The Brazilian military after the Cold War: In search of a mission

What purpose should Brazil’s armed forces serve in upcoming years? Democratization, the end of the Cold War, and Brazil’s economic crisis have prompted an unprecedented debate over this question by narrowing the range of tasks that the Brazilian military can pursue. This article investigates civilian and military support for various possible military roles and analyzes their compatibility with civilian control. It argues that the political weakness of the current government, the economic crisis, and growing social unrest militate against an expansion of the military’s conventional external defense mission and in favor of non-combatant domestic functions. This has begun to occur despite military enthusiasm for the former and military reservations about the latter. The military’s adoption of multiple domestic assignments in a country with a tradition of military interventionism poses risks to civilian control.