"I love you Trump" perde o seu objeto: Bolsonaro ainda insiste na resistência a Biden - Frederic Puglie (Washington Times)

 Newfound flexibility? Defiant Bolsonaro not rushing to embrace Biden

By Frederic Puglie - Special to The Washington Times 

Thursday, November 26, 2020

In the wee hours of election night Nov. 3, the president’s son tweeted a screenshot of Michigan vote totals purporting to show a sudden jump in favor of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden.

“Strange,” he noted ironically.

But what may sound like Donald Trump Jr. in truth came from Eduardo Bolsonaro, the congressman and third son of a man who has long and enthusiastically embraced his “Trump of the Tropics” moniker: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Several foreign leaders who forged strong personal bonds with President Trump — including Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — over the past four years face challenges adjusting to the prospect of a Biden administration. But nowhere may the whiplash be as severe as in Brasilia.

Having openly endorsed President Trump’s bid for reelection, the leader of South America’s largest and most populous nation now finds himself having to deal with a man he all but called a danger to his country as recently as two weeks ago — and one who has had some pointed criticisms of the populist Brazilian leader to boot.

“We heard a great candidate for head of state say that if I don’t put out the fire in the Amazon, he’ll put up trade barriers against Brazil. How can we react to all that?” Mr. Bolsonaro said on Nov. 10.

“Diplomacy alone won’t do,” he cautioned. “When you’re out of spit, you need gunpowder.”

The remark was but the latest sign the confrontational Mr. Bolsonaro sees no immediate intent to ingratiate himself with Mr. Biden, who had threatened the former army captain with “significant economic consequences” should he refuse to “stop tearing down the forest” in exchange for a $20 billion payment.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Bolsonaro is one of the last major holdouts who has yet to formally acknowledge Mr. Biden’s apparent electoral victory, so long as his friend Mr. Trump refuses to formally concede the race.

But also characteristically, Mr. Bolsonaro’s defiance is not so much about alienating Mr. Biden or placating Mr. Trump as it is about promoting none other than Mr. Bolsonaro, said Ambassador Paulo Roberto de Almeida, a former director of the IPRI think tank at Brazil’s foreign ministry.

“He must know that Trump lost and that Joe Biden will be the next president,” Mr. de Almeida said. “But since he embodied this ‘anti-multilateralist, anti-globalist, pro-American, anti-Chinese, anti-communist and so on’ position, he sticks to it.”

And while Mr. Bolsonaro’s refusal so far to congratulate — much less offer to work with — Mr. Bidenmay unnerve Brazil’s foreign policy establishment, his inner circle continues to egg him on, Mr. de Almeida added.

“Bolsonaro depends on his immediate advisers: [foreign policy adviser] Filipe Martins; son No. 3, Eduardo Bolsonaro; and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo,” he detailed. “Those three kept Bolsonaro from ending [his] silence about the [Biden] victory.”

And little suggests Mr. Bolsonaro is about to turn into a second Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s leftist president who — despite his political leanings — was able to forge an unexpectedly respectful and productive relationship with Mr. Trump, his ideological opposite.

Mr. Bolsonaro “doesn’t seem like he’s really ready to backtrack and find ways of working with Biden,” said Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. “In part, it’s [because] Brazil is certainly less dependent on the United States than Mexico.”

Running in 2022

In the medium term, then, the fate of Washington-Brasilia relations may well depend on what Mr. Bolsonaro concludes is his best campaign strategy to win a second term two years from now.

“Whatever he does with regard to relations with the United States — what he looks for in the United States — will be in reference to his [reelection],” Mr. Hakim cautioned.

The Brazilian president, who has remained buoyant in the polls despite the country’s devastating fight with the coronavirus, has shown a tactical ability to be flexible on the policy front.

Having initially championed his Economy Minister Paulo Guedes’s pro-market fiscal conservatism, Mr. Bolsonaro this year switched course to allow for generous government handouts amid the coronavirus pandemic — one big reason, analysts say, for an unprecedented bump in his approval numbers.

