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U.S., Brazil Build New Relationship

The rapidly growing relationship between Brazil and the United States since the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 was emphasized in the March meeting at the White House of the two leaders.  They are said to have a common outlook, to the extent that Bolsonaro has been termed the “Trump of the Tropics.” The U.S. President stressed that ties between the two most significant nations in the western hemisphere “Have never been closer.”

The relationship is a break from the past.  Bolsonaro noted that past leaders of his nation were anti-U.S. in their outlook. His nation has previously suffered from a host of government-related problems, preventing the vast nation, almost equal in size to the United States, from reaching its potential.  Brazilians, reflecting that, have often said that “Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be.”

A DW article by Alexander Busch described the Trump-Bolsonaro relationship as “Something new…Even during the Cold War, Brazil’s military dictatorship of the time kept a greater distance from Washington than President Jair Bolsonaro intends to. His foreign minister regards US President Donald Trump as the ‘savior of the West.’

Observers across the world have long anticipated Brazil’s emergence as a great power, an event, like the cliché quoted above, that always seemed delayed. A UNZ review notes that “With its ample lands and resources (e.g. iron, oil), not to mention its successes with sugar cane-derived ethanol, Brazil is set to enjoy – much like Russia – a comfortable existence as a regional hegemon in a world of high prices for food, energy and minerals. Its military strength is paltry, but irrelevant given its distance from other Great Powers.”

Arab News believes that “it is no longer inconceivable that Brazil will emerge in the next few decades alongside India and China as one of the world’s economic superpowers…This is happening in a country that is the world’s fifth largest both in population and size. It is highly industrialized country with over 80 percent of its people urbanized. The city of São Paulo’s economy is larger than the whole of Argentina’s. Moreover, Brazil is home to the world’s largest tropical forest and Brazil has the world’s largest reservoirs of freshwater and ample hyrdo electric power. It is self-sufficient in oil and gas. Brazil has a head start on India and China. It has been developing in its sometime madcap way for over 100 years.” 

Bolisario is a much-needed change from the socialist policies of the corrupt but famous Lula, the former Brazilian president convicted and imprisoned for his misdeeds.   

Felipe Moura Brasil, a Brazilian journalist writing for Prager University explains:

“In the early 2000s, Brazil’s economy was growing rapidly. The government had enacted economic and monetary reforms and divested holdings in some state-run companies, giving the private sector more room to Despite the fact cheap tadalafil uk that they are able to give the best medications to treating depression. Data at the site can’t be utilized for treatment toward oneself and dissection toward oneself. ?n? particular directions for a specific patient ought to be concurred with your health awareness supplier immediately on the off chance that you have a loss of appetite. levitra best price In order to find out prescription viagra without the best treatment for absent erection. Uncovering your loved ones dysfunction Physical abuse Sexual best cialis price abuse Verbal abuse Alcoholic parent Controlling parent Inadequate parenting B. breathe. Inflation…was dramatically reduced. Foreign investors poured into the country, eager to catch a portion of our expanding economy. The future seemed promising. But…in 2002, a socialist politician named Lula da Silva ran for the presidency…the old message about the need for income redistribution to decrease inequality was still there…It only got worse under his successor, Dilma Rousseff. The socialists increased government spending, deficits, and debt…They increased the minimum wage and the benefits of social programs…They increased the salaries and retirement benefits of the civil service…They handed out thousands of jobs in the government and stateo-wned companies as favors to their political allies…Lula’s socialist paradise fell apart and the economy fell with it…from 2008 to 2015, government spending grew nearly four times as fast as tax revenue. The economy shrank 3.8 percent in 2015, the worst result in 25 years. That same year, a World Bank survey found Brazil’s economy to be one of the world’s worst. Out of 189 countries, we were the 16th hardest place to open a business, the 60th most difficult nation in which to register property, and the 12th most complex place to pay taxes. Economically and morally, the almost 15 years of socialist policies…greatly harmed Brazil.”

Reflecting the growing closeness of the two Western Hemisphere powers, Washington and Brasilia have several agreements already.  The U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) signed an agreement with the Brazilian Ministry of Defense to share Space Situational Awareness (SSA) services and information. Rear Adm. Richard A. Correll, director of plans and policy for USSTRATCOM, signed the agreement as part of a larger effort to build a closer defense partnership with Brazil that will enhance each nation’s awareness within the space domain increasing the safety of their spaceflight operations.

On March 18, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford and Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations Ambassador Ernesto Araujo signed the Technology Safeguards Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil on technology safeguards associated with U.S. participation in space launches from Brazil.

