the aircraft carrier club 73
as a considerable threat to any of Brazil’s most immediate regional com-
petitors, would have any effect on Brazil’s status, or on the credibility of
its Security Council aspirations. The Veblenian framework, on the other
hand, can provide persuasive answers to these questions. An aging carrier
can be a source of prestige because it is an almost perfect example of con-
spicuous consumption. Brazil’s desire to be recognized as a great power
can benefit from the acquisition of appropriate status symbols that signal
membership in the desired great- power class. The carrier has little to do
with military strategy and more to do with political signaling. However,
since Brazil has yet to augment the resources that can safely support such
aspirations, by making expensive military acquisitions it is risking the
long- term deleterious implications of the dreaded Gatsby effect.^18 Nev-
ertheless, more recent Brazilian defense planning calls for the establish-
ment of two fleets, each with a corresponding carrier (Wiesebron 2013 ).
At the same time, with no replacement in sight, the aging São Paulo is
expected to serve for two more decades, at the very least, taking it well
past its seventieth birthday.
Britain and France
In the years following World War II, the British navy experienced a radi-
cal reduction in size and scope of operations. Faced with a rapidly shrink-
ing procurement budget, the government adopted the 1966 defense white
paper that canceled the British carrier fleet (Kennedy 1983 a, 344 ). Naval
aviation was renewed only in the beginning of the seventies with the com-
missioning of three STOVL carriers. The British carriers were small and
limited in their capabilities. In fact, many observers do not even consider
them “true” aircraft carriers.^19 The British design sought to compensate
for the limited size and capabilities of the carrier by dividing the roles of
an aircraft carrier among many ships. In this way, some missions can be
carried out by helicopters, while others can be dealt with using the missile
power of the escorting frigates. A cheaper carrier can enable the procure-
ment of more escorts that can fulfill these roles (Slade 1994 ). The recent
decision to reverse course and procure new medium- sized CATOBAR
carriers reflects the failure of this approach.
The first noteworthy deployment of the STOVL British carrier fleet
came during the Falklands War. The carriers provided an important con-
tribution to the war effort. However, even with all three carriers taking
part in this relatively limited military confrontation, the carriers were
