“The Armed Forces are genetically and structurally linked to democracy in Portugal. There are many historical cases where the Armed Forces are at the root of the breakdown of democracy and the establishment of authoritarian regimes. In Portugal, on the other hand, the Armed Forces are at the origin of April 25, 1974, which overthrew the dictatorship of Estado Novo and paved the way for the transition to democracy”, underlines Nuno Severiano Teixeira in “Democracia, Defesa e Forças Armadas”, in a contextualization text that opens Defense policy in Portugal. Co-ordinated with Helena Carreiras, the book launches today in Lisbon, at a time when Europe is raging a war unlike any other since 1945 and in Portugal we are just over a year away from the 50th anniversary of the revolution, an ephemeris conducive to various reflections.
“With the exception of a seminal book by Joaquim Aguiar, the study of defense policy as a public policy has little or no academic output in Portugal. It is a starting point, a state-of-the-art, in the various areas of defense policy that can serve as basis for broadening and deepening research into defense policy as a government policy,” explains Nuno Severiano Teixeira.
The work consists of six parts: 1. Institutional Framework of National Defense, 2. Human Resources of Defense, 3. Material Resources of Defense, 4. Missions of the Portuguese Armed Forces, 5. External Relations of Defense and 6. Society, Defense and armed forces. The book, co-ordinated by a former defense minister and current portfolio holder, is published by the National Defense Institute (IDN) and features texts from nearly three dozen specialists, mostly academics, but also several general officers.
The scope of the themes can be seen in some examples of texts: when General Vítor Rodrigues Viana, who was director of the IDN, addresses “The Strategic Concepts of Portuguese Democracy”, António Ideias Cardoso and Cláudio Costa Reis write about “The Provision of Military Services : the road from conscription to professionalization”, explains António José Telo on “Military technology and society – the past in Portugal”, General Carlos Branco, former spokesman for the NATO force in Afghanistan, explains how “The participation of the Portuguese armed forces in peace support operations”, Nuno Lemos Pires, brigadier general who commanded the EU training force in Mozambique, describes the “missions in support of the development and welfare of the population”, Carlos Gaspar gives the status of the essential relationship ” Portugal and NATO” and António Paulo Duarte and Maria Francisca Saraiva analyze “Education for civic rship and national defense as public policy”.
When asked about the curiosity of one of the book’s coordinators who is the current Defense portfolio holder, Nuno Severiano Teixeira replies: “it’s an old idea of two academics who have in common that they are both interested in defense. An idea that takes two to three took years to become a reality and that when the project came about Helena Carreiras had no thought of becoming a minister and I had already forgotten that I had been one [risos].”
Nuno Severiano Teixeira, professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, was not only Minister of Defense, but also Minister of Internal Administration and Director of the IDN. He has published an enormous amount of work on military themes, such as New Military History of Portugal (co-directed by M. Themudo Barata), The military and democracy It is The Portuguese at War: From the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (still no Portuguese edition). He also chairs the Strategic Defense Concept Review Board. Helena Carreiras, a professor at ISCTE, was director of the IDN and since last year defense minister, the first woman in the position in Portugal. Among the books he published is Women in the Portuguese Armed Forces.
The launch of the defense policy in Portugal will take place in the IDN auditorium at 6 pm and the presence of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is expected.
Defense policy in Portugal
Nuno Severiano Teixeira and Helena Carreiras
IDN
526 pages
Source: DN
