Search results
This book contributes to the construction of an integrated analysis of Brazilian foreign policy by focusing on the country's insertion into both the regional and global system over the roughly twenty-five years through to the end of Dilma's first term as president in 2014. An attempt is made to order the discussion through exploration of a series of themes, which are further broken down into key component parts. The first section presents the context, with chapters on institutional structures and the tactical behaviours exhibited by the country's diplomacy, which will be used to guide the analysis in subsequent chapters. The second focuses on issues, taking in trade policies, the rise of Brazilian foreign direct investment, security policy and multilateralism. Key relationships are covered in the final section, encompassing Latin America, the Global South, the US and China. A central contradiction is the clear sense that Brazilian foreign policy makers want to position their country as leader, but are almost pathologically averse to explicitly stating this role or accepting the implicit responsibilities. The recurrent theme is the rising confusion about what Brazil's international identity is, what it should be, and what this means Brazil can and should do. A repeated point made is that foreign policy is an important and often overloooked aspect of domestic policies. The Dilma presidency does hold an important place in the analytical narrative of this book, particularly with respect to the chapters on trade, Brazil Inc., security policy and bilateral relations with the US and China.
matters is how you deal with threats to human rights, what type of action you take, what is your method. In other words, whether you do things through threats and punishment or through cooperation. JF: You’ve often referred to a ‘dialectic’ between national interest and solidarity. The innovation of Brazilian foreign policy during Lula’s Workers’ Party government is perhaps most notable in the practice of balancing these motivations. Nonetheless, other governments had previously promoted the idea of compatibility between interests and values, most
A long-standing, self-deprecating joke in Brazil runs as follows: ‘Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be.’ Although ambitions of global importance and international influence are not new to Brazilian foreign policy, the capacity and credibility to realize these dreams have until recently been absent. Whether it be Brazil’s relative geographic isolation from the main US–Europe axis of power, a lack of industrial capacity in the first half of the twentieth century, financial disaster in the 1980s and 1990s, or a generalized lack of military
The argument made in this book is relatively simple in nature, but one that is counter-intuitive to first inclinations when analysing a country’s foreign policy. Simply put, the point I have sought to make is that Brazilian foreign policy is primarily concerned with questions of structural power, not relative power. Brazil is not seeking power over other states or regional dominance simply to enforce its own will. Instead, the focus is on influencing a deeper and more profound type of power, an effort which seeks to embed Brazilian interests in the very fabric
Perhaps one of the most consistent themes in Brazilian foreign policy over the last century has been the drive for a seat at the main global governance decision making tables. Whether it be the Versailles Palace talks after World War One, the San Francisco discussions leading to the United Nations system or negotiations in countless international forums such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, GATT/WTO, or World Health Organization, Brazilian diplomats have devoted enormous efforts to ensuring they are given space to be active participants. This has
Introduction In this chapter, I explore the use of the concept of multipolarity in the Brazilian foreign policy debate from 2000 to 2015. To do so, I draw on four sources. First, I analyse documents from Brazilian government agencies to reconstruct how polarity was thought of and what impact this had on actual policy. Second, I rely on a series of in-depth interviews conducted in June 2017 with academics and Brazilian public officials to help unravel their understanding of the term and the interests of different actors. Third, I systematically review the
Latin America more broadly and South America specifically provide the platform on which Brazilian foreign policy architects positioned their main lever for attempting to shift structural power frameworks and the pursuit of their country’s particular brand of international insertion. Central to this has been a continental strategic reality particularly propitious for the consensual hegemonic style of leadership sought by Brazil over the last quarter century. While there have been occasional armed contretemps between South American states, the most serious
phase of Brazilian foreign policy which advocated, on the one hand, relations with the United States and other ‘major’ powers, but also with emerging and newly independent countries. It also coincided with a key moment for the Republic of Armenia. After the Treaty of Sèvres was rejected by Mustafa Kemal and the national government in Ankara, Kemalist troops marched east. The Armenian Republic was threatened on the one hand by this Turkish advance, and on the other by the Bolsheviks. Aware of these threats, Etienne Brasil, in a telegram to the Minister of External
out o jeito brasileiro , or the Brazilian way, this chapter will set out the three essential building blocks of any essential jeitinho. First, it will put forward the Brazilian outlook on the world, one that at times is simultaneously realist and idealist. This makes the tenor of Brazilian foreign policy remarkably similar to that of the US and France, two countries who have definite views of their ideal version of the world and total confidence about what is their rightful place in it. While Brazil shares this confidence, it is a bit more circumspect about
A major theme running through this book is the sense of tension between Brazil and the US that periodically arises across a range of policy areas. Indeed, much of Brazilian foreign policy can be read as an explicit attempt to assert autonomy from the US, reflecting the reality that in no other area is the distinction between relational power and structural power so important for gaining analytical insight as the case of Brazil–US bilateral relations. Although this line of argumentation overlooks the enormous degree of pragmatic cooperation between the two