Winning Brazil

During the height of the Cold War, global attention was fixed on Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We too often forget how close South America came to a full communist takeover and nowhere was this more evident than in Brazil. By the early 1960s, Soviet and Cuban intelligence had penetrated deep into the state, embedding agents in ministries, Petrobras, the judiciary, and even the president’s own military household. Archival records from the Czech StB (the KGB’s partner service) reveal that propaganda fronts such as O Semanário and the planned Frente Popular were financed with bloc funds, while Operation DRUZBA coordinated directly with Communist Party leader Luís Carlos Prestes.¹ Researchers drawing on these archives later described President João Goulart’s government not as merely “infiltrated” but as “a spearhead of Soviet imperialism.”²

Against this infection, Brazil’s immunity came not from bureaucrats in Brasília but from the people themselves. Catholic women’s organizations such as the Campanha da Mulher pela Democracia and the União Cívica Feminina summoned nearly half a million Brazilians into the streets during the Marcha da Família com Deus pela Liberdade of 1964. Priests and lay leaders warned that a Goulart–Prestes axis meant “Cuba on a continental scale.”

As declassified intelligence records now show, Brazil in the early 1960s was not simply polarized, it was being systematically destabilized from within, with Soviet-backed unions, student fronts, and agitators overwhelming a paralyzed government that had lost the ability or the will to resist communist subversion.³ The counterweight came not from Brasília but from civil society, where Catholic women’s organizations and parish networks awakened a patriotic majority that had been silent until 1964. The Marchas da Família com Deus pela Liberdade were the turning point: they united workers, business owners, families, and clergy in a common stand against Goulart’s drift toward the Soviet bloc. Military officers later acknowledged that these marches were the first force powerful enough to challenge the radicalized unions and organized communist fronts. They demonstrated publicly that most Brazilians still favored order, faith, and national sovereignty and they signaled to the Army that society would back decisive action if it came.⁴ With this moral mandate in place, and supported by state leaders such as Magalhães Pinto, the Armed Forces finally moved.

Today, a new challenge emerges. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has deeply embedded itself into Brazil’s economy, technology, and culture, reviving Cold War style tactics with modern tools. Brazil stands at a crossroads: alignment with Beijing would lock the hemisphere’s largest country into China’s orbit and threaten U.S. strategic interests.

A “red” Brazil fully aligned with the CCP would be catastrophic to U.S. national security. It would anchor a BRICS-led bloc, drawing South American states like Argentina toward Beijing, fracturing the Organization of American States, and enabling Chinese encirclement via South Atlantic bases. Control of lithium and uranium would disrupt supply chains for electric vehicles and defense, while BRICS de-dollarization would strike at the dollar’s reserve role. Proxy conflicts would intensify: Amazon resources could fuel illicit networks, destabilize Central America through narcotrafficking, strengthen Cuba and Nicaragua, and worsen illegal migration and fentanyl flows into the United States.

In the event of a war with China, this alignment would present a major risk. Chinese controlled ports could serve as South Atlantic military bases, echoing World War II concerns when Washington drafted “Plan Rubber” to secure Brazil’s “Natal bulge” if neutrality failed to persist. Back then, American forces could realistically contemplate occupation; today, with Brazil’s 8.5 million km², 215 million people, and a modern military equipped with Gripen jets, such an option would be a costly quagmire, especially with existing U.S. commitments in the Middle East, Europe and the Indo-Pacific stretching our resources.

We Are Losing

China begins this competition to control Brazil with a huge head start. China already dominates as Brazil’s largest trading partner, with over $150 billion in annual trade and 30 percent of exports (soy, iron ore, beef), compared to the U.S.’s under 10 percent. Post-COVID investments, now totaling $20 billion, give Beijing control of 20 percent of Brazil’s power grid, key ports, and mining operations, anchored by the Belt and Road Initiative’s “Two Oceans” corridor from Peru through Acre to Bahia.

But Brazil is more than soy and iron ore, it is the next frontier for critical minerals, especially copper, where exploration spending is rising as global demand is projected to nearly double by 2035. Beijing has moved first: state linked firms have acquired Brazilian rare earth and base-metal producers, extended concessional financing, and are building downstream capacity such as BYD’s Bahia EV plant to secure end-to-end control from ore to finished products.

