Book Review: Brazil in the Global Nuclear Order,1945–2018 by Carlo Patti

At the 1988 UN Special Session on Disarmament, the Brazilian president José Sarney delivered one of the most memorable speeches. ‘The doctrine of the security of some through the insecurity of all is inconceivable’, he argued. ‘The balance of terror is a form of aggression against humanity’. But he also indicated that Brazil would not be joining the nuclear nonproliferation regime any time soon. Sarney maintained that it was nothing less than ‘incoherent and paradoxical’ for the leaders of the great powers to preach non-proliferation to other states while in possession, themselves, of ‘fantastic arsenals’ of thermonuclear annihilation. ¹ However, within just a decade, Brazil had joined all the key institutions of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). How did this come to pass? And how did Brazil's engagement with the global nuclear order evolve over time? These are among the key questions asked by Carlo Patti in Brazil in the Global Nuclear Order.

Seeking to ‘carefully examine the history and politics of Brazil's nuclear ambitions and to put them in the global context’ (p. 10), Patti offers what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive study of Brazil's nuclear history yet. The analysis is supported by a wealth of primary sources, including oral history interviews and archival material from multiple countries. The study speaks eloquently to the broader literature on nuclear politics. It is an important book. Brazil maintains one of the world's most advanced nuclear complexes and is currently in the process of developing nuclear-powered attack submarines. If it succeeds, Brazil will become only the seventh power in the world to field such systems. The Brazilian case also offers a valuable looking glass into broader questions on how emerging powers relate to the global nuclear order. In a world where the possession of nuclear weapons is widely seen as an indicator of status as a great power, countries eager to climb the international hierarchy of states face other incentives than do smaller countries without pretentions of ever becoming world powers.

Patti's central thesis is that Brasília's nuclear choices have been shaped by a dialectic of domestic politics and international pressures. Brazil's nuclear programme and determined pursuit of ‘nuclear autonomy’, that is mastery of the full nuclear fuel cycle, is dated to the first years of the military dictatorship that seized power in the 1960s. Patti finds that the military was eager at the time to retain the possibility of building a nuclear device in the future. Yet the pursuit of autonomy became difficult as the United States, the regional hegemon, began limiting exports of sensitive materials and technology to countries opposing the NPT. Brasília, which opposed the division of the world into nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, was thus pushed into the arms of alternative suppliers, including France, West Germany and China. One deal detailed by Patti involved China helping Brazil enrich unsafeguarded uranium in Chinese nuclear facilities (pp. 126–9). Interestingly, though, Patti finds little evidence of concrete Brazilian plans to build nuclear arms. Brazil's principled opposition to the NPT was, indeed, principled.

Patti persuasively stresses Brazilian agency in the story of how Brasília shifted its stance vis-à-vis the non-proliferation regime. For Patti, Brazil's accession to the NPT in 1998 was above all an outcome of a conscious decision made by the Brazilian executive. In addition, Patti identifies ‘international pressure’ and the promise of ‘a deeper relationship with the United States’ as important factors behind the Brazilian about-face (pp. 178, 182). But questions about timing remain. As Patti shows in Chapter Five, the supposed nuclear rivalry between Brazil and Argentina had been punctured by the establishment of an atomic partnership between the two countries. And as he shows in Chapter Six, Brazilian scientists and engineers had mastered the critical aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle by the mid-1980s (pp. 140–3). The United States and other major powers had been in favour of Brazil's accession to the regime for decades. So what changed in the 1990s?

The author is right to highlight the end of the Cold War as an important structural change (p. 183). But if there is anything missing from Brazil in the Global Nuclear Order, it is a wider theoretical reflection about the mechanisms linking the end of the Cold War to the near total universalization of the non-proliferation regime over the course of the 1990s. Brazil was, after all, only one of more than 50 states that joined the NPT in the first decade of the post-Cold War period. The transition from bipolarity to unipolarity had profound effects on Washington's non-proliferation approach and influence. Not only did the apparent ‘end of history’ help elevate US interests to a higher plain, the collapse of the Eastern bloc also meant that many neutral and non-aligned states lost their traditional means of escaping superpower pressure, namely the possibility of threatening to align with the opposing power bloc. Other states, most notably those in the US sphere of influence, discovered that anti-communism was no longer sufficient to staying on good terms with Washington. Unipolarity, in other words, allowed the United States to pursue a more ambitious and effective non-proliferation policy.

Brazil in the Global Nuclear Order is a rich and compelling book that deserves a wide readership. It will be of great value to everyone interested in South American politics, the history of the Cold War, and the development of the global nuclear order.