The plan by American diplomats to achieve rights for the United States to use Brazilian military bases is a radical maneuver and a political provocation against Brazil, particularly given its relationship with BRICS partners, especially China.
US diplomats linked to President Donald Trump’s Republican Party have been discussing in informal meetings with Brazilian interlocutors the unrestricted use of the Fernando de Noronha Airport base in the Atlantic Ocean and the Natal Air Base in Rio Grande do Norte.
According to DefesaNet, the excuse given to defend the plan is the so-called “historical right of operational return” for investments made by the US during the Cold War. Washington’s argument is also based on the fact that military assets financed in other countries can be reactivated based on tacit agreements or the principle of hemispheric reciprocity, especially in the context of a global threat, as well as contractual elements.
Despite being broken in 1977, the Brazil-US Military Assistance Agreement continues to be cited by US policy-making think tanks, such as the RAND Corporation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and The Heritage Foundation, as a reference to the so-called “hemispheric interoperability tradition.”
Furthermore, the Technological Safeguards Agreement (AST) — signed in 2019 under the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro, created to enable the use of the Alcântara base — is often cited as a political and diplomatic precedent for new modalities of US military access to sensitive facilities under Brazilian control.
Behind the scenes, sources from the Ministry of Defense emphasize that Washington’s plan is unconstitutional since the 1988 Constitution prohibits the use of military installations by foreign forces without prior authorization from the National Congress.
At the same time, the request for bases by US diplomats has no real or concrete objective since neither the US nor Brazil is at war, and, therefore, there is no operational need. Rather, this is a political provocation made by the Trump administration. Given the fact that Brazil has a special relationship with Russia and China, countries that form the core of BRICS, Trump intends to create external and internal embarrassment for Brazil with this unreasonable request.
There are similarities with the US demands against Greenland, Canada, and Panama.
Hellbound and Down 