MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Move closer to Brazil politically and economically, says US Foreign Relations Council

From sponsoring the ousting of Goulart in 1964 to close relations with Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff

Influential foreign policy experts at the New York based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think the United States should move closer to Brazil politically and economically and recommend the creation of a Brazilian affairs office at the National Security Council.

According to an independent task force run by CFR, it is in the interest of the United States “to understand Brazil as a complex international actor whose influence on the defining global issues of the day is only likely to increase.”

As an upside to Brazil, the CFR report recommended that Washington lobby to get Brazil a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, something the previous Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, often went on world tours trying to promote.

During the Cold War, Washington kept a close eye on Brazil, seeing it as the most influential power in the region. It politically — if not strategically — backed a military coup to overthrow left-leaning elected President João Goulart in the 1960s. Goulart’s downfall led to two decades of military rule in Brazil, a trend that occurred throughout Latin America.

The US drifted from Brazilian politics under Jimmy Carter, who grew wary of human rights abuses under the military regime. And once that regime folded and ushered in a new era of democracy, Washington then turned its focus to the financial and economic policies promoted by the big multilateral institutions like the World Bank. The hopes were to create a large Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, a NAFTA on steroids.

The so-called Washington Consensus kept Brazil on the radar until that economic policy wore thin in the late 90s and was crushed under President Lula da Silva in 2001 that started a more autonomous course in Brazilian and Latin American politics. Since then, Washington has turned its back on Latin America, and turned its focus on the Middle East and Asia.

CFR thinks Washington would be wise to look south again, not for new rivalries, but for new, and even stronger partnerships.

The report stressed the importance of regular communication between US President Barack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

“Cooperation between the United States and Brazil holds too much promise for miscommunication or inevitable disagreements to stand in the way of potential gains,” CFR said in a press release on July 12. A mature, working relationship means that “the United States and Brazil can help each other advance mutual interests even without wholesale policy agreements between the two,” notes the report.

The Task Force also recommended:

1. U.S. Congress eliminates the ethanol tariff on Brazilian sugarcane ethanol in any bill regarding reform to the ethanol and bio-fuel tax credit regime.

2. US waive visa requirements for Brazilians by immediately reviewing Brazil’s criteria for participation in the Visa Waiver Program.

3. US State Department create an Office for Brazilian Affairs and the National Security Council (NSC) centralize its efforts under a NSC director for Brazil in order to better coordinate the current decentralized US policy.