Sea Control - Sea Control 188 - Brazilian Maritime Security with Andrea Resende

Episode Date: July 12, 2020

Link:Gateway and Neighbourhood: Brazilian Perspective on South Atlantic Security

Hey folks, Jared here. We are publishing on Sunday, July 12th, and if you're listening to this as we go live, that can only mean one thing to you. It's the final day to send in submissions for our call for articles on ocean governance. So if you've got that draft ready, send it on over. Our ocean governance project is a collaboration with Stable Seas and the second stage of Project Trident. Project Trident is your opportunity to shape the future of maritime security. You can find more information on our website at simsec.org. I also just want to advertise one more time for the SimSec Podcast Network and our second podcast feed, The Bilge Pumps. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you download your podcasts. It's a

more low-key, slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval history by three guys with some real credentials. So check them out wherever you download. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security Challenge. Aloha shipmates and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we are discussing Brazilian maritime security challenges with Andrea Rosende. Andrea, thank you for coming on. Thank you so much, Jared.

It's a great opportunity. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. So you are new to our audience. Would you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your background? Oh, for sure. Since my childhood, I was amazed by the sea. One of my favorite movies ever is Mabdik.

Great respect, Mabdik. I used to watch once a week with my grandma. I wasn't able to work with maritime strategies during my bachelor's degree. But in my master, I did work with South Atlantic Maritime Security. I studied at the presence of the United States here in South Atlantic And now I'm a PhD student studying the United States overseas, Beijing But I have a lot of articles published about South America's institutions of defense And about Brazil's defense

Well, thank you very much, and I appreciate, again, you joining us today So as you and I start exchanging references and articles examples for this podcast, you sent me two chapters from a book you've been reviewing. There's Navies and Maritime Policies in the South Atlantic, edited by Errico Duarte and Manuel Correa de Barros. So we'll post links to that in the show notes for anybody who wants to go and read what we're going to be discussing here. But the first chapter that you assigned me was entitled Gateway and Neighborhood, Brazilian Perspective on South Atlantic Security. And it started with the sentence, the South Atlantic has been one of

the least strategically relevant among the world's oceans throughout the 20th and early 21st century. Do you agree with that statement? And why do you think that's been the case or not? See, I partially agree with this sentence. The South Atlantic Ocean is not completely irrelevant. We have a problem of vacuum of power, because the South Atlantic powers, they have not been able to project power efficiently in the South Atlantic. So this vacuum of power was occupied by major powers like the United States, United Kingdom, and China. Let me put in facts. The United States established the fourth fleet in 2008. And it was a major move, especially because it caused a lot of talking in South America. And China has been building a major base in Djibouti, what's close

to, it's in the Indian Ocean, but it's very close to the South Atlantic Ocean. And the United Kingdom still has several territories here in South America. And it had a major dispute with Argentina in 1982, but it's still an issue in South America, because in Argentina we have a perception that the Falklands, or what they call the Malvinas, are an Argentinian territory, but in the last few years, the government, the Argentinian government, is trying to minimize this conflict to regain the economic cooperation with the United Kingdom. So we have a lot of marine presence here in the South Atlantic. So when we talk about, you talk about a power vacuum, are you referring specifically to naval power?

Or is there a law enforcement power vacuum there as well? These countries have active coast guards? so it's a mostly naval power because brazil don't have coast guard i don't think if that argentina has one as well i may be wrong but i don't think so but we are talking about very small navies if compared with others like china and the united states and what we have Here in Brazil, it's a navy that patrols the coast and the other territories, including the rivers. Thank you. So as I was going through this, there are another couple of treaties and cooperative agreements that came up.

What is the Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic? So, the Zone of Peace is a Brazilian initiative. In 1986, it was proposed in the General Assembly in the United Nations, and it was to form a cooperation between the two sides of the Atlantic, the South American side and the African side. The context of this initiative is actually a little bit curious because actually the United States had a proposal in the 50s to create the kind of NATO of the South Atlantic

called OTAN. I think it's SETO in the English symbol, but it didn't work out in South America Because here, since the end of the Second World War, we are trying to establish the region, not to cause more conflicts. So in the mind of our governors, it was needed an institution to foment peace and not a military organization. We used to say that no institution in South America goes without Brazilian initiative. Brazil is always involved in some international institution here in South America and Latin America. And it was the case, because Brazil did not accept to do this NATO of South. And so it was again proposed in the 70s.

