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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BRASILIA 000057 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR WHA, WHA/BSC, S/P, DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/07/2018 
TAGS: KDEM PREL EAID BR
SUBJECT: BRAZIL: (KIND OF) MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR 
DEMOCRACY 
 
REF: STATE 169367 
 
Classified By: DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION PHIL CHICOLA FOR REASONS 1.4 B A 
ND D 
 
¶1. (C) Summary:  For the world's fourth largest democracy, 
the promotion of democracy abroad remains an important, if 
secondary goal of Brazil's foreign policy, but its focus and 
execution has been only loosely defined under the Lula 
government, limiting potential efforts to forge bilateral 
initiatives with Brazil to non-controversial projects 
targeted at countries not deemed strategic by either Brasilia 
or Washington.  While Lula and his senior officials liberally 
pepper their speeches with references to the importance of 
promoting democratic norms and institutions, practice reveals 
a mixed picture--one where the current set of senior 
policymaker's leftist ideological leanings and skepticism of 
U.S. intentions, together with Brazil's history and 
self-image as a non-interventionist country, exercise a 
strong influence and impede explicit democracy-promotion 
initiatives.  Although the GoB's rhetoric and some of its 
initiatives do leave the door open to spur further engagement 
on Brazil's part, the possibilities for robust policies under 
the Lula government will remain low as long as 
"non-interventionist, but non-indifferent" defines the GoB's 
views on promoting democracy abroad.  End summary. 
 
------------------------------------------- 
Brazil's View of Democracy is Malleable... 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (C) Conversations with foreign policy analysts, members of 
the Brazilian Congress, and working level contacts at 
Ministry of Foreign Relations (Itamaraty) Human Rights 
Division, which handles democracy promotion, reveal an often 
repeated theme that, before the return of democratic rule in 
Brazil almost 20 years ago, the GOB had no articulated policy 
of international democracy promotion.  Even after the return 
of democracy, Brazilian governments have placed a heavier 
emphasis, at the international level, on human rights, 
development, and trade issues.  The situation changed with 
the advent of democracy in both Argentina and Brazil in the 
1980s and with the creation of Mercosul.  Together, these 
developments became the most important factors in reducing 
the historic rivalry between the two neighbors. 
 
¶3. (C) Professor Maria Helena de Castro Santos, who studies 
democratic consolidation in the Americas at the International 
Relations Department of the University of Brasilia, told 
poloff that the importance of democracy in changing the 
dynamic between Brazil and Argentina was not translated 
within Itamaraty into a specific theoretical framework on 
democracy promotion.  Instead, as seen through numerous 
statements made by President Lula and Foreign Minister Celso 
Amorim, almost any foreign policy initiative can be placed 
into the democracy promotion box.  For example, Lula and 
Amorim have claimed infrastructure projects in Latin America, 
development initiatives in Africa, promotion of human rights 
at the United Nations, production and export of biofuels, 
strengthening the multilateral system and reforming of the 
United Nations Security Council, creation of the Mercosul 
parliament, opening agricultural markets in developed 
countries, support for global efforts to fight hunger and 
disease, and its role in international peacekeeping missions 
are all bulwarks of its democracy promotion policy.  These 
can all be classified as such because, in their own words, 
democracy can only be achieved through an educated, healthy, 
hunger-free populace that enjoys peace. 
 
¶4. (C) On the other hand, a mantra heard often in meetings 
with Itamaraty officials, and repeated in public speeches by 
senior Brazilian officials is the view that democracy is a 
means to other ends: namely, social justice, peace, and 
development.  That formulation allows Brazil to defend what 
Foreign Relations and National Defense Committee member 
Federal Deputy Raul Jungmann (PPS, Socialist People's Party, 
opposition; of Pernambuco) described to poloff as 
"democraduras," such as Venezuela--countries that Brazilian 
officials believe are achieving those things even if through 
 
BRASILIA 00000057  002 OF 004 
 
 
illiberal means. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
...But Cautious and Multilateralist Above All Else 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
 
