Jan 20 2023 | Nº. 50

Editorial

In the aftermath of the January 8 insurrection of right-wing extremists in Brasilia, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s relationship with the armed forces is, at best, ice cold. There have been innumerable reports that the president profoundly distrusts the military as a whole, and a number of high-ranking officers in particular. The lack of respect for the country’s commander-in-chief has been seeping out of the barracks into the pages of the country’s major newspapers. General Sérgio Etchegoyen, for example, former Secretary of Institutional Security under Michel Temer, this week called Lula’s criticisms of how the army handled events on January 8 an act of “profound cowardice.” It was also reported this week that Brazil’s senior army commander told Justice Minister Flávio Dino that “you are not going to arrest people here” when Dino went to oversee the detention of rioters camped outside army headquarters. Representatives of the Lula administration “were confronted with tanks and three lines of military personnel.” Finally, journalist Marcelo Godoy noted that on January 8 an army colonel with links to General Augusto Heleno—one of the generals closest to Bolsonaro—openly called for a coup. “Brasilia is agitated by the action of patriots,” the colonel tweeted, calling the event an “excellent opportunity” for the military “to enter the game, this time on the right side. Where are the brave colonels with troops at hand?

No president has come to office since the return of democracy on such explicitly bad terms with the armed forces as a whole. Lula has committed himself to improving relations with the military, telling journalist Natuza Nery in his first one-on-one interview that “I don't want to have problems with [them], [and] I don't want them to have problems with me, and I want us to get back to normal, that's all.” Defense Minister José Múcio, an experienced and deeply conservative politician who has a longstanding friendship with Lula, was heavily criticized by some of the president’s supporters after January 8. They say Múcio is either too weak or too complicit to stand up to the military. Múcio, however, still has Lula’s trust. He and Justice Minister Dino face the momentous task of bringing the culprits of the January 8 insurrection to justice and preventing anything like it from happening.

The investigation into how the insurrection in the capital was possible moved forward this week with the arrest of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s former justice minister and the man technically in charge of public security in the Federal District on January 8. While Bolsonaro remains in Orlando, with almost daily videos of him coming out wandering through grocery stores, greeting well-to-do supporters in the gated community where he is staying, or playing videogame, there are concerns from those close to Bolsonaro about what Torres might reveal regarding the former president’s involvement in attempts to directly undermine Brazilian democracy. During a search of Torres’ house last week, authoritites found a document that laid out a plan for how the 2022 presidential election could be overturned. The story behind how that document came to be will need to be cleared up, and there is no telling where such an investigation will lead.

Highlights

• SECURITY PURGE. On Wednesday, January 18, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva dismissed 26 heads of the Federal Highway Police and 18 regional heads of the Federal Police. He also removed 53 presidential security personnel linked to the Institutional Security Office. The government suspects that these agents have connection with extreme right Bolsonaro supporters.

• TOTAL DISTRUST. Lula feels that he is surrounded by traitors in the security area. In an interview this week with a television channel, he commented that the intelligence services did not prevent the coup attacks on January 8. The previous day, he stated that he had lost confidence in a part of the armed forces.

• SURROUNDED BY MILITARY. Jair Bolsonaro left behind 1,231 military personnel occupying positions in the Presidential Palace, the seat of the executive branch. This number represents a 20 percent increase compared to the period of the Michel Temer government (2016-2019). The co-opting of military personnel was one of the most striking features of the Bolsonaro government, which treated the armed forces as a private security apparatus, that agreed with his ideological perspectives, including the defense of the 1964 coup and the dictatorship that lasted until 1985.

• COWARDLY ACT. The military's reaction to Lula came in a statement made by Sérgio Etchegoyen, a reserve general who was a minister in the government of President Michel Temer, and who usually speaks to the press about political issues forbidden to active-duty soldiers. Etchegoyen said that Lula's criticism is an act of cowardice because the president knows that the military cannot respond publicly to the accusations that are being made against it.

• FEDERAL ISSUE. As in the United States, Brazil’s police are subordinate to the governments of the 27 units of the Federation – the 26 states plus the government of the Federal District, Brasília. The Lula administration only has control over the federal police and the armed forces. In this regard, the Supreme Court was the body with the power to order the arrest of Anderson Torres, the now former secretary of public security for the Federal District and Bolsonaro’s former minister of justice. While searching his residency, police found a draft of a decree that, in practice, would have curtailed the powers of the Federal Election Commission and prevented Lula's victory. The decree was never implemented, but it could be used against Torres for violating articles of the Constitution of 1988.

• MEGA CASE. Until January 17, the police held more than 1,400 prisoners in the Federal District for their involvement with the events of January 8th. The judiciary is currently overloaded with the legal procedures related to a single case, which involves, for example, the analysis of images captured by security cameras of more than 200 commercial establishments in the capital. Each prisoner will be able to summon up to eight witnesses, which could involve thousands of people accused of involvement in the invasion of the seats of power of the three branches of the government.

