The development of Brazil's arms exporting industry and its roots in geopolitical and national security doctrines

The military in Brazil has long sought to establish an arms industry in order to achieve greater independence from outside powers. Though some steps had been taken toward this end, in the 1950s Brazil produced little in the way of military goods, and exported none. After the military coup in Brazil in 1964 an arms industry was established. By the mid-1980s Brazil was one of the leading exporters of arms among Third World countries.;The literature concerning the remarkable success of the Brazilian arms industry offers two opposing hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. The first gives great explanatory value to the articulated ideology of the military regime: the National Security Doctrine. According to this view, the military had developed a detailed doctrine which had a profound influence on policy-making and implementation. The rationalistic developmentalist approach adopted by the regime accounts for the success of the arms industry. The second argument gives more explanatory power to the military's corporate ideology. This view sees the priority given to the arms industry as an outgrowth of the longstanding desire to achieve arms independence.;This dissertation examines the development of the National Security Doctrine in detail, from its roots in geopolitical thought to its dissemination by Brazil's Superior War College. The development of the Brazilian military's corporate ideology is also examined. The two hypotheses are examined against the politics and policies of the period of military rule, 1964-1985. It finds that both hypotheses are necessary to understanding the establishment and success of the arms industry, but insufficient as they stand. In order to better understand the phenomenon in terms of ideological inputs, it is necessary to add a third element: a tacit alliance between the faction in the military advocating policies based on the National Security Doctrine and the civilian technocratic elite, which shared its developmentalist goals, was involved in economic policy-making, and was given a great deal of autonomy in implementation of those policies.