I struggle to understand why Brazil needs nuclear submarines. It's a country where the interior is extremely difficult to penetrate or control and where the coastal cities have horrifying slums controlled by gangs and where poverty is rampant. How real is the threat of invasion? How real is the desire to be the alpha dog of South America?
Of course one benefit of having nuclear powered subs is that the military can impose secrecy on the fissionable materials it stockpiles as fuel and in that secrecy can use it to make nuclear weapons. There are indications that this is just what they're doing or are about to do, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressing irritation at the US monopoly on nuclear weapons in South America and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
So why the hell does Brazil, it's recovering economy notwithstanding, need the Bomb? I suppose it's because it simply feels it can -- and with the US busy chasing its own tail, hell bent on self-destruction and anarchy, who is to say it can't?
Not sure if it is the same in Spanish and Portuguese, but the word that comes to mind is...machismo.
ReplyDeleteIt makes no sense to me. The only potential threat they face comes from the US.
ReplyDeleteTwentieth Century history created the haves and the have nots, the players and the played Upon. Nuclear power was a hallmark of the haves in that history. Maybe Brazil just wanted to play with the big boys and the bomb seemed like their ticket to admission. Never mind that the rest of us are trying to rid ourselves of our weapons, Job One would be acquiring some playing pieces.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, there's no Portuguese equivalent to Macho - maybe Masculino, but military swagger seems to be the mark of an impotent country, a terrified country or like us, a country made into cowards by the people who get rich arming us and exploiting us.
ReplyDeleteThe US of course, is not in a position to act as an example of putting our money where money is needed; what with our vast military expenditure, insane nuclear stockpiles and a budget bigger than most of the world combined.
A Brazilian nookyooler sub? Who would have thunk it? Of course, there's a long and not so pleasant history between the USA and Central & South America, so they probably see getting that capacity as lending them real autonomy. But it also seems somewhat anachronistic.
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