As U.S. President Barack Obama wades through an alphabet soup of Eastern summits that underscore his pivot to the Pacific, media coverage has focused on the U.S.-China rivalry, spiced by the awkward encounters between the American president and the most powerful person in the world according to Forbes Magazine, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile back in the Western Hemisphere, a much less heralded event is taking place that is equally instructive for the future of global competition and conflict: Brazil is conducting its most extensive war game to date, sending forces deep into the Amazon rainforest to hone Brazil's capacity to secure the region against invaders.
This is no eco-warrior task force, with Brazilian brigades fanning out to protect flora and fauna. Brazil's Amazon is home to vast mineral wealth, not to mention water resources - a precious commodity in a world with a population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050.
The exercise is a testament to Brazil's strategic foresight: In the resource-development world, where massive, multi-billion dollar mining projects can take a decade to develop, it's already 2025 - at least. Given that the mines being planned today will in most cases operate for 25 years, it may already be 2050 for resource planners.
In some ways, Brazil's focus is anything but new. The Amazon has given shape to the future since at least 1541, when Gonzalo Pizzaro set sail from Spain in search of the new El Dorado, a land of gold and canela (cinnamon), and became the first European to navigate the Amazon River. Today, the treasure is different: Gold, to be sure, but in place of cinnamon are the rainforest's known resources of copper, iron, aluminum, manganese, nickel, tin, and uranium. Alongside these are byproduct metals widely used in laptops, cellphones, solar panels and high-strength steel alloys - elements such as gallium, rhenium, selenium, tellurium and indium. By some estimates, the primary metals alone could fetch Brazil more than $50 billion per year.
So who is Brazil's putative Amazon enemy - the adversary analogous to the conquistadors of 500 years hence? Military analysts note that the current war games are geared to defend against a hypothetical opponent far larger than the forces that could be mustered by Brazil's neighbors. So if Brazil is not girding for a land invasion from the combined forces of Peru, Bolivia, Guyana and Suriname - who could threaten the Brazilian Amazon rainforest by sea or air?
The list is short. Russia, for all of Putin's bristling in its near abroad, isn't likely to project power into South America with its antiquated Soviet-era fleet or Bear bombers. What about China, with its nascent blue-water navy? Well, is Brazil worried over a single aircraft carrier, like some seaborne Chrysler Caravan, built atop a remaindered Ukrainian navy hull? Not likely.
That leaves the one indisputable global power with the capability to command sea and air: the United States.
Interestingly, Brazil has dubbed this war game Machifaro - a reference to the region that led the 16th Century uprising against the conquistadors of Spain, which was the global power of the day.
Could Brazil really be preparing for an Amazon showdown with the United States? Sure, the bilateral relationship has soured since the disclosure that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was under U.S. National Security Agency surveillance. Plenty of world leaders graced that list. Still, the revelation led to the cancellation of Rousseff's U.S. visit, and relations have since taken a turn for the worse.
While the military battle for the Amazon's resource wealth may belong in the realm of war games, in non-military terms, the battle to exploit Brazil's rainforest resources is already underway. Between 2012 and 2017, $30 billion in investment are pouring into Brazilian resource projects, and a spiderweb of mining roads reaches ever deeper into the Amazon.
In this battle, the primary mining enterprises vying for a share of Brazil's resource wealth come from China, Russia, Britain, Canada and Australia. This is one war game the United States isn't playing.
