If another global war breaks out, Portugal will be a participant in the defense of western civilization against communism. However, as one of the smaller nations of Western Europe, Portugal has neither the size nor the military potential of its Iberian neighbor, Spain. Therefore, because of the popular tendency to dismiss smaller nations from global-scale thinking, some persons are nonplussed to learn that western-bloc military experts have labelled Portugal as a useful member of the North Atlantic Defense Pact.
Portugal’s military significance cannot be measured by either its manpower or by its production-potential, but by its geography. Napoleon once described Lisbon as the key to the Mediterranean.1 Contemporary military thinking in the United States, being uneasy over Spain’s exclusion from the Atlantic Pact, is said to regard Portugal as a possible emergency bridgehead for American military power on the European continent. Portugal happens to be closely bound to Spain in various ways and Spain, although still in limited diplomatic favor, is certain to be a combatant if and when the catastrophe of a third world war occurs. Western defense planners also know that Portugal brings her strategically-placed Atlantic island groups, namely the Azores and Madeira, into the Atlantic Pact. Finally, they are aware that the Portuguese colonial empire, located in Asia and Africa, is the third largest in the world today. When we further recall that one of the main purposes of the Atlantic Pact is mutual use of bases by its members, Portugal’s relationship to western defense planning can be more clearly understood.
If we are to concede, thus, that one of the “small fry” among our allies merits serious consideration, it would follow that Portugal’s elements of strength and of weakness can interest everyone concerned with the success of American foreign policy in this complicated era. Since it is also true that Portugal will be understood best by persons who are aware that its culture, language, and national psychology are distinct from those of Spain, such aspects of Portuguese background will be briefly regarded here.
Occupying the western one-sixth of the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal has a population of 8,500,000. A country almost crowded off the edge of a continent, geography has made Portugal’s traditional frontier the sea. It has, therefore, produced some of history’s prominent navigators and discoverers; to this day, Portuguese fishermen cross the Atlantic every year to fish in the icy waters off Labrador and Greenland. The Portuguese capital of Lisbon, with its mosaic sidewalks, splendid harbor, and its nearby resorts of Cascais and Estoril, happens to be one of the most cosmopolitan capital cities of Europe, and also the closest in miles to the United States. Visitors to Portugal usually praise the country’s natural charm—its pine and chestnut forests, its architecture, its cleanliness and color—but they never praise the poverty that has affected many in its lower classes. In past years thousands of immigrants, mostly drawn from the hard-working peasantry of northern Portugal and the Atlantic islands, have had to go to Brazil, to Massachusetts, or to the Portuguese colonial empire to earn a living. Gayety is almost entirely foreign to Portugal, a land where even the bullfights are somber spectacles compared to those of Spain. The spoken Portuguese language is unexpectedly different from Spanish, as it possesses many nasal and difficult sounds.
Portugal is administered by a singular form of government; since this government was authoritarian, it is not too warmly regarded in democratic nations. It is a corporative state headed by a former economics professor, Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who has an international reputation as an economics wizard. Dr. Salazar’s regime maintains diplomatic relations with every nation in the world except Soviet Russia.
Portuguese nationality originated in Galicia, Spain’s tiny northwestern province. It was in Galicia, at any rate, that the Portuguese language developed from a dialect of provincial Latin and from Galicia that the Christian reconquest of what is today Portugal was undertaken against the Moors. Galicians and North Portuguese are still similar as people—in modern Brazilian slang Portuguese immigrants are referred to as galegos, meaning Galicians. Since their part of the Iberian Peninsula is a hilly zone that was settled by Celts and Suevi as well as by Latin peoples, they share, besides a fondness for the bagpipe, the usual faults and virtues of mountaineers.
With the aid of English crusaders, Portugal was liberated from the Moors by the middle of the 13th century. England, incidentally, whose use of naval power has always been characterized by an intelligent use of strategic world bases, has maintained a military alliance with Portugal dating from 1384 (a few historians attribute Brazil’s present orientation toward the United States to the long English influence on Portugal).2
Portugal’s period of discovery and overseas conquest took place in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the entire country had less than one million people. Employing a blend of sea and land power wherein no problems were presented by “unification,” the Portuguese of that era built up a commercial empire that extended from Lisbon to Canton. The empire was administered inefficiently and collapsed almost immediately, however, and a long period of decay ensued. This period of decay endured until recent times, owing to certain phenomena for which the nation itself was to blame. A republic was established in 1910 but, even then, Portugal’s downward spiral continued, as the country was in no way prepared for a sensible use of democracy. In 1928 a group of Portuguese army generals, angry over the fact that Portugal had had fifty-two governments in its first sixteen years as a republic but unable themselves to solve the country’s bewildering economic tangle, asked the aforementioned Professor Salazar to leave his Chair of Economics at the ancient University of Coimbra and accept the position of Finance Minister. After some reluctance, Salazar accepted the post. What he has done in Portugal since 1928 might be described as a controversial subject.
