O antiamericanismo de Lula já está comprovado: o resto decorre mais disso do que de outros fatores - Brian Winter, Nelson de Sá (Americas Quarterly, FSP)

 Is Lula anti-American?

It’s the question in Washington that won’t go away: “Is Lula anti-American?” Since returning to Brazil’s presidency on January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has repeatedly caused alarm in the U.S. capital and elsewhere with his comments on Ukraine, Venezuela, the dollar and other key issues. An unconfirmed GloboNews report in June said President Joe Biden may have abandoned any intentions of visiting Brasilia before the end of the year because of frustration with Lula’s positions.    

The question causes many to roll their eyes, and with good reason. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, some in the United States continue to see Latin America in “You’re either with us or against us” terms. Washington has a long record of getting upset with Brazil’s independent stances on everything from generic AIDS drugs in the 1990s to trade negotiations in the 2000s and the Edward Snowden affair in the 2010s. A large Latin American country confidently operating in its own national interest, neither allied with nor totally against the United States, simply does not compute for some in Washington, and maybe it never will.   

That said, there is a long list of reasonable people in places like the White House and State Department, in think tanks and in the business world who are perfectly capable of understanding nuance — and have still perceived a threat from Lula’s foreign policy in this, his third term. The list of perceived transgressions is long and growing: Lula has repeatedly echoed Russian positions on Ukraine, saying both countries share equal responsibility for the war. In April, Lula said blame for continued hostilities laid “above all” with countries who are providing arms—a slap at the United States and Europe, delivered while on a trip to China, no less. Lula has worked to revive the defunct UNASUR bloc, whose explicit purpose was to counter U.S. influence in South America. He has repeatedly urged countries to shun the U.S. dollar as a mechanism for trade when possible, voicing support for new alternatives including a common currency with Argentina or its other neighbors. Lula has been bitterly critical of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela–”worse than a war,” he has said—while downplaying the repression, torture and other human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship itself.    

For some observers, the inescapable conclusion is that Lula’s foreign policy is not neutral or “non-aligned,” but overtly friendly to Russia and China and hostile to the United States. This has been a particular letdown for many in the Democratic Party who briefly saw Lula as a hero of democracy and natural ally after he, too, defeated an authoritarian, election-denying menace on the far right. And for the record, it’s not just Americans who feel this way: the left-leaning French newspaper Liberation, in a front-page editorial prior to Lula’s visit to Paris in June, called him a “faux friend” of the West.  

To paraphrase the old saying, it’s impossible to know what truly lurks in the hearts of men. But as someone who has tried to understand Lula for the past 20 years, with admittedly mixed results, let me give my best evaluation of what’s really happening: Lula may not be anti-U.S. in the traditional sense, but he is definitely anti-U.S. hegemony, and he is more willing than before to do something about it.  

That is, Lula and his foreign policy team do not wish ill on Washington in the way that Nicolás Maduro or Vladimir Putin do, and in fact they see the United States as a critical partner on issues like climate change, energy and infrastructure investment. But they also believe the U.S.-led global order of the last 30 years has on balance not been good for Brazil or, indeed, the planet as a whole. They are convinced the world is headed toward a new, more equitable “multipolar” era in which, instead of one country at the head of the table, there will be, say, eight countries seated at a round table—and Brazil will be one of them, along with China, India and others from the ascendant Global South. Meanwhile, Lula has lost some of the inhibitions and brakes that held him back a bit during his 2003-10 presidency, and he is actively out there trying to usher the world along to this promising new phase—with an evident enthusiasm and militancy that bothers many in the West, and understandably so. 

“A new geopolitics” 

In private and in public, Lula’s allies vigorously reject the idea that he is anti-American — highlighting that he visited Washington within six weeks of taking office, and had a, by all accounts, friendly meeting with Biden. If the delegation Lula took to China two months later was far bigger and more ambitious, as many have pointed out, well, that’s realpolitik: China was offering Brazil much more in terms of investment and support, and now buys three times as many Brazilian exports as the United States. Lula was never going to continue the nearly automatic U.S. alignment that characterized much (though not all) of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. But he has a long record of pragmatic and often friendly engagement, including an apparently genuine personal bond with George W. Bush during his first presidency. When I met Lula’s top foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim in São Paulo last year for an otherwise off-record conversation, Amorim paused and emphatically told me: “This you can publish: It is in the interest of Brazil to have a positive relationship with the United States. No doubt.”   

The idea that the world would benefit from a more multipolar order, and that Brazil should “actively and assertively” push in that direction, has been a mainstream tenet of its foreign policy for many years (thanks in part to Amorim, who was foreign minister the first time in the early 1990s). Brazil’s long, fruitless pursuit of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, for example, is seen across the political spectrum as a sign that greater influence will have to be pried from the United States and Western Europe rather than politely requested. In that vein, Lula’s lobbying for peace in Ukraine can be understood not as instinctively anti-Western, but expressive of the doctrine that the world’s sixth-most populous nation should elbow its way if necessary into major issues of the day, as it did (or tried to do) during Lula’s first presidency on subjects like Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mideast peace and Doha trade talks.  

The problem, from the Western point of view, is that Lula and Amorim seem to think it’s not enough for Brazil to simply build itself up on the world stage. Rather, they seem to believe that, for the Global South to rise, Brazil should work to actively tear down, or at least weaken, the pillars of the U.S.-led order of recent decades. 

