Brazilian arms transfers, ballistic missiles, and foreign policy: The search for autonomy

This dissertation examines the relationship between Brazil's arms transfers and foreign policy. Specifically, to what extent has Brazil utilized arms transfers as an instrument of influence in its foreign policy?; Part I of the dissertation provides an overview of Brazilian arms transfers through October 1990. Part II analyzes elites and the arms transfer decision-making process in Brazil. Part III utilizes the focused comparison method and examines the case studies of Brazilian arms transfers to Suriname, Libya, and Iraq. Part IV takes the policy-relevant theory that emerges from the case studies and applies it to the development of Brazil's ballistic missile program and the transfer of missile technology.; The thesis is that Brazil has utilized arms transfers less as a means for influencing recipient behavior than as a means for increasing Brazil's autonomy vis-a-vis other suppliers in the international system. Other conclusions are that (1) the primary rationale for Brazil's arms transfers has been economic, but in at least one instance (Suriname), a security motive has driven Brazilian arms transfers; (2) Brazil has utilized its arms transfers as an instrumental form of influence in its foreign policy only on rare occasions, such as in Suriname; (3) Brazil's arms transfer decision-making process is extremely centralized and concentrated among a few elites--the military (the dominant actor), the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and industrialists; (4) the gradual transition from an exclusionary authoritarian regime to a democratic regime has yielded only marginal changes in the arms transfer policy; (5) Brazil has in fact increased its autonomy vis-a-vis the United States, its traditional supplier of arms and technology, but in the case of the ballistic missile program, Brazil has been extremely vulnerable to U.S. denials, through the Missile Technology Control Regime, of high technology for its space program; and (6) Brazil's arms transfers have been consistent with the country's broader foreign policy of alignment with the Third World and movement away from the United States.