scholarly journals Brasil: ator unipolar na América do Sul?

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 274
Author(s):  
Lucas Pereira Rezende

Esse artigo busca fazer um estudo da balança de poder na América do Sul, através de um levantamento quantitativo e qualitativo de 15 indicadores de poder: (1) tamanho da população; (2) tamanho do Produto Interno Bruto; (3) os Correlates of War (COW); (4) os gastos absolutos em defesa; (5) o percentual do PIB gasto em defesa; (6) o número total de efetivos nas Forças Armadas ativas; (7) o total de efetivos nos Exércitos; (8) o total de efetivos nas Marinhas; (9) o total de efetivos nas Forças Aéreas; (10) o total de veículos blindados; (11) o total de peças de artilharia; (12) o total de submarinos; (13) o total de embarcações de guerra; (14) o total de aviões de combate; e (15) o índex Global Fire Power. Partindo dos indicadores comumente utilizados pela literatura para medir poder, como o tamanho do PIB, os COW e os gastos em defesa - indicadores utilizados por Wohlforth (1999 e 2009) para sustentar a unipolaridade estadunidense, o Brasil seria, também, uma unipolaridade da América do Sul. Todavia, quando adicionamos os outros indicadores específicos de mensuração da capacidade militar atual sul-americana, vimos que a tendência brasileira à unipolaridade não se sustenta. Há uma grande defasagem, em termos comparativos, das Forças Armadas brasileiras frente às demais na América do Sul, levando em consideração seu tamanho territorial, populacional e PIB. Isso faz com que, por esses outros indicadores, observássemos uma tendência a uma multipolaridade desequilibrada. Mesmo que tenha programas de reaparelhamento de suas Forças Armadas, o Brasil não é o único a fazê-lo. Isso pode indicar que, tal qual se observou no campo global com os Estados Unidos no pós-Guerra Fria, a unipolaridade brasileira possa ser um fenômeno de curta duração, ainda que a maioria dos indicadores mostre estar, do início do século até 2013, em ascendência. Abstract This article seeks to make a study of the balance of power in South America through a quantitative and qualitative survey of 15 power indicators: (1) size of the population; (2) size of gross domestic product; (3) the Correlates of War (COW); (4) the absolute defense spending; (5) the percentage of GDP spent on defense; (6) the total number of personnel in the active military; (7) the total personnel in Armies; (8) the total personnel in Marine; (9) the total personnel in the Air Force; (10) the total number of armored vehicles; (11) the total number of artillery pieces; (12) total figure of submarines; (13) total figure of war vessels; (14) the total number of combat aircrafts; and (15) the index Global Fire Power. Based on the indicators commonly used in the literature to measure power, as the size of GDP, the COW and defense spending - indicators used by Wohlforth (1999 and 2009) to support the US unipolarity, Brazil was also a unipolar power in South America. However, when we add other specific indicators to measure the current military capability of South American states, we see the Brazilian tendency to unipolarity does not hold. There is a large gap, in comparative terms, between the Brazilian Armed Forces and the other South American actors, taking into account their territorial size, population and GDP. Taking these indicators into account, we could describe the system as an unbalanced multipolarity. Even if there is a re-equipment program of its armed forces, Brazil is not the only one to do so. This may indicate that, as it was observed in the global system with the United States in the post-Cold War, the Brazilian unipolarity may be a short-term phenomenon, although most indicators show that, from the beginning of the century to 2013, Brazilian capabilities were rising.

Author(s):  
Ricardo Borges Gama Neto

The article tries to discuss if the impact of the political changes, which occurred in South America from the first decade of the century, influenced the purchase of military equipment by some countries of the region. The emergence of new governments, with a strong left leaning, occurred concurrently with a clear change in the classic pattern of buying defense equipment. European countries and the US have come to be preferred, as opposed to Russia and China, as suppliers of arms to the various South American armed forces.


Author(s):  
D.B. Izyumov ◽  
E.L. Kondratyuk

The article discusses issues related to the development and use of training means and facilities in order to improve the level of training of US Army personnel. An overview of the main simulators used in the US Armed Forces at present is given, and the prospects for the development of the United States in this area are presented.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Bilmes

AbstractThe United States has traditionally defined national security in the context of military threats and addressed them through military spending. This article considers whether the United States will rethink this mindset following the disruption of the Covid19 pandemic, during which a non-military actor has inflicted widespread harm. The author argues that the US will not redefine national security explicitly due to the importance of the military in the US economy and the bipartisan trend toward growing the military budget since 2001. However, the pandemic has opened the floodgates with respect to federal spending. This shift will enable the next administration to allocate greater resources to non-military threats such as climate change and emerging diseases, even as it continues to increase defense spending to address traditionally defined military threats such as hypersonics and cyberterrorism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.


