Obama Comes Around

Take note — you read it here first: President Obama, who is coming to Brazil in the next few days, will be inclined to be especially sympathetic to our positions and demands because we are the country with the biggest black population of the hemisphere.

I regret to inform you that this prediction may be inevitable in some naïve little minds, but is perfectly stupid. In international relations, and the same for domestic politics, American presidents have neither color nor ethnicity; if they could, they would not even have a defined sex. With all due respect, it’s obvious.

Evidently, this reservation does not hinder Washington from attributing some importance to the visit. An American president, it is good to remember, does not leave Washington for tourism. South America may not have critical importance in Obama’s international agenda, but it is also far from negligible. And Brazil is the only country in the hemisphere that makes up part of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), a bloc of reasonable importance in the pending issues and trends of international politics, one that can certainly be important in critical situations, like what is happening now in relation to Libya.

In the first visit by an American president to South America in many years, Obama is also going to Chile and El Salvador. It seems like an agenda chosen at random, but it is necessary to recognize that the State Department sometimes has reasons which know no reason. For the Brazilian government, the visit will be a success if Obama makes a declaration here that, even without being emphatic, begs the interpretation that the USA will not veto Brasilia’s principal request on the international scene: a permanent place on the U.N. Security Council. Obama already took this position in relation to the pleas of India and Japan; it would be almost a diplomatic blunder if he did not do the same for Brazil.

It will probably not be a formal compromise; it will be something that is part of the game. Visits by chiefs of state are formal episodes; the really important decisions are discussed and made by professionals of each cabinet behind closed doors.

It is evident that Obama is not coming to Brazil on tour or to resolve problems. It is to give blessing to decisions already agreed upon that interest the two countries. Presidents rarely pack their bags to look for solutions, as much as to celebrate them. There is a range of them awaiting the two.