Fernando Alcoforado*
The sovereignty of a nation is generally considered over two aspects: the internal and the external. Internal sovereignty means that state power is the greatest within the country. External sovereignty means that, in reciprocal relations between countries, there is no subordination or dependence, but equality. The maintenance of the sovereignty of Brazil is directly linked to the state power in imposing its supremacy within the national territory, 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 country cannot submit to any jurisdiction other than its own. At the external level, national sovereignty is translated by equality among countries, and there is no need to speak of subordination or subservience on the international scene, and fair conditions must be ensured in the legal business, whether in the economic, social or political field.
The recent neoliberal globalization and the exercise of the monopoly of nuclear weapons by the great military powers (the United States, Russia, England, France and China) put in question the exercise of the sovereignty of the great majority of the countries of the world, with rare exceptions like the peripheral countries possessors of nuclear weapons 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 do not have nuclear weapons 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. The United States and its allies have recently organized what has been termed “humanitarian aid” with the delivery of food and medicines to the Venezuelan population, which was considered as a pretext for military intervention that is underway to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. Venezuelan oil reserves, the largest in the world. 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, does not have the military and nuclear power to prevent que its natural resources, including water and oil, be 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 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, multinationals own 33% of all land and mills [FALCÃO, Lula. Crescimento capitalista aumenta submissão do Brasil ao capital estrangeiro (Capitalist growth increases Brazil’s submission to foreign capital). Available on the 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 Bolsonaro government’s Brazilian foreign policy moves toward even greater subordination to US foreign policy interests as demonstrated in his recent visit to the United States, leaving aside the initiatives of autonomous insertion in a multipolar world in which the Brazil would have a much greater bargaining margin.
Brazil’s subaltern alignment with US interests is manifested in the Bolsonaro administration’s position, which admitted the possibility of installing a US military base in Brazil that was later abandoned, according to the press, by pressures from nationalist sectors of the Armed Forces, transfer of the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the denationalization of Embraer through its sale to Boeing and the use of the Alcântara rocket launch base by the United States government. How to justify the installation of a US military base in Brazil, the transfer of the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the denationalization of Embraer and the transfer of the Alcântara base to the Americans, other than government submission Bolsonaro to the United States? The sack of the national wealth has increased exponentially with the denationalization 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 quickly most of the national production will be foreign, demonstrating the anti-national character of his government that is at the service of the god Market, Wall Street, the Washington Consensus.
The Bolsonaro government acts against national sovereignty by weakening Petrobras by selling its refining, transportation and distribution areas, preparing the ground for its future privatization and making a gigantic oil auction in the pre-salt area by making the largest delivery of national wealth from history to foreign capital. Recently, one of the largest auctions of national wealth has been held. The fields of Aram, Southeast of Lula, South and Southwest of Jupiter and Boomerang 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 $ 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. Petrobras, which was pillaged by the PT governments, is now on its way to destruction as a national patrimony by the Bolsonaro government.
Paulo Guedes, the neoliberal economist and economy minister of the Bolsonaro administration, promised that he intends to privatize all the public assets and, consequently, to foreign capital. Privatization implies, in fact, what is often 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 matrices abroad. 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.
The sovereignty of Brazil is the condition without which Brazil will not develop economically and socially. Brazil has never been a sovereign country throughout its history. This explains to some extent the economic backwardness of Brazil throughout history. In order to conquer it, it is necessary that Brazil has a government that imposes its supremacy within the national territory through which it does not allow that within the national territory there is a power superior to its own, a fact that does not happen in the present moment, because the Country is technologically and financially dependent from abroad, has the most dynamic sectors of the economy in the hands of foreign capital, does not have a military and nuclear power capable of dissuading foreign threats to the national territory and is subordinate to the United States.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Engineering 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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