Brazil Seeks to Stretch Alliance With the U.S.

When Hillary Clinton received Celso Amorim last week in Washington D.C., not only was she meeting with the Brazilian diplomat to prepare for President Lula Da Silva’s visit, but she also was sending a signal to Latin America that Brazil is a fundamental ally to the United States in the region, and it will play an important role in hemispheric relations with the current U.S. Democratic government.

In contrast with Mexico and Colombia, key allies for the White House, Brazil has always kept a greater distance and independence. Due to its economic weight and political influence, successive Brazilian governments have been able to play an international role that goes beyond the region by being a member of exclusive clubs, such as the G20, and by participating in meetings with the eight most developed countries.

Amorim utilized the privilege of having been the first Latin American diplomat received by Barack Obama’s Secretary of State to express, with no reservations, his country’s concerns on problems that both countries share. He spoke on commerce and protectionism, pointing out his worries about the “Buy American” clause, which obligates all government related projects to buy American products through special economic measures for the current crisis. He spoke about biofuels, and how to improve affairs with Latin America, supporting development, and fighting poverty. A focal point in the meeting was Cuba, to which Amorim pointed out that changes are occurring and justify a new approach by the United States. Clinton merely took notes.

This is not the first time that the Brazilian government acts by default as a mediator between Washington and the region. Some time ago, another of Lula’s ministers, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, after meeting with Obama’s aides – he was Obama’s law professor at Harvard – acknowledged having talked with them of the possibility to aid in a reconciliation of the United States with Venezuela, Bolivia, and the island governed by the Castros. And Lula himself has played, on several occasions, a pacifist role to the extreme stands of the leaders of the aforementioned countries, taking advantage of his image as a leftist, architect of a successful syndicalist movement, and with a moderate model of reform.  

If the Brazilian pragmatism allowed him to keep fluid relations with the Bush administration, in spite of a marked ideological distance, the expectations of stretching the alliance with Obama’s White House are high. In Amorim’s words, both governments have a “similar concept” of the world. However, time will tell how effective this complementariness helps Brazil achieve its most prized international goals, such as the WTO accords and the UN reform that will allow Brazil a permanent seat on the Security Council.  

In the meantime, the commercial relations will stay high on the bilateral agenda. For Brazil, the United States is its main economic partner, with a bilateral commerce of 53 billion dollars this past year, and wants to extend it to areas such as biofuels. This is a delicate topic. Brazil wants to reach an agreement with the U.S. to produce great quantities of sugarcane ethanol for the American market where corn-based produced ethanol has powerful detractors. Given that Obama has stated his interest in the development of clean energy, the Brazilians hope to go forward on a strategic agreement regarding biofuels, which could take it to the Americas Summit in April.

Human Rights in Latin America

The promotion of human rights continues to be a declared objective of U.S. foreign policy; it’s from there that so much importance is given to the report that the State Department presents every year on this subject. This past Wednesday, a report came forth on the situation of human rights in 2008, in which Cuba and Venezuela are described as the two countries in the region where abuses have increased, while Colombia and Guatemala appear to have made the most substantial improvements.

Caracas’s response was not long in coming and criticized “practices that continue injuring relations between our states, which should have as a base, respect, equality, and no interference in internal affairs.” It’s probable that this sentence was directed at Obama’s government that, most calculate, seeks to avoid a confrontation with Venezuela, similar to what kept Bush in permanent tension with Chávez.

In the case of Cuba, though the government has ignored the report, that coincided with good news for Havana: the House of Representatives passed a law that included certain reductions of travel restrictions to Cuba. This measure doesn’t seem isolated, for there are clear indicators that Obama is willing to revise his policy toward the island. If he does, he should evaluate to what extent the embargo has completed its objective or, on the contrary, has given the Castro brothers an argument to maintain a dictatorship that has already turned 50 years old.

For Colombia, the report in question was good news, since it’s in the sights of Democratic Congressmen who have not passed the FTA, signed two years ago, arguing that there are no advances in the investigation of trade unionist murders and that ties existed between the government and paramilitary groups. Bogotá depends on the help from Plan Colombia, which has meant receiving since the year 2000 more than five billion dollars for the fight against narcotrafficking. A good grade in human rights can assure them of a continuation of these resources.

It is in this context that one can interpret the visits to Washington this past week of Diplomat Jaime Bermúdez and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, which called attention to the announcement that Colombia would send troops to Afghanistan to incorporate itself into NATO’s contingent in the work to deactivate terrestrial mines.