The ghost of developmentalism

Amidst a backdrop of external pressures, informational attacks, and intense internal disputes, this article examines how the developmentalist project places Brazil back at the center of global tensions—and why this has provoked a coordinated reaction from political, economic, and technological forces opposed to its sovereignty.

The enemy's name - Communism has never been the true fear of global elites. The red flag, the hammer and sickle, the revolutionary slogans—all of this has always served more as a scarecrow than a real threat on the Latin American chessboard of the 21st century. What sends shivers down the spines in the glass-walled rooms of Washington, on the desks of Faria Lima, in the servers of Alphabet, and in the armored offices of BlackRock is not the socialist utopia. It is sovereign developmentalism. It is the idea of ​​a Brazil that stands on its own two feet, distributes wealth, reorganizes the role of the State, and establishes symmetrical relations with the world. This is what needs to be combated at all costs.

Lula is not an enemy because of ideology. It's because of effectiveness. What makes him intolerable to imperial interests is his ability to reorganize the national pact around a project that includes the people. That activates the domestic market. That repositions Brazil on the international stage. That gives prominence to the Global South. That removes the country from the position of a backyard and places it as a power with its own voice, disturbing the neocolonial structures of Western geopolitics.

Since 2003, Brazil has lived under continuous attack. This is not about democratic alternation or legitimate programmatic differences—it is a war. A hybrid and silent war, waged through economic, legal, technological, informational, and symbolic means, whose central objective is to prevent Brazil from realizing its project of becoming a sovereign nation. And on this front, Lula is the constant target because, for the Empire, he is the greatest threat to the global order based on submission.

It's no coincidence that every time Brazil attempts to grow autonomously, the system reacts. And it reacts with everything: legal warfare, sabotage of the legislature, media manipulation, algorithmic censorship disguised as neutrality, informal sanctions, absurd tariffs, diplomatic blackmail, and, when all else fails, chaos. Bolsonarism was that: chaos as a method. A Trojan horse of international capital to recolonize the country in the name of "order," "family," and "free market."

Every attempt by Brazil to get closer to China, to strengthen BRICS, to expand Mercosur, or to regulate its digital platforms, sets off alarm bells in the global financial system. With every dollar diverted from rent-seeking to public works, with every loan from the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) for national infrastructure, with every crumb of informational sovereignty recovered, panic grows in the command centers of digital financial capitalism. The country is watched, pressured, punished. Brazil cannot succeed—this is the unspoken logic that drives the world's power brokers.

That is why, in 2025, Lula continues to be persecuted. Not for real mistakes, but for intolerable successes. His re-election was not just an electoral victory: it was a geopolitical defeat for a model of domination. And that is why the war has not ceased. On the contrary: it has intensified. Today, Brazil lives under the media, legal, legislative, and technological siege of an offensive aimed at destroying its autonomy. And, at the center of this battle, is the ghost that never ceases to haunt the Empire: the next cycle of sovereign developmentalism in Latin America.

That's the enemy's name.

The first uprising – Lula 2003: sovereignty, people and national project – Lula assumed the Presidency of the Republic on January 1, 2003, carrying the hope of the people on his shoulders and the distrust of the market on his back. The former lathe operator from the Northeast, who had endured strikes, persecution, and electoral defeats, finally took office in the Planalto Palace—and, with him, the heart of Brazil began to dream again. But what was unfolding was not a revolution. It was something far more dangerous in the eyes of the elites: a national development project with social inclusion, based on political sovereignty and economic autonomy.

In the early years of his administration, Lula orchestrated a complex strategy. On one hand, he maintained certain commitments to economic orthodoxy, such as the primary surplus target and the inflation targeting regime. On the other, he mobilized the State as an active instrument of social transformation: he expanded the minimum wage, strengthened public banks, broadened credit, created the Bolsa Família program, initiated the Zero Hunger program, and invested in major infrastructure projects. The State was acting again. And it acted in a way that was coordinated with popular interests—an unforgivable crime for defenders of the status quo.