• EUROPEAN SUPPORT. A week after U.S. senators and congressional representatives expressed support for Lula and condemned the pro-Bolsonaro extreme right, the European Parliament made a move in the same direction. The parliamentary body of the European Union issued a statement that “condemns in the strongest terms the criminal actions committed by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.”

• HADDAD IN DAVOS. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad stated that Brazil intends to review the process of joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He explained that there is a working group dedicated to reviewing the matter within the Brazilian government, and the final decision rests with Lula.

Feature Article

Brazil’s South-South Cooperation is Back 

By Laura Trajber Waisbich

In his election victory speech President Lula da Silva vowed to “bring Brazil back” to the world stage. This motto has been repeated again and again by Lula, as well as by many of his recently sworn-in ministers. Central to this project are Brazil’s South-South relations. Strengthening ties with the “developing world” was at the heart of the Workers’ Party (PT) previous administrations. Lula himself was a great enthusiast of the idea. During his time in office not only did Lula task his closest foreign policy advisors with this mission, but he also personally championed it through his charismatic presidential diplomacy.  

Undoubtedly, and despite the many ebbs and flows, under the PT, Brazil lived a “golden era” for South-South cooperation. The government championed regional integration, built strategic alliances with rising powers (including under the BRICS umbrella), and became a “provider” of policy and technical solutions to lesser developed countries (notably in Latin America and Africa). It also invested in boosting its own credentials as a leading voice of the developing world in multilateral fora. 

Not unlike other realms of foreign policy, each one of these facets of Brazil’s “South-South agenda” contained several inconsistencies and were far from consensual. While it is healthy for foreign policy agendas to be challenged “from within” and to generate disputes over priorities, actors involved, and resources, during the PT-led period of active and assertive foreign policy (política externa ativa e altiva), however, Brazil experimented an unprecedented period of politicization, as well as partisan polarization, over Brazil’s international identity and diplomatic moves. Most of the commentaries about the South-South agenda, however, missed the point. Far from a question of ideology, improving one’s ties with the region and the developing world is a pragmatic tool to make the existing geopolitical context more conducive to one’s own development and aspirations. It makes no sense for a country like Brazil not to invest in having good ties to its neighbours, or to exclusively trade and exchange goods and services with industrialized countries and overlook markets and expertise based elsewhere. Criminalizing one’s relations with the developing world is not only short-sighted, it is a mistake. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the value of learning from and exchanging with the South on policy responses, as well as aligning with other developing countries to collectively negotiate better access to strategic inputs. 

From global health to global trade, having good relations with the “wealthy countries” is necessary but far from enough. Looking forward, Lula and his foreign policy makers are poised to resume this vast array of South-South cooperation efforts, as a soft power using strategic tools for Brazil. Take for instance the environmental agenda. Here, South-South relations are an essential component of the much-needed renewed Brazilian activism on this pressing global challenge. On the one hand, there is no solution to the daunting challenge of reverting deforestation and environmental crime in the Amazon without our neighbours. On the other hand, from climate to biodiversity negotiations, there is global room and appetite for re-making Brazil as one of the leading Southern voices, reinforcing the country’s traditional stance of bridging environmental protection and socio-economic development agendas. One can also expect the new government to resume Brazil’s diplomatic activism in other multilateral arenas, including peace and security, global health, and inclusive development.

While Brazil’s voice is important (and still very much needed), global politics are very different from what they were when the Workers’ Party was removed from power in 2016. Not only has the world became more volatile, but also “the South” is increasingly a diverse entity. Larger developing countries do not always represent (and worst still, might even enter into conflict with) the positions of smaller countries. Climate change is again a good example. Small-island states expect large emitters from the South, like China, India, and Brazil, to do more than point their fingers to historic emitters in the North and accept their own share of common but differentiated responsibilities. The same goes for other public goods, including global development goals. 

Besides understanding its own role and identity as a major developing country in a changing world, the new government will have to address some important bottlenecks in order to make South-South cooperation a useful tool as Brazil returns to the global stage. First, Lula has to include it in the budget and governmental structures. This means having specialized human resources for international cooperation within governmental ministries and enacting legal and institutional reforms, including approving a long-standing international development cooperation law that can help Brazil to better operationalize and use its development cooperation initiatives as a foreign-policy instrument. It also means creating better interfaces with policy, science, and society on foreign-policy-related issues. Here, the new government must improve diplomatic planning structures within the Ministry of Foreign Relations (Itamaraty) and formalized communication channels among the ministry, the presidency, and different actors in civil society. Rather than old debates, these unfinished reforms can help the new government to make its renewed South-South rhetoric a real tool in the reconstruction of Brazil’s foreign policy. 

Laura Trajber Waisbich is an International cooperation expert. Currently works as a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is also affiliated with three Brazil-based think tanks: the Igarapé Institute, the South-South Cooperation Research and Policy Centre (Articulação SUL) and the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap).

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.