Brazil’s Sovereignty Is on the Ballot

Bolsonaro Win Could Bring U.S. Military to Brazil

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Argument: Brazil’s Sovereignty Is on the Ballot

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

Brazil’s Sovereignty Is on the Ballot

A far-right win in the country’s presidential election would open the door to U.S. military activity on Brazilian soil.

By **Alexander Main**, the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, and **Guillaume Long**, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington and a former foreign minister of Ecuador.

!Bolsonaro and Lula, both men wearing suits, stand beside each other, both with their hands pressed in a similar prayer position. Bolsonaro wears a suit and no tie and looms over Lula, who is shorter and wears a tie with his suit.

*Bolsonaro and Lula, both men wearing suits, stand beside each other, both with their hands pressed in a similar prayer position. Bolsonaro wears a suit and no tie and looms over Lula, who is shorter and wears a tie with his suit.*

Brazilian presidential candidates Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speak during a debate in São Paulo on Oct. 18. Nelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images

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October 22, 2026, 7:00 AM

At the time of writing, prediction markets favor Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro to win Brazil’s Oct. 25 presidential runoff. But only a few months ago, his candidacy appeared to be coming off the rails. In mid-May, the far-right senator became embroiled in a major corruption scandal following the publication of leaked messages that showed he had asked for roughly $27 million from a now-jailed former banker at the center of the biggest banking fraud in Brazilian history.

The funds—around $12 million of which were transferred to a Texas account linked to the candidate’s brother Eduardo—were purportedly to help finance a hagiographic biopic about their father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who remains under house arrest for plotting a coup to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election. Soon after the scandal broke, Flávio’s poll numbers began to plummet. He urgently needed to change the subject.

At the time of writing, prediction markets favor Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro to win Brazil’s Oct. 25 presidential runoff. But only a few months ago, his candidacy appeared to be coming off the rails. In mid-May, the far-right senator became embroiled in a major corruption scandal following the publication of leaked messages that showed he had asked for roughly $27 million from a now-jailed former banker at the center of the biggest banking fraud in Brazilian history.

The funds—around $12 million of which were transferred to a Texas account linked to the candidate’s brother Eduardo—were purportedly to help finance a hagiographic biopic about their father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who remains under house arrest for plotting a coup to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election. Soon after the scandal broke, Flávio’s poll numbers began to plummet. He urgently needed to change the subject.

The following week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to the rescue. On May 26, Trump received Flávio in the Oval Office for an unannounced photo-op. He told reporters that he had asked Trump to label Brazil’s biggest gangs as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Rubio granted the designation two days later. Flávio was able to project political strength and shift the conversation from corruption to insecurity; his candidacy was once again secure.

The FTO classifications are yet another example of the Trump administration interfering in Brazilian politics, coming on top of politically motivated tariffs on Brazilian exports (which Eduardo lobbied for) and sanctions on the Supreme Court justice who prosecuted Jair Bolsonaro. They are not dissimilar to the administration’s aggressive efforts to influence recent elections in Argentina, Colombia, and Honduras.

Beyond their symbolic impact in an election year, it’s worth considering what the U.S. FTO designations could mean for Brazil’s sovereignty and strategic autonomy—especially if Flávio wins on Sunday. Brazilians have reason to fear that their country could become engulfed in Trump’s expanding war on what he calls “narco-terrorism.”

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Waging war on regional drug trafficking organizations was a prominent campaign theme for Trump. In January 2023, he announced that he would “take down the cartels just as we took down ISIS,” ostensibly to combat the fentanyl epidemic in the United States.

Within weeks of his 2025 inauguration, the president began to make good on his promises, designating several Latin American criminal organizations as FTOs—including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels and gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. It was the first time that any U.S. administration had applied this classification to drug-trafficking organizations with no apparent political agenda.

In August of that year, Rubio declared that cartels are “armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations,” placing them in the same national-security framework as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State.

Starting in September 2025, this doctrinal shift servedas justification for a series of unprecedented—and seemingly unlimited—lethal military actions in the Caribbean, Central America, and eastern Pacific. In a campaign later dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” U.S. military vessels have struck dozens of boats allegedly controlled by drug-trafficking FTOs, killing their o