Most recent published article:
Lula's Foreign Policy 3 and the Options Open to Brazilian Diplomacy
Revista CEBRI online, July 30, 2026
The prospects for Lula's third administration foreign policy appeared especially favorable in the immediate aftermath of the October 2022 elections: the experienced Brazilian president during the eight years of his first two terms (2003-2010), a major sponsor of his successor's victory in 2010 and 2014, and the likely winner of the 2018 elections–were it not for a political "veto" imposed by the high command of the Armed Forces, and subsequently by the Supreme Federal Court–was received by the national and international press as the "restorer" of a diplomacy deformed and tainted by the followers of anti-globalism inspired by the lunatic theories of the far-right, disseminated during Trump's presidency (2017-2020) and absorbed by the erratic governance that took over the country between 2019 and 2022. Even before taking office, Lula was enthusiastically received at a COP 27 meeting (Cairo, December 2022) and conveyed to everyone his commitment to a Brazilian policy decidedly dedicated to the energy transition, the protection of the Amazon, and other goals established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which had been deliberately rejected during Jair Bolsonaro's government.
The favorable forecasts for the return of the “active and assertive diplomacy” of his first two terms were further highlighted when, in the first months of 2023, Lula decided to invite his South American colleagues to two meetings in Brazil: the first was announced almost immediately after his inauguration, aimed at reviving or restructuring UNASUR, created under the auspices of Brazil and integrated by its continental neighbors, despite certain Chavista manipulations (such as removing a possible secretariat in Rio de Janeiro, as proposed by Celso Amorim in 2004, in what was still the South American Community of Nations, and financing, with Venezuelan petrodollars, the construction of a beautiful building in the capital of Ecuador, also Bolivarian, under Rafael Correa). Even before receiving the heads of state or government in Brasília, Lula hosted, in an informal State visit, President Maduro, Chávez's successor, which caused some discomfort among other guests. The meeting did not produce the expected results; instead, the decision was made to refer the "rebirth" of UNASUR to a working group composed of foreign ministers, who were supposed to produce a report within six months. That report never materialized.
The second meeting of the member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), at the beginning of the second semester, was intended to promote potentially contradictory objectives: fulfilling multilateral commitments to safeguard the Amazon's natural resources and its biological diversity, while also being consistent with the energy transition to renewable sources, even with the potential for immediately available wealth in old fossil resources (which awaited exploration by Brazil itself near the mouth of the Amazon). The meeting ended without any coherent agreement between advocates of a preserved Amazon and pragmatic supporters of oil exploration, resulting in the same failure as the first meeting.
Immediately following this, the Hamas attack on Israeli sites near the Gaza Strip in October 2023 triggered the largest and most serious conflict between supporters of the Palestinian cause–including Iran, via Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen–and the Israeli Defense Forces, surpassing virtually all confrontations since the wars of the 1960s and 1970s or the waves of various intifadas that followed. Lula sided with the Palestinian cause, as he had done since 2010–by recognizing the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign state and establishing a Brazilian representation in Ramallah–which generated a clash with the Netanyahu government, as Lula spoke impromptu about "holocaust" and "genocide." Brazil was left without representation in Tel Aviv, and bilateral diplomatic relations have been effectively severed since then. A new confrontation, between Israel and the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran, emerged in the immediate aftermath of the war in the Gaza Strip, amplified by Iranian bombings against Israel, followed by devastating attacks against Iran and its political leadership. Lula, for various political reasons–among them the inclusion of Iran in the BRICS+ bloc–did not hide his political stance, which, obviously, created new friction with the second Donald Trump administration, which won the November 2024 elections, before which Lula had declared his support for the Democratic candidate.
The year 2025 saw Trump II expand the dismantling of the multilateral trading system, beginning with a tariff offensive directed against virtually all US trading partners, first in April, in a graduated "architecture" based on bilateral deficits–which left Brazil with a base tariff of 10%–but which was subsequently aggravated by new abusive surcharges, as those affected were reluctant to comply with the unilateral impositions of the American president. In the case of Brazil, the commercial offensive quickly transformed into a political blitzkrieg–driven by the Bolsonaro family–in the middle of the year, when Trump sent a personal letter to Lula demanding the dismissal of the case and the conviction of the coup plotters responsible for the January 2023 attacks on Brazil's three federal branches (very similar to the January 2021 trumpist attacks against the Capitol), while simultaneously imposing various political sanctions on Brazilian authorities, including the application of the Magnitsky Act against the Supreme Court judge responsible for the conviction of former President Bolsonaro. The tariff surcharges reached an unbelievable 50% ad valorem, effectively making new trade flows impossible.
The new front of political and commercial warfare was partially averted by the actions of businesspeople from both countries involved in bilateral trade, and by the opportunity created by the seemingly fortuitous meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly debates in September 2025. A second bilateral meeting, held during an ASEAN summit in Malaysia in October, helped ease the potential conflict. Still, a new reality with greater geopolitical impact emerged with the publication of the US national security strategy announced by the Trump administration in November, with a special focus on Latin America. Its proponents mistakenly equated it with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, when it represented nothing more than a clumsy repetition of the Roosevelt Corollary of 1903.
