In a simple metaphor, Brazil’s role in the leadership of the G20 can be summarized as “drying ice”. This is not the result of mistakes made by Brazilian diplomacy under the current government. Any country with the same status that Brazil enjoys in the international system would suffer the same limitations in an era in which great powers, who possess economic and military power, prioritise their interests. The country is considered a middle power, with a certain regional influence, but no presence on a global scale.

We’re not just in the world of America First. China First, Russia First, EU First: each looking after itself instead of trying to establish a minimum of coordination between them on issues such as global warming, trade and international security. It’s not easy for middle powers to be able to talk big with the rest of the world.

Even so, regional powers can influence specific elements of relations between countries and, therefore, of the global order. Compared to India’s presidency of the G20 the previous year, Brazil has made notable progress on social issues, having put the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty on the agenda, which is in line with Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals 1 (poverty eradication) and 2 (zero hunger and sustainable agriculture).

A fund to combat disinformation

Under Brazilian leadership, the debate on combating climate change has also gained even more priority, with an emphasis on optimizing funds for this global challenge, including the idea to be presented in Rio de Janeiro of forming a fund to combat the spread of disinformation in the sector.

These points contrast with the lack of progress in the debates on the much-needed global governance reforms. Success requires dialogue with the Russians, the Americans, Chinese and Europeans.

With Trump back in the White House, Moscow at war with Ukraine and Beijing grappling with internal economic problems, only the EU – at least for as long as it isn’t captured by ultra-right-wing forces – tends to show the slightest willingness to join a global action agenda.

Nationalisms overshadow global alliance

That’s unless the interests of the major powers change even more as a result of Trump 2.0’s actions. For example, in an era of growing nationalism, what’s the point of supporting a global alliance to fight hunger and poverty if countries seek unilateral or bilateral solutions, partnering with regional allies or those with whom they have greater ideological affinity? China, whose economic dimension could fill the void left by the United States in multilateralism, is not interested in playing the role of articulating the provision of global public goods either.

The EU and other European political actors, notably the UK, will have to devote more resources to their own security. This is because Trump has already shown himself to be in favor of an understanding with Russia in the war against Ukraine and is seeking to reduce American commitments within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), thus putting pressure on Europeans to put more money into military spending.

Superficial legacy on climate

On the climate-environment issue, whatever Brazil’s legacy at the G20, the risk of superficiality is even greater. Again, this is because of the changes in sight in the configuration of the power game between the great powers and the interests of other members of the bloc. For example, it is certain that Trump will once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, which should nullify any effect of the energy transition partnership that Lula will sign with Joe Biden during the G20 meeting.

Furthermore, India – which has flirted with great power status due to its nuclear weapons and robust economic growth in recent years – is essentially dependent on fossil fuels and shows no sign of letting go of this. The same reasoning applies to other G20 regional powers such as Indonesia and Mexico.

So, barring a miracle, the Brazilian presidency of the G20 – touted as an instrument to demonstrate Brazil’s ability to play an active role in reshaping the global order in the 21st century – is likely to end with limited results, as other members of the bloc turn a deaf ear on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s desire to lead the world in development.

Lula doesn’t even have the support of Brazil’s main historical partner in the G20, Argentina. Under right-wing leader Javier Milei, Buenos Aires rejects everything Brazil stands for. If we can’t even lead our neighborhood, it’s chimerical to claim an active role in shaping the global order beyond specific issues.

Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira is an associate professor of Economy and International Relations at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP)

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/brazilian-presidency-of-the-g20-is-likely-to-end-with-limited-results-243837

As an ethical point of fact, most articles about Brazil’s new government ought to begin by addressing how many coup attempts President Lula da Silva has survived since coming to office. While Bolsonaro was president, three of them were unleashed on the division of powers as enshrined in the 1988 Constitution. Independence Day 2021 idealized a coup without materializing it. Meanwhile information technologies were pitted to switch the real with the fake on Election Day, October 30, 2022, almost to effect. Then, on a quiet sunny Sunday afternoon, January 8, 2023, a week after his term had actually ended, the plan was but an inferno away from reach as a Bolsonarist horde ransacked the contents of the Oscar Niemeyer designed buildings in Three Powers Square – although not the buildings themselves. 

