{"id":103143,"date":"2017-12-11T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=103143"},"modified":"2017-12-06T12:34:34","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T12:34:34","slug":"brazil-u-s-and-20-other-countries-carry-out-military-exercise-in-the-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/brazil-u-s-and-20-other-countries-carry-out-military-exercise-in-the-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil, U.S. and 20 Other Countries Carry Out Military Exercise in the Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2017 – <\/em>Military units from 20 countries, including Peru and Colombia, as well as the US, Germany and Japan, participated last month in military exercises dubbed Amazonlog 2017.<\/p>\n

Coordinated by the Brazilian military command, they marked the first such international war games in Brazil\u2019s strategically sensitive Amazon region. The exercise was centered in the city of Tabatinga, in the state of Amazonas, on the triple border that separates northwestern Brazil from Peru and Colombia.<\/p>\n

According to Gen. Guilherme Theophilo, the Brazilian military commander of the Amazon region between 2014 and 2016, who was responsible for the military exercise, Amazonlog\u2019s purpose was to create a multinational logistical support base to work on humanitarian aid and prepare for responding to airplane crashes and natural disasters, such as extreme drought, floods and earthquakes.<\/p>\n

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U.S. guided-missile destroyer Nitze, third from left, docks with other warships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during a joint military exercise, April 27, 2011. (AP\/Victor R. Caivano)<\/p><\/div>\n

Participating in the exercise were 2,000 troops, including 1,550 Brazilians, 150 Colombians and 120 Peruvians. The US deployed 30 soldiers and a C-130 military cargo plane.<\/p>\n

In an interview with TV Bandeirantes, General Theophilo said that \u201cthe initial idea of the operation came from an experience that the officers of the Brazilian army\u2019s logistical command had when they went to Europe and participated in multinational NATO logistical bases to deal with refugees from Africa and the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience that General Theophilo referred to was the NATO military exercise Capable Logistician 2015, held two years ago in Hungary. Brazil participated as an observer. While Capable Logistician 2015 resulted in the creation of a NATO military base in Hungary, General Theophilo denied that any such intention was involved in Amazonlog 2017.<\/p>\n

Also, according to General Theophilo, the military exercise included the presentation of \u201cdual employment material, both for peace and for war.\u201d Beginning with the Amazonlog 2017, he hopes that the humanitarian actions of the Organization of American States (OAS) will be carried out with the prior contribution of every nation of the continent.<\/p>\n

According to a report published on the UOL website on November 2, titled \u201cBrazil drills to create a military base with the US, Colombia and Peru in Amazon,\u201d \u201cmembers of the armed forces say that the great concentration of troops will also have an impact on combating of arms and drugs in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

The silence of the Brazilian corporate media\u2014as well as that of the pseudo-left\u2014on Amazonlog 2017 was broken only a few times in order to echo the words of General Theophilo, who classified as a \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d any suggestion that the presence of US troops in the Amazon constituted a threat to Brazil\u2019s national sovereignty. According to him, \u201cThe US has very great expertise in humanitarian aid. Only from hurricanes, the United States had this year four and quickly the country rebuilt itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the coverage of the WSWS has made all too clear, particularly in terms of the criminal neglect of disaster victims in Puerto Rico, what the general said is sheer nonsense.<\/p>\n

Under the pretext of carrying out \u201chumanitarian actions\u201d and prosecuting the \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d the South American versions of the \u201chuman rights\u201d crusades and \u201cwar on terrorism\u201d employed elsewhere, the Amazonlog 2017 military exercise marks a new stage in US imperialism\u2019s offensive in the region.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s \u201cpivot to Asia\u201d has its counterpart on the American continent, with its \u201cpivot to Latin America\u201d and a resort to increasing militarism in the region both to compensate for China\u2019s growing influence and to secure Washington\u2019s own strategic interests.<\/p>\n

According to a secret document from the US State Department published in 2010 by Wikileaks, Brazil\u2019s niobium mines\u2014a chemical element employed in the aeronautics industry of which Brazil controls 98 percent of global reserves\u2014are considered strategic and essential by the United States.<\/p>\n

