Brazilian Diplomacy Research Articles

Strategies and Tactics for Global Change: Democratic Brazil in Comparative Perspective

Brazil has consistently been seeking a more influential place at global decision-making tables in order to preserve its sovereignty and protect its national policy autonomy. The challenge for Brazilian diplomats is that their country lacks the economic or military muscle to force a way onto these tables. Subtler avenues for inclusion are thus needed. Seven of the main tactics employed in Brazilian foreign policy are outlined here, and range from the defensive/passive (avoiding mindless opposition, collectivisation) through the neutral (consensus creation, technocratic speak) to the assertive (building new organisations, propagating new thinking) and finally to the aggressive (principled presidential righteousness).

Leadership in the WTO: Brazil, India and the Doha development agenda

The Doha round of multilateral negotiations has witnessed the relocation of Southern powers towards the core of the World Trade Organization (WTO) decision-making structure. Brazil and India are the only developing countries that have participated consistently in all major ministerial phases of the Doha round between 2001 and 2008. Their consolidation as trading powers cannot be attributed solely to their status as emerging economies. Their projected legitimacy as representatives of the global South has operated as a catalyst in facilitating their relocation. In various phases of negotiations, however, Brazil and India have refrained from playing a proactive role in driving negotiations forward. Their defensive stance has raised questions about the two countries' prospects for systemic leadership in world trade. In explaining this condition, this article will argue that Brazilian and Indian trade diplomacy is consistently directed towards maintaining broad bases of followership. Brazil and India are disposed to exercise assertive leadership only when that accommodates the expectations and preferences of their followership in the global South. Their preoccupation with constantly reasserting their Third World image often renders blocking agreement the preferable strategy to avoid paying a high price in terms of legitimacy.

BRAZILIAN STUDIES THEN AND NOW

In 1912 the Brazilian diplomat and scholar Manuel de Oliveira Lima gave six lectures at Stanford University that encapsulated his views of what we now call Brazilian Studies. This article summarizes Oliveira Lima’s lectures. It then points out three aspects of Oliveira Lima’s worldview that are problematic from the perspective of the twenty-first century: his Eurocentrism; the unproblematic nature of the nation-state in his thinking; and his largely negative view of Brazil’s racial heritage. The third part of the essay analyzes three aspects of Oliveira Lima’s lectures that are still contemporary. These are the need to establish an adequate comparative context for the study of Brazil; the difficulty of justifying an academic discipline that revolves around the study of a single country; and the challenge of uniting disparate and specialized disciplines in order to appreciate Brazil’s complexity and trajectory in the modern world. In the conclusion, some guidelines for maintaining Brazilian Studies as a vibrant field are suggested.

Posiciones internacionales del Brasil al nivel unilateral

The relations between the conduct of Brazilian foreign policy and internal affairs have attracted the attention of academics in this area, as well as the main path of Brazilian diplomacy in its historical aspects. This paper examines the positions that Brazil has assumed at the multilateral level. In doing so, an attempt is made to restrict the examination, which does not pretend to be exhaustive, to taking samples of positions, attitudes and basic statements of Brazilian delegations in some international political organizations such as the Organization of American States, the United Nations, their specialized agencies and multilateral conferences under its auspices and, additionally, various specific areas of action are examined.

La política externa brasileña y la crisis en el Atlántico Sur : una evaluación

In this paper, an evaluation of the position and behavior of Brazilian diplomacy in the recent South Atlantic crisis, which meant the war between Argentina and Great Britain, is carried out. We argue that during the Malvinas crisis, Brazil succeeded in helping to "circumscribe the negative effects of the conflict" and now has the task of helping to circumscribe the negative effects of "a mechanical solution." In the specific case of the Malvinas, this means, at the bilateral and multilateral level, the reiteration of the Brazilian position both in relation to Argentine rights in the field of the great world colonization process and the need for a negotiated solution to the problem as a means of overcoming the current instability.

<b> A atual pouco compreendida política externa brasileira </b> 10.5102/uri.v9i1.1332

