MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro's offensive foreign policy tweets have created at least twelve disputes with world leaders

Bolsonaro latest target is Chile's ex president Michelle Bachelet, whom he took aim lauding how “communists like her father” were dealt with by the Pinochet regime

Offending French, German, Norwegian and UN leaders along the way, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has embarked on a diplomatic scorched earth policy that is fueling concern over potential long-term damage to Brazil's global relations.

The far-right head of state has made a habit of speaking undiplomatically, wading into disputes with foreign leaders particularly when it comes to defending Brazil's sovereignty over the Amazon and its human rights record.

A graphic in the leading Brazil daily Estado de Sao Paulo shows “Bolsonaro's international controversies” and lists no fewer than 12 countries or regions he's managed to insult.

His latest target is Chile's former president Michelle Bachelet, whom he took aim at this week by lauding how “communists like her father” were dealt with by the 1970s Augusto Pinochet regime. Bachelet's father died in prison in 1974 after being tortured.

Bachelet, now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, had set Bolsonaro off by voicing concern over “a narrowing of the democratic space” in Brazil.

In the midst of his spat with Emmanuel Macron over the Amazon fires, Bolsonaro mocked the first lady Brigitte Macron's looks in a Facebook post deemed “extraordinarily disrespectful” by an exasperated French president.

One of his cabinet members also referred to Macron as “an opportunistic cretin” -- that was the education minister -- while another, high-profile Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, said Brigitte Macron was “truly ugly.”

So unfiltered and vulgar has the rhetoric become under Bolsonaro that he no longer seems aware of normal diplomatic limits, a concern that political commentators say embarrasses many Brazilians.

When Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel suspended subsidies to an Amazon conservation fund in protest at Bolsonaro's policies, she was told to go and “reforest Germany.”

Bolsonaro also took aim at Oslo, which similarly withdrew funding, by broadcasting videos of “Norway-sponsored whaling” -- though the pictures were actually shot in Denmark.