January 8th marks the most serious coup attempt President Lula has survived, but hardly the only one since he was elected last October. Even before the green-yellow assault was unleashed, politicized officials of the high military command and their families were blocking highways and airports, while camping out in front of bases in complete impunity. In December, one of their ilk was detained for planning to detonate a fuel truck and blow up Brasilia airport. Now, as Lula’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira builds up resistance to the NATO proxy war against Russia, others are likely to follow.

Russia’s Special Military Operation in eastern Ukraine has only begun to count for Brazil.  At its outset a year ago, Bolsonaro was allowed to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Largely a publicity stunt “for the English to see”, it worked to brush aside suggestions the Democrat President was doing business with the Tropical Trump. Although the latter’s visit to Moscow last February appeared to snub the U.S.’s threats against a Russian move on Ukraine, at stake was his agribusiness base’s desperate need for fertilizer. Too obsessed with burning down the Amazon rainforest, agribusiness has failed to use what the Original Peoples developed for millennia as “terra preta”, or black soil. To spruce up the forest’s acidic and basically non-farmable ground, this ancient agri-technology served to cultivate the controlled gardens of forgotten Amazonian civilizations, in which over eighty fruits and vegetables were domesticated and millions lived. In their haste for quick returns, Bolsonarist ranchers and gold prospectors sought to exterminate the People of the Forest, with the Yanomamö almost succumbing to orders allegedly issued by Bolsonaro himself. 

The pressure has grown on President Lula to shift his concerns from the Amazon to the plains of Ukraine. The meeting of defense secretaries and ministers with NATO’s high command in Ramstein, Germany, on January 20, 2023, sent out the message. In turn, the nation’s main media outlets have stormed up a slew of hawkish warpath pieces, similar to those assaulting G7 countries since late 2021. Penned by the likes of Rodrigo Lopes of Zero Hora or the editors of the Folha de S. Paulo, a samba-driven goosestep has begun to echo through newsrooms. On the homefront, a wail rises over the polyrhythms, splitting into a 1/2 between the aggressive-Putin-menacing-kind-democratic-Westerners diatribe, similar to what has fogged over G7 minds for the past year. 

The barrage of Russiaphobia now strives to align Brazilian public opinion to the will of the hegemon as well. It proves the point about how the fifth estate has every bit a vested interest in creating World War III as does the Military-Industrial Complex. Typically casting social media as purveyors of Russian propaganda and fake news, Mass Media is seeking out revenge against the information age – with profits drawn from advertising increasingly soaked in Ukrainian blood and censored outlets that resist their vendetta. With Russiaphobia, media is digging deeper into the advertisement goldmine than it did with a virus called Sars-Cov-2. 

The order broadcast out of Ramstein was to give the Kiev Government’s Head of War, General Valerii F. Zaluzhnyi, the cannon fodder he requested. In an interview with The Economist in December 2022, Zaluzhnyi left nothing to the imagination. Without additional help, as he put it, the Kiev regime would have to concede it had lost the war. Three weeks into a subsequent media blitz, Kiev now confidently announces it is prepared to conquer the Donbass and Crimea. If nothing has really changed on the ground to justify such optimism, it is interesting to note how it all evokes feelings of déjà vu. Was such a plan to assault the Donbass and Crimea not precisely the reason given by President Putin to launch the Special Military Operation in the first place? Indeed, Putin had accused Zelensky’s government of planning to ethnically cleanse these regions of their Russian-speaking inhabitants. Were it to occur now, NATO would simply show itself to be complicit in a racially motivated genocide. It would justify the Nazi spirit present in Western Ukraine since the 1930s.  

