151) Temas de política externa (5): auto-estima na diplomacia brasileira...

O Council On Hemispheric Affairs, entidade americana que, segundo sua própria definição, monitora as questões políticas, econômicas e diplomáticas afetando o hemisfério ocidental, acaba de anunciar a publicação em seu site de um artigo sobre a diplomacia brasileira sob o governo Lula.
Trata-se do artigo do pesquisador senior em política externa brasileira de naturalidade canadense Sean W. Burges, intitulado "Auto-estima no Brasil: a lógica da política externa Sul-Sul de Lula". Ele foi publicado na revista canadense The International Journal.
Abaixo um sumário em inglês desse artigo, que pode ser lido neste link.

Auto-estima in Brazil: The logic of Lula’s south-south foreign policy
Analysis prepared by COHA Senior Research Fellow Sean W. Burges, Ph.D.
Wednesday 11 January 2005

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In an article just published in the International Journal, the leading Canadian foreign affairs journal put out by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, COHA Senior Research Fellow Sean W. Burges investigates the tone and intentions of the diplomatic rhetoric that has been emanating from Brazil since the 2002 lection of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Burges argues that, “the Lula government in Brazil is pursuing a psychologically transformative foreign policy agenda in the global south. The goal is not to overturn or delink from the existing international political and economic system, but to prompt a change in how developing countries are inserted into and view the system.”
While the general content and intentions of Brazilian foreign policy are presented as having deviated little from the pattern established during the Cardoso presidency, the emphasis has turned slightly from seeking developed country cooperation in reforming international institutions to rebuilding developing country self-esteem, the essence of the auto-estima that lies at the core of contemporary Brazilian foreign policy. In short, “Lula is consciously attempting to reframe the development dichotomy, deliberately seeking to reshape notions of southern and Brazilian identity in the international political economy.
Rather than presenting the country as a developing state in need of aid, the emphasis is on Brazil as a complex and highly sophisticated economy and polity that is working to overcome an inequitable internal development pattern.” Significantly, leanings towards the isolationist, intra-Southern orientation of the New International Economic Order of the 1960s and 1970s are found to be absent despite the sometimes exceptionally nationalistic utterances of such key figures as Brazilian foreign ministry secretary general Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães or Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development vice-president Darc Costa.
Burges thus argues that “Although idealist notions of solidarity play an important role in Brazilian diplomatic discourse, they are underpinned by a hard-edged analysis. Expansion of south-south trade and investment is an important part of Brazil’s strategy for economic expansion and development. Moreover, interest-based solidarity plays a central role in the maintenance of developing country coalitions such as the G-20 that Brazil has deployed with great effect in the WTO.”

The rise of auto-estima in Brazil and the growing sense of self-confidence it has created in the country’s foreign and domestic policies finds an international manifestation in Lula’s frequent suggestion that a new economic geography should be constructed, a proposal that has pushed the G-20 group of developing countries forward and provided the underpinning forthe evolution of the India-Brazil-South Africa dialogue forum which is now taking place with such an important potential. Emphasis is squarely on taking advantage of the opportunities that exist within developing countries and, on a competitive economic basis, exploiting the possibilities of intra-South cooperation.
Thus, “Rather than arguing that close economic ties with the north are not necessary, [Lula] suggests that they are neither sufficient nor structurally able to provide the opportunities needed for his country's sustained development. Instead of relying on new opportunities to be created in and approved by the north, the south should actively look to form its own arrangements.”
Isolation is not the rule or the goal; economically rational self-belief is. “Efforts to reshape global economic geography stem from a need to direct the loci of southern attention away from the North if auto-estima is to continue prospering both in Brazil and the global south. The challenge is to create a stable and self-sustaining new economic geography.”

Sean W. Burges (2005), “Auto-Estima in Brazil: The Logic of Lula’s South-South Foreign Policy,” International Journal 60 (3) (Autumn): 1133-1151.

An electronic copy of the journal article can be downloaded at www.coha.org