By Tom Fowdy
Left-leaning titan Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as just "Lula" has been re-elected President of Brazil. The tightly fought second round of the contest saw him pip Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Lula's disgraced predecessor, for leadership of the second most populous country in the Americas and the biggest in the Latin American world.
The news of Lula's victory has not gone down well in Washington, where the Trump administration has barely disguised contempt for the veteran left-wing leader, and considerable sympathy towards the Bolsonaro family, with Flavio having fled for Florida claiming the election had been rigged and facing investigation over several alleged crimes including corruption and money laundering.
Indeed, the re-election of Lula is a thorn in the side of the US. Why? Because Lula, President of a country as large as Brazil, advocates a geopolitical strategy of multipolarity and pursues close engagement with countries such as Russia and China. This itself becomes a direct obstacle to the Trump administration's immediate and explicitly stated foreign policy priority of securing complete hegemony over the Western Hemisphere region, or "The Americas" in a strategy that has been widely described as a "new Monroe doctrine."
Since returning to office, the Trump administration has placed emphasis on securing power over its immediate geographic proximity as a fundamental national interest of the United States, both in terms of economics and security. This goal has manifested in a number of policy actions. This has first included terminating or strangling hostile regimes in the Americas, with military force having been used to depose Nicholas Maduro from Venezuela and turn he country into a pro-US, pro-Israel client state, while imposing a crippling fuel embargo on Cuba. Havana's revolutionary regime has held on, but severely impoverished.
Secondly, the Trump administration has sought to advocate greater economic and strategic control over the region and its critical resources. While this again takes us back to actions in Venezuela, it also includes making threats to annex Greenland as a ruse to expand US influence in the country, while coercing Panama to dump Chinese ownership from its famous canal. This moves to the third point: whereby trade wars and tariffs are being used to forcibly realign supply chains in the region in a way which favours the US and aims to exclude China, which has yielded some success with Mexico, but backfired on Canada. Then, finally, supporting and assisting the rise of right-wing administrations into power in South American democracies.
As a result, the re-election of Lula represents a frustration of US goals. In terms of hypothetical future power and influence, Brazil is the only country in the Americas that, if its condition improved, has the capacity to become a great power in its own right and thus exert a check on the United States's unbridled power within its own region. This is because it is the 5thlargest country in the world and the 7thmost populous. However, the Portuguese-speaking giant has been held back by severe economic stagnation over a long period of time and it is only now starting to recover from. Brazil's gross domestic product dated from 2011 continues to be higher than today. The country has experienced a "lost decade" so to speak.
It goes without saying that Brazil's desire for economic development leads to the inevitable calculus that it cannot afford to become an economic subservient to a unilaterally aligned "America first" economic order in the western hemisphere. The Trump administration sets trade terms whereby countries are expected to capitulate to one-sided American preferences, for often only partial tariff relief in exchange. Instead, Brasilia has subsequently courted Chinese-led investment, especially in sectors such as Automobiles, because it brings jobs and exports to the country. This subsequently dilutes the White House's strategy to try and force China's economic influence and footprint out of the Western Hemisphere, not least because Brazil is by far the biggest and most significant country in South America itself.
Lula, as noted, is an advocate of multipolarity, and one of the key figures in the group commonly known as "BRICS" (Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa). While BRICS was originally positioned as the "economies of the future", that admittedly hasn't quite worked out, not least because Russia has faced isolation over Ukraine, India initially tilted towards the US (Although not now) and South Africa is increasingly a basket case. Still, these countries represent the most influential powers from the non-Western, non-US-aligned part of the world, and continue to advocate geopolitical multipolarity. It is therefore no surprise that Lula's re-election has been met with a frosty reception.
We should expect the Trump administration to threaten and apply tariffs on Brazil, given its own economic model will not align with the White House's preference and they will seek to stop it becoming a backdoor for 3rdcountry made Chinese products. For Beijing, however, they will nonetheless be quite content that for all their bluster, Trump has not been able to eject them from the Americas yet, and this geopolitical competition will continue.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | Why Ukraine peace isn't as easy as an electoral wishlist
Opinion | Understanding Trump's 'stage-managed hostility' in diplomacy and acts towards Ukraine
Opinion | 'Building Bridges'- How North Korea went from isolated pariah to strategic counterweight
Comment