Les petits matins blêmes du président Lula

Les années Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) ont été pour le Brésil une époque de violence, de régression sociale et économique, de polarisation politique, et de désastres environnementaux. Elles ont vu sa démocratie chanceler sous la pression conjointe d’un président nostalgique de la dictature, d’une confrontation ouverte entre lui et la Cour suprême, d’un Congrès divisé et rapace, et d’institutions policières et militaires tentées par un retour à l’autoritarisme. Évidemment, la pandémie y était pour quelque chose : avec plus de 700,000 morts le pays se place en effet dans le peloton de tête des grandes économies—avec les États-Unis et la Grande-Bretagne—pour la proportion de la population affectée. Mais c’est chez Jair Bolsonaro lui-même qu’il faut chercher le ressort principal du désastre des dernières années, un règne de mépris de la décence, de l’humanité et de la bienveillance, copie tropicale de l’ex-président Trump.

Sortir de la nuit

De cette nuit cauchemardesque, le Brésil et Luiz Inacio Lula (2003-2011), élu pour un troisième mandat en 2023, n’émergent toutefois que dans un petit matin blême. Accueilli après quelques jours au pouvoir par une tentative de coup d’État, le « nouveau » président se meut pour ce nouveau mandat dans un marécage économique et politique qui lui laisse très peu de liberté de mouvement. Depuis son élection, il panse les blessures infligées au secteur public par son prédécesseur, réinvestit en éducation et permet aux agences environnementales de faire leur travail, et entreprend d’expulser les mineurs illégaux des réserves autochtones.

Malgré des problèmes de santé, il essaie, tant bien que mal, de rapiécer la société brésilienne. Mais l’économie ne se remet que lentement du choc d’une pandémie qu’avait précédé, sous son héritière Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), la pire crise qu’ait connu le pays depuis cinquante ans. Masqués pendant les premiers mandats de Lula par l’explosion du prix des matières premières, les problèmes structurels du pays refont surface, des lacunes du système d’éducation à une désindustrialisation accélérée entamée dans les années 1990. Le pays voit les grands rêves de l’après-guerre, portés par la sidérurgie et l’industrie automobile, s’effacer pour faire place à la dominance d’un secteur tertiaire peu productif, pour l’emploi, et d’un secteur primaire, des mines et du soya à la production animale, pour la croissance. Son taux inespéré de 2.9% de croissance en 2023—dont la modestie est en soi révélatrice—est porté par le bond formidable (15%) de la production et des exportations agro-alimentaires, qui ne représentent pourtant que 7% du PIB du pays.

Le paysage politique n’est guère plus ensoleillé. Le Parti Libéral de Bolsonaro dispose du plus grand nombre de sièges dans un Congrès que se divisent 18 partis politiques et on s’entend maintenant, chez les spécialistes, pour dire qu’est en déréliction le « présidentialisme de coalition » avec lequel, tant bien que mal, on gouvernait le pays depuis la fin de la dictature en 1985: au marchandage de sièges au cabinet, de nomination dans les secteurs public et parapublic et, dès lors, de budgets à contrôler, s’ajoute maintenant une mécanique encore plus dysfonctionnelle centrée sur la concession systématique de fonds liés à des amendements introduits par des députés qu’encadrent moins que jamais les partis politiques.

Avec un secteur public déjà gonflé à bloc, une dette dont le service est de plus en plus contraignant et des perspectives de croissance anémiques, les options du gouvernement sont limitées. Pour le moment, le très capable ministre des Finances, Fernando Haddad, s’attache simplement à contrôler les dépenses tout en assurant le maintien des services publics et de santé, ce qui ne plaît guère aux militants du Parti des travailleurs de Lula, pour qui la discipline fiscale s’apparente avant tout à un complot capitaliste.
Accueilli après quelques jours au pouvoir par une tentative de coup d’État, le « nouveau » président se meut pour ce nouveau mandat dans un marécage économique et politique qui lui laisse très peu de liberté de mouvement”

Un passé encombrant

Lula doit par ailleurs composer avec une légitimité politique qu’entame encore le scandale milliardaire de Lava Jato. Il est maintenant clair que sa condamnation à 12 ans de prison et les 580 jours qu’il a purgés en captivité ont été le fait d’une machination politique menée par le juge Sergio Moro—qui devint Ministre de la Justice dans le premier cabinet de Bolsonaro et siège maintenant au Sénat—pour l’empêcher d’être candidat aux élections de 2018. Il demeure que des milliards de dollars de fonds publics ont été détournés alors qu’il était au pouvoir et le refus de Lula et de son parti d’assumer quelque responsabilité pour le scandale ont facilité leur association, dans la propagande de l’opposition, au crime et à la corruption.

