Brazil_To Be or Not to Be a BRIC

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BRAZIL: TO BE OR NOT TO BE A BRIC?

Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo

Brazil will gain a place as a significant player in the mul- tipolar international system taking shape since the end of the cold war simply on the basis of its economic size and material capabilities. However, its potential to influence international outcomes is likely to be determined more by the capacity of the countrys elites to identify and harness qualitative assets associated with its stable and democratic governance than by any hard-power assets. Brazil is the quintessential soft-power BRIC. Among the four BRICs, Brazil is the only one positioned to become a potential environmental power in a world increasingly preoccupied with global warming.

Key words: Brazil, BRICs, international relations, economicdevelopment

Introduction

Brazil will very likely be a major power by the middle of thetwenty-first century, albeit not one of the worlds top three.Along with its fellow BRICs countries (Russia, India, and China),as early as 2040 Brazil may overshadow the traditional majorpowers of Western Europe in terms of its relative material capabilities within the global system. 1 Yet unlike China, Russia, or

1. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, Dreaming with BRICs:

ASIAN PERSPECTIVE,Vol. 31, No. 4, 2007, pp. 43-70.


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India, Brazils future political alliances are significantly predeter-mined: It will be a Western power, closely linked to the UnitedStates and Western Europe. Moreover, Brazils power projectionis fundamentally one of soft power and largely depends on thequality of the democratic institutions it has adopted since thereturn of civilian rule in 1985, institutions that, in the eyes of Brazilians themselves, confer legitimacy on the countrys recentdiplomatic assertiveness.

Brazils policy makers already actively participate in andshape international institutions at both the regional and globallevels. Curiously, Brazil may achieve major-power status almostaccidentally. Despite the countrys long history of dreaming of being a great power, relatively few Brazilian policy makers andopinion leaders yet have fully thought through the implicationsof playing an influential role on the global stage. One possibilityis for Brazil to position itself as the emerging environmentalpower. As owner of the worlds last major tropical rainforest,one of the largest renewable reserves of fresh water, 2 the plan-ets most diverse stock of biodiversity, the best energy matrixamong major countries, and the most successful industrial-scaleproduction of renewable fuels, Brazil has the assets to play sucha role, if it adopts policies to preserve those assets and use themas political tools in a world increasingly preoccupied with cli-mate change.

The Material Capabilities of a BRIC

Is Brazil legitimately included within the set of large emerg-ing powers christened the BRICs countries? Brazil possesses,or will possess by early in the twenty-first century, the mini-mum material capabilities to be considered as a second-tiermajor power, analogous to the position of France or Italy today.This claim at first appears unfounded, in that Brazil is not aworld military power, even to the level of the major Western

44 Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo

The Path to 2050, Global Economics Paper No. 99, Goldman Sachs,New York, October 1, 2003.2. World Resources Institute, database available at http://earthtrends.wri.

org/text/water-resources/variables.html.


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European states or its fellow BRICs. In terms of military expen-ditures, Brazil ranks only among the top twenty countries. Itsestimated $13.4-billion expenditure in 2006 puts Brazil on a parwith Australia, Canada, Spain, and Israel. It falls below the nexthighest group of South Korea, India, Italy, Russia, and Ger-many, each of which spent between $20 and $30 billion in 2006.And Brazil is well below Japan, China, France, and Britain, whichexpended $40 to $50 billion on their militaries. The United Statesstands alone, having spent $528.7 billion in 2006. 3

Of course Brazil has little reason for a large military, as iteasily dominates its continent and neighborhood. For example,if we take military expenditure as a very rough measure of mili-tary power, then Brazil is approximately three times as powerfulas Colombia, four times as dangerous as Mexico, and has morethan seven times the strength of either Venezuela or Argentina.The comparison is of course fanciful. The truth is that Brazil has been geostrategically fortunate, not having been engaged in awar with its neighbors for well over a century. Nor is the Brazil-ian military involved in an ongoing civil conflict, as in Colom- bia. The last significant military engagement for Brazils armyand navy was in World War II, when Brazil sent a division toItaly and also provided air and submarine bases for the Allies.

Brazil is also a technologically sophisticated country that hasexplicitly renounced nuclear weapons since becoming a stabledemocracy. It possesses the indigenous capacity to produce fissilematerial for a nuclear weapon. In 1990 a Brazilian parliamentaryinquiry commission reported that during the years of military

government (1964-1985) Brazils air force had designed two atomic bomb devices. 4 However, Brazils secret nuclear-weapons pro-gram, and the countrys consequent refusal to sign the NuclearNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1970s and 1980s, had beendirected mainly at deterring neighboring Argentina, in addition topreserving the principle of not officially recognizing the exclusive

Brazil: To Be or Not to Be a BRIC? 45

3. All figures, in constant 2005 dollars, from the Military Expenditure Data- base of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),

accessed at www.sipri.org, September 29, 2007.4. Yana Feldman, First Watch International (FWI), Country Profile 11:Brazil, accessed September 29, 2007 at www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/cnsc1bra.html.


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rights of any nation to have nuclear weapons. With redemocratiza-tion in both Brazil and Argentina in the early 1980s, their govern-ments entered into closer political and economic cooperation, oneresult of which was a series of bilateral arms control treaties. In1988 Brazil introduced a non-amendable clause in its newly adopt-ed, democratic constitution forbidding itself from ever building anuclear weapon. By the decades end, Brazil and Argentina eachhad opened its nuclear-power facilities to mutual inspection.

