Strategic Myopia or Deliberate Blindness?

The repeated and awkward statements by Brazil’s President, Lula da Silva, and his Advisor for International Affairs and de facto Secretary of State, Celso Amorim, lending airs of alleged normality and legality to the semblance of elections in Venezuela represented the last straw in the process of institutional dismantling and public execration to which Brazilian foreign policy has been subjected.

Under normal conditions of temperature and pressure, in which the Brazilian government hypothetically had any clear foreign action guideline or strategy that could be in the country’s best interests and benefit its people, this could be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate assertiveness and some veneer, even if a thin and superficial one, of regional leadership, by passing on the crystal clear and powerful message that Brazil does not condone open electoral frauds,  dictatorial adventures and systematic violations of human rights. 

This could be one of those symbolic transformational moments in which the state agent takes advantage of a turbulent circumstance and builds his historical legacy, showing his political integrity, truly democratic personality and the greatness of the nation he represents. That was not what happened, however. In practice, the Lula-Amorim duo’s stance of giving time to their partner and friend Nicolás Maduro and his minions to “deliver the electoral records” – something that will not happen, given Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela’s recent ruling forbidding the disclosure of those records – means, more than supporting the consummation of an electoral fraud, to make Brazil an accomplice in the perpetuation of a bloodthirsty and corrupt dictatorship that helped to turn one of the once most prosperous countries in the Americas into an exporter of poverty,  misery and tragedies.

Unlike countries such as the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, which have categorically rejected the Venezuelan supreme court’s decision to confirm Maduro’s widely contested re-election – some of these same countries even recognized the victory of Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González –, the Lula-Amorim duo sought to gain time, while balancing on a razor’s edge, in what a country without a moral or strategic compass in its foreign relations and dwindling deterrence capabilities considers as a difficult political equation: To eventually come to not recognize Maduro’s fraud and thus contradict its political base, the Workers Party (PT) and its allies, who have already fully subscribed to the official Venezuelan fraud,  aligning itself even more with the Latin “axis of progressist backwardness”, formed by the leftist governments of Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia, or alternatively maintaining the current farcical course and leaving Brazil more isolated in the region, damaging relations with what remains of the Biden Administration, in the United States (not to mention a possible new Trump Administration, where a tougher stance against leftist and authoritarian regimes is expected), and tarnishing Lula’s image of a “democratic leader” vis-à-vis his European supporting clique, formed by Macron (France), Scholz (Germany) and Starmer (United Kingdom), among others.

It should be noted that the position of the Brazilian government is one that gradually conforms to the guidelines emanating from the São Paulo Forum, whose macro reading of Venezuela’s role in the socialist “Great Homeland” sees the maintenance of the Bolivarian regime in that country as indispensable. While the Forum provides for the transitory replacement of left-wing governments by conservative ones due to electoral cycles in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and even Brazil, socialist regimes such as those of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are considered a cornerstone of the organization’s continental strategy. In this context, the decision-making process now underway in the Brazilian government follows this ready-made script and dispenses with autonomous strategic guidelines: it is the concurrence of the main Latin American power to the maintenance of one of the pillars of the Forum’s strategy, even at the cost of suppressing the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people and destroying the diplomatic heritage and legitimacy of Brazil as a mediator in good faith in conflicting situations on the continent.

Although it has historically served as one of the main engines of national development and one of the vectors of the formation of the modern Brazilian State and territory, Brazilian foreign policy continues to operate erratically, moving ahead in its march of folly towards international isolation and discredit and the relativization of hard-won democratic conquests.  in a context in which the efficiency and traditions of the Brazilian foreign policy have been replaced by considerations of an ideological or dilettante nature and personal preferences.

In this sense, submerging and waiting for the evolution of events does not exactly represent a manifestation of diplomatic prudence, appearing more like strategic myopia or deliberate blindness, already meaning the taking of a position and putting Brazil on the wrong side of history. Brazilian diplomacy suffered a devastating blow in the episode and has been humilitated. Foreign policy is not made in a vacuum. A country with the economic weight of Brazil cannot be satisfied with a reactive and conformist foreign policy, always in the wake of events, which has little influence on international relations, but suffers too much from the effects of the policies of the Global Players.

It shouldn’t be like that. Foreign policy is also public policy, and its eventual success or failure not only highlights the State’s capacity for action and its limitations, but also has profound implications for the daily lives of citizens, including the control of inflation and bank interest rates.

Foreign policy translates as an expression of needs, capacities, possibilities of action and domestic interests in the external sphere, especially in an increasingly interdependent world in which centripetal forces of convergence and centrifugal forces of fragmentation collide and act simultaneously to shape international relations.

The Venezuelan case mirrors exactly the lack of debate, reflection, self-criticism and planning to which the theme is submitted in Brazil, marked by a lot of rhetoric, a lot of ideological discussion and few results. In fact, an analysis of foreign policy indicates that under Amorim there has not been a formulation of a consistent and integrated international agenda, which clearly identifies the main commercial, economic and political objectives that Brazil proposes to achieve, in a systemic way. And because it lacks the precise identification of concrete objectives and means of translating them into effective diplomatic action, Brazilian foreign policy has retracted and lost its influence capacity, being reduced to specific actions of a naturally limited scope.

The rebuilding of Brazilian foreign policy, with the recovery of the ability to formulate a proactive agenda and to articulate an action strategy through which a country can anticipate new circumstances and challenges, is fundamental to ensure the defense of the national interest. May the deconstruction to which Itamaraty, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was subjected become an opportunity to rescue the identity and pride inherent in the traditions of Brazilian foreign policy. Within the framework of this structuring framework, foreign policy needs to be closely linked to national development, defense, and security strategies and have as its primary purpose to facilitate, promote, and seek their achievement.

I don’t see this happening in the near future under the Lula-Amorim baton, however. Without this “purposeful realism”, Brazil will fail in its search for a place among the great world powers, and its actions in this direction will remain in the terrain of rhetoric and the outdated third-world discourse. In the meantime, the little that remains of Brazil’s regional leadership and credibility will quickly fade away, while democratic stability is threatened and undermined in the Americas.

[Photo by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo, via Wikimedia Commons]

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.