POLICY BRIEFING 9

Emerging Powers Programme

November 2009

Brazil as a Regional and Emerging Global Power

Matias Spektor1 RECOMMENDATIONS

• The marked improvement in ’s material capabilities and growing foreign policy ambitions EXECUTIVE SUMMARY need to translate into something more decisive and sustainable over ince the year 2000, Brazilian foreign policy has expanded the long term. This should encourage Sdramatically on the back of the country’s growing material a clear and constructive agenda for wealth. Changes in the international system helped too. The global South America and other developing balance of power became more open to large developing states, and regions like Africa, and extend to active South America has experienced a range of dramatic challenges that involvement in global institutional has forced Brazil to take an increasingly assertive stance in regional reform. affairs. Does this mean Brazil is a major power in the making? Changes in • Brazil remains a reluctant emerging foreign policy lack the depth and strength to make them irreversible. power. Greater efforts should be Something more sustainable is needed. But is the country willing to made by the Brazilian government to pay the price? determine what it wants, what it can do and whether it is willing to pay the INTRODUCTION price as a and as a major stakeholder in the new global order by Brazil is booming. Since 2000 the story has been one of sustained shouldering more responsibilities. economic growth coupled with falling social inequality for the fi rst • Brazilian public opinion sees time in generations. Its economy ranks ahead of , and outward-orientated policies as costly, South Korea, and the country is now richer in income per person risky and challenging. Such sentiments than India, or Russia. In 2007 the United States (US) traded limit its role as an emerging power and with and invested in Brazil more than it did with either India or will need to change through targeted Russia. Brazil accounts for over half the wealth of South America and government efforts if it is to realise its over half its population. And for all the perversities of the current potential. global fi nancial crisis, it has remained relatively unscathed — having already recorded moderate growth in the second quarter of 2009. • The 2010 presidential election will Improving wealth has translated into greater global political shape the tone of Brazilian foreign infl uence. An unequivocal member of the group of large developing policy. Regional changes and the global states that now move upwards in , Brazilian balance of power may require it to be leaders have expanded foreign policy ambitions. In recent years more assertive as a decisive regional the number of career diplomats has grown by a third, and new leader and global player. embassies have been established in three dozen countries — most

AFRICAN INSIGHTS. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES. BRAZIL AS A REGIONAL AND EMERGING GLOBAL POWER

of them in Africa. In 2004 Brazil saw its largest Western alliance norms. Foreign policy is about troop deployment since the Second World War as preventing these factors from hampering Brazil’s it led a (UN) operation in Haiti. evolution into an industrial powerhouse. The fl urry of diplomatic activities and initiatives This has powerful implications. Traditionally, is striking. Brazilian foreign policy has had little to do with Brazil has anchored its new power in a maintaining regional order in South America, network of regional institutions. It has also been which has severely restricted the space for active in global institutional reform — from the collaborating with the US. This is coupled with UN to the International Monetary Fund and rooted suspicion of the so-called Washington the World Bank. It has been particularly active Consensus, the global environmental regime and on UN Security Council reform, and has sat as international financial institutions. Hence the a non-permanent member more times than any resurging emphasis on South–South relations that country except Japan. It will take a seat again in might, leaders hope, mitigate unipolarity. 2010–2011. In negotiations at the World Trade Yet, for all its qualms, Brazil has been mild and Organisation, Brazil is a member of the ‘Quartet’ moderate in seeking to revise the global order. It group that steers major deals with the US, the has not pursued a revolutionary foreign policy and India. fi lled with ‘anti’ rhetoric nor has it been strident However, this positive picture requires caution. in defending its preferences. The emphasis is on Brazil remains one of the most unequal societies partial adaptation. Brazilian leaders and diplomats in the world with roughly 15% of the population thrive as smooth operators behind the scenes still living in poverty. Crime is rampant in all rather than as major architects at the helm. major cities. For all that its economic foundations In part, this is because Brazil seeks greater are solid, a prolonged recession abroad could participation and status in international society, translate into decay at home. It is structurally which is still heavily dependent on Western dependent on global capitalism and an activist countries. Becoming a major stakeholder in a new foreign policy. Accounting for little more than emerging order is bound to be costly so Brazilian 1% of global trade, it is clearly punching above opinion polls shriek at the thought of too assertive its weight. Diplomatic retrenchment under a new an approach. president (taking offi ce in January 2011) could But as Brazil moves up the global hierarchy, its affect and even reverse the trend. It is not clear current behaviour will not be without problems. that the strategy guiding Brazilian leaders has A design that is best for an emerging state is likely adapted to the recent fl urry of activist diplomacy. to need adapting as the country, and its outlook, changes. Sustained economic growth and greater MANAGING EMERGENCE infl uence will no doubt force it to reassess its own interests more aggressively. Brazil is moving up in international society and There is little or no debate in Brazil about what traditional strategic beliefs are coming under the country might do once it sits at the head table. increasing scrutiny. Sitting firmly in a post- What is its vision of global order? How would its colonial world, foreign policy thinking has leaders help manage the world? What happens been about transcending its peripheral status by when it can no longer claim undeveloped status? emphasising economic development at home and And how will Brasilia respond to challenges from national interests globally. smaller neighbours who see it as an intervening In this view, major threats come from imperial power in their continent? Answers asymmetrical structures of global capitalism, remain elusive. the reluctance of Western industrialised states The relationship with the United States will to liberalise trade and transfer technology to also need attention. For much of the Cold War the developing South and increasingly intrusive it was tense and acrimonious. In the 1990s it