In 2005, Brazil paid off its debt to the IMF—a symbolic and strategic gesture that marked a turning point in the country's position in the world. We went from being chronic debtors to assuming the role of creditors and influencers of the international financial system. This shift was more than economic: it was geopolitical. And the Empire understood. It was the beginning of the reaction.

Domestically, Lula was revitalizing the consumer market through income distribution and formalization of labor, reducing inequalities and accelerating social inclusion. Internationally, he was attempting a South-South realignment, strengthening Mercosur, forging closer ties with Africa and Asian countries, and seeking autonomy in international relations without automatic subordination to the US or Europe. It was a new foreign policy—assertive and proactive, as Celso Amorim dubbed it—that deeply disturbed the Western powers.

The Brazilian elite, colonized and dependent, never forgave this audacity. The commercial media, which has always functioned as the ideological arm of the ruling classes, sought to undermine the government's image with selective scandals, narratives of incompetence, and a moral vigilance that was never applied to its allies. The market, in turn, oscillated between the euphoria of easy profit and the terror of a government that dared to think beyond the spreadsheet.

But what was frightening wasn't the rhetoric. It was the silent effectiveness of a model that was beginning to work. Growth was solid, inflation was under control, and social indicators were improving. Brazil, for the first time in decades, was experiencing development with inclusion. And this, for local and global elites, was unacceptable. Not because it was a failure—but precisely because it was a success.

Lula's first government proved that it was possible to combine fiscal responsibility with the expansion of social rights. It proved that the State could be efficient without surrendering to speculative capital. It proved that Brazil could grow by distributing—and not just concentrating—wealth. And this historical proof was, for the system, a political heresy.

It was there, at that moment, that the outlines of the war began to take shape. The Empire understood that it was not enough to tame the discourse: it was necessary to sabotage the project. Brazil needed to be reminded of its "place." And the instruments of domination—media, market, lawfare, cognitive manipulation—began to be organized. The first bullet had not yet been fired, but the artillery was already in position.

The enemy's name had been recognized. And the first uprising of a sovereign Brazil under Lula was now in the spotlight of history.

The war begins – 2005, the year of the rupture – The year 2005 marks a watershed moment in Brazil's recent political history. On the surface, what was seen was a political scandal—the so-called "Mensalão." But behind the theater of headlines, something much deeper was unfolding: the systematic beginning of a hybrid war against the Brazilian developmentalist project. It was then that the Empire decided that Brazil could no longer continue with impunity for its audacity. The price for sovereignty would be high.

2005 is the year in which Brazil officially refused entry into the FTAA, the continental integration project led by the US that aimed to subordinate Latin American economies to the US market. The Brazilian decision, built with leaders such as Chávez, Kirchner, and Evo Morales, definitively buried the plan for regional economic domination via asymmetrical free trade. This gesture, seemingly technical and diplomatic, was interpreted by Washington as an act of outright disobedience. And the response would come forcefully.

While Lula consolidated social policies that reduced poverty, strengthened the domestic market, and increased the country's international prestige, the Brazilian elites—ideologically and economically tutored by global power centers—organized to destroy what they could not control. The Mensalão scandal was transformed into a political attrition operation, judicialized by the media and instrumentalized as a founding narrative for the criminalization of the left and the Workers' Party (PT).

From that point on, the game would change forever. The Supreme Federal Court would become a political tool. The mainstream press would adopt the aesthetic of constant denunciation. Federal Police operations would gain media prominence. And the judiciary, previously distant from politics, would be trained and incorporated into the techniques of lawfare—the use of law as a weapon of war, to destroy reputations, and to neutralize political projects that oppose the interests of global capital.

2005 is also the year in which Brazil begins to consolidate itself as an independent global player. Lula's foreign policy takes the lead in South-South cooperation, strengthens UNASUR, advances bilateral agreements with China, India, and South Africa, and lays the foundations for a new multipolar geoeconomic project: BRICS. At the same time, Petrobras discovers the pre-salt layer, revealing one of the world's largest oil reserves under state control. Brazil was beginning to cause concern not only as a social model but also as an energy powerhouse.

It was too much. A continental country, with vast natural resources, led by a charismatic worker, strengthening its ties with China, advocating for a reformed UN, stimulating regional integration and reducing poverty—all without asking permission from the US. It couldn't go on.

