Military professionalization as a vector of strategic dependence/autonomy of Brazil and Venezuela

• Grant number: 21/09342-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Sebastiao Carlos Velasco e Cruz
• Grantee: Ana Amélia Penido Oliveira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Military professionalization is the process through which the military incorporates behaviors and sociability, technical and operational expertise, modes of employment and organization of the force, especially through educational activities. The theme is the object of reflection by authors of civil-military relations, who also perceive it as a way of improving civilian control and the removal of the armed forces from politics, forcing them to dedicate themselves to the defense of the national state, forming a specialized bureaucracy. However, the historical experience of South America points to the opposite: moments of greater professionalization were accompanied by greater military participation in politics, not only initiated by coups of force. Military professionalization in South American countries, under the motto of technological modernization, was historically conducted by the central countries through the use of military missions. Since World War II, the United States of North America has held the hegemony over this process in South America. The Brazilian and Venezuelan armed forces were professionalized in this context and both boast a strong history of participation in domestic politics, which is repeated at the same time through the militarization of politics. However, today the two countries and their respective armed forces adopt different views on how the international system works and the way their respective nations should integrate into it, which are reflected in different strategic readings and, consequently, tactics, doctrines, forms of organization of strength, among others that are also different. The objective of the research projected here is to understand the similarities and differences between the military strategy of the armed forces of Brazil and Venezuela in the 21st century, expressed in their professionalization, and how these contribute to the construction of strategic dependence/autonomy in both countries vis-à-vis the States United. As assumptions, both are i) exogenously professionalized armed forces; ii) politicized; iii) inserted in the same hierarchical international power system, in which the international division of labor in defense occurs; iv) subordinated to external constraints for the construction of their strategic autonomy.