Having realized that they neither needed nor wanted nuclearweapons, Brazils leaders made as public a point as possible of renouncing them. In September 1990 President Fernando Collor(1990-1992) had himself photographed shoveling dirt down anuclear test shaft, symbolically burying the militarys nuclear- bomb program. Subsequently, Brazil signed all of the majorinternational arms control treaties. With the worlds sixth-largestdeposits of uranium, and the capacity to enrich it, Brazil also hasaccepted the covenants of internationally-legitimated nuclearsupplier countries. 5 Although the new nuclear policy posturehas never been accepted by nationalists in academia, the mili-tary, or the foreign ministry, and remains a matter of consider-able controversy, it is unlikely to be reversed.

An even more crucial requisite for being considered a largeemerging power is current and projected economic size, whichmany international relations theorists consider the single best indi-cator of relative power. As of 2006 Brazil just makes it into the setof the ten largest economies, so expectations of future growth areessential to any judgment about whether Brazil belongs among

the globally consequential large emerging powers.6

Brazil hadits fastest growth spurt associated with industrialization andimport substitutionwhat some Brazilians today call its Chinamomentfrom the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, when growthaveraged 7.4 percent per year. Particularly during the so-calledmiracle years of 1968-1973, Brazils gross domestic product(GDP) expanded at a phenomenal annual average of 10.59 per-


5. These include the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which establishes a Latin American

nuclear weapons free zone, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Nuclear SuppliersGroup (NSG). See Feldman, Country Profile 11.

6. For more detail see Armijos article in this special issue.


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cent.7 But growth from 1974 through the end of the twentiethcentury was both comparatively low, averaging 3.7 percent, andvolatile. From 2000-2006, the World Bank reports Brazilian GDPgrowth of slightly over 3 percent. Embarrassingly, this record is below that of several of Brazils immediate neighbors, includingChile and, since 2004, Argentina.

Despite its modest performance in recent years, the econom-ic comparison between Brazil and the other BRICs countries

should not be taken at face value. It is inappropriate to comparerates of growth of Brazil, China, and India today, because Brazilcompleted the transition from a primary to an industrializedeconomy much earlier, in 1980, says prominent economist Anto-nio Barros de Castro. 8 The Economist Intelligence Unit expects amean growth rate for Brazil of 4.2 in the near term (2007-2012).Even more optimistically, the model used by the Goldman SachsBRICs team projects very steady Brazilian growth, averaging justunder 4 percent from 2005 through the middle of the twenty-firstcentury.

To keep these rosy predictions in perspective, we note thatfew Brazilian sources dare to predict the future. Much can gowrong. Nonetheless, it seems safe to conclude that steady meangrowth of 3.5 percent or above for the coming decades is bothpossible and likelywith the caveat that this depends on steadyand sensible government macroeconomic policies and on amoderately favorable international environment.

The surprise is that, if Brazil achieves growth at these plausi- ble levels, then it can expect to be among the six or seven largest

economies by the mid twenty-first century, as it is extremelyunlikely for any of the mature industrial economies to expandthis fast. If sheer economic size and a solid industrial base are themost important criteria of international material capability, thenBrazil may not be able to help becoming something more thansimply a regional power in the coming decades. By objective cri-


7. Instituto de Pesquisas Economicas Aplicada (IPEA), accessed on May 23,2007 at www.ipeadata.gov.br/ipeaweb.dll/ipeadata?65370046.

8. Antonio Barros de Castro, remarks at a conference on A New Directionin Brazilian Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution and the WoodrowWilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., September28, 2007.


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teria Brazil thus belongs in the set of BRICs countries. In fact, both Brazilian and U.S. policy makers have previously employedsimilar formulations. In 1993, George Kennan, the former Ameri-can diplomat and public intellectual who first articulated the post-war U.S. strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, describedthese same four nations plus the United States as monster coun-tries, endowed with a unique combination of continental sizeand huge populations. 9

Brazil Is a Western Power

One reason that Brazil is less easily conceptualized as aBRIC is that its rise is hardly perceived as threatening in Wash-ington, London, Paris, Berlin, or Tokyo. Unlike China, Russia, oreven India, Brazil is a Western power, securely and nearlyinevitably allied with the United States and Western Europe.Though geography does not fully determine a countrys strate-gic options, as illustrated by the case of Cuba and more recently by the overtures of Venezuelas President Hugo Chvez to Iran,Byelorussia, and Russia, it clearly limits them. A nation thatshares the culture and values of the Western world, Brazil is theonly one of the BRICs in the area of influence of the sole remain-ing superpower. Within a military-security framing of interna-tional relations, Brazils vast territory seems a safe area to thepowers that dominate contemporary global security arrange-ments, and thus a hardly noticeable one. Even within Brazil, for

decades foreign policy principally has been about commercialrelations, not security issues, although the challenge of protec-tion of the Amazon alone should be enough to justify some deepthinking about the subject. As Brazilian international relationsscholar Monica Herz recently observed, Foreign policy anddefense policy have been detached from one another in Brazil,and this is a concern for the military and for several other sec-tors [in Brazilian society]. This debate has to be faced. 10


9. George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Phi-losophy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 143.10. Mnica Herz, remarks at the conference A New Direction in Brazilian

Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson


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was during the early 1940s, when populist and intermittentlyauthoritarian President Getulio Vargas (1930-1945, 1950-1954)negotiated with both the Nazis and the Americans to see whichside would offer better inducements in exchange for military bases and refueling rightsor in the case of the Axis powers,strict neutrality. Following the war, President Harry Truman fol-lowed through on Roosevelts promises of helping to completeconstruction of a steel mill in Volta Redonda and offering crucialtechnical assistance in designing Brazils first comprehensiveindustrial development plan. 12 Brazilian expectations of a mas-sive inflow of American investment after the war, however,were frustrated. By the mid 1960s, Brazil-U.S. relations were dri-ven by Washingtons cold-war strategy. Despite Washingtonssupport for the coup that brought the armed forces to power in1964, divergent interests soon would cause conflict.

