Why does a strong Brazil scare Washington?

Time and again, the United States moves to prevent nations around the world from gaining prominence on the global stage. Here in Brazil the situation is no different, as several government and independent analysts have already explained. But why does Washington fear a strong Brazil so much? What is behind the US power project?

From obstacles to the development of our industry to blocks in the transfer of essential Defense technologies, such as the nuclear submarine, the United States seems to want to keep Brazil within a very clear geopolitical order.

More than what it seems, he says Williams Gonçalvesprofessor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), this has been the “strategic determination of the power project” of the United States since at least the Second World War.

“US hegemony in the post-war period was built from a very broad strategic conception”, states Gonçalves. “In Europe, the base was Germany, turn Germany into an important and distant ally of Russia. On the other hand, in Asia, Japan. Japan is an important base of American power.”

“And in Latin America, the basis of hegemony was theoretically elaborated in the following way: there cannot be a great power in the Americas that competes with the United States.”

Brazil: the ability to be a ‘great power’

Brazil is the country in Latin America, especially South America, that has the most potential “to become a great power”highlights Gonçalves.

“It has size, population, natural resources and social cohesion, all the factors that allow Brazil to become a great power.”

For Thiago Rodriguespolitical scientist and professor at the Institute of Strategic Studies at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Inest/UFF), the United States is not against the entirety of Brazilian economic development.

“In the last 20 years, for example, Brazil’s growth, including from the point of view of its strategic leadership in the region, has complemented the interests of the United States”, states Rodrigues. Until then, the country served as point of balance and regional moderation “among governments opposed to the USA.”

Furthermore, the researcher highlights, Brazilian economic development does not occur independently.

“There are interests of capital of American origin in Brazil,” he stated. Within the asymmetric globalized logic, he says, “Brazil depends much more on the United States than the United States on Brazil, so Brazilian growth, in this asymmetry model, also favors the United States.”

In this sense, there is room for Brazilian elites to benefit from subservience to North American interests, points out Gonçalves. “Brazil’s ruling elites sweetly conform to this subordinate position.”

Thus, in the UFF professor’s view, the country is politically divided between a democratic center-left and a “neoliberal right and extreme right”.

“Liberalism in Latin America always goes against integration, it has a colonial spirit.”

US embargoes Brazilian defense industry

It is not because there are US gains in our development that the Americans do not impede it when necessary. One of these examples is the Brazilian Defense industry, which, if well articulated and developed, could rival the United States in the region.

“A Brazil developed from a technological point of view, in the defense sector, has economic and geopolitical impacts that are of no interest to a country like the United Stateswhich have strategic dominance in the region”, says Rodrigues.

The North American military industrial complex is a fundamental part of its economic system, describes the UFF researcher, so the creation of competitors in other countries is not in the interest of North Americans. “From an economic point of view, it means losing contracts from companies in the United States Defense sector.”

This is the case, for example, of sales of the Brazilian Super Tucano plane to Venezuela.

As the model uses certain parts that contain US technology, the sale was embargoed by the USA.

The case of Defense, points out Rodrigues, represents the two areas of North American domination in the region, o economic and geopolitical.

Firstly, being the largest seller of military weapons to the rest of America, the United States is able to impose its sales model: military aid packages, as was the case in Plan Colombia it’s at Merida Initiativetwo security agreements and combating drug trafficking.

“These are large military aid packages that are intended to make a kind of indirect investment by the American State in its own defense economy.”

These packages “deliver money to other countries, But there are conditions in these contracts so that the defense equipment purchased comes from American industries”, he explained.

Geopolitical domination, states Rodrigues, occurs as follows: “[…] like countries they only have the US to turn to in their Defense purchasesthey become dependent on the technologies that the United States wants to offer and cannot establish their own national projects.”

Brazil is a leader in autonomy in the Global South

For both experts, Brazil occupies a certain position of global leadership in autonomy movements against North American hegemony. According to Williams Gonçalves, this is exemplified by the connections made by the country with the BRICS and the rest of the Global South.

For Thiago Rodrigues, what gives Brazil greater global prominence is not its struggle to create new spaces of autonomy that do not oppose each other in a rigid way to the Global North.

“It is not being totally dependent on US global hegemony and also not being a counter-hegemonic power. It’s about increasing spaces of autonomy within the planet’s current hegemonic architecture,” she described.

In this way, says the UERJ professor, he is in fact a leader with the capacity to globalize his influence on some topics, “such as cooperation in energyelectoral systems, public health, public adaptation policies, adapted agriculture and others”.

“These are dimensions that Brazil has capacity and is already developing this potential back and forth in Africa and Latin America.”

Text by Sputnik