Brazil Decides To Get Closer to the US

A couple of weeks ago, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visited Barack Obama in Washington. With that, bilateral relations between Brazil and the U.S. seem to have returned to normal, after the deserter Edward Snowden – in September 2013 – revealed the extent of U.S. espionage in our neighboring country. This spying apparently included tapping even the phone of Brazil’s president, which very visibly – and awkwardly – plunged the ties between the two countries into a frigid atmosphere, so much so that it provoked the very public cancellation of a previously planned visit by the Brazilian president to the USA.

But things have changed a lot. Brazil is going through a difficult time. It is in recession. Its economy, the seventh largest in the world, will contract this year by a painful 1.5 percent. The society is externalizing its discontent, plunging the country into a troubled political and social climate, in which a cloud of hostility floats toward the president. This has a lot to do with the wave of corruption that is affecting the state-owned petroleum company Petrobras. Thus, Dilma has been seeking a little oxygen and tranquility by taking refuge in external politics to cover up her loss of popularity.

This is such a big deal that the beleaguered Dilma is accusing the opposition of allegedly plotting a coup, the way authoritarian governments constantly do when they fall out of favor through their own mistakes. This alleged plot is laid at the feet of the opposition, as personified by the Social Democratic Party of Brazil, under the leadership of Aécio Neves, along with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. At their party’s recent convention, they announced their readiness to form a new government, insinuating that Brazil could – soon – be living through another unfortunate period, like the suicide of Getúlio Vargas in 1954, or the expulsion of Joao Goulart in 1964, or Fernando Collor de Mello’s “resignation” in 1992 when Brazil’s National Congress was getting ready to remove him from office.

For this reason, the president’s leap onto the international scene is like a convenient “smokescreen.” Behind it, she appears to have moved beyond the atmosphere of mutual recrimination between Brazil and the U.S. that was there during the first terms of both presidents, when it took the shape of an intense network of working groups that – little by little – were blurring the outlines of their respective tasks.

It is time to re-energize the bilateral work that was under way. This includes, among other things, the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the unfortunate – and even dangerous (because of lack of transparency) – issue of the uranium enrichment centrifuges that Brazil has in operation that should be once and for all brought into the light.

The relationship between Brazil and the U.S. has often been fragile, perhaps because the U.S. doesn’t see Brazil as a competitor in the sphere of geopolitics, and because Brazil has become very protectionist, distancing itself from the efforts of those who, like Barack Obama, are actively trying to open the world to trade and investment.

In this, it must be pointed out that Argentina has been of no help to Brazil. Argentina's closing itself off in some way forced Brazil to adopt a policy of what is called “strategic patience,” faced with our positions which have impeded – time and time again – wrapping up important commercial negotiations, like those which have been underway for some time now with the European Union. This patience might be coming to an end, beyond the fine rhetoric. For this reason, they are fed up as regards our commercial activities – which the Brazilian private sector no longer conceals – now along with the governments of two of our other partners, Paraguay and Uruguay, which also appear to be tired of our lack of consideration.

Unlike Angela Merkel – who was also spied on by the Americans - Dilma Rousseff, was bitter, loudly tearing her hair out. And she distanced herself from the northern country, to which, however, she is now returning under pressure of internal politics. This is in spite of the fact that from the point of view of economics, the two big countries do not have close ties or important and stable value chains that for strategic reasons require them to remain close to each other.

The time to re-invigorate the bilateral relationship between the two countries seems to have arrived. That is why Joaquim Levy* is aiming to re-open Brazil to the world in the areas of commerce and investments. This is being done fundamentally through the private sector in order to overcome in this way the paralysis that is affecting his economy, and to get back to normal growth. [*Editor’s note: Joaquim Levy is Brazil’s finance minister.]

If the two countries re-engage, they will also be able to work together to confront some delicate questions in our region: like Cuba’s difficult road back to “normality”; and, even more, to avoid further movement by Venezuela – whose economy has been demolished by the “Bolivarians” – away from what is left of its damaged democratic life, in order to let its suffering people regain in peace their civil liberties, which presently have been cut off.

Our whole region, not just Brazil, has to emerge from the frustrating isolation in which it finds itself. It can’t keep being closed in on itself without causing a setback. Today, our space for dialogue has been voluntarily shrunk because it appears that this is about preventing our countries from interacting with the rest of the world, for which it is resorting to building a unique, small voice that otherwise has become harmless.

If the current situation is maintained, it will inevitably lead our people to sink more deeply into their relative backwardness, which we must avoid. When we are on the brink of a possible and necessary change of course, it is worth re-iterating that opening ourselves to the world is not only possible but necessary.