SAIIA POLICY BRIEFING 9 2 BRAZIL AS A REGIONAL AND EMERGING GLOBAL POWER

improved as US attention shifted elsewhere and a court for adjudication and an incipient forum Brazil adapted to the dominant rules — from for debate. Its technical secretariat in Montevideo signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty to embracing issues a growing number of quite intrusive norms human rights and lowering import barriers. and regulations. In 2000 Brasilia invited all South From 2000 many in the US and Brazil American heads of state to the fi rst-ever summit spoke of an important partnership. In 2005, for of its kind and later sponsored a fusion between instance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Andean Community of Nations said Brazil was ‘emerging as a global power’ and to launch a South American Community of spoke of its ability to lead ‘the way forward for Nations. all of Latin America’. The Economist reported When neighbours faced crises, Brazil became that many in Washington hoped Brazil could be actively involved in producing solutions. In 1997 ‘a bulwark against instability’ in the region. The it signalled that it would throw its weight against argument implied that order in the hemisphere plotters, thus averting a coup in Paraguay, a could only gain if the two largest, wealthiest country it considers to be important in its sphere and most powerful states were to engage more of influence. From 1995 to 1998, it took the constructively. lead in mediating a territorial dispute between But the partnership picture is misleading Ecuador and Peru, and in 2002 it led a mediation even if Brazil’s regional interests converge to resolve a coup attempt against President Hugo fundamentally with those of the US. Serious Chavez of Venezuela. When the UN Security clashes of interests over trade, international Council mandated action in Haiti, Brazil led a law, and regional governance exist and Brazil’s South American force to which it committed dominant strategy has been to restrict or restrain most troops and funding. And when Colombian overwhelming US power. It will not challenge troops chased and killed Revolutionary Armed the US overtly, but it will not work as a regional Forces of operatives in Ecuador in policeman either. Low-level attrition is likely in 2008, Brazil floated ideas about sponsoring specifi c policy areas. And if the US and Brazil are collective security under a South American to be partners, it will be through quiet diplomacy, Defence Council. President ‘Lula’ da Silva of example and new-found magnetic attributes of Brazil has indicated repeatedly that, in regional the Brazilian economy. The two countries are not affairs, non-intervention must be coupled with natural allies. A working partnership — if it is to ‘non-indifference’. Judged by the standard pace exist at all — needs concerted effort. of change in Brazilian policy these are important Problems abroad will require a shift in posture transformations. and a more active engagement by Brasilia. Yet Brazil is not your typical regional power. It Distinctly Brazilian views on key problems in may constitute half the territory, population and world will have to be contrived if great wealth of South America, but it has not sought expectations on emergence are to be sustained. to develop a capability to control its neighbours. It may also be the major institution builder in BRAZIL’S CHEQUERED the region, but the institutional architecture that ENGAGEMENT WITH THE REGION results is thin and weak. Governing elites remain wedded to traditional understandings of autonomy Over 20 years, Brazilian governing elites have and discard pooling regional sovereignties into sponsored a major shift in the region, revamping supranational bodies. They are equally reluctant strategies and recasting priorities. In 1994 Brazil to pay for regional prominence, preferring to deal led the creation of Mercosur — a four-member with smaller neighbours on an individual basis. trade bloc purportedly seeking increased political Notions of regional interdependence have not and social integration in the southern cone. taken root. Today Mercosur has an independent chairman, Ultimately, regional policy has been low-key

SAIIA POLICY BRIEFING 9 3 BRAZIL AS A REGIONAL AND EMERGING GLOBAL POWER

and predominantly risk-averse. Deep engage- CONCLUSION ment with neighbours does not feature prominently. Smaller neighbours perceive Brazil Over ten years Brazil has translated greater as a complicated centre of power with which to economic wealth into a far-reaching foreign bandwagon precisely because it is unwilling to policy agenda. The country fi nally appears to be engage. It resists or responds selectively to calls coming into its own and is realising the massive for deepening regional institutions and defi nes its potential that eluded it for decades. But these trade, fi nance and migration interests in narrow changes still lack the depth and strength to national terms. make them irreversible. Brazil is an undisputed Such ambivalence toward the region is regional power. But its role as a regional leader refl ected in Brazilian public opinion. Recent data and emerging power remains open-ended. The shows that elites see South America as a source of presidential race of 2010 will be important in ‘problems and concern’. This is partly to do with determining what happens next. a perceived return of populism and autocratic governance in neighbouring countries, and ENDNOTES with the perception that Mercosur suffers from the protectionist policies of neighbours (not of 1 Dr Matias Spektor is the co-ordinator of the Center Brazil). A heightened sense of insecurity about the for International Studies at Fundação Getulio drug trade and criminal activities in the Amazon Vargas in Rio de Janeiro. region, where Brazil shares porous borders with seven countries, fuels such negative sentiments.

The Emerging Powers Programme is funded by the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency and the Royal Danish Embassy, Pretoria. SAIIA gratefully acknowledges this support.

© SAIIA 2009 All rights reserved. Opinions expressed are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of SAIIA.

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