This is how the war began: silent, well-articulated, cloaked in an air of democratic normalcy, but conducted with the coldness and persistence of a permanent sabotage operation. It was no longer about winning an election. It was about preventing Brazil from becoming what it could be: an autonomous actor, with a voice, with strength, with a project—an unacceptable example for the Global South.

From 2005 onwards, no Brazilian policy would be judged solely on its technical merits or social impact. Everything would be interpreted through the lens of its threat to order. The State became suspect. The people, secondary. Sovereignty, dangerous.

It was the year the national elite stopped feigning neutrality and began operating as a fifth column for transnational capital. It was the year the Empire stopped tolerating Lula—and decided, albeit not immediately, to destroy him.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

The cycle of progress – Lula 2 and Dilma 1: Brazil begins to bother the center of the world. Even under the effects of the political crisis forged from 2005 onwards, Lula's second term was a strategic reaffirmation of developmentalism. Brazil not only resisted—it advanced. The country grew, distributed income, expanded rights and, above all, projected itself internationally with a boldness that broke the sanitary cordon imposed on countries of the South. And it was this progress, more than any scandal, that sealed the sentence of permanent war against the project of national sovereignty.

Between 2007 and 2010, Brazil experienced one of the most virtuous periods in its recent economic history. GDP grew, unemployment fell to historic lows, and millions were lifted out of extreme poverty. The minimum wage began to be adjusted with real gains. Formal employment advanced. Public credit expanded. Family farming was strengthened. Public banks once again became instruments of state policy.

And in 2008, when the financial crisis brought the world down, Brazil made history: while the central countries sank into unemployment and panic, Lula said the crisis would be a "little wave"—and, the following year, the country grew by more than 7%. It wasn't a miracle. It was public policy. It was a sovereign decision. It was empirical proof that another path was possible: a path in which the State does not serve the market, but the people.

Internationally, Brazil was becoming a protagonist in a new possible order. The founding of BRICS in 2009, alongside Russia, India, and China (and later South Africa), placed the country at the center of a geopolitical articulation that directly threatened the financial hegemony of the dollar and the unilateral control of the US over global trade. With the strengthening of Mercosur, the construction of UNASUR, and the resumption of strategic relations with African and Arab countries, Brazil became the strongest link in the multipolar shift.

At the same time, Petrobras consolidated its dominance over the pre-salt reserves, now supported by a new regulatory framework that guaranteed exploration under state control and investment in education and health with oil royalties. BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) financed large-scale infrastructure. The PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) activated the national production chain. The shipbuilding industry was reborn. Local content became policy. Brazil became a symbol: a great country, with an inclusive people, an active state, strong public companies, and a sovereign foreign policy.

But there is no greater sin for the Empire than to succeed without asking for permission. Brazil was growing on its own. And more: it was inspiring other countries to do the same.

When Dilma Rousseff assumed the presidency in 2011, the project continued, with adjustments, but without surrender. Dilma maintained the three pillars of developmentalism: active state presence, income distribution, and national sovereignty. She launched the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life) program. She expanded federal universities. She established federal institutes in the interior of the country. She guaranteed 75% of pre-salt royalties for education. She invested in Pronatec (National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment). She created the Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders) program. And she silently confronted the brutal resistance of rentiers and the digital extractive elite that was beginning to infiltrate Brazil forcefully through big tech companies.

But the price was becoming more visible. The media attack intensified. Tensions with Congress worsened. The conservative agenda returned to center stage. The field of capital—financial, agricultural, digital, energy—was reorganizing to regain control of the country.

During Lula's second term and Dilma's first, Brazil experienced its greatest rise to prominence. It became a point of reference. It started to cause concern.

The system's mistake was not the excess of corruption—it was the excess of sovereignty.

The crime wasn't spending—it was investing in the people.

The heresy wasn't governing—it was doing so without asking permission from the Empire.

And then, the counter-attack would come with force.

The cycle of progress needed to be interrupted.

Not because of failures, but because of successes.

Brazil had gone too far.

