After being elected president, Lula created transition working groups in almost all ministries except Defense.
Despite the fact that the number of academics in the area grew and was consolidated with the National Defense Strategy formulated by the Lula Government in 2008, the president-elect preferred not to point out changes in the military establishment and did not consider speaking with one of his legacies. the defense academic community.
He chose an old acquaintance, José Múcio, an experienced right-wing politician, to head the Defense Ministry.
Pragmatic, President Lula chose to promote the new commanders of the three armed forces based on seniority, but even so he received protests from those who were leaving power.
The former commander of the Navy, Admiral Almir Garnier dos Santos, refused to participate in the ceremony.
The crisis prior to the inauguration led to General Julio César Arruda, the new commander of the Army, taking office before Lula's inauguration.
Never in the recent history of Brazilian democracy had a military commander refused to participate in the ceremony for the transfer of the highest position of the force.
Garnier had been responsible for the impromptu military parade in August 2021, when Marine vehicles were used as pressure for Congress to approve an old Bolsonaro agenda, the return of the printed voting system.
In the military regulations, the salute is made to the constituted power.
In a professional military, this is an impersonal procedure.
Bolsonarismo has distorted the military establishment, giving honor to those who defend the politician Bolsonaro at the expense of institutional, republican and democratic canons.
One of the possibilities of charismatic leadership, Max Weber reminds us, is the constant tension with the rational legal order.
Bolsonarismo has stimulated a reactive militarism.
It has inherited fierce anti-communism from previous generations, just as it has adapted to the method of spreading false news on social media.
Like a kind of new fascism, it clings to truths never known and to the exaltation of myth.
Bolsonaro's militarism is autophagic and, like all militarism, it goes beyond the barracks to society while eroding military professionalism.
It devours its moderate supporters and everything that is designated as opposition.
During the elections, some of the generals in the high command of the Army who were inclined to assume the highest position in Lula's government, were called watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) by Bolsonaro's militancy, an old expression for refer to the left officers.
More recently, when the Bolsonaro campers realized that the high command respected the electoral result, a barrage of curses was written on social media: the Army and the Armed Forces became the glass ceiling of Bolsonaro hatred, and began to be called with the hashtag
Frouxas Armadas
(Armed Faints).
Despite the criticism, many of these campers remained in front of the barracks.
For the first time since the return to democracy, the military commanders interpreted at their whim the movement that occupied the walls of the barracks and that called for military intervention, a euphemism for a coup d'état, as a democratic demonstration.
The collusion of the commanders was related to the profile of the protesters: among them, relatives of soldiers who supported Bolsonaro.
The bomb installed by Bolsonaro can only be deactivated by the Lula government if there is a conviction of the obvious: professionalism must protect the institution and its members.
Bolsonaro's adventure has led to wear and tear on the military and may lead to the fragmentation of the forces.
The events of Sunday showed its degree of destruction.
There are certain aspects that the president could take into account.
Within the legalistic general officer mindset, serving in the high command is the successful outcome of a three-decade career in which honor is based on subservience to constituted powers and the ability to contribute to the institution.
The idea of honor and sacrifice fits with the defense of the institutions, of democracy, of the State, as defined in the oath that the applicant takes when becoming an officer.
It will be up to Lula and his Defense Minister, José Múcio, to reorganize the ministry with trained civilians, elect officers with a legalistic profile, not only for the high command, but also for the strategic commands of each of the forces.
If the seniority criterion was used to choose the force commanders,
If there is no reaction from the new government formed with the support of the legal officers, the barracks will be used as a locus to maintain a tactic of political attrition of the government.
For the Bolsonaristas, it will be an asset;
for democracy, the most crushing defeat, a kind of Behemoth, the biblical monster that fuels the civil war, immortalized by Thomas Hobbes.
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