Are Brazil’s President-elect Dilma Rousseff and U.S. President Barack Obama capable and ambitious enough to create an alliance that would define the Western Hemisphere in the decades to come? According to columnist Moises Naim of Spain’s El Pais, if President Obama can grab the chance that his predecessor George W. Bush passed up – the potential opportunities would be enormous.
For El Pais, Moises Naim writes in part:
A powerful alliance between Brazil and the United States may be one of the most important geopolitical innovations of our time – and perhaps the most viable. It isn’t that Brazilian soldiers are going to die in arbitrary U.S. wars or that Brasilia would abide by the dictates of Washington. Those times are gone, and the United States can’t even rely on the unconditional support of traditional allies like the British or Canadians.
This is about reaching a series of “very possible” agreements on key issues that are important for both countries as well as the rest of the world. From trade relations to climate change, from financial reform and international trade to nuclear proliferation or the way the world handles the inevitable dislocation caused by the growing economic and political might of China, India, and of course, Brazil. It’s obvious that both countries should make concessions and that for the superpower of the North and the giant in the South, it won’t be easy to accept some of the other’s conditions. But that’s the way things work. It’s vital to understand that these commitments would be a price worth paying to forge an alliance that can have such enormous positive impact.
My suggestion, then, is that Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s next president, make Barack Obama an offer so attractive that he can’t afford the luxury of rejecting it. For many reasons, Obama will be much more receptive to this chance to make history than his predecessor. For Brazilians, this will involve a difficult change: to stop believing that what’s good for the United States is bad for Brazil. Sometimes it is, and the interests of one clash with those of the other; but in many cases – no. In fact, the areas where there are common interests are more numerous and important than those where there are, and will remain, irreconcilable differences.
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