O poder parador da água no realismo ofensivo e o advento das Armas Hipersônicas

uma análise sobre o HGV Avangard

Abstract

Introduced by John J. Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, the concept of the Stopping Power of Water is a fundamental principle of what he calls Offensive Realism, a theory according to which the great powers of the International System of States seek to maximize their power in order to achieve an eventual hegemony, whether it be regional or global. The Stopping Power of Water represents an obstacle to the power projection of a given country when it employs conventional military forces. However, the argument presented here is that today's hypersonic weapons, especially hypersonic gliding vehicles, represent an apparent overcoming of such a concept. At the beginning of the nuclear age, for a brief window, the United States had a nuclear monopoly, an essential condition for global hegemony according to Offensive Realism. When the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, that strategic window began to close. This article argues that, within specific conditions of nuclear conflict, the Stopping Power of Water, as proposed by Mearsheimer, loses value. Even more, the Russian Federation today finds itself in a window of strategic advantage with its new classes of war equipment, mainly the HGV Avangard. This article analyzes the historical conditions that led to the development of these weapons as well as their potentialities. It also seeks to integrate the main principles of nuclear doctrine from the Cold War with the strategic implications that the introduction of hypersonic weapons on the battlefield brings to the political-military apparatus of the great powers.