Dans cette grisaille, Lula demeure populaire (50% d’approbation, selon les sondages) mais il semble un peu démuni. Il s’implique dans les micro-négociations dont dépend, au jour le jour, la gouverne politique du pays, mais ne domine guère l’agenda politique. Principale cible du coup d’État manqué de janvier 2023, il laisse à l’ambitieux Alexandre de Morais, de son siège à la Cour Suprême, prendre tout le crédit de la défense de la démocratie dans le pays. Il est aussi largement absent des débats entre son parti et Fernando Haddad sur la politique économique. Qui plus est, ses réflexes et idées ont quelque chose de suranné : ainsi de son programme de voitures populaires, de sa sympathie pour l’exploration pétrolière en Amazonie, de son refus de nommer des femmes à une Cour Suprême qui voit maintenant des hommes occuper 10 de ses 11 sièges ou, dans le même registre, de son silence dans le débat sur l’avortement, qui est toujours criminalisé au Brésil.

Une perte d’influence dans le monde

La politique étrangère, une de ses forces au début du siècle, ne lui sourit pas non plus. Ici aussi, ses vieux réflexes le trahissent. Victime lui-même du dévoiement d’un système de justice et ayant échappé in extremis à une horde anti-démocratique, il fait montre d’une indulgence gênante devant les frasques dictatoriales d’un Nicolas Maduro, au Venezuela, qui n’a de gauche que la manière, et refuse d’appuyer le Chili progressiste de Gabriel Boric dans sa condamnation des dérives répressives de l’ex-révolutionnaire Daniel Ortega, président du Nicaragua.

Sa remise en cause de la dominance de l’Occident dans les grandes instances internationales trouve aujourd’hui moins de sympathie dans des démocraties libérales dont aucun leader ne l’accueillerait, comme le fit Barack Obama, en le présentant comme « my man». Et si les BRICS et autres coalitions Sud-Sud du début du siècle apparaissaient comme des tremplins intéressants pour le Brésil, leur exploitation géopolitique de plus en plus claire, par une Russie imprévisible et une Chine de plus en plus impériale, amputent fortement le potentiel politique de ces alliances pour un pays qui demeure, militairement, une puissance très moyenne.

Même dans sa région, enfin, le Brésil ne semble pas pouvoir recouvrer l’influence et le prestige qu’il avait auparavant. Les présidents de gauche de la Colombie et du Chili, plus « modernes, » soucieux d’équité de genre et de protection de l’environnement, ont peu d’atomes crochus avec Lula. L’élection en Argentine de Javier Milei, un ultra-libéral déchaîné, ne promet aussi que des migraines, et la diplomatie luliste ne semble savoir que faire des velléités expansionnistes du Venezuela en Guyane.

Même l’Équateur, jadis partenaire du Brésil à l’époque de la « vague rose » des années 2000, cherche maintenant dans le petit El Salvador du brutal Nayib Bukele, plutôt qu’au Brésil, la solution à ses problèmes de sécurité. Le monde extérieur, en somme, jadis grand terrain de jeu où Lula pouvait exploiter la légitimité que lui confère une trajectoire personnelle extraordinaire et déployer son charme rustique et ses remarquables qualités de médiateurs, ne semble guère plus accueillant que sa cour arrière de Brasilia.

Tout cela étant dit, il reste que dans la sombre barbarie qui gagne le monde, la présence de Lula à la tête du Brésil représente une petite éclaircie. Car son pays–dixième économie, sixième population, puissance environnementale—est important, et parce qu’on peut parler et faire des choses avec cet homme décent, pacifique et soucieux de justice sociale.

[Publication originale: Conseil des Relations Internationales de Montréal]

The Brazilian gun lobby's er... dysfunctions

A funny one from my favourite Brazilian magazine, although, unfortunately, gun proliferation in Brazil is a sad, very serious and, literally, deadly problem.

Let me explain this one because, although the analysis may look a bit vulgar and simplistic, it is dead on about the whole gun lobby, whether in the US, in Canada, or in Brazil.

The Lula government has recently introduced a decree revising the extremely liberal regime of access to weapons that his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro had adopted, and which had led to a huge increase in the number of guns in circulation in Brazil. In many ways, it is very little, very late, and it is not even clear that it will survive congressional resistance. Given the government's weakness in congress, what little there is there probably is as much as can be done. The Congressional Gun Lobby ("a Bancada da Bala") has 267 members, out of 513 deputies in total, and it is predictably going to war over this. The government may still win, but they will literally have to buy votes to do so--freeing money for the pet projects of enough deputies.

The key is, most people affected already have guns, piles of them, and in may cases, they have bought a huge number of additional ones under Bolsonaro: the number of registered weapons went from 83,000 to 280,000 between 2018, when he was elected, to 2021, one full year before he was finally thrown out of power.

That's the context.

Now the text itself (revised Google translation):

"To compensate for restrictions in gun ownership, the Gun Lobby is negotiating a decree on penis enlargement.