The political landscape is also increasingly favorable. Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party (PT) has openly aligned itself with the authoritarian left bloc in the region and has deepened its strategic partnership with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).⁵ In September 2024, the PT signed a Foro de São Paulo resolution defending Nicolás Maduro’s refusal to concede his electoral defeat in Venezuela, framing it as an act of “self-determination” and opposing international pressure for democratic accountability. At the same time, the PT has moved significantly closer to Beijing. In 2023, it renewed a formal political cooperation agreement with the CCP, declaring party-to-party collaboration as a “strategic priority” and celebrating the Chinese model of state-led development as an inspiration for Brazil. PT officials now regularly participate in joint PT - CCP ideological forums and bilateral exchanges, while PT leaders such as Mônica Valente use the Foro de São Paulo platform to echo Beijing’s anti-U.S. “anti-imperialist” narratives and promote a China-Latin America alignment in a “new global order.”⁶ These political dynamics create an environment in Brasília increasingly sympathetic to Chinese economic penetration and Venezuelan-style illiberal governance, and hostile to U.S. influence.

Beyond ideology and economics, Brazil’s defense alignment is steadily moving toward China under PT leadership. In 2024, Chinese troops participated for the first time in the Operação Formosa exercises in Goiás,⁷ an unprecedented step that signaled a shift from symbolic diplomacy to tangible military cooperation. Soon after, Army Commander General Tomás Paiva traveled to Beijing to deepen strategic ties, openly stating that China is now “a country at the center of our interests.”⁸ Military exchanges have expanded to include officer training, doctrine familiarization, and technical cooperation, with Brazilian and Chinese personnel now embedded in each other’s defense institutions. This deepening military partnership is increasingly framed by PT-aligned channels as part of a broader “anti-imperialist” realignment, reflecting a geopolitical posture that distances Brazil from the United States while opening the door to long-term Chinese influence in South American security affairs.

China is now embedding itself inside Brazil’s defense industrial base, shifting from symbolic cooperation to concrete technology transfer. State-linked defense firms from Beijing are pursuing joint projects with Brazilian counterparts in dual-use drone systems, electronic warfare platforms, and cyber defense infrastructure, with proposals that include local co-production to bypass Western export controls and secure long-term access to South American defense markets. Presented by the PT government as a push for “technological sovereignty,” this partnership is gradually displacing U.S. and European defense suppliers and integrating Brazil into China’s military industrial ecosystem. The result is not just commercial cooperation, but the quiet construction of a strategic dependency that strengthens Beijing’s long-term influence over Brazilian security policy.⁹

In effect, Brazil is no longer just China’s economic partner, it is becoming a strategic defense partner as well, a crisis level shift in Western Hemisphere security that Washington continues to ignore.

The U.S. remains on the back foot and asleep at the wheel; closing the gap requires immediate action. Without that scale and speed, Brazil’s and its mineral wealth risks becoming another pillar of China’s global dominance and a chokepoint on Western supply chains.

We are already well down the road to losing. America is the insurgent power in the Southern Hemisphere, while China dominates economically. So, how do we win? While there are many economic policy levers that Washington might bring to bear on this problem, one of the most potent tools available may be to leverage precisely the same Christian resistance that served as a powerful bulwark in the depths of the Cold War.

Christianity as a Strategic Bulwark

The will for sovereignty is fostered not just by military force or cash, but by visible proof that independence improves daily life, especially when trusted faith communities provide moral and organizational backbone as Catholic and evangelical networks did in the Marcha da Família in 1964. In other words, realigning Brazil requires not just economic deals that outbid the CCP, but bolstering domestic forces that themselves work to throw off Chinese influence.

Using “Christianity as a strategic bulwark” means building America’s economic, security, and civic interventions around Brazil’s 30% evangelical base and 60% Catholic majority to counter CCP influence. This blending of hard and soft power into a hemispheric moral front echoes Cold War clergy-led resistance, turning faith into a shield against hybrid threats of ideology and crime. This civilizational inheritance, from Catholic natural law to evangelical revivalism, provides not only private belief but a public architecture of resilience against Marxist encroachment.

Christian Economics

Authoritarian influence thrives where economic vacuums exist. Chinese loans and Venezuelan narco-money now fill those spaces in Brazil, enabling the CCP to use corruption to extend its influence throughout the country.¹⁰ The counter must move quickly and visibly, by anchoring Brazil’s export engines – soy, beef, poultry, lithium and copper – into Western supply chains; investing in schools, hospitals, and safe neighborhoods.