The clearest evidence of this is probably not Lula’s stance on Ukraine or Venezuela, which have received the most attention, but his tireless advocacy for countries to abandon the U.S. dollar. “Every night I ask myself why all countries are obligated to do their trade tied to the dollar,” Lula said to applause during his trip to China. “Who was it who decided ‘I want the dollar’ after the gold standard ended?” He expressed similar sentiments when he hosted Venezuela’s dictator in May, and touted the idea of a common BRICS currency. It is worth noting that Brazil does not have a dollar scarcity problem; rather, it has vast reserves, meaning Lula’s advocacy can only be understood as part of a larger geopolitical project. Meanwhile, Lula focused his recent summit of South American leaders on a proposal to reestablish UNASUR, which was founded in the 2000s as a counterweight to the Washington-based Organization of American States (and later unraveled when it became too blindly leftist for most of its members). Brazil’s position on Ukraine is more complex—but Lula’s rhetoric, and cultivation of warm ties with Moscow more generally, has often seemed rooted in a desire to chip away at NATO, perhaps the ultimate symbol of the postwar order. 

“Our interests with regard to China are not just commercial,” Lula said in Beijing. “We’re interested in building a new geopolitics so that we can change global governance, giving more representativity to the United Nations.”  

Of course, these are valid strategic choices, and Brazil is hardly alone in these views. Lula and Amorim may in fact believe that Brazil’s future lies more with its BRICS partners than with a country where bombing Mexico has become a mainstream foreign policy idea in one of the two major parties. Similarly, it is easy to understand why the broader notion of a repressed Global South finally throwing off the shackles of domination by wealthy, formerly colonialist powers appeals to someone who sees the world primarily through the lens of class struggle, as Lula does. At age 77, and after his experience in prison, Lula may be past the point of biting his tongue and sense now is the time to move decisively on a variety of causes he has spent a lifetime pursuing. (Amorim, for the record, is 81.)  

But there can be no doubt that the last six months have put Lula at odds with another cherished tenet of Brazilian foreign policy: The idea that Brazil can essentially be friends with everybody. The tone in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Washington has been less one of anger, and more of surprise and disappointment among people who were deeply predisposed to embrace Lula, and Brazil more broadly, in the wake of the shambolic Bolsonaro years. Many have wondered, fairly, why Lula is so intent on bolstering the influence of dictatorships whose values don’t match his own 40-year record defending democracy in Brazil. Whether his actions have ultimately brought Brazil closer to its dream of greater global relevance, or more distant, is the biggest question of all, and will depend on what exactly happens next.  

A rocky road ahead 

There have been signs in recent weeks that Lula may be pivoting to a different approach. “I don’t want to get involved in the war of Ukraine and Russia,” he said on July 6. “My war is here, against hunger, poverty and unemployment.” This possible shift, if it holds, may be driven not by the Western backlash, but domestic opinion; recent polling suggests Lula’s foreign policy may be dragging on his overall approval rating in a country where, outside the left, most people have positive views of the United States and the West. But it is also unrealistic to expect a major change without a wholesale reshuffling of Lula’s foreign policy team—which almost no one in Brasilia expects to happen.  

That means Washington must figure out how to cope. Some voices have urged confrontation, saying Washington should warn Brasilia that U.S. investment and other areas of cooperation will suffer without a change in tack. History shows that approach is almost certain to backfire, but it may gain more adherents as the 2024 election draws closer and Republicans seek to burnish their “anti-communist” credentials. (Lula is a capitalist, by the way, but that’s another column.) The Biden administration, wisely, has chosen a more mixed strategy; firmly pushing back against Brazil when necessary, but also trying to acknowledge its ambitions. Sources told me that during their February meeting, Biden told Lula he sees Brazil “not as a regional power, but a global power” —a comment that brought a vigorous nod from the Brazilian leader. Whether Washington can figure out a way to make that vision a reality, in a way that doesn’t undermine its own interests or the democratic order more broadly, remains unclear. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a seasoned analyst of Latin American politics, with more than 20 years following the region’s ups and downs.

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/is-lula-anti-american/

EUA cercam diplomaticamente o “antiamericanismo “ de Lula

EUA cercam diplomaticamente o 'antiamericano' Lula

Visita de Victoria Nuland, nomeação de Elliott Abrams e artigos de organizações de política externa se voltam para o Brasil

A subsecretária de Estado dos EUA, Victoria Nuland, encontrou-se em Brasília com o assessor especial de Lula, Celso Amorim, "para aprofundar nossa cooperação em questões globais vitais" (abaixo). Segundo ela, "a relação EUA-Brasil segue forte graças ao nosso compromisso compartilhado com a democracia", entre outras razões.

Semanas antes, como noticiou a CNN, entre críticas da MSNBC ao Guardian, o diplomata Elliott Abrams foi nomeado por Joe Biden para sua Comissão sobre Diplomacia Pública. Ele é lembrado por passagens como a "campanha para trocar" o governo venezuelano, o escândalo Irã-Contras e "o maior assassinato em massa na história recente da América Latina", em El Salvador.

Abrams estava no Council on Foreign Relations, organização influente na política externa americana, e seu texto mais recente destacou que Lula não recebeu o presidente do Irã, em visita à região: "Será que Lula enfrentou reação forte o suficiente, ao seu abraço em Nicolás Maduro, para persuadi-lo de que a visita era muito arriscada?".

Na revista do CFR, Foreign Affairs, o brasileiro Matias Spektor, ligado à FGV e à organização Carnegie, publicou o artigo "O lado bom da hipocrisia ocidental" ou, mais precisamente, americana. Defende que "a hipocrisia ocidental pode ser benéfica" e "a alternativa –um mundo em que as potências nem se preocupam em justificar suas ações com valores morais– seria mais prejudicial".

Em suma, "o Sul Global deve reconhecer que crítica demais à hipocrisia pode colocar em risco a cooperação internacional ao gerar cinismo".

