Lula, Brasil and BRICS: anatomy of a betrayal

By Quantum Bird

We have repeatedly pointed out our growing discomfort with the direction that Brazil’s foreign and domestic policies have taken under Lula’s third administration. A representative collection of our complaints can be found in the article “So that’s the cost of Lula’s freedom?“, and articles linked there. As indicated recently here, it works like a continuous escape into an increasingly implausible future, in a game of expectations fostered by a track record of past success – the first two terms, from 2002 to 2010 – and a series of promises that are constantly renewed but never actually kept when the opportunities arrive. In short, a collective frustration of continental dimensions.

The news that President Lula would not be attending the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, due to a domestic accident – the most diffused version reports a fall in the shower – came across to the most attentive observers as a bad omen. In fact, the presence of Celso Amorim, the president’s special advisor for foreign policy, in the local media, reporting on the accident and assuring Lula’s good health, could never be associated with anything positive. The diplomat has been less and less discreet about his “preferences” for the G20 as opposed to the BRICS, as a platform for multilateral relations.

The bad omen was confirmed quickly enough with the news of the Brazilian government’s veto of Venezuela and Nicaragua joining the BRICS. Amorim explained it like this:

“Perhaps it’s not yet possible to reach a conclusion. I’m not worried about whether Venezuela joins or not, we’re not making moral or political judgments about the country itself. The BRICS has countries that practice certain types of regime, and other types of regime, the question is whether they have the capacity, due to their political weight and relationship capacity, to contribute to a more peaceful world.”

WTF?

Some valid questions follow straightfordlly. Relationship with whom? How exactly would Brazil be contributing to a more peaceful world when the country’s leadership is undermining and indefinitely delaying the resolution of a crisis stemming from an attempted coup d’état and regime change, which could well have led to a civil war in a neighboring country?

Or when, despite all the denunciation, it continues to negotiate various supplies with Israel, indirectly supporting the genocide in Gaza?

Monroe Doctrine, house niggers and field niggers

In fact, the shameful stance of the Brazilian leadership, which invested its political capital heavily in the BRICS to support Argentina’s accession to the group, and refuses to allow Venezuela and Nicaragua to join, is only apparently contradictory. Like everything else related to the BRICS, the key lies in the concept of sovereignty.

In fact, since Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, successive administrations have endeavored to consolidate and deepen the architecture of austerity, economic dependence and reduced sovereignty, resulting from the liquidation of resources and strategic infrastructure due to the capitulation of the — flagrantly inept — left-wing leadership to the hybrid attacks of the US, via Operation Car Wash and other actions, in the first half of the last decade. Summarizing everything, in 2024, there is no shortage of evidence of the Brazilian leadership’s willingness to adapt Brazil to the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, which is being so vocally promoted by General Laura Richardson, head of the Southern Command of the US Armed Forces.

In this context, Brazil is repositioning itself to be the region’s captain-slave – or the house nigger, as Malcom X would say – acting, on the one hand, as a soft representative of Washington’s interventionist policies in South America, and on the other, acting as a containment valve to prevent the BRICS from expanding in the area. The main nuance of this policy consists of not allowing the entry of sovereign countries that openly rival the US and have direct relations with Russia, China and Iran without Brazilian mediation. For this reason, in the short-sighted view of Brazil’s comprador elites, there is no problem in supporting Argentina, which has positioned itself as a junior member and channeled its demands through Brazilian diplomacy from the outset. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are genuinely sovereign countries, with independent bilateral relations with other BRICS members, and outside Washington’s sphere of influence in the region. Again, just watch the continued freezing or deterioration of bilateral relations of Brazil with these countries.

Chain of inversions

The 2022 federal elections have made Brazil a genuine member of the club of Western liberal democracies. The political architecture based on a broad center-right alliance contesting the elections against a so called extreme right, replicating the political landscape of the US and the EU, has made the popular vote obsolete. Polarization has shifted from the class struggle to disagreements over individual morals and customs. Multinational NGOs have taken over popular representation in collegiate pubic forums. The external enemy, historically identified as the US, disappeared from the discourse of the political class, and broad popular sectors, associated with evangelical churches, have became the internal enemy.

Liberal democracies can only be run by making intensive use of political, cultural and cognitive inversions. Coups against democratically elected governments to defend democracy. Mass censorship to protect freedom of expression. Imposition of societal and cultural standards to defend diversity. Economic liberalization, which leads to income concentration, to promote prosperity. Reduction of the statehood, social programs and privatization of public infrastructure to improve services. Etc.

In 2024, all these elements are present in Brazil’s foreign and domestic policies. As far as BRICS is concerned, the main inversion taking place at the moment is the veto on Venezuela and Nicaragua joining, which totally negates the organization’s purpose as a promoter of multipolarity and a platform for exercising sovereignty. Basically, the superficial and obtuse rhetoric of Lula, Celso Amorim and Mauro Vieira matters little, because the fact is that two sovereign Latin American countries, which dare to confront the imperialism of the Collective West in the region and pursue the improvement of conditions for their own people, have been prevented from joining the main instrument for changes in this direction.

Leveraging the veto power in BRICS as an instrument to indirectly implement the imperialist policies of the Collective West in Latin America constitutes an act of economic and geopolitical sabotage, which will inexorably end up qualifying Brazilian diplomacy as a Trojan Horse within the organization. In addition, it calls into question the mechanism of decision-making by consensus between members, which is in force in the BRICS, and raises red flags about the candidacy of countries like Turkey, which as a NATO member would automatically be in a position to play the similar games in Central Asia.

Why is it a betrayal?

The answer is direct and simple. Lula was not elected on the premise of bringing about the definitive conversion of the country into a liberal democracy, nor of consolidating Brazil as a US lieutenant-vassal in Latin America. The millions of workers who voted for Lula sincerely believed his promises that there would be an effort to recover Brazil’s stature, life standards, strategic infrastructure, and a broad exercise of solidarity with our partners on the continent. Lula is not senile enough to forget the platform on which he was elected, and he understands very well that his election will be for an indefinite period the last exercise of a de facto popular vote to elect a ruler on the basis of a truly progressive political, social and economic recovery program.

So, what changed in man between 2010 and 2022?

A very popular explanation suggests that Lula version 3.0 is a hostage who has negotiated his release from prison, and the rescue of his personal dignity, with his native and overseas tormentors, in exchange for the votes needed to defeat Bolsonaro in 2022 and guarantee the arrival of the Broad Front for Democracy to power, restoring political normality in the country around a new center-right liberal pact. Personally, I believe there is some truth in this. According to the proponents of this theory, this is a politician under blackmail, as evidenced, for example, by the US initiative to investigate the purchase of Gripen fighter jets by the Brazilian air force in 2014. The deal led to an accusation, within the scope of Operation Zelotes, of alleged influence peddling by Lula and one of his sons in the deal. The investigation was closed in 2022 by Ricardo Lewandowski, of the Federal Supreme Court and current Minister of Justice, due to the absolute lack of evidence. The fact is that Lula was imprisoned on the basis of fraudulent cases of this kind, and even like this, some of his staunchest accusers are now part of his government. The vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, is an excellent example.

Contrary to what it might seem at first glance, this explanation does not excuse Lula. If this is indeed the case, we are under the leadership of a man who has put his personal circumstances above the present and future well-being of his people, and would therefore not be up to the task of guiding Brazil towards multipolarity as a sovereign country loyal to its geopolitical partners.

Available in portuguese at Saker Latinoamérica: https://sakerlatam.blog/lula-brasil-e-brics-anatomia-de-uma-traicao/