BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY Present and Future Washington, DC, 2010 Brazilian Foreign Policy: Present and Future Original Conception Deputies Rodrigo Maia and José Carlos Aleluia Coordinating Editor Paulo Gouvêa da Costa Editor A+B Comunicação CLN 112 Bloco B Sala 208 – Brasília, DF Tel.: (61) 3347-9356 www.amaisb.com Graphic Design Link Design Cover: Fernando Xavier de Abreu Photos Paulo Pampolin/Hype Press Gráfica e Editora Executiva Ltda Democratas – National Board of Directors Liberdade e Cidadania Foundation Federal Senate – Building 1 26th floor Brasilia, DF Brasil 70293-900 Tel.: (61)3311-4305 / 3311-4273 www.flc.org.br www.democratas.org.br Table of contents Introduction, 5 1 The main lineaments of Brazil’s current foreign policy, 7 Rubens Ricupero 2 Uncertain times for the WTO, 17 Luiz Felipe Lampreia 3 The BRIC Club: good things do come in large packages, 25 Marcos Azambuja Photos, 37 4 Brazil: three strategic relationships – China, Germany, and USA, 47 Roberto Abdenur 5 Energy Cooperation in the Americas, 69 Sebastião do Rego Barros 6 Mercosur crisis, 87 Sérgio Amaral 7 Brazil’s foreign policy: diagnostic and prospects, 95 Antonio Carlos Pereira Introduction This volume contains texts by Ambassadors Luiz Felipe Lampreia, Rubens Ricupero, Sérgio Amaral, Sebastião do Rego Barros, Marcos Azambuja, 5 and Roberto Abdenur and by Antonio Carlos Pereira, a journalist on the staff of O Estado de São Paulo. They texts are a summary of their lectures at the Conference on Brazilian Foreign Policy: Diagnosis and Prospects convened on August 31, 2009 by the Freedom and Citizenship Foundation, in partnership with the São Paulo Trade Association and with the support of the Teotônio Villela Institute and the Astrojildo Pereira Foundation. Of the seven invited lecturers, only Ambassador Roberto Abdenur was not able to attend but was willing to contribute to this publication. The encounter, which was attended by 600 hundred people most of them university students of the state of São Paulo, and included politicians, members of the intelligentsia, and journalists, who undertook a careful, highly technical analysis of the conduction of Brazilian diplomacy under the Lula government. The main conclusion reached is that the Brazilian was that Brazilian foreign policy has been in disarray in recent years and that its focus has been restricted to practically just one, as yet unattainable objective: to secure a seat on the United Nations Security Council. For nearly eight years, the Workers Party-PT, at the whelm of Itamaraty, has chosen to support governments with which it is ideologically identified, bypassing the professionalism and the impartiality that have always characterized Brazilian diplomacy. The Rio Branco Baron used to say: “Everywhere I remember the Homeland.” The Workers Party’s diplomacy subverted his motto, replacing it by “Everywhere I remember the Party.” This stance became crystal clear when the Brazilian government decided to interfere in the Bolivian and the Paraguayan elections, used resources of the Brazilian National Economic and Social Development Bank-BNDES to make concessions to Ecuador and Venezuela, and, in a flagrant disrespect of the Brazilian foreign policy tradition, interfered in the internal affairs of the Republic of Honduras. The conversion of Brazilian foreign policy into a Party policy has been criticized by this competent team of diplomats and a journalist, for whom foreign policy should be a State policy, never one particular government’s policy. Governments are transient, while the State stands, and diplomatic activities in the course time are a corollary of this truth. Today, Brazil practices a personality-centered foreign policy, playing to the crowd. It has not pursued a long-term vision, and much less a long- term strategy. It has ended up by distancing itself from the great powers as it 6 followed a naïve course, establishing a series of diplomatic missions in Africa, as if the election for a seat on the UN Security Council were a question of numbers, a mathematical calculation, failing to see that this is a much more far-reaching issue, which depends on the recognition of real, solid, enduring leadership. As these seven texts make clear, the Lula government has put our foreign policy in disarray, transmogrifying it into an ideological carnival. The future will inexorably show its consequences. As our fellow congressman Luis Eduardo Magalhães would say, this policy does not run the least risk of being successful. Deputado Rodrigo Maia Deputado José Carlos Aleluia National President of Democrats Party President of the Liberty and the Citizenship Foundation 1 The main lineaments of Brazil’s current foreign policy Rubens Ricupero 7 A career diplomat, Rubens Ricupero was international affairs advisor to president-elect Tancredo Neves in 1984 and 1985. He was Brazil’s Permanent Representative to UN agencies in Geneva (1987-1991) and Ambassador to the United States (1991-1993). A former Minister of Finance, he was also Brazil’s Ambassador to Italy. He was elected Secretary- General of UNCTAD and is currently dean of