The Amazon has 21 percent of Brazilian niobium reserves, along with tantalum\u2014employed in the electronics industry\u2014of which Brazil also has the largest reserves in the world\u2014copper, gold, iron, oil and gas and other mineral resources that are in large part concentrated on indigenous lands and whose exploitation is still very limited. In addition, the Amazon Rainforest, 60 percent of which is in Brazil, is also one of the most important environments on planet Earth, with one-third of its rain forests, the largest biological diversity and the largest freshwater basin in the world.<\/p>\n

In addition to American interests in Amazonian mineral resources, Amazonlog 2017 took place amid a US military buildup around the world, with a program to expand its military bases that includes Latin America, a region US imperialism has long regarded as its \u201cbackyard.\u201d Brazil is surrounded by more than a dozen US bases in neighboring countries, mainly in Peru and Colombia, Brazil\u2019s main partners in the military exercise. While Latin America\u2019s largest nation, Brazil is one of the only countries in the region that does not have an American military base, and Amazonlog 2017 could pave the way its first one. At the time, a proposal is also under evaluation to allow the US to start using the Brazilian satellite launching base of Alc\u00e2ntara, Maranh\u00e3o, one of the world\u2019s best because of its proximity to the equator.<\/p>\n

The Amazonlog operation also took place amid tensions between the US and Venezuela, which have only escalated since last August, when President Donald Trump declared that \u201cwe have many options for Venezuela, including the military one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2016, Brazil has received more than 30,000 Venezuelan immigrants, who have entered the country through the Northern State of Roraima. According to the Ministry of Justice, in the first half of 2017, the number of requests for asylum from Venezuelans has almost doubled compared to 2016, reaching 7,600 by June 2017. If the US decides to resort to its \u201cmilitary option\u201d against Venezuela, the flow of refugees will increase dramatically, and Amazonlog 2017 is a way for Brazil and neighboring countries to prepare for it.<\/p>\n

According to Jo\u00e3o Roberto Martins Filho, professor at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Carlos, who spoke to BBC Brazil for a May 4 report titled \u201cUS Army will participate in an unprecedented military exercise in the Amazon at the invitation of Brazil,\u201d the rapprochement between Brazil and the US represented by Amazonlog 2017 is \u201ca break from what has been happening since 1989, marked by a distancing from the US by the Brazilian armed forces.\u201d This distancing coincided with the launching of a massive American military offensive in the Middle East, which initiated the last 25 years of uninterrupted US wars.<\/p>\n

One milestone in the military distancing between the United States and Brazil was the creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL) and its South American Defense Council in 2008 at the height of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the subcontinent identified with the so-called \u201cPink Tide.\u201d That same year, the US Fourth Fleet was resurrected in Florida to increase the reach of US imperialism at a time when China was poised to become Brazil\u2019s and other Latin American countries\u2019 main trading partner. From then until 2014, the US tripled its deployment of special operations troops in Latin America.<\/p>\n

It was also this distancing that led the Brazilian government to enter military agreements with European countries. In 2011, Brazil signed a US$10 billion agreement with the French government for the construction of five submarines with the transfer of technology, including for a nuclear one. And in 2013, it bought 36 Gripen fighters from Sweden for US$4.5 billion.<\/p>\n

But in the midst of the collapse of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the region\u2014in Argentina with the defeat of Peronism by Macri, in Brazil after the impeachment of Workers Party\u2019s (PT) Dilma Rousseff, in Venezuela with the enormous crisis of the Maduro regime\u2014the regional integration proposed by UNASUL in various areas, including in terms of the military, is weakening and leading to a rapprochement with the United States.<\/p>\n

Martins Filho also said that if this rapprochement continues, it would lead to a greater alignment of Brazil\u2019s defense policy with that of the OAS and the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), the latter created in 1942 by the United States during the Second World War. During the Amazonlog 2017 exercises, General Theophilo confirmed that the ministry of defense is creating a multinational logistics control center with the support and participation of these two entities.<\/p>\n

