Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States

Chapter 11. International Relations

CHAPTER 11 International Relations SCOTT D. TOLLEFSON INTRODUCTION In the new millennium, there seems to be a growing awareness that Brazil is playing a larger role in the international arena. In mid-2000, as Brazil prepared to host the first-ever meeting of South American heads of state, the New York Times noted that Brazil was becoming increasingly assertive on the world stage (Rohter 2000). In 2001, a book entitled Brazil's Second Chance: En Route Toward the First World captured a heady optimism that has been so recurrent in the study of Brazil's international relations (Gordon and Leone 2001). This essay analyzes the major themes, theoretical orientations, and methodological trends in the study, within the United States, of Brazil's international relations. While the focus of this chapter is U.S. scholarship on Brazil's international relations, it will examine the relationship between scholarship in the United States and Brazil. Finally, it will consider recent trends that affect the study of Brazil's international relations. The study of Brazil's international relations changed considerably from 1945 to 2003. From 1945 until the mid-1960s, the topic was largely ignored, as the Cold War focused the attention of most U.S. scholars on the Soviet Union and Europe. With Brazil's rapid economic growth from 1968 to 1974, some international relations scholars began to examine Brazil's rise within the international system, and its search for grandeza (greatness). At the same time, other scholars, influenced largely by Latin American scholars, used dependency theory or world systems theory to analyze how Brazil's position in the international capitalist system affected its development. 288 International Relations From 1974 to 1985, the limitations of Brazil's economic model and its growing debt crisis had a sobering effect on the literature, which shifted from traditional diplomacy to economic issues, especially the foreign debt crisis. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, one of the major concerns has been Brazil's position within a changing international system. Since the 1980s, the study of Brazil's international relations has become much more specialized, with the emergence of new themes, such as bilateral relations, regionalism, integration, security, and the environment.With the emergence of comparative foreign policies as a subset of international relations, a larger number of authors have sought to penetrate the "black box" of Brazil's foreign policy-making process (Lincoln and Ferris 1984; Davis and Wilson 1975). 1. BILATERAL RELATIONS: THE UNITED STATES AND BRAZIL Not surprisingly, the most prominent and enduring theme in U.S. scholarship of Brazil's international relations has been U.S. relations with Brazil . Historians have been at the forefront of this literature. The late E. Bradford Burns was one of the most important historians in this area, publishing The Unwritten Alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American Relations (1966). Frank D. McCann Jr. wrote a watershed study, The BrazilianAmerican Alliance: 1937- 1945 (1973). Stanley E. Hilton, the U.S. historian with the most sustained research on Brazil's international relations, produced an insightful analysis, "The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War, 1945-1960: End of the Special Relationship" (1981). Mark T. Berger, in Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas 1898- 1990 (1995), examined how much of U.S. scholarship on Latin America tended to support U.S. relations with the region since the late 1800s. Much of the sophistication of this literature results from the use of archives and other primary sources in Brazil by scholars like Hilton and McCann. Many political scientists have also focused on the theme of U.S.Brazilian relations. They include Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration ofBrazil (1977); Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961- 1969 (1990); and Martha Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (1998). These books are critical of U.S. policy toward Brazil. Additional books in this area include Roger Fontaine, Brazil and the United States (1974) and the insightful The United States and Brazil: The Limits ofInfluence (1981), by the late Robert Wesson. Wesson argued that U.S. influence was limited by a number of factors, 290 SCOTT D. TOLLEFSON including Brazil's national interests. In an excellent book, Abraham F. Lowenthal continued in the Wesson tradition and explored Brazil's foreign policy interests vis-a.-vis the United States, in Brazil and the United States (1986). Lowenthal's...