France to be main military threat to Brazil, report says

Text by: RFI Follow

France is the main military threat to Brazil over the next 20 years due to disputes over the Amazon, according to a secret report by the Brazilian Defense Ministry which leaked to the press on Friday.

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The French Embassy in Brazil joked on Twitter about "the limitless imagination of the authors of this report", from which the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo published extracts.

This respected daily explains that it obtained a copy of this document of around forty pages entitled "Defense scenarios 2040", drawn up from the forecasts of 500 members of the Brazilian military elite who participated in 11 meetings in the ministry during the second semester 2019.

The daily specifies that the document contains " realistic geopolitical considerations ", but also " somewhat delusional hypotheses ", such as that of an attack on the SARS virus by " ultranationalists from Southeast Asia " during the Rock in Rio festival. in 2039.

France is the only country cited as constituting a threat in the four main scenarios mentioned in the report.

In one of them, the document provides, still according to the newspaper, that Paris could " formalize in 2035 a request for intervention by the UN " in the territories of the indigenous Yanomami tribe, on the border with Venezuela, with " a great mobilization of French forces in Guyana ".

With this overseas department which shelters a portion of the Amazonian forest, France shares a border of 730 km with Brazil.

Tense diplomatic relations from a G7

" France has for decades maintained daily, close and friendly cooperative relations with the Brazilian army ," commented the French embassy on Twitter, stressing, in Portuguese, that Brazil " is the main strategic partner " of this countries in Latin America.

" This report includes a lot of inconsistencies (...) and shows the impulsiveness of the government on diplomatic issues ," said Nelson During, the director of the website specializing in defense affairs Defesanet.

For him, the report of the Ministry of Defense, which began to be written at the height of the Amazon crisis, was " strongly contaminated by the dispute between (French presidents Emmanuel) Macron and (Brazilian Jair) Bolsonaro ".

Diplomatic relations between France and Brazil strained considerably last August, at a time when images of forest fires in the Amazon caused great international emotion.

During a G7 summit, Emmanuel Macron called for a "mobilization of all powers" to defend the Amazon, "the common good " of the planet.

His Brazilian counterpart had been ulcerated, criticizing a " colonialist mentality " and an attempt to undermine the sovereignty of Brazil.

The fact that the "secret" report leaked to the press " risks further tarnishing relations between France and Brazil, " said Nelson During.

For him, these tensions could prove harmful, because of " the importance of the partnership between the two countries ", in particular for the construction of submarines and helicopters for the Brazilian army.

( With AFP)

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• Jair Bolsonaro

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