Instead of taking advantage of increasing Brazilian international projection and involve the country in matters that are relevant for the group of actors in the international system, it seems that the country´s insertion goes confusedly in the opposite direction. Since the beginning of the current decade, Brazil has maintained evident cordiality for the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and more recently Iran. As a consequence, Brazil is increasing dialogue with countries and involving itself in themes with a high level of insecurity and uncertainty mainly for the other decision maker actors. In doing so it seems that the Brazilian Diplomacy is suffering of an identity crisis. These examples when are taken individually give a certain impression and provoke criticism, which is something totally normal, considering that the new Brazilian project for its foreign affairs has never been explained or discussed widely. But on the other hand, if these same examples are analyzed together and as parts of a broad scenario everyone can observe what is behind such Brazilian actions and which message the country wants to give. After intense discussions and the frustrated project to create Americas Free Trade Area, which was launched by the US in 1994, the US government seeked to strengthen its presence in the South American continent. Slowly the country started to sew a net of bilateral free trade agreements with Central and South American countries. It made its military presence possible in the Andean and Amazon region by the Plan Colombia. It seeked cooperation with Paraguay to set up military bases in that country what would let the US close to Itaipu the world´s biggest dam. They also reinstalled the US 4th Fleet in order to facilitate monitoring the Brazilian coastal hydrocarbon sources. And the US also hurried up to support the call for anticipated elections in Honduras by the established government after depriving the elected president. It is not surprising such approximation. The gas, the oil, the rainforest, the water, the huge consumer market make part of the greed of a superpower, it doesn´t matter who it is. And with all these movements taking place in an area surrounding Brazil´s territory, it is not surprising a Brazilian reaction to show that there is a counterpoint in the South American area. Brazil has realized the maneuvers and has decided that it cannot accept such interference in its natural region. And all of this is mainly taking place in a moment when the south area of the continent expresses almost unanimously and with a renewed vigor its support to economic integration initiatives in the region and condemning the old politics of aggression against nations.

¿Necesita São Paulo una política exterior? Hegemonía, diplomacia y paradiplomacia en Brasil

El presente trabajo argumenta dos cosas. Por un lado, que la condición hegemónica del estado de São Paulo en el seno de la federación brasileña lo predispone a una acción paradiplomática endógena. Por otra parte, alega que esta acción paradiplomática endógena coincide con un fenómeno de desconcentración (y no de federalización) de la diplomacia nacional. La conclusión a la que se llega es que si la desconcentración paulatina de la diplomacia brasileña exige un esfuerzo capitalizado de la paradiplomacia endógena, esto no significa que para maximizar las ganancias la paradiplomacia exógena no deba ser implementada. La hegemonía del estado de São Paulo no justifica un comportamiento poco expresivo respecto a una elaboración coordinada de la estrategia de gestión de sus negocios extranjeros.

Uma análise da política externa do governo lula em relação à temática das mudanças climáticas

The arrival of the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led to a paradigm shift in Foreign Relations of Brazil, from the neoliberal or normal paradigm to logistic paradigm. This change has caused significant changes in foreign policy, which result in treatment of the theme of climate change. Thus, the aim of this paper is to show how works these reorientations in Brazilian diplomacy, noting their action and discourses about the theme of climate change, especially in the United Nations system organizations, and the practical measures of environment protection and the external agreements in this field.

Brazilian foreign policy towards South America during the Lula administration: caught between South America and Mercosur

The aim of this article is to analyze Brazil's foreign policy towards the South American region during President Lula's administration. As such, the article intends to highlight two specific dimensions: the extent to which foreign policy during this period has differed from previous periods and the relative importance granted by Brazilian diplomacy to recent cooperation and integration efforts, more specifically the Unasur and Mercosur. The article argues that the Lula administration has behaved differently from its predecessors by prioritizing the building up of Brazilian leadership in South America on several different fronts, especially by strengthening multilateral institutions in the region