One does not have to be a president to spot a genocide in the making, although Lula seems to do so faster than his NATO counterparts. Minister of Defense José Múcio thus received the order to decline the requests issued by the head of U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson and the German government. Chancellor Olaf Scholz returned to Berlin without the tank munition held by the Brazilian Armed Force NATO had requested so as to build the Kiev regime’s third army. A third army, since, if we are to believe Swiss, American, French, German and Russian military intelligence analysts, the first two have been annihilated by Russian forces. During the electoral campaign, Lula had expressed interest in bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiation table, this time without any doom saying English Prime Ministers. His position against participating in the proxy war proves how diplomacy breaks with belligerence by siding with the wise.     

This decision is but the first of a predictable sequence of disputes Lula will face with the US, regardless of what was discussed in his recent meetings with President Biden. Lamentably, nothing changes the fate of Ukraine as it slides into what analysts see as an utter disaster on the human scale with hundreds of thousands already killed. Nor does the future bode clearer for its territorial integrity as its State structure teeters on the brink of collapse as a major Russian invasion awaits. 

The wise also tend to know their history. Minister Mauro Vieira understands what it would mean for Russia to see German tanks on its flanks right after the 80th anniversary of Stalingrad. Lula’s international monetary reputation as a BRICS member hangs in the balance. His current defiance of the autonomy of Brazil’s central bank actually embodies optimism for his country’s future, provided multipolarity continue to materialize.

The first anniversary of the Sanctions War on Russia

Given the depth and density of the CIA-NATO dispatches serving as news these days in the West, it is worth recalling why Brazil’s integrity depends on leaning toward a peaceful settlement. The war in Ukraine did not begin a year ago. Nonetheless, twelve months into the hostilities triggered by the Special Military Operation, Russia’s Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov conceded the situation has “almost become a war”. As Russian General Sergey Suruvikin’s military machine methodically grinds away at what are now Ukrainian, Polish and American military and fascist mercenary formations, silently pulverizing, according to insider reports, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers per day, Lula’s government faces off against the uncertain stance of his own country’s neo-feudal armed forces. 

If taken with the degree of seriousness it deserves, the contempt held by the British and Americans toward things Russian explains the sequence of events from Euromaidan to February 24, 2022, if not from 2008 itself, with their plan to integrate Ukraine into NATO. As analysts examine the events of Euromaidan in 2014, it has become increasingly clear how the United States pre-empted a popular uprising in order to orchestrate regime change. Soon after the support given by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland to neo-Nazi groups in 2014, violence broke out in central Kiev. A shootout ensued, killing eighteen police officers. The pro-Russian camp was accused, and the government sent fleeing. Nuland then gave the green light to ditch the constitution and install a handpicked provisional government. These non-elected leaders, chosen from extremist groups, then moved swiftly to strip the country’s Russian-speakers from their constitutional rights. The Russian language was prohibited from being used in public affairs. They justified their actions as punishment against ousted President Viktor Yanukovych for his corrupt government, buttressed by a group of Russian-leaning oligarchs. However, it was his alleged reluctance to join the European Union that led to his fall.

The hastily built NATO-quality army, shielding its funding by conveniently using gear left over from the Soviet era, headed south to subdue resistance by ethnic Russians to the measures being brought against them in the Rada. These regions, called the Donbass and Crimea, rejected the provisional government in Kiev. In their opposition to the anti-Russian measures, the republics, or oblasts, of Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence and were pillaged in term by the national army. As for Crimea, ever since two referenda passed in 1991, its independence was never recognized by Kiev. Western media seldom mentions that a year after the 1994 Budapest Memorandum by which the former Soviet Republics in Europe pledged to respect their existing borders, Ukraine’s Leonid Kuchma sent troops to overthrow the Crimean Republic’s pro-Russian president Yuri Meschkov on March 17, 1995 – altering its border then to fit within Ukraine. When in 2014 the safety of the Russian-speaking majority was put at risk, Putin’s government supported Crimea’s wish to (re)integrate into the Federation. Settled by a bloodless referendum, the territory returned to its legal homeland. 

