Will Brazil follow India's Rafale bet?

In a country where defence policy has traditionally not been a key aspect of overall foreign policy, seeing a former powerful Foreign Minister assume the Ministry of Defence is certain to raise some eyebrows.

And so it happened when, in August 2011, President Dilma Rousseff chose Celso Amorim, the architect of Brazil's foreign policy under the Lula administration, to replace Nelson Jobim after the latter had openly questioned the capacity of several of his fellow cabinet members.

While Jobim was generally respected by the generals, several leading members of the armed forces voiced their concern about Amorim, who conservatives often accuse of being an anti-American ideologue.

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