Rising Powers and the Future of Global Governance by Kevin Gray & Craig N. Murphy

Author:Kevin Gray & Craig N. Murphy [Gray, Kevin & Murphy, Craig N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415714051
Google: 9DYrnQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18172791
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Brazil’s foreign policy strategy and its main aims: 2003–12

The change in government in Brazil in 2003 represents a turning point in the country’s foreign policy. The new government pursued an activist foreign policy agenda that focused on South–South coordination in a strategy that Vigevani and Cepaluni have called ‘autonomy through diversification’.12 According to this approach, the way forward for Brazil was to pursue alliances with large peripheral countries, to avoid subordination to the agendas of dominant countries, and to pursue active domestic development policies and reduce domestic inequalities.13 This policy orientation corresponded to the autonomist current within the Itamaraty, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,14 and to the traditional foreign policy orientation of the Workers’ Party. According to Almeida Brazil’s foreign policy, while maintaining the typical professionalism of the diplomats at Itamaraty, came to be dominated by the Workers’ Party line, thereby diverging from the traditional autonomy of the Itamaraty in the definition of the foreign policy direction.15 The policy of diversification also relied on support from the leading industrial business organisations, the Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI) and Fiesp, which shared the government’s view that Brazil needed to increase its exports substantially in order to stabilise the economy and create conditions for renewed economic growth.16 The foreign policy priorities can be summed up as a focus on diversification of trade and on South–South relations generally but especially in terms of South American relations and relations with other large peripheral countries.

The government was extremely ambitious on the foreign policy front. Brazil aimed to build up power resources through economic strengthening and alliances with other developing countries as a way to gain more influence on the international political scene. Furthermore, the government sought to turn South America into Brazil’s sphere of interest,17 and to use the continent as a platform for its competitive insertion in the global economy and its political ambitions in the regional and global arenas. Brazil’s ambitions did not end here, however. The new government also sought to transform the global order by working against US unilateralism, as epitomised by the Iraq war of 2003,18 and to raise Brazil’s position in the global hierarchy of states. Thereby, Brazil would contribute to a more multipolar world in which the country could become the leader of a united South America.19 Furthermore, Brazil sought to assure its presence in all the relevant multilateral arenas of global economic and political governance, with the major aim of its inclusion as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.20 Foreign ministers have time and again argued that a key foreign policy objective was to promote a fairer and more economically balanced world as well as a more democratic international system that would be more inclusive of developing countries.21 President Lula linked uneven development to the global human rights situation, arguing for the need to assure a more socially and economically balanced world order. In a speech given at the UN in 2003 he specifically criticised the dominant powers for not paying enough attention to the need to fight global poverty and hunger.

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