Brazil: a cordial power? Brazilian diplomacy in the early 21st century

Brazil: a cordial power? Brazilian diplomacy in the early 21st century

Dream or Delirium?: Revisiting the Ages in Eça and Machado

Dream or Delirium? Revisiting the Ages in Eça and Machado K. David Jackson Eça de Queirós’s recourse to the “diaphanous veil of fantasy” introduced in novels of the 1880s, O Mandarim (1880) and A Relíquia (1887), finds a counterpart in Machado de Assis’s first major novel of the same decade, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1880–81). The two authors were aware of each other’s work, documented by Machado’s sharp critique of characterization and motivation in O Primo Basílio (in O Cruzeiro, April 16, 1878). As if to suggest a further oceanic dialogue between the two great Luso-Brazilian novelists, A Relíquia was first published in the Rio de Janeiro journal Gazeta de Notícias in 1887, the same year of its publication as a book in Portugal. After 1880, according to Machado da Rosa, Eça explored the oneiric experiences of his characters and in the process enlarged the frame of conscious reality: “Talvez que a sua maior originalidade resida na integração do subconsciente com a consciência da personagem, feita sob um plano em que as fronteiras da realidade externa se enredam no mundo da fantasia, sem contudo perderem as suas linhas prosaicas . . .” (Rosa 199). Oneiric versatility is equally an innovative, even experimental feature in Machado’s Memórias Póstumas. The striking similarities of Brás Cubas’s “delirium” with the dream sequences of Teodorico Raposo in A Relíquia offer an illuminating counterpoint in the use and meaning of scenes of imagination and dreams and their role in the art of the nineteenth-century realist novel. Duílio da Gama, a Brazilian diplomat who frequented Eça’s house in Paris, confirmed the Portuguese writer’s special fascination with Machado’s oneiric episode: . . . uma das especialidades de Eça como ‘entertainer’ na sua casa de Neuilly, nos arredores de Paris, durante a década de 90, era a recitação memorizada do Capítulo VII, [End Page 47] ‘O Delírio,’ da obra de Machado, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. Eça conhecia-o de cor. Nas palavras de uma testamunha de uma exibição do mestre actor/comediante que Eça seguramente era, ele ‘gostava de o declamar pausadamente, com inflexões estudadas, que sublinhava e esclarecia, com um comentário, as passagens de mais apurada análise psicológica ou da mais subtil ironia.’ (Lyra 199–200) What the fantasies in each novel most have in common is a universal re-visitation of the ages, placing the unsuspecting narrator in an abnormal reality with a privileged perspective on the theater of human history, described by Óscar Lopes as an “. . . amplo e imaginoso distanciamento histórico e geográfico” (83). Both create an aura of hallucination treated by the narrator with sarcastic and intense irony, contradicting the normal sense of reality in the attempt to reconstruct both personal and historical consciousness. Dreams are incorporated into Eça’s and Machado’s novels as a new counterpoint to descriptive realism, as Lopes comments: “Tanto em A Relíquia, escrita desde 1884, como mais tarde em A Ilustre Casa de Ramires (1900), o naturalismo das notações contemporâneas tem uma importante contrapartida de sonho, polarizada num subenredo que se insere na intriga principal” (85). Traveling back in time Brás Cubas’ “Delirium” (Chapter VII) consists of a hallucinatory trip back through the centuries, involving magical perspectives, moral critique, and metamorphosis. In an uncanny parallel to Eça’s novel of the same year, Brás first took the form of a Chinese barber shaving a mandarin, who mistreated him, before his body was transformed into a morocco-bound volume of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. Restored to human form, he was carried off by a hippopotamus on a furious ride to the origin of the centuries. The delirium is considered by Benedito Nunes to be one of three exemplary moments in Machado, all involving metaphor or fantasy, in which the author’s fiction becomes a form of thought, absorbing and restating philosophies aesthetically.1 The chapter mixes the skepticism of Montaigne with Pascal’s sense of the tragic...

Brazil in Africa: Another Emerging Power in the Continent?

This paper develops three basic arguments. First, it presents the basic underpinnings of Brazilian diplomacy in the past half century, concentrating on the changes adopted in the 1980s and the 1990s up to the foreign policy put forward by Lula's government (2003–2009). It recognises that Lula's foreign policy represents a step forward, especially where Africa is concerned. However, it does not seem to be clear whether the Brazilian economy has enough strength to sustain such a foreign policy, as is shown in the second part of the paper. This is indeed the case if comparisons are made with India, China and even South Africa, when the latter's regional role is considered. Finally, an effort is made to summarise the recent political cooperation established between Brazil and African countries as well as to present an overview of Brazil's trade and investment relations both with the region as a whole and with some important individual partners. Once this picture is established, we investigate whether these realms—diplomatic/political and economic—take independent tracks, or if they do interact in a coherent manner. Africa remained deep inside Brazil and Brazilians, not as something external to ourselves. But as a mythic space; neither geographical, nor historical.

POLÍTICA EXTERNA EM PERSPECTIVA: UM BALANÇO SOBRE A DIPLOMACIA DOS PRESIDENTES COLLOR, ITAMAR, CARDOSO E LULA

A key characteristic of Brazilian diplomacy is its capacity to expand and diversify the country’s international relations. During the last two decades Brazil has had four presidents who led foreign policy according to their individual styles. This article aims to study in both practical and conceptual terms Brazilian foreign policy, its domestic and international constraints, and the country’s bilateral and multilateral relations during the last four presidencies.

