Lula’s radicalism keeps Brazil from leadership in South America

Since taking office at Palácio do Planalto last year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has defined foreign policy as one of the priorities of his third term. The PT member tried to project himself as a world leader but, in the opinion of analysts, he did not even reach the objective of being recognized as a regional leader, according to analysts interviewed by the report. Using increasingly radical and ideological speeches, the Brazilian president has difficulty getting close to right-wing leaders, which makes it difficult for him to project himself as a leader and even as an intermediary for crises in Latin America.

“Lula, at this first moment, is only seeking real rapprochement with his peers. He talks a lot with Gustavo Petro (Colombia), tries to appease the Venezuela issue, he even got closer to Guyana, he is going to Chile in May… . He seeks this rapprochement with peers before trying to expand his political influence to those who are not”, analyzes Vito Villar, who is an international policy consultant at BMJ Consultores Associados.

In this context, the Brazilian is not close to the right-wing presidents Daniel Noboa, of Ecuador, Javier Milei, of Argentina, and Santiago Peña, of Paraguay. Evidence of this is that the PT member was not invited in April to the Foro Llao Llao in Buenos Aires, a traditional economic and technological meeting promoted by Argentina in Bariloche. In addition to businesspeople, the event was attended by the presidents of Uruguay and Paraguay, who were invited by Milei.

“It has been difficult to bring the two political poles together, normally left-wing presidents and right-wing presidents have come together in their own little group and it has been difficult to bring different ideas together. In other words, promoting a journey together but with divergent ideas”, says Vito.

The Brazilian president sought integration of South America at the beginning of his third term. To try to show strength, he organized a meeting of South American presidents in May 2023 in Brazil within the scope of Unasur (Union of South American Nations). The idea was to revive the bloc with the aim of negotiating with the rest of the world with more strength.

However, the event failed after Lula gave special treatment to the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, and minimized the dictatorship in Venezuela, saying that authoritarianism in the country would be just a narrative. Right-wing and left-wing leaders left Brazil complaining about the statements made by the PT member.

The nods to the left-wing dictator Daniel Ortega, from Nicaragua, which had been occurring since before the PT member’s election and the government’s attempts to disrupt the election of Javier Milei, in Argentina, also caused discomfort for Lula.

During the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Commission, in March 2023, the Lula government proposed “dialogue” with Nicaragua. In a statement, Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes in Geneva, Switzerland, stated that “Brazil is ready to explore ways for this situation to be addressed constructively in dialogue with the government of Nicaragua and all relevant actors.”

Indirectly, Lula’s government also sought to support the re-election of President Alberto Fernández, in Argentina. After the country’s economic crisis worsened, Fernández had high levels of rejection among Argentines. A long-time friend of Lula, the Brazilian did not declare support for the Peronist candidate, but sought ways to strengthen his government in an attempt to improve his image among the electorate.

In one of these attempts, the PT member tried to include Argentina in the Brics (bloc formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) so that the country would have access to financing from the Brics Bank. Lula also tried to unlock financing for the country through BNDES for the completion of the Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline, in Vaca Muerta. The attempts, however, were unsuccessful and Javier Milei emerged victorious from the dispute.

Lula says, in turn, that he has good relations with all presidents and countries. His proximity to dictators is one of the factors that keep him away from a leadership role in Latin America, especially because the Brazilian president does not use this proximity to defend diplomatic solutions to end the authoritarianism of these regimes.

Vito Villar states that Lula will hardly be able to articulate his desire for regional integration. The discomfort with Argentine Javier Milei still makes this possibility more distant, according to the BMJ expert. “The two main powers in the region barely talk to each other, how do you create a political group and regional political articulation without the second largest power in the region?” asks Villar.

Bet on creating a leftist bloc in South America was a huge failure

For the analysts heard by the People’s Gazettethe absence of a moderate speech on the part of the Brazilian president, the proximity to Maduro and the frustrated bet on the left-leaning bloc Unasur kept Lula away from better articulation with Latin American leaders, especially those with whom Lula does not share the same vision ideological.

Unasur was founded in 2008 by twelve presidents of the time, most of them left-wing, including Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Hugo Chávez (Venezuela) and Lula himself.

