November 11, 1953 in the historic hall of the Maipú 262 building.
The new institution was conceived as a fundamental link in the establishment and implementation of the new legal, institutional and doctrinal frameworks for the defense of our country.
The event was also attended by the authors, translators, designers, illustrators and editors of the book -published by Undef Libros-, as well as authorities from the university and academic units.
The work has an introduction and comments by Taiana, Agustín Rossi, Nilda Garré, Jorge Battaglino, Ernesto López, Juan José Giani, Norma López, Aldo Duzdevich, Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez and Sergio Rossi.
The book is offered in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Russian and Mandarin Chinese.
