Brazilian Foreign Policy

Abstract

Brazilian foreign policy is internationally recognized, in comparative terms, for its stability, continuity, and a high degree of predictability, which can be observed throughout the different periods in which it has been categorized. The country’s international engagement from its independence in 1822 to the proclamation of the republic in 1889 was guided by a coherent behavioral pattern in liberal-conservative molds. In the subsequent period, which was initiated with the overthrow of the monarchy and extended until 1930, the interests that nurtured the country’s engagement abroad became strongly intertwined with those of the agro-exporting elite. With the hegemonic transition in this period, Brazil shifted from the British and toward the North American sphere of influence. The period that began in 1930 and extended to the end of the Cold War constituted a new model of international insertion. Within this model, the country’s international engagement assumed a supplementary character in relation to the national strategy for economic development, and its foreign policy thereby became conceived and formulated with a high degree of instrumentality as part of the aspirations for furthering the process of industrialization. Brazil’s adaption to the international post–Cold War context was a complex process, yet it is possible to detect a relatively homogenous strategy during these decades that informed the foreign engagement of governments marked by otherwise different ideologies. The growth of specialized academia from the 1990s on has spurred scientific production concerning international issues in general, and regarding foreign policy in particular. It is also important to emphasize the idea that the stability and coherence of Brazilian foreign policy is part of a narrative produced by both diplomats and scholars, and this has been reproduced intensively in the specialized literature over the years. This narrative facilitated the emergence of a certain notion of Brazilian foreign policy exceptionalism and the proposition of analytical axes that have been used in different traditions of foreign policy analysis to justify the notion of perenniality and continuity of the country’s international actions. It is possible to verify from this narrative the proposition that there are principles, ideas, and values that organize the strategies of international insertion and that give coherence to an international identity. It is important to emphasize that an important group of scholars has tried to problematize this question, discussing what would be the mythological nature of foreign policy in order to explain its continuity.