Brazil: analysis of a rising soft power

Abstract

Rising powers gain economic and political clout and challenge the post-Cold War world order. Located in a relatively peaceful region away from global conflict zones, Brazil has fought no war with its neighbours in 150 years, and with limited military capabilities, Brazil differs from its BRICS peers as a non-militarised emerging power. Based on Nye’s soft power concept, this article examines Brazil’s soft power characteristics (preference for diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, use of force as a last resort; actions as agenda-setter, bridge-builder, Southern interests’ supporter, pro-multilateralism, etc.). This paper compares Brazil’s role conception to its role performance to conclude that Brazil projects itself as a soft power broker.

Keywords:

• Brazil
• rising power
• military strength
• soft power
• role theory

Notes on contributor

Mathilde Chatin is a PhD candidate at King’s College London (Brazil Institute). She has been a fellow at the BRICS Policy Center (Rio de Janeiro) and a visiting scholar at the University of São Paulo (Department of International Relations).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dawisson Belém Lopes, Guilherme Casarões, Philip Cerny, Giulio Gallarotti, Mark Haugaard, Kai Kenkel, Oliver Stuenkel, Ambassadors Sérgio Moreira Lima and Everton Vieira Vargas, as well as and the anonymous referees of the Journal of Political Power for their comments.

Notes

1. The acronym BRICs refers to Jim O’Neill’s original concept.

2. In 2011, just 53 of the Navy’s 100 ships and two out of five submarines could navigate; not even half of the Air Force’s aircrafts could fly and most had over fifteen years of use; only 60% of the Army’s armoured vehicles were usable (Monteiro 2011).

3. Brazil’s ‘traditional’ partners are the US, the EU and South America.

4. The US has 49 embassies in Africa, China (48), Russia (38), Turkey (31) and India (30). Brazil’s diplomatic network has been evaluated as ‘overdimensioned’ and ‘under-utilised’ (some embassies operate with half of the expected number of employees, and are unable to pay the bills). For ex-Minister Lampreia, it made no sense opening embassies in countries having little relations with Brazil and/or a small diplomatic/commercial expression, considering political/commercial interests and investments justify creating embassies (Stolte 2012, Freitas 2013). The new Foreign Minister José Serra requested a study to analyse the cost and utility of diplomatic representations opened over the past three mandates to eventually close some of them.

5. The US and Russia, with by far the largest nuclear arsenals, have only made timid efforts to dismantle their nuclear arsenals.

6. The League of Nations and GATT prior to those. On the contrary, after its expulsion from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), China joined the WTO in 2001 and Russia joined in 2011.

7. The Rousseff government was the first in three decade during the course of which Brazil was not elected for a non-permanent UNSC seat, and the country has not yet negotiated its return (Casarões 2016). Also, Brazil is now the second largest debtor to the UN, after the US.

8. Behind the US, the EU and Canada.

9. Some view Brazil as seeking to reform existing institutions to confront the prevailing system; Patrick (2010) characterised Brazil as an ‘irresponsible stakeholder’ and Schweller (2011, p. 293) argued Brazil was ‘the most revisionist of all emerging powers … a rising spoiler’.

10. For Smith (2015, p. 28) and Milani (2015, p. 42), while rising states demand reforms for a more equitable form of multilateralism, based on a discourse of global justice, they primarily use multilateral institutions to promote their interests, meaning change does not necessarily entail a ‘democratisation’ of governance, but their inclusion in the process from which they are excluded.

11. The reform of the IMF quota/voting shares were on-hold until the ratification of the 2010 proposal by the US Congress in late 2015.

12. Yet, due to budget constraints and President Rousseff’s little interest in foreign affairs, Brazil struggles to complete development projects (delayed and undergoing difficulties), concentrating on concluding the already begun projects. Sombra Saraiva signalled frustrations in Africa, due to unfulfilled promises: ‘Brazil promised, particularly to developing countries in Africa, to contribute to their development, and it is already known, in African capital cities, that Brazil does not have the means to achieve this diplomacy’ (Dias Carneiro 2015).

13. Brazil suffered from analogue pressures from the international community to abandon its nuclear ambitions, achieving uranium enrichment despite international opposition. The US Congress even imposed sanctions on Brazil in the 1980s, when Brazil’s military regime pursued nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technology (Patti 2010, p. 190, Stuenkel 2014, p. 2). For Parsi (2012, p. 174), Brazil’s own programme was at the heart of the matter; as a non-nuclear weapons state, with an advanced nuclear fuel-cycle capable to enrich uranium, Brazil might come under scrutiny and have its right to enrich denied.

14. Yet, Brazil came to the Doha Round seeking significant gains on agriculture; Hopewell (2016) expresses doubt on the potential benefits gained by developing countries from agricultural liberalisation and the elimination of subsidies.