China in the Atlantic

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News reports tying China to Brazil are fairly rare from a military perspective. Generally speaking, Brazil holds no great interest for China other than run-of-the-mill resource acquisition and U.S. irritation. So the fact that China for the first time is sending a People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps detachment to participate in joint Brazilian military exercises is worth a discussion. These multilateral exercises, known as Formosa 2024, will take place within the next several weeks. So far, it’s unclear if U.S. assets will participate alongside the Chinese.

China and Brazil have had a relationship since the 19th century, minus a brief interruption after China went communist. Relations were reestablished in the 1970s. Since then, there has been robust trade between the two as Brazil helped replace U.S. soy and grain supplies. (This gave Beijing room to breathe when the trade war started under the Trump administration.) China has become Brazil’s largest trade partner with exports to China in 2023 approaching $105 billion. More recently, Brazil was almost alone in its support of Chinese efforts to build 5G infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere. But Brazil’s invitation to China to participate in military exercises attests to their improved standing and that the partnership is growing beyond economic sectors.

China to Brazil
(click to enlarge)

At the center of the issue, of course, is the United States. The U.S. and China have stood in dramatic if largely bloodless military opposition to each other in the broader Asia-Pacific for some time. Alone, Formosa 2024 does not mean China will soon be operating in the United States’ backyard as America operates in China’s, but China accepted Brazil’s invitation nonetheless. This can be interpreted as a fundamental policy shift for a country that largely stays out of the Atlantic, or, more likely, a signal from Beijing for Washington to tread lightly in the Pacific.

China would like to pressure the U.S. into diverting its Pacific assets away from the South China Sea, of course, but the problem is that doing so would also divert and disperse its own forces. The size of the deployment, moreover, is hardly enough for the U.S. to reconsider its naval strategy. Nor is it enough to threaten even the weakest Latin American government. And while the deployment could theoretically be a prelude to some future long-range endeavor, remember that China is in no position whatsoever to threaten the U.S. at sea or to wage war in the Western Hemisphere on land.

In that sense, Formosa 2024 is likely a training opportunity for China or a chance to improve bilateral trade with Brazil, rather than a strategic move. The most China will gain is to alarm the U.S. a little. Which is fine so long as China does not alarm the U.S. excessively. The possibility of tension arising from these apparently minor exercises can’t be ignored.

Brazil has had its fair share of problems with the U.S,. and the U.S. and China have plenty more of their own. Some thus might believe a dangerous alignment is emerging. It is not. The biggest risk, then, is that the exercises could be perceived as dangerous and that all involved might conclude that they are. They probably won’t, but in geopolitics “probably” is a dangerous term.

George Friedman

George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

Dr. Friedman is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, published February 25, 2020 describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period which will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture.



His most popular book, The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade, America’s Secret War, The Future of War and The Intelligence Edge. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy and intelligence in major media. For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.