Beijing has already shown the playbook: acquire or build plants tailored to Brazilian regulations, then use tariff policy to justify scale. The result is embedded control and regional export hubs, one of the reasons why sleek Chinese vehicles manufactured in Brazil can sell at a fifth the cost of imported U.S. equivalents.

We can do the same. US financing for vertically integrated projects that keep ore, refining, and component output in allied chains and in friendly states offer a parallel deal. This should be paired with targeted tariff exemptions for Brazilian-made critical inputs that feed US and allied manufacturing, so local plants win on price without ceding control to Chinese processors.

But we cannot merely mirror the CCP strategy. America will lose if it attempts to compete dollar-for-dollar with the investments that the CCP brings to the fight. The US deal must be one that offers more than financial upside: by supporting cooperatives tied to churches and conservative-leaning municipalities, America can join material gain to moral conviction.

To do this we must enter into direct state level compacts with liberty aligned governors and amplify these partnerships though Evangelical and Catholic networks. Targeted grants and development programs should flow to these governors and regions, as Cold War aid once empowered provincial leaders and civic groups when capitals were unreliable. When states like São Paulo, Paraná, or Santa Catarina become conspicuously more prosperous and secure through Western partnership, they model success for the country and the blunt model of dependency forwarded by Beijing.

Christian Narrative

Cold War strategy placed “active measures” at the center, recognizing propaganda as the enemy’s weakest point.¹¹ In Guatemala, carefully staged broadcasts and leaflet drops convinced soldiers the fight was already lost, collapsing resistance without major combat. In Chile, newspapers and civic media relentlessly tied food shortages and inflation to socialist policies, eroding support for Allende. In Brazil, mass marches and clergy-led campaigns framed unrest as the work of communist agitators, giving moral clarity to a confused public. RAND playbooks even recommended mobilizing clergy, veterans, business associations, and exiles as trusted voices, a formula that proved decisive in the 1960s.¹²

The same approach applies now. Narratives must connect crime and corruption directly to foreign-backed regimes and their proxies. This effort should expose how the CCP’s economic policies enable Tren de Aragua’s gang networks through Venezuelan migration and drug funded money laundering, blending ideological subversion with street terror.

Delivering this message requires a credible messenger. Faith leaders can be more than preachers, as they were in the 1960s, when sermons and parish bulletins rallied entire communities, they can now become digital influencers mobilizing millions across WhatsApp, TikTok, and livestreams, giving moral clarity to chaos. Modern tools like AI-generated satire, memes, and viral videos can replicate the effectiveness of Cold War satire and ridicule campaigns, stripping CCP-aligned elites of credibility by turning them into figures of derision. Exile voices, as once seen with Cuban and Chilean dissidents writing from abroad, should be amplified again; they can speak truths at home that local repression silences, carrying disproportionate moral weight.

This strategy can go broader. American collaborations with local and regional religious groups could stand up parallel bastions of support: youth retreats, veteran and police associations, faith-based business leader groups, and family groups can crowd out the CCP’s Confucius Institutes with civic alternatives blending moral clarity and community services. These mirror the parish bulletins that once delegitimized Soviet fronts.¹³

The cumulative effect of these steps can be immense. Tying Beijing’s influence to the drug and migration crises fueled by Maduro’s Tren de Aragua proxies turns outrage into viral resilience across Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Every brutal street gang crime becomes another example of the toxic influence of the broader Marxist bloc.

Civilizational Values

Civilizational values are a realist strength. In Brazil, poverty, propaganda, lawlessness and passivity have created opportunities for the CCP to increase its influence over a major geostrategic theater. While dollar diplomacy allows the United States to regain some of its footing, full realignment of Brazil will require something more.

Today, marrying economic and diplomatic interventions with an explicit religious bent is unfashionable among the established think tank classes of Washington. But, we have forgotten the lessons of just a few decades prior. The Cold War taught us that prosperity, faith, and identity can defeat authoritarian regimes from within.

Today, those lessons must be revived. Liberty must once again be tied to prosperity. Faith must give moral clarity. Crime must be revealed as the hand of foreign-backed groups. And exile voices must remind us of what is at stake.

The Trump administration has an opening to act decisively in the Western Hemisphere. We are at the beginning of a new Monroe Doctrine, one that requires a strong affirmation of an anti-foreign, pro-liberty identity across the Americas, and one that requires us to ensure that Havana, Caracas, and Beijing find no foothold in Brazil’s future.

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