During the early 1970s the United States provided technicalcollaboration for Brazils first nuclear power plantuntil Brazilsthen military leaders chafed at the controls and inspectionsrequired by the Americans, and turned instead to West Ger-many. 13 Of course, Brazil indeed had a covert weapons program,though it was something of an open secret, being intended morefor deterrence and power assertion (somewhat implausiblydirected mainly at Argentina) than actual weapons development.Following redemocratization in 1985 and the 1988 constitutionsexplicit ban on nuclear weapons, in 1990 Congress launched aninquiry into the secret nuclear program. President Collor drama-tized the new Brazilian position by staging the presidential photo

opportunity noted earlier. More recently, Brazil-U.S. relationshave been tested by trade tensions, discussed below. Nonethe-less, and as has happened repeatedly in the past, Brazil finds thatcooperation with the United States, with which it shares liberal-democratic values and a neighborhood, remains an anchor of itsforeign policy.


12. Robert G. Long, Volta Redonda: Symbol of Maturity in the IndustrialProgress of Brazil, Economic Geography , vol. 24, No. 2 (April, 1948), pp.149-54.

13. Michael Barletta, The Military Nuclear Program in Brazil, WorkingPaper, Center for International Security and Cooperation, StanfordUniversity, March 1998; available at http://cisac.stanford.edu/publica-tions/military_program_in_brazil_the.


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Underlying the political competition over trade venues (MER-COSUR versus the FTAA) is a genuine conflict of interest: TheUnited States is a postindustrial economy highly competitive infinancial services and similar sectors, but profoundly uncompet-itive in many agricultural goods and labor-intensive manufac-turing sectors, while Brazil is a lower-middle-income develop-ing country. Brazil opposes both agricultural trade barriers andcompulsory adoption of other measures, providing what theUnited States claims is a level playing field for foreign firms by enforcing strict patent rights, and limiting or prohibitingpreferential credit, tax subsidies, government procurement, orother benefits targeted only to nationally-owned businesses.Since the late 1990s, however, the rise of Venezuela, newly flushwith high petroleum prices, as a self-conscious competitor toBrazilian leadership in South America has moderated Brazilian-U.S. disagreements.

In the 1980s, while Brazilian President Jos Sarney (1985-1989) and Argentine President Ral Alfonsn (1983-1989) con-centrated their domestic policies on establishing civilian controlover the military and institutionalizing their national politicaltransitions, their foreign policies regularized their bilateral inter-action. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay began tonegotiate over a regional common marketinternal free trade,with modest exceptions, and a common external tariffthat wasformally inaugurated in 1991 as MERCOSUR. Despite the lack of a clear economic imperative for integration, the free tradearea has been a reasonable political and economic success. It has

increased intra-bloc trade and helped both Brazil and Argentinato complete the transition from military to civilian rule and totrust once another enough so that they could simultaneouslyconstruct mechanisms for mutual nuclear-weapon verification.The political thaw facilitated the demilitarization of the Brazil-Argentina border, and has allowed Brazil to relocate importantmilitary assets to the Amazon Basin region. MERCOSUR alsohelped to ensure political stability in Paraguay.

In late 1992 Brazils President Fernando Collor de Mello, thefirst popularly elected Brazilian chief executive in decades,resigned to avoid an impeachment trial on charges of corruption. 16


16. Jos Sarney, Brazils first civilian president since 1964, was indirectly


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Despite this ignominious end to his term, Collor began the processof much-needed economic reforms, including substantial tradeliberalization. 17 MERCOSUR expanded its multilateral sectoralworking groups, incorporating business and sometimes othercivil-society participation, and began to be viewed as a consider-able success in the region. When President Fernando HenriqueCardoso (1995-1998, 1999-2002) assumed office, he strove to rein-troduce a stable and democratic Brazil to the world. 18 His immedi-ate objective was to recover the international credibility and confi-dence lost in two debt moratoria in the 1980s, in hyperinflation,and in the political crisis that had led to Collors resignation. Aworld traveler who was sometimes criticized at home for hisfrequent trips abroad, Cardoso became the first Brazilian leaderto incorporate presidential diplomacy as a central feature of hisgoverning strategy. He consistently exercised it during the eightyears of his administration. 19 Cardosos main foreign policy visionwas the concept of South America as a geopolitical and a geoeco-nomic entity. The clear objective of his South America project wasto define Brazils own area of influence, distinct from the U.S.-dominated Central and North America. In this sense, the initiativewas aimed at reducing or counterbalancing U.S. influence in theregion, while creating room for future expansion of MERCOSUR.

The United States also has had a vision of organizing eco-nomic and political integration in South Americabut within aunited Western hemisphere, and of course with institutions domi-nated by itself. On January 1, 1994 just as Mexico, the UnitedStates, and Canada inaugurated NAFTA, the Zapatistas began

their rebellion in Mexico. For the next year and a half Mexico, andmuch of Latin America, was in the grip of the financial panicknown as the peso (or tequila) crisis. 20 Nonetheless, the United


elected by Brazils congress. The presidential election of late 1999 wasthe first popular election in twenty-five years and the first ever with atruly universal suffrage.

17. Leslie Elliott Armijo and Philippe Faucher, We Have a Consensus:Explaining Political Support for Market Reforms in Latin America,Latin American Politics and Society , vol. 44, No. 2 (2002), pp. 1-40.

18. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, A Arte da Poltica: A Histria que Vivi (Riode Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 2006).19. Srgio Danese, Diplomacia Presidencial (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1999).20. Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra, Mexico: Foreign Investment and Democ-


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States initiated the FTAA process with the December 1994 Sum-mit of the Americas in Miami. The World Trade Organization(WTO) opened its doors the following year, in 1996. Then, in thelate 1990s, Latin America again suffered exchange rate, credit, andgrowth crises associated with the Asian and Russian financialcrises. Consequently, the 1990s saw little progress on ambitiouseconomic integration, whether continental or hemispheric.

In September 2000 Brazil convened the first-ever summit of South American presidents in Brasilia. Cardosos administrationtried for an understated, consensual style of leadership in the con-tinent, a discreet, fit-to-Brazil way of conducting its diplomacy,in the words of Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia. 21 Oneresult of the South American summit was the ambitious Programof Integration of Infrastructure in the Region of South America(IIRSA), calculated to promote new transcontinental highwaysand pipelinesand arguably in ways that would be beneficial toBrazil, especially in the area of energy. The program also providedan attractive political cover for the affirmation of Brazilian regionalleadership, using the theme of economic integration.

Cardosos successor, President Luiz Incio da Silva (2003-present), universally known by his nickname, Lula, was Brazilsfirst president from the left-leaning Workers Party (PT), as wellas the first to have been raised in poverty. Lula deepened theemphasis his predecessor had placed on the development of closer ties with Brazils immediate neighbors in South America.He introduced, however, a dramatic change of style. Barely twoweeks in office, the new president used his first visit abroad to

proclaim Brazilian leadership in the region and announce thathis country was ready to assume its greatness at the worldstage and to take on the burdens of being recognized by theneighbors as its natural leader. Much like his predecessor,Lula overestimated his capacity to moderate the populist presi-dent of Venezuela, Hugo Chvez (1998-present). That miscalcu-lation contributed to Brazils decision to invite Venezuela to join


racy, in Leslie E. Armijo, ed., Financial Globalization and Democracy in

Emerging Markets (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1999).21. Sean W. Burges, Without Sticks or Carrots: Brazilian Leadership inSouth America during the Cardoso Era, 1992-2003, in Bulletin of LatinAmerican Research , vol. 25, No. 1 (2006), pp. 23-42.


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Via the G-20, a large group of major developing countrieswas able to take a relatively strong stance vis--vis the wealthyindustrial democracies. Moreover, the G-20 has hung togetherdespite significant differences of domestic economic structureand interests among the group. The WTO Doha Round talksstalled at the Cancn Ministerial in 2003, arguably because of rich-country unwillingness to reduce its agricultural subsidiesand the G20s refusal to accept anything less. 25 Subsequently, anew Quad of the United States, the EU, India, and Brazil(echoing the Quad of advanced industrial countries that negoti-ated the conclusion of the Uruguay Round in 1994) was put incharge of negotiating the impasse. Thus far it has been unable todo so.

As of mid-2007, the FTAA vision of hemispheric trade pro-moted by the United States, decisively opposed by a group led by Brazil at the November 2003 Ministerial Meeting in Miami,remains stalled. The George W. Bush administration instead haspursued an alternative strategy of bilateral trade deals. Worriedabout preserving their share of exports in the U.S. market, since2003 six Central American countries as well as the DominicanRepublic, Peru, and Colombia each has been persuaded to sign bilateral trade agreements with Washington, all with clausesyielding more domestic policy space than these governmentsmight freely have chosen. Prior to this, the United States only bilateral trade agreement in Latin America had been with Chile.

At the other extreme, the grand plans of Venezuelas Chvezfor continental and hemispheric integration have resulted in

numerous summits and new international initiatives. Chvez, forexample, has both entranced and divided the continent with itsproposal to contribute a generous sum to funding a new Bank of the South, envisioned as a regional development bank that would be an alternative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), but without U.S. participation. Countries as diverse as Bolivia,Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Argentina have accepted cheap creditor petroleum from Venezuela. 26 The Brazilian business commu-


25. Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Why the Trade Talks Col-lapsed, Wall Street Journal , July 7, 2007, online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118376072653959606.html.

26. For example, from 2005 to 2007 Venezuela purchased $5 billion worth


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nity is in favor of Venezuelan entry into MERCOSUR, becauseVenezuelas rising exchange rate ensures Brazils strong tradesurplus with Venezuela. At the same time, Chvezs posturinghas begun to anger many of his neighbors, including many inBrazils congress. Though President Lula has remained concilia-tory, Brazils congress had as of late 2007 refused to ratify thenew MERCOSUR treaty admitting Venezuela.

Brazils politically and rhetorically moderate vision of firstcontinental and only later hemispheric integration may be theLatin American economic integration scheme with perhaps the best long-term chance of succeeding, although progress has been uneven and incremental. The South American summit in2000, for example, occurred under the cloud of the fraudulentelection staged earlier that year by President Alberto Fujimori of Peruan election to which the hemisphere-wide Organizationof American States (OAS) also had been unable to agree on aneffective coordinated response. The exchange-rate crises inBrazil in January 1999 and late 2002, and in Argentina in 2001-2002, rendered regional economic integration much less attrac-tive. Although both Brazil and Argentina have since returned togrowth, deeper economic integration will require a degree of institution building and mutual cession of sovereign rights thatneither Brazil nor Argentina has yet been prepared to entertain.

