Fernando Alcoforado*
The maintenance of the sovereignty of Brazil is directly linked to the state power in imposing its supremacy within the national territory. Sovereignty in Brazil concentrates on the supreme authority of the representative power of the people, not allowing within Brazilian society a power superior to its own. The principle of sovereignty is one of the foundations of international law, whereby, for example, a State cannot be subject to jurisdiction other than its own. At the external level, national sovereignty is translated into equality between States, not having to speak about subordination or subservience in the international scenario, and fair conditions must be ensured in the legal affairs entered into, whether in the economic, social or political field. In the contemporary era, the decline of Brazil as a sovereign country is shaped by the loss of its capacity to constitute a territorially confined national economy and to have it under its control.
Recent neoliberal globalization and the exercise of monopoly of nuclear weapons by the great military powers (the United States, Russia, England, France and China) call into question the exercise of the sovereignty of the great majority of the countries of the world, with rare exceptions such as peripheral nuclear-weapon countries such as Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. As the wars of the 21st Century will have as a fulcrum the battle for natural resources, countries that own such resources like Brazil may be threatened with invasions as occurred recently with the invasion of the United States in Iraq and Libya by the domination of their oil reserves. With the lack of natural resources necessary for its survival and the absence of a world government capable of mediating conflicts, humanity tends to regress to barbarism and cruel behavior.
Water is becoming a source of war because of international competition for water resources. Competition for resources such as oil is currently the largest potential source of global conflict. The remaining oil dispute will lead to a permanent state of war characterized by the presence of great powers in its producing regions. Countries that have natural resources without military power, especially without nuclear weapons, could be the victims of invasions by the great powers at the service of the great international monopolies, as is the case of Brazil. This situation reveals the vulnerability of Brazil, which, in addition to having a fragile economy at the mercy of global market forces due to its economic and technological dependence, lacks the military and nuclear power to, by means of deterrence, to prevent their natural wealth, including water and oil, from being plundered by the great military powers of the planet and by large multinational corporations.. .
Brazil is not a sovereign country because it does not have the economic, military and nuclear power to assure the exercise of its sovereignty. Brazil is not a sovereign country because foreign subsidiaries control 82% of the science-based industry sector; 73% of the differentiated, and 68% of the continuous production. The dependence of Brazilian industry is not only of capital, but also foreign technology. Brazil occupies the 43rd place in the world ranking of UN technology, which directly affects the industrial performance of the country. Brazil is not a sovereign country because the denationalization of the Brazilian economy is evidenced when it is observed that of the 50 largest Brazilian companies, 26 are foreign. More than half of Brazilian companies in high-end sectors such as automotive, aeronautics, electronics, IT, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, agribusiness and mining are in the hands of foreign capital. Foreign capital is present in 17,605 Brazilian companies that account for 63% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and controls 36% of the banking sector where it owns 25% of Bradesco shares and 20% of Banco do Brasil shares. Foreign capital owns more than 30% of land in the country to produce sugar cane, livestock and soybeans. Only in the sugar – alcohol sector, the multinationals own 33% of all the lands and mills [FALCÃO. Lula. Crescimento capitalista aumenta submissão do Brasil ao capital estrangeiro (Capitalist growth increases Brazil’s submission to foreign capital). Available on website <http://averdade.org.br/2012/02/crescimento-capitalista-aumenta-submissao-do-brasil-ao-capital-estrangeiro/>, 2012)].
Finally, in addition to not exercising the status of sovereign country, Brazil has had rulers throughout history who have attacked national sovereignty by adopting policies contrary to the interests of the country, except for the governments of Getúlio Vargas, João Goulart and Ernesto Geisel. The Bolsonaro government aims to make Brazil move toward total submission to the United States on the international stage by breaking even further with the tradition of its foreign policy – recognized worldwide for guiding its actions by some principles of which it almost never gave up , such as non-intervention, self-determination of peoples and peaceful settlement of disputes. The Brazilian foreign policy of the Bolsonaro government is heading towards even greater alignment with US interests in foreign policy, leaving aside the initiatives of autonomous insertion in a multipolar world in which Brazil would have a much greater bargaining margin.