Besides that, according to the May 4 BBC Brazil report, in March the US Army inaugurated a technology center in S\u00e3o Paulo to \u201cdevelop partnerships with Brazil in research projects focused on innovation,\u201d which was followed by the signing of the Master Information Exchange Agreement between the two countries.<\/p>\n

Hector Luis Saint Pierre, professor of international relations of the State University of S\u00e3o Paulo (UNESP), also interviewed by BBC Brazil, said that there is also a rapprochement with the US \u201cmotivated by economic interests\u2026 I have noticed officers defending the thesis that we do not need technological autonomy in the Armed Forces if we can count on partnerships like with the US.\u201d He continued saying that this is a \u201cliberal perspective on the military that is gaining momentum,\u201d as opposed to the nationalist stance that the PT governments defended, which led, for example, to the construction of the nuclear submarine.<\/p>\n

This \u201cliberal stance,\u201d which tends to increase the dependence of Brazil\u2019s armed forces on the US, is driven in large measure by the enormous economic crisis affecting the country, with the military budget reduced by 44 percent from 2012 to 2017. Considering that other military exercises like the Amazonlog 2017 are expected to happen every two years, it is likely that they will take place with greater coordination and participation of the American military.<\/p>\n

Samuel Alves Pereira, also a professor of international relations at UNESP, was quoted in the November 2 UOL report as saying that Brazil\u2019s military alignment with the OAS and the Inter-American Defense Board tends to change the country\u2019s defense strategy. According to him, \u201cthese bodies address the issue of defending a multidimensional perspective, in which the armed forces of Latin American countries are more encouraged to work on internal security,\u201d while the United States would take action against possible external invasions of those countries.<\/p>\n

After Amazonlog 2017, Defense Minister Raul Jungmann traveled to the United States, where he met with the under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., ambassador to Brazil from 2011 to 2013, and discussed the possibility of a South American Security Authority to combat organized crime, which tends to further diminish the power of the UNASUL\u2019s South American Security Council.<\/p>\n

Jungmann, on November 17, also participated in a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he \u201casked for the two main democracies in the Hemisphere to discuss and adopt a true long term State agenda,\u201d reported the Defense Ministry web page. Michael Matera, director of the CSIS America\u2019s Program, opened Jungmann\u2019s conference saying that \u201cBrazil and the US are at a time when our national interests and the views of our two presidents coincide more closely than has been the case in many years on issues as varied as Venezuela, regional threats to security as well as the serious global threat represented by North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the same day, Jungmann held a meeting with the United Nations (UN) Department of Peacekeeping Operations, where he told Empresa Brasileira de Comunica\u00e7\u00e3o he would like to see the country assume the military command of the UN\u2019s \u201cstabilization\u201d mission in the Central African Republic, where Brazil is supposed to send 1,000 troops next year, and that Brazil was invited to take over the military command of the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These preparations are taking place after Brazil\u2019s 13-year military command in Haiti, which ended in October.<\/p>\n

At a time when Africa is being disputed by China, European\u2014and particularly French\u2014imperialism and by the US, a Brazilian military presence would certainly factor into the plans of American imperialism on the continent.<\/p>\n

The rapprochement of Brazil\u2019s armed forces with that of the US and the realignment of Brazil\u2019s defense strategy to US imperialism are clear warnings to the Brazilian and Latin America working class, a region that has witnessed dozens of US-backed coups and right-wing military dictatorships over the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

These developments urgently pose the need for an independent working class movement against war in Brazil and throughout Latin America. In a region marked by the promotion on the part revisionist movements of various substitutes for such a movement, from Castroist guerrillas to the \u201cdemocratic socialism\u201d of the Workers Party in Brazil and Chavismo in Venezuela, the urgent task facing the Brazilian and Latin American working class is the struggle against imperialism through the construction of an internationalist and socialist movement, that is, the construction of the national sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2017 – Military units from 20 countries, including Peru and Colombia, as well as the US, Germany and Japan, participated in military exercises dubbed Amazonlog 2017. Coordinated by the Brazilian military command, they marked the first such international war games in Brazil\u2019s strategically sensitive Amazon region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}