Zanini, Fábio. Euforia e Fracasso do Brasil Grande: política externa e multinacionais
brasileiras da Era Lula [Euphoria and Failure of Grand Brazil: Foreign Policies
and Brazilian Multinationals] (São
Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2017): pp. 224 ISBN 978-85-7244-988-5
At the heart of traditional Brazilian foreign policy thinking is the idea of ‘Brasil grandeza’ or a ‘great Brazil’. For decades this
was seen as the country’s natural destiny, something that would arrive in the
future. Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) government brought a real sense that the
future had arrived, that Brazil was now a major global player. To a significant
extent this new status was underwritten by the outward expansion of Brazilian
business into African and South American markets. While the subject of a
growing scholarly and policy literature, there is little work that provides a
more granular, contextualized account of the story. This is the task Zanini
sets for himself.
Researched and written in a sabbatical period as Zanini moved
from being foreign editor to national politics editor at the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, this book combines the easy style of
travel writing with the perceptive eye of an investigative journalist. For
example, the story of Brazil’s training of the Namibian navy and attempts by
Petrobras to explore for oil are well known. How these companies integrated
into the fabric of Namibian society, working through social networks at an
elite level is less well understood. The account Zanini provides is one of clear
strategic calculation by the Brazilian government and a sense of wildcat
pioneer capitalism by Brazilian entrepreneurs. Zanini describes an influx of
‘mini Eikes’, taking the reader on a tour through their now abandoned offices
in an attempt to search out what is going on in terms of Brazilian trade and
investment in the country and other frontier markets.
Another theme Zanini takes up is that of the Brazilian
corporate model, which major firms such as Odebrecht and Vale sell as being
more inclusive and humane. Again, the author’s use of the travel diary style is
particularly compelling in unpacking this rhetoric. In Angola, an economy
dominated by Odebrecht, attention is turned to the centrality of Lula’s support
and the importance of funding from Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social
Development (BNDES). The difficulties Brazilian firms face operating in Africa
are starkly highlighted, disentangling the public relations spin and pointing
to an underlying business case that seeks to maximize the use of local labour
to minimize project delivery cost while maintaining quality. Public good is
being done because it makes financial sense. For Brazilian firms, as Zanini
alludes, this sort of approach is not new and grows from the experience of many
projects in the remoter parts of Brazil. It is also consistently hailed by
Brazilian firms, corporate observers, and African government officials as a
strength, but one that is not particularly well exploited by Brazil’s
government.
The importance of the Brazilian experience for these firms
remains as a subtle theme throughout the book with clearly referenced echoes of
the Lava Jato corruption scandal that was taking place as Zanini researched and
wrote the book. While the close relations between Odebrecht and the ruling
Santos family in Angola are not deeply unpacked, neither are they minimized nor
their implications discarded. Perhaps more interesting is the discussion of Vale’s
coal project in the Tete province of Mozambique. The importance of
government-to-government relations, particularly intermediated by Lula, in
winning the concession are made clear. What is perhaps more telling is Zanini’s
discussion of the mistakes Vale made when resettling people displaced by
development of the mine as well as worries about land expropriations that
residents in the Nacala corridor fear will take place due to the
Japanese-Brazil ProSAVANA agricultural development assistance project. A history
of highly integrated business-government-operations in Brazil as part of a
sophisticated national industrialization and development strategy resulted in
perhaps too much confidence being given by Vale to the Mozambican government to
adequately address its side of the social commitments in these projects. The
result was a mess, which Vale has addressed but that nevertheless threatens to
damage the perception of Brazil in Mozambique and other countries. For Zanini
this was a potentially costly lesson highlighting the extent to which Brazilian
firms and diplomats are scrambling to learn how to play the outward engagement
game.
This is perhaps the key problem Zanini highlights. Lula’s
government aggressively helped major national firms expand, but failed to think
through the attendant strategic risks and opportunities. Mozambique and Angola
are held up as cases of risk. More ambivalent is the bi-oceanic highway through
Peru. By Zanini’s assessment the highway is massively over-engineered for
traffic levels that remain a distant mirage. The result for some is a
boondoggle designed solely to enrich Brazilian construction companies on the
back of Peruvian tax-payers. Yet, the drive Zanini takes the reader on along
this road underlines the massive transformation it has had on the micro-level
political economy of the region. The story is problematic and complicated, but also
positive. The unanswered question is how Brasília is managing and leveraging
the narrative.
To be clear, this is not a scholarly book and has no
pretensions of being one. Rather, it is a sensitive journalistic record of what
is taking place on the ground and a critique of the Lula administration’s lack
of strategic planning as it raced to build and deepen links throughout Africa
and South America. The question of corruption and the de facto privatization of
Brazilian foreign policy to serve the needs of firms that now appear to have
been the PT government’s paymaster is acknowledged, but as Zanini points out,
much of this problematic story broke as the book was moving through the
printing press. This book is thus an important contextual study for those
examining Brazil’s South-South relations, the rise of Brazilian multinationals,
and a good starting point for those turning to questions of corruption and
presidential foreign policy strategy in the PT years.
Sean W Burges
The Australian National University
