Active non-alignment to survive superpower split

What does the Ukraine war have to do with Brazil? On the face of it, perhaps not much.

- JORGE HEINE

Yet, in his first six months in office, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – now in his third non-consecutive term – has expended much effort trying to bring peace to the conflict in eastern Europe. This has included conversations with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing and in a teleconference call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It has also seen “shuttle diplomacy” by Lula’s chief foreign policy adviser – and former foreign minister – Celso Amorim, who has visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and welcomed his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Brasília.

One reason Brazil has been in a position to meet with such an array of parties involved in the conflict is because the nation has made a point of not taking sides in the war. In so doing, Brazil is engaging in what my colleagues Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami and I have called “active nonalignment.” By this we mean a foreign policy approach in which countries from the Global South – Africa, Asia and Latin America – refuse to take sides in conflicts between the great powers and focus strictly on their own interests. It is an approach that The Economist has characterized as “how to survive a superpower split.”