Brazil: In Search of a Security Space

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that Brazil has conceptualized national security over time as a function of systemic and domestic constraints that have regulated the country’s ambitions in its region. Yet the very concept of “region” for Brazilian policymakers has evolved significantly across time significantly effecting its national security policy. The chapter demonstrates through an analysis of the historical development of Brazilian national security policy from independence in 1822 to the present that the conception of “region” has constituted a meta-concept as it has shaped how Brasilia has framed threats, interests, and objectives over time. In the contemporary period, this has seen Brasilia focused on South America and the South Atlantic as its “natural region” due to its centrality for preserving sovereignty and autonomy in a world that appears to be moving toward Sino-US bipolarity. The chapter concludes with a consideration of whether the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a retired army captain, as president in 2018 represents a new turning point in Brazil’s security policies insofar as he supports re-alignment with the US after pursuing for more than half-century autonomy in foreign policy and, hence, in security affairs.

Parts of this chapter have been adapted from my M.A. thesis in Latin American Studies submitted in May 2010 to the University of California at Berkeley, entitled “Reinventing the Wheel: A Comparative Study of the Political Economy of Brazilian Foreign Policy under Cardoso and Lula”, and the paper “The Limits of the Neighborhood: South-West Africa, the South Atlantic, and the Concept of Region in Brazilian Foreign Policy”, presented at the 34th LASA Meeting, New York, May 2016. This research was supported by a São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant (no. 2014/26455-7).