CHAPTER 1

BRAZIL

Shadows of the Past and Contested Ambitions

MATIAS SPEKTOR

WHAT IS Brazil’s strategy to cope with the emerging world order? The question has come up time and again in scholarly writings as analysts try to project whether Brazil is bound to be a “responsible stakeholder” or a spoiler of the emerging system.1 Answers, however, are not readily available because generations of Brazilian statesmen have rarely couched their foreign policies in the language of “grand strategy” that is common in American scholarly discourse.
In this chapter, I examine what Brazil wants in the world and how it hopes to get it by putting its foreign policy frameworks in context. First, I focus on three underlying factors that have shaped the evolution of Brazilian strategy: domestic politics, ideology, and the intersection between geopolitics and economics. The chapter then turns to the substance of Brazilian strategies, with reference to four core strategic themes that recur in national conversations and in the making of foreign policy—namely polarity, regional order, membership in international institutions, and global justice. The pages that follow frame these issues in a historical perspective; even if my chief concern is with the contemporary period, Brazilian attitudes regarding global order are profoundly shaped by shared national grievances about the past and by the widespread perception that the country remains at the receiving end of a highly unequal and discriminating international system. Across the political spectrum, there is a persistent national historical narrative of relative weakness and dependence that influences behavior. While critics often point out that a Brazilian foreign policy community bounded by historical tropes risks walking forward while looking backward, the fact remains that shadows of the past must be integrated into any account of Brazil’s behavior in the world today.

Core Constraining Factors

Three core factors have shaped the evolution of Brazilian strategy: domestic politics, ideology, and the country’s relative position in the international system.