De sua parte, a Americas Society/Council of the Americas publicou na Americas Quarterly o artigo "Lula é antiamericano?". Brian Winter, vice da organização, escreve que "Lula e Amorim parecem acreditar que, para que o Sul Global se erga, o Brasil deve trabalhar para derrubar ou enfraquecer os pilares da ordem liderada pelos EUA".

Para ele, "a evidência mais clara é a incansável defesa de que os países abandonem o dólar". Por outro lado, "não é realista esperar grande mudança sem a reformulação total da equipe de política externa de Lula —o que quase ninguém em Brasília espera que aconteça. Isso significa que Washington precisa descobrir como lidar com a situação".

(...)

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/nelsondesa/2023/07/eua-cercam-diplomaticamente-o-antiamericano-lula.shtml

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira on the “Lula Doctrine” - Brian Winter (Americas Quarterly)

 Brazil

Q&A: Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira on the “Lula Doctrine”

BY BRIAN WINTER
MARCH 23, 2023 

An exclusive interview with Brazil’s top diplomat, on the relationship with China, the U.S., the need for multilateral reform, and more.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira gives a statement in Asunción, Paraguay on March 9, 2023.Norberto Duarte/AFP via Getty Images

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Reading Time: 9 minutes

This article is a preview of Americas Quarterly’s upcoming special report, “What Lula Means for Latin America,” to be published in April. (Ler em português)

BRASILIA — “Brazil is back,” declared President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at an international conference shortly after his election. But what does that mean in practice for its relationships with the rest of Latin America, how it navigates the growing competition between China and the United States, and key flashpoints like the Ukraine war, Venezuela and Nicaragua?

Some of the answers will sound familiar to those who remember Lula’s first presidency, from 2003-10. But a lot since then has changed, both in Brazil and the world, which will lead to differences in foreign policy, Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira explained in an interview with AQ.  

“Twenty years ago, China’s growth was visible, but now it is a superpower, without a doubt,” Vieira said. “In less than 20 years, China has become Brazil’s main trading partner—and not just Brazil, but many Latin American countries. So that changed the scenario a lot, and geopolitics have changed.”

This interview took place in Portuguese via Zoom on March 13. It has been translated to English and lightly edited for clarity and content.

Brian Winter: This may be a very American question, but here in the United States, we always talk about presidents’ doctrines – the Biden doctrine, the Bush doctrine. Is there a Lula doctrine?

Minister Mauro Vieira: I’d say the Lula doctrine is one of restoring Brazil’s image and its relationships—not just with our Latin American neighbors, but also restoring Brazil’s presence in the world, on all the different kinds of world stages, be they bilateral or multilateral. In the past four years, Brazil halted its diplomatic tradition of being a country that is open to all interlocutors, regardless of their ideological positions, and of maintaining contact, and negotiating and talking. I think that if there is a doctrine, that is it.

President Lula gave me very specific instructions. He gave a very powerful, very important speech during the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference, where he said that “Brazil is back.” After he appointed me and after he took office, he said repeatedly that this is what matters most, that it should be known that Brazil is back to its diplomatic tradition. He told me to rebuild all the bridges and all channels of communication that had been destroyed.

BW: The world has changed a lot in the past 20 years since Lula’s first term. What are the most important differences between his foreign policy then and now?

MV: At the time, his foreign policy was referred to as ativa e altiva (active and assertive). That’s a phrase coined by the former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, for whom I worked as chief of staff, and who represented very well this style of foreign policy in the first eight Lula years.

Of course, the world has changed a lot, in all ways, including media—information travels much more quickly—and geopolitics have also changed. Twenty years ago, China’s growth was visible, but now it is a superpower, without a doubt. In less than 20 years, China has become Brazil’s main trading partner—and not just Brazil, but many Latin American countries. So that changed the scenario a lot, and geopolitics have changed.

Now we have a war going on in Europe. And I think that global governance has also changed, because multilateral organizations, whether political or commercial, are very weakened, and they have lost their ability to act. From a commercial point of view, the World Trade Organization is paralyzed; it has lost relevance. And, at the same time, the situation of the United Nations is also worrying because we are witnessing the paralysis of its main body aimed at maintaining peace and security, which is the Security Council. The Security Council, with its 1945 format, is no longer reflected in today’s reality. And we are facing a major crisis in which its mechanisms, methods and composition do not allow the United Nations to play the fundamental role it should have—as Brazil’s argues it should, and as it did in the past.

Today there is a certain paralysis, to the detriment of world peace, to the detriment of better governance. So I think those are the big changes. And that’s where Brazil and President Lula’s foreign policy want to be active again, in promoting a discussion on global governance as well.

BW: The world has changed a lot. Brazil has also changed, especially in the last four years, as you mentioned. How do you see the efforts to restore Brazilian democracy following the events of recent months, especially the January 8 attacks in Brasilia? And these episodes, which represented an authoritarian risk for the country, similar to what we face here in the United States, do they have any point of intersection with Brazilian foreign policy? Or are they separate themes?

MV: Look, the issue of democracy in Brazil… I think that since 1964, when there was a break in the democratic order, which took 21 years [for democracy to be restored]… I think that with the restoration of democracy in Brazil and with the promulgation of the [1988] Constitution, we launched a young democracy, but a solid one, with solid instruments, dictated by the Constitution.

The events of January 8 were the result of clashes that have taken place in Brazilian society in recent years, since 2016, with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and then, in 2018, with the election of the last government, which represented a huge shift to the right. That changed Brazil’s position in terms of foreign policy, but it also changed domestic policies, emboldening a group that felt privileged and encouraged to even finance the events of January 8. I was in Brasília, and it was an unexpected and surprising event—to see that number of people, about 4000 people, arriving at the Praça dos Três Poderes [where the judicial, legislative and executive branches are located] and destroying the buildings… It is an unbelievable thing, which received not only ideological and political encouragement, but also important financial support from various sectors.

