Record holder for trips abroad among former presidents, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) should resume the foreign policy that caught the attention of the international community from 2003 to 2010. But, in the third term, repeating this performance will be more difficult, due to a very different international scenario.
The Ukraine War and the polarization between the USA and China make the vectors of conflict greater than those of cooperation. At the same time, the fear of a global recession and the economic impacts intensified by the war in Europe, which began ten months ago, make it difficult to build new partnerships in the short term.
It is in a complex geopolitical context that the president-elect will try to recover Brazil’s image after the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), at the same time that he will seek to resume relations with countries despised by his opponent and with regional integration bodies from which the country gave up, the case of Unasur (Union of South American Nations), from which Brazil formally withdrew in 2019.
“In active politics, which marked Lula’s first terms and which should be resumed, there are initiatives on all boards. The country is not restricted to a single type of game and seeks gains everywhere”, says Ambassador Rubens Ricupero, former Minister of Finance and the Environment under Itamar Franco and emeritus member of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (Cebri). “This policy helps to diversify markets, something important at a time of reduction in the level of global growth.”
Lula made 157 trips to bilateral meetings during his first two terms, which represents an average of 19.6 trips per year, according to a survey carried out by Rafael Mesquita, a professor of international relations at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Argentina and Venezuela, neighboring countries, were at the top of the most visited — there were ten visits each.
The PT leader visited 79 countries to strengthen bilateral ties, in a foreign policy that was marked by the appreciation of the regional environment. Of the seven most visited nations, six are South American. The South-South policy also embraced African nations: there were 28 trips to countries on the continent.
The numbers are significantly higher than those of the current president, on the other hand hampered by the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Bolsonaro made 22 trips to bilateral meetings during his term, which represents an average of 5.5 per year, concentrating the itineraries in nations ideologically aligned with his personal agenda, such as Hungary and Israel.
The president-elect’s foreign policy will have to adapt to a new geopolitical arrangement. In previous mandates, while the countries that make up the Brics —besides Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa— emerged only as promises, the US exercised political hegemony with the ability to act unilaterally on sensitive issues. This is no longer the case, especially with Washington.
The 2008 financial crisis, which broke out in the US and caused a global recession, was important for the rise of China, a country that today is at the forefront of clashes with Washington in the Cold War 2.0.
In a world no longer dominated by the Americans and today with some centers of power, there are more possibilities to create alliances and bargain in order to obtain commercial and political advantages, says Lucas Leite, professor of international relations at Faap (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado).
“This could have happened in the case of the 5G auction in Brazil, but we didn’t see it”, he says. The Chinese giant Huawei did not participate in the auction by the National Telecommunications Agency to exploit the service in Brazil last year, during the Bolsonaro government, an ally of then US President Donald Trump.
If, on the one hand, Brazil can negotiate under more favorable conditions, on the other hand, with the dispute between the superpowers, the goal of Brazilian diplomacy should be less ambitious, says Pedro Feliú, a professor at USP’s Institute of International Relations. “Today, for example, there is fiercer competition in Africa between the US and China, which leaves less room for Brazil to gain projection on the continent”, he says.
It was in an attempt to strengthen diplomatic ties and contain the advance of Chinese influence over Africa that Biden received dozens of leaders from the continent in Washington this month. It is also in this context that South America once again became the target of American interests, since, after 9/11 and the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, in which the US began to prioritize actions and investments in the Middle East, America Latin America was off the White House’s economic radar.
Still in the first three months of his government, Lula should visit the US and China, and, for Feliú, the proximity of the trips represents a sign that Brazil will remain neutral in the dispute. In addition to the superpowers, Lula has a scheduled trip to Argentina, during which he will meet with President Alberto Fernández and participate in the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Summit.
In the wake of the strategy to strengthen diplomacy in the regional environment, Mauro Vieira, future chancellor, said that relations with Venezuela, broken in 2019, will be reestablished on the first day of the PT’s administration. “There was a huge amount of Brazilian investment in Venezuela. Brazil spent 15 years investing in the bilateral relationship and suddenly breaks the diplomatic relationship? That doesn’t make sense,” says the professor.
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