Abstract

MENEGHIM DONADELLI, Laura; SAINT-PIERRE, Héctor Luis  and  VITELLI, Marina Gisela. Brazil’s Defense Documents: Successive Approaches to the National Security Doctrine?. rev.relac.int.estrateg.segur. [online]. 2021, vol.16, n.2, pp.141-156.  Epub Dec 31, 2021. ISSN 1909-3063.  https://doi.org/10.18359/ries.5602.

In Brazil, the federal government is responsible for disseminating every four years updated versions of three defense guidance documents: the National Defense Policy, the National Defense Strategy, and the White Paper on National Defense. The authorities guide the Brazilian armed forces on these documents among various regulations. This descriptive work contributes to existing studies on Brazilian defense policy from the search and reading of official documents published by the Brazilian government between 1996 and 2020, focused on the conceptions of security and defense. Beyond documentary research, the review of the current literature on the subject helps us understand the impacts of regulations and their updates on the use of armed forces. It is argued that, despite the difficulties in updating, successive governments maintained certain inertia in modernizing the country’s defense policy. Although updated, the documents preserve old concepts that allow the intensive use of the armed forces in internal missions. The paper concludes that, since the first National Defense Policy, successive concessions to the military were recorded in the documents to enable interventions in internal affairs, including military missions related to public security. In brief, it highlights the maintenance of the obsolete concept of national security, the reference to military documents (e.g., the glossary of the Armed Forces and the Guarantee of Law and Order), and a careless expansion of the scope of security to any threats.

Keywords : Security; armed forces; Brazil; defense; official documents; public security.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )