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Writer's picturePablo Sánchez Martín

Brazil’s Military Crisis: is Democracy in Danger A Year Before the General Elections?



The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly become one of the black swans that mark the political and economic futures of the countries they affect. In the months between January and March 2021, a series of events and appointments at the top of the Brazilian army further fuelled the instability that has plagued Bolsonaro’s government since the beginning of the pandemic. With a constant sabre-rattling noise behind the scenes and the suspicions of a self-coup, many feared that Brazilian democracy itself was in danger. Below, we will analyse the events of this military crisis, its causes, its possible consequences and the future regional scenario after the Brazilian presidential elections in 2022.


Theorised by Nassim Taleb, black swans are rare, severely impactful, and unpredictable events that go beyond what is normally expected of a situation in terms of catastrophic consequences. Although unpredictable at first, Taleb further describes a black swan as an event that is ​​explained in hindsight as if it were actually predictable. In the case of some of them, such as Brazil, they overlap with other crises that altogether provoke a real political storm.


COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: between questionable handling and militarisation


The Bolsonaro government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been heavily criticised at home and abroad. As a matter of fact, today, Brazil has the second largest death toll in the world just after the United States and the largest one in Latin America. Additionally, a recent inquiry held by the Senate in Brazil stated that the President “should be accused of a series of crimes over his handling of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic” in a final report. In the latter, the same inquiry committee estimated that the “macabre strategy” of Bolsonaro caused 120.000 preventable deaths.


Alas, what decisions have characterised the Brazilian government during the crisis? Undoubtedly, one of them has been the militarisation of the responses to the pandemic. A recent publication from February 2021 by Anaís Medeiros and Igor Acácio in the Brazilian Journal of Public Administration shed light to some interesting facts about the militarisation of responses to COVID-19 in democratic Latin America. In their article, they describe how Brazil – among other countries like Perú or Honduras – has “intensively deployed the military in an array of tasks, ranging from border security, medical care and logistics to policing and crisis-management”. In the specific case of Brazil, the authors underline that “its influential military has taken over several positions to manage the public health crisis while the country struggles with the largest number of cases”. In fact, in May 2020, President Bolsonaro appointed Army General Eduardo Pazuello as Acting Health Minister and “military officers were appointed to about twenty positions” within this ministry.


The what and the why: March 2021 and the role of the military in Brazilian politics


Since the beginning of his mandate, President Bolsonaro has not ceased strengthening his relations with the army – being a former military man himself – with the aim of winning its favour. And although he has not always succeeded, the March 2021 crisis is to a greater or lesser extent part of his government’s actions in this regard.


In a nutshell, the crisis unfolded as follows: On March 29, 2021, President Bolsonaro removed Fernando Azevedo as Minister of Defence. The latter, after leaving his post, declared that during his time at the ministry he had “preserved the Army as a state institution”, suggesting that the President’s intention was to the contrary. The following day, on March 30, three other leading figures in the Brazilian army resigned: Edson Pujol (Army), Ilques Barbosa (Navy) and Antonio Carlos Moretti Bermúdez (Air Force). On the same day, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ernesto Araujo, also resigned. Shortly afterwards, and under suspicions of Bolsonaro’s possible intention to follow the Trumpist strategy of not accepting the results of the 2022 elections, the President “asked the armed forces if they had troops available to control possible social unrest from the COVID-19 crisis”.


Although the story does not end here – the next section will continue the chain of events – it is crucial to analyse why this relationship between the political and the military has a special background in Brazil. From 1964 to 1985, the South American country was ruled by the military dictatorship that followed Goulart’s democratic government after the coup d’état led by Castelo Branco. A dictatorship, by the way, which Bolsonaro himself has on several occasions celebrated. Because precisely since the restoration of democracy in 1985, military power had been carefully distanced from political life – although it never lost its relative weight – and Bolsonaro’s arrival seems to dynamite this delicate balance. In fact, Brazil has always rejected the use of force in its international relations even during the dictatorship, preferring to use strategies that favour peaceful means of conflict resolution, something that, for a time, may have sounded paradoxical.


Is democracy thus in danger?


After this overview, the question that comes to mind is clear: is Brazilian democracy thus in danger? Although the answer is not a simple one, it is undeniable that there are certain elements that indicate that Bolsonaro’s executive may endanger the democratic functioning of the Brazilian political system. For instance, as an annex to the events of March, on 7th September 2021, the President called on his followers to take to the streets against the rulings of the Supreme Court against several politicians close to Bolsonaro’s entourage. Undoubtedly, and even more so given the profile of those who responded to this call, this constitutes a direct challenge to Brazilian democratic institutions.


In fact, this hypothetical democratic backlash has already been pointed out by some experts. Professors Vilas Bôas and Barbosa Gouvêa stated in an August 2021 publication that in contemporary Brazilian politics one could observe “a process of inversion of Clausewitzian aphorism” (“war is the continuation of politics by other means”) thus affirming that “the erosion of civilian control over the military instrument represents a threat to democratisation”.


2022 elections and regional perspectives


While these facts are obviously worrying in themselves, it is true that the electoral horizon of 2022 makes the alert even greater. Most of the polls indicate that, if Lula da Silva can finally become a candidate, he would lead Jair Bolsonaro by up to 7 points in the first round. This fact, in a climate of increasing militarisation, could, as has been suggested above, trigger a challenge to the result of the polls by the current president.


In short, the military crisis of March 2021 is an issue that deserves close attention, especially given regional dynamics in this regard - some studies already pointing to a re-militarisation of Latin American politics. However, we will have to wait for many events to unfold before we can discern whether Brazilian democracy is in real danger.

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