TOMA LÁ DÁ CÁ [A Brazilian expression meaning patronage]– The system of checks and balances of democracy continues to function normally. Dissatisfied with the presidential decree that radically reduced the CACs' right to own and carry weapons [CAC stands for Caçadores, Atiradores e Colecionadores/Hunters, Sharpshooters and Collectors], the Gun Lobby obtained compensation from the federal government. In the next few days, Lula should sign a new decree to provide penis enlargement via SUS [Brazil's public health system], in addition to discounts on Ferraris, Porsches, pickups and SUVs for all CACs.

The solution was celebrated by federal deputy Alberto Fraga, from the PL [Bolsonaro's Liberal Party], who presides over the Bancada da Bala. “I had already been complaining that the restriction on the sale of 9mm pistols would cause a crisis in trade and a feeling of deep insecurity in the masculinity of the Brazilian shooter”, explained Fraga. “That consolation will be welcome.”

Taurus [a large Brazilian gun manufacturer] has already announced that it intends to change the production of rifles for that of penis enlargers, projecting a record profit for the next quarter."

https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/herald/2023/07/21/para-compensar-corte-na-posse-de-arma-bancada-da-bala-negocia-decreto-sobre-aumento-peniano/
[About the picture: Sildenafil is the generic version of Viagra, and C.A.C. stands for Hunters, Sharpshooters and Collectors].

Canada's review of its Cannabis legalization policy

 [This short comment marks the return of the Little Crocodile, exceptionally, with Canadian content, but only because it is about drugs and drug policy. I am letting go of administrative responsibilities and will be posting more regularly from now on]

Cannabis legalization was to be reviewed after three years, that is, in 2021. The process was launched a year later and is still underway.

Like many things this government does, it is shrouded in secrecy. What would we do without nosy journalists (in this case from the Marijuana Business Daily)?

The report will be prepared under the direction of Morris Rosenberg, former head of the Trudeau Foundation and author of the recently published report on foreign threats to the 2021 elections, which, to say the least, was thin. 

Here is Andrew Coyne's take on it: "The report on foreign interference in the 2021 election by former Trudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg was even worse. O'Toole says Rosenberg did not interview any senior Conservative official for his report. Yet the report leaves the strong impression he did... The report says “[t]here was an opportunity to meet with representatives of major political parties” without saying who, refers to “interviews with party representatives” without saying which, even states  “party representatives were pleased with the thoroughness of briefings..."

Is there really no one else available for these things in Ottawa?

Bolsonaro and the Brazilian military

Reacting on Facebook to my recent piece on Lula in Open Canada, Fraser Taylor pointed out that, aside from the Covid situation, the key variable was the role of the military: "the role of the military. I think that a coup is unlikely but who will the military support and what deals will be made."

 

I answered that "the military issue is complicated. Bolsonaro's has strong support among the rank and file, as he does among the states-based "military police," which has its own command in each state, and 50% more members than the federal military. Officers are another story: Bolsonaro has talked the talk and brought several generals in his cabinet--and they have brought other officers in their own cabinets. When he talks about "his" military and disrespect standard rules of promotion, however, the establishment is reminded that he was expelled for violating military discipline as a captain, and they don't like that at all. Lastly: Brazil will be a mess for at least another decade and they may want to leave the management of the mess to civilians..."

 

Here is more meat around that bone: As the Thais Oyama suggests, the top brass are doing their best to protect the military from the increasingly broad backlash against Bolsonaro's criminal mismanagement of the COVID crisis.

 

Here is the Google translation of a column on a recent letter by the head of the Military Club and the link to the letter itself:

Thaís Oyama

Pazuello's summons to COVID Parliamentary Commission Inquiry [CPI] irritates the Army and makes the Military Club go wild

04/29/2021 11h52

The president of the Military Club, Reserve Division General Eduardo José Barbosa, published yesterday a text in which he defends the application, by the Executive Power, of the infamous article 142 of the Constitution - the one that talks about the use of the Armed Forces to guarantee "the law and the order "and which is brandished by President Jair Bolsonaro every time he feels run over by the Supreme Court.

In the text, General Barbosa points to the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress, the press, Minister Gilmar Mendes [a Supreme Court Judge], ex-President Lula and Senators Omar Aziz (PSD) and Renan Calheiros (MDB) - President and CPI rapporteur for Covid. None of the characters was named in the article, entitled "The power of darkness in Brazil". In it, Eduardo José Barbosa also says that the criticized institutions "chickened out" and now want to blame President Jair Bolsonaro "for what they did not let him do".

The general's text needs to be read in perspective.

The Military Club, a bunker for Army reserve officers, is the Force's most strident political voice. There, the generals, free from the restraints of active duty, shout at will against whom and what they want. General Hamilton Mourão presided over the Club when he accepted to be candidate for vice on Bolsonaro's slate, when he called Colonel Brilhante Ustra, a former DOI-CODI [military investigation units during the dictatorship, infamous for their use of torture] chief and the first military man to be recognized by the courts as a torturer, as a hero.