The Imperial Counterattack – From Dilma to the Coup: Destabilization, Lawfare, and Surrender to Foreign Affairs Dilma Rousseff's re-election in 2014 was the last straw. Against all the forces of the system—media, market, Congress, financial speculation—the people confirmed at the polls the continuity of a project that had resisted. The victory, however narrow, was a message: the majority still believed that Brazil could be a country for everyone. And that was intolerable.

It was then that the imperial counter-attack was unleashed with brutality. What was once subtle sabotage became a full-blown offensive. With the tools of lawfare sharpened, the judicial and police apparatus was transformed into a political arm of capital. Lava Jato, disguised as an anti-corruption crusade, operated as a hybrid warfare operation aimed at destroying the credibility of the State, neutralizing national engineering, and eliminating Lula from the political game.

With logistical support from the US and cynical coverage from the corporate media, Lava Jato disrupted entire production chains, destroyed the national heavy construction industry, opened space for foreign companies in the oil sector, and imposed the dismantling of Petrobras and the local content policy. What was sold as moralization was, in fact, a policy of deindustrialization and dismantling of economic sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Congress—already co-opted by factions sold to international capital—was moving to isolate Dilma, render governability impossible, and prepare the ground for the coup. The fiscal bombshell agenda, Eduardo Cunha's collusion with the opposition, the institutional betrayal of the centrist bloc—it was all part of a meticulous sabotage plan. The impeachment farce was merely the formalization of the assault: a constitutional rupture carried out without tanks, but with magazine covers, WhatsApp dossiers, and hypocritical votes in the name of "family."

The 2016 coup was the high point of the counteroffensive. Dilma, an honest president, democratically elected, was overthrown without a crime. Lula, the most popular former president in history, was convicted without evidence. And Brazil, once again, was handed over.

Michel Temer was the lackey of capital. His government approved Constitutional Amendment 95 — the spending cap that froze public investments for 20 years, subjecting the country's future to the logic of neoliberal scarcity. He began dismantling labor laws. He weakened public banks. He accelerated privatizations. He handed over the pre-salt oil reserves. And he tried to erase any trace of the development project that had flourished between 2003 and 2014.

Lula, convicted by Sergio Moro in a sentence that would become a symbol of lawfare, was imprisoned in 2018 to prevent his election, in a move that involved the judiciary, the media, and international interests. Lula's imprisonment was not a legal episode—it was a geopolitical coup. And that is precisely what paved the way for the rise of the political anomaly that would follow.

The objective of this phase of the counter-attack was achieved: to annihilate the possibilities of a new cycle of sovereignty. And the method was exemplary: the destruction of the State from within, with judges doing the work of tanks and headlines operating as fragmentation bombs of national consciousness.

Brazil, once a project, has reverted to being a product.

And those who didn't understand this in 2016, understood it in the worst way in 2018.

Bolsonarism as a weapon of national destruction - Jair Bolsonaro was never a political project. He was an instrument. A vector. A crude but functional Trojan horse, built to fulfill a single mission: to annihilate what remained of the idea of ​​Brazil as a sovereign nation. His election in 2018 was not a spontaneous phenomenon—it was the final stage of a destabilization cycle that required an unscrupulous agent, without institutional commitment, without moral limits. And he delivered all of that, with brutal efficiency.

Bolsonarism was born from the vacuum left by the destruction of politics as an instrument of the social pact. After years of media warfare, lawfare, and systematic disinformation campaigns, the Brazilian people were poisoned with the venom of anti-politics—and the Empire knew how to capitalize on this hatred. With the support of big tech companies, intensive use of personal data, mass algorithmic manipulation, illegal WhatsApp messaging, and fake news networks operated by international think tanks, Bolsonaro was catapulted to power as the ideal puppet to finish the job started by the coup.

Once in power, his government functioned as a crusher of institutions. The destruction was not a mistake—it was a program. It was not collapse—it was a method. The Amazon was handed over to illegal mining. The budget was seized by the military and militias. Science was stifled. Education was dismantled. Diplomacy became an international joke. The pandemic was used as a laboratory for death and radicalization. And the Brazilian state was reduced to a shadow of its former self: a machine in ruins, operated by fanatics and plundered by elites.

