Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0050/00508.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 20KB | 323 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00508}
$Pretitle{220}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 4E.   Other Relations}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{James D. Rudolf}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{brazil
united
states
brazil's
brazilian
trade
africa
early
relations
foreign}
$Date{1982}
$Log{}
Country:     Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      James D. Rudolf
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 4E.   Other Relations

United States Relations

     Brazil greatly expanded the scope of its foreign relations in the 1970s
and early 1980s, but the United States remained its most important foreign
relationship. Although it had lost its primacy of previous years (in 1960, for
example, nearly half of Brazil's trade had been with the United States), the
United States remained the single most important market for Brazilian exports,
its largest single supplier of imports, its largest source of bank financing,
and the largest foreign investor in Brazil.

     From the Brazilian perspective, economic matters dominated the agenda
between the two nations. This had not always been the case. The close
cooperation between the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (Forca Expedicionaria
Brasileira-FEB) and the United States Army in Italy during World War II was
the beginning of a long and fruitful consensus in matters of international
politico-military strategy. When rising Brazilian nationalism combined with
economic slowdown in the late 1950s and early 1960s to bring to power
leftist-populists who threatened that consensus, the United States pursued a
destabilizing policy against the government of President Goulart and then
strongly supported the military government (many of whose members had been
part of the FEB) that came to power in the 1964 coup d'etat (see The
Presidency of Joao Goulart, ch. 1). The renewed consensus was symbolized by
Brazil's supplying troops (including the figurehead commanding general) in the
United States-sponsored intervention in the Dominican Republic. United States
economic and military aid flowed freely into Brazil between 1964 and 1971.

     In contrast, Brazilian foreign policy officials showed little interest in
the politico-military agenda set by the administration of President Ronald
Reagan in the early 1980s. Specifically, efforts to interest Brazil in the
Central American problems and in a military alliance to protect the South
Atlantic were either ignored or received coolly in Brasilia in 1981 and 1982.
United States support for Britain in the Falklands/Malvinas war of 1982 also
diverged from Brazil's neutrality. In a more general sense, Brazilian leaders
no longer shared, as they had during nearly three decades of consensus, the
competitive bipolar geopolitical vision that had waned under the detente of
the 1970s but was being renewed in the early 1980s. In a 1981 address at the
ESG, Minister of Foreign Affairs Guerreiro was critical of both the United
States and the Soviet Union who, in the renewed competitive climate, "seek to
reinvigorate alliances and blocs and to reaffirm vertically dependent
relationships." In such an atmosphere, he continued, "the idea of an
international community is replaced by a dichotomy of friend and enemy, in
which the very concept of friendship is utilized as an instrument to further
reinforce vertical dependence and the concept of loyal friend is corrupted to
mean docile ally or satellite."

     This jealously independent stance had emerged gradually over more than
a decade, which had seen an increasingly self-confident Brazil willing to
differ publicly with the United States when important self-interests were at
stake and willing to sever ties no longer deemed necessary. In 1970 President
Medici had unilaterally declared a 200-nautical-mile territorial sea off the
coast of Brazil. Although at odds with the 12-mile position declared by the
United States, a compromise was later made that allowed American shrimp
boats to operate (upon payment of a tax) in the rich waters at the mouth of
the Amazon. In 1974 Brazil loudly protested when the protectionist United
States Trade Act and the imposition of countervailing duties on the
importation of Brazilian shoes threatened its most vital export market. More
important, 1974 saw the United States-concerned over nuclear proliferation and
disturbed by Brazil's failure to sign either the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco,
which prohibited nuclear weapons in Latin America, or the 1968 Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons-remove some guarantees for the long-term
supply of nuclear fuel. The guarantees had been part of a contract between
Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which built Brazil's first nuclear reactor,
and the Brazilian government. Brazil, counting heavily on nuclear power in
its long-term development plans, was deeply disturbed by the United States
government decision and the following year signed a wide-ranging nuclear power
agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), which provided
that the West Germans would supply facilities for nuclear fuel to Brazil.

     The United States-Brazilian rift was exacerbated in 1977 when newly
installed President Jimmy Carter pressured the West German government
(without consulting Brazil) to cancel its two-year-old deal with Brazil.
Although the Carter effort failed, Brazil was offended by what it viewed as
United States efforts to undercut its sovereign rights. The issue remained a
source of sensitivity that was partially alleviated by the new United States
administration that in 1981 pledged to make every attempt to become a reliable
supplier of nuclear fuel.

     Another source of irritation during the Carter years centered on the
issue of human rights. When the administration's first human rights report
appeared in March 1977, it was uncompromisingly critical of the situation in
Brazil; in response, the Brazilian government promptly announced the
unilateral severance of their 25-year-old military aid agreement. Although
United States military assistance to Brazil had been minimal since the early
1970s, a number of United States military personnel were obliged to return
home, and the rebuff was important as a symbolic expression of Brazilian
independence.

     The easing of the United States government stance with respect to human
rights and nuclear safeguards under President Reagan held promises of marked
improvements in bilateral ties. Indeed, Figueiredo's May 1982 visit to
Washington was the first by a Brazilian president since 1971, and Reagan
returned the visit the following November-his first official visit to a Latin
American capital-in order to illustrate the importance the United States
placed on its relationship to Brazil. Both visits were marked, however, by a
growing list of complaints against United States policies which, Brazil
claimed, were adding to its economic difficulties. When taken together, these
disagreements created what Riordan Roett of the Center for Brazilian Studies
at Johns Hopkins University termed in early 1982 "the increasingly tense
economic relationship between Brazil and the industrial world, particularly
the United States."

     One area of concern was Brazil's foreign debt, which loomed as a
potential problem to both countries. American banks, which held some 60
percent of these loans, were concerned about repayment, although they,
as well as the United States government, maintained a discreet silence on
the subject. Brazil was neither discreet nor silent, publicly condemning
high interest rates in the United States as having greatly increased the
burden of Brazil's foreign debt and calling on the United States to
"loosen the pursestrings" at the World Bank and the IDB. The United States
had led efforts to make multilateral loans less available to Brazil and to a
handful of other nations it termed "newly industrializing nations"
because of their relatively large GNPs, but a promised US $1.2 billion loan
announced during Reagan's 1982 trip marked what Brazilians hoped would be
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