By Franklin W Knight



A story circulates that the haughty and humourless Charles de Gaulle once described Brazil as a country about which no one could be serious. His reasoning was based on the enthusiasm with which Brazilians celebrated carnival. Yet de Gaulle was not the only major world leader to have seriously underestimated the Brazilians. Within the hemisphere, especially in the United States of America, the spectacular achievements of Brazil are being overlooked. But Brazil has been quietly remaking itself not only into a major regional player but also into a major player on the world stage. Brazil has been bracketed along with Russia, India and China as the countries most likely to dominate the global economy by the middle of the 21st century.

Brazil has a significant list of often overlooked accomplishments. Under the Getúlio Vargas regime of the 1930s and 1940s Brazil began to lay a solid foundation for its later industrial development. Under Juscelino Kubitchek de Oliveira in the 1950s Brazil responded to the disappointing result of its allied war participation by single-handedly undertaking a massive public works development programme. The government constructed the new capital of Brasilia, new highways, huge hydroelectric power facilities, impressive public buildings across the country, and started the motor car industry. The enormous deficit spending initiated a punishing inflationary spiral that plagued Brazil for decades. In the 1970s Brazil swiftly switched its dependency on foreign imported petroleum to nationally produced oil and ethanol, and rapidly became a growing international marketer of energy supplies.

In the past decade Brazil has increased its global economic presence as well as becoming a major participant in the global and hemispheric political affairs. While the US has been bogged down economically since 2003, Brazil has expanded its GDP at an average rate of more than 4.2 per cent annually. At the end of 2009 the Brazilian economy represented more than 55 per cent of the GDP of the combined South American countries and more than 40 per cent of the combined GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil joined Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to initiate the South American Common Market in 1991, which has expanded to include Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru as associate members. Venezuela has applied for full membership and Mexico enjoys observer status. In 2010 Brazil ranks as the eighth largest economy in the world.

Brazil has been expanding its regional political influence exponentially. Since 2004 Brazil has led the United Nations Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and after the devastating earthquake of January 2010 has expanded its local operation. Brazil played a major role in trying to resolve the political crisis in Honduras although that role was undermined by the United States, and has steadily supported Cuba over the past decade. It was a major participant in the establishment of the Union of South American Nations in 2007 based on the formula of the European Community. On September 26, 2009 Brazil joined Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela to found the Banco del Sur, or BANCOSUR, capitalised at US$20 billion. At the United Nations and within the Organisation of American States, Brazil has led discussions on a variety of internationally important issues ranging from energy policies, food security, environmental legislation, trade measures to global finance. Moreover, Brazil got involved in issues involving Turkey and South Africa.

Leadership in regional and international issues is a relatively new experience for Brazil. Indeed, Brazil held itself aloof from the rest of Latin America during most of the 19th and 20th centuries for quite rational reasons. With its royal connection to the Braganza family between Independence and the establishment of the republic in 1889, along with its Portuguese language, Brazil felt less Latin American than European. The term Latin America was a French creation in 1870 and as the only monarchy in the Americas at that time, Brazil felt alienated from the politically restless new republics that inhabited the former vast domain of the Spanish American empire. For a time the feelings were mutual. Those, however, would change when Brazil declared itself a republic. Before the Second World War, under the auspices of the Estado Novo of Vargas, Brazil began to aspire to the sort of leadership in South America that the United States enjoyed in North America and that meant a new approach to its Spanish-speaking neighbours - although initial engagements were sporadic and ineffectual.

The rise of military dictatorships all over Latin America beginning with the Brazilian coup of 1964 brought increased, if unofficial, collaboration between Brazil and the rest of the Americas. Brazil played a major role in the despicable Operação Condor, the coordinated multi-country military intelligence operation designed to eradicate political leftists and other radical and independent thinkers in the southern states of South America. Brazil planted spies in Bolivia and Uruguay, helped determine the outcome of the Uruguayan elections of 1971, and supported the military coup in Chile in 1973 that terminated the Allende regime. With the restoration of democracy across the region after 1985, things changed significantly. The Brazilian government, beginning with the outstanding administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) and continued more vigorously by Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva (2003-2010), vastly expanded its hemispheric political and economic cooperation and welcomed opportunities to reinforce national sovereignty and independence, especially against the United States.

The difference in the way Brazil goes about promoting its hegemony in the hemisphere presents both challenges and opportunities. Unlike the United States that prefers unilateral agreements, Brazil opts for multilateral associations that respect the individual sovereignty of the participating states. That often reduces the operational efficacy of many of its agreements. Small, ineffective states like Bolivia and Ecuador might welcome Brazilian leadership and support. But larger states like Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico do not fall in line as easily. Nevertheless, it is less political ideas than economic buoyancy that will sooner or later eventually bring reluctant adversaries to accept Brazilian hegemony not only in South America but also across the hemisphere.

September 15, 2010

jamaicaobserver