Also within MERCOSUR, there are currently sharp tensions between Uruguay and Argentina over two Uruguayan papermills on the river that forms their shared border. There is mis-trust between Brazil, on one side, and Bolivia and Venezuela on

the other, over Bolivias recent natural gas field nationalizations.Indeed, the Lula administration in Brazil is itself divided overthe desirability of the IIRSA process, which is favored by theministries of planning, energy, and transportation, but viewedwith suspicion by the more leftist foreign ministry, because itwould give the IDB and its shareholders, including the UnitedStates, a central coordination and financing role.

On the positive side, the EU, whose share of total MERCO-SUR trade now equals that of the United States, has begun totake South American economic integration quite seriously, its


of Argentine government bonds, giving the government of PresidentNestor Kirchner a much needed fiscal respite.


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leaders and pundits perhaps flattered to think that they have blazed the path. More South American countries appear poisedto cooperate with Brazils politically moderate vision of SouthAmerican cooperation and closer economic integration thanwith Venezuelas more ideological and polarizing dreams. 27Thanks to the activities of the G-20, the influence of developingcountries within the WTO has been notably enhanced. 28 If Brazilcan tread lightly and avoid frightening its neighbors, its conti-nental and hemispheric economic and political soft power willcontinue to increase.

Peacekeeping and Human Rights

From the late 1990s onward, new international political pri-orities, including peacekeeping and managing climate change,have become gradually more important. Brazil was internation-ally active in the early postwar period, participating for examplein the first-ever United Nations peacekeeping force, in Suez andGaza in the 1950s. Then in 1965, the year after Brazils militarycoup, the newly-installed generals agreed to contribute troops toa U.S.-led intervention in the Dominican Republic. They subse-quently concluded that their participation made Brazil appear to be an American puppet, leading Brazil to abandon such interna-tional involvement for most of the two decades of military rule.While Brazils first presidents following its mid-1980s democrat-ic transition concentrated on trade diplomacy and foreswearingnuclear weaponry, the Cardoso administration in the late 1990s

and early years of the new century also worked to elevateBrazils presence and voice in non-trade discussions in theinternational arena, guided by what the former president laterwould describe as the search for autonomy by participation,in contrast to the autonomy by distance that had marked themilitary governments diplomacy. 29 Brazil became an active par-ticipant in conflict mediation in South America, for example by


27. Burges, Building a Global Southern Coalition.

28. See remarks by Javed Maswood, Woodrow Wilson International Centerfor Scholars, May 21, 2007; available at www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1462&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=235158.

29. Cardoso, A Arte da Poltica , p. 604.


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helping to resolve a brief war between Peru and Ecuador in Jan-uary and February 1995 (and contributing military personnel toa four-year border pacification mission) and to avert a coup inParaguay in April 1996.

Since then Brazil has become a regular contributor to peace-keeping operations, sending troops to both Portuguese- and Eng-lish-speaking African countries, to Cyprus and the Balkans inEurope, to Central America, and to Southeast Asia, including thenewly independent Portuguese-speaking mini-state of East Timor.Between 1996 and 2003, Brazil provided technical support for theremoval of land mines in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras,Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru, under the auspices of the OAS.Most recently, in 2004 Brazil accepted military command of amultinational force of 6,000 assigned to the United Nations Stabi-lization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Following a problematic beginning that included the suicide of the first Brazilian comman-der of the mission, MINUSTAH generally has been judged a verypositive contribution to strengthening respect for legal and humanrights within the country. 30 With the Brazilian troops have arriveda variety of Brazilian nongovernmental and community-actionorganizations, also with mostly favorable reviews.

Brazils government and civil-society actors also have takenan active role in international governmental organizations (IGOs)and transnational fora in support of human rights. This is a topicwell understood by both of Brazils two most recent presidents,Cardoso and Lula da Silva, each of whom was briefly impris-oned and lost other rights as a result of political activity during

Brazils twenty-year military regime. Brazils role in peacekeep-ing and the international human rights regimes remains limited, but has expanded very rapidly since the countrys democratictransition.

Environment and Climate Change

Perhaps the most interesting manifestation of Brazils interna-tional leadership and actual and potential soft power is in the


30. International Crisis Group, Haiti: Justice Reform and the Security Crisis,Latin America/Caribbean Policy Briefing No. 14, Port-au-Prince/Brussels, January 31, 2007, available at www.crisisgroup.org.


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realm of preventing climate change through protecting the envi-ronment and adopting sustainable production processes. Brazilhas an oddand uniqueenvironmental profile. By several keymeasures, the country is among the worlds top polluters. Accord-ing to the World Resources Institute, Brazil was responsible for 6percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions from 1950 to2000, a share exceeded only by the United States, China, Russia,and Indonesia, with 17, 10, 8, and 7 percent, respectively. 31 How-ever, all of the U.S.s cumulative net emissions, as well as 80 per-cent of Russian and 60 percent of Chinese emissions, are fromfossil fuel burning and cement manufacture. In contrast, 95 per-cent of Indonesian and fully 88 percent of Brazilian cumulativenet emissions resulted from land-use changes, mainly deforesta-tion. Deforestation has ravaged an average 0.5 percent of thetotal Brazilian rainforest each year from 1990 to 2005, despite thefact that Brazil receives the highest possible score (100) for its biodiversity potential from the Global Environmental Facility. 32Thus, Brazil arguably has a terrible environmental recordbutone which is awful in a way quite distinct from that of China,Russia, or the United States.