The city of Odessa was not as fortunate. Once known as the capital of the Russian Riviera on the Black Sea, it was the scene of a massacre of ethnic Russians by Western Ukrainian Nazis in 2015, with persecution persisting in the years following. As the Ukrainian Armed Forces pillaged Donetsk and Luhansk, leading to over 10,000 casualties on both sides, Russia engaged in negotiations to bring an end to the conflict. With Ukraine, Germany and France, a settlement was sought in two agreements signed in Minsk, Belorussia, known as Minsk and Minsk 2. What these treaties guaranteed was the autonomy of the regions of the Donbass within Ukraine in exchange for recognition of the rights of its Russian-speaking population. As part of the agreement, Russia pledged to disregard the declarations of independence made by the Oblasts in 2014. 

As Kiev explicitly undermined the two Minsk accords, Russia had no option but to recognize the independence of the Oblasts in February 2022. By then, with the assistance of British and American MI6 and CIA forces, the Kiev regime was preparing a large-scale invasion of the Donbass. Prior to the Special Military Operation, Russia sought to negotiate with the U.S. and France in a bid to demilitarize Ukraine, including the separatist oblasts. Instead of agreeing on the need to establish Ukraine’s neutrality to maintain peaceful relations, NATO preferred to taunt and dare the Putin leadership. 

Why these treaties eventually failed was a persistent query in Moscow until Angela Merkel uttered a statement that befell dumbfounded ears ten months into the conflict. From the Western perspective, these treatises, she admitted, “were only meant to give Ukraine time”. Fake befuddlement aside, former French President François Hollande was quick to confirm her claim. Those paying attention years earlier, though, could recall former Ukrainian President P. Poroshenko’s disgruntled smirk about how the treaties were simply aimed at deceiving the Russians while NATO could build up Ukraine’s army. 

That Merkel’s admission drives a dagger into the heart of international law is the least that can be said. At the geopolitical level, in which great powers are pitted against each other, a treaty used to mislead one of the partners plunges them all into the vulnerability of a first strike. Thereafter, nobody is safe. When nuclear states are in confrontation and elected leaders no longer heed the call to cease fire, it is up to the people to break ranks and fight to end the war. To get there though, one needs certified facts.

As much as one might understand the need to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty in this war, it is nothing short of astonishing to observe the extent to which pro-Kiev academics and scholars are willing to go in order to whitewash the violent overthrowing of an elected president. Since 2014, Kiev’s subsequent leaders have outlawed opposition parties, the independent press and non-national religions. It has forced men into conscription, with some accounts suggesting minors might be sent to the front. Nazi supporters of the regime have mounted a kill list to include its critics. This is the shining example of democracy at work that G7 – and now Brazilian – media outlets want viewers to defend.

As the Special Military Operation began, numbers seemed to mean nothing to journalists and the so-called experts called up to explain to viewers what they are to understand. Blinded as they were by militaristic delirium to punish Russia, aka “Putin”, few journalists seemed to have the wherewithal to notice that 190,000 troops are hardly enough to conquer a country, much less invade Western Europe. Self-certain in their glee, journalists hit the warpath, holding that President Putin had to be held accountable. Among his would-be crimes was his attempt at creating a Euro-Asian economic community to rival the E.U. Likewise, former president Viktor Yanukovych was gutted by Nuland due less to corruption than for seeking the best economic deal for the reality of Ukraine’s complex web of ethnicities. Impatient to hear such a message, Western Europeans have simply censored perspectives unfavorable to Kiev’s ultraconservative hatred. Yet for Brazil, Russia, not Ukraine, has been its willing partner in the BRICS, over whose central bank ousted president Dilma Rousseff will now preside.  

