Page 221 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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international and national public opinion, the self-limitation of military operations and
a continuous pursuit of legitimacy stand out as instruments of a grand strategy to guide
strategic models, attitudes and approaches to military conflicts.
Strategic concepts that focus on political legitimacy, that respect the psychosocial
reality and that limit the political, psychological and economic effects of military
responses to aggressive threats deserve the most careful attention by policymakers of
security and defense.
Brazil’s strategy in the War of Cisplatine is an example of the application of state
power confronting an attempt to unsettle or dismember part of its territory bordering
a neighboring region ravaged by civil war or internal strife. In this type of conflict,
the population of the threatened territory was the center of gravity around which the
government designed policies and strategies to deal with the conflict and conduct
corrective operations. This population, insofar as it was separated from the conflicts
across the border tended to repel or reject foreign attempts of domination or absorption.
Territorial identity strengthened the participation and support of the population in the war,
but limited the actions beyond its borders. Brazil’s strategy in the War of Cisplatine was
a natural consequence of its colonization of the disputed territory during the eighteenth
century (PICTURE 7). The Empire’s military strength in the war was derived from this
set of established identities and interests, and not from the systematic confrontation.
The territorial approach sometimes overlooked, deserves to be appreciated as away
of strengthening the legitimacy, moderation and restraint, even though the enemy’s
disregard for brings suffering to the local population. However, the erosion of the
imperial government’s political capital lost its relevance in the face of a state policy that
focused on structures and historical continuities of a political and psychosocial situation
that drifted into violence.
The most effective demonstration of power that a military force can offer is creating
the feeling that it is not worth to fight against it. This effect can be achieved by the
judicious application of measured force at the most suitable time and place, always
driven by an unshakeable will to use it when a limit is passed by a hostile force. Limits
are never applied to a single party and its establishment is part of a strategy.
War, as a social and political phenomenon, increasingly depends on the knowledge,
in general and especially knowledge of history, and all sources must be considered in
shaping history.

References
ALEIXO, José Carlos Brandi. El Congreso Anfictiónico de Panamá de 1826: la presencia de Brasil en su
historia. Saarbrücken: Editorial Académica Española, 2012.
AMEAL, João. História da Europa: da formação da Europa ao Tratado de Tordesilhas. Porto: Livraria
Tavares Martins, 1964.
BEAUMONT, J.A.B. Viajes por Buenos Aires, Entre Rios y la Banda Oriental (1826-1827). Buenos
Aires: Librería Hachette S. A., 1957.