This comes from a part of Brazilian society that is not democratic and does not appreciate democratic values. There is no doubt that there was an election, that President Lula won.

So, now it’s a matter of investigating and clarifying what happened, who inspired this, who committed these highly illegal acts that could have really compromised Brazilian democracy. But I think society and the established authorities reacted quickly and everything was brought under control. On Sunday [when the attack happened], already at the beginning of the evening, everything was under control and many had been arrested. And that’s that, in short.

BW: And does this have any impact on Brazil’s foreign policy? For example, were the similarities between the risks faced by Brazil and the United States a fundamental part of President Lula’s [February 10] visit with President Biden in Washington?

MV: Undoubtedly, these are national issues, but also with repercussions on foreign policy. That night I received maybe 15 phone calls from foreign ministers from other countries, in which they expressed solidarity and support for Brazil and for Brazilian democratic institutions. Presidents Biden and Lula discussed the subject, referencing events in each country, and they made public comments on the need to strengthen democracies around the world.

I think that big countries like the United States, Brazil and others, can play an important role in the dissemination of democratic values and in reinforcing the importance of maintaining democracy and highlighting the gains of democracy. In the case of Brazil, it was thanks to the restoration of democracy since the promulgation of the Constitution of 1988 that we’ve had progressive governments, such as that of President Lula, which created conditions for economic growth and which benefited the population, lifting millions of people out of poverty, creating housing for people in need, healthcare systems and everything else.

This only happens in a democracy. Hence the importance of defending democracy, and any initiative to defend democracy internationally is very valid, because this way countries can develop and grow.

BW: Does the relative silence of the Lula government about dictatorships in Latin America, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela, in any way contradict this appreciation for democracy?

MV: No, because there is no silence.

The first time that there has been some movement on Nicaragua in the international scene inside a multilateral organization was in Geneva, at the Human Rights Council. [Editor’s note: On March 9, 54 countries including the United States, Chile, Peru and Colombia signed a statement urging the Ortega government to “release all political prisoners” and condemning the regime’s recent decision to revoke the citizenship of more than 300 Nicaraguans.] Brazil did not support [the statement], on the contrary. We wanted to make a separate statement, independent of that made by that group of nations. Because we wanted to make clear our position that there need to be changes, there need to be adjustments. Brazil wanted to first appeal to the multilateral mechanisms that are there and then discuss and exhaust all options before any other stronger measure, such as, for example, the adoption of sanctions, an element that was suggested throughout the debates.

That was the element that made us publish a separate declaration, referring to the need for dialogue with the [Ortega] government and relevant actors from Nicaraguan society. Unilateral sanctions, a measure many countries adopt, are illegal for Brazil. We can only apply sanctions that have been approved by the Security Council of the United Nations. So we could not, in principle, support a statement that didn’t make a reference to dialogue as a first step. And as it was the first opportunity [to debate this subject] in a multilateral forum, which is an institution that has the mechanisms to correct these points, and this was the first time that this discussion took place since President Lula took office, two and a half months ago, we wanted to make our position very clear.

BW: Does Brazil and the president have a role in possible peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia?

MV: Look, President Lula has said this countless times… There is a lot of talk about Lula’s proposal… He didn’t make a concrete proposal, with goals to follow to reach peace. What he said is that he keeps hearing about war, about large amounts of resources being allocated for the purchase of arms, about destruction and death, and he doesn’t hear about peace. What he wants and what he has done is to call for us to start discussing, in some way, peace.

This is what is important, in the face of all the victims, all the destruction wreaked in the country. He also condemned the invasion of Ukraine, and commented on the worldwide effects of inflation, a threat to food security, the risk of this war lasting for many years, or even getting out of control, in a world where weapons are increasingly destructive and more lethal. So, it is with all this concern that he has made and will continue to make, calls for a sit-down, because we are absolutely convinced that it is not in the interest of either party to continue with this sad and deplorable war, without at least trying to find a negotiated solution.

Brazil is a pacifist country … that’s our diplomatic DNA. That’s what the president wants to tell the world.

BW: Many countries, especially in the global south, are adopting the idea, or the doctrine, of “active non-alignment” as a strategy for dealing with the growing competition between the United States and China. Ambassador Amorim, whom you mentioned, even wrote a chapter for a recent book on this idea. Does this concept basically summarize the Brazilian position on this issue?

MV: Yes, we don’t have an automatic alignment to either side. We have, on the contrary, excellent relations with the United States — in fact, next year we will celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations with ambassadors in each country. And we also have important relations with China. What guides us is the national interest within a framework of multilateralism, of international law. Automatic alignments do not bring positive results and results that are beneficial to the national interest. There can be losses when there is an automatic and unjustifiable alignment. In fact, as there was during the last four years.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira (R) meets with his counterpart from Uruguay Francisco Bustillo at Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia on March 7, 2023. 
Photo by Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images.

BW: There is a lot of talk about Latin American integration right now. There is ideological alignment between many governments in the region, but there is skepticism among some as to whether these ideas will translate into practical decisions, aside from meetings and the existence of blocs like CELAC and Unasur. Is there a concrete, practical agenda when it comes to regional integration? And what are the most important opportunities?

MV: There is no doubt that integration is a serious goal. In fact, Latin American integration is even in the Brazilian Constitution. And there are concrete examples, very concrete ones. The president visited Argentina and Uruguay. I just came back from Paraguay. President Lula will soon have a meeting with the president of Paraguay. These are the original partners of Mercosur. In these three cases, very specific measures and projects were agreed upon, pertaining to physical integration, for example, which is fundamental. We’ll soon announce them.

