Chico Buarque and Luiz Inácio Lulada Silva gave a good lesson in soft power this Monday at the start of the Brazilian president's visit to Portugal and Spain. "We are here because democracy has finally won in Brazil," Lula said at the presentation of the Camões award to the veteran writer and samba and bossanova artist, exiled during the military dictatorship and fellow traveler of the Workers' Party (PT). , in the Portuguese city of Sintra. Former President Jair Bolsonaro had refused to endorse Buarque's award announced in 2019.
With far-right populist parties knocking on the door in their respective countries, many European leaders – including Pedro Sánchez – have taken note of the strategic success of the Brazilian left and its centrist allies in defeating Bolsonarism.
But if the common rejection of Jair Bolsonaro has served to strengthen relations between Brazil, Spain and Europe, another strongman of authoritarian nationalism, Vladimir Putin, threatens to sour them.
Lula has not hidden a central objective of his international policy: promoting a negotiated solution for peace in Ukraine. Always critical of NATO's permanence and expansion, he has rejected pressure from Washington and, to a lesser extent, from Europe to supply Ukraine with arms. Brazil has condemned the Russian invasion before the UN, but rejects a conflict to wear down Russia's military capacity, as the war has been defined in Washington.
“Lula does not support Russia, but he defends the negotiation, and he wants to maintain the equidistance between China, the United States and the European Union,” Pedro Silva Barros, former director of Unasur, said in a telephone interview.
At 77, the historic leader of the PT has adopted a grueling schedule of trips abroad, beginning, days after he took office in January, with visits to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, then to Washington and Beijing. After the trip to the Iberian Peninsula this week, he will go to Tokyo. All this to reinsert Brazil in the diplomatic circuit after years of pariah status with Bolsonaro.
It is intended to relaunch economic integration projects in South America such as Unasur, strengthen the single market of Mercosur and sign a treaty with the EU that does not involve excessive liberalization of imports. On May 30, a summit of South American presidents will be held in Brasilia and another in August of the countries with territory in the Amazon in the city of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon. European support will be key to promoting multilateral mechanisms necessary to protect the planetary lung.
But playing a central role in achieving peace in Ukraine may be the boldest gamble for the Brazilian government. Lula defends opening negotiations between Ukraine and Russia mediated by China. Experienced and respected diplomat and former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim has already met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow and is expected to visit Ukraine soon.
Criticism of the initiative has rained down from Washington. Also from Brussels, although it is likely that the negotiated solution has more support in Europe than it seems. Amorim visited Paris just after his trip to Moscow. Even in the United States, where popular support for the war is already waning, some applaud the move.
“Everyone loved Lula, now they criticize him,” Peter Hakim, an analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, said in an interview in Washington. “But her way is sensible. Negotiations offer the best solution for the Ukraine-Russia war."