Multilateralismo, democracia e política externa no Brasil: contenciosos das patentes e do algodão na Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC)

O objetivo deste artigo é verificar se o aperfeiçoamento das instituições democráticas brasileiras no tocante ao processo de formulação da política externa por meio da elaboração e da ampliação de canais institucionais que facilitem a interação entre policy-makers e atores das organizações da sociedade civil pode melhorar o atendimento das demandas dos grupos de interesse, bem como ampliar a qualidade técnica da diplomacia brasileira durante as negociações comerciais internacionais. Combinada a opção estratégica pelo multilateralismo, verificaremos ainda se esse aperfeiçoamento pode gerar maior credibilidade e legitimidade internacional para as ações do Brasil na OMC, inclusive possibilitando ao país moldar regimes internacionais de comércio favoráveis aos seus interesses nacionais. Buscarei demonstrar a viabilidade do argumento analisando os contenciosos das patentes farmacêuticas e da questão dos subsídios agrícolas, especificamente o caso do algodão contra os Estados Unidos na OMC.

Negociações comerciais internacionais e democracia: o contencioso Brasil x EUA das patentes farmacêuticas na OMC

The aim of this article is to verify the analytical feasibility of Two-Level Game - TLG theory to analyze Brazil’s action in the World Trade Organization - WTO. We simultaneously analyze whether the enhancement of Brazilian democratic institutions in relation to foreign policy-making can help meet demands by interest groups and expand the technical quality of Brazilian diplomacy in international trade negotiations. We further verify whether this improvement can generate greater credibility and international legitimacy for Brazil’s actions in the WTO, allowing the country to shape favorable international regimes for its interests. We develop this argument by analyzing Brazil’s drug patent case against the USA in the WTO.

De FHC a Lula: uma década de política externa (1995-2005)

This article aims to analyze the main trends and changes of Brazilian foreign policy by examining the actions and paradigmatic approaches of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s (1994-2002) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (2003-2005) governments. In an international context characterized by the crisis of the neoliberal globalization models, the article investigates Brazilian external and internal responses and its possibilities, presenting the country’s global and regional profile, specially towards South America and the Ftaa. Key words: Brazilian diplomacy; FHC and Lula’s foreygn policy; International relations of Brazil

Fábrica de heróis: a reacção da imprensa portuguesa de referência ao atentado que provocou a morte de Sérgio Vieira de Mello

This paper describes how the Portuguese prestige papers Publico and Diario de Noticias reacted to the attack that killed the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, representative of the United Nations in Iraq. The author concludes that the Portuguese quality papers, Publico in particular, had personalized the coverage of the attack, centring it in Sergio Vieira de Mello, which helped to construct a heroic image of the diplomat.

Ilusão desfeita: a "aliança especial" Brasil-Estados Unidos e o poder naval brasileiro durante e após a Segunda Guerra Mundial

O americanismo foi a principal idéia norteadora da diplomacia brasileira na primeira metade do século XX. Os anos 40 constituíram o apogeu e o declínio desta idéia. A análise da política naval brasileira no período mostra o quanto ela foi influenciada pela aliança formal com os Estados Unidos dos tempos de guerra, e como se sonhou que a supremacia naval do Brasil no cone sul seria atingida como auxílio norte-americano. O fracasso desta política, entretanto, foi explicitado logo no início dos anos 50. A idéia da aliança especial contaminou todos os elementos inerentes ao poder nacional, e o caso da Marinha do Brasil serve para referendar este achado.

Antirevolutionary diplomacy in oligarchic Brazil, 1919–30

In the 1920s oligarchic rule in Brazil was perceived to be constantly under threat from ‘revolution’. Domestic developments and the impact of the First World War had brought about major changes in the political arena. In this context, the resources of the Ministry of Foreign Relations (Itamaraty) were systematically used by the Brazilian government as a means to monitor and counteract presumed overseas connections of a ‘revolutionary’ nature. Actions against tenentismo in the Río de la Plata region and diplomatic efforts to oppose the 1930 Revolution, among other issues, are examined in this article in order to provide further understanding of the role played by Brazilian diplomacy in the final years of the Old Republic.

Brasil-China: trinta anos de uma parceria estratégica

O presente artigo analisa a aproximação do Brasil com os países da Ásia e, em especial, com a China, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica. No final do século XIX e início do XX, o relacionamento com esse continente foi ínfimo e restringiu-se basicamente à vinda de mão-de-obra japonesa e à migração não-oficial de chineses. Durante a Guerra Fria, sob a tentativa brasileira de diversificar suas parcerias, ocorre uma aproximação política com a China no plano multilateral, mas os laços econômicos bilaterais ficam restritos ao Japão. Apesar do tradicional discurso da diplomacia brasileira de universalização das suas relações internacionais, somente na década de 1990 houve de fato um fortalecimento da aproximação econômica, e não apenas política, com a China. Destacam-se como principais motivações o acelerado crescimento econômico chinês e a disputa comercial incitada pela proposta de criação de uma Área de Livre Comércio das Américas (Alca), entendida como um obstáculo para a inserção de atores externos.