“After a blustery, Trump-like start that he is going to make these huge changes in the way Brazilfunctions and he’s not going to follow the rules,” Mr. Hakim quipped, “he has [now] recognized the value of getting something done.”

And though the Nov. 15 first round of municipal elections saw Bolsonaro-backed candidates lose key mayoral races, the overall success of center-right forces, ironically, turned out to be good news.

“In truth, he gained strength,” Brasilia-based political consultant Vera Galante noted. “He ends up strengthened in Congress, and also in the states, even though his candidates were defeated.”

Which version of Mr. Bolsonaro — the 2019 ideologue or the 2020 pragmatist — will show up for the 2022 campaign, then, is, more than ever, anybody’s guess.

“He has a real dilemma facing him,” Mr. Hakim said. “Does he use his populist strongman approach? … Or is the best to try to get the economy going again? He would like to do both, but there are trade-offs there for him.”

The dilemma is real, political scientist Lucas de Abreu Maia agreed. But economic realities will ultimately force Mr. Bolsonaro’s hand, the former O Estado de S. Paulo reporter added.

“He is in a very tough position, actually, because he has to please his domestic audience — but the Brazilian economy cannot afford to have anything but [a] good relationship with the U.S.,” Mr. de Abreu Maia said. “Brazil needs the U.S. a lot more than the U.S. needs Brazil.”

And plenty of influential forces will be pushing Mr. Bolsonaro to at least try to mend fences with his new American counterpart, Mr. Hakim said.

“The agricultural lobby, the business community and the military — and even many of the evangelicals,” he said, “are going to press him to find a way to patch up relations with Biden.”

To do that, though, all roads lead back to the Amazon, whose deforestation pits Mr. Bolsonaro’s trademark talking points — sovereignty, national pride, development — against Mr. Biden’s assertion of an “existential threat” from climate change and his determination to make climate change a centerpiece of U.S. economic and foreign policy.

“Trade relations, trade negotiations, trade agreements,” Mr. Hakim enumerated, “are going to be very hard for Brazil to secure without a real reversal on Bolsonaro’s Amazon policy.”

In fact, Mr. Biden’s mention of the Amazon in the first presidential debate was the first time he had seen a purportedly domestic issue come up so prominently in a foreign campaign, economist Marcio Pochmann said.

“The Amazon issue, in truth, is an international debate,” said Mr. Pochmann, the former president of the Perseu Abramo Foundation linked to the opposition Workers’ Party.

About-face?

And given Mr. Bolsonaro’s newfound flexibility on a variety of issues, another about-face is certainly within the realm of the possible, he suggested.

“I wouldn’t rule out Bolsonaro changing positions” on the international scene, Mr. Pochmann said.

Getting along with Mr. Biden could certainly help Brasilia stay at the top of the South American pecking order, Ms. Galante suggested.

“President Bolsonaro will want to re-establish [Brazilian] hegemony in the region, and for that he needs the United States,” she said.

But any “flexibility” could easily cut both ways, Mr. Pochmann cautioned, pointing to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conspicuous display of camaraderie toward Mr. Bolsonaro at last week’s virtual BRICS summit of major emerging economies.

And if anything, the former congressman — who during his 20-year career in politics has switched party allegiances no fewer than eight times — has a history of digging in, not dropping out.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s animosity toward Argentine President Alberto Fernandez — by all accounts mutual — seems to have survived countless attempts at reconciliation. And his jabs against China have already cost Brazil dearly, Mr. de Almeida said. At the BRICS summit — a loose grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — Beijing quietly withdrew its longstanding endorsement of an expanded role for Brasilia at the United Nations.

A telltale sign of what course Mr. Bolsonaro wants to take toward the Biden administration, analysts agreed, will likely be the fate of Mr. Araujo, his foreign minister.

A changing of the guard at the ministry’s famed Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia could come around Mr. Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration and would signal Mr. Bolsonaro’s desire for a new beginning, Mr. de Almeida said.

“I would pay close attention to the Itamaraty,” Ms. Galante agreed, “because he could use this opportunity.”