Author(s):  
Tatheer Zahra Sherazi ◽  
Amna Mahmood

Asia Pacific, which is extended Eastward to the states of Oceania, Westward to Pakistan, Southward to New Zealand, and Northward to Mongolia, is currently a pivot of the globe due to its economic growth. Since last two decades, it has got status of ‘growth center’ owing to its high economic growth rate. The United States (US) had been very active in Asia Pacific throughout the Cold War period, but in post-Cold War era, it was disengaged due to its pre-occupation in Middle East. However, the rise of China attracted US again with multiple arrangements at political, economic and social fronts. There are two world views about the US presence in Asia Pacific. The first one asserts that the Asia Pacific is more secure without the presence of US, while others takes the US presence as a patron for stability and solidarity within the region. The US policy of ‘Pivot to Asia’, ‘Asia Pacific’ commonly known as ‘Rebalancing’ ensured its new commitment of deep engagement in Southeast Asia. Policy shift under Trump administration from ‘Pivot to Asia’ to ‘Free Indo-Pacific’ has direct as well indirect implications for Pakistan. The study analyses the US strategies and polices under the theory of ‘Offensive Realism,’ where ‘rational powers uncertain of intentions and capable of military offensive strive to survive’. Analytical, descriptive approaches are adopted in order to analyse US ongoing strategies.


Author(s):  
Kevin Zhou

Canada is known for its close relations with the United States in the domains of economic affairs, defence and international diplomacy. This arrangement, however, was a product of the great changes brought about by the Second World War. The combination of British decline, Ottawa’s desire to achieve full independence from London, and the looming Soviet threat during the Cold War created a political environment in which Canada had to become closely integrated with the United States both militarily and economically. Canada did so to ensure its survival in the international system. With the exception of a few controversial issues like US involvement in Vietnam (1955) and Iraq (2003) as well as Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), Ottawa has been Washington’s closest ally since 1945. On numerous occasions like the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as recently as the War in Afghanistan and the War Against IS (Islamic State), Canada had provided staunch military and diplomatic support to Washington in its engagements around the globe. In an era of relative peace, stability, and certainty, particularly during the Post-Cold War period and the height of American power from 1991 to 2008, this geopolitical arrangement of continental integration had greatly benefited Canada. This era of benefits, however, is arguably drawing to a close. The Great Recession of 2007-09, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the insistence on pursuing a foreign policy of global primacy despite its significant economic cost, are sending the US down an uncertain path. Due to its close relations and geographical proximity with the US, Canada now faces a hostile international environment that is filled with uncertainty as a result of superpower decline, great power rivalries, environmental degradation, and failed US interventions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (11) ◽  
pp. 31-37
Author(s):  
N. Arbatova

The Euro-Atlantic relations after the end of the Cold war have been strongly influenced by the impact of three interrelated crises: the existential crisis of NATO, the world economic and financial crisis, and the crisis in the Russia-West relations. The end of bipolarity has changed the threat environment and revealed how different alliance members formulate their threat perception and foreign policy interests. Europe stopped to be the US foreign policy priority. The US pivot to Asia has raised European concerns about American commitments to collective defense. The removal of the threat of a global conflict resulted in the EU initiatives aimed at promoting integration in the field of common security and defense policy (CSDP). Even though the US has officially welcomed a stronger European pillar in NATO, it has become concerned about new approaches that could divide transatlantic partnership and take resources away from military cooperation. At the same time the unilateralist preferences of the Bush administration generated deep political divisions between the United States and the European Union. The world economic and financial crisis contributed to a dangerous gulf between American and European defense spending. The US has complained about the tendency of the alliance’s European members to skimp on defense spending and take advantage of America’s security shield to free ride. In the absence of a clear external threat NATO tried to draft new missions, which were found in NATO’s expansion to the post-Communist space and Alliance’s out of area operations. But these new missions could not answer the main question about NATO’s post-bipolar identity. Moreover, the Kosovo operation of NATO in 1999 fueled Russia’s concerns about NATO’s intentions in the post-Soviet space. The creeping crisis in the Russia-West relations resulted in the Caucasus and Ukrainian conflicts that provided kind of glue to transatlantic relations but did not return them to the old pattern. There can be several representing possible futures lying ahead. But under any scenario EU will be faced with a necessity to shoulder more of the burden of their own security.


Author(s):  
Aaron Ettinger

Is there a left-wing foreign policy emerging in the United States? The rise of an energized and assertive left wing of the Democratic Party, and a receptive constituency within the electorate, has opened space for new political possibilities at home. In the foreign policy realm, leftist internationalism is making compelling arguments about new directions. However, there are limitations to the possible realization of a left-wing foreign policy in the US. While candidates like Sanders and Warren are distinctive in a left-wing foreign policy worldview, the practical implications of their foreign policies are consistent with post-Cold War practice. There are two important exceptions: in trade policy and in their positions on the use of military force. Here they mark a sharp break from the liberal internationalist mainstream. This paper outlines five broad principles of left internationalism, assesses the foreign policy positions of leading Democratic candidates for the 2020 nomination, and explores the long-term prospects of left-wing foreign policy in the US after 2020.


Author(s):  
Chris Arney ◽  
Zachary Silvis ◽  
Matthew Thielen ◽  
Jeff Yao

The United States armed forces could be considered the world’s most powerful military force. However, in modern conflicts, techniques of asymmetric warfare (terrorism) wreak havoc on the inflexible, regardless of technological or numerical advantage. In order to be more effective, the US military must improve its counter-terrorism (CT) capabilities and flexibility. In this light, the authors model the terrorism-counter-terrorism (T-CT) struggle with a detailed and complex mathematical model and analyze the model’s components of leadership, promotion, recruitment, resources, operational techniques, cooperation, logistics, security, intelligence, science, and psychology in the T-CT struggle, with the goal of informing today’s decision makers of the options available in counter-terrorism strategy.


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