An Alliance Rid of Nazis

Behind the revolutionary ethics of Euromaidan come the flags, uniforms and symbols of ultra-right paramilitary groups, such as Azov Battalion, Right Sector, Svoboda, along with other fringe groups. Initially filling the ranks of the provisional government, Azov was culled during Euromaidan from the Patriot of Ukraine and National Socialist Assembly movements. Despite losing representation in the following elections, the movement was blended into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. These are the groups to which Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham pledged their support in 2016, in a meeting that can be identified retrospectively as a time bomb. The Azov Battalion began pillaging the Donbass region for their choice not to comply with the ethnically motivated coup. And extremists they are for pledging allegiance to Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, two Nazi terrorists who acted alongside Allied intelligence networks well into the 1950s to strip Western Ukraine from the U.S.S.R. 

That said, Ukraine is clearly not an official Nazi state. Still, analysts who reduce these groups to a fringe allow their patriotic sentiment to drive them into theoretical naivety and irresponsibility. Once fascists acquire commanding positions in any Armed Forces, a part of the State apparatus veers to the extreme right. Just ask the politically interested Generals who command Bolsonaro about their mission to rid society of the influences of “cultural Marxism”. The customs and traditions espoused by the Kiev regime are not more European than Russia’s. As other European ultra-conservatives, they emerge from the same reactionary, patrilineal and authoritarian culture. Indeed, just like Bolsonaro and his commanding Generals who see their role as social reformers summoned to destroy progressives and the social vision they espouse.

Just as monuments to the military dictatorship dot the landscape of Brazilian parks and cities, throughout Western Ukraine Stepan Bandera’s bust has replaced the statues in honor of those who freed the land from the Wehrmacht. Bandera’s name also adorns the major avenue leading up to Babyn Yar, in central Kiev. That is where Banderites and Nazis executed up to 100,000 Jewish persons from 1941 to 1943, in one of the largest massacres committed outside of the extermination camps.

What is lamentable with Euromaidan is how its undertow soon transformed into hatred of Russia. According to the experts holding sway over western media, Yanukovych would have simply rejected the majority’s wish to become part of the European Union. The insurrection is said to have been triggered by Kiev’s suspension of negotiations. Who in fact refused further talks was Brussels – at the behest of the unelected European Commission. That there might be benefits to becoming a member of the Union, Putin was surely among the first to recognize. Yet his own wish to join the zone was rejected without much explanation by Brussels back in 2002, just as 60 years earlier Joseph Stalin’s request for integration into the Marshall Plan had also been vetoed – despite Russia’s victory over Germany in World War II. 

From the European perspective, already forged by its colonialist ambitions, Russia is a welcome partner so long as it remain a supplier of cheap natural gas, oil, wood and over a dozen strategic metals required to keep consumer costs low for Europeans, and its green technologies growing. What Ukraine ideally has to offer is a pool of cheap labor. That said, its population has dramatically plummeted, estimated according to some sources to have been tragically reduced by half to 20 million. Pro-Kiev propagandists make much of the country’s scarce natural resources. If anyone understands how capital is a social relation driven by the accumulated wealth produced by the backs of labor, it is Goldman Sachs and BlackRock. The untold story of the horrendous suffering imposed on civilians is how these two financial hegemons have transformed Ukraine into their private property – the fulfillment of an OSS/CIA wish list first idealized in 1944. 

The economic war now waged against Russia through the sanctions imposed by the European Commission, led by hyper-hawk revolving-door lobbyist Ursula von der Leyen, brings nothing new to the geopolitical chessboard. It might stand as testimony to further ambitions, no matter the superior economic growth projected for Russia in 2023 and 2024 as compared to the EU. Yanukovych’s hesitation to negotiate for EU integration actually thickened the plot Western media is uninterested in discussing. The historical record show no country has joined the EU before joining NATO first. 

Analysts who sing the praises of how European Ukrainians look – white faces, blonde hair and blue eyes as evidence – fail to hide their Russiaphobic racism. Given such Aryan hallucinations, one might wonder why they fought the Nazis at all – a tragedy were such nostalgia not whispered by the lips of many. Yanukovych was simply the first eastern European leader to attempt to disconnect the EU membership from NATO integration. His government was jettisoned for its efforts. 

