O general hobbesiano: Golbery do Couto e Silva e a Doutrina de Segurança Nacional

Abstract

The purpose of this article is, first, to present some of the central theses of Geopolítica do Brasil, a work by General Golbery do Couto e Silva, which can be read as a new solution to the Hobbesian problem of fear and widespread violence – through the Armed Forces as the entity responsible for leading the State. Insofar as these theses lie at the core of the so-called National Security Doctrine as it was formulated and developed during the dictatorship that began in Brazil in 1964, our second objective is to show that Golbery’s doctrine creates the conditions for the exercise of the most brutal forms of violence (particularly police repression and torture), not as an unintended or incidental outcome, but as something embedded in the very core of the theory – without which it would lack coherence. Our general conclusion can be summarized in a single image: the idea of a “soft dictatorship” (the so-called “ditabranda”) is a chimera, for the simple reason that Golbery and Sérgio Fleury, the theoretical sorcerer and the practical crook, have always been, and remain, heads and tails of the same National Security Doctrine.