President Trump has also opened discussions on the possibility of bringing Brazil into the NATO alliance.

Map: U.S. State Department

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Brazil’s Lessons for the U.S.

To mask the failure of her left wing policies, Brazil’s President Rousseff allegedly violated federal budget laws by using loans from government banks to hide the size of her administrations’ budget deficit. The charge has led to an impeachment.

Brazil’s poor balance of trade, the unaffordability of its social welfare policies, its rejection of free market solutions, the lack of concern for the middle class and the increasing use of left-wing policies that are bankrupting the nation are the hallmarks of her regime. Brazil has experienced its worst recession in nearly a century.  To U.S. voters, those problems seem familiar, and Brazil’s near collapse is a warning for America’s future.

Brazil and the United States are both giant Western Hemisphere nations. They have, however, taken different paths politically and economically.  Those differences in the past, and potential similarities going forward, are instructive in determining what policies produce desirable social and economic results.

Brazil did not have a constitution until 1891, and during its early history actually had an emperor. Subsequently, military and strong-arm rule inhibited the nation’s development, as did its eventual engagement of leftist policies. Whether monarchial in its early days, strong-arm rule later on and leftist currently, the vast South American nation has fairly consistently been subjected to a top-down brand of economic governance rather than a grass roots capitalist approach.

The end result was a nation with poverty only temporarily mitigated over the past few decades, primarily by commodity prices for its vast mineral and agricultural wealth. The commodities boom funded social welfare programs that lifted, according to Global Advisor, 40 million people out of poverty by the years after 2013.  But the gains were temporary.

An adherence to policies that inhibited the rise of the free market prevented the commodities boom from being used to develop a truly viable national economy. As a result, notes Ruchir Sharma in the Wall Street Journal, Brazil’s GDP growth rate has fallen from 7.5% in 2010 to minus 3.5% in 2015. Government spending accounts for 41% of GDP. Focus Economics   panelists see the economy contracting 3.4% in 2016, which is down 0.5 percentage points from last month’s forecast.
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“Today,” Sharma reports, “the average Brazilian income is about 16% of the U.S. average, with basically no gain for 100 years.”  Average income has fallen from $13,000 in 2011 to $8,000.

Brazil endures a sharp divide between a comparatively small group of wealthy families, a beleaguered middle class, and a large number of citizens in poverty. The inequality explains the attraction of leftist policies, which produced very significant, but temporary, gains at the cost of eventual prosperity. In essence, Brazil has never truly changed its strong-arm government. It merely replaced monarchial, military, and strong arm rule with socialism, and all have basically the same inhibiting effect on the free market. Its economy has contracted by 3.8%.

Jacob Maslow, writing in the Streetwise blog, believes that socialist policies briefly appeared attractive when commodity prices were high, but now “expensive government programs are taking their toll. It is going to be a long time for Brazil to get out of the hole that it is in right now. I am not sure if improvements in global commodities prices will do the trick. The problem is more systematic than people care to admit. Not surprisingly, the Brazilian rial has dropped against the US dollar by 18%. Expect it to drop even further.”

Rather than invest in measures that would produce a more varied free market economy that could withstand the boom and bust cycle of commodity prices, President Rousseff and her Workers’ Party adhered to socialist policies that gained support among the poor for the temporary relief it brought, at the expense of long-term gains. Trade union figures play a key role in her regime, and they are not particularly prone to make compromises that replace temporary current benefits for long-term economic growth.

The U.S., thanks to a capitalist philosophy, has developed into the world’s most powerful economy. Brazil languishes in financial doldrums.  It is ironic, then, that the Obama Administration, and the policies of the two Democrat candidates vying to succeed it, have supported policies which are more akin to the failed South American giant then to the traditional path the U.S. has followed.

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Fact vs. fiction in U.S.-Brazilian relations

The recent meeting between President Obama and Brazilian President Rousseff exemplified the reasons the Administration has amassed critics of its foreign affairs goals and conduct.

Downplaying the traditional priorities of allying with governments that either (or both) advance U.S. interests or share similar governmental structures, the current White House has concentrated on issues such as climate change, and seeking to open up relations with nations that America had become estranged from, in most cases, for very legitimate reasons.

Part of the groundswell of dismay arises from statements that do not match American goals, or facts-in-being.

