Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (AP/Eraldo Peres)
the ceremony of attachment of the President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on January 1, will be a showcase of his government’s foreign policy. at least some 30 presidents and heads of government They have already confirmed their presence Almost twice as much of those present at the investiture ceremony Jair Messiah Bolsonaro in 2018. This is a surge that, according to the Brazilian press, symbolizes Brazil’s reopening to the world after the Bolsonaro era, more pro-Trump and focused on internal issues. On behalf of Latin America, the Presidents of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Suriname and Costa Rica will attend, representing the return of Brazilian leadership in the region. Also King Felipe VI. from Spain will be present. French President Emmanuel Macron will not attend but has announced an official visit to Brazil early next year.
That great absent will be instead Nicholas Maduro, although Lula did everything to have the dictator in Brasilia. The current government, like other countries in the world including the United States and the European Union, does not recognize him as head of state. In addition, an official interministerial document from 2019 bans their entry into Brazil, as well as those of their relatives and their high-ranking officials, because they pose a threat to “democracy, the dignity of the human person and the spread of human rights”.
On behalf of the President Joe Biden A delegation led by Home Secretary Deb Haaland will land in Brazil, accompanied by National Security Council Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Juan González and US Embassy Brasilia Charge d’Affaires Douglas Koneff. But the inviting esplanade of Brasilia also opens its doors to the Putin’s Russia, engaged in the war against Ukraine and will send a delegation led by her Senate President Valentina Matviyenko. Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan also arrives, along with three ministers of trade, foreign affairs and development.
Is the group photo at the end of the ceremony an admirable exercise in diplomatic skill in the new president’s future foreign policy, which manages to contain all differences? Or the beginning of an ambiguous strategy that winks at the US, but in the end prefers to go hand in hand with the dictators of the earth? Lula will see Biden in Washington early in his term, as previously agreed with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who met the president-elect in Brasilia in early December. As for Putin, Lula announced on Twitter I spoke to him on the phone last week. “He congratulated me on my victory,” he wrote, “he wished good government and the strengthening of relations between our countries.” Lula added that “Brazil once again engages in dialogue with everyone and is committed to finding a world without hunger and at peace.”
After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Brazil remained neutral towards Moscownot just because it belongs to the group of BRICSthe economic alliance of emerging countries like China, India, Russia and South Africa, but also because there is one large importer of fertilizers. 99% of its ammonium nitrate comes from Moscow. The Ukraine conflict and the sharp drop in Russian exports have tripled the cost of fertilizers worldwide. This explains why both Lula and Bolsonaro declared theirs Resistance to sanctions against Russia. Lula’s controversial testimony to Time magazine that “Zelensky is just as culpable for the war as the Russian president” put him on the Ukrainian government’s list of speakers who promoted Russian propaganda, from which he was later removed due to media impact.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, and Lula da Silva, who will take office in Brazil on January 1, 2023
China it will also play a prominent role in the foreign relations of the future government. After Lula’s victory, the Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter highlighting “the global strategic partnership between the two countries.” The Brazilian has praised the Chinese regime on numerous occasions, including recently calling the Asian giant an “example for the world” and a “strong state that makes decisions and people respect them”. Since 2009, China has been Brazil’s largest trading partner, ahead of the USA. Bilateral trade between the two countries reached $135 billion in 2021. Brazil exports soybeans, steel, raw materials and meat, while China mainly exports technology. In the Bolsonaro government, despite pressure from the United States, Brazil finally allowed the participation of the Chinese company Huawei, which the Washington government has accused of industrial espionage, in the 5G network. In addition, according to a recent report by the non-profit human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, the Xi Jinping regime has set up three secret police stations in Brazil to monitor and intimidate the Chinese living there. This is an issue that could cause diplomatic problems with Beijing.
Brazil’s Relations with the United States, Russia and China will put Lula’s foreign policy to the test. According to the interim government’s final report, Bolsonaro made a strategic mistake by turning “South America into a scenario of geopolitical dispute between the United States, Russia and China” and also “isolating Venezuela”. Venezuela could be exactly the issue where Biden and Lula could need each other. Indeed, despite being on the State Department’s list of the most dangerous drug traffickers, the United States is turning to Maduro to exploit the country’s oil resources in exchange for a phased relaxation of sanctions.
Lula will visit Joe Biden in 2023
Ricardo Zuniga, The US special envoy for Central America and coordinator of Biden’s policy on Brazil said in an interview with the Folha de São Paulo newspaper that Washington expects Lula to commit to “improving the conditions of democracy in Venezuela,” and with a great deal high number With a population of 7.1 million, it remains the second largest country in the world after Syria in terms of the number of refugees. Among the new government’s first decisions is the green light for Maduro and his family to enter Brazil. In addition, the Brazilian embassy and consulate in Caracas, which have been closed since the beginning of 2020, will reopen. For his part, Maduro last week appointed his future ambassador to Brasilia, Manuel Vicente Vadell, as consul in São Paulo in 2013.
The question remains how this “Realpolitik” proposed by Biden Lula can coexist with organizations created with an anti-American function whose protagonists are precisely the Brazilian left of Lula and Venezuela. It is the case Saint Paul Foruma group formed in 1990 by Lula himself and Fidel Castro after the fall of the Berlin Wall to salvage the communist ideology it was promoting in Latin America.
According to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, Lula will return Brazil to the Union of South American Nations (UNSURE), the Latin American bloc created in 2008 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez against the influence of the United States, from which Brazil quit in 2019 along with other countries such as Colombia, which accused it of complicity with “the dictatorship of Venezuela” in 2018. “
With the new government, Brazil will also return to the community of Latin American and Caribbean countries (CELAC), which she had assumed with Bolsonaro. CELAC was founded in 2011 at the behest of Chávez as a Latin American challenge to the Organization of American States (OAS). Neither the United States nor Canada are members. The next CELAC meeting will mark Lula’s first trip as President to Argentina, where on January 24th he will meet his colleague Alberto Fernández, who personally invited him during his visit to São Paulo immediately after his election victory.
In terms of Iran, Workers’ Party (PT) Vice-President José Guimarães met with Ambassador Hossein Gharibi in Brasilia last week. “We will resume our good bilateral relations between the two countries and expand international investments,” wrote on Twitter. Brazil sells halal corn and meat to Iran and has started importing fertilizers. The fear is that trade relations will also open the door for Tehran politically. In his two terms in office (2003-2010), Lula has fostered ties with former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and worked with Iranian and Turkish Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a controversial nuclear fuel deal in 2010.
The future Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira tried to minimize the criticism of the fears Extreme multipolarism in the new government and stated that Lula will not travel to Nicaragua, Cuba or Venezuela early in his term, although “Brazil intends to support Venezuela’s return to Mercosur”. Regarding the free trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, Vieira spoke positively. “The European Union is now better prepared because Lula’s statement on his environmental strategy, which was one of the obstacles, was very clear.” Environmental diplomacy in particular is to be the business card of the new world government. At the COP-27 on the environment, held in Egypt in November, the President-elect met UN Secretary-General António Guterres, whom he asked to host the 2025 climate conference in the Amazon.
Finally, great importance is attached to it Africathe Lula as a key continent for the so-called South-South policythat is, a diplomacy close to the countries of the South of the world to strengthen commercial and cultural ties, already initiated in his first term.
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