In almost the end of the dictatorial governorship, in 1986, we had a new government, a new democratic government, and they are trying to connect more with the region. So this zone of peace was a means to do that. But in the 90s, we experienced a major crisis, major economic crisis. I think most of all South American states and African states was in a kind of crisis, economic crisis, social crisis. And the zone of peace didn't go well. It was still waters, let me call that.

until the 2013 plan of revitalization. But in 2014, we experienced a major economic and political crisis here in Brazil. And like I said, no institution goes without Brazilian approval. So the zone of peace is again in still waters. So, that being said, what does the Zone of Peace actually commit the member states to doing? The Zone of Peace declares that the South Atlantic is a region of peace and promotes denuclearization treaties and tries to establish a stable environment for all South Atlantic countries. Let me remind you that

Namibia and South Africa did not sign the treaty they were banned from signing the Zopaka initiative because it was occurring a conflict between the two countries and only

in 1994 I think South Africa joined the zone of peace so this demonstrates how they were trying to preserve the stability in the region thank you uh we'll move on to the next uh sort of the diplomatic instrument but what is the treaty of pelindaba so the treaty of pelindaba is a denuclearization

treaty it was signed in 1996 but not all states of the african union signed it most of them signed but there are countries like Sudan that didn't sign it. But it only was ratified in 2009. So it was to ban nuclear weapons and to specifically put the context of nuclear technology for specific demands. Let me remind the public that South Africa did have the technology to build nuclear weapons here, also Brazil and Argentina. So this comes in a context of what Sopaca establishes as a stable region, because in 1967, we had the local treaty between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to ban nuclear weapons.

And in the 70s, Brazil and Argentina had an agreement about nuclear weapons, and it was a tendency in the region to do denuclearization. And so Africa took more time to do it, but it did. Thank you. How are Brazil's relations with its other maritime neighbors? Are any of these relationships affected by Brazil's inclusion with the BRICS, for example, as more of a rising power? After the 90s, after the major economic crisis, when the Workers' Party entered the federal government in 2003, it experienced economic blooming, and it was able to do multilateral and bilateral cooperations with several countries in South America and Africa. And this goes to the two terms of President Lula from 2003 and 2011, and from the two terms of President Dilma during 2011 to 2014. But in 2014, we had a rupture because President Dilma was impeached. But during this period, Brazil had a real close relation with neighbors. And it was not a trouble to join BRICS.

I think that it was the contrary. It's an opportunity for other South American countries to do more relations with BRIC countries like China. What about Brazilian maritime boundaries? Are there any significant disputes that are contentious for Brazil? See, Brazil, the country was able to expand its continental shelf. Since the 70s, we had the LEPLAC. It's a project to research oil reserves in the maritime. And it did have a lot of evidence that it was a major oil reserve in the Rio de Janeiro coast.

But this evidence only came to surface in the 2000s. And Brazil asked the United Union to extend the continental shelf. It was extended to 65,000 nautical square miles. It was expanded beyond the 2,200 miles. And its exclusive economic zone is one of the richest in the region. It has not only oil reserves, but also gas reserves, other natural resources, fishing resources. So it was needed to preserve this territory at the United States' Law of the Sea. And Brazil was able to extend it.

About disputes, I don't think that there are any disputes in South America since the Malvinas, the Falklands War. But, interesting fact, it was the Lobster War in 61 and 63. The Lobster War is a minor conflict with France about illegal fishers from France were fishing lobsters next to Brazilian territorial waters. And what caused Brazil to intervene diplomatically? But this diplomacy involved the preposition of Brazilian and French vessels.

So it's a minor distress, but it was a fun one to read about, especially because it's called Lobster War. Yeah, I was going to ask, do you want to tell us a little bit more about the Lobster War? Because I hadn't heard of it until you just mentioned it now. I find a lot of these fishing disputes particularly interesting. One, because they always have the best names, and then two, usually no one has been actually physically injured, so you can talk about them without too much concern about human life. But yeah, please go ahead and tell us about the Lobster Wars. Lobster War was just a nickname about this conflict, but it all started when Brazilian patrols discovered illegal French vessels

illegally fishing lobster in the Pernambuco Coast. This is in the northwest region. So they started diplomatic conversations, but during this time, the French government sent some patrolling ships with these fishing vessels here to the region. But if Brazil responded, we'd send some more vessels to the northeast region. So it was basically a minor gunboat diplomacy, I think. But it ended in 1963, in good terms, with both countries.