But if General Barbosa's text is one or two shades higher than what even some of his most prominent reserve colleagues would adopt, it is certain that, at some points, it reflects precisely what even active duty officials think.

As one of them says: "It is intolerable to hear someone like Renan [the President of the CPI, a conservative anti-Bolsonaro who happens to be one of the most corrupt members of Congress] wanting to teach a moral lesson and summoning a uniformed general to testify".

Covid's CPI scheduled for next Wednesday the testimony of the former Minister of Health, General Eduardo Pazuello, who is still active and is now in the General Secretariat of the Army, in Brasilia.

Not that Pazuello is very prestigious in the ranks of the Force. The maskless parade he performed in a shopping mall in Manaus last Sunday even angered the Army High Command (those who attended the inauguration ceremony of the new commander, General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, could see how the members of the institution take the recommendations of the anti-covid manual to the letter: with the exception of Minister Braga Netto [the new Minister of Defense], who took off his mask for a moment when speaking, no one was without it for a second).

Pazuello's display of nonchalance in the mall, therefore, was seen as deserving even of a public reprimand by the Force command, which did not happen.

But it is one thing for a general to suffer internal criticism from his peers and quite another to be "publicly embarrassed by people like Renan", as an active official in the government says.

General Barbosa's text may call attention to the stridency, but it contains a message shared by generals, from active duty and in pajamas: it will be noisy if Covid's CPI, when targeting Pazuello, hits the Army.

Lula is Back

Brazil is going through the worst crisis of its modern history. As of this writing, the pandemic has killed more than 400,000 Brazilians, with 60,000 COVID-related deathsin March alone, and reaching 20,000 per week in April. Mortality is on an explosive growth path as hospitals are running out of oxygen and now of the painkillers needed to intubate patients. Thousands are waiting for admission into intensive care units while people are treated and die on hospital floors. Bodies are piling up in morgues and cemeteries, and funeral homes are running out of caskets. Infection levels are such that the country threatens to turn into the world’s foremost incubator of COVID variants.

Meanwhile, the president who bears much responsibility for the scale of the crisis and the awful government response to it tells Brazilians to stop “whining,” complains Brazil looks like "a country of fags” and publicly mocks people gasping forair.

Incredibly, Jair Bolsonaro’s political prospects were, until recently, not that bad. The opportunism of the centre-right coalition that dominates Congress, the deep divisions that plague the opposition, the relatively good growth expectations for next year (+3.6%), along with incumbency and a still sizable core group of fanatical supporters gave him solid chances to win a second mandate in the fall 2022 presidential elections.

On March 8, however, a Supreme Court judge nullified the criminal conviction of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ruling that the tribunal that condemned him did not have the jurisdiction to do so. His decision was endorsed in April by the full Court, which also ruled the judge who presided his trial, SergioMoro, had been partial and decisions he made during the proceedings were tainted. A new trial will take years to complete. In the meantime, the 76-year-old da Silva is free to face off against Bolsonaro next year.

Lula, as he is universally known, is by far Brazil’s most popular politician of the last 50 years. He ended his second mandate in 2011 with an 80 per cent rate ofapproval, though corruption allegations have tarnished his reputation since. He was president when billions of dollars of public monies were diverted to political parties and intermediaries in exchange for their support for hispolicies. Evidence that he benefitted financially is evaporating by the day, but the scale of the scandals and the involvement of several of his closest advisors make his claims to be the victim of a full-fledged conspiracy difficult to swallow.

However, out of resignation or cynicism, Brazilian voters tend to see corruption as an inherent part of their national politics, especially if it is tempered with meaningful action or change. And on this front, Lula is untouchable.

Helped by the explosive increase in China’s demand for natural resources in the early 2000, he presided over the fastest period of growth since the mid-1960s and, crucially, the largest and broadest reduction of poverty in the history of the country. While his progressive outlook doesn’t make him the first choice of the business sector, he has proven to be remarkably pragmatic and credible rumours already signal his interest in recruiting a centrist business person as candidate for vice-president. Brazil’s economic elites would not fear a radical turn to the left in the country’s economic policies were Lula to return to the presidency.

For all these reasons, he is Bolsonaro’s worst nightmare. Polls show Lula and Bolsonaro neck-and-neck when it comes to Brazilians’ voting intentions — and this is without any campaigning by Lula, or even a formally declared candidacy.

* * *

Interesting, you might say, but why should the prospect of an electoral victory by Lula more than 18 months from now matter to Brazil, the Americas and Canada?

Lula’s return matters in Brazil because it changes the calculations of all political forces in the country. On the Left, presidential hopefuls must now know that they have to wait until at least 2026 to even think of winning, because their current supporters will most likely vote for Lula in a polarized 2022 contest,.

