Lula da Silva, it is common to say in his inner circle, has special recognition for three leaders who stood in solidarity with him while he was behind bars. One is the Argentine Alberto Fernández. The other two, Pope Francis and Emmanuel Macron. This information led to the assumption that the friendship between Lula and Fernández would be projected on the foreign relations of Brazil and Argentina, inspiring an association on the international agenda. History is having other ideas and it has shown it last week. Brasilia and Buenos Aires have taken divergent paths regarding the main conflicts facing the world. Especially, given the growing confrontation between the United States and China.
Brazil’s diplomacy has returned to the ideas of Celso Amorim, Lula’s adviser on international policy. The clearest manifestation is the vocation to intervene in a peace process for the war that Russia brought to Ukraine. The play was chained in different movements. First, a trip from Amorim to Moscow and Paris. Then, Lula’s visit to Beijing, where Xi Jinping offered him the reception given to friends. Last Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov landed in Brasilia, where he thanked Lula’s government for understanding Putin’s position on Ukraine.
This round of activities matched other behaviors. The Brazilians participated in the Summit for Democracy called by Joe Biden, but refused to sign the final declaration, especially since it contained a condemnation of Russia for the conflict with Ukraine. Lula’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, deplored the unilateral sanctions imposed on Moscow by Volodimir Zelenski’s allies. The Brazilian president himself went further and suggested that, in order to end the war, Zelensky could cede the Crimean peninsula to Russia once and for all. At the beginning of the month he had raised that idea, associated with the fact that “Putin cannot claim to keep what he invaded.” But on Monday the 17th he crossed a red line by saying, at a press conference with Lavrov, that “the confrontation was started by two countries.” It was a mistake and an inconsistency: the Brazilian government has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Brazil’s position is based on a political and military hypothesis. Lula’s diplomats assume that the military offensive that Ukraine is preparing with the support of its allies may be the last war effort, before rehearsing a negotiation. Above all, due to the doubts that are beginning to exist in the West about Biden’s ability to maintain support for maintaining the war. Based on this premise, Lula and Amorim seek to associate France with their venture. Macron cannot distance himself from Europe’s position in the conflict. But in a phone conversation with Zelensky on April 15, he raised the possibility of a “peace summit.”
It would be a mistake to separate the Brazilian initiative in the war against Ukraine from a more general orientation of its foreign policy. Amorim tends to accentuate a classic propensity of his country’s diplomacy: the pretense of behaving like a power outside any automatic alignment, especially with the United States. At this stage, Lula and his adviser support the postulation of a Global South, which to some extent coincides with the BRICS. The question is not Russia and Ukraine. The axis of this position is the relationship with China, which is becoming an increasingly aggressive partner with Washington.
The North Americans notice this inclination of the Government of the Workers’ Party. And they are surprised. They assumed that, when his government defended, against Jair Bolsonaro’s denunciations, the purity of the elections that would give Lula power, and after the warm reception that Biden offered the Brazilian on February 10, an idyll had been inaugurated. However, last Tuesday, White House spokesman John Kirby complained that the Brazilian president “parrots Chinese and Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine without even studying the facts.”
It is impossible to know if it is a consequence of this declaration, or of other irritated messages that reached Brasilia from Washington, but the Brazilian discourse began to adjust some nuances. Lula arrived in Portugal, in the first visit to Europe of his current term, and explained that in the mediation effort there could not be only neutral countries. The United States should also be there. He will insist on this proposal during his time in Spain. And he will continue to modulate his position until he reaches Hiroshima, for the G7 summit, which will be held from May 19 to 21. He was invited by the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida. In addition to the members of that club (Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom), the Ukrainian president, Zelenski; Indian Prime Minister Nadendra Mori; and the Indonesian, Joko Widodo. In that conference, the reference, even if tacit, to the growing conflict between Washington and Beijing will be inevitable.
Brazil’s position on that map contrasts with that of its main Mercosur partner: Argentina. Buenos Aires has been the scene last week in which the United States deployed all its arguments to counteract the Chinese weight in the region. On Friday, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman visited that capital. This diplomat is not focused on Latin American issues. Much less in the bilateral relationship with Argentina. Her career has been spent associated with international security issues: relationship with North Korea, with Iran, now with China. As soon as she returned to her country, General Laura Richardson, head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, arrived in Argentina.
The two visits had the same objective: to neutralize Chinese pressure on the government of Alberto Fernández. From Beijing there is a permanent interest in selling combat planes to the Aeronautics; participate in the installation of a nuclear power plant; getting the country to adopt Huawei’s technology for the 5G system; intervene in the establishment of a naval logistics supply base in the extreme south of the country, among other matters.
The two travelers specified recommendations that a couple of weeks earlier President Fernández had heard on a visit to Biden. The orientation of the Argentine ruling party, led by Cristina Kirchner, is always reluctant to the type of “advice” of Sherman or Richardson. But this time that political and ideological reluctance must give way to necessity. Argentina is, for the umpteenth time, going through a great economic crisis. March inflation was 7.7%. Throughout the past week there was an exchange run against the peso that triggered the value of the dollar in the parallel market. Added to a highly improvised economic policy was the effect of a terrifying drought: cereal exports fell by more than 20,000 million dollars.
Faced with the abyss, the Minister of Economy Sergio Massa only has one way out: to get the International Monetary Fund to disburse in advance the resources that it would allocate to the country until the end of the year. If the Fund’s authorities accept the request, it is very likely that they will demand a devaluation of the official currency price as a counterpart. A somersault, which could accelerate inflation.
To obtain clemency in the Fund, the endorsement of the US Government is essential. Massa is managing, with what little credibility he has left, that support. If Lula wants the Argentina of his friend Alberto Fernández to accompany him in his global strategy, he will have to wait. The need has the face of a herectic.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Lula #Fernández #friends #Brazil #Argentina #divergent