As Brazil faces its greatest political crisis in 30 years, int'l observers are paying more and more attention to the dynamics within the country's armed forces, seen as a crucial political actor as tensions between the president, Congress and the Supreme Court rise [thread👇]
Yet understanding the armed forces, usually less transparent, is a harder task than assessing dynamics within congress or the presidential palace. The more important the armed forces' political engagement, the harder reading a country's overall dynamics tends to become.
For example: Assessing political dynamics in Pakistan and Venezuela, where generals are very influential politically, is often trickier than in Portugal or Uruguay, where the armed forces are a less relevant actor in day-to-day politics.
In Brazil, where the armed forces largely stayed out of political life since the end of the military dictatorship 30 years ago, some political analysts nowadays struggle to offer international investors specific assessments about what the generals and low-level soldiers think.
International investors now often ask political risk analysts things like "Let's suppose ongoing investigations lead the police to execute a search warrant against one of the president's sons and political serious instability ensues. What would the armed forces do?"
Others ask things like: Who is more influential in the armed forces: Heleno, Mourão or Azevedo? Who speaks on behalf of whom? Or: how would an institutional rupture affect the likelihood of economic reforms? (I'd they not at all, since their likelihood is 0% already)
There is a a general sense that the president has the strong support of the army, with the navy and airforce less enthusiastic about Bolsonaro. Yet it is anyone's guess what that means in practice. As the old saying goes, Brazil is not for beginners.. or the faint-hearted.
As a consequence, only those with the stomach for lots of uncertainty consider betting on Brazil. A political crisis that could lead to an institutional rupture, a massive economic crisis, a once-in-a-century pandemic: it's almost impossible to imagine a more volatile scenario.
