From 2012, August 6 to 9, the Sixth National Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Defense Studies was held in São Paulo (Brazil).
On August 8th, Hervé Théry, director of the Oyapock Human-Environment Observatory and member of the CEBA, geographer by training, participated in a roundtable titled ‘Challenges of Brazil’s opening-up to foreign countries: geopolitical prospects’.
Here is a summary of Hervé Théry’s intervention and a presentation of the roundtable :
The border between Brazil and France on the Oyapock, crossed perspectives
Brazil’s foreign policy starts at its borders, in its relations with its neighbours. One of these borders is the one that separates – or unites – Brazil and France along the Oyapock river. It is a frontier between the Amapa state and French Guiana, between the two countries but also between Mercosur and the European union.
This situation is the legacy of a long history in which Northern Europeans took advantage of the lack of interest felt by the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires for this « dead angle » on the continent – this situation was stabilized by arbitration only at the beginning of the 20th century. This is how a brand new geopolitical configuration was born. This configuration holds many possibilities for both countries but also potential friction in case certain precautions were not taken.
Recently built to mark concretely the willingness to cooperate in the region, the bridge on the Oyapock river is a symbol of these possibilities. The tensions are reflected in the postponement of its inauguration, which clearly shows that there are some difficulties, mainly because of illegal gold miners who shot French militaries on June 2012.
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Roundtable ‘Challenges of Brazil’s opening-up to foreign countries: geopolitical prospects’
Eighty years ago, Mario Travassos wrote ‘Brazil’s opening-up on the continent’, founding work for Brazilian geopolitics of both classical and military inspiration. His main theme, which is the one we will be discussing today, is the full analysis of Brazil’s policy on an international scale, limited in Travassos’ work to the South American subcontinent. Indeed, the latter still represents today the most strategic region of the world for Brazil’s foreign policy on several aspects: diplomacy, agreements for economic cooperation, security and defense.
Nevertheless, for the last three decades, the accelerated transformations of the world and the country have been profound and these changes have had a strong influence on the studies led in the field of theory of international relations, political geography and geopolitics. One of the most striking of these ongoing transformations on an international scale is probably the new distribution of economic wealth, but also of political power and politico-strategic or military power in strict sensé. And there is no doubt that Brazil – along with China and India among others – is one the most interesting cases in this incredible ongoing movement of redistribution of the countries’, the States’ and the regions’ specific stature and international influence.
Therefore, Brazil’s scales for international opening-up have widened these last few years. Beyond South America, territory on which links of regional cohesion and neighbourhood are getting stronger, these scales now need to integrate to the radar screen of our priorities for international relations, the South Atlantic, the Caribbean, Central America as well as Occidental, Oriental and Southern Africa. The challenges of this new scale for the role played by Brazil, on an international scene dominated by accelerated changes, are the main subject of analysis for this Roundtable conference organized today.
Participants :
Wanderley Messias da Costa – DG/USP (Coordenador)
Hervé Théry – CNRS/DG/USP
Luis Felipe de Alencastro – Paris IV/Sorbonne
Cláudio Egler – DG/UFRJ
Click here to download the program of the Meeting (in Portuguese) : Programme Table-Ronde Sao Paulo – 6-9.08.12