Things are more complicated on the right. The Brazilian Congress is fragmented, with 24 parties dividing up 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and 81 in the Senate. The government’s core coalition is made up of only 150 deputies and 12 senators, while the opposition has 170 deputies and 18 senators. The balance of power is held by the so called “Fat Centre.” Members of this group have no well-defined ideology and are almost purely opportunistic. For them, their families, friends and financial backers, bargaining every one of their votes, and getting re-elected to keep doing it, is all that counts. With Lula in the picture, the price of their support for Bolsonaro’s policies will increase and he will need to demonstrate that supporting him in 2022, instead of Lula, will increase their chances of winning.

All this has shaken up President Bolsonaro’s life and weakened his electoral prospects. He’s panicking, and it shows on several fronts. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s finally announced the creation of a committee to fight it. He’s replaced several of his ministers. He’s tried — and failed — to increase his own executive power while reducing that of Congress. He’s also tried to get the explicit support of the military hierarchy for his opposition to the restrictive COVID-19 measures imposed by some governors and mayors and in his fights with the Supreme Court. These efforts backfired, however, when the commanders of the army, navy and air force resigned following the dismissal of the Minister of Defense, himself a four-star general, who was resisting Bolsonaro’s pressure to involve the military in the politics of pandemic management.

The long-term domestic effect of Lula’s return would obviously depend on how he does in the presidential elections. Were he to win, it is easy to see a period of Joe Biden-like calmness and moderately progressive policies that would help stabilize the country. Lula’s Worker’s Party doesn’t have a great reputation for competent economic management. Party member Dilma Rousseff, who succeeded Lula as president in 2011, squandered much that Lula had achieved. Still, it is difficult to imagine anything worse for the country than the utterly anachronic hyper-liberalism of Paulo Guedes, Bolsonaro’s current finance minister, whose narrow obsession with privatization comes straight out of the 1980s.

Lula’s return clearly matters for South America. In the short term, Brazil’s numerous neighbours are bound to benefit from a more rational pandemic policy born out of Bolsonaro’s growing fear that someone will capitalize on his mismanagement of the COVID crisis. In the mid- and long-term, the prospects of Lula’s regaining power would be encouraging in a region where Venezuela remains the epicenter of the worst refugee crisis in the America’s history, where democratic crises are multiplying and where an experienced diplomatic bridge-builder is sorely needed. Over his eight years in power, he was the linchpin of a golden age of pragmatic regional problem-solving through presidential diplomacy, and the face of a Left as committed to democracy as it is to social justice.

Canada should also root for Lula. Ottawa’s attempts to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to hold open elections and stop violating human rights, along with similar efforts directed at President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, are hampered by the presence on its side of a Brazil led by] Bolsonaro, an authoritarian and overt apologist of military rule. While Lula’s diplomacy never quite aligned with Canada’s core strategic interests, its pragmatism, its support for multilateral diplomacy and its commitment to a humane world order certainly accorded well with Canadians’ values and international outlook. Conversely, the re-election of Bolsonaro or, worse, a coup in the face of probable defeat, would definitely plunge South America as a whole into a period of instability and democratic decay, an outcome clearly at odds with both Canadian interests and values.

[This piece was first published in Open Canada]

Thinking clearly about Amazon protection

The world has suddenly rediscovered the Amazon. After a summer of record heat waves in Europe and North America, thousands of fires and a climate-sceptic, obnoxious, sexist, racist and proudly authoritarian Brazilian president have put the Amazon and its protection on the global to-do list and, more pointedly, on this past week’s G7 Summit agenda.

This is great. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and its largest reserve of biodiversity. It plays an important role in the planet’s carbon cycle and its destruction would have a massively negative impact on climate change. And yet, a fast-growing part of it is being destroyed on President Jair Bolsonaro’s watch.

Over the last two weeks, as demonstrations were taking place the world over, a huge wave of aid offers, threats and advice have flooded the media, and the usual clique of universal experts and global spotlight grabbers — from Stephen Walt and Leonardo DiCaprio to our very own Lloyd Axworthy — have jumped in the fray. Most of the suggestions, however, seem to assume that the development of the region can still be largely stopped while others have been frankly counter-productive — for instance, sending "multilateral green helmets [...] across the Brazilian border."

For the current energy not to evaporate as the rainy season starts in the Amazon and as temperatures drop in the Global North, it may be useful to drop those views and consider a few basic things that any serious endeavour to save as much of the forest as possible should take into account.

First, and most importantly, the Amazon is huge: larger than Western Europe and, at 5.5 million square kilometres, as large as Canada’s 10 provinces together. Depending on how one defines it, between 20 and 30 million people live in the 60 percent of the Amazon that lies in Brazil, and millions more in the Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon. Most of those people are poor and, with very few exceptions, their current livelihood and long-term life prospects are not consistent with the transformation of the Amazon into a huge forest reserve.

The protection of forest thus calls for the creation of options for those people. This will be costly, and it will take time. Consider for instance that the US$20 million G7 aid offer represents less than a dollar per capita for Amazonians — or less than the carbon tax on 20 litres of gasoline that many Canadians are loath to pay. It also probably means that, even in the best of cases, a substantial portion of the forest will be destroyed in the meantime.