¶5. (C) Officials at Itamaraty often offer grudging support 
for democracy-promotion initiatives not-funneled through 
well-established international institutions.  For example, 
Carlos Eduardo da Cunha Oliveira of Itamaraty's Human Rights 
Division repeated an often-heard Itamaraty line when he told 
poloff that Brazil prefers to work through existing 
international institutions and pour its energies into 
strengthening organizations that already exist, rather than 
engage in new ones such as Community of Democracies or the 
Partnership for Democratic Governance.  Although Brazil 
decided to participate in both of these organizations, some 
at Itamaraty, including Oliveira, remain skeptical about 
their legitimacy and chances for long-term success, as they 
are seen as exclusionary organizations that are not founded 
on the premise of universalism.  As an example, despite 
Brazil's involvement in the East Timor peacekeeping mission 
and the assistance it has given through Itamaraty's 
development arm, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), 
Brazil was reluctant to engage in the East Timorese request 
for democracy capacity building as channeled through the 
Community of Democracies.  In a conversation with poloff, 
Christiane Almeida, a foreign policy advisor in the Brazilian 
Chamber of Deputies, characterized Brazil's role in East 
Timor as "typically timid" and coming "just late enough to 
avoid facing hard choices."  During the November, 2007 
Community of Democracies ministerial meeting in Bamako, Mali, 
contacts at the Human Rights Division told poloffs proudly 
that the Brazilian delegation worked to soften any language 
that was critical of democratic norms in particular 
countries.  One of the few exceptions to Brazil's 
multilateralist, hands-off approach has been the trilateral 
parliamentary capacity building initiative Brazil agreed to 
participate in with the United States in Guinea-Bissau signed 
through a Memorandum of Understanding in March 2007. 
Discreet, uncontroversial, requested by the government, and 
in a Lusophone country, it offered Brazil a project with 
little potential downside that also put it, at least in 
theory, on an equal footing with the US as a donor. 
 
 --------------------------------------------- -------- 
From Views to Policy: Speak Softly and Carry a Carrot 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶7. (C) One of the most salient aspects of Brazil's democracy 
promotion activities under the Lula government is their focus 
on initiatives that can be funneled through diverse 
organizations that highlight what Professor Alcides Costa 
Vaz, Deputy Director of the International Relations 
Department of the University of Brasilia described to poloff 
as Brazil's distinct and independent global reach.  President 
Lula, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, and presidential foreign 
affairs advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia have all characterized 
Brazil's approach to such activities as falling somewhere 
between "non-intervention" and "non-indifference". Many of 
these initiatives are performed outside of region-specific 
frameworks, and are performed in conjunction with a diverse 
set of partners such as the Community of Portuguese Speaking 
Countries (CPLP) or through the IBSA (India-Brazil-South 
Africa) fund. 
 
¶8. (U) Most of the initiatives, proudly cited by Lula as 
helping to build democratic institutions across the globe, 
include the distribution of generic medicines, anti-HIV/AIDS 
projects, training of health care workers, literacy programs, 
establishment of vocational training centers, in almost every 
Lusophone African country; debt forgiveness in Mozambique; 
election monitoring through the CPLP in Sao Tome and Principe 
and Guinea-Bissau; and providing logistics and human 
resources for peacekeeping missions in Angola, East Timor, 
and Haiti. 
 
----------------------------------- 
Venezuela: A Long Way from Ushuaia 
 
BRASILIA 00000057  003 OF 004 
 
 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) A concern for many Brazilian analysts and legislators 
is whether the Lula administration would be willing to employ 
sticks instead of limiting itself to carrots if faced with 
the prospect of a Mercosul partner--namely, 
Venezuela--suffering from a crisis to its democratic system. 
In a meeting with poloff, Elir Cananea Silva, Legislative 
Consultant on International Law for the Brazilian Chamber of 
Deputies, noted one instance in which Brazil has in the past 
effectively used the tools of statecraft to promote democracy 
abroad, during the 1996 attempted coup in Paraguay against 
President Juan Carlos Wasmosy.  At the time, Brazil acted in 
concert with Mercosul partners Argentina and Uruguay and 
jointly issued statements condemning actions against the 
democratic order in Paraguay.  Subsequently, the Mercosul 
countries agreed on the Ushuaia Protocol of 1998, which 
institutionalized Mercosul's previously vague democracy 
clause and laid out specific actions the members would 
undertake in the case that that one suffered from a similar 
situation to Paraguay's.  Among other things, the Protocol 
allows the member states to suspend the rights of another 
member or associate state (currently Chile and Bolivia) if 
its democratic institutions are under threat. 
 