And France started to kind of freeze-lost this one, because Brazil was able to monitor very good its waters. Thank you. So, which brings me to my next question is about non-state maritime challenges for Brazil today. How are they addressing those non-state maritime challenges? Trafficking in person, weapons, drugs, piracy, illicit fishing, how is that all managed today? You've mentioned Brazil doesn't have a Coast Guard, so I imagine a lot of this is the Navy trying to regulate it. Yes, basically it's the Navy that does this work.

The national defense strategy claims what every other national defense strategy claims, to provide seed and IOC control of its waters from its enemies and to insert the terrorists to its major enemies. Brazil does not have any enemies, and it is more focused on the problem of trafficking. But Brazil does not have a huge navy to do it. So it focused mostly on patrol ships and frigates to do it. In 2018, Brazil was able to apprehend 600 kilos of cocaine in its waters, but it's still not effective enough.

Since last year, we had a major oil disaster, an oil spilling in the northeast coast. It harmed a lot of citizens because the northwest coast is mostly economic dependencies on tourism, on the beaches, and fishing. So a lot of people lost their walks. And the Brazilian Navy could have monitored better its waters. I think they suspect it was Greek tanker, but I don't know a lot about the investigation. And this is an example of how badly the Brazilian Navy needs investment. Brazil has a real trouble budget.

80% of its budget is for personal expense, not investment in its own Navy. I think it's the source problems in Brazil. We'll come back to the Brazilian Navy in a few minutes here. I had one other question. It's that looking at countries with which Brazil shares kind of maritime borders or maritime connection. And the one that really jumped out to me was a country, again, it doesn't necessarily share a border, but that's Nigeria. So Nigeria is just on the other side of the South Atlantic, borders the Gulf of Guinea, known most recently for an abundance of oil transshipment and piracy. How is the Brazilian

Nigerian relationship and how are those countries working together? See, the Brazilian Navy has a lot of projects with the Nigerian Navy and also the Namibian Navy, just to put an example. They apply courses, there are a lot of trainings between the countries. But since 2014, I don't think that Brazil had a major cooperation efforts with Africa, mostly because of the crisis that was established before the impeachment of President Dilma and because the government of Bolsonaro doesn't have a foreign policy for African states. So it's all these cooperation efforts that are occurring, it's Navy efforts mostly. And Brazil participates in the Obangama Express, again with the United States and other European countries.

But it's not enough to surveil those waters. It's not enough to cause, to deter from the action of pirates and other illegal activities. I think that Brazil needs to put more effort in this, more effort in established cooperation with these countries, especially in the coast of Guinea and the Gulf of Guinea, because it's not only beneficial for them, but for us as well, because we establish presence, novel presence in the South Atlantic.

Thank you. So then let's come back to the Brazilian Navy. And I want to spend the last few questions talking about the Navy, its past, present, future ambitions. And as I was doing my research, Brazil has always been a very maritime nation, large coastline,

the relatively international outlook. So as an example, just prior to the First World War, It bought two dreadnoughts from the British and sent a naval task force into the Mediterranean. In the Second World War, the Brazilians sent a 25,000-strong force to fight for the Allies in Italy as well. What's the present state of the Brazilian Navy? You've hinted at it a little bit. Now we can go a little bit more in depth. Okay. Brazilian Navy is without doubt a major regional superpower.

It has approximately 100 ships, 44 ships of coastal patrol, but it comes behind Mexico, Chile, and Colombia in the region. The first spending, it's huge, it's $28 billion. It's the biggest in the region. The Navy budget is also the biggest in the region. But, like I said before, it's spent more in personal than investment. So this causes the velocity that the ships are being decommissioned. It's more fast than the replacement of the ships. I think the United States has a problem with that as well.

But here it's turning to snowball because we are losing a lot of ships. And we are not replacing them. We are not improving or maybe we're not technological enough, if I may say that. But most of Brazilian ships are also for research. And it's a good point that I made about that because we have a presence in the Antarctic continent. And Brazilians, I think in the 70s, bought a ship from Norway to explore this region and send material there. Even if we don't have the most efficient navy, but we have means to be the most efficient navy in the region, more than we are now. We have helicopter carrier.

