Brazil’s Monroe Doctrine
In order to understand Brazil’s current foreign policy, one must understand one thing: hubris is not equidistance.
There comes a time in the history of the nation when its success goes to the head of its population. It is sadly a common misconception that that which is achieved with tolerance and pragmatism is a gift from the heavens, fruit not of cautious management but of intrinsic cultural superiority. Take the Spaniards and Portuguese in their imperial overstretch, when at a time in which their economies were giving way to the Dutch and English, they decide to glorify their Catholicism with a nice little Inquisition. Not only was the purge of society not a priority but the persecution of the commercial and intellectual Jewish elites contributed to increase the pace of the loss of economic competitiveness. Not to mention of course gratuitous wars in Morocco or the Netherlands in a period of financial difficulty.
The same applies to America: ended the Cold War and victorious in the tripolar game for global domination (between central Europe’s German bid for power and the eastern European Russian and western European/Atlantic Anglophone ones) America tends to believe in the strength, not of its pragmatic policies, but of its ‘spirit’ and ‘values’.
Just like in Madrid and Lisbon success was perceived as a gift from almighty God to the foremost Catholic powers, so too in Washington it was democracy which had won and not competent offshore balancing. Forget the non-constitutional subversion of leftist movements in western Europe and south America, ignore the valuable authoritarian allies throughout the world; no! it was Yankee democracy that saved the day.
This we shall designate as Pre-eminence Derived Universalism.
Brasilia, following the steps of its Portuguese forefathers, also sees the XXI century world as a defeat of the developed North in favour of the decolonised, developing, post-modern and morally superior South. Of course in the case of Brazil, it is not the zenith of its power that brings forth this delusion, but rather the rapid rise of its geopolitical status.
Putting aside pubescent Brasilia’s controversial takes on climate change (assigning blame and burden of repair exclusively to the West) or its less than pathetic attempt at intervening in the global stage in a clumsy non-alignedish tone to mediate between America and Iran, the focus will be on Brazil’s latest foreign policy controversy: the February 23rd declaration of support by President Lula da Silva to Argentina’s territorial claim over the Falkland islands.
There are two scenarios that may justify this positioning:
I – Narrative Consistency
The Brazilian Presidency is in fact idealist and wishes in a spirit of solidarity to help a fellow developing country against a developed (imperialist) northern nation.
In this scenario Brasilia does not look to calculations of power or of political convenience, it bothers only to assess which party is morally superior according to the regime’s current politically correct ideology. Thus former colonialist and imperialist Britain does not have the right to deny a former colony, sovereignty over what the latter perceives its territory to be.
II – Legal Precedent Building
Another possibility is based on self-interest. Perhaps there are those in the Itamaraty who see in Argentina’s claim a possibility to increase Brazil’s diplomatic leverage over the industrialised north in such a way that Brazil might be able to rally the south behind its leadership in the UN or in trade negotiations with the EU.
There might even be the off chance that Brazil may one day claim south Atlantic islands itself (such as Ascencion, St. Helena or the Tristan da Cunha) and sees in the Falklands the opportunity to establish legal precedent.
I counter that the sensible alternative is:
III – Balance of Power in Detriment of Argentina
Brazil’s geostrategic future is in the South Atlantic. Brazil does not need to direct its focus towards South America because its size makes it an effortless regional hegemon there. In the South Atlantic however, there are rivals and Brazil will not succeed in having a say in world affairs as long as it does not control its own sphere of influence.
It is not just the natural resources or the transit flows, it is the power to be the geopolitical arbiter from the Magellan strait to the Caribbean, from the Cape of Good Hope to Macaronesia.
In order to accomplish this Brazil will have to ultimately confront those that will want to stand in the way. The US will be most displeased with this and the US Navy’s 4th fleet is as much a deterrence against Venezuela’s anti-American impetus as it is a counter-weight against Brazil. Fortunately for Brazil the US seems to be concentrating its attention on Asia (Obama’s choice for the new National Security Advisor reflects this) and thanks to the financial crisis, Robert Gates and future SecDefs will have no choice but to scale down defence spending.
Then there are those countries that want the south Atlantic to continue as multilateral as possible. Brazil’s long time rival Argentina is one of them and South Africa is the only possible other. These two countries are the only ones to be capable of projecting a modern navy into the South Atlantic and last month they signed a new military cooperation agreement. Neither of them would be happy to trade one hegemon for another. But while the RSA’s navy needs to worry about protecting naval transit around the Cape and in securing its Indian Ocean flank, Argentina’s has no such concerns and is ready to rival with Brazil, at least in so far as it prevents Brasilia from achieving naval primacy.
Brazil has a special interest in securing a balance of power in the Atlantic Ocean since this would almost certainly result in its pre-eminence in the south Atlantic rim. During the 90s Brazil cleverly resisted America’s ALCA free trade pact in favour of Mercosul’s European connection. Today this imperative of Brazil’s foreign policy is very much alive in Brazil’s dealings with France. The military, industrial and commercial cooperation between Brasilia and Paris is ideal in economic terms given the two economies’ complementarity but also in geopolitical terms for it offers a solid counter-weight to American influence. Given that America is now more concerned about Asia and that France and Britain are coming closer strategically, Brazil should take the opportunity and enact a rapprochement with Britain rather than seeking to isolate it.
This is why Brasilia’s championing of Buenos Aires is in fact counter-productive for its interests. One shouldn’t empower a potential rival, especially at the cost of a potential ally.
What is more, not only is there no danger of Britain or France intervening in south America – while the XIX century US did not have the same certainty – but Argentina’s claim is not even reasonable. Britain had been around the archipelago and even established claim over it long before Argentina was even independent. Both the ‘uti possidetis, ita possideatis’ (what one has owned, one shall continue to own henceforth) and the ‘in pari turpitudine, melior est causa possidentis’ (in equal claims to an object, the successful claim is from the party which already owns said object) legal principles deny Argentina legitimacy over those islands. Not to mention the fact that the islands have been inhabited by British nationals for over a century.
Hubris is not equidistance. If Brazil truly wished to be equidistant it’d worry about its own regional rivals instead of pursuing a values based foreign policy. If the PT (Labour Party) government wanted equidistance, it wouldn’t take sides. No, the Itamaraty is enacting a clearly left-wing policy which will hurt Brazil’s national interest in the long-term. Hugo Chávez recently stated on his TV show that ‘Caracas-Brasília-Buenos Aires is the articulating axis of south-American unity, the land of utopia where a new world is being created‘.
Brasilia’s constructivists, now promoting the UNASUL and the South-American Defence Council, will inevitably stumble across the geographical and historical imperative of adjacent friction and when that happens, their linear normativism will be useless in the defence of Brazil’s national interest.
Perhaps Brazil – like America – is still prone to revolutionary exceptionalism, in which case one will anxiously long for a tropical Kissinger…
The Westphalian Post 