¶10. (C) The analysts and officials with whom poloff talked 
all agreed it was difficult to imagine a repeat of the 
Paraguayan case with regard to Venezuela, at least under the 
Lula administration.  The decision to back entry of Venezuela 
into Mercosul is a political one taken in the interest of 
regional stability, in the hope that bringing President 
Chavez's government into a Brazil-dominated forum will help 
control Venezuela's destabilizing effect in the region. 
Therefore, despite the rising discontent evident in the 
Brazilian media and congress with some of Chavez' 
anti-democratic measures and over his frequent derogatory 
comments about the Brazilian Congress, Itamaraty and Lula 
continue to throw their full weight behind guaranteeing 
Venezuela's entry into Mercosul and are showing little 
concern, either in public or in private discussions, with the 
continuing erosion of democracy within that country. 
Publicly, President Lula and other senior officials deny such 
erosion is even occurring and occasionally go out of their 
way to burnish Chavez's democratic credentials to Brazilian 
media outlets.  Prior to the December 2 referendum on 
amending the Venezuelan constitution, Lula vigorously 
defended Chavez, stating that he could be criticized for a 
lot of things, but not for a lack of democracy. 
 
------------ 
Comment: 
------------ 
 
¶11. (C)  Brazil's engagement in various democracy-promotion 
initiatives is not a strategic objective of Brazil's foreign 
policy.  GOB participation in the various international 
democracy building organizations, its work through CPLP and 
IBSA, and its own development agenda is primarily driven by 
its strategic goal of projecting Brazil internationally as an 
independent global player, with support for democracy a 
secondary goal.  Likewise the GoB bills many of its foreign 
policy priorities, such as in its defense of developing 
country's prerogatives on Doha or its desire to become a 
permanent member of the UNSC, as democracy-building 
initiatives, even when they are primarily driven by Brazil's 
larger objective of increasing its economic and political 
influence on the global stage  When democracy-promotion 
features more explicitly as a goal behind Brazil,s 
international initiatives these tend towards the softer end 
of the policy spectrum, focusing on non-controversial 
development, education, and health projects.  These projects 
constitute the underpinnings of their pro-democracy rhetoric 
and highlight Brazil's growing role as donor country in these 
primarily development-oriented areas.  In addition to 
supporting Brazil's projection of its soft-power, they also 
serve to reduce pressure on the GoB to deal with the 
thorniest issues related to democracy promotion, such as 
pronouncing judgment with regard to particular countries on 
the level of press and religious freedom or dealing with 
 
BRASILIA 00000057  004 OF 004 
 
 
corruption--which also risk highlighting Brazil's poor 
internal record in this last area. 
 
¶12. (C) Comment, cont: As a result, the potential for us to 
engage with Brazil on concrete democracy-promotion 
initiatives (as opposed to development, health or education 
projects that have a positive, but indirect, effect on 
democratic institutions in a given country) will remain 
limited by the priority the GoB place on other goals.  For 
example, being perceived as the junior partner to the US on a 
trilateral project could upset its goal of projecting its 
equal footing as a global power; defending democracy in 
Venezuela would hinder its strategic goals of maintaining 
regional stability and expanding and consolidating regional 
integration.  It is therefore unlikely that Brazil will step 
up to the plate to promote democracy when and where its 
efforts could matter the most.  Nonetheless, even if the GoB 
clearly has not formulated a coherent and consistent 
democracy promotion policy, both Lula and Amorim talk a good 
game by including democracy promotion among Brazil's most 
important foreign policy goals.  This can serve as a basis 
for encouraging Brazilian officials to remain consistent with 
their own avowed goal by assisting burgeoning and threatened 
democracies in tangible ways, and by speaking out in favor of 
democracy where it does not yet exist. 
 
SOBEL