Presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and Brazil, Lula da Silva, at the White House this Friday JONATHAN ERNST (Portal)
This Friday, US President Joe Biden welcomed his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Washington for his third official foreign visit since taking office on January 1. In a brief joint statement at the White House, Biden invoked defending democracy and the rule of law as shared values. The attack on the Capitol in 2021 and that on the headquarters of the government, Congress and Supreme Court in Brasilia just two years later, with scenes copied from the first, bring the two leaders closer, resolute in their active defence of democracy, on the other hand, their predecessors. Lula has stressed that he wants to “replace Brazil in world geopolitics because the country has been isolated and marginalized for four years,” with a president who is “degrading international relations,” alluding to Jair Bolsonaro. “That sounds familiar,” Biden said.
Both have met behind closed doors to discuss an agenda that has centered on climate change alongside defending democracy, the economy, global issues (with the war in Ukraine at the forefront) and regional issues like the US relationship USA with South America and Mercosur. After the meeting, the Brazilian president announced that the US will help protect the Amazon, although he didn’t say exactly how. “Taking care of the Amazon today is taking care of planet Earth,” he said.
The two presidents agreed on “their categorical rejection of extremism and violence in politics” as well as the need to address the threat of climate change, with a remarkable consensus on protecting the world’s largest tropical forest, that of the Amazon. Lula’s election victory made it possible to revive a special relief fund. But the proximity to these issues collides with their differing opinions on the war in Ukraine, in which Lula condemns the Russian invasion but splits responsibility between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy given the seamless support from Washington to Kiev.
The Democrat has tried, with varying degrees of success, to rally the global South to support Ukraine, arguing that all nations have a responsibility to resist a superpower’s bloody and unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country. Lula, for his part, has rejected calls from the West for arms to support Kiev because he does not want to be indirectly involved in the conflict. In addition, he has attempted to establish himself as a statesman capable of mediating between the two sides, and has proposed the creation of a “peace club” of countries that can contribute to a negotiated settlement. Lula himself, in an interview with CNN before his appointment to the White House, has stated that the Russian invasion was “a mistake that we now have to fix” and that he refuses to arm Kiev: “If I send ammunition, I step in start the war and want to end the war”.
Sources from the Brazilian delegation confirmed in Washington that Lula would propose to his host “a negotiated debate on peace in Ukraine that would include the involvement of more neutral world actors in the conflict,” such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia or Turkey, including the former BRICS.
Regarding China, which Biden believes is the biggest long-term threat to US interests, as demonstrated by the recent diplomatic crisis – following the downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon and this Friday a suspicious object over Alaskan waters – Brazil’s main trading partner and Lula intend to strengthen bilateral ties with an official visit in March, a trip that Brazilian officials quoted by the Washington Post say will have a more solid agenda than this Friday’s meeting with Biden.
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The Brazilian thanked the American for his closeness in the happiest and most tense moment of recent months. Biden was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Lula on his victory and spoke to the Petista after the Jan. 8 uprising in Brazil to invite him to the White House. However, it was 505 days before he called Bolsonaro, who had questioned the legitimacy of his November 2020 election. Lula’s visit comes just 40 days after he took power. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two presidents, although they have known each other since 2009, when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president.
Referring to his predecessor at the Planalto Palace, Lula called him a “loyal copycat” of Donald Trump and said there was no way he would return to the presidency. In the interview with CNN, the Brazilian President recalled that the judiciary is investigating Bolsonaro for inciting an attack on democracy, although he stressed that he had no intention of asking Biden for the extradition of the far right, who has been living in Florida since stops at the end of December. Lula was convinced that democracy would prevail in his country, although he warned of the existence of a far-right international in the world, an “organized movement” present in countries like Spain, France, Hungary or Germany.
The former labor leader used the morning before heading to the White House to meet with Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, dean of the party’s left-most faction, and other Democratic congressmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who expressed their support for him expressed. Lula embodied the “threat to democracy from the far right” in the characters of Trump and Bolsonaro.
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