Domestic Politics

Of the three factors shaping current Brazilian strategy, domestic politics is the most salient. Unlike three decades ago when an authoritarian regime ran the country, democratic Brazil defies careful, calculated foreign policymaking by elites. Brazil is as vibrant and messy a democracy as any other: Brazilian presidents preside over an often-fractured governing coalition and they face the challenge of managing a vast federal state with an unruly set of bureaucracies and semi-independent agencies operating within it. Candidates for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies are chosen on the basis of a highly competitive open-list, proportional electoral system and coexist with twenty-seven powerful state governors and legislatures. Members of the gargantuan judiciary branch are staunchly independent from executive control, and so is the free press. Private lobbies and organized interests seek to and do exert influence at all levels, further complicating the ability of leaders to conduct foreign policy according to a rationally constructed notion of “national interests.”2
Domestic factors have been critical in the foreign policies of the last three presidencies: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003–2010), and Dilma Rousseff (2011 to the present). Facing different domestic circumstances, all three presidents invested in grand strategies that they thought would best serve their ability to govern successfully and retain power. Their individual skill, rhetoric, and experience must figure prominently in any detailed account of their respective foreign policies, but the focus here is on the incentives emerging from the domestic political system that they faced.
For the past twenty years, intense electoral competition between center-right and center-left coalitions have dominated the political scene. For all of their divisions, however, these two poles came to frame national politics around a set of shared priorities: consolidating democratic rule through free, competitive elections and an independent judiciary; securing financial stability after years of hyper-inflation and economic mismanagement; building an incipient welfare state to assist the poor who still comprise over half the population; and embracing many of the benefits of a liberal global order, like norms governing human rights, free trade, and nuclear nonproliferation.3 But the differences in these coalitions are reflected in the two political leaders—Cardoso and Lula—who emerged on the national political scene as opponents to dictatorial rule and who went on to govern Brazil from 1995 to 2002 and from 2003 to 2010, respectively. The parties they commanded fought for the presidency in 2010, with Lula’s anointed successor Dilma Rousseff winning the election that year and gaining reelection in 2014.
Both Cardoso and Lula thought of themselves as statesmen set to transform Brazil’s position in the international system. The two of them traveled extensively around the globe and actively used foreign policy to build their authority at home. Perhaps more importantly, each couched his own vision for the future of Brazil in terms of wider changes in the global context. Let us look at their views in turn.
Cardoso took office in the mid-1990s believing that unipolarity was not a fleeting moment but a structure of world politics that was likely to endure. As an academic sociologist years earlier, he had written extensively about global inequality and the dependence of nations from the postcolonial world on the major industrial countries of the North Atlantic. As president, his core conviction was that countries like Brazil had little policy space. Either they had to adapt to the rules of the game or they would be left behind. According to this view, Brazil’s ability to shape the international system was limited, and the best foreign policy was one that avoided conflict with the major centers of power and sought to adapt to the dominant regimes and institutions. Normatively, it was the duty of leadership to ensure that Brazil took part in the prevailing wave of globalization, with a view toward stabilizing the economy, consolidating democracy, and transforming one of the most unequal societies in the world into a middle-class nation.4
Lula held a very different view as he took office in 2003. He believed a significant transition of power was under way in the world that would benefit countries like Brazil. This was partly the result of changes in the global economy, but also a consequence of what he saw as the failures of neoliberalism under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, as well as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Lula saw the anti-globalization protests erupting in Seattle in 1999 as a signal that the global political mood was about to shift and the international system would become more malleable for a country like Brazil. In his estimation, there was policy space to reform existing regimes and institutions with a view to secure a better place for Brazil, a newfound position that would offer Brazilian authorities more “autonomy” to pursue policies consistent with growing the economy, reducing poverty and inequality at home, and producing a middle-class society.5
Even if their ultimate goals were similar, Cardoso and Lula developed very different causal logics. Their thinking shaped two alternative ways of conceiving of polarity, regional order, membership in international institutions, and global justice. Before turning to these in the section below, let us first look at the domestic political incentives influencing the foreign policies of each president.
Cardoso was elected in 1994 on the promise to end the cycle of hyperinflation that had haunted Brazil for the better part of the fifteen years prior to his arrival in power. He launched a major program to reform the state, open the economy to foreign trade, privatize large state-owned companies, modernize public services, and construct for the first time ever a fairly basic but nonetheless impressive welfare state to nurture the poor, who accounted for about half the population, but who had been denied the vote until 1989 (when illiterates first got the right to vote).
Accordingly, Cardoso did not have a major incentive to invest his time and attention in foreign policy. He only assumed a more active interest as his first term came to an end in 1998. This occurred as a response to a more ominous international environment, as financial crises systematically threatened his economic stabilization policies (1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000). He focused on global financial reform and on fortifying South America against the instabilities of global capitalism, realizing that public opinion was turning markedly against “neoliberalism” in the wake of the anti-globalization protests in Seattle in 1999. When Osama bin Laden attacked the United States on 9/11, Cardoso, who was at the peak of his foreign policy activism, was inclined to emphasize that “terror equals barbarianism, but so does unilateralism.”6 In spite of his fast-declining popularity ratings, he knew he had built a major coalition in Congress that would support him.
Lula won office in late 2002 under very different circumstances. The economy was stable, state reform was in process, and a welfare state for the poor was in place. Lula had a clear mandate from the electorate to challenge the neoliberal orthodoxy and to denounce George W. Bush’s foreign policies, but the economic climate was good as the commodity super-cycle saw the value of Brazilian exports (increasingly to China) soar. A favorable global economy allowed Lula to amass unprecedented popular support without having to challenge global capitalism or to confront the United States. Within a decade, Brazil underwent rapid change in its class structure, with some forty million people moving from poverty or extreme poverty up the social ladder.
In this context, Lula and his foreign policy advisors thought they had the material resources and the political space to embark on an activist foreign policy. Overseeing a massive party coalition in Congress, his administration launched an expansive set of international initiatives not so much to challenge the existing global order as to secure for Brazil a better position in that order. By the time Lula’s tenure in office came to a close, his critics accused him of overreaching. None of his major foreign policy initiatives had paid off: there was no trade agreement at the Doha world trade conference, no reform of the UN Security Council, and no nuclear agreement brokered between the West and Iran. But supporters highlighted a list of successes: the formation of a coalition of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); the development of a Union of South American Nations (Unasur); the engagement with Africa that saw trade from Brazil boom; the protection of democratic rule in neighboring countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela; and the strengthening of the G20 as a prime forum for global economic management.7
Dilma Rousseff succeeded Lula in 2011 in a domestic and global context that gave her far less leeway to conduct an activist foreign policy. None of the core elements that had undergirded Cardoso’s and Lula’s activist turns were present anymore: the economy slowed down in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the coalition supporting her administration showed widening cracks, and the public was far less supportive of expansionist foreign policies in the aftermath of Lula’s time in power. For the first time in twenty years, there were renewed fears of inflation and recession. Even if Rousseff enjoyed sufficient popular support to secure reelection, the political climate had changed.
Rousseff’s opportunity for an activist foreign policy further diminished in the aftermath of massive protests that erupted around June 2013 and then recurred intermittently. Demonstrators demanded better public services, a curb on government corruption, and political reform to offset the impunity of the powerful that is a hallmark of Brazil’s public life. These expressions of public anger were leaderless and did not translate into benefits for any one single political party. They reflected a widespread malaise about the state of the country, even if economic growth had climbed, social inequality had declined, and public services had improved, however slowly. The malaise illustrated a widespread phenomenon across the developing world—the disruptive nature of international ascent.
Whereas Brazilians throughout the early 2000s saw the world as a place of opportunity for an ascending Brazil, the mood turned to caution in view of an international system that presented Brazil with many obstacles. Rousseff retrenched, scaling back the high profile that Lula accorded to foreign policy. This reduction in Brazil’s geopolitical footprint remained relative—military expenditures stayed pretty high, and so did the range of international issues Brazilian diplomats engaged.
For the emerging countries that had benefited from transformations in the global economy over the prior fifteen years, climbing the international rankings came at the price of unsettling old ways of doing things at home. Critics felt empowered to demand better services from their governments, making it more difficult for governments to achieve their goals.8 Becoming an “emerging power” and moving up the ranks did not simply expand Brazil’s options. On the contrary, it brought a whole new set of constraints on the conduct of foreign policy.9

Ideology

The Brazilian view of global order vastly differs from that of the United States. Take for instance people’s perceptions of “international threats.” Polls show that the average Brazilian worries little about terrorism, radical Islam, or major international war. Brazilians are more fearful of climate change, poverty, and infectious disease. Odd as it may seem, many Brazilians fear the United States itself—the perceived threat it poses to the natural richness of the Amazon and the newfound oilfields under the Brazilian seabed.
Perceptions may be wrong, but they matter enormously. It is no wonder that Brazilian military officials spend a chunk of their time studying how Vietnamese guerrillas won a war against far superior forces in jungle battlefields. Nor should it be a surprise that Brazil is now developing nuclear-propulsion submarines that, its admirals believe, will facilitate their ability to defend oil wells in open waters against the eventuality of an attack from an unnamed industrial power “from the North.”
Brazilian leaders who govern the country today came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, the period when foreign policy was closely aligned with that of the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries. That this should be the case today is not obvious; Brazil is the seventh-largest industrial economy in the world, it is an urban society, and it shares few commonalities with ...