And these are projects that will benefit the road and rail infrastructure and river navigation in these countries, which will also have an immediate impact on trade: it lowers costs, it provides more security. It’s not just rhetoric. These are not projects that are starting now. We’re finalizing them, we put the final touches on them, and they are going to be implemented soon. And there are many others that could come.

CELAC is a place, it is a stage for discussions that can lead to concrete things. In addition, President Lula wants to review and update Unasur, which was indeed, differently from CELAC, a strong body, with concrete integration initiatives in many areas and which unfortunately was abandoned, but which we want to adapt and update, because it is also not the same world anymore. Mercosur integration translated to exponential growth in trade between our countries. Today we have important and significant trade for our economies, and without Mercosur, without an integration project, that would not happen.

BW: I mentioned this ideological alignment. Most governments, especially in South America, are left-wing, for all their differences. But it is possible that we will see a change of government in Argentina this year, for example. Is this ideological alignment important for Latin American relations, or is its importance overestimated?

MV: Look, the important thing is the national interest—and above all, the decisions of each country regarding integration with its neighbors. We cannot, under any circumstances, stop talking to any country, even more so to those with which we share a border. You know very well, as a Brazilianist, that we share 10 large borders with countries in the region. We cannot stop talking because this or that government has this or that ideological orientation. This is something that will not happen during President Lula’s government and that did not exist in Brazilian diplomatic tradition.

We will always talk to everyone. Regardless of ideological orientation. The national interest is above any difference of political position. So that’s what I can say, that’s what’s relevant, that’s what counts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and one of Latin America’s most influential political analysts, with more than 20 years following the region’s ups and downs.

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Tags: Brazil,  Brazil's foreign policy,  Lula

Understanding Lula 3.0 (mais parecido com Lula 2 do que com Lula 1) - Brian Winter (Americas Quarterly)

 Understanding Lula 3.0

Will more pro-business voices prevail in Brazil’s new government? AQ’s editor-in-chief looks to Lula’s long history as a guide.

Brian Winter

Americas Quarterly, Washington DC - 22.12.2022

 

One of the most insightful things I ever heard about Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from his sometime friend, sometime rival and immediate predecessor as president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. “Lula is a union man,” Cardoso told me, “and union men understand that for the workers to do well, the owner must do well.” 

This is one reason why Lula can be so confusing to outsiders, and indeed to many Brazilians as well. He was always a leftist, in the sense that he made the poor his first priority. But Lula was never a communist or even a Marxist; rather, his formative years in the 1970s and 80s as the head of the automotive metalworkers’ union in Greater São Paulo taught him that capitalism could, under certain circumstances, be a generator of broad-based wealth. Even during the most militant period of Lula’s long career, the 1990s, he defined his economic philosophy as being closest to that of Henry Ford, who believed, in Lula’s words, that “companies should pay their workers enough so they can buy the cars they make.” That kind of language and life experience certainly doesn’t make him Adam Smith. But it has often put Lula at odds with members of his own Workers’ Party (PT) and other more traditional leftists who grew up reading Antonio Gramsci, spent their careers as lawyers or economists working mostly in the public sector or academia, and harbor a much deeper distrust of big capital, if they understand it at all.

The resulting battle between pragmatism and dogma, between skepticism of the private sector and a desire to let animal spirits run at least a little bit free, was at the heart of Lula’s first presidency from 2003-10. It is now back in the spotlight as he prepares to begin a third term on Jan 1. Like many policy debates, it is a battle that will never be fully or definitively resolved. The critical question is, rather, which viewpoint will be more ascendant in his government’s opening phase. Lula’s Cabinet, and specifically his economic team, will include members representing both factions. The ideological differences between them are not huge, but they are arguably big enough to make the difference between success and failure, as they did during the PT’s previous period in power, which included some of the best and worst years in Brazil’s modern history.

 

Lula’s first five years or so in office, the period some call “Lula 1.0,” were clearly dominated by the more business-friendly viewpoint. Figures like Antonio Palocci at the finance ministry, José Dirceu as chief of staff, José Alencar as vice president and Henrique Meirelles at the central bank helped hold the line on a very conservative fiscal and monetary policy (interest rates topped 40%), and push some limited pro-business reforms to pensions and elsewhere. Some forget how controversial this was within the PT—in fact, it fractured the party, leading hard-left figures to form a new party, the PSOL, in 2004. But the relative conservatives held the line long enough that business confidence soared, foreign investment poured in, and Brazil squeezed maximum benefit from the China-led commodities boom of the era. To paraphrase Cardoso, both workers and owners did well: The stock market quintupled in value, and some 35 million Brazilians were lifted out of poverty. 

But another somewhat forgotten truth is that this more market-friendly consensus began to fray before Lula left office, not after. During the so-called “Lula 2.0” years, Palocci and Dirceu exited due to corruption scandals and were replaced, respectively, by Guido Mantega and Dilma Rousseff, both longtime career public servants who had far more “developmentalist” ideas about industrial policy and how the state should try to actively manage the private sector. When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, this group unleashed a barrage of loans from the BNDES, Brazil’s state development bank, contributing to eventual disasters such as Eike Batista and the bankrupt telecoms firm Oi. After Rousseff succeeded Lula as president in 2011, she doubled down even further on interventionism, elevating true believers such as Gleisi Hoffman and Aloizio Mercadante and, eventually, abandoning the Lula-era fiscal framework entirely. The outcome was the worst recession in Brazil’s history, impeachment, and other assorted disasters from which the country has still not fully recovered.

