Eight or eighty. This popular expression defines the differences between the proposals of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) for the relations between Brazil and Latin America if they win the elections.
In the foreign policy section, Bolsonaro’s plan dedicates just one line to the purpose of seeking partnerships with the “geographic environment in the Americas”. For the rest, relations with neighbors appear only occasionally in other topics.
Bolsonaro’s diplomacy focuses on the idea of a “universal vocation”, that is, extending ties in multiple directions and not being restricted to a few countries. Historically, universalism was a way of avoiding automatic alignments with world powers.
It is understandable, therefore, why the term was incorporated into the Bolsonarista plan: the need to seek new partnerships became inevitable after the end of the Donald Trump administration, when the anti-globalist foreign policy played by Ernesto Araújo lost its leadership.
Latin America’s neighbors, however, are definitely not on the priority list of the alleged universalism of Bolsonaro’s revamped foreign policy. They haven’t been until now and they won’t be in an eventual second term. This is made clear by the multilateral bodies mentioned in the program: United Nations, G20 (group of the richest countries in the world), WTO (World Trade Organization) and OECD (the “club” of developed countries), with emphasis on the latter, in which the Bolsonaro government insistently seeks to be accepted.
There is no mention of Mercosur. The only instance mentioned that refers to the partnership with emerging countries is the BRICS (which brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) — in which, obviously, Brazil is the lone Latin American representative.
The basic problem with Bolsonaro’s program is that it is inconceivable for Brazil to have a reasonable international insertion if it cannot even present itself as a relevant actor at the regional level.
Lula’s plan goes to the other extreme. The former president wants to revive the diplomatic activism of his eight years in power, what his then chancellor Celso Amorim called an “active and haughty foreign policy”. The PT promises to resume cooperation with poor countries, promote “the integration of South America, Latin America and the Caribbean” and strengthen bodies such as “Mercosur, UNASUR, CELAC and BRICS”.
CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) is a regional cooperation bloc created in 2010 with the purpose, in the view of the then Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, of being an alternative to the OAS (Organization of American States), that is, free from American influence.
Like UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), another project that was linked to Chávez’s ambitions to exert regional influence in opposition to the US, CELAC was emptied with the arrival of right-wing or center-right governments in Brazil and in other countries in the region from 2016.
In his two terms as president, Lula sought to build his role in the region based on two interconnected pillars: political articulation with neighboring governments and the integration of regional infrastructure through large projects carried out, preferably, by Brazilian construction companies.
The problem with trying to revive the protagonism of the past is that Latin America is no longer the same. Integration via infrastructure, in PT governments, was marked by corruption schemes, which led to a dismantling of Brazil’s material capacity to lead it. Certainly, there would be great political resistance to resume the internationalization of Brazilian construction companies and the large external financing from BNDES after what was revealed by Operation Lava Jato.
From the point of view of political articulation, the region’s governments have mostly returned to the hands of the left, but the context is different. First, because the economic scenario is now much more challenging. Despite the gradual recovery to pre-Covid levels, inflation will continue to be a problem next year, and the price of commodities, which helped so much in Lula’s time, faces a downward trend.
Second, because China’s presence in the region is now much greater, and so is US interest in rivaling that influence — which leaves less room for Lula’s leadership aspirations.
The political issue, with the bias of ideological alignments, is already being explored in the campaign. In Jornal Nacional, Bolsonaro displayed a “colinha” in the palm of his hand with four keywords, including Nicaragua, Argentina and Colombia. He intended to draw attention to the political persecution in the Nicaraguan regime, to the economic problems of Argentines and to the risk of leniency of the new Colombian government with the narcoguerrillas. Bolsonaro’s objective is to relate everything to Lula, who has already expressed friendship or affinity with the governments of the three countries.
As if to reinforce the difference, Bolsonaro’s plan states that his government has prioritized “cooperation with other democracies” and that it will seek “even greater interaction with countries that defend and respect values that are dear to Brazilians and fit into the democratic environment”.
Nothing could be more false, given Bolsonaro’s rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Mohammad bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia.
