Abstract
Since the 1960s, the Brazilian defense policy toward the Amazon has been oriented by the security/development binomen. This was simultaneously a directive for the Brazilian authoritarian regime and for US defense doctrine for the Americas. We argue in this paper that despite the structural influence of US hemispherical security and defense strategy, the formulation of an Amazonian defense strategy by the Brazilian military responded to peculiarities attached to local military historical practices regarding civilizational values, concepts of security and development, and geopolitical targets. We claim that Brazilian defense strategy towards the Amazon is a local manifestation of a biopolitical approach to both the forest and its natural resources and to its population. It is our goal to point out that the local version for the duality security/development has been a manifestation of a set of technologies of government in a biopolitical strategy.
Highlights
The Amazon has returned to the international headlines
Data from the National Institution of Spatial Research (INPE) indicated that in 2020 9,200 km2 had been deforested compared with 6,800 km2 in 2019 (ESCOBAR, 2020)
The actual notion of sustainable development owes much to Brazilian diplomatic protagonism, which since the first UN conference on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, led the developing countries group to pressurize countries from the capitalist center to ensure that international compromises would guarantee a midpoint between economic development and environmental preservation
Summary
The Amazon has returned to the international headlines. Its always concerning rates of deforestation reached alarming new levels following the beginning of the new administration of Jair Bolsonaro in January 2019. Our hypothesis is that Brazil’s Amazon policy shows how the security/development binomen was operationalized in the country shaping an Amazonian biopolitics that was updated in the post-1985 democratic period, demonstrating the elements of continuity between the doctrine of national security of the authoritarian regime and the defense policies and strategies of the democratic governments.
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