Incomplete Transition provides a counterpoint to much of the recent literature on Argentine militarism, which details how the armed forces have reoriented their strategic vision in the wake of the Falkland Islands conflict and subsequent return to elected government. McSherry argues that the continuation of the national security doctrine; the persistence of intelligence networks, paramilitary groups, and military agencies inherited from the “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional”; and the ongoing antidemocratic attitudes and sentiments voiced by many military personnel and their civilian allies (such as elements of the Roman Catholic Church and the Peronist party) have combined to form a pernicious authoritarian legacy that is inimical to the consolidation of democracy. Anti-Semitic, antidemocratic, and overtly violent quotes by a variety of military figures serve as a chilling reminder that most of the individuals and networks involved in the “dirty war” of the 1970s (and 1980s) continue to operate freely and, worse yet, have some appeal in Argentine society.

The first part of this book offers a conceptual framework and historical backdrop to the analysis of post-1983 civil-military relations. McSherry undertakes a broad discussion of the transitions literature, while emphasizing that authoritarian state structures can coexist with elected forms of rule and that the pervasiveness of the national security doctrine as an organizing and legitimating construct upon which Argentine military perspectives are founded has left indelible antidemocratic features in both political and civil society. Under such conditions, transfers of power such as the 1983 election mask the ongoing prevalence of authoritarian conceptualizations of the proper social order, which in turn makes it difficult to pursue substantively democratic outcomes.

Part two of Incomplete Transition explores civil-military relations under the Alfonsin and Menem administrations (1983-96). The analysis is weighed more heavily on the Alfonsin years, when civil-military relations were at their most contentious (resulting in several military uprisings and many other destabilizing acts on the part of seditious antidemocratic forces). The scene depicted is grim: through their words and deeds, the most antidemocratic sectors of the Argentine military are shown to have forced rollbacks and concessions from the Alfonsin government that effectively perpetuated their power as self-appointed “guardians” of the nation. This trend is seen as having continued under Menem.

Other aspects of the discussion are problematic. No mention is made of Argentine military involvement in international peacekeeping and international cooperative security schemes, of the decision to abandon the Condor ballistic missile program, of the renunciation of nuclear weapons and ratification of both the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Treaty of Tlatelolco, or of military cooperation with Brazil and Chile and the signing of nonaggression pacts with these nations. The parallels that McSherry repeatedly points out between the Argentine and Guatemalan militaries are overdrawn, and several assertions are made without supporting documentation. This causes the author to misinform at times, as witness the claim that “in 1996 it appeared that U.S. funding for the military would increase in the future” (p. 277). Although it sells arms and provides training, the United States does not fund the Argentine military, and military assistance levels have remained constant, low, and limited in scope for over 15 years.

McSherry deserves credit for the documentary evidence of lingering authoritarian attitudes and agencies in Argentina’s security apparatus (although personal interviews and military documents detailed in footnotes are not recorded in the bibliography). Whatever its external reorientation, Argentine military ideology as depicted continues to be (in the main or the minority) a major hindrance to the consolidation of democracy in that country. For that insight Incomplete Transitions deserves a place along recent works by David Pion-Berlin, Deborah Lee Norden, and Antonio Pala as an important contribution in English to the study of modern Argentine militarism.