By SUZELEY KALIL*
Preface to the newly released book by Ana Penido
The military's return to government following the coup against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 has turned the spotlight on the Armed Forces, resulting in a growth in the number of publications that seek to understand what the military is and what it does. However, this growth is nowhere near the volume that would correspond to the military presence in Brazilian politics. As scholars of different political persuasions point out, the Armed Forces have been present in all important political events in Brazil's political history, most often as protagonists.
Education, on the other hand, is the subject of constant discussions and work, whether lay or specialized; directed or general. It can be said that the focus on education responds to its permanent importance in the process of socialization of the social being. Education and, within it, teaching, despite the advent of new technologies, especially the Internet, continues to be the main mechanism for constructing the subject-citizen. It is at school that the process of socialization is experienced in which values specific to a given society are created and transformed, allowing its reproduction and transformation (Durkheim, 1978).
It should be noted that while academia has devoted little to studies of the Armed Forces, it has focused even less on military education. And even the most recent literature only mentions education because it is impossible not to relate it to the doctrine prevalent in the barracks, one of the pillars of the thinking that has dominated public administration since 2016.
It is at the confluence of these two themes, education and the armed forces, that Ana Penido dedicates her research. Thus, I feel privileged to present this book, which has as its first quality the courage to shed light on a challenging topic both because of the importance of military education itself – any real transformation must begin within the school walls – and because of the lack of information and access to sources surrounding it.
The book that the reader is holding in their hands originated from a master's dissertation defended in 2015 and awarded as the best dissertation by the Strategic Studies Program of the Fluminense Federal University. This award highlights at least two other qualities of the work: in addition to being courageous, it is well-written, well-founded and original. It should be emphasized that the research was conducted between 2013 and 2015 and, therefore, long before the spotlight turned to the military. This shows the author's perspicacity in choosing her research topic.
Assuming that the Armed Forces are professional, that is, they are educated and trained in skills that allow them to perform national defense functions, the author endeavors to understand how the professionalization of Brazilian military personnel takes place, hence focusing on the education of officers, the future generals/commanders of the Armed Forces. Since it is impossible to study all the training schools, Ana Penido takes as an example the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras (AMAN), which is responsible for training Army professionals. The choice of AMAN is not, however, random: it is a question of analyzing the school responsible for training professionals of the largest force and with the greatest political participation among the three national Armed Forces.
Thus, in the first chapter, the author describes the state of the art on military professionalization. In it, she points out how, for example, professionalization cannot be understood as a single, universal concept, because when treated as such, it leads to substantial discrepancies. This is the case, for example, in the assessment by Samuel Huntington (1996), who understands that there is a direct relationship between professionalization and apoliticalism in the Armed Forces. This proposition may be true for countries like the USA, which is the focus of the author's analysis, but it is not true for former colonial countries, such as Brazil. Here, the Armed Forces are highly professional, but they actively participate in the political process.
Based on her in-depth reading of the literature on civil-military relations, Ana Penido proposes an adaptation of the concept of professionalization, calling it “Brazilian-style professionalization.” Ana Penido dedicates the second and fourth chapters to the construction of this concept. She starts from the premise that any process of professionalization—the process of transforming a layperson into an expert in something—is subject to factors both external and internal to the country. Considering internal factors in particular, one of the most important is the growing autonomy that governs the design of military professional training, increasingly separating professionals from others, including those in the state bureaucracy itself.
Another quality of Ana Penido that is present in the book is her sincere humility, as she states on more than one occasion that there are several gaps in her work, not only because she lacked access to sources or time for a more accurate investigation, but because her proposal was not to present a complete analysis of military education, especially since such a stance encourages future research. I call this academic talent, as it represents always leaving the discussion open, gaps that allow for criticism and debate. I would like to take this opportunity to mention some points that I disagree with the author and that, unfortunately, it is impossible to delve into here.
The first point I mention is that one of the characteristics that the author attributes as particular to military professionalization can, however, be seen as common to Brazilian higher education: the dispute between theory and practice (which would be more important, a philosophical education or a technical education?) – in military language, veterans versus bachelors – which permeated much of the discussions that preceded both the implementation of higher education in Brazil and the debate on the different legal reforms (Saviani, 1997).
Another point to highlight is the statement that it is the responsibility of external influence on military doctrine to ensure that Brazilian-style professionalization has as its core “serving the interests of the dominant classes in society” and also “serving external interests, not those of the country” (p. 76). I agree that the Brazilian armed forces are far from being national, from being forces focused on defending the country. However, two questions should be asked beforehand: (i) except, perhaps, for revolutionary armies, is there any armed force that is not prepared to serve the interests of the dominant class? And also: (ii) how can the dominant classes of dependent societies be autonomous?
Marx and Engels (1848) taught that the State is nothing more than the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. If the armed forces are the specific means that define the State, they are also the specific means to serve the interests of the dominant classes. The second observation, a corollary of the first, is (almost) a tautology: if the dominant classes in Brazilian society are subordinate (or dependent) on the dominant classes of the central countries, then their interests are also subordinate and, therefore, the Brazilian defense forces must be professionalized to serve foreign interests.
I would like to add: if we use a magnifying glass to see the doctrinal foundations of military professionalization, it is quite likely that we will conclude that there is a “Brazilian-style nationalism” that is part of the civilizing process of the so-called weak and weak society, following the guidelines of developed societies, because only in this way will we achieve progress. Authors such as Azevedo Amaral, Alberto Torres and, perhaps the best known, Oliveira Viana are representatives of this thinking. Thus, my opinion is that the doctrine that supports Brazilian-style professionalization was not forged only by the foreign missions that were here, but that these found a good breeding ground to flourish.
In short, when studying military professionalization through education, Ana Penido reviews the process of soldier socialization. For this reason, she touches on different topics that, as she sometimes points out, deserve more in-depth investigation. Among these, I highlight: the issue of the (almost impossible) compatibility between professional specialization and the range of functions required of the military, which, the author points out, is common to a variety of professions; the issue of choice of weapons, which has pointed to a discrepant tendency between the officer desired by the institution and the individual choice; the isolation imposed on the military which, while functional to the demands of discipline and hierarchy, is dysfunctional to national defense; the impact of religious diversity on the behavior of cadets and officers; the anachronism of disciplinary and training programs that feed military isolation, etc.
For all its qualities, but also for its shortcomings, this How do you become a soldier? It is an essential book for all those who want to know about the firearms professional, but above all it is a defense education book and, therefore, is mandatory reading for citizens.
*Suzeley Kalil is a professor of International Relations at the São Paulo State University (UNESP).
Reference
Anna Penido. How does one become a soldier? Initial training at the Agulhas Negras Military Academy from 1995 to 2012. São Paulo, Editora Unesp, 2024, 256 pages. [https://amzn.to/3Zw8KBV]
REFERENCES
Durkheim, E. (1978). Education and Sociology. SP, Ed. Improvements.
Huntington, SP (1996). The Soldier and the State. RJ, Bibliex.
Marx, K.; Engels, F. (2012) Communist Party Manifesto (1848). SP, Company of Letters.
Saviani, D. (1997). The new education law: trajectory, limits and perspectives. Campinas, Associated Authors.
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