the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation’s School of Economics as well as President of the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics. Rubens Ricupero s eighty-five percent of President Lula’s two terms have elapsed, it is already possible to draw a preliminary balance of Aits diplomacy. This is what we will attempt to do – and do it objectively, without any prejudiced ideological or partisan viewpoints. As we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the New Republic, I have taken as a starting point Tancredo Neves’s speech in late 1984, in which he said that “… if there is one thing in Brazilian politics that meets the consensus of all currents of thought, it is certainly the foreign policy carried out by Itamaraty.” The relative consensus mentioned by Tancredo no longer exists. This is not a matter of opinion but a factual statement, as illustrated by the difficulties to secure the National Congress’s approval of Venezuela’s adhesion to Mercosur, the editorials in newspapers and magazines about the vicissitudes of Latin American integration and of trade relations with Argentina, the accusations of weakness and excessive concessions in regard to actions by Bolivia, Paraguay, and Ecuador, and numberless other episodes the listing of which would be too tiresome. 9 It is worth looking at which content changes in our foreign policy might explain such development. Although Lula’s diplomacy elicits much controversy, it does not imply such a radical change of paradigm as occurred when the “independent” foreign policy of President Jânio Quadros and Ambassadors San Tiago Dantas and Araújo Castro permanently replaced the former paradigm of Foreign Ministers Rio Branco, Nabuco, and Oswaldo Aranha. Taken up and consolidated under President Geisel and during Foreign Minister Azeredo da Silveira’s tenure, the new paradigm was maintained by the New Republic, and no significant breach has occurred since. Against this background of continuity, the Lula government’s foreign policy revolves around three main axes: 1. The pursuit of a permanent seat in the UN Security Council; 2. The conclusion of the WTO’s Doha Round with gains in agriculture; and 3. The achievement of a South American space in which Brazil would enjoy preponderance. Along this general direction that has varied little, at least since 1974, the different embodiments of this diplomacy have been due The main lineaments of Brazil’s current foreign policy to the different styles of presidents and ministers, changing internal circumstances, and external challenges and opportunities. It was only with the consolidation of political and economic stabilization as of 1994 that the good moment experienced by the country found an international scenario which was also receptive toward Brazil’s international personality and increasing irradiation. The confirmation of this inevitable link between internal circumstances and international projection helps check the temptation of voluntarism, never sufficient in the diplomatic domain. Already in place one way or another in the past, the three axes of diplomacy acquired greater emphasis or a different focus under the current Administration, either because of Lula’s political innovations or because of circumstances or opportunities. For instance, the priority attached to the country’s candidacy to the Security Council would have been inconceivable before the attempts of an ambitious reform of the United Nations started by Kofi Annan in 2005 had put it on the agenda. 10 Similarly, the central place assigned the Doha Round was due in part to the calendar: had all gone well, its conclusion would have occurred under the current government. A preliminary balance of the results achieved by our diplomacy show that they vary according to the issue involved, just as the distance between Brazilian pretensions and reality varies. The frustration over unachieved objectives in each case was not necessarily due to our fault or shortcomings. I once simplified the issue thusly: in the first two cases, the Brazilian government wants but cannot; in the third case, it can but does not want. Simply said: as regards the UN and the WTO, even though Brazil does everything right, its capacity to influence developments is not sufficient to solve impasses the way we would like. No matter how much we endeavor, so far no consensus has been achieved to reform the Security Council or to conclude the Doha Round, and even less to do it according to Brazil’s interests. It is more a question of insufficient power or political will (not only on Brazil’s but also on other countries’ part) than of policy. This does not mean that nothing has been accomplished. On the contrary, in recent years Brazil’s position in both forums has become favorable, so that the country stands to benefit should conditions conducive to an agreement return. Rubens Ricupero As regards the Security Council, the current government’s policy is clearly different from that of the preceding government, which tended not to attach so much importance to the issue or to pursue a candidacy in a sort of condominium with Argentina so as not to harm relations with our neighbor.