The Brazilian Geopolitics and its Influence on National Strategic Thinking

• Main Author: Wanderley Messias da Costa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2017-04-01
• Series: L'Espace Politique
• Subjects: Brazilian geopolitics; national strategy; territorial policies; external projection; national integration; Amazon
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/4117

This text looks to the evolution of the Brazilian geopolitical thinking and its direct or indirect influence on questions designated as strategic for Brazil’s development since the first decades of last century: national sovereignty, integrity and territorial unity, national integration, reduction of regional unbalance, occupation of the Amazon and the external projection of national power. In consequence of the new institutional and intellectual panorama as from the beginning of the 1980s, the geopolitics that has evolved in the country has considerably broadened the themes and their reflections to practically embrace all the domains that include strategy and international politics topics. This text also examines the main strategic challenges of contemporary Brazil: territorial policies for the Amazon and the external projection of the country in its regional surroundings: South America and the South Atlantic. A matter of reflection that well illustrates the present transition that affects the new geopolitics approach.