Interferências extrarregionais na Zopacas: uma abordagem para a África do Sul

Abstract

This monograph addresses Defense Intelligence, specifically its Strategic Intelligence approach, as a threat identification tool for Brazil, through academic studies that can be used as intelligence “proto-studies”, in strict alignment with documents conditions of the Brazilian legal framework that deal with National Defense. The objective of this study was, from the diagnosis of the defense and security situation of the “Strategic Surroundings”, South America, and, subsequently, from Africa bordering the South Atlantic (the “Strategic Surroundings further away”), to provide subsidies that serve as a basis for assessing the action of extra-regional powers that may interfere, in a deleterious way, in Brazilian interests in the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone (ZOPACAS). The adopted methodology included a bibliographic and documentary research, in order to seek theoretical references on the definition of power, within the scope of the International System, and to develop a dialogue between the past and the present of the relations between the ZOPACAS member countries and the their security and defense problems. Using economic data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity – OCE (SIMÕES e HIDALGO, 2011) and other analyzes, a geographic profile of South Africa was carried out to study the influence exerted by China, throughout the years 2010, after a wide action developed in the continent by the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC). Based on the inductive method, the research concluded that China's performance in South Africa will not have the main threat to Brazilian interests in the economic field, but rather in the influence it exerts on the position taken by African countries in voting in multilateral forums, with emphasis on the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), in view of the alignment it maintains with the position of Pretoria. From the point of view of interference in the status quo of ZOPACAS, the research identified that China is expanding its interests in the South Atlantic, which may prove to be a factor of concrete destabilization of the peace situation, given the possibility of extending, for the region, rivalries and conflicts foreign to it.