We don't have anymore an aircraft carrier. But I think that has a major tendency to focus on the literal right now. And I think that what Brazil needs to do, because what kind of country we are, if we can't surveil our own waters and stop these disasters like the oil spilling of 2019 in Chuaco, can also point that we have five submarines. All of them are conventional submarines. On the other hand, we have nuclear submarine program since the 70s, but it's coming to be a major vortex of resources because we don't have a nuclear submarine to today. So it's always, oh, we come out the next 10 years, 5 years, the new dateline is 2024, I think.

But I think that it will be delayed again. And it's a shame because we have a great nuclear technology capacity here. We have, I think that Angra dos Reis utilizes nuclear energy. We are capable of doing that, but we don't have much of investment from the government to do that. We need a reform in the budget to do that. And then, as I think about Brazilian naval forces deployments, I know that you all participate in UNITAS whenever it gets hosted, whether that's in South America or up in the United States. But I believe there's been a Brazilian contribution to UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Forces Lebanon, off the coast of Lebanon. Is that correct? Yes, it's correct.

Brazil, the armed forces of Brazil participate a lot in distributing missions from the United Nations. In the last mission to Haiti, a Brazilian was participating actively. I think that a Brazilian officer, a woman Brazilian officer, was awarded for her position in this peace mission. I forgot her name, but Brazil is very present in these missions. Thank you. then so the last question is what is the brazilian shipbuilding industry like whether it's commercial or military specific see a brazilian shipbuilding industry is not as successful as the building industry we see depends a lot of foreign investments and partnerships to build our ships

we had a the tamandere class project that was delayed several times and always receiving investment from the T-Sync maritime group right now. I think most of Brazilian vessels were bought from Italy, United States, United Kingdom, even Colombia have sold us some ships. But I think just 20 of those ships are Brazilian. So it needs a boost. It needs more investment from the governed right now we had a major comeback of brazil shipbuilding industry in the 2000s with the workers party but again since the the economic and political crisis of 2014 we are not being able to put effort in this how we were able in the last decades it's a shame you mentioned tucson group coming in and they actually just bought one of the local shipyards how is that expected

to change things for industry i think that we have major crisis coming again so i think that we have to to accelerate the projects like the demand direct project right now because we have this need of more vessels to modernize our navy in the patterns that are surging right now and i think that's the only way right now that this will happen because the government is here is not being able to even to establish effective foreign policy so we depend on our companies to do these cooperation efforts with other foreign companies like ThyssenKrupp. I think the Brazilian Navy has great responsibility to do that. They are able to do that, even if they don't receive a lot of support from the government right now.

But it's an old institution since the 19th century. Even if we don't have a maritime culture like other countries, like the United States, the United Kingdom, we still have a major coastline. We need those ships. We need to patrol this area. I think that that's the way we are going to make this happen right now. So we've talked about the ships, but one of the things that we haven't really talked about is aircraft for the Brazilian Navy. and aircraft are really, and this is not just my opinion, I've had other guests tell me this, really the best way to establish maritime domain awareness.

Does the Brazilian Navy operate any significant number of maritime patrol aircraft or helicopters? Yes, I agree. Brazil has some aircraft. I said that we have a helicopter carrier. But again, we need to improve that. We need to be more able to invest more in our naval aviation. Actually, I said that the Brazil industry was a successful one, but we almost sold our company, the Brazilian air industry company, the most prominent one, the Embraer. And some politicians were able to stop this sale. I think this was a major constraint because what country we are if we sell our main company of aviation? But I think that this is the way to proceed right now. We need partnership, we need cooperation.

And I think that Brazil needs to put more effort in its own aircrafts. We have a lot of successful partnerships, like the Griffin ship, excuse me, the Griffin, I forgot the word. You're talking about the Griffin, the Swedish fighter aircraft, right? Yes, yes, this one. And I think that's an example of a successful partnership for us. But I really think that Brazil needs to put more effort, even in aviation, naval aviation right now,

because, once again, we had this major oil spill that should not happen. And I think that we need to reform our budget to do that. And we're not going to be able to do these improvements if we don't urgently reform our budget, start to put more effort in cooperation. That's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Andrea Rezende. Andrea, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So I'm working on my PhD thesis right now. I have a few publications, but mostly in Portuguese. One will come out right now in English. But if you want to contact me, you can do it by Twitter.

It's a D-E-A Resende with an S. Or by my email. It's andrearesende, R-I-G-E-M-E-I-O dot com. send me a message. I'll be very glad to talk to you if you want to. Absolutely. Andrea, thank you again for participating today and for our listeners, thank you for tuning in.

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