Brazil: The raid, COP 30, foreign ambition vs domestic fragility

October 28, smoke rises above the rooftops, bodies lie on the pavement, helicopters fly low over Alemão and Penha neighborhoods in northern Rio de Janeiro. This was the panorama after the deadliest police operation, Operation Contenção, against the criminal organization Comando Vermelho that for a long time has controlled parts of Rio. This is the news that recently brought the world’s attention to Brazil, it not only is evidence of deep internal security concerns but also paints a worrying picture for a country that has long been trying to achieve regional leadership.

Comando Vermelho (CV) is Brazil’s oldest and most powerful criminal organization born in the 1970s inside a Rio de Janeiro prison. They started as a self-protection group for inmates and quickly transitioned from small robberies into cocaine trading during the 1980s for their income source,therefore, and not surprisingly, they created links with Colombian cartels and established strong holds in Rio’s marginalized communities. Today, they exert control in areas far beyond the favelas, the group has influence across Brazil and extends into the northern Amazon with additional presence in Bolivia, Paraguay, and even parts of French Guiana. They manage cross-border drug routes and have clashes in the tri-border region between Colombia, Brazil, and Peru.1 Despite repeated police incursions since 2020, the CV remains a national and transnational threat, challenging authority of the state.

The idea of the state losing control of parts of its territory is not just a security failure, it represents a political and geopolitical vulnerability. Brazil has tried to build its foreign policy under the approach of non-alignment, showing itself as a strong autonomous actor capable of even taking a significant role in the world stage as for instance mediator in international disputes such as in the case of Russia-Ukraine war 2 and the territorial tensions over the Esequibo region between Venezuela and Guyana 3. Yet the scenes from Rio contradict this major player image. You could start doubting a government that struggles to govern its own capital. 

The timing could also not be more inadequate for Brasilia. Earlier this year, the United States proposed that Brazil classify the Comando Vermelho and an additional criminal organization, the PCC, as terrorist organizations as part of their strategy to fight immigration and organized crime in Latin America. A proposal that Brasília refused on the one hand because Brazilian law considers a “terrorist group” as one that violently clashes with the government for religious or racial reasons. On the other hand, Brazil is  outspokenly against foreign intervention, so it is also a way of not inviting foreign interference and taking charge of its own internal security agenda. But then October 28 comes and the narrative changes, it shifts the optics. To Washington, the scale of the violence could perfectly confirm what it had been warning about: that criminality is off the government's hands and is not in full command of its territory. That perception alone could become a pretext for the U.S. to attempt to push for more American involvement through diplomatic pressure  and security “assistance,” similarly to what is happening in Venezuela.

So contradictions could be evidenced not only in the context of inner security, but also in the realm of climate policy. Brasília has been putting a lot of effort to assert its position on the world stage with a symbolic return to global climate diplomacy under Lula’s leadership by hosting the COP30 in Belém. Lula has highlighted Brazil’s responsibility to protect the Amazon and lead by example in sustainable development. However, days before the raid in Rio, his government quietly approved new oil drilling concessions at the mouth of the Amazon River basin to the oil multinational company Petrobras 4, a decision that goes against every environmental promise Brazil has made. The irony is almost poetic, as diplomats around the world prepare their plans for the climate summit, oil rigs are being licensed in the rainforest.

For Brazil, the danger lies precisely there: losing control of the story it has tried so hard to write. A nation that shows itself as a sovereign mediator cannot afford to look unstable or inconsistent. Yet in 2025, the contradictions are multiplying. 

Brazil’s ambition to be the leader in Latin America and even the wider Global South is not misplaced, it has the demographic weight, natural resources, economy and infrastructure to achieve it, but leadership requires coherence, it cannot come across as an unstable or inconsistent country, It requires a state that commands both its territory and its narrative, a government whose actions align with its ideals. Yet in 2025, the contradictions are multiplying. Brazil’s power is real, but it remains deeply fractured.

Why does this matter? 

Brazil is at a crossroads between the power it wants to project and the reality, ambition and fracture. This matters not only because Brazil is one of the biggest economies in the world but because it’s the representative of the global south in the effort of being in the boat of a new multipolar -or post western reality, as some would call- of countries that  can lead on their own terms. The aspiration risks becoming only rhetoric, mirroring instead the  negative image that already exists: nations rich in resources and ideals but that struggle to be in charge of domestic matters independently.