But foreign policy and self-interest aside, embracing Mr. Biden will not come easy to Mr. Bolsonaro, who modeled much of his political success — his stunning 2018 electoral victory, his jabs at “fake-news” media, his Twitter tirades — on the Donald Trump model.

“He embodied this ‘Trumpist’ position not because he was Trump’s friend — he isn’t — [but because] he is Trump’s admirer,” Mr. de Almeida said.

“To the extent that either follows a playbook, Bolsonaro has been following Trump‘s,” Mr. de Abreu Maia said. “It’s going to be harder for [Mr. Bolsonaro] to win reelection without having really an inspiration — really a playbook to follow.”

Entre Biden e Trump, a América Latina fica na expectativa - Frederic Puglie (The Washington Times)

 Frederic Puglie é um jornalista americano que cobre a América Latina para o Washington Times, um jornal de direita americano. Ele sempre me telefona para pedir minha opinião sobre os temas de política externa, o que eu não me recuso a dar, embora ele selecione cuidadosamente apenas uma frase ou duas de uma conversa bem mais abrangente.

Eis a última matéria, cobrindo vários países latino-americanos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 

 

'Heartfelt' views: Latin America watches, weighs in on U.S. election

Sharp policy shifts could be in the works after election

 

By Frederic Puglie - Special to The Washington Times - Wednesday, October 28, 2020

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/28/latin-america-weighs-trump-biden-election

 

Americans choosing between President Trump and Vice President Joseph R. Biden on Tuesday will also have a say on what’s next for some 650 millions of their neighbors to the South, where the presidential race is a top topic of discussion on screens and around kitchen tables.

Any U.S. presidential election is bound to generate intense interest in Latin America, but leaders and ordinary citizens across Central and South America have tuned into — and sought to shape — the 2020 race in ways not previously seen. Issues such as immigration, trade and relations with problem states such as Cuba and Venezuela could take sharp turns next year depending on whether the U.S. is led by Republicans or Democrats.

Some are not just watching from the sidelines.

In a break with normal protocol, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week endorsed Mr. Trump for reelection. He said there was no “need to hide [his] heartfelt” views.

In Colombia, critics say some lawmakers have been actively “campaigning” for both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden as the country’s troubled, U.S.-backed peace deal ending a long leftist insurgency hangs in the balance.

In Argentina, meanwhile, Buenos Aires college student Daniel Sandrea said he was keeping a close eye on the election unfolding on the other side of the hemisphere.

When the Biden fan told friends on social media that he was happy to be challenged on his views, he quickly found himself debating American politics not with his Florida-based relatives but with a fellow Venezuelan emigre living in Chile.

“We are in disagreement,” Mr. Sandrea said with a laugh. “He explained his position, and, well, I explained mine.”

Analysts say such cross-continental attention should come as no surprise. Mr. Trump’s style and record, which have long been catalysts of passion for backers and detractors alike, and a uniquely volatile campaign have made for compelling drama.

“There has never been anything remotely close in the level of attention, interest and concern … as there is with this election,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “It’s just quite striking.”

Mr. Trump’s tough line, his supporters say, has forged an unexpectedly productive diplomacy with key Latin American states, leading the fight against illegal drugs and aggressively confronting leftist regimes in Venezuela and Cuba. As for Mr. Biden, he served as a point man to Central America as vice president and helped shepherd through a $750 million aid package for the region in 2015.

Mr. Biden’s campaign platform calls for a $4 billion aid package to struggling Central American states as a key plank in his immigration agenda.

The election’s impact on policy could be tested quickly no matter who wins the election. The U.S. is scheduled to host to the ninth Summit of the Americas next year. It will be the first time in more than a quarter century that the hemispherewide gathering will be on U.S. soil.

How a second Trump term or a Biden administration would turn out often depends on the idiosyncrasies of individual Latin American nations and leaders.

 

BRAZIL: The ‘other’ Trump

For the “Trump of the Tropics,” a moniker that the conservative maverick Mr. Bolsonaro has long embraced, the outcome of the U.S. election may make a particularly stark difference.