By other measures, however, Brazil is an environmentalsuperstar. Most importantly, Brazil has begun to reverse its pol-lution profile. In 2000, the most recent year for which data areavailable, the United States alone accounted for 22 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions, China for another 18 percent,Russia for 6 percentbut Brazil for only 1 percent. Also in 2000,emissions of CO2 averaged 11.2 metric tons per person in devel-

oped countries and 1.9 in developing countries. Brazil, despite being not a low but a middle-income country, was just at thedeveloping country mean of emissions of 1.9 metric tons of CO 2per person. 33 According to Brazils president, the pace of defor-


31. Calculated from World Resources Institute, World Resources 2005 , DataTable Climate and Atmosphere 2005, available at http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/data_tables/cli1_2005.pdf.

32. The Little Green Data Book 2007(Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2007).33. World Resources Institute, World Resources 2005. The unweighted mean

of the G-7 countries was 12 metric tons/person annually. Among theBRICs countries and other large emerging powers, only India (1.0) andIndonesia (1.4) produced fewer emissions per capita than Brazil. Chinaemitted an average of 2.7 metric tons/person, while Russia, South


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estation was reduced by 52 percent between 2003 and mid-2007, although the true goal of course is net reforestation. 34 Sec-ond, Brazil generates only 11 percent of its electricity from burn-ing fossil fuels. An astonishing 83 percent of Brazils electricityderives from hydropower, and almost 27 percent of total energyuse (including in vehicles) is from renewable biomass sources,notably ethanol. 35 Third, Brazil is the worlds leader in ethanolproduction, technology, and exports, a fact that suddenly has become important in a global environment that saw internation-al petroleum prices triple from an average of $28 a barrel in 2002to $84 a barrel in the first three quarters of 2007. 36 Brazilianethanol is also much greener than that produced in the UnitedStates, using inputs, especially energy, four to five times as effi-ciently.37

The first international Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, beginning a process that led to the Kyoto Protocolon Climate Change in 1997. Brazil ratified the Protocol in 2002. Itentered into effect when Russia approved it in 2004. (The UnitedStates still declines to participate.) Given its own vast environ-mental resources, the importance of rainforest protection for glob-al biodiversity and ameliorating climate change, and Brazils expe-rience with industrial production and country-wide distributionand use of biofuels, Brazil is uniquely positioned among all emerg-ing and advanced industrial powers to play a central role in theevolving global climate regime. Brazil has everything to be anenvironmental power, which is, by the way, the only area in whichour aspiration to be a great power is realistic, commented veteran

diplomat and ex-Environment Minister Rubens Ricupero.38


Africa, and South Korea all had emissions equivalent to those of WesternEurope and Japan.

34. Lula da Silva, Brazil Does It Better, posted at The Guardian (London) blog, May 17, 2007; online at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/lula_da_silva/2007/05/the_challenge_of_sustainable_d.html.

35. The Little Green Data Book 2007.36. Annette Hester, Energy Issues in the Western Hemisphere, presenta-

tion at the Annual Congress of the Latin American Studies Association,

Montreal, September 5-9, 2007, p. 1. All prices in constant 2006 dollars.37. The Economy of Heat, The Economist , April 12, 2007; available atwww.economist.com.

38. Author interview, August 3, 2007; see also Rubens Ricpero, A mae de


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tions to country-specific political and technical problems associ-ated with managing climate change. Instead, Brazils brief isinternational leadership. The Brazilian team task is to elaboratea detailed climate-change negotiation strategy for developingcountries, as a group, to employ vis--vis the advanced industri-al countries, in order to persuade the latter to bear more of the burden of cuts and adjustment than they otherwise would. Thisdivision of labor is about right.

As is the case in the trade regime, and in peacekeeping, building an internationaland transnationalclimate regime isas much or more about politics as it is about science. But Brazil-ians are now comfortable with democratic processes and incre-mental advance. We close this section with a vignette illustrat-ing the importance of political skills in the intertwined arenas of trade and climate change, which recently have played out inhemispheric relations among the trio of Brasilia, Washington,and Caracas, Venezuela.

The rise in world oil prices has made Venezuela wealthy, atleast for now. President Hugo Chvez has employed govern-ment revenues from the petroleum bonanza to seek influenceinternationally by means ranging from subsidies to low-incomeconsumers in the United States and Britain, to cheap loans orenergy for neighboring countries, to photo opportunities and joint declarations with leaders of other resource-rich states,including Russias Putin and Irans Ahmedinijad. Chvez alsohas decided to attack Brazilian ethanol, which he claims is adirty fuel that increases poverty among poor farmers who

switch out of food crops to grow sugar cane, and thus indirectlymay cause starvation in developing countries. (By implication,depending on Venezuelan oil or gas would be more green.)Bolivarian revolution sympathizers worldwide have begun anInternet campaign to re-brand ethanol an agro-fuel, much toBrazils annoyance.

Brazil has had two responses. One is closer cooperation between Brazil and the United States. President Lula, Brazilsmost left-leaning president ever and a strong critic of the IraqWar, nonetheless decided shortly after his reelection in October2006 to accept the Bush administrations offer of collaborationon biofuels research and marketing. This is a logical partnership,given that the two countries currently account for 80 percent of



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global production. The partnership is being formed despiteBrazils strong objections to high U.S. tariffs on imports of Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol, much cheaper and cleaner to pro-duce than the U.S.s corn-derived version. Chvezs criticismshave also prompted a personal response from the Brazilian pres-ident in the form of a thoughtful blog on the site of the Britishnewspaper, the Guardian .41 There, Lula da Silva cites recentBrazilian technical cooperation with Mozambique in biofuelsproduction and marketing, offering similar assistance to develop-ing countries everywhere. He pointedly observes that Brazilianethanol and biodiesel production are both labor-intensive andgreen in their production processes. The piece also gives Brazilsleader an opportunity to complain indirectly about highandecologically inexcusableU.S. trade barriers to Brazilian ethanol.