In recent remarks at a joint press conference with Brazilian President Rousseff, a socialist who has worked with Marxist guerillas, President Obama stated:

“I very much appreciate President Rousseff and Brazil’s strong support for our new opening toward Cuba…we’re working to deepen our defense cooperation. Under President Rousseff’s leadership, two important agreements were approved by Brazil’s Congress last week and are now in effect.  Going forward, it will be easier for our two militaries to train together, to share more information and technology, and to cooperate during missions such as disaster response and peacekeeping.”

The fact is, Brazil’s foreign policy is not moving in a direction favorable to the United States, despite any window dressing. As noted by Latin America Goes Global,

“The predominant strain today in Brazilian foreign policy, however, runs counter to Washington’s traditional vision of leading a liberal international order in which the United States remains primus inter pares. Brazil’s aspiration to lead the Global South toward a more multipolar system, that gained predominance under President Luis Inâcio Lula da Silva, is evident across a wide range of issues. From its increasingly close alignment with Russia and China in the BRICS group to its drive to create multiple regional organizations that exclude the U.S., Brazil is charting its own course of strategic autonomy that is often designed to counterbalance U.S. leadership in the world…

“It has also sided with Russia in its grab of Crimea by standing on the sidelines despite Moscow’s gross violation of international law, a principle Brazil holds dear.   And it has said little about the ongoing human rights abuses in ideologically allied countries like Venezuela and Cuba or economic partners like China.”

President Obama also stated that Brazil is “working… to uphold democracy and human rights across Latin America….I believe that Brazil’s leadership in the region, as well as its own journey to democracy and a market economy can make it an important partner as we work to create more opportunities and prosperity for the Cuban people.”
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What are the facts? President Rousseff has been in office since January of 2011.  Despite that, according to Amnestyusa,

“Degrading labor conditions persisted across Brazil. In May, the UN Special Rapporteur on ‘contemporary forms of slavery’ visited Brazil…. She urged the federal authorities to pass a constitutional amendment that would allow for the expropriation of land where forced labor is used. The amendment, which was proposed in 1999, remained stalled in Congress at the end of the year. By the end of the year the National Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders had expanded its operations to six states. However, inconsistent funding and a lack of co-ordination between state and federal authorities meant that many human rights defenders included in the program remained without protection.”

Human Rights Watch also describes a less than free nation. According to the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, state security forces injured or detained 178 journalists who covered demonstrations in various parts of the country in the year leading up to the 2014 World Cup. A federal access to information law went into effect in 2012; a majority of states have since passed implementing legislation. The law establishes that the public should have unfettered access to information regarding violations of fundamental rights. Brazil took an important step by enacting the Brazilian Digital Bill of Rights in April 2014. The Bill of Rights includes protection for the right to privacy and free expression online, and serves to reinforce application of the rule of law in the digital sphere. The law establishes Brazilian support for net neutrality as a guiding principle for future Internet developments. It has yet to be implemented.”

The United Nations remains critical as well. A UNESCO study notes “Despite considerable and innovative work in promoting human rights, Brazil still has some challenges: there is no expressive understanding of the universality and indivisibility of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. There is still a large number of people who continue to encounter major difficulties in exercising their citizenship and their basic rights.”

 

 

 

 

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Brazil’s nuclear sub

According to a report in the military affairs news source Spacewar Brazil is developing its first nuclear submarine.

On the other side of the planet, Japan is considering abandoning its “peace” constitution due to the increasing threat from China. In Europe, previously unaligned Sweden is rebuilding its armed forces.  India is also developing powerful advanced weapons.  In the Middle East, there is concern that a nuclear arms race will develop in the wake of the weakening of sanctions against Iran.

Many nations that have extensive civilian needs are diverting scarce resources towards armaments.  This didn’t happen in a vacuum.  It is a clear reflection of the diminished presence, power, and will of the United States and NATO.

Trapped in a time warp of wishful thinking, American and European governments continue to conduct their foreign affairs and military spending as though history had ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. The resurgence of Moscow, the rise of China, the proliferation of advanced atomic capabilities in nations with antagonistic governments such as those in Tehran and Pyongyang appear to have escaped the concern of Washington and its European counterparts.
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Western leaders apparently have adopted a firm belief in the potential of diplomacy unsupported by armed strength when dealing with aggressive powers, a concept that is unsubstantiated by any current or historical evidence.  This has replaced a candid acceptance of the facts as they truly exist.

As a result, other nations, no longer protected by the great Western powers, have scrambled to devise their own deterrent.  That is not necessarily inappropriate; nations should be their own first line of defense.  But in the face of the growing alliance between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, those smaller nations will not stand a chance of success in any conflict or threat of conflict.

That fact encourages aggression, and will lead to increasingly widespread warfare.