Brazil: A Century of Change

4. Brazil and the World

= 101 = 4 celSo laFer Brazil and the World This essay is an analysis of Brazil’s international relations in the twentieth century . Such an analysis brings together a range of themes and problems. The organizing perspective of this survey, though, is that foreign policy is public policy whose purpose is translating domestic needs into possible foreign relations. The Legacy of Rio Branco For the history of Brazilian diplomacy, the nineteenth century stretched into the first decade of the twentieth century. This decade was the final phase of the career of José Maria da Silva Paranhos Jr., Baron of Rio Branco. Rio Branco’s service as Brazil’s minister of foreign relations from 1902 to 1912 crowned an exemplary diplomatic career. Rio Branco completed Brazil’s primary task as a newly independent nation: consolidation of the national territory.1 Setting international borders is always a key challenge in any country’s foreign policy. The first problem on a new country’s diplomatic agenda is establishing the difference between the “domestic” and “foreign” and, therefore, the specificity of foreign policy as public policy. The detailed process of setting Brazil’s borders, begun in the colonial and imperial periods, culminated in the republican era with Rio Branco’s numerous efforts. In bequeathing to the nation the legal title to a continent-sized territory , Rio Branco brought to a positive close the activity of navigators, wilderness tamers, and diplomats since 1500, the year that Portugal laid claim to Brazil. These were the agents of history that, based in their Lusitanian heritage, managed to create “the body of the homeland.”2 Rio Branco managed to conclude this feat through peaceful means—through arbitration and negotiations that led to s s BrazIl aND tHe WorlD = 102 = treaties. In the estimation of a recent ambassador to the United States, Rubens Ricúpero, the work of Rio Branco was a diplomatic undertaking with few parallels in the history of international relations, especially if one considers that Brazil has more neighbors than most countries and that, moreover, several other continent-size countries, including Russia, India, and China, still have not fully resolved their border problems.3 Setting the borders fixed Brazil’s place in the world and allowed the release of the “deep forces” of economics and geography that would distinguish Brazilian foreign policy in the twentieth century.4 It is the peculiarities arising from these “deep forces” that I will outline in this essay. These characteristics are expressed in Brazil’s relationships with its neighbors, its posture in relation to the major powers, the affirmation of a “goal-oriented nationalism,” focused on the development of the nation’s territory, and the conduct of foreign policy in a Grotian mold, which, over time and space, has used diplomacy and law, without naivete, to deal with conflict and cooperation on the international level while addressing national interests. The Best Policy for the Continent By relieving Brazil of its border-drawing tasks, Rio Branco left the country free and at home in its South American setting—the site of Brazil’s diplomatic first person, as José Ortega y Gasset would say. Once he had legally consolidated the map of Brazil, the next stage of Rio Branco’s vision was to ensure peace and stimulate progress in South America.5 In the twentieth century, Rio Branco’s plan became a conduit for Brazilian foreign policy, which addressed the deep forces of economics and geography in diplomatically constructive ways. Indeed, a climate of peace in South America was an important condition for the development of Brazil’s territory, and it was the predominant direction in Brazil’s foreign policy after Rio Branco. This was why, in the 1930s, Brazil actively sought conciliatory solutions to the Leticia Conflict between Colombia and Peru and to the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. The role of Brazil in the 1990s as one of the guarantors of the 1942 Protocol of Rio de Janeiro that settled the Ecuador-Peru border dispute follows this same line. This line of foreign policy that Rio Branco envisioned, directed toward peace and progress in South America, is representative of the classic concept of diplomacy : countries should try to make the best policy for their geography. In the course of the twentieth century, this principle was elaborated to foster develop- BrazIl aND tHe WorlD = 103 = ment, the modern expression of the concept of progress. From this comes the driving idea...