The Global Brazilian Challenge to the U.S.

Many people believe that the leader of the anti-American movement in Latin America today is the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. However, the real threat to U.S. interests, not only in Latin America, is not Venezuela but Brazil. Recently, before transferring his authority to his former Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva outlined Brazil’s grievances against the United States. He also voiced a claim to turn Brazil into a global power.

In fact, the former president of Brazil can afford to speak from a position of strength. A former worker with no higher education has created a team that, during eight years of his leadership, brought the economy of the country into the top 10 largest in the world and is aiming for the top five. Today, Brazil’s economy is growing by seven percent a year, and it claims to be the leader of Latin America.

According to Lula, the U.S. belittles Latin America. He personally asked Barack Obama to change the attitude of the U.S. towards its neighbors on the continent but with no results. “The problem with the United States is that, as it is a very large country, they play down foreign policy and they appoint a deputy secretary for this and an assistant secretary for that. Our critics are those who think that we will wake up every morning asking the United States permission to sneeze and asking the European Union permission to cough. We are not going to do that,” said Lula.

It’s worth noting that in recent years Brazil has done much to create a regional counterweight to the United States. The Union of South American Nations was founded in 2008 on Brazil’s initiative. It is designed to become an analog of the EU, and a military advisory board was created to serve its needs. Brazil has initiated a whole series of political conflicts with the United States at the regional level.

The most notable conflict was the Honduran military coup in June 2009. Not accidentally, the coup is sometimes referred to as “Washington’s trail.” Sufficient evidence suggest that the Pentagon had taught, trained, instructed, funded and supplied arms to the Honduran military, the initiators of the coup.

Brazil strongly condemned the coup and demanded the reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya, while the United States acted as a mediator in the elections. The two positions were sharply different. As a result, Zelaya was sent into exile with no right to return to his country, while Brazil still does not recognize the new government of Honduras elected in 2009.

Some of the other conflict issues include the expansion of U.S. military bases in Colombia, ostensibly to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking; restoration of Cuba’s membership in the Organization of American States and a rapprochement between Brazil and Hugo Chavez.

The inability of the American establishment to conduct a respectful dialogue played a role in the formation of an anti-American bloc led by Brazil (including all Latin American countries except Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico). That would not have happened if Brazil wasn’t a major independent economic power.

Thanks to popular support and real economic progress, Brazil has gained momentum at the international level. China has become its main trade and investment partner. The United States actually facilitated that reorientation by blocking sales of Brazilian fighter aircraft to Chavez in 2006. As a result, Chavez started buying Russian weapons. Brazilian military industry uses American technology and parts, and by contract the U.S. can block export of such weapons to “undesirable” countries.

But regional and bilateral relations with the United States are not the only forms of relations in stagnation. The Brazilian government does not hide its annoyance at the dismissive attitude of Washington. In recent years the country has been actively trying to establish itself in the international arena, and many of its initiatives have been met with very negative reaction from the United States.

The culmination of these tensions was seen in Brazil’s vote against the U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. Instead of sanctions, Lula suggested organizing the enrichment of uranium for Iranian nuclear power stations in Turkey. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported him. But the sanctions against Tehran were imposed regardless.

Obama was visibly furious with Lula’s obstinacy after Lula refused to discuss sanctions against Iran at an April 2010 meeting in Washington on nuclear security. “Obama even called Medvedev to complain about my visit to Iran, and Hillary appealed to the Emir of Qatar with the same complaint. Hillary has been working against me all the time, in fact. And all because some third world country dared to poke their nose into other people’s business,” said Lula.

After that episode nothing could hold back the cooling of relations between the countries. The U.S. refused to support the ambitious intention of Brazil to have their man as the director of the Inter-American Development Bank. In response, Lula accused Obama and Clinton of ignoring Brazil’s and Turkey’s proposals to resolve the Iranian problem, and also initiated the recognition of Palestine in its 1967 borders.

“There will not be peace in the Middle East as long as the United States is the guardian of peace. It is necessary to involve other countries in negotiations,” said the ex-president of Brazil. The demarche of Brazil in late 2010 was followed by a series of similar actions by other countries in the region — Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay. The actions were aimed not so much against Israel but at isolating the U.S. as a peacemaker on the international scene.

Even though right now, the U.S. does not agree with Brazil’s active attempts at playing a role in global processes, this clearly will have to change soon. What is that role going to be? Will Brazil be considered an ally or merely a fellow traveler? Americans are actively trying to figure that out and they sent the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself, not an “assistant secretary of her secretary,” to the inauguration of the new president Dilma Rousseff.

As much as Americans want to downplay the significance of Brazil, that becomes more difficult with every year.