Brazil and its neighbours - Foundation Office Brazil
Brazil, with over 200 million inhabitants, is the largest country in Latin America. Chile and Ecuador aside, it borders every country in the continent. It ranks fifth worldwide when it comes to population and territorial dimensions.
When it comes to foreign policy, however, Brazil has been a fairly passive actor since the Second World War. This tendency was only somewhat changed in the 2000s with the advent of Lula da Silva's presidency. From then on Brazil began a rather more active line of foreign policy, creating new embassies in various countries, with a particular focus in Africa. Equally, Brazil began to make its mark in the field of international conflict resolution and also established partnerships with other emerging countries.
There is little doubt today that Brazil is the second major power of the American continent. An emerging country, also known as “the country of the Future”, Brazil is today part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and of its ensuing construct: the IBSA democracies (India, Brazil, South Africa) all of which act as leaders in their respective regions.
Since Dilma Rousseff's presidency Brazilian foreign policy has, however, returned to a position of relative inactivity. Independent initiatives and concepts are lacking; the giant has shifted its focus to domestic issues anew. Similarly wanting are efforts towards greater integration within the MERCOSUL framework, which Brazil as the strongest member of the group should spearhead. Besides this, since 2010, Brazil has only rarely taken political standpoints regarding even those events occurring in its immediate surroundings. This silence became particularly loud in 2015 when the Brazilian government made no official statement regarding the political and economic crises raging in neighbouring Venezuela.
The intention of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is to give an overview of Brazil's relations with its neighbours. Every two weeks, the “Brazil and its neighbours” series will publish scientific analyses in Portuguese by select authors about Brazil's relations with its Spanish-speaking neighbours. The views there expressed shall not necessarily represent those of KAS Brazil. The purpose of these publications is to make the general round-up of Brazil's relations with its neighbours. We shall begin with the publication of documents on the Andean Pact prior to analysing the relations with other MERCOSUL countries. We intend thereby to contribute to a better understanding of Brazil's regional foreign policy, analysing the bilateral relations of the Lusophone regional power, as well as galvanising interest in and comprehension of the key issues of Brazilian foreign policy in general.
