Between the US-UK Axis and Chinese Might

The objective of this chapter is to estimate how much – or how little – maneuverability Portugal still has presently, and in the upcoming decades, to navigate and adjust to systemic pressures. To achieve this objective, this chapter assesses three specific systemic pressures: the EU membership of Portugal, the Anglo-Portuguese and the US-Portuguese alliances, and the Chinese investment (and thus economic influence) in Portugal, listing the leverage, interests, and power of these countries and supranational organization in Portugal. The object is approached from the point of view of neoclassical geopolitics, an innovative method that joins geopolitical factors and systemic imperatives with the geopolitical agents’ perceptions and capacities. The chapter adopts a qualitative approach and a multivariate model of causation by combining individual, domestic, and international-level explanations. Apart from formulating several scenarios for Portugal in the short and long terms, one of the chapter’s main results was to concluded that, whereas both the systemic pressures of the EU membership of Portugal and the Chinese investment came with a price on Portuguese sovereignty, the Anglo-Portuguese and the US-Portuguese alliances remain as the systemic opportunities for the country, in economic, political, and security terms.