Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War

Introduction

Introduction Brazil started the twenty-first century by raising its global foreign-policy profile, catching attention as one of the four BRIC emerging-market countries —Brazil, Russia, India, and China—preoccupying foreign ministries in the G-8 nations. As part of this group of emerging powers Brazil has played an increasingly vocal and central role in the evolution of major international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and adopted an important position as provider of economic, political, and physical security in the Americas. This characterization of Brazil as a nuanced and sophisticated actor on the international stage strikes many outside of South America as unlikely not only because of the scant attention the country has received from internationalaffairs analysts and scholars, but also because of the manner in which Brazil pursues its international agenda. The country has a long history of acting to protect its own interests in the Americas by quietly influencing and pressuring its neighbors, a process that accelerated toward the end of the twentieth century. That such actions have often gone largely unnoticed is not just a byproduct of broad international indifference to Brazil’s foreign policy, but also a result of the methods that the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, Itamaraty, uses to pursue the country’s international agenda. Overt action or intervention has not been the norm. Rather, the strategy has been one of secreting the country ’s integrated and sustained ambitions for hemispheric and global leadership behind a cloak of indirect and ostensibly technocratic apolitical programs, well wrapped in an added mantle of multilateralism and often run through other government ministries and agencies. This book will unravel the tangled threads of Brazil’s continentally oriented actions and ambitions between 1992 and 2002 to explain why sometimes seemingly unrelated initiatives have been pursued in the South American context and, more significantly for the wider study of Brazilian foreign policy, provide a clear picture of how Itamaraty goes about advancing Brazil’s international agenda. Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War 2 Although not often officially framed in such explicit terms, the perennial goal of Brazilian foreign policy remains the preservation of national autonomy and the prevention of external interference in internal domestic affairs (Lampreia and Cruz 2005; Bernal-Meza 2002; Lampreia 1998a, 8). The central research question driving this book therefore asks what foreign-policy strategy Itamaraty implemented between 1992 and 2002 to continue preserving and protecting national autonomy amid the changing pressures created by the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of globalization. An added complication is that Brazil faced a succession of economic crises throughout the time period covered by this book, severely limiting policymakers’ freedom to engage in activities requiring much more than symbolic resource expenditure. In short, the answer is that after 1992 Brazilian foreign policy was based on a strategy of achieving and exercising a quiet style of leadership in South America, seeking to develop and lead regional groupings as a defensive response to the new realities that rapidly followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. These regional groupings were pursued in a decidedly self-interested manner, one that was relatively benign and that explicitly left space for the advancement of the interests of other South American states provided those interests did not contravene Brazil’s core interests. The story told is thus one of how Brazil rose from being a significant actor in the Americas to one of two dominant players in all hemispheric discussions despite lacking the economic and military muscle of the United States. An understanding of the techniques and strategies deployed by Itamaraty to position Brazil as the leader of South America, albeit a sometimes shaky leader, is essential for a comprehension of Brazilian action in the extrahemispheric global context. Efforts to secure and consolidate leadership in South America were the proving ground and finishing school for tactics and strategies that would be deployed tentatively at first on the global stage after 2000, and with increasing confidence and vigor after the 2002 presidential succession . The temporal period I have chosen for the study of Brazilian foreign policy begins in 1992 and extends to 2002 because it encompasses a time of important changes and innovation: the decade in which Fernando Henrique Cardoso had enormous influence on or direct control over Itamaraty, first as foreign minister (1992–1993), then as the finance minister attempting to rescue the embattled national economy (1993–1994), and then as president of the republic (1995–2002). As a sociology...