The ideological bias in the group’s discussions alienated countries that contrasted with the leftist political position. Between 2018 and 2019, Unasur was completely dismembered. Former president Jair Bolsonaro was responsible for Brazil’s departure, but countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Paraguay also left the bloc.

Lula tried to reactivate Unasur when he brought together South American presidents in Brasília in 2023. But he encountered resistance from some countries, especially after defending Maduro’s dictatorship. The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle-Pou, was one of the most critical of the PT member’s statement. The Uruguayan president also criticized the possibility of reactivating Unasur due to its ideological bias.

For political scientist Leandro Gabiati, most Latin American countries lack the same thing that Brazil lacks: state policies. “The lack of consolidation of State policies means that political, ideological and government changes make certain agreements and approaches unfeasible. This is not just a problem for Lula, but for Latin America”, he states.

The attempt to reintegrate Venezuela into the geopolitical scenario was what took Lula the most away from his leadership role in Latin America. While Nicolás Maduro abused electoral maneuvers to stay in power, Lula even asked for the “presumption of innocence” for the election called by the Venezuelan dictator for the end of July this year.

The nods he made to Russia in the context of the war against Ukraine also placed Brazil on the opposite side of Western nations and other Latin American countries. In June last year, six months after Lula took office, the French newspaper Liberation placed the PT member on the cover of its edition with the title “Lula, the disappointment” and stated that the president has been acting like “a false friend of the West”.

“The Brazilian president is not the precious ally we imagined, especially when it comes to ostracizing the West’s new pariah: Russia, guilty of an intolerable invasion of Ukraine,” wrote the publication.

Severe criticism of Israel also helped to sink Lula’s international image. The PT member accused the country of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and created a serious diplomatic incident with the Israelis by comparing Israel’s offensive against the terrorist group Hamas to the Holocaust promoted by Adolf Hitler in the Second World War.

The statements helped to further turmoil diplomatic relations in Latin America. Colombia’s leftist president Gustavo Petro of Colombia supported Lula and Argentina’s Milei disapproved of the statements.

South American issues and divergence in the region

Despite resistance from South American countries in resuming Unasur, the leaders agreed to create the Brasília Consensus, an agreement that provides for more meetings to be held, with the alleged objective of increasing trade and improving infrastructure and logistics in the region with “social and gender focus”. The next one takes place in May, in Chile, and Lula has already confirmed his presence. The PT member highlighted that the meeting aims to find a way to align countries with the same objective.

The South American scenario, however, has undergone transformations in recent months and a climate of instability hovers over some countries. In Ecuador, for example, Daniel Noboa’s government invaded the Mexican embassy in the city of Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, who is accused of being involved in corruption schemes across the country.

Maduro’s threats about a possible invasion of Guyana also broke ties between the two countries. Brazil is trying to broker a peaceful resolution regarding the dispute over Essequibo — a territory rich in oil and which represents around 70% of Guyana —, but Maduro is not giving in. Even though he has committed to finding a solution through dialogue to the dispute, the Venezuelan dictator insists on announcing unilateral decisions to take over the region, most of them aimed more at the internal public, such as releasing maps showing the Essequibo region as if it were Venezuelan. .

Javier Milei also faces problems with Maduro. Unlike Lula, the Argentine adopted a critical stance against Venezuela. Amid the insults, the climate between the two countries worsened after Buenos Aires sent a plane from the Venezuelan state-owned company Emtrasur that was held in the Argentine capital to the United States. The decision came after a legal agreement between the two countries.

The aircraft arrived in Argentina in June 2022 with Venezuelan and Iranian crew suspected of espionage. Emtrasur is a subsidiary of the state airline Conviasa. Both are targets of sanctions by the US Treasury Department. The Maduro regime accused Argentina of “stealing” the plane and, in response, closed the country’s airspace to Argentine flights. The decision escalated to a diplomatic crisis between the nations.

For experts, Lula’s preference for rapprochement with his leftist peers prevents Brazil from playing a leadership role in the region. Without good coordination with right-wingers Daniel Noboa, from Ecuador, Javier Milei from Argentina, and Santiago Peña, from Paraguay, the Brazilian president will not be able to encourage, much less lead, any type of integration in Latin America.