In 2035, French marines and paratroopers storm Rio de Janeiro, while tanks and infantry invade northern Brazil. These troops are the spearhead of a United Nation military expedition determined to seize the Amazon region and turn it into an international environmental zone.
Is this the latest apocalyptic vision from the Tinfoil Hat Brigade? Has Napoleon risen from the dead?
No, this is actually a scenario that Brazil’s military is planning for.
“The Brazilian military elite views France as a strategic threat to Brazil,” said Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, which obtained a look at a Brazilian military report. “This stems from France's renewed interest in internationalizing the Amazon.”
The military study, titled “Defense Scenarios 2040,” examined several potential scenarios in what Folha de Sao Paulo called a mixture of “realistic geopolitical considerations and somewhat delusional hypotheses.” Notably, the forecast—based on interviews with 500 senior Brazilian officers—envisioned a scenario in which Southeast Asian ultranationalists, incensed by Brazil’s growing strength, unleashes the coronavirus against Rio de Janeiro in 2039.
But all these scenarios, France is the enemy. In the Amazon invasion, for example, French forces would operate from French Guiana, which shares a 500-mile border with northern Brazil.