Where does that leave us now? Looking at Lula’s Cabinet, which is not yet complete, it’s striking how familiar it all seems. There are few truly new faces, and few new ideas, for better and for worse. Lula has once again put together a pluralistic team that includes both ideological groups. Geraldo Alckmin, his vice president and onetime rival, will be the standard bearer of the more centrist faction, and looks set to have considerable power. Fernando Haddad as finance minister seems like an attempt to repeat the Palocci experience (the good parts, anyway): a relative moderate within the PT’s core, who has the party bona-fides, and close relationship with the president, necessary to say “no” to excessive spending requests. The decision to keep Hoffman outside the Cabinet seems important, while even Mercadante’s appointment to the BNDES, which markets did not like, could be read as an effort to reward a loyal aide with a prestigious position away from the true core of economic policymaking. A new law enshrining central bank independence means that Roberto Campos Neto, who has helped guide Brazil to an even lower inflation rate (5.9%) than that of the United States (7.1%), will remain in that critical role until the end of 2024.

But here again we come back to the imperfect example of history. If you talk to the main protagonists of Lula 1.0, and I have interviewed many of them over the years, they believe that what really maintained discipline during that era was the feeling they had no real choice. Lula and the PT had been humbled, and some of its members pushed closer to the ideological center, after losing three consecutive presidential elections. A market panic prior to the election essentially forced Lula to sign a public letter vowing to maintain a stable macroeconomic policy, and appoint figures who could do so. Today, as we enter 2023, the narratives feel very different. Far from chastened, the PT feels vindicated by the events of recent years, including Lula’s release from prison. Their primary focus is not on appealing to business or markets, but on addressing the “social emergency” left behind by the Jair Bolsonaro years. The need is real, of course: More than 30 million Brazilians are estimated to be suffering from some degree of hunger or food insecurity in the wake of COVID-19 and years of subpar economic growth. But the party’s drive to secure 200 billion reais ($38 billion) in “transitional” funding surpassed the expectations of markets, and even some members of Lula’s transition team. Lula’s repeated statements dismissing the concerns of financial markets, including his November comments questioning the need for “so-called fiscal responsibility,” suggests he is feeling less boxed in than 20 years ago, and may be more willing to listen to the interventionist voices in his midst—or at least not stand in their way—on issues ranging from fiscal management to regulation.   

And that is why, today, many are betting that Lula 3.0 will resemble Lula 2.0 more than Lula 1.0. That his government will not be a disaster by any means, but that the forces pushing for more government spending (and perhaps higher taxes, as Haddad has refused to rule out), and a greater state hand in the economy overall, will win more battles than they lose in the early going. Critically, other actors beyond the PT, including the so-called Centrão with whom Lula must share power, are also pushing for a greater pool of resources to manage. For those who believe that the capacity of the Brazilian government to address poverty and help steer the economy was grievously wounded in the six years since the PT last exercised power, this is primarily good news. For those who think that not all aspects of Bolsonaro’s economic policymaking were disastrous, and that the public sector already accounts for enough of Brazil’s economy, Lula 3.0 may end up looking like something of a lost opportunity—in a country where the glory days of the 2000s are becoming an ever more distant memory. 

 

Brian Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and one of Latin America’s most influential political analysts, with more than 20 years following the region’s ups and downs.

How Will Brazil Navigate the US-China Rivalry? - Hussein Kalout (Americas Quarterly)

 Americas Quarterly, Washington DC – 14.3.2021

How Will Brazil Navigate the US-China Rivalry?

Both superpowers are pivotal to the country. Choosing is not an option.

Hussein Kalout

 

Historians may one day describe the escalating rivalry between the United States and China as the most important driver of contemporary international relations. As the mightiest power in the Western world since the fall of the Roman Empire, the U.S. is fighting to preserve its hegemony. As a challenger, China aims to restore its imperial might – not only as the greatest empire in the history of the East, but as a rising global superpower in its own right.

Their battle for the 21st century has begun, and – for better and for worse – Latin America has already become a critical staging ground. China seems to have gained the upper hand in recent years as a distracted Washington channeled most of its resources into unsuccessful military interventions in the Middle East, the global “War on Terror” and confronting a resurgent Russia as well as numerous crises at home.Throughout the past three U.S. administrations, the White House and State Department assigned only peripheral importance to Latin American countries, despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary. This strategic inertia has allowed China to overtake the U.S. as the main trading partner of Brazil and Argentina – the two largest economies in South America – and some other countries as well.

In Brazil, a new and pressing question has arisen: How to navigate this growing rivalry?

An array of internal and external actors seeks to frame Brazil’s path forward as a binary choice – that is, forcing Brazil to develop a deep relationship with either Washington or Beijing, but not both. The Donald Trump administration certainly framed this as a mutually exclusive choice. Since taking office in January, the Joe Biden administration seems to perceive Beijing in a broadly similar light. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s government has welcomed and even encouraged this Manichean view.However, it has met with stiff resistance in Brazil’s National Congress, business sector, and in the Foreign Ministry, where many believe that making such a binary choice violates the Brazilian national interest and reduces Brazil’s leeway amid the intensifying geostrategic clash of titans.

The magnitude and complexity of Brazil-U.S.-China relations are immense. For Brazil, navigating these relationships is not about making a binary choice. It is about fine-tuning the nation’s indispensable relationships with the two greatest powers in the world.

This may be particularly true at a time when Brazil’s economy, stagnant or shrinking for the past decade, cannot afford to alienate large partners. In the trade sphere, Brazil’s dependence on China is significantly greater than its dependence on the United States. Brazilian exports to China in 2020 were more than triple its shipments to the U.S.