Its practical effects were immediately translated into completely illegal attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, supposedly belonging to drug traffickers, who would answer to an imaginary Cartel de los Soles, whose leader would be none other than the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro himself, who was immediately kidnapped by American forces in Caracas (January 2026). Lula–who had already broken with the Chavista dictator following the fraudulent elections of mid-2024–proclaimed the obvious opposition of Brazilian diplomacy to this unusual gesture in inter-American relations since similar interventions by the Reagan administration in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s. Subsequently, Israeli and US forces launched devastating attacks against Iran, aiming to overthrow the Islamist theocratic government, opening a new war front with no prospect of a ceasefire or agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the focus of a new oil crisis as impactful as the two shocks of the 1970s.
Most relevant from the perspective of Brazilian diplomacy and foreign policy, as well as its own domestic policy, is the political offensive of the Trump administration, partly led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but driven by the president himself, aimed at obtaining, through open and veiled pressure, electoral victories in several Latin American countries, to realize the "Shield of the Americas" project, a kind of coalition of right-wing governments explicitly aligned with the Trumpist empire. This offensive is directly connected to the highly polarized environment of the upcoming Brazilian presidential elections in October 2026, with Trump's undisguised support for the Bolsonaro family, not hesitating to mobilize other actors in his interventionist endeavor (as was the case with the participation of Argentine President Javier Milei in the party convention that consecrated the PL candidate, provoking the biggest diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Argentina since the 1970s conflict over the water resources of the Paraná River). Subsequently, President Trump announced a new trade offensive against Brazil, just days after imposing new sanctions under Section 301 of the US Trade Act, all of which were politically motivated, alleging "unfair trade" even for Brazilian regulations completely independent of trade exchanges (such as the PIX payment system, the alleged deforestation in the Amazon, or the use of forced labor in Brazil's trade with third parties).
The stance of Brazilian foreign policy in the new context of escalating illegal actions and unilateral impositions by the Trump administration against the independent posture of national diplomacy in the hemispheric context, as well as in the broader framework of Brazilian regional and extra-regional relations, must be viewed within a challenging context that is relatively unprecedented in the country's current democratic situation. This is perhaps comparable only to the difficult choices made in the 1930s, amid external threats and confrontations provoked by expansionist powers, whose sequential development, uncontrolled by the nation itself, led to the country's involvement in the most terrible war known until that juncture in the mid-20th century. The world is currently experiencing instability in international relations, perhaps comparable only to the conditions prevailing at that juncture, when Brazilian leaders had to defend national interests against powers mightier than national capabilities.
In this context, it is necessary to examine the conditions under which the country's foreign policy should ideally be defined and conducted, in accordance with the doctrinal foundations of Brazilian diplomacy and the possibilities open to defining the main guidelines that should guide foreign relations within the framework of the instability created precisely by the great powers, or at least by some of them, specifically the two great powers that are at the origin of the wars currently underway in two regions of the world, in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. The doctrinal foundations of national diplomacy were carefully constructed throughout the reigns of the Empire's statesmen, later refined and formalized by the reflective work and practical guidance of diplomats of high intellectual caliber, among whom we must recognize the figures of Baron of Rio Branco and the jurist Rui Barbosa, both providing the substantive mandate with which worked another statesman, Oswaldo Aranha, tasked with defining the best course of action for foreign policy choices during the darkest hours of the 1930s, an extremely challenging situation, both internationally and domestically, also marked by profound ideological divisions between right and left, in addition to an authoritarian government that hindered and prevented the action of centrist or more moderate political forces, in line with the nation's social structure.
In that context, under the guidance of statesman Oswaldo Aranha, Brazilian diplomacy directed the nation's foreign relations in a way that preserved, to the maximum extent possible, the decision-making autonomy of a markedly presidential foreign policy, up to the point where practical guidelines managed to maintain the country's neutrality in the face of conflicts between the great powers. At the moment of greatest danger, when external threats materialized through direct attacks on national interests, diplomacy knew how to steer foreign policy towards the posture necessary to preserve the nation's independence, even going so far as to engage pragmatically in actions aimed at such existential objectives.
In the current context, it is necessary to reflect on the best practices and guidelines for foreign policy, committed to maintaining the country's decision-making autonomy in the face of the challenges already posed to the preservation of national interests, in principle, impartially and independently vis-à-vis confrontations and clashes between the great powers, based on objectives linked to their strictly national or imperial goals. These are the lessons of the 1930s and 1940s, as illuminated by the doctrinal foundations of Brazilian diplomacy, which remain relevant today.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 5415: July 29, 2026
Paulo Roberto de Almeida was a career diplomat from 1977 to 2021. He taught at the Rio Branco Institute and the University of Brasília (UnB), and served as the director of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Institute for International Relations Research (IPRI-MRE) (2016–2018). Among his many published books are Apogeu e demolição da política externa (2021) and Construtores da nação: projetos para o Brasil, de Cairu a Merquior (2022).
Received: July 29, 2026
Accepted for publication: July 30, 2026
Copyright © 2026 CEBRI-Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited.
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