The National Defense Strategy (NDS) was the first defense strategy made public by the Brazilian government. Approved in 2008, the document marked a milestone in the sector, determining important changes in the stated objectives and the means - political and military - to be used to achieve them and the military means to be used to achieve them. However, the feasibility of its implementation has been widely questioned especially in academic circles. This is due both to inconsistencies in the strategy per se, and uncertainty regarding the government's capacity and/or ability and/or willingness to mobilize the resources required to adopt such the measures. This article discusses the main challenges the NDS faces. This article discusses the main points of the NDS and the main advances in its implementation between 2008 and 2011, as well as the obstacles to its implementation.
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The subject of strategic leadership has had a spectacular development in the world of business management, where much literature has been published to explain its scope, forms of operation and its relationship with strategic planning and the decision-making process. All this information, which would ensure the success of a company, has been an extremely useful reference for the field of defense and security, even though everything written is not exactly applicable to the strategic scenario in which we operate. Indeed, the specificities of the political office, of the Armed Forces and of the type of conflict this sector is involved in, make it necessary to redefine the essential aspects of strategic leadership in the field we are concerned with.
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More than two decades after Oliver North's role in the Iran-Contra affair exploded into public view as part of one of the most important political scandals in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century, the imbroglio continues to offer critical insights into contemporary debates about foreign policy mechanisms and the role of the military. North's responsibility as an individual, combined with certain institutional enablers that flourished within the Reagan Administration's conduct of foreign policy, resulted in an inexorable bifurcation between the traditional ethos of the U.S. armed forces and the foreign policy aims and practices of a conservative administration, despite their sometimes conflation in the popular mind. This paper will explore the tensions between institutional versus political conservatism, as well as those institutional practices, that facilitated North's shift away from the instincts and training of the military sphere to that of a lone-wolf activism.
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