Being serious about the Amazon means being ready to invest massive amounts of money into the long-term and necessarily slow and muddled re-engineering of its economic development. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who managed Brazil’s Amazon policy from 2007 to 2009, speaks for instance of a knowledge-based economy for the region, an appealing prospect, but one that is also not realistic in the short or medium term.

Third, the G7 countries’ track record on climate change commitment is patchy at best: Germany’s main source of electricity is still coal; Canada is building pipelines to export thick and dirty oil; the gilets jaunes movement in France was driven in part by opposition to a carbon tax; the Trump administration is doing its very best to keep the country’s energy matrix as dirty as possible; and so on.

In other words, a serious attempt at tackling the problem calls for a long-term outlook, a willingness to invest large sums of money, a sizable degree of humility and the recognition that the main players will be Amazonian countries themselves. Now, with a man like Bolsonaro in charge of the largest chunk of the forest, some prodding will obviously be needed too, but the latter must be cleverly applied.

This means leveraging the will and interests of local players. Brazilians are proud and protective of the Amazon and, as Robbert Muggah recently noted, most are shocked and ashamed at the current government’s policies and actions. The governors of Amazonian states and significant sectors of the Brazilian Congress are pushing the central government to fight the fire and enforce existing regulations, and they want to prevent Bolsonaro from weakening the latter. Powerful counter-forces must obviously be tackled — the large and powerful congressional “cattle caucus” for instance — and for this, sensitive pressure points must be exploited.

The most obvious of them is Brazil’s sizable dependence on foreign agricultural markets. Brazil is the world’s top exporter of sugar, coffee, soy, orange juice and chicken, and it ranks third for beef and eighth for cotton. Credible threats of boycotts could thus in theory work wonders. The agro-business lobby in Brazil understands this and is already pushing the government to enhance the monitoring of illegal logging and enforce existing regulations.

To have any hope of success, however, such pressure needs to be completely de-linked from any challenge to Brazil’s sovereignty, and tied to a credible and substantive offer of cooperation.

A very promising avenue is being opened by Colombia and Peru’s call for a summit of Amazon countries on September 6. The G7 summit may be now over, but if leaders of those countries are serious about action on the Amazon, they should engage with this effort, commit to supporting effective action with significant resources, and make it clear that, while the effort must be led by Amazon countries themselves, inaction or worse could have real economic consequences.

[This post was first published on the Open Canada website]

Lava Jato: beware throwing the baby with the bathwater

The trove of documents that The Intercept is posting online shows increasingly clearly that Lava Jato Judge Moro and key prosecutors were targeting Lula to make sure that he would not run in 2016, thus opening the way for a victory of the Right.
Those who denounced the impeachment of Dilma and the arrest of Lula as a coup--among whom I was not--look increasingly right. The whole affair, well beyond clownish, violent and vulgar Bolsonaro, points to deep flaws in the country's institutional make-up and to strict limits to its supposedly democratic status.
It would be tempting, therefore, to dismiss Lava Jato as a scheme, as the pure artefact of an attempt by the Right to get back to power, which would be a mistake.
Let's indeed not through the baby with the bathwater: though the proof against him personally look increasingly fraught, corruption was rife under the governments of Lula and his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff (against whom nothing has been found) government.
As the latest issue of David Fleischer's Brazil Focus (August 17-23) reminds us, the scale of those scandals is just mind boggling. In one of the latest instalments of the investigation, two of the PT's finance ministers are targeted: Antonio Palocci, who is already in prison and collaborating with the police, and Guido Mantega, "the longest-serving finance Minister in the history of Brazil," still free.
The latter is accused by Palocci of having received $R50 million Reais (about US$15 million) from Odebrecht, the big engineering firm that was at the core of the scandal. As Palocci is clearly trying to save his skin, this may or not be true, but in the meantime, judges and the Swiss authorities, on the request of Brazil, have frozen the bank accounts of Mantega: $R 50 million in Brazil, and $US 50 million in Switzerland, for a total of about US $65 million dollars.
Mantega should obviously be considered innocent until proven guilty, but this guy is the foreign-born son of Italian immigrants, he has a BA in Economics and a PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo. He has been close to Lula since the 1990s, he has taught in universities, worked for think tanks, and he was, for a while, an advisor in the PT administration of the City of São Paulo. His only real claim to fame is this long stint as Finance Minister for Lula and Dilma. And now, no doubt among many other assets, he has US$50 million in a Swiss bank account?
As the evidence piles up, of Moro's scheming and of engineering firms, banks and PT operators' getting immensely rich, Lula--and possibly Dilma too--looks increasingly like a pathetic tool cleverly used by a cynical mafia of conservative political entrepreneurs and long-time "friends" and "collaborators."
It is to cry.

A military intervention in Venezuela?