Brazil’s bid for balance

The censorship of Russian accounts of the war has not been institutionalized in Brazil. Pollster would be well advised to investigate the link between the all-out warmongering attitude existing in countries like France and its devastating extermination of critical perspectives. By contrast, few countries are as adamant for peace as Brazil. It is easy to deride the country for its social unrest, pitted by its landed and financial oligarchy against any move in favor of land distribution. Behind the flash of favela-bound violence, inequality is perpetuated by the same castes as those who benefitted from four hundred years of slave labor, when not by its firearms manufacturing cartel, led by the likes of Taurus, a world leader. Such internal violence should not be confused with the country’s diplomatic stance on the international front.  

Danger is what now lies at stake in Europe, if not for the planet as a whole. Through its TASS agency, the Russian leadership has reiterated it shall not be the first power to use nuclear weapons, unless its territory were to be invaded. Meanwhile, just as the Biden Administration allowed the US the authority of a first strike for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the American and Western mass media howl in unison over how Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons. Far from marshalling the message, Western media is now the menace. Nor is the corporate media alone to blame. Publicly-funded networks, whether by billionaire endowments or democratic oligarchies, merely bring more class to the belligerence.

Assuming critical thinking does not shrink its own media outlets to becoming NATO voice pieces, the Brazilian leadership has three ways to treat this geopolitical conflict. Just like Western Europe and Canada, it can settle into the micro-perspective: by focusing on the conflict zone, it can submit to the reign of simple oppositions. One side is the aggressor, in this case “Putin” or “Imperialist Russia”, while the other suffers as victim: “Zelensky”, or even the “Eastern European states historically dominated by Russia/USSR”. It is the level at which one speaks of “national sovereignty”, the “U.N. Charter” or “national self-determination” within the “rules based” economic order. Such a stance would ensure good standing within a unipolar world. 

Other options are available. The middle-level, or meso-perspective, allows governments and their spokespersons to publicly voice some degree of interpretation. This perspective caters to those who thrive on free speech and freedom of the press, regardless of the censorship applied to claims made by the alleged aggressor, broadcast by either YouTube or RT. It designates the spirit with which the Republic of Turkey had engaged in peacemaking, or the ethical compliance behind international legal treaties, such as the Minsk Agreements were meant to enshrine. It also opens considerations, if not debate itself, about the risks incurred for the G7 by economic sanctions. It questions whether the sacrifices civilian populations have had to endure is justified, as the money sent to “defend Ukraine to the very end” reaches figures in the tens of billions of dollars, largely surpassing what was spent in 10 years of war in Afghanistan. 

Finally, the macro-perspective is another alternative. Through its spectrum, world history is understood according to the great power conflicts instrumental in shaping borders and creating zones of influence. Highly depended on objective facts, it gives rise to the critical considerations required for governments and analysts alike to avoid catastrophes or nuclear war. It also obliges committed stances over covert actions, such as the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 deep-sea pipelines, the operation of biological laboratories on Ukrainian territory or even CIA torture-centers authorized for use in Poland.

Now that Lula’s Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, is set on shutting down deforestation by 2030 and ending further mining in the mineral rich southern Amazon basin, Russia continues to be the world’s leading commodity supplier. Even the Sahel region, still under French control but flailing, fails to compare. When Zbigniew Brzezinski paraphrased Roman Dmowski in his celebrated observation about how stripping Ukraine from an alliance with Russia would maintain the latter merely as a Eurasian empire, the greatest mineral source to its wealth was nickel and China’s GDP was among the world’s lowest. Following a decade of humiliation under neoliberal shock therapy, President Putin surpassed Western expectations by raising the Russia economy to its feet again. 

Ever since the sanctions imposed last year, its growth has skyrocketed. Thanks to U.S. imposed sanctions, the GDP based on purchasing power parity of Brazil’s BRICS partner has risen to sixth worldwide. Indeed, Russia is one of the least indebted countries in the world. After the U.S. literally stole 60 billion dollars of its treasury reserves at the outset of the Operation, Russia’s oligarchs have been forced to keep their money at home. Anglo-American oligarchs had previously stolen Afghanistan, Venezuela and Iran’s national reserves, part or whole – as they have also confiscated Ukraine’s gold reserves, undoubtedly for safekeeping from Moscow. 