The close ties that the populist leader has sought with the United States contrast sharply with the lukewarm feelings that for decades — under U.S. and Brazilian presidents of all ideological stripes — defined Brasilia’s view of Washington.

“The government, and Bolsonaro in particular, try hard to highlight this special relationship,” said Ambassador Paulo Roberto de Almeida, a former head of the IPRI think tank at Brazil’s foreign ministry.

Among other things, this helped Mr. Trump — who “launched a great offensive to guarantee Brazil’s support” — install American Mauricio Claver-Carone as president of the Inter-American Development Bank, a post traditionally held by a Latin American, Mr. de Almeida said.

“Bolsonaro and Trump have this bromance of sorts and have this affinity both ideological and temperamental,” Mr. Shifter said.

Although a pragmatic President Biden might be inclined to let bygones be bygones, it remains to be seen whether that would hold true for Mr. Bolsonaro, he added.

“There are going to be some strains on issues like the environment,” Mr. Shifter said. “To what extent Bolsonaro is prepared to accommodate to that changing agenda, that’s going to be a big question.”

 

MEXICO: An AMLO dilemma

Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Trump may be cut from the same cloth in style and substance, but one of the big surprises of Mr. Trump’s first term has been the cordial and productive relationship he forged with leftist Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a critic in the past of what many see as overbearing U.S. policies.

Almost immediately upon taking office in late 2018, Mr. Lopez Obrador toned down his long-standing anti-Trumprhetoric, committed to ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and in July made his first foreign trip to sign the free trade pact alongside his counterpart in the White House.

Mr. Trump has praised Mexico’s efforts to crack down on streams of immigrants from Central America, and the two governments recently struck a deal on a water-sharing accord that threatened to incite tensions between the two countries’ powerful agricultural sectors.

By staying firmly on Mr. Trump’s good side, Mr. Lopez Obrador — widely known by his initials as “AMLO” — defied his base and the persistently negative views that most Mexicans hold of Mr. Trump, said Jose Del Tronco of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico City.

“Because of [Mr. Trump‘s] positions on immigrants and ‘the wall,’ there is a kind of general expectation in Mexico that the Democrats will win the election,” said Mr. Del Tronco, leading critics to warn that Mr. Lopez Obrador’s accommodating attitude toward Mr. Trump could come back to haunt him.

The real challenge of a Biden administration, though, would be the expected renewed focus on human rights issues, where common ground is easier to find in theory than in practice, Mr. Del Tronco added.

“There would not be a conflict of visions” with Mr. Biden, he said, “[but] the real policies — the public-safety policies, such as the [new] national guard and the military presence in public spaces to fight crime — those could result in conflict.”

 

COLOMBIA: Florida calling

Such a mismatch also could spell trouble for conservative Colombian President Ivan Duque. Mr. Trump has dubbed him a “really good guy,” so he has had little to fear other than an occasional slap on the wrist over Bogota’s inability to rein in coca production.

Once again, that would likely change if Mr. Biden moves into the White House, Mr. Shifter said.

“Broadening the agenda in Mexico and Colombia is going to make AMLO and Duque uncomfortable,” he predicted. “They will not necessarily embrace greater scrutiny on human rights abuses and corruption, which Trump has largely ignored, [and] they like getting a free pass on these issues.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Mr. Duque’s ruling Democratic Center and the opposition Progressive Movement have been anything but coy about taking sides, said Juan Carlos Ruiz Vasquez of Bogota’s Del Rosario University.

“The Democratic Center is trying to campaign for Trump in Florida,” Mr. Ruiz Vasquez said, “mobilizing Colombians who already have the right to vote.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Gustavo Petro’s endorsement of Mr. Biden is playing in heavy rotation in Florida commercial breaks, he said, though probably not in the way the leader of the Progressive Movement intended.

“[His] statements were used in a Trump campaign ad,” Mr. Ruiz Vasquez marveled.

 

VENEZUELA: Side effects

Few issues move Colombian American voters like the ever-deteriorating meltdown in neighboring Venezuela. Mr. Trumphas tried to capitalize on the concern by repeatedly branding his opponent a “socialist.”

