framework of interpretation that certain facts and events are identified, assessed and,
eventually, defined as threats. That interpretive framework, by providing a foundation on
which to base our beliefs, allows us to avoid both circularity and an infinite regress.
However, this foundation is a matter of
convention rather than an unmediated
epistemological anchor.
Geopolitics provided the interpretive framework which came to prevail in South
America’s Southern Cone during the 1970s. However, geopolitical thought within the
region emerged much earlier. For instance, some of the guidelines of Brazilian geopolitical
thinking were laid down during the 1930s by army officers like Everardo Backheuser and
Mario Travassos: e.g., the pursuit of a policy of “living frontiers” (a Brazilian rendition of
Haushofer’s
“natural frontiers”, derived in turn from the concept of
“Lebensraum”),
proposed by Backheuser; and the subsequent imperative to develop the country along an
East-West axis, towards the Amazon, proposed by Travassos
118
. They were not only
contemporaries of Haushofer, but also maintained communication with him and the
German Academy (Backheuser even published some articles in the German language in the
Academy’s journal)
119
.
Although deeply ingrained in its professional formation, the institutional adoption by the
Brazilian armed forces of a geopolitically driven approach towards security issues did not
take place until the 1940s. Perhaps the crucial landmark in this process was the foundation
in 1949 of the Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG), under the influence of the United States’
National War College
120
. Since then, the code word that summarized the main thrust of
Brazilian geopolitics was “Grandeza” (“Greatness”). In the words of general Carlos de
Meira Mattos:
We will be a world power, reaching this goal in our development by 2000, and this
will be independent from our vocation or enjoyment of such power. We must be,
therefore, prepared also to exercise this power, protecting our interest whose
dimensions in terms of economics and geostrategy will acquire world amplitude
121
.
118
Child 1986, p. 39.
119
Ibid.
120
De Arruda 1983.
121
Quoted by Kelly 1988, p. 116.
Convention