One day, G7 denizens might awake to equate their own billionaires to oligarchs, once they open their blind eye and link tax exemption to tax evasion through offshore “wealth-management” zones. If Lula survives politically, Brazil will be set to resume its productive potential, thus raising the purchase power of its own citizens. Bolsonaro’s financiers attempted to deindustrialize the country through hyperprivatizations, while the Central Bank unleashed private banks to bleed consumers. Lula finds himself in man-to-man combat with Bolsonaro’s men placed in the highest authoritative bodies of the State, which he has brilliantly submitted to public debate. With its means of production back at full steam, the industrial base will seek to regain the three positions of GDP per capita it had lost while under the psychotic rule of the green-and-yellow fascists.

Taken as a whole, these three perspectives, micro, meso and macro, have to be worked together, lest one allow informed discussion and critical thinking to degrade into shouting matches. The endpoint of the latter is rehearsal for nuclear holocaust. Most Westerners get deeply stressed by thinking within the micro-perspective alone, while some appreciate the complexities and mysteries arising from the meso. Yet few in the West, much less Brazil, reach for the third and most urgent perspective. 

Is the geopolitical macro-perspective really that of “Russian propaganda”? Is it really nothing but the voice of lies, fake news, and the cynical opinions of “Muscovites”? Are advocates of the macro-perspective really nothing but Putin’s “foot soldiers” or “altar boys”? Everyone is free to decide, so long as real information of the kind discussed above is really accessed and read. One might even fancy how the Rand Corporation of late seems to have warmed up to the third macro-perspective. Despite being one of the architects for the proxy war, its latest report published on January 25, 2023, has counselled on “Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict”. Of course, it has. The macro-perspective is the only one able to deter what was once promptly called MAD: mutually assured destruction through nuclear attack. But, that was yesterday, before the U.S. systematically gutted its arms control treaties with Putin’s Russia.  

The upshot of Rand’s backtracking is timely in what it reveals as the fake news strategies by which to ideologically marshal public opinion. Only at the level of the macro-perspective does fake news appear as the killer of ideologies. At the meso, fake news merely oscillates as a variation on ideology. And at the micro, fake news circulates beneath ideology. 

By the looks of Lula’s “não, obrigado” on the tank ammo, his foreign policy advisors understand as much. After all, their leader is currently the most gifted negotiator on the planet.   

Norman Madarasz is Professor of Political and Economic Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. 

“Russia and Brazil will consider ways to expand cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in the following areas: radiation technologies and nuclear medicine, nuclear fuel cycle, training and upgrading of skills of specialists in the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, completion of the third power unit of the Angra nuclear power plant, as well as the construction of new nuclear power plants in Brazil,” it said.

“There are prospective projects in the nuclear power industry. In the beginning of this year, the Russian company Rosatom won a tender for the supply of uranium for Brazilian nuclear power plants… The company… would like to receive a contract for the construction of a spent nuclear fuel storage facility at the site of the Angra NPP in the state of Rio de Janeiro,” Putin told reporters.

Russian energy giant Gazprom is interested in the establishment of liquefied natural gas supplies to Brazil and construction of underground storage facilities for it, the materials ahead of the meeting of Russian and Brazilian leaders read.

“A branch of Gazprom is operating in Rio de Janeiro. The company is interested in establishment of liquefied gas to Brazil, import of Brazilian equipment for gas production facilities on the sea shelf, as well as in participation in the construction of underground storage facilities for LNG,” the documents read.

Space

Russia and Brazil are considering the possibility of conducting joint launches of carrier rockets from a Brazilian space center, Putin revealed.

“We are looking into the possibility of conducting joint space launches from Brazil’s launching site, as well as of constructing small- and medium-lift launch vehicles. We also have ideas on establishing cooperation in remote Earth sensing,” the Russian leader said after his meeting with Temer.