In the field of digital and informational sovereignty, Brazil was brought to its knees. Digital platforms operated without regulation. The State outsourced its data flows. The communication infrastructure was handed over to foreign capital. National intelligence was manipulated by parallel networks linked to Trumpism. And the country became one of the world's largest laboratories for cognitive warfare techniques—with the population transformed into a target of continuous experiments in manipulation and disinformation.

Meanwhile, the true beneficiaries smiled silently. Agribusiness multiplied profits through deforestation and dollar exports. Financial capital celebrated stratospheric interest rates and the dismantling of the state. Big tech companies captured data and minds without any control. The media feigned surprise but profited from the chaos. And Congress, for the most part, continued to operate as a transmission belt for anti-national interests.

Bolsonaro was grotesque, yes. But he was also highly functional for the imperial project. A president who despised sovereignty, humiliated the country on the international stage, broke historical ties with Latin America, and subjected Brazil to the strategic interests of the US with embarrassing servility. Trump treated him like a vassal. Elon Musk used him as a spearhead. The CIA operated freely.

Bolsonarism didn't invent the destruction of Brazil. It merely executed it with brutal efficiency. It was the terminal stage of an infection that began decades ago, accelerated by the coup, and crowned with the corrosion of democracy from within.

And when Lula returned in 2023, he inherited not just a country in crisis. He inherited a country that had been sabotaged, monitored, poisoned, with the state captured, sovereignty torn apart, and a population wounded from within.

Reconstruction would necessarily be a new declaration of war.

And that is exactly what is happening in 2025.

Lula 3: The return of the nightmare for the elites. When Lula returned to the presidency in 2023, Brazil was no longer the same country it had been in 2003—or even in 2010. It was a wounded, distrustful, fragmented country, divided by cognitive bubbles, dominated by armed lobbies and a deeply captured institutional logic. The state had been hijacked by foreign interests. Common sense had been poisoned by years of hate propaganda and disinformation. Sovereignty was in ruins. And yet, the people brought Lula back.

What returned to the Planalto Palace was not just a man—it was a historical memory and a rekindled promise. But, for the system, Lula's return meant more than just an inconvenience. It was the return of the nightmare. Because, even in a scenario of ruins, even under fiscal blackmail, legislative sabotage, and media siege, the new government rekindled the spark of developmentalism. And that, for the elites of the Global North, is unacceptable.

Lula 3 is not the same Lula of 2003—nor could he be. He now governs with full awareness that he is at the center of a global hybrid war, where every gesture is tracked, every decision is attacked before it is even understood. Even so, he has repositioned Brazil. He resumed stalled projects, reactivated public banks, relaunched the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program), invested in education, culture, and innovation. He bet on reindustrialization. He has re-established closer ties with Africa, Asia, the Arab world, and, above all, China—a strategic partner in the new multipolar landscape.

It was during this administration that Brazil reactivated its sovereign presence in the BRICS, now expanded and stronger. Alongside China, it led efforts to de-dollarize global trade, began trading in local currencies, and advocated for a new global digital governance, openly confronting the monopolies of big tech companies. In international forums, Lula was once again heard, respected, and invited. The periphery of the world once again saw in Brazil a possible beacon, a concrete alternative to permanent subordination.

And that is precisely why the war intensified.

Starting in 2023, the US intensified its offensive against Brazil. Through think tanks, private foundations, diplomatic pressure, legislative lobbying, and informational offensives orchestrated by digital platforms, Brazil began to be punished for its audacity. And the episodes are piling up: open espionage under the pretext of security, disguised economic sanctions, trade blackmail, pressure on the Supreme Federal Court, encouragement of disloyal parliamentary opposition, manipulation of public opinion with generative artificial intelligence, and, more recently, the retaliatory tariffs of digital Trumpism—a direct response to Brazil's attempt to regulate platforms and protect its informational sovereignty.

The war is not symbolic. It is structural. And it is ongoing. Big tech companies — Google, Meta, X, Amazon — treat Brazil as an experimental field. For every step towards regulatory autonomy, a new retaliation. For every effort towards a sovereign internet, a disinformation campaign. For every speech by Lula about multipolarity, an attempt at international discrediting.

