What's left for South America would be its aggregation -- as marginal players, part of the US-driven Pacific Alliance -- to those NATO on trade deals, the TPP and TTIP. The "pivot to Asia" -- of which TPP is the trade arm -- is the Obama doctrine's push for containment of China, not only in Asia but also across Asia-Pacific. Thus it's natural that China (Brazil's number one trade partner) should also be contained in the hegemon's backyard, South America.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and beyond
It's never enough to stress the geo-economic importance of South America. The only way South America can be fully integrated to the multipolar world is by opening up to the Pacific, boosting its strategic connection with Asia, especially China. That's where the Chinese push to invest in a massive high-speed rail project uniting the Brazilian Atlantic coast with Peru in the Pacific fits in. That's South American interconnectivity in a nutshell. If Brazil is politically annulled, none of this will ever happen.
South America is now arguably the prime geopolitical space where Exceptionalistan is laying the bases to restore its unrivalled hegemony -- as part of a multi-dimensional, geo-finance war against the BRICS bent on perpetuating the unipolar world.
All previous moves have lead to this geostrategy of imploding the BRICS and reducing South America to an appendix of North America.
Wikileaks revealed how the NSA spied on Petrobras. In 2008 Brazil came up with its own National Defense Strategy, focused on two key areas; the South Atlantic and the Amazon. This did not sit well with SOUTHCOM. Unasur should have developed it to a continental level, but they didn't.
Lula decided to award to Petrobras the prime exploitation of the pre-salt deposits -- the largest oil discovery of the 21st century. Dilma's administration gave a firm push to the BRICS's New Development Bank (based on the Brazilian BNDES) and also decided to accept Iranian payments bypassing the US dollar. Anyone involved in South-South trade bypassing the US dollar enters a kill list.
So the die is cast. We will know for sure by the time there's a new US President -- and arguably a new, unelected Brazilian President -- in early 2017. The geostrategic game though remains the same; Brazil must fall so BRICS-led integration must fall, and Exceptionalistan may concentrate all its firepower in an all-out confrontation against Russia-China.
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