The U.S. Won’t and Brazil Can’t

The United States has no interest in remaining the power responsible for stability and good governance in Latin America. That was an uncomfortable task in the twentieth century. With the USSR gone, American politicians now feel no potential threat to national security coming from this region. Cuba seems like a frail dictatorship to them that will be gone in the short or medium term.

They see Chavez as odd and slightly mad; an oil exporter who is capable of doing a lot of damage to Venezuelans and other neighbors, but not to them.

It is true that Castro and Chavez are on a delirious crusade to revive their conquest of the planet with twenty-first century socialism, but, for now, this nonsense only affects the direct victims of their schemes. Even in a conflict like that in Honduras, Washington did not mind agreeing with the aims of its enemies, although control of that country by a Chavez-style government means another couple of million illegal Hondurans in the United States fleeing from famine, another landing strip for drug traffickers and the closing of the Palmerola base – which has already happened with the one in Manta in Ecuador anyway. In short, no big deal.

Naturally, the USA would prefer Latin American countries to be democratic, prosperous and sensible, like the European Union, for example. But Washington no longer feels any urgency to guide them in that direction. They would like it, of course, if Brazil could substitute them in their leadership role, but this is an unrealistic illusion.

Brazil is the size of the United States, has 200 million inhabitants and possesses certain partially developed areas, but it is a long way from being powerful. One need only look at the CIA Fact Book online to confirm it: Its economy is neither leading nor innovative and it barely has $2 billion. Over 30 percent of its population is very poor.

But there is something more important: Brazil does not have the vocation to be a regional power, nor does it wish to rule its neighbors. Leadership costs money and sometimes force must be used; and Brazil, which cannot even put its shanty towns in order, has spent too long dealing with its own matters to reinvent itself now as the United States of South America. It does not want to. It cannot. It does not have the strength. It tries to be important but without assuming international responsibilities.