Security & Strategic Review - May 2013 (ISSN 1741-4202)

The government of President Dilma Rousseff has decided to make its huge combined military-police border operations a ‘constant’, instead of specific actions with particular objectives. This is already raising eyebrows as it appears to give the military a permanent policing role, although the defence establishment justifies it as part of the military’s constitutional mission of protecting the country’s 16,886 kilometres of borders with 10 neighbours.