Although the Trump administration’s take-no-prisoners style has been compared at times to Nicolas Maduro’s, Mr. Trump’s hawkish approach to the Venezuelan leader and Mr. Maduro’s allies in Havana have earned him enduring support within the Venezuelan and Cuban diasporas in the U.S.

“We see that President Trump has taken positions of solidarity, and that has also generated a response of solidarity with Trump,” said Milos Alcalay, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations.

But the Trump administration’s tough sanctions “are more popular in Miami than they are in Caracas,” Mr. Shifter said. Mr. Biden might reduce the saber-rattling, he added, but he is unlikely to prove as dovish as Republicans would have voters believe.

“I don’t think Biden or his team have many illusions that Maduro is anything but a brutal, ruthless dictator,” Mr. Shifter said. “The difference is in style and approach. You’re not going to hear, ‘All options are on the table.’”

Still, even if Mr. Biden proves tough on Mr. Maduro, the possibility of a more accommodating approach to those who have propped up the strongman’s rule would concern him just as much, Mr. Alcalay said.

“It’s not just about the U.S.-Iran, U.S.-China and U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationships,” he said, “but about the negative effect these countries have maintaining the Maduro regime in power — with all its implications.”

 

ARGENTINA: Maps and money

A broader map, meanwhile, may also be on the mind of Cristina Fernandez, Argentina’s leftist vice president who — though nominally second in command to President Alberto Fernandez, no relation — is widely considered the driving force in Buenos Aires policy these days.

During her own presidency from 2007 to 2015, Ms. Fernandez forged close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Mr. Maduro, as well as leftist leaders in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay, before countries across the continent drove the left from power.

But the triumph of Evo Morales’s Movement for Socialism in Bolivia’s election this month has given Argentina’s left-leaning populist leaders new hope that the tide may be turning once again, said Mariano de Vedia of Buenos Aires‘ La Nacion daily.

“There is, of course, a bet on Trump losing [and on] a Democratic triumph giving the government a direct benefit [that] would help it form a friendlier regional map,” Mr. de Vedia said.

That a Biden administration would roll out the red carpet for the Fernandez government, though, may be little more than wishful thinking, the political commentator said.

“The scene being set is, in truth, hypothetical. There is no evidence they’ll have a better time” with Mr. Biden, Mr. de Vedia said. He noted that Ms. Fernandez endured a “pretty bad” relationship with President Obama, which “failed to yield her any advantage.”

Many in Buenos Aires seem to fail to appreciate that Mr. Trump lent a helping hand in recent talks to renegotiate its sovereign debt with the International Monetary Fund, said Gustavo Cardozo of the Argentine Center for International Studies.

“We needed the help of the White House to be able to make a deal with the IMF …,” Mr. Cardozo said. “Trump has not been opposed to helping Argentina, and that has been very positive.”

There is no guarantee that relations will improve markedly with a Democratic administration in Washington, Mr. Cardozo said, and many parts of the relationship may have to be renegotiated from scratch.

“Nobody knows where [Mr. Biden], if elected, will stand” on this, he said, “so it would mean drawing up these deals from zero.”

 

THE HEMISPHERE: Monroe or multilateralism?

Beyond individual issues and countries, analysts say, the picture is cloudy for how Tuesday’s vote will affect U.S. policy, attention and resources devoted to the region as a whole.

Mr. Trump would be bound to continue a “chairman of the board” approach in hemispheric fora such as the Organization for American States, Inter-American Dialogue President Emeritus Peter Hakim predicted. On issues such as immigration and security, the U.S. has proved more assertive since Mr. Trump took office.

After all, the Trump administration has “declared that the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well, thank you, after it had been really seen as obsolete by previous governments,” Mr. Hakim quipped.

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, might take more of a “first among equals” approach. Mr. Hakim predicted that there would be at least a “change in tone.”

“The notion that the U.S. plays a special role — that it has a certain leadership responsibility for the hemisphere — will diminish,” he said, “[though] it will not disappear.”

 

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