Even with all this, Lula governs. With courage and caution, he forges alliances, avoids traps, and confronts blackmail. He reorganizes ministries, restructures the State, and invests in science, culture, and the reconstruction of national ties. His government is a battlefield—and yet, he has managed to contain the institutional collapse promoted by Bolsonaro, curb the sell-out frenzy, and reconnect Brazil to the world.

But the siege does not loosen. And the lesson is clear: Brazil cannot exist as an autonomous project without facing war. What is at stake is not the mandate of a president. It is the right of a nation to self-determination.

And that is why Lula, today, remains the greatest strategic enemy of the global elites. Because he does not kneel. Because he represents the return of something they never managed to bury: the idea of ​​a country built from the inside out, with the people as the subject and the State as the tool.

This is called sovereign developmentalism.

And that name continues to haunt the Empire.

The all-out hybrid war: how the US and big tech are reacting today (2025) - In 2025, Brazil is under attack. An attack without tanks, without visible drones, without official troops—but with far more lethal firepower: data, algorithms, legislative lobbying, informational manipulation, and direct economic sabotage. Hybrid warfare is no longer an academic concept—it's the name of the reality lived every day by a country that dares to retake control of its own destiny.

The first clear sign came from where it was least expected: the tariffs imposed by the US on Brazil, under commercial justification, but with a clear political motivation. A movement spearheaded by the Trumpist Republican core, with support from sectors of Silicon Valley, as a direct response to Brazil's advance on the regulation of digital platforms. It was the Empire saying: "you don't have the right to protect yourselves." It was an explicit retaliation against the attempt by Lula, the Supreme Court, and democratic sectors to prevent the cognitive colonization of the country by big tech companies.

But the war is not limited to the economy. It deepens in the National Congress, where entire blocs—funded by platforms, transnational agribusiness, and international religious groups—act as transmission belts for the imperial project. Bills that prevent internet regulation, weaken data protection, criminalize social movements, undermine public education, and dismantle the state's fiscal structure are presented in series, with the support of think tanks funded by foundations from the US and Europe.

In the field of information, sabotage is constant, massive, and invisible to most. Platforms like X, Meta, and YouTube operate with opaque criteria, favoring reactionary content, silencing progressive voices, and manipulating algorithms to push political radicalization, disinformation, and the demoralization of the government. The cognitive war machine works in real time: it creates trending topics, undermines engagement, amplifies fake news, manufactures scandals, and destroys reputations.

At the same time, lawfare 2.0 operations are back in the spotlight. Fabricated accusations, selective investigations, processes strategically leaked to the press—everything reappears with a renewed guise—now aided by artificial intelligence capable of fabricating evidence, forging videos, simulating voices and texts with a legitimate appearance. The objective? To destabilize institutional credibility and, above all, to anticipate the destruction of leaders before the 2026 elections.

The struggle is not just against Bolsonaro or his cronies—they are mere pawns. The struggle is against the recolonization of the country through unconventional instruments of domination. Big tech is not just a company: it is the new civil-military arm of the Empire, operating under the rhetoric of innovation, but promoting the sabotage of sovereignties, the exploitation of data, and the manipulation of subjectivities.

Brazil, by 2025, has become the planet's main laboratory for hybrid warfare. Nothing less. Here, informational weapons, legislative capture strategies, digital lawfare models, forms of indirect economic intervention, and algorithmic censorship mechanisms are being tested. Here, the new imperialism of the 21st century is being experimented with.

And all of this has one central goal: to prevent the full return of the developmentalist project, to prevent Brazil from thinking for itself again, from producing with its own people, from speaking with its own voice.

This war will not be won with tweets, speeches, or good intentions alone. It requires strategy, organization, and unity. It requires naming the real enemies—without fear, without euphemisms.

The enemy is not just the far-right. The enemy is the system that gave birth to it, that sustains it, and that uses it as a shield to continue ruling Brazil without appearing to be in charge.

And this system is now forced to bare its claws because, despite everything, Brazil resists.

