Although Brazil renounced nuclear weapons, it’s nuclear submarine joint venture with France will guard its 3000 miles of Atlantic coast and is a logical extension of its rise as a global power. A diesel/electric powered submarines ordered to DCNS by the Brazilian Navy (Marinha Brasileira-MB).
Brazil’s acquisition of six nuclear submarines raises the issue of nuclear proliferation in a region of the world that renounced the use of nuclear weapons. But not in the way most casual observers would think. First, to set the record straight, the Brazil nuclear submarine joint venture with France will guard its 3000 miles of Atlantic coast and is a logical extension of its rise as a global power. After all, Brazil’s extensive national wealth lies below the ocean floor.
Second, the nuclear reactors used in the submarines will be built by Brazil and coordinated through a new state-owned company, Blue Amazon Defense Technologies or Amazul. These reactors use low-enriched uranium, the same used in French submarines. The decision to use this type of nuclear fuel enables enrichment and manufacturing in its civilian plants. As such, the submarines are not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which Brazil is a party. Brazil’s 1988 constitution affirms the use of nuclear materials for peaceful purposes, but specifically renounces their use in arms.
Nuclear weapons a means to gain respect
Still, this episode helps illustrate one of the reasons that the Americas are frequently considered the geopolitical equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield comedies, in that “they don’t get no respect.” In today’s world, having weapons of mass destruction is a way to get attention if not respect. Think Pakistan, where the United States continues to pour billions in foreign assistance into a fragile state that seems perpetually on the verge of imploding, yet possesses the capacity to blow up neighboring India, not to mention parts of Central Asia. North Korea and its farcical government might be easily dismissed, if it were not for its nuclear brinkmanship. And then there are Iran’s apocalyptic mullahs.
When policy experts who work in the Americas complain that the region is neglected by major powers, they probably never consider that it might be because, in part, the region swore off nukes with the Treaty of Tlatelolco, signed 45 years ago in Mexico City. The Americas, save for the United States and Canada, is a nuclear free zone. And no nation in Latin America or the Caribbean, not even Venezuela, has shown any overt sign of acquiring nuclear weapons, although transnational crime, international terrorist networks and weak border controls leave a gap for shipping nuclear devices across borders.
There is another side of the coin that also encourages major powers to be dismissive—the need among some of the region’s leaders to get attention by grandstanding. Some taunt the concept of western democracy by suspending civil liberties, expropriating private industry, enriching cronies through corruption, or even backing international pariah states at such forums as the Non-Aligned Movement.
Latin America chooses peaceful resolution over nuclear weapons
Still, the American states are part of the global community, no longer the junior partner in a relationship dominated by the United States. The challenge ahead will be to promote a more responsible approach to regional problems we all face that go beyond our borders—crime, climate change, migration, trafficking, pandemics and more. Eleven countries in the hemisphere have signed on to the 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative that seeks cooperation in interdicting nuclear and other threatening arms concealed on ships and planes. In similar spirit, governments might embrace new multilateral arrangements that offer the region and our own country peaceful means of resolving problems, while also promoting a deeper partnership for the combating future threats.
In the final analysis, we should never forget that a region without nuclear weapons gives us common ground to build more constructive partnerships around other goals—stronger democratic governance, access to justice, and opportunities for workers to become educated to meet future economic needs. The hemisphere’s policymakers should consider how to riff off the success of a 45-year-old idea—a nuclear free zone—to create the Americas as a zone of peace, equality, justice and self-fulfillment for all citizens. That would be the way to get respect from the major powers.
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