France on future invasion of Brazil: 'Imagination without limits'

With an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, embassy of France in Brasilia welcomed on Friday, 7, "the boundless imagination of the authors" of the document "Scenario of Defense in 2040", formulated by the Ministry of Defense, which points come from this country only military threat against Brazil. The tone of the draft brings more acidity to bilateral relations, contaminated by the episode of fires in the Amazon in 2019.

"The fact is that Brazil is our main strategic partner in Latin America and that France has maintained daily, close and friendly cooperation relations with the Brazilian Armed Forces for decades," added the French embassy, ​​in response to Twitter.

As published by the Folha de S Paulo newspaper, the confidential draft was prepared based on the views of 500 respondents collected in 11 meetings organized by the Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG) in the second half of 2019 to outline future challenges for national security. One of the scenarios outlined in the document, according to Folha, concerns a request by France to intervene in the Ianomâmi Reserve to be made in 2035. Two years later, Paris would place its Armed Forces in French Guiana, a French overseas territory neighboring Brazil.

Other non-feasible, if not astonishing, predictions are the installation of United States bases in Brazil and the contamination of Rock in Rio in 2039 by an outbreak of coronavirus. Argentina, a potential source of conflict during the Brazilian military dictatorship, appears as an overcoming risk.

The document disregards Brazil's strategic cooperation with France in the development of conventional submarines and the nuclear powered version. Nor is there an assessment of the degree of economic connection between the two countries, especially on French investments in Brazilian territory and on the trade flow of 460 billion. “It is silly, amateurish. How will France be confrontational if it is Brazil's largest strategic partner in the area of ​​defense? ”, Said Ambassador Rubens Barbosa, director of the Institute of International Relations and Foreign Trade (Irice).

Bilateral relations have been undermined since the beginning of the administration of Jair Bolsonaro , who aligned Brazilian foreign policy to that of the United States and adopted a line of contempt for issues of environment and sustainability particularly dear to France. Brasilia even considered withdrawing the country from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and, in the episode of the fires in the Amazon, Bolsonaro went into direct shock with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron , who claimed to be the region "our common good".

In a note, the Ministry of Defense stated that the document does not reflect its position nor that of the Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG) and highlighted the importance it attaches to the strategic partnership between Brazil and France in the area of ​​Defense for the 21st century. “This is academic work, developed within a school, which reflects the first phase of a preparatory study, it is important to highlight that prospective scenarios are tools used by any successful corporation or country and that academic freedom is one of the requirements fundamental to the excellence of any higher education institution, such as ESG ”, he informed.