February 23 marked the failure of two gambles against the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

First, the opposition bet that Venezuela’s military would abandon Maduro and let a peaceful caravan of food and medicine cross the country’s borders from neighbouring countries; instead, it ended in tear gas, fire and death. Second, the Lima Group and most European countries bet that the recognition of Juan Guaido as interim president would lead to a peaceful collapse of the regime; instead, it ended in the embarrassed denunciation of violence that was always highly probable.

Dreams of a tropical Berlin Wall bash were replaced by opposition demands for military action.

The Lima Group is desperately looking for another path and is having a hard time finding one. At its meeting in Bogota on Monday, the alliance took a firm stand against military action, denounced Maduro’s use of violence to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid and reaffirmed its support for Guaido. It repeated its call for the military, and now the judiciary, to recognizeGuaido as interim president. The group also announced a series of diplomatic initiatives already under way at the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council and Human Rights Commission, and the OAS Permanent Council – in particular the recognition of Guaido’s envoys as legitimate representatives of Venezuela.

Broad smiles and hugging aside, this is unlikely to satisfy Guaido. On Sunday, he echoed an earlier statement of U.S. President Donald Trump. He called on the international community to "consider every option to free this homeland.” Guaido is almost certainly worried that the current mobilization, already more than a month long, could lose its momentum – as has happened repeatedly in the past. Worse still, cracks have appeared in his ranks, and the familiar spectre of disarray again threatens the opposition.

In this new phase, the United States takes centre stage, because from the beginning, Mr. Trump was adamant not to exclude the use of military force. The legality of foreign military interference in Venezuela would be on shaky grounds, but an “invitation” by Guaido – recognized broadly as the legitimate interim president of the country – could probably give the intervention some legal cover.

Ultimately, the success or failure of such a move will rest on the nature and scale of the endeavour. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Francisco Toro examines the challenges of such an intervention, noting the collateral dangers of a large operation and the difficulty of dealing with the criminal organizations – including Colombian National Liberation Army guerrillas – that control much of the country’s territory. He argues that Venezuela’s generals would quickly fold in the face of a credible threat and that its army should be spared to give the new regime a tool to reassert control over the country. Doing otherwise would turn it into a “Libya of the Caribbean.” His analysis looks sound, though the “credible threat” he favours looks a bit like another gamble. At a minimum, limited commando operations or targeted missile attacks may be needed to do the trick, while avoiding large-scale loss of life and the complete dismantling of the army. History reminds us, however, that such “surgical” operations can quickly get out of hand.

Unsurprisingly, Europe, Canada and the Lima Group will have none of this. Even Brazil, whose President is openly nostalgic of the old days of his country’s military regime, has made it clear that it would not join a military operation against Venezuela or even let U.S. troops on its territory. Given the opposition’s growing desperation, however, this unfolding scenario risks leaving Canada and its allies on the sideline.

Their bet on hardball diplomacy is coming back to haunt them: recognizing governments that enjoy no territorial or administrative control, and letting their leaders blatantly politicize humanitarian aid leads one down a slippery slope. Here, it could end up opening the way to an aggressive U.S. foreign policy that cares little for democracy but, if successful, will nonetheless reap much of the credit for toppling a heartless dictatorship. Were a Libya scenario to develop, Canada and its allies would find themselves forced to choose between owning something they didn’t break, or washing their hands and watching the disaster unfold from the outside. Whatever the outcome, I am not sure it shores up Canada’s claim to represent a bulwark of the global liberal order or a shield for the international rule of law.

[Originally published on February 26 in The Globe and Mail, under the title "Why U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be a risky gamble"]

Who has skin in the Venezuela game?

[Originally published by Open Canada on February 11]

The crisis in Venezuela obviously matters most for Venezuelans. On top of years of economic crisis, political repression, decaying infrastructure, withering education and social services, hollowed-out administrative capabilities, revolting corruption and stratospheric levels of criminality, they now confront the possibility of chaos and violence in an uncertain and likely drawn-out process of regime transition. At the same time, this very uncertainty holds the promise of a new economic beginning, with the prospect, dim but genuine, of a broadly legitimate political regime and of a rational economic policy.

Venezuela’s current troubles also have significant ripple effects. Canada’s media and commentators have mostly focused on the wisdom and implications of Ottawa’s recognition of Juan Guaidó, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as interim president of the country, and of its call, along with Lima Group allies, for the Venezuelan military to switch allegiance and abandon the current head of state, Nicolás Maduro.

The reality, however, is that Canada has very little at stake in this crisis. It could enjoy a moment of glory at the vanguard of global democracy promotion, if Maduro resigns. But whether he does or not, Canada’s long-standing reputation as a diplomatic honest broker will suffer from its quick siding with Guaidó. The Trudeau government will also have to face an inevitable reckoning when it becomes clear that consistently applying this new “Freeland Doctrine” of forceful democracy promotion, in a world where dubious electoral processes and broad-based challenges of the governments they produce are common, is simply not possible (think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just last December). For Canada’s diplomacy and the credibility of its foreign policy, this is far from irrelevant, but a number of other countries have much more at stake than mere reputation or self-image.