Conclusions and Challenges:To Be or Not to Be a BRIC?

The Promise of Brazil

We began with the question of whether Brazil belongedamong the select set of large emerging powers known as theBRICs countries. In terms of Brazils material capabilities weanswered in the affirmative, although this assessment depends onBrazils maintaining a rate of economic growth averaging justunder four percent annually for the coming several decades. This

is an achievement that ought not to be difficult, given Brazilspolitical stability and factor endowments; yet it has been an elu-sive goal in recent decades. We observed that Brazil was inevitablya Western power, closely tied by culture, history, and geographyto the United States and Western Europe, and is thus an emergingpower whose future military and diplomatic alignment are not indoubt. In terms of the broad tenor of global governance, one mightimagine substituting Brazil for Italy, Canada, or France within theG-7 without anyone noticing the difference.

At the same time, Brazil is a developing country, albeit amiddle-income one, and a number of its policy preferences for


41. Lula da Silva, Brazil Does It Better.


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Brazil for a Security Council seat in 1944, a move blocked by both Russia and Britain. 45 The Cardoso government in the late1990s briefly considered making Security Council membership amajor foreign policy priority, but decided against it. 46 In Sep-tember 2004, Brazil joined Germany, Japan, and India in anunprecedented collective bid for Security Council membership.Lulas government was distressed to encounter rapid and vigor-ous opposition from both Mexico and Argentina. As the otheraspirants faced similar resistance and none of the current SecurityCouncil members was keen, the proposal was dropped. But it islikely to be revived again.

Development Problems

At the same time, Brazil has pressing domestic problemswhich, if not attended to, could undermine the viability of itscurrent economic recoveryand therefore also any aspirationsto be a major power and global player. Prominent economistMarcelo de Paiva Abreu expresses the pessimistic view. Brazilhas had a record of mediocre economic growth for more thantwo decades, and there is nothing to suggest a much improvedperformance in the near future. In the absence of new policies toassure extensive microeconomic reforms, reduced public expen-diture, a more efficient tax system, a considerable increase in thesavings ratio, and above all, a much improved growth perfor-mance, Brazil will not be listed as a BRIC very far in the future. 47According to a report compiled by the American Chamber of

Commerce in So Paulo, from 2000 to 2006 Brazil lost competi-tiveness in fourteen of twenty-four indicators. 48 This negativetrend was confirmed by the World Economic Forums Global


45. Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), p. 49.

46. Cardoso, A Arte da Politica , p. 610.47. Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, roundtable remarks at Conference on BRICSAM

(Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and Mexico) and Fragile States,Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Canada, Sep-

tember 15, 2006.48. Brasil perde Competitividade ante emergentes, O Estado de So Paulo ,December 4, 2006; online at http://render.estadao.com.br/arquivo/economia/2006/not20061204p40154.htm.


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Competitiveness Report 2007-2008, released in November 2007,which showed Brazil walking backwards from the sixty-sixth tothe seventy-second position, behind China (34), India (48), andRussia (58), and losing ground even in Latin American, where ittrails Chile (26), Mexico (52), and Colombia (69). Although longa regional leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, Brazil isfar behind the other BRICs in this crucial indicator of potentialeconomic vigor.

Moreover, from 1991 to 2006 the cost of the federal govern-ment almost doubled, from 14 to 24 percent of GDP; yet thequality of services provided has not notably improved. Brazilachieved universal primary education in the 1990s, but only half of children entering first grade are expected to finish high school.The average years of schoolingaround fiveis lower than inChina and India, which have lower per capita income. AlthoughBrazil spends twice as much per capita on education as SouthKorea, 82 percent of Korean youth attend university, while inBrazil only 18 percent have the privilege. Similarly, Brazil investsthree times more public money in health than China, but infantmortality rates are lower in China, at 30 per thousand in 2004,than in Brazil, at 33 per thousand. 49 About half of total socialexpenditures in Brazil disappear into pensions targeted towardthe relatively privileged half of the employed population luckyenough to have found formal-sector employment.

Nonetheless, optimists and Brazil boosters abound, including both the British newsweekly The Economistand the World Bank. 50Brazils most pressing problems, aside from the challenge of con-

tinuing growth, are tackling the countrys enormous inheritedinequalities in income and educational opportunity. Since Brazilis finally a genuine mass democracy, programs to reduce inequal-ity have been popular electorally, and have begun to show incre-mental but very important positive results. 51 Inequality in per


49. Fabio Giambiagi, Brasil, Razes do Atraso: paternalismo versus produtivi-dade (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus/Elsevier, 2007).

50. Adis to Poverty, Hola to Consumption, The Economist , August 16,2007; Thomas Vinod, The Three Rising Giants: Brazil, China, India,

presentation at XIX Frum Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, May 2007.51. For analyses explicitly linking mass democracy to improvements toeconomic policy improvements crucial to the poor, see Wendy Hunterand Timothy J. Power, Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, Social Policy,


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capita household income fell substantially from 2001 to 2004, atrend that has continued since. Measured by the Gini coefficient,the most used indicator of income inequality, income concentra-tion in Brazil declined from 0.593 to 0.566 between 2001 and 2005,constituting over a four-percent decrease. Put differently, the percapita income of the poorest 10 percent of Brazilians grew at aChinese rate of 9 percent annually, compared to overall growthof 2.5 percent during those years. 52 Demographic trends giveBrazil ample room for further gains in income per capita over thefifty-year period of the Goldman Sachs projections. With its rateof population growth decelerating, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) projects that the countrys popu-lation will stabilize at around 260 million in 2050 as the worldssixth largest, behind India (1.5 billion), China (1.3 billion), theUnited States (400 million), Pakistan (350 million), and Indonesia(300 million).

