Description
This article examines how postcolonial armed forces experience and respond to international status anxiety. Building on debates on status dissatisfaction, stigma, and ontological insecurity in International Relations, it conceptualizes postcolonial status anxiety as a condition rooted in the ambiguity of postcolonial subjects who internalize hierarchies forged by colonial domination. Different components of the postcolonial state are affected in distinct ways and respond differently to this condition. The paper focuses on the armed forces, whose institutional identity is uniquely tied to the state’s international standing, while their very nature constrains the range of possible responses. Through an analysis of the Brazilian Army’s intellectual production from the early to late twentieth century, the article shows that postcolonial status anxiety is expressed in tensions between autonomy and imitation, and in competing claims about the military as both instrument and definer of the national community. Furthermore, the military's dominant responses to status dissatisfaction are emulation and transference. The study contributes to the growing literature on international status by showing how global hierarchies shape domestic politics and institutional identities in postcolonial contexts.
