For months, an incumbent president with authoritarian leanings has questioned his country’s democracy. His supporters staged a violent march on the capital to contest their narrow electoral defeat. But the institutions of democracy were stronger than the attacks, and on Inauguration Day the legitimate victor took office in a peaceful ceremony.
The parallels between recent presidential elections in the United States and Brazil are striking. Outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro supported Donald Trump and he in turn supported Bolsonaro in the election campaign. Though Joe Biden didn’t go that far and didn’t endorse anyone during the campaign, it wasn’t long before he acknowledged the victory of new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and ignored his rival’s allegations of voter fraud.
“The United States is back,” Biden said on the eve of his own inauguration in 2021. “Brazil is back,” Lula said two years later.
But beyond the similarities between their presidential campaigns, there are fundamental differences in the vision Lula and Biden have of the world and the role their countries should play in it. These are differences that should serve as a basis for building mutual understanding and should not become points of conflict between the great powers of the western hemisphere.
Lula’s multilateralism
Let’s think about their victory speeches. What does it mean for Biden and Lula that their countries have “returned”? Joe Biden is clear on this: a return to a global campaign to “defend democracy around the world, halt the advance of authoritarianism” and unite the countries of the “free world” against rivals like Russia and China. But Lula’s vision of a global order “based on dialogue, multilateralism and multipolarity” contradicts these divisions and their calls for confrontation. “We will have relationships with everyone,” Lula said in his speech this Sunday.
What does Lula’s commitment to “dialogue, multilateralism and multipolarity” actually mean? By “dialogue” Lula means the transition from a foreign policy that seeks to isolate opponents to one that seeks diplomatic solutions. For example, when the Biden administration called for the world to join its campaign for tough sanctions on Russia, there were people associated with Lula who called for caution. “I am against the sanctions,” said his former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. “They won’t help solve anything, they will create problems around the world.”
The procedure also applies to Washington’s opponents on the continent.
While Bolsonaro aligned himself with the United States in refusing to recognize Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, President Lula will now seek to build a relationship with the Maduro government. Meanwhile, Lula regularly supports the UN General Assembly in voting to condemn the US blockade of Cuba.
Lula’s resistance to these unilateral coercive measures defines what “multilateralism” means to him. From the beginning of his first term as president, Lula sought to increase the role of multilateral organizations like the United Nations in solving global challenges. Sometimes that meant taking on the US government. Just as he rejected the unilateral decision by the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. “This disregards the United Nations,” Lula said of the decision at the time.
restoration of world order
But his commitment to multilateralism goes beyond a mere preference for consensus. Then as now, Lula’s government advocated a fundamental reform of the multilateral system that “reflects the current distribution of power in the world,” as Amorim put it. It’s possible that Washington will celebrate the end of Bolsonaro’s isolationism on issues like the fight against climate change, but the key remains how it will respond to Lula’s attempt to bring the so-called Global South to the fore, despite the Biden administration it has promised to keep the United States at the top of the table.
What defines Lula’s vision of “multipolarity” is this ambition to form new blocs to rebalance the world order. A process of realignment beginning in the western hemisphere. Lula has long tried to unite Brazil’s Latin American neighbors in a common bloc that should be independent of the United States. During his presidency, Bolsonaro left these regional bodies in a bad way. But Lula now has like-minded governments in countries like Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and his government will seek to integrate regional health, defense, infrastructure and environmental policies to create a new “pole” in what Biden “the country” called “front yard.” of the United States”.
But Lula’s commitment to a different bloc carries the greatest risk of a collision with the US. Since the beginning of his presidency, Biden has spoken of a growing civilizational conflict between “democracies” and “autocracies”, with Russia and China representing the autocratic camp. However, in 2008, Lula led the creation of a new global bloc that broke with this division of civilizations, uniting Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics). Back in the presidency, Lula has already said he will support proposals to expand the block and develop a new Brics payment system that will facilitate trade between its members without the use of dollars.
New chance
The United States has a dismal record of interventions in countries it felt were too close to its rivals, and Brazil is no exception. In order to prevent Brazil from becoming the “China of the 1960s”, Washington supported the military coup against the democratically elected government of João Goulart as early as 1964. You didn’t apologize. And recent US administrations backed Lula’s 580-day incarceration in what is widely viewed as the 2016 judicial coup.
Now that Lula takes over the presidency, Biden has an opportunity to write a new chapter in US-Brazil relations based on mutual respect for national sovereignty. It is also an opportunity to review key US foreign policy assumptions. Neither Lula nor his allies identify with his concept of a “free world” or with the idea that the United States should be the country at the top. However, they believe that a multipolar world is emerging and that it is their responsibility to play a positive role in it with an active, independent and strong foreign policy. Brazil doesn’t need a United States to “lead the world.” What he needs is for the United States to find its new place at the table.
David Adler is the General Coordinator of the Progressive International. Guillaume Long is Senior Policy Analyst at CEPR.
Translation by Francisco de Zarate