Colombia
Colombia has suffered the brunt of the crisis, absorbing most of the three million or so refugees that have fled Venezuela’s economic and political collapse. The massive inflow of refugees has hit Colombia as it confronts a tricky stage of its peace process, with millions of internally displaced people to resettle, tens of thousands of coca farmers to bring back into the legal economy and thousands of former guerrillas to reintegrate into civilian life. While public opinion and the government have proven to be admirably open and generous towards Venezuelans, uncertainty and discontent are growing as the country continues to face severe public security challenges and still partial and unequal social service provisions.

The flip side is that regime change in Caracas could both stem the flow of refugees and restart an economy that has long been a natural partner of Colombia’s. In the short-term, the fall of Maduro would put an end to the use of Venezuela’s territory by the National Liberation Army, significantly weakening the last guerrilla group that still refuses to demobilize and that has claimed the recent bombing that killed 20 people in Bogotá. For Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque, Maduro’s fall would be a great help.

Cuba
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s former president, saw himself as an heir to Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and relations between the two countries have remained extremely close since Chávez’s death in 2013. Cuban advisors surround Maduro, as they did Chávez, Cuban doctors staff many of the regime’s “missions” among Venezuela’s poor, and Cuban military personnel support Venezuela’s security and intelligence apparatus.

In exchange, Venezuela took over from Russia the transfer to Cuba of large amounts of heavily subsidized oil, which helped Havana keep its economy afloat.

Crucially, in the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive stance towards the remaining “Leftist” governments of the Americas (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), and of the right turn of several previously sympathetic countries (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador), Venezuela gave “strategic depth” to Cuba’s diplomatic and military defence arrangement. Losing both the oil — which admittedly had been diminishing quickly — and a key buffer would represent a major strategic setback for Havana. For Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the still-influential Raul Castro, Maduro’s fall would be a costly loss.

China
Until now, China has refused to recognize Guaidó and made it clear that it would block any US attempt to use the United Nations Security Council to pressure Venezuela, for instance by suspending its membership in the multilateral body. Beyond that, however, the Chinese government has remained largely quiet, its media defending a peaceful political settlement and giving pride of place to negotiation efforts by the UN Secretary-General. That moderation could well be related to the Venezuelan government’s debt to China, estimated at $13 billion. The idea has been floated that China — and Russia — could decide to jump in to defend Maduro and take control of what many refer to as the largest oil reserves in the world. Notwithstanding the fact that much of that oil is probably not recoverable, the global oil glut, the sorry state of Venezuela’s production infrastructure and the poor quality of its heavy, sour crude oil, such a bet would make little economic and even strategic sense. China has a lot of money currently sunk in what looks like a bottomless pit and internationally-supported guarantees of repayment by Guaidó could perhaps make Beijing reconsider its current position. Keeping a hard line, by contrast, could put its sizable investment in jeopardy.

Russia
Vladimir Putin’s Russia has also lent money to Venezuela, and Russia’s Rosneft oil company has a collateral claim to half of Venezuela’s US-based refinery, Citgo (the US government is now preventing Citgo from remitting its revenues to Maduro’s government). The amounts involved — $2 billion to $3 billion — are relatively small, but Russia does not have the financial leeway of China. Venezuela has also bought sizable amounts of weapons from Russia, though the extent to which they have already been paid for is unclear. Altogether, Moscow’s economic stakes nonetheless appear to be relatively limited. Venezuela probably matters more to Putin as a piece of the chicken game he is playing with at least part of the Trump administration. Maduro’s fall would be a loss, but Venezuela is not equal to Syria or Ukraine on Moscow’s strategic board, and the shock would have little strategic impact on Russia’s position.

The United States
The Trump administration was the first to recognize Guaidó. It has also undercut attempts by the Lima Group — and now Europe — to frame the international pressure as a peaceful initiative by insisting that military intervention remain an option. The fall of Maduro’s fragile regime would be a boon to an administration that boasts of machismo but has in fact been retreating globally in the face of Russia’s and China’s increasingly assertive policies beyond the Americas. Another easy win could be in the offing in Nicaragua — another member, along with Cuba, of what John Bolton has called Latin America’s “Troika of Tyranny” — where President Daniel Ortega also confronts massive popular opposition. The first domino, however, absolutely has to fall, and Washington really can’t afford to lose such an easy play.

Many other countries have dipped into the Venezuela stew: Brazil, most members of the EU, Mexico, Norway and Bolivia, among others. Like Canada, however, they have little at stake: they are to a large extent “disinterested.” This gives them freedom but also makes them less likely to remain engaged or to throw in significant political or economic capital. Hopefully, it should also make them wary of pushing for “solutions” whose consequences are immaterial for them but all too concrete for Venezuelans.