In the opinion of Salazar’s adherents, Portugal is important to the world today not only as a military outpost against Communism, but as a testing field and as a test case.3 It is their claim that Salazar has created a unique social and spiritual order in contemporary Portugal, one that will prove to be an antidote to materialistic and atheistic Soviet communism. Salazar’s political philosophy is based on a logical system in which the spiritual side of man is considered to be as important as the material. Thus, his administration has manifested itself not only in public works, but in the moral realm as well. The family has been made the basis of society. In housing, for example, Salazar’s regime has built small, family homes and not apartment houses. Portugal has been organized on a corporative basis whereby the country’s different economic elements receive proportionate representation in the government, and in which all national and social components are supposedly united rather than in conflict with one another. In spite of the corporative nature of his regime, and the absence of some aspects of democracy in contemporary Portugal, salazaristas claim that his government is not totalitarian.
Opponents of the Salazar regime, however, label it as reactionary and paternalistic, and claim that it has signally failed to uplift Portugal’s poorer classes. They also assert that Salazar has circumvented truly democratic elections since 1928. While admitting that Portugal has improved infinitely since that time, considering the handicaps imposed on the nation by history and circumstances, they believe that full national development has not occurred because private initiative has been throttled.
Salazar, the man, is an unassuming premier who avoids crowds. He lives a secluded life and, almost cynically, disclaims ever having “flattered men or the masses.” His habits are austere enough to be suggestive of a modern Savanarola:
“I owe to Providence the grace of poverty; very little binds me to the wheel of fortune.”
Portugal is now a member of the Atlantic Pact, whatever the light in which one chooses to view its government, and it also happens that one of the first reforms effected by Salazar was the reorganization and re-arming of the Portuguese armed forces. Consequently, the fact that Portugal has promised to take its full share of military responsibility under the Atlantic Pact does have certain practical significance today.
The Portuguese armed forces will never frighten an enemy by their numbers alone, as General Eisenhower discovered when he visited Portugal, but they are well-trained and up-to-date in almost every respect except heavy equipment. Including its auxiliary forces, which are fairly well-trained, the Portuguese Army numbers about 125,000 men. It is based in both metropolitan Portugal and the overseas territories, and is being slowly expanded so as to meet Portugal’s responsibilities under the Atlantic Pact. Portugal has always had compulsory military training, thus full mobilization could possibly swell the country’s ground forces to 700,000 men. Portugal has no heavy steel industry as has Spain, but it manufactures most of its military equipment, which is British in type. Portugal’s army was for long under French influence, which is evident today in its training methods and in its powder blue uniforms. The most foreseeable use of the Portuguese ground forces, in event of war, would be in integration with the large army of Spain in defense of the Iberian Peninsula, and in defense of adjoining island bases.
Like many another nation, Portugal has had its military ups and downs. Its successful military period was, of course, the first half of the 16th Century but, in more recent years, it has occasionally been evidenced that Lusitanian arms have not lost all of their former luster. One such example occurred in the African colonial fighting of the late 19th century when a Zulu chieftain, Gugunyama, had harassed the military forces of several different colonial powers for three years. Finally, one Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, by a bold stroke, marched into Gugunyama’s camp with but a handful of Portuguese soldiers and took him prisoner. During World War I Portugal managed to scrape up two expeditionary forces of 40,000 men each, one of which was dispatched to the Western Front and one to Africa. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 a Portuguese expeditionary force aided the “Nationalist” (Franco) side against the “Loyalists.”
Although traditionally the country’s best arm, the Portuguese Navy is very small today. Its most modern units are a dozen destroyers and submarines, six naval transports, two fleet oilers, eight gunboats, and various types of coastal patrol craft. However, it has had a separate naval air arm since 1917 (in 1925 two Portuguese naval aviators, Admiral Sacadura Cabral and Admiral Gago Coutinho, made the first flight across the South Atlantic). The Portuguese Air Force is being expanded, but still possesses less than one hundred combat airplanes.
Portugal’s political and military relationship with Spain is important in that, even though Spain has been excluded from security and mutual defense pacts involving Western Europe, the two nations are allied through a treaty of friendship and nonaggression. Portugal considers it an incongruity that Spain should not be included in the common defense of Western Europe against communism, American foreign policy, however, which has global considerations to weigh, long felt that more harm than good could come from an alliance with Spain.
The Spanish Navy held maneuvers in the Atlantic during October, 1950, at which Portuguese observers were said to be present,4 and there can be little doubt that the land and sea bases of the Iberian powers will be valuable in the next war. Spanish Chief of State General Francîsco Franco has held several conferences with Salazar in the last twelve months in connection with Iberian defense plans, and he was recently made a general of the Portuguese Army.
Portugal’s colonial empire consists of 934,000 square miles of territory, most of it in Africa. The Azores Islands and the rugged island of Madeira, both in the North Atlantic, are considered an integral part of metropolitan Portugal, but the volcanic Cape Verde Islands are not. They are located even closer to the bulge of Brazil than is French Dakar, and possess usable harbors and air strips.
