That’s what thinks ambassador Antonio Patriota, the man chosen to succeed Foreign Affairs minister Celso Amorim in the incoming administration of president-elect Dilma Rousseff.
In a brief résumé on Brazilian foreign policy delivered a few months ago for the magazine Política Exterior (Foreign Policy) the current Director General of Itamaraty (seat of the country’s Foreign Affairs ministry) praises the “diversification of associates” actively supporting neighboring countries and defends a strong protagonist Brazil in world affairs.
“Brazil has the characteristics that enable it to a greater participation, with special authority, in the current international transformation processes,” and in which “Brazil, India and South Africa emerge as unavoidable partners of such a decision making process,” writes Patriota.
Further on the ambassador, who is known for his cautious approach, argues that “we might not know with precision what is coming, but we can identify the elements of the past which no longer have influence,” and among those are the “traditional governance mechanism elements” in direct reference to the United Nations Security Council five permanent members where decision making currently rests.
According to Patriota the unipolar system with predominance of the US superpower is gradually giving space to a multi-polarity ruled by “multilateral governance structures”. In this new scenario “the US supremacy is seen in a relative declining process,” and failures such as Iraq and Afghanistan “have revealed that the US is not capable by itself to produce and model results at a global scale according to its interests.”
Patriota defines three main axis for Brazilian foreign policy: a reinforcement of the so called ‘traditional relations’, that is the historic friendship with South American neighbors, with the US, Europe and Japan; secondly the “diversification of associates” particularly in the South-South relation, a decision which enabled Brazil to protect itself from the 2008 financial crisis and thirdly a ‘systemic plan’ to support and promote “the improvement of multilateralism and the global governance processes.”
In this scenario the policy of giving Mercosur priority and now the Union of South American Nations, Unasur, is “the correct focus”. Patriota mentions in support of his statement the fact that regional trade jumped from US$ 9 billion in 2003 to US$ 36 billion in 2008.
“The (Brazilian) government did the right thing on opening 35 new embassies, mostly in Africa but also in Asia and the Arab world,” said Patriota adding that the option of a South-South strategy impeded trade with the European Union and the United States from ‘increasing too much.’
Finally Patriota argues that Brazil developed a “foreign policy that avoids false options between North and South, between economics and politics, while at the same time not forgetting to modernize its Armed Forces.