Venezuela President
Nicolas Maduro: The revolt against his government
is a test of Latin
American plans to integrate without U.S. interference.
Venezuela: Can Latin America Resolve Crises without the U.S.?
(Opera Mundi, Brazil)
"The U.S. position will be the greatest challenge to the
ambitions of Brazilian foreign policy in the 21st century. ... While Brazil
influences the creation of institutions to guarantee decision-making autonomy
for countries in the region, this can create tensions with the United States
over the long term. ... The Union of South American Nations has already
demonstrated a capacity to handle regional crises without the need for U.S.
intervention, as it did with the installation of seven U.S. military bases in
Colombia and the 2008 Pando Massacre in Bolivia. However, the current crisis in
Venezuela represents a new challenge that accelerates these long-term
tensions."
Police fire tear gas at anti-government protesters during riots in Caracas, April 6. Protests and riots against the government of Nicolas Maduro began in February. Progress was made this week as the Maduro government agreed to talks with the opposition, mediated by the Union of South American Nations, a Brazil-backed regional grouping that excludes the United States.
In
a recent article published in the Folha de S. Paulo,
Mathias Spektor mentions that the Russia-Ukraine
issue would be an opportunity for Brazil to exercise its aspiration to build an
international order “benign and multipolar” in character, i.e.: it represents a
moment for Brazil to assist in carrying out its desire for several poles of
global influence that would stabilize the system through the existence of
international organizations. Given the country’s new status in the world, Spektor argues that there is an opportunity for Brazilian
foreign policy to define and assist in building the type of power center it
wishes to see materialize.
According
to this perspective, new challenges will emerge in the regional prism that need
to be carefully observed. Analyzing the geopolitics of regional organizations
and the interaction between the centers of power in the Americas raises equally
relevant questions about the evolution of Brazil's proposal for regionalism and its articulation with the United States. As José LuísFiori recently put in two
analyses in the newspaper Valor Econômico [Economic Value], the U.S. position will be
the greatest challenge to the ambitions of Brazilian foreign policy in the 21st
century.
Not
necessarily from the perspective of military confrontation, since U.S.
capabilities are far superior to Brazil's. There are challenges coordinating
policy given differing visions when it comes to the
management of regional issues. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a
consolidation of two projects that are complementary, but that weigh
differently in the balance of political objectives for the two countries.
On
one side, the United States has sought to consolidate hemispheric relations
through a political, military, and economic agenda. The agendas of the
Organization of American States (OAS),
the Summits of
the Americas, the proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and meetings of defense ministers of the
Americas, are examples that illustrate how the U.S. seeks to establish
hemispheric bases for international organizations by actively participating in
their decisions. In the 1990s, in particular, with the end of the Cold War and
the diminishing centrality of the security agenda, the hemispheric path provided
leverage sufficient for proposing the FTAA.
On the other hand, Brazil's vision
for regional integration has other features. Over the years, Brazilian
diplomacy has never stopped participating in these [U.S.-sponsored]
organizations. Even when disagreeing with certain of their agendas, like that
of the FTAA, for example, Brazilian foreign policy
has never been absent from the negotiating table. However, since the late 1990s, Brazil
has chosen to equip Latin America with its own resources for dealing with
crises, without the need for political intervention from the United States. The
country hosted the first summit of South American presidents in 2000, worked
for the construction of CASA in 2004 [later changed to UNASUR- the Union of South American Nations in 2008], and CELAC
[Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] in 2010.
If there is a conjunction of
complementary organizations, there are also projects of integration that are
divergent. While Brazil influences the creation of institutions to guarantee
decision-making autonomy for countries in the region, this can create tensions
with the United States over the long term, as José LuísFiori pointed out. Therefore, one now observes a new
type of geopolitics in the region - that of the occupation of institutional and
decision-making environments.
UNASUR has already
demonstrated a capacity to handle regional crises without the need for U.S.
intervention, as it did with the installation of seven U.S. military bases in
Colombia and the 2008 Porvenir Massacre in
Bolivia. However, the current crisis in Venezuela represents a new challenge
that accelerates these long-term tensions, given that the United States has
actively participated in OAS meetings on the issue, publicly rejecting the
South American approach to handling the situation and threatening to adopt
sanctions against the government of NicolásMaduro. Venezuela rejected the work of the OAS, and only
accepted mediation from UNASUR.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Because of this, Brazil faces the
challenge of taking up a leadership role in an institution it created and
showing a capacity for crisis management. This, however, requires it to work
more actively on mediation and the support of UNASUR,
giving this more emphasis than the current government has done. Brazilian
foreign policy is confronted with a complex framework that may be a harbinger
in the immediate decades of the 21st century. Now, the capacity of regional
organizations that exclude the United States to resolve crises without creating
discord with the great power, such as UNASUR and CELAC, will depend on how the cards on the table of these
new geopolitical organizations are played.
*Raphael Camargo
Lima has a master’s degree from the San Tiago Dantas
Post-Graduate Program in International Relations (UNESP,
UNICAMP, PUC-SP). He is a member of the Study Group
on International Defense and Security and the Observatory of Brazilian Foreign
Policy.
