On Nov. 3, the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College published a piece penned by its Latin America Research Professor, R. Evan Ellis, labeling the Lula government a strategic opponent of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Its message was blunt: If Brazilian President Lula da Silva knows what is good for him, he will capitulate to the Trump administration’s imperial agenda of domination over the Western Hemisphere and its resources, leave the BRICS, and kick China out of Brazil. Otherwise, he suggests, “the U.S.-friendly Brazilian military” might just have to take action against him.
“The October 25 victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of Brazil’s 2026 presidential elections puts the country on a collision course with the United States and positions Lula to be the Trump administration’s principal strategic opponent in the Western Hemisphere,” Ellis pronounced. “It is a tragically ironic course for the traditionally warm, tolerant, democratic Brazilian people and the US-friendly Brazilian military, and a position likely to be undesirable and uncomfortable for Lula himself.”
Ellis’s primary assignment in recent years has been to work up operations needed in the region to prepare for the U.S. “global war” on China that he assumes is coming. .
He gives a long list of where Lula’s Brazil has been an obstacle to Trump policy. Lula called the invasion of Venezuela and the stealing of its oil “unacceptable;” he called U.S. (genocidal) “regime change” efforts in Cuba “a global disgrace;” he opposes “U.S. support for Israel’s protracted military actions [sic] in Gaza and Lebanon.” Brazil’s “integration into the BRICS forum” is another crime. Above all, Brazil’s collaborative relationship with China is deemed unacceptable (even the years-long Brazil-China earth-monitoring satellite program, CBERS, is labeled a strategic problem).
“US decisionmakers should consider the strategic implications of a Brazil fully and openly working against US policies and interests in the hemisphere and globally, while hosting PRC, Iranian, Russian, and other militaries, commercial ventures, and people-to-people initiatives in the region,” he writes.
In addition to his praise of a (claimed) “U.S.-friendly” military in Brazil, there are other elements which signal U.S. preparations for a coup. Ellis asserts that the United States has “grounds for concern” that Lula’s recent election victory was fraudulent, regurgitating the various Bolsonaro family lies on that score. And he names “profound economic and fiscal difficulties… an opposition-dominated congress and a deeply divided society” as factors which would weaken Lula in “an open conflict with the United States.”
There is a fly in Ellis’s ointment, however: the deep nationalism of the Brazilian people. Ellis cites as “evidence” that Lula’s election was fraudulent, “the statistically improbable shift in votes” towards Lula between the first and second round of votes. A fool like Ellis is incapable of understanding the power of the nationalist mobilization kicked off by Brazil’s youth!