The contradictory trends of loss of competitiveness com- bined with gains on the social front have fed an intense andwide-ranging national debate amplified by an open and compet-itive media that keeps the core economic and political choicesconfronting the country highly visible. There is an ample andgrowing societal consensus on many of the essential structuralreforms that Brazil still must confront: the growing cost of thepublic sector; the poor quality of public education; the unfair-ness and lack of equity in the social security system; Brazilshigh taxation (around 39 percent of GDP), which even left-lean-ing President Lula has described as punishing to investors;

and other issues that limit Brazils prospects at home and com-petitiveness in the world economy. The difficulty in findingsolutions derives in large measure from the nature of democraticlife, made dysfunctional at times in Brazil by a political system


and the Brazilian Elections of 2006, Latin American Politics and Society ,vol. 49, No. 1 (2006), pp. 1-30; and Leslie Elliott Armijo, Mass Democ-racy: The Real Reason that Brazil Ended Inflation? World Development ,vol. 33, No. 12 (December, 2005), pp. 2013-28.

52. Ricardo Paes de Barros, unpublished paper, The Recent Decline in

Income Inequality in Brazil and Its Consequences on Poverty, Instituteof Applied Economic Research, Rio de Janeiro, September 2007; availableat www.ipea.gov.br/sites/000/2/publicacoes/NT_%20ingles_des_pobreza.pdf.


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built to protect the privileges of the powerful in a still veryunequal and unjust society.

In common with the other three BRICs countries consideredin this volume, Brazils future status in the international systemthus depends crucially on how well the countrys leaders man-age its domestic challenges. In Brazil these challenges are over-whelmingly ones of economic management. Only if they are metwill Brazil play a global role in the twenty-first century.

Principal References

Armijo, Leslie Elliott. Mass Democracy: The Real Reason thatBrazil Ended Inflation? World Development , vol. 33, No. 12(December, 2005), pp. 2013-28.

Armijo, Leslie Elliott and Philippe Faucher. We Have a Con-sensus: Explaining Political Support for Market Reformsin Latin America, Latin American Politics and Society , vol.44, No. 2 (2002), pp. 1-40.

Armijo, Leslie Elliott and Christine A. Kearney. Does Democra-tization Alter the Policy Process? Trade Policymaking inBrazil, Democratization (forthcoming, 2008).

Botelho, Marcio. The G-20: Aims and Perspectives of a NewTrade Alliance, M.A. Thesis (Berlin: University of AppliedSciences, 2005).

Burges, Sean W. Without Sticks or Carrots: Brazilian Leader-ship in South America During the Cardoso Era, 1992-

2003, Bulletin of Latin American Research , vol. 25, No. 1(2006), pp. 23-42._______. Building a Global Southern Coalition: The Competing

Approaches of Brazils Lula and Venezuelas Chvez,Third World Quarterly , vol. 28, No. 7 (October, 2007), pp.1343-58.

Burns, E. Bradford. The Unwritten Alliance . New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1966.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. A Arte da Politica: A Histria queViv . Rio de Janeiro: Civilizao Brasileira, 2006.

Cason, Jeffrey. Democracy Looks South: MERCOSUL and thePolitics of Brazilian Trade Strategy, in Peter R. Kingstoneand Timothy J. Power, eds., Democratic Brazil (Pittsburgh,



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Penna.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).Danese, Srgio. Diplomacia Presidencial. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks,

1999.Elizondo Mayer-Serra, Carlos. Mexico: Foreign Investment and

Democracy, in L. E. Armijo, Financial Globalization andDemocracy in Emerging Markets (Basingstoke and London:Macmillan, 1999).

Fausto, Boris. A Concise History of Brazil. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999.

Giambiagi, Fbio. Brasil, Razes do Atraso: paternalismo versus pro-dutividade. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus/Elsevier,2007.

Gratius, Susanne. Brazil in the Americas: A Regional Peace Bro-ker? Working Paper, April 2007, Fundacin para las Rela-ciones Internacionales y del Dialogo Exterior, Madrid,Spain.

Hunter, Wendy and Timothy J. Power. Rewarding Lula: Execu-tive Power, Social Policy, and the Brazilian Elections of 2006, Latin American Politics and Society , vol. 49, No. 1(2006), pp. 1-30.

Long, Robert G. Volta Redonda: Symbol of Maturity in theIndustrial Progress of Brazil, Economic Geography , vol.24, No. 2 (April, 1948), pp. 149-54.

Malamud, Andrs. Presidential Diplomacy and the InstitutionalUnderpinnings of MERCOSUR: An Empirical Examina-tion, Latin American Research Review , vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb-ruary, 2005), pp. 138-64.

Soares de Lima, Maria Regina and Mnica Hirst. Brazil as anIntermediate State and Regional Power: Action, Choiceand Responsibilities, International Affairs , vol. 82, No. 1(2006), pp. 21-40.

Ricpero, Rubens. A me de todas as ameacas: a mudanaclimrica e o futuro da vida, Revista da USP , So Paulo,Brazil (forthcoming in 2008).

Wilson, Dominic and Roopa Purushothaman. Dreaming withBRICs: The Path to 2050, Global Economics Paper No.99, Goldman Sachs, New York, October 1, 2003.


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