 

Of the 15 most exported Brazilian commodities, China is the main importer of 11, while the U.S. is the main importer of only two. Moreover, U.S. companies are the main competitors of Brazilian companies in the Asian and European markets. And, of the total investments in infrastructure in Brazil – a fundamental part of the country’s continued development – China by far surpasses the U.S., even though the latter continues to be a much larger source of foreign direct investments overall. These numbers reveal Brazil’s deep dependence on China when it comes to structural elements of the economy such as job creation, income, credit and investments.

But of course, trade and business cannot be the only aspects of Brazil’s relationships with foreign powers. The equation facing the country’s foreign policy thinkers is in fact much more complex.

 

A complex relationship

 

U.S.-Latin America relations have gone through numerous ups and downs, despite generally positive sentiment and some improvements in recent years. Today’s political classes are still scarred by the history of U.S. interventions in Latin America, often involving the overthrow of democratically elected governments such as Salvador Allende in Chile and João Goulart in Brazil during the Cold War. More recently, the Trump administration resuscitated the idea of the Monroe Doctrine while making threats of military intervention in Venezuela and lending support to Jeanine Áñez’s coup in Bolivia. Even among friends, the U.S.’ record as a dependable, trustworthy power has been put in doubt because of its history of betraying and abandoning its former allies. The examples in this list are plentiful: Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Kurds in Syria, and the criticism of NATO and Europe, to name but a few. In contrast, Latin American governments tend to view China as both more consistent in its relationships and more prone to boost the region’s economies without staining its hands with the blood of their people.

At the same time, many Brazilians retain an admiration for the Founding Fathers of the United States – particularly for their construction of a nation based on the rule of law, the unequivocal separation of powers, democratic solidity and an enviable educational system. Similar admiration is not generally expressed towards China, in part because its long and storied history is not widely known or studied in Brazil. China is seen by the public as a faraway, mysterious, and exotic country.

The Brazilian view towards Washington, of course, is not monolithic. Internal political divisions frame many of the differing opinions on how the nation should interact with the United States. For instance, the Brazilian left is divided into two currents. The most radical see the U.S. as a constant threat to regional political stability. The influence of this group in Brazilian policymaking, however, is practically nonexistent. The second current, with a more pragmatic view, understands that despite having valid reasons to distrust the U.S., it is necessary for Brazil to maintain good relations with Washington. This latter group believes that the two countries have considerable room for cooperation, particularly in the fields of human rights, education, trade, and the environment.

We can identify two distinct views on the political right as well. The first, a minority position, claims that the subordination of Brazilian interests to those of the U.S. during the Cold War saved Brazil from “communism” and domestic subversive elements – ostensibly including in that group anyone who opposed Brazil’s authoritarian military regime. Juracy Magalhães, a well-known conservative politician in Brasília and foreign minister under the military regime, had a famous phrase that is sometimes still invoked by adherents of this belief: “What is good for the U.S. is good for Brazil.” Today, the most prominent proponents of these sentiments are President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters. For them, a close and friendly relationship between Brasília and Washington is not enough. They believe Brazil should instead pledge unconditional alignment to the U.S. policy, something Bolsonaro sought to create while Trump was in office.

The less radical viewpoint found on the Brazilian right – and, I believe, the more commonly held one, frames the relationship with the U.S. as a source of prosperity, opportunity, and development, but still tends to harbor some reticence about the supercilious behavior of the U.S. towards developing countries. Adherents to such a view tend to favor a close bilateral relationship, but not one of automatic and unconditional alignment with Washington.

Critically, the radicals on the left and the right alike constitute only a minority. Taken together, those who prefer unconditional alignment and those who advocate for staunch U.S. containment may represent the views of less than a fifth of the Brazilian population. This minority can be noisy and disruptive, though. The right-wing extremists were able to gain decisive influence in the decision-making process, as we have seen under the Bolsonaro administration and in the beginning of the military cycle inaugurated in 1964. The other two subgroups, more realistic and pragmatic, represent the majority viewpoint of those who find themselves on the right and the left of the political spectrum. The more moderate positions are even stronger in the most influential segments of Brazilian society, such as the private sector, parliamentarians, the military, diplomats, journalists, academics, scientists and public intellectuals. This is not a guarantee that a more moderate view will always prevail, but it is a powerful undercurrent force that should be reckoned with.

Global stage

For Brazilian state institutions, whose raison d’être involves upholding the country’s national interest, the current majority assessment holds that Brazil should not treat the two relationships as mutually exclusive – now or in the future. Any effort to determine a possible preference between the U.S. and China should be based on past practical experiences, objective data, and the treatment of Brazil by each power.

In the view of the Brazilian diplomatic corps, for example, the relationship between Brasília and Washington over the last 20 years has not lived up to expectations. During this period, Brazil has waited for a recognition that has never materialized. The U.S. has consistently supported rivals against Brazilian candidates in elections to multilateral forums such as the WTO and FAO. The Chinese, on the other hand, offered their votes to the Brazilian candidates in these elections. Furthermore, U.S. support for Japan and Germany, and more recently India, to hold permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council in a hypothetical reform has disappointed Brazilian diplomats. Brazil’s own aspirations for such a position were never recognized or supported by the United States. In the Brazilian view, this unequal treatment constitutes a reminder that the United States does not consider Brazil to be a power worth respecting.