The two vast territories of Angola and Moçambique are Portugal’s most valuable possessions. Angola is much larger than Texas and now has some 70,000 European settlers, most of whom live on its central uplands. Here, where the altitude averages 5,000 feet, in a climate where apples and wheat thrive, a new Lusitanian nation is being built. Economists and sociologists predict the growth of a semi-industrial and temperate zone civilization which, seated on the Angola plateau, will be served by the raw materials of the tropical zones below it. The railroad that serves the uranium mines of the Belgian Congo, incidentally, passes through northern Angola.
The East African colony of Moçambique, also larger than Texas, has a less favorable climate than Angola but it is a potential colonial treasure-house whose development might be speeded by the Marshall Plan funds which Portugal has lately begun to receive. Its capital, Lourenço Marques, has the best harbor in southeast Africa and is the terminus for the produce of the Rand mines of the Transvaal. Lourenço Marques has a large and growing Portuguese population, and the veldt behind it is a cattle raising area. Moçambique is lightly garrisoned by white and colonial troops, as is Angola, while its naval defence consists of coastal patrol craft and river gunboats.
Angola and Moçambique face one of the modern world’s basic sociological problems— the aspirations of colored peoples to human values such as dignity of treatment and equality of opportunity. A pressing racial problem exists in Moçambique’s close neighbor, the young and vigorous Union of South Africa, which recently enacted a stringent system of segregation called Apartheid against its Negro majority. Blacks and whites are partially separated in Angola and Moçambique, but they share identical legal rights. Portuguese colonization methods are usually successful in developing the loyalty of overseas peoples—whether they are black, brown, or yellow—toward the distant mother land.
The rising nationalism of the newly independent Asian peoples has placed Portugal’s holdings in Asia under considerable pressure. Both India and the Indonesian Republic have indicated a desire to annex adjacent Portuguese territory, which has created a ticklish diplomatic situation. This problem is further complicated by communism which, with the expansionist force of a social revolution, seeks to engulf Asia.
Portugal’s three little coastal holdings in India, the most important of which is the territory of Goa, are collectively considered the “State of India” by the Portuguese. As such they are regarded as an integral part of metropolitan Portugal, as are the Azores and Madeira. At a meeting of the Indian National Congress at Jeipur, however, a motion was passed alleging that the existence of foreign concessions within the territory of Hindustan was contrary to the conception of a free and united India. Portuguese eyebrows were lifted over the reference to a “unified” India, as they pointed out that a separate Moslem state called Pakistan has already been set up, and that there are some 220 languages and 3,000 castes, the latter including forty million “untouchables,” or pariahs, in India. Other sample Portuguese arguments are that their “State of India” has had a charter of privileges since 1526; that it is distinct in its way of life from the rest of the Indian Peninsula; and that the Goanese, many of whom have emigrated to other parts of the Portuguese Empire, have the same rights and privileges as any other Portuguese.
A curious aspect of the Portuguese-Indian controversy is that it brings into contact and conflict the personal policies of Salazar and India’s Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru—two quite different personalities. Nehru is sometimes regarded as spokesman for the democratic nations of Asia, and has long labored for advancement of the Asian masses. In the midst of a cold war between the United States and Russia, Nehru has also sought to adopt a neutral “Third Position” for his important country. Salazar is a full-fledged military ally of the United States against world Communism but, on the moral plane, alleges that certain aspects of western capitalism need reform.
Portugal has possessed the island city of Macau, in China, for four hundred years. It was once notorious as a gambling and piracy center. As a gesture of respect toward Portugal’s colonial policies, Chiang Kai-shek at one time indicated that China had no aspirations toward the recovery of Macau. The armed forces of a hostile Communist China now surround Macau, however, and Portugal maintains a garrison of 5,000 combat troops there. Much of the volcanic island of Timor, near Australia, is also under the Portuguese flag. Its future, like that of all other Portuguese enclaves in Asia, cannot be ascertained at present.
Examination of a small and secondary power like Portugal at a time of world crisis such as the present, might appear as time ill-spent to some persons. There are also liberals who regard Salazar as an intellectual Mussolini, or as a conservative born in the wrong age: history will best be able to evaluate that contention, it seems. However, in a world whose crisis is even more moral in nature than it is military, we should be familiar with the points of view held in all camps, including that of the enemy. There is every reason, therefore, to be acquainted with the view held by admirers of one of our little- known allies:
“Now that the modern age which she helped to usher in draws to its close in bloody confusion, Portugal, small, weak, forgotten by the world, may be the first nation to have reached the threshold of Post-Modernity and her claim to respectful consideration will be ignored or scorned only by those who hold that right is where the big battalions are.”5
1. Eugene Bagger, “Portugal—Anti-Totalitarian Out- Post,” The Catholic World (December, 1946), p. 4.
2. Hispanic American Report (Special Number, Stanford Conference on Brazil, May 28-30,1950), p. 6.
3. Bagger, op. cit., p. 5.
4. A certain amount of conjecture was caused in diplomatic circles by the fact that Captain Adolph Oswald, naval attaché of the United States Embassy in Madrid, was the only non-Iberian attaché present at the Spanish maneuvers; some observers are “puzzled” over the interest which the U. S. Navy has been showing in the Iberian Peninsula.
5. Bagger, op. cit., p. 19.