Brazil at the center of the new world geopolitics. It is no exaggeration to say: Brazil is today at the epicenter of the disputes that will shape the 21st century. Not because of weapons, but because of what it represents: a country of the Global South with resources, territory, people, culture, biodiversity, industry and, above all, a project. A country that refuses to be a colony—and, for that reason, has become a threat. A concrete threat to the global order of Western capital. Brazil is where it was never allowed to be: at the center of decisions, at the negotiating tables, in the articulations that escape Washington's control.

The expansion of BRICS was a milestone. In 2024, the bloc began to incorporate new countries—such as Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia—and, even with the temporary exclusion of Argentina for internal political reasons, the multipolar logic was consolidated. BRICS became not only a symbolic space, but a real geoeconomic force, responsible for more than 35% of global GDP, with its own bank, independent credit lines, and the most concrete proposal for the de-dollarization of the international economy.

And Brazil is there. Taking a leading role. With credibility. With a voice.

Brazilian diplomacy has resumed the role that the coup governments tried to erase: a bridge between continents, a facilitator between blocs, a defender of multilateralism, peace, and the right to sovereign development. Lula, with his rebuilt international prestige, has become a central figure in G20, UN, BRICS, and Mercosur meetings. And not by chance: he is the only leader of the wider West who speaks to all sides of the world—and is listened to.

But nothing sends shivers down the spine of the Empire more than the physical and logistical integration of the Global South without its intermediation. The proposed bi-oceanic railway, which will link Brazil to the Pacific Ocean through Peru, passing through strategic areas of agricultural and mineral production, is a silent revolution. With Chinese support and multilateral investment, this route shortens distances, breaks with dependence on Atlantic ports controlled by the US and Europe, and strengthens the logistics chain of South America.

This railway changes everything. Because it efficiently connects Brazil to Asia, strengthens Mercosur, enhances South American integration, and weakens the logistical bottlenecks imposed by subordinate trade. It's infrastructure geopolitics. It's sovereignty on rails. And, for that reason, it's treated as a strategic threat by the US. Not surprisingly, Washington think tanks and multinational lobbies have intensified campaigns to sabotage and defame the project, using everything from captured environmentalists to the Brazilian Congress as instruments of containment.

Meanwhile, Brazil is making progress on agreements with China, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. It is expanding the use of local currencies in bilateral trade. It is promoting technology fairs. It is exporting knowledge. It is resuming the debate on semiconductor technology, energy transition, digital sovereignty, and global inclusion. The country is beginning, timidly but firmly, to present itself as a 21st-century leader that does not bow to colonial logic.

And the Empire? It reacts. It reacts with tariffs, with manipulation of ratings, with legislative sabotage, with pressure from big tech companies, with attempts to isolate the country in international forums, with the creation of defamatory narratives, with the use of artificial intelligence to produce fear, distrust, and internal rupture. It reacts because it knows: a sovereign Brazil, connected to the Global South and respected on the international stage, is the beginning of the end of the imperial order based on inequality.

The world is at stake.

What's at stake is the future of nations that want to exist outside the leash.

Brazil is — whether we like it or not — a protagonist in the new global geopolitics.

And that's why the war won't stop.

Unless the people organize themselves to defeat it.

What's at stake – Sovereignty, people, project – What's at stake isn't an election. It's not a government. It's not an ideology. What's at stake is whether Brazil will exist as a nation or continue to be a disposable piece on the chessboard of empires. And that's not decided in headlines or on social media—it's decided in the direction of the national project. It's decided in the struggle over what Brazil is and whom it serves.

The ongoing hybrid war, with all its layers—judicial, economic, digital, symbolic—has a single objective: to prevent the Brazilian people from regaining control of the country. That's why they attack Lula. That's why they attack the Supreme Court. That's why they sabotage media regulation. That's why they lie about BRICS. That's why they sell the dismantling as "modernization." Because they know that if Brazil wakes up, there will be no force in the world that can contain its power.

Brazil is a threat to the global order because it has everything it needs to be sovereign. It has territory, biodiversity, an industrial base, an energy matrix, science, culture, a domestic market, and a hardworking and creative population. It has what no empire tolerates: autonomous potential. But this can only be achieved with a plan. And that plan is currently being contested.