Putin stressed that Russia and Brazil closely cooperate in peaceful space exploration, and recalled that four foreign stations of the Russian global navigation system Glonass are operating in Brazil.

Temer, in his turn, said he gave a positive assessment to construction of the Glonass stations on Brazilian soil, and expressed interest in expanding the network of such stations.

The Brazilian Space Agency operates two launch centers, the Alcântara Launch Center on the northern peninsula of the same name, and the Barreira do Inferno Launch Center, which is used as support to the first one.

Glonass, a global navigation system operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces, consists of 27 satellites, 24 of which are operational. The system allows real-time positioning and speed data for surface, sea and airborne objects around the world.

Currently, there are eight Glonass stations located outside Russia, with four of them in Brazil, three in the Antarctic and one in South Africa.

Terror

Russia and Brazil are ready to boost bilateral cooperation in a wide range of spheres, including the defense industry, trade and the economy, as well as the nuclear energy sector, the Russian and Brazilian leaders said in a statement on Wednesday.

The two leaders also agreed to deepen coordination in the fight against terror.

“We have just signed a joint statement with the president on strategic foreign policy dialogue, which provides for a higher level of coordination and efforts by our countries in combating new challenges and threats, terrorism, supporting peace, stability, non-proliferation, and armaments control,” Putin told reporters after the meeting with his Brazilian counterpart.

The Brazilian President arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for a two-day visit and talks with the Russian leaders.

Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., the Vice President of the country’s New Development Bank, said that the visit of the Brazilian leader comes as confirmation of the important role Brazil assigns to one of its key partners in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) format.

The banker stressed that ten years ago, the association of five major emerging national economies started with a dialogue between Russia and Brazil, which then extended to other states.

Nowadays, he said, the association has very promising prospects, including China’s New Silk Road project, One Belt, One Road. Brazil’s New Development Bank, which opened its branch in Shanghai in 2015, is set to participate in this project alongside other multinational banks. It has already inked an agreement with the Chinese government under which it is going to finance this infrastructural project.

Cybersecurity

Russia’s Kaspersky Lab IT company has started developing special cybersecurity software on behalf of the Brazilian Defense Ministry and several banks.

“Russia’s Kaspersky Lab company is expanding a range of services at the Brazilian market. The company has started development of special cybersecurity software on behalf of the Brazilian Defense Ministry and several major banks,” the documents said.

According to the documents, Moscow and Brasília are also cooperating in the sphere of development of software and the use of Russian technologies in the Brazilian system of e-government services.

The documents added that a number of other Russian companies, such as payment service provider Qiwi and remote banking services system Megapay, are also working in Brazil or participating in tenders on the provision of software to the Latin American nation.

Human Rights

There are certain complaints against the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) decisions, but it is too early to estimate the prospects of alternative to the organization proposed within the framework of the BRICS organization, a member of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights told reporters.

Yelena Sutormina, the chair of the Russian Civic Chamber’s Committee on Public Diplomacy and Support for Compatriots Abroad, informed that the Civic Chamber had plans to send a proposal to the Russian Foreign Ministry to create an alternative to the ECHR within the framework of BRICS.

“It is too early to estimate this initiative — there are more questions than answers. It is necessary to give assessment to the ECHR decisions and if you do not agree with them — to release your arguments,” Alexander Brod said, adding that ideas of creation of yet another human rights courts had been repeatedly voiced during the recent decade, but such initiatives had not gone any further.

The official added that despite several claims against the ECHR, a new institution would have its own minuses.

“Of course there are complaints against the ECHR. We, as human rights activists, monitoring its activities and the decisions, have repeatedly faced a political bias of this body…

“BRICS comprises five countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] and the ECHR is the basis for protection of human rights in 47 members of the Council of Europe…

“That’s why even if the idea of such a court would be discussed at the BRICS summit only a limited number of people would be able to petition this institution,” the official added.

There are also questions to the professionalism and impartiality of the institution within BRICS, as there are fears that the BRICS member states could have an impact on decisions of the institution, Brod explained.

Sputnik