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Abstract
Brazil is one of several rising powers that assumed greater protagonism in advancing peace on the global stage and in the Global South beginning in the early 2000s. In places like Haiti, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, it expanded its peacekeeping deployments and exercised leadership on peacebuilding issues. What explains this notably increased activity on peace-related issues? In this article, I test four core theories of international relations – realism, liberalism, constructivism and post-colonial theory – to explain the rise and content of these policies in that country. Brazil has been vocal in its non-traditional approaches to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and this study examines its rhetorical claims through theoretical lenses. It aspires to bring systematic theoretical thinking to a case whose empirics have been used to support each of the four main theoretical approaches. I argue that interest-based theories such as realism and liberalism best account for the emergence of Brazil’s increased peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives in the early 2000s. However, idea-based constructivist and post-colonial approaches are necessary to account for the content of these approaches that reflect national identity and social and culturally historic experiences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Matthew Hartwell and Chris Brandt for research assistance. I am also grateful for feedback from two anonymous reviewers and Matt Taylor, and for the collaboration with Adriana Abdenur and Cedric de Coning, whose ideas in our 2017 co-authored pieces are drawn on in this article.
Notes
1 Abdenur and Neto, Brazil’s Growing Relevance; Call and de Coning, Rising Powers and Peacebuilding.
2 This paragraph draws on Abdenur and Call, “A ‘Brazilian Way’? ”
3 Quoted in Ministry of External Relations, Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook, 23.
4 Manicom and Reeves, “Locating Middle Powers in International Relations Theory,” 24.
5 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 72.
6 Thies and Nieman, Rising Powers and Foreign Policy Revisionism, 160.
7 Mearsheimer, “False Promise of International Institutions.” Waltz has a slightly more expansive view of multilateral institutions, but still sees them as created and maintained in line with interests of the dominant states. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” 21.
8 Cooper and Flemes, “Foreign Policy Stategies of Emerging Powers,” 947.
9 Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy”; Schweller and Pu, “After Unipolarity.”
10 Carranza, “Rising Regional Powers and International Relations Theories,” 258.
11 David, “Alice in Wonderland Meets Frankenstein.”
12 Velázquez, “Why Some States Participate,” 168.
13 Gegout, “The West, Realism and Intervention.”
14 Keohane, “International Institutions”; Keohane “Lilliputians’ Dilemma.”
15 Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan.
16 B. de Carvalho and de Coning, Rising Powers and the Future of Peacekeeping, 4. Kahler focuses as well on the domestic dilemmas: Kahler, “Rising Powers and Global Governance,” 712.
17 Richmond and Tellidis, “Emerging Actors in International Peacebuilding.”
18 eg Moaz and Russett, “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace.”
19 eg Bueno de Mesquita et al., “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace.”
20 Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, 2.
21 Finnemore and Sikkink 1998.
22 Finnemore and Jurkovic, “Getting a Seat at the Table.”
23 Carranza, “Rising Regional Powers and International Relations Theories”; Brysk, Global Good Samaritans.
24 Capie, “Indonesia as an Emerging Peacekeeping Power,” 4.
25 David, “Alice in Wonderland Meets Frankenstein,” 3.
26 Richmond and Tellidis, “Emerging Actors in International Peacebuilding,” 566.
27 Bellamy and Williams, Understanding Peacekeeping.
28 Cooper and Flemes, “Foreign Policy Stategies of Emerging Powers,” 952.
29 Gill, “Reimagining the Future,” 8.
30 Pugh, “Peacekeeping and Critical Theory”; Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders.”
31 Personal interviews with senior Brazilian and Indian officials, New York and Brasilia, 2015.
32 Pugh, “Peacekeeping and Critical Theory”; Pugh, “Political Economy of Peacebuilding.”
33 Nadarajaha and Rampton, “Limits of Hybridity,” 70.
34 Richmond, “Genealogy of Peace and Conflict Theory”; Richmond and Mac Ginty, “Where Now for the Critique of the Liberal Peace?”
35 Richmond and Mac Ginty, “Where Now for the Critique of the Liberal Peace?”
36 Richmond and Tellidis, “Emerging Actors in International Peacebuilding.”
37 Hernández, “Collapse in Cancún.”
38 IPEA, “Cooperação Brasileira.”
39 Abdenur and Call, “A ‘Brazilian Way’?”
40 Mares and Trinkunas, Aspirational Power; Valença and Carvalho, “Soft Power, Hard Aspirations”; Stuenkel and Taylor, Brazil on the Global Stage.
41 It deployed troops to UN missions in the Sinai in 1956, to El Salvador and Angola in the early 1990s, and to East Timor in 1999, where the chief of mission was Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello. Sánchez Nieto, “Brazil’s Grand Design,” 164.
42 Ibid., 174.
43 Ministry of External Relations, “Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook,” 25.
44 Stuenkel and Taylor, Brazil on the Global Stage.
45 Cardoso, “Globalization vs Democracy.”
46 Christensen, “Brazil’s Foreign Policy Priorities”; Nel and Taylor, “Bugger thy Neighbour.”
47 Cited in Ministry of External Relations, Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook, 24–5.
48 Pickup, “Foreign Policy of the New Left.”
49 Amanor, “South–South Cooperation in Africa,” 26.
50 Mawdsley, Kim and Marcondes, “Political Leadership and ‘Non-tranditional’ Development Cooperation.” See extracts of Lula’s speeches in Ministry of External Relations, Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook.
51 Adriana Abdenur, personal interview with a Brazilian diplomat who requested anonymity, Brasólia, November 2015, quoted in Abdenur and Call, “A ‘Brazilian Way’? ”
52 Patriota and Timerman, “Brasil e Argentina.”
53 Author interviews with diplomats in Itamaraty, August 2015; and see Ministry of External Relations, Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook.
54 Vigevani and Cepaluni, Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times.
55 Ministry of External Relations, “Brazilian Foreign Policy Handbook,” 208.
56 Abreu quoted in Steiner, “‘Blending’ of Aid and Private Flows,” 14.
57 United Nations, “Statement by the President of the Security Council.”
58 Kenkel, “South America’s Emerging Power,” 656.
59 Ibid.
60 Abdenur and Call, “A ‘Brazilian Way’? ”
61 Abdenur and Call, “A ‘Brazilian Way’?”
62 Novaes Miranda, “The Pacification of Bel Air.”
63 Author’s personal interview with Leopoldo Paz, August 2015, Brasilia.
64 Moreno, Braga, and Gomes, “Trapped between Many Worlds,” 383.
65 Ibid.
66 Author’s personal interview with a Brazilian diplomat who had worked at the mission to the United Nations and who requested anonymity, August 2015, Brasilia.
67 Spektor, “Humanitarian Intervention Brazilian Style?,” 58.
68 V. M. de Carvalho, “Brazilian Music at MINUSTAH.”
69 Amanor, “South–South Cooperation in Africa”; Leite et al., Brazil’s Engagement in International Development Cooperation.
70 Call and de Coning, Rising Powers and Peacebuilding.
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Charles T. Call
Charles T. Call is an associate professor of international peace and conflict resolution in the School of International Service of American University. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. He served as Senior External Advisor to the UN–World Bank study Pathways for Peace in 2017. From 2012 to 2014, he was a Senior Advisor in the US State Department, and from 2012 to 2018, he served on the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Group on the UN Peacebuilding Fund.