Is Brazil’s Lula giving the West cause for concern?

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/08/2023 (798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has crafted a foreign policy that has left many Western leaders uncomfortably shaking their heads. In seeking a larger role for Brazil — in both the Americas and the wider world — “Lula” has adopted some controversial positions on a host of hot-button global issues.

Take the recent summit in Brasilia of the reinvigorated Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) forum in late May, where Lula sought to push the regional integration card among a group of mostly left-leaning leaders. “We let ideology divide us and interrupt our efforts to integrate. We abandoned our channels of dialogue and our mechanisms of co-operation, and we all lost because of it,” he said emphatically. Greater South American economic, political, cultural and social integration is seen by the Brazilian president as also a means of countering outsized U.S. influence in the Americas.

Breaking with the previous far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, which banned members of the Venezuelan government from even entering Brazil, Lula warmly embraced Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Turning aside serious issues about Venezuela’s human rights record, humanitarian crisis and internal electoral/political opposition restrictions, he noted that Maduro is Venezuela’s legitimate president and dismissed any charges of him violating political rights as part of “a narrative that has been constructed against Venezuela.”

Add to that the fact the Brazilian government permitted Iranian navy vessels to dock in Rio de Janeiro, opposed the removal of a leftist president in Peru and refused to be a party to a United Nations resolution condemning Nicaragua’s human rights record. And while it is true that common cause with Lula can be found on the climate emergency front, his serious misgivings about the broader — and deeply unfair — global order are percolating once again.

In terms of a rising China and BRICS ally, Brazil’s president is anxious to expand and deepen economic relations with Beijing — already the country’s top foreign trade and investment partner. Additionally, Lula has adopted more of an engagement over an estrangement approach to China when it comes to diplomatic relations and securing a strategic counterweight to the U.S.

On the critical issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Brazil’s Lula has exhibited some outward support for the Kremlin (and refused to send military hardware to Ukraine), called for Ukraine to relinquish claim to the now Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and mused out loud about Washington’s hand in fuelling the deadly conflict.

Perhaps he does have designs on somehow mediating an end to the war in Ukraine. But it remains unlikely that either Kyiv or Moscow would actually welcome Lula’s high-level involvement.

Furthermore, at the mid-July meeting of European Union member states and countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Lula pushed back against a joint final communiqué condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and securing an unsatisfactory EU-Mercosur trade pact.

Governments in the West are also scratching their heads and trying to figure out what is really driving Lula’s current foreign policy orientation. Is he deliberately seeking to stir up trouble in the world? A good place for them to start would be to closely examine his past track record when he was leader of the Workers’ Party — where his bark was far worse than his bite.

It may well be that Lula’s hard left philosophical outlook has been finally unleashed, that his true anti-imperialist colours and deep suspicion of U.S. motives are shining through or that his lack of interest in a second term has unburdened him. But I think it is more than that.

Lula’s foreign policy record thus far can be explained by a return to his ingrained preference for Brazilian independence, non-alignment/neutrality and Brazil’s customary role as a regional power-broker — as was the case during his first two terms at the helm in 2003-2011. Stated differently, his international policy reflects a number of traditional Brazilian principles: international co-operation and dialogue, the peaceful resolution of global conflicts, non-intervention and self-determination.

Furthermore, his actions are more about Lula’s recognition of a multipolar world and what it takes to advance Brazil’s offensive and defensive interests in such a global ecosystem. Lula has, moreover, always had a deep distrust and concern about U.S. foreign/security policy interference in Latin America and the Caribbean. In some ways, Lula’s Brazil sees Washington as a hemispheric rival and is in direct competition with the U.S. (which underscores the recent announcement by Brasilia of imposing a visa requirement on visiting U.S. tourists in the fall).

While it is clear that Lula’s foreign policy is a sharp departure from his predecessor’s, the finer details and nuances of his various initiatives still remain to be ironed out. More to the point, the key red lines of his international engagement are not yet clearly defined or understood. But if his past record in office is any indication, where his actions often reflected more of a pragmatist than ideologue, the West should just relax and hold its rhetorical fire.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.