On one side, the model of modern servitude: a country controlled by banks, big tech companies, and digital empires; where politics is held hostage by foreign think tanks, the media is subservient to financial capital, and the population is treated as a mass of algorithmic pawns. This is the Brazil they want: productive on the outside, obedient on the inside.

On the other hand, there is the project that began to be built in 2003 and that today resurfaces with force: a Brazil that decides its priorities, protects its people, regulates its information, distributes its wealth, defends its forests, invests in science, integrates with the Global South, looks China, Africa, and the Arab world in the eye—and speaks with its own voice.

It's not communism they fear. It's popular nationalism. It's an active state. It's energy sovereignty. It's industrial policy. It's emancipatory education. It's the decolonization of the imagination. It's the people understanding their historical role. It's Brazil ceasing to be a colony.

And that's why the war will continue to be brutal. They won't accept defeat without a fight. They will radicalize the lawfare. They will spread disinformation. They will buy Congress. They will pressure the judiciary. They will invest in economic sabotage. They will revive the hate machine. Because they know that 2026 could be the point of no return.

But there is one force they cannot control: popular unity. Grassroots organization. The awakening of consciousness. The collective intelligence that springs forth in the peripheries, in universities, in resistance networks, in quilombos (maroon communities), in villages, in factories, in schools, in networks of affection that survive barbarity. They have everything. But they don't have the people awakened.

And when these people wake up, no big tech company, no hedge fund, no financial think tank, no corrupt Congress can stop them.

Because a people fighting for their sovereignty doesn't ask for permission—they take back what is theirs.

This is what's at stake:

Will we forever remain a backyard, or will we finally become a country?

A nation in dispute - Brazil is up for grabs. Not just at the ballot box or within institutions. It's up for grabs in memory, language, history, the economy, geopolitics, algorithms, and the collective imagination. It's up for grabs in the capacity of a people to retake control of their destiny in the face of a global system that operates to prevent any glimmer of real sovereignty.

We are not experiencing a simple political crisis. We are living through the acute phase of a long-lasting war, fought on multiple fronts, against the possibility of Brazil existing as an autonomous project. Everything we have seen—from the 2016 coup to the fake news of 2018, from Lula's imprisonment without evidence to the retaliatory tariffs of 2025—is part of the same logic: the containment of a country that dares to want more than it has been allowed.

But something has survived it all: the idea of ​​Brazil. A Brazil that produces for its own benefit. That redistributes. That preserves without bowing down. That connects to the world with dignity. That educates its people with science, art, and awareness. That refuses to be a mere cog in the extractive machine of empires. This idea still pulsates—and it is what guides every attempt at reconstruction.

Today, July 13, 2025, the stage is set. On one side, the global elites and their local operators: big tech companies, financial funds, think tanks, colonized media, a captured Congress, an army of bots, and moralistic speeches that mask the fear of losing privileges. On the other, a people beginning to rise again, to understand the nature of the attack, to see in developmentalism not nostalgia, but a strategic tool for a possible future.

This struggle will not be decided with pretty speeches or symbolic gestures. It will be decided with organization, a battle for narratives, material resistance, and concrete projects. It demands a new pact of sovereignty—informational, economic, energy, environmental, cognitive. It demands that progressive sectors abandon the illusion of conciliation and assume, with lucidity and firmness, the responsibility of defending Brazil against its true enemies.

Lula is not just a president. He is a symbol that survived the machine that grinds up leadership. But the future cannot depend on symbols. The future needs strategy. And strategy needs clarity. Method. An organized social base. Digital trenches. Mobilized streets. Committed legislators. Courageous journalists. Firm teachers. Dissenting artists. Courageous scientists. Willing youth. A national alliance that understands that what is at stake is the right to exist.

The world is changing. The empire is in crisis. Cracks are opening up. And Brazil is at the center of it.

They are not afraid of a red past.

They are terrified of a sovereign future.

What's at stake isn't Lula's ideology. It's the country.

And this war — however long and dirty it may be — can still be won.

But it will only be won if we name the enemies, understand the field and, above all, decide to fight.

Because Brazil — this real, vast, multifaceted, wounded, powerful Brazil — can still win.

And winning now means resisting strategically.