Although China has never expressed explicit support for Brazilian claims to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Beijing has sought to treat Brazil as a rising power comparable to China – even when China is undoubtedly the more powerful nation. The Chinese establishment, in the last 20 years, has been able to more accurately understand how the hearts and minds of Brazilian public agents work. This is not to say that China never practices protectionist measures or blocks Brazilian interests, but the way in which these actions are carried out and the language used to express them are important. The experience of high-level diplomatic missions to Beijing tends to be more respectful and honorable when compared to the treatment offered by Washington – especially when considering the latter’s far more ceremonious conduct towards officials from nations such as India. Deepening diplomatic connections between Brazil and China are reflected in the frequent high-level interactions between the two countries as well. In the last 20 years, the number of Brazilian head of state missions to Beijing was at least double the number of missions to Washington.

Washington’s hesitation to endorse Brazil’s accession to the OECD is an additional example, and another instance appeared when the Bolsonaro administration attempted to support a Brazilian candidate for the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank. This move was unsuccessful because the United States chose to support Mauricio Claver-Carone, Donald Trump’s candidate for the regional forum. In the view of the Brazilian diplomatic community, this was an unmistakable sign that the U.S. did not have much interest in supporting even the most pro-U.S. Brazilian government in history. The move to support Claver-Carone not only undermined Brazilian regional leadership in the Latin American context, but also reignited the classic distrust of the region’s countries towards the United States.

 

5G conundrum

 

Another important factor is the incessant pressure that Washington has placed on Brazil and other countries to disallow Huawei’s participation in the bidding process for 5G networks. Following such commands would completely ruin Brazil’s relationship with China. Not to mention that Washington’s warnings of Chinese espionage and data theft – risks that Brazil could potentially be exposed to – seem wildly hypocritical in the face of the U.S. espionage operation against the former Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, revealed to the public in 2013. This pressure and the hypocritical argument used to justify it have seriously damaged the U.S.-Brazil diplomatic relationship, in the eyes of Brazilian establishment officials.

This is not to say that past and present Chinese misdeeds are ignored in Brazil. Brazilians certainly view the Chinese government as authoritarian, a regime that engages in serious persecution of minorities and violates the sovereignty of its neighbors. Many Brazilians know that Beijing may have not-so-friendly policies toward Africa (the so-called debt trap) and has supported the Maduro regime, albeit not as decisively as Russia. However, in the Brazilian view, the Chinese government has not tended to invoke moralistic, holier-than-thou rhetoric in the same way the U.S. often has. Despite China’s flaws, Brazilian leaders believe today that they can maintain a pragmatic stance towards Beijing – a decision motivated by much of the same pragmatism that leads Washington to defend allied dictatorships in the Middle East in order to safeguard U.S. economic and political interests.

It is important to remember that Brazil has always offered unwavering solidarity in the most heart-wrenching moments of American national life, such as the Second World War and the terrorist attacks ofSeptember 11. Brazil fought with the Allies with Brazilian soldiers serving alongside American troops in the fight against Nazi forces in Italy. Military cooperation with the U.S. and its allies has long been a cornerstone of Brazilian doctrine. In the eyes of the Brazilian military, the alignment of interests with the U.S. for defense cooperation is infinitely greater than that between Brazil and other powers such as China and Russia. Partnership with these strategic rivals of the U.S. is extremely limited – and even during left-leaning Brazilian governments, this preference remained unchanged.

The U.S. Senate recently passed a unique bipartisan bill – the Innovation and Competition Act – designed to combat China’s growing economic influence around the world. But Washington’s new strategy could also benefit from incorporating a renewed emphasis on Latin America – and especially the largest economy in the region, Brazil. Increasing the bilateral trade between the two countries is certainly possible, but it will ultimately depend on how the U.S. chooses to navigate the issue in the coming years – perhaps, for instance, by gradually eliminating commercial barriers for Brazilian goods, helping to revamp Brazilian infrastructure, connecting Brazilian innovation ecosystem with American tech hubs, and providing incentives for renewable energy and sustainable development. 

When considering areas of potential cooperation, environmental issues have often been an area where visions and goals have overlapped. The current situation is an obvious exception, with the Biden administration making combating climate change a vital priority, while the Bolsonaro government has adopted decidedly non-environmentally friendly policies fueling the destruction of the Amazon. But looking more in the medium term, it is important to emphasize that in this field in particular, Brazil has opportunity to cooperate both with the U.S. and with China.

Vaccine diplomacy will continue to be another important factor. So far, Brazil has made better progress with China following the partnership established between the Butantã Institute and the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech. As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in Latin America, Brazil’s dependence on China has become increasingly evident. The import of input materials to produce the CoronaVac vaccine in Brazil depended exclusively on supplies from China. The Biden administration has recently made progress in expanding its provision of vaccines around the world, but China still holds a lead in the realm of vaccine diplomacy in Brazil and Latin America in general.

In the last two decades, Brazil’s relations with China have evolved in an unprecedented manner. But these trends are not set in stone. It is time for the U.S. to make up for lost time and bet on a closer relationship with Brazil to reverse this situation in the two decades ahead. While China values ??Brazil among its international priorities, the U.S. continues to attribute low strategic relevance to the country. If this dynamic persists, Brazil will have little choice but to deepen its relationship with the dragon at the expense of the eagle. And trying to impose a binary choice on Brazil, as the Trump administration attempted to do, will not succeed in the long run. The Brazilian governmental and economic establishment will not opt ??for the exclusion of one of the two most powerful countries on Earth. To do so would run contrary to Brazil’s long history of pendular diplomacy – carefully fostering relations with both sides of an international competition for as long as possible to increase Brasília’s strategic leverage. The best strategy, and the one that respects the Brazilian national interest, is certainly one that involves a balanced relationship between both the United States and China. But the precise nature of that balance will depend in large part on how Washington chooses to proceed.

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Kalout is a political scientist and research scholar at Harvard University and a former special secretary of strategic affairs of Brazil (2016-2018)