RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Unless he takes a 180-degree turn in his foreign relations and environmental policies, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro risks becoming an international pariah. Yet the Brazilian President continues to disregard the Foreign Affair’s tradition of not speaking out about other countries’ presidential disputes, and even before the final result, he again attacked President-elect Joe Biden.
“The Democrat candidate discussed the Amazon twice. Is this what we want for Brazil? There is an interference from abroad towards Brazil,” he declared to supporters on Wednesday in Brasília. Earlier, he had said that “hope is the last to die,” knowing that the election could be judicialized by Donald Trump.
However, by the end of the week he had softened his tone somewhat. “I’m not the most important person in Brazil, just as Trump is not the most important person in the world, as he himself says. The most important one is God, humility has to be present among us,” he said at a police graduation ceremony in Santa Catarina.
Diplomats and political analysts point out that the victory of Democrat Biden over Republican Trump in the race for the presidency of the United States will deepen an isolation created by Bolsonaro and his Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo.
Mirroring the defeated American president, but lacking the economic and military power that the country possesses, the Brazilians have scorned multilateral organizations and worked against themes that have been advocated here for decades, such as human rights, environmental protection and women’s protection. All of these were openly supported by Biden in the race for the White House this year, as a means of gaining support from his party’s progressive wing.
In diplomatic circles, foreign government officials sent word to the Planalto Palace last week that in the event Biden won, Bolsonaro should be pragmatic. And as an indication that he is open to dialogue with the new president, he should dismiss the two main officials of his government’s radical wing: Ernesto Araújo and Ricardo Salles, the Minister of Environment who lacks international recognition from his peers.
The President has not indicated whether or not he intends to follow the advice. As a matter of fact, he seldom does. But among his advisors there are some who are trying to persuade him of the change, even if it occurs in the medium term, in order to prevent it from seeming that the President has yielded to the interests of the new American leadership or that he has given up Brazilian sovereignty.
“Without Trump, Ricardo Salles and Araújo become more vulnerable players. If he wants to survive in this international scenario, Bolsonaro must consider getting rid of them,” said political scientist Fábio de Sá e Silva, professor of International Studies at Oklahoma University.
The sign of isolation was pointed out by five foreign diplomats who work in Brasília and spoke on the condition that their names would not be disclosed. “We were waiting for the result of the American election to find out how we should address Brazil. Now that it happened, we are waiting for the Brazilian Government’s actions to understand which side it is on, whether that of ideology or that of the globalized, interconnected world,” said an ambassador.
For some who have already held key positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such as the body’s ex-Secretary General and former ambassador to the United States, Roberto Abdenur, and the ex-ambassador to China, Marcos Caramuru, the Bolsonaro government was wrong to ally itself with Trump’s persona, and not with the American government.
“For decades Brazil aligned itself with the United States at different times. But they were parallel alignments. This alignment between Bolsonaro and Trump is one of subordination, almost of vassalage,” Abdenur assessed. The result of this approach, in his opinion, is the total absence of strategic partnerships, whether it be with the United States or with any other country.
“In these almost two years of his mandate, Bolsonaro’s Brazil has only three and a half countries as friends: Israel, Hungary, Poland, and the Trump half of the United States. With Biden’s election we are loose in the world,” he said.
Lucas Leite, professor of international relations at FAAP (Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation) shares a similar assessment: “This ideological alignment always came with some bargaining, with some kind of benefit for Brazil. In the case of Bolsonaro, it was free, with little negotiation.”
Ambassador Caramuru is of the opinion that Brazil should bow to pragmatism, as it has done in its relations with China. “The United States under Trump’s administration lives a dichotomy, a schizophrenia between ideology and reality. That’s what Brazil has mirrored itself in so far,” he said.
However, in the coming months, the Bolsonaro administration should immediately change course, just as it did in trade relations with China, a country often criticized by the Brazilian president and his followers. “There is awareness of our higher fragility as a country. There may be an economic retaliation if there is a radicalization by Brazil. And no one wants to take the risk of losing.”
Of the 13 interviewees – including the five diplomats who spoke unofficially – only two analysts consider that there will be no major tensions between Biden’s White House and Bolsonaro’s Planalto Palace: Professor and economist Vitoria Saddi of INSPER (higher education institution) and political scientist Chistopher Garman, Eurasia Group’s executive director for the Americas. “Typically, Democratic governments tend to partner more with Brazil than Republicans. I think ideology is behind us right now,” Saddi said.
Garman considers that the United States would not be interested in weakening this relationship either. “I don’t believe that Brazil will place itself in an international ostracism because of an ideological tantrum,” he said. According to him, Latin America is an important stage for the technological and geopolitical dispute with China; the Brazilian economy, the largest in the region, is “too large to be ignored”.
The only point of friction between the Biden and Bolsonaro managements would be environmental issues, which are no small matter: “Bolsonaro has placed himself in the unfortunate position of villain on the environmental agenda because of patch burning in the Amazon and Pantanal, coupled with the President’s bellicose reaction,” Garman stated.
Financial pressure
Ultimately, the mismanagement of these environmental crises and this role of villain taken on by Bolsonaro tend to result in financial losses. “We are experiencing a time in which any deviation in the environmental area serves as an argument for losing business. All groups that wish to adopt protectionism in relation to Brazilian products will charge and retaliate against Brazil,” assessed professor and coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Foundation international relations course, Eduardo Mello.
Both Mello and professor Sá e Silva, from Oklahoma, analyze that this negative scenario for Brazil can be driven by a group of congressmen allied to Biden who consider the Bolsonaro management as a violation of indigenous rights, populations and environmental rules.
“In the U.S. Congress, a group of congressmen who are very critical of Brazil have established themselves as defending that no [trade] agreements should be reached because of the environmental issue. They also consider that democracy in Brazil is at risk,” reported Sá e Silva.
In the human rights area, there are still two other issues that may eventually gain importance with the new occupant of the White House: the collective deportation of Brazilians and the potential expropriation of quilombola communities in Alcântara, Maranhão. For the first time, a US president authorized the massive deportation of Brazilian immigrants who would have been detained in the United States.
So far, 120 have reached the country on charter flights. In relation to Alcântara, Biden is expected to respect the rights of the traditional black communities living there. The Bolsonaro management has progressed with a technological safeguard agreement that grants the commercial use of the rocket launching base by the United States.
In practice, unless there is a change in attitude, Brazil could lose the chance to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a pledge made by Trump that has so far not materialized. “The Bolsonaro government loses a godfather complicit in its socio-environmental and human rights violations. Now, it will have to prove a minimal commitment in environmental issues and respect for minimum democratic standards in order to join the OECD,” considered Camila Asano, Program Director of the NGO Conectas.
In the 21st century cold war, what should not change is the U.S. stance on 5G internet frequency, which should be auctioned in Brazil next year. The Trump management has pressured its allies not to agree to Chinese Huawei supplying equipment to telecommunications companies participating in the bid. The issue is not a Republican party cause, but rather of the whole country.
“In both Democratic and Republican circles, the trade dispute with China is here to stay,” says Professor Mello.
Source: El Pais