Brazil’s subaltern alignment with US interests is manifested in the position of the Bolsonaro government that admitted the possibility of installing a US military base in Brazil later abandoned, according to the press, by pressure from nationalist sectors of the Armed Forces, the transfer of the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the denationalization of Embraer through its sale to Boeing. How to justify the installation of a US military base in Brazil other than the submission of the Bolsonaro government to the United States? How to justify the relocation of the Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem, putting at risk our export of Halal meat – considered to be the world’s largest producer and exporter of beef, the world’s second largest broiler and leader in Halal beef sales – for the Arab countries, except for the submission of the Bolsonaro government to the United States? How to justify the denationalization of one of the largest national companies with a high degree of technology such as Embraer other than the submission of the Bolsonaro government to the United States?
The Bolsonaro government attacks national sovereignty by making a gigantic oil auction in the pre-salt area by making the largest delivery of national wealth in history. Recently, one of the largest auctions of national wealth has been held. The fields of Aram, Southeast of Lula, South and Southwest of Júpiter and Bumerangue were all auctioned, all adjacent to the rich fields already auctioned of Lula and Jupiter. There are no official estimates, but at least 10 billion barrels of pre-salt oil are expected to fall into foreign hands. For the current oil price the recent auction means a delivery of a value that could reach US$ 1.5 trillion. This first auction of the Bolsonaro government is only preparatory to the delivery of the “Crown Jewel” with the surplus area of the “onerous assignment” that will go to auction soon, whose oil volume is about 11 billion barrels, which some estimates up to 30 billion barrels in these giant fields. It is a fortune that will be given to Shell, Total, Repsol, and other foreign companies. When the onerous assignment is the auction, the fields of Búzios, Itaipu, Atapu and Sepia will be delivered. Petrobras will be left out, and will be a minority shareholder of the foreign company that will snatch most of it.
Since the Temer government foreign participation in the sack of national wealth has increased exponentially, with privatizations of oil fields belonging to Petrobras and with new auctions that, in two years, the foreign production went from 7% to 23%. With the new auctions to be held by the Bolsonaro government, most of the national production will soon be foreign, demonstrating the antinational character of its government that is at the service of the god Mercado, Wall Street, the Washington Consensus and against the Brazilian people. The Bolsonaro government is saluting the American flag. And, more than that, it is conniving with the continued actions of the American empire and multinational corporations to dominate Brazil. The Bolsonaro government is willing to hand over Brazil, its lands and its mineral wealth, the Alcântara Base, in short, the national public assets such as Petrobras, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica Federal, BNDES, Hydroelectric Plants, Research Institutions, Universities, Technical Schools, etc., to international investors whose sole objective is unlimited profit. Captain Bolsonaro does not seem to have assimilated the teachings of patriotism he received at the Agulhas Negras Military Academy and the Army.
Paulo Guedes, the neoliberal economist and economy minister of the Bolsonaro administration, promised that he intends to privatize all the public assets and, consequently, handing it over to foreign capital. Privatization implies, in fact, what is commonly called “denationalization”, where controlling acquirers are almost always (if not always!) foreign companies or consortiums, often state-owned companies from other countries whose profits are remitted to their outside. The use of the term “privatization” is a way of hiding its true purpose, which is to hand over the nation’s assets to foreign capital. It might be imagined that privatizations would benefit nationally-owned companies, but this is not the case because the weak national companies do not have the financial capacity to acquire state-owned enterprises located in strategic sectors such as oil, electricity and infrastructure. If everything moves in this direction there will be little left in Brazil economic sectors belonging to Brazilians.
In his speech at the Economic Forum in Davos, which brings together the cream of world capitalism, Bolsonaro gave a demonstration of his subservience to the holders of global capitalism by stating, in the part relative to economy, that in his government “we are going to open our economy” to naturally meet the interests of international capital, “our economic team, led by Minister Paulo Guedes, will put us in the ranking of the 50 best countries to do business” which will certainly benefit international economic groups, “Brazil is still a relatively closed economy and to change this condition is one of the greatest commitments of this Government” that opening the Brazilian economy will naturally satisfy the appetites of foreign investors and that “we have the credibility to make the reforms that we need and what the world (naturally the global capitalism) expects of us”
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Merit, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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