The year 2021 ends with a feeling of insecurity on the international stage. The expectation held in January that a new American leadership would bring greater stability and less risk of conflict in the world is far from having become reality. World peace is under suspicion, with more than one scenario bringing risks that can become difficult to manage. The most worrying of them is related to the situation in Taiwan. But other pictures are complex, like the one in Ukraine.
Multilateralism continues to bleed and raises low expectations for the future. Even COP 26, the meeting that generated the greatest dose of optimism in the year, had notable absences, like the one at Xi Jinping, and produced more selective agreements (the agreement on forests) or in the purview of the private sector than a significant global understanding.
In December, the Democracy Summit generated more questions than solutions. Americans seem to favor selective multilateralism riddled with provocations, such as the invitation to the meeting made to Taiwan and governments whose democratic commitment is debatable.
Many are wondering what role Europe will play in the world at the end of the year, without the solid Angela Merkel in Germany and with elections in France in 2022. If Macron wins, there is some hope that the Europeans will understand each other on international issues and, above all, , do not take permanent sides in disputes between China and the United States.
On the economic front, there are questions about whether the Fed is correctly handling the risks of inflation that may not be temporary and about the extent of the Chinese slowdown. On the trade front, the prospect of new understandings for a resumption of international regulatory efforts is limited or nil, with the WTO severely weakened and protectionism becoming attractive even among liberal trade champions such as the US, who seem to play the game towel without ceremony, when determining, for example, protection for electric cars produced in its territory.
In our regional scenario, things are not going well either. The Brazilian decision to abandon its natural leadership has helped to foster a divided Latin America, without its own direction and with precarious interaction between countries. With Boric’s victory in Chile’s elections, Brazil will possibly abandon the fluid dialogue with another country in the region. It must be recognized that the ideological and partisan vision in our Latin American policy did not begin with the Bolsonaro government. PT’s management inaugurated an ideologically motivated dialogue. But Bolsonaro took the idea of not having a dialogue with those who do not have an identity to the extreme.
Of the new challenges in the world order of the future, four are more evident: building a low-carbon economy; the incorporation of new technologies to productive activity and life in general, which will generate the need for discussions on new standards and rules; the West’s coexistence with a stronger and more influential Asia, which entails a natural conflict of values and perspectives; and development cooperation, whose importance has been highlighted in the last two years, with low access to vaccines by less-developed countries, while rich countries have accumulated stocks in excess of their needs.
There are other themes, old and new, that will also require cooperation, such as the fight against terrorism, immigration, cooperation in the health and health fields, for example.
Our credentials on some of these topics, such as building a low-carbon economy or re-oxygenating development cooperation, are widely recognised. In addition, our current trade with the Asians is now denser than the current with Europe. There, too, we are accumulating relevant experiences.
Brazil lost conditions to be heard internationally while it had the ideological vision of Ernesto Araújo as head of Itamaraty. Partially recovered with the impartial and professional diplomacy of Carlos França. But France is part of a worn-out government, identified with the idea of deconstructing the internal order and, in a way, also the international order, although more recently it has been practicing diplomacy with a higher dose of rationality.
The debate on foreign policy is far from being a priority given the many dilemmas of our internal reality. But we are not immune to the elements of a world full of risks. The best we can hope for the future is that threats to peace do not evolve into conflicts, that the international community better explores the capacity to engage in relevant global discussions, and that the course of the international economy does not turn us too far.
This will only happen if powerful countries privilege conflict containment, if economic decisions taken in large centers take into account not only national economies, and if countries with some voice, such as Brazil, position themselves with expressiveness, balance and exemption.
Given the wear and tear that Brazil has accumulated recently, it is not possible to expect much from 2022, but in a year of elections and reflections on the future, we cannot lose the idea that, further on, we will regain some influence on the course of world reality .
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