By BRUNO BEAKLINI*

Brazil under the Bolsonaro misgovernment within the International System in evident change of hegemony

Initial comment

This article was finished about twelve hours before the fall of the worst chancellor in the history of Brazil. The text does not even address the replacement of Ernesto Araújo by Carlos Alberto França. Nor did we enter into the subsequent political crisis with direct characteristics of a military crisis. The analysis that follows positions Brazil under Bolsonaro's misgovernment within the International System in an evident change of hegemony.

International System in “new order”

At some moments in human history, intracapitalist competition and the projection of power by some countries and empires reached a climax. An upward curve rotates the weight of the International System, as if planets began to revolve around another gravitational axis. The beginning of the 2020s of this century demonstrates the growth of Asia, led by China and followed by India and Russia. The loss of hegemony by the Anglo-Saxon countries, components of the Five Eyes System (United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, https://www12.senado.leg.br/emdiscussao/edicoes/espionagem-cibernetica/mundo-o-mundo-perplexo-diante-do-big-brother/five-eyes-espionagem-moderna-comecou-ha-quase-um-seculo), it will not be by magic. However, some factors lead to this understanding, forcing the other world powers, important regional pivotal countries and other members of the UN General Assembly to anticipate their positions so as not to be lost.

Nor is this a new phenomenon on the planet. This happened when, after the Second World War, the allied powers (USA and USSR) supplanted the European empires in their expansion, in the second half of the 1870th century. Within the Atlantic and Western world, from the XNUMXs until the mid-XNUMXs, unified Germany and the United States, composed of former British colonies unified after a civil war between oligarchies, managed to tie with the English Empire in the production of steel and coal. By the standards of the period, these indicators implied the ability to compete and compete in markets through oligopolistic arrangements. The “economic disputes” are intertwined with the war capacity and the successive crises of decaying empires led humanity to the insane intra-imperialist and intra-capitalist war, the First World War.

Surviving in the rotten game of the International System is no easy task. Trying to play in the big leagues is even tougher. At the height of British power projection, in the Victorian Era, geographer Halford John Mackinder outlined a plausible argument for capitalist countries to resolve their elite internal disputes, pointing out that statesmen were more important than big investors. The English and British ruling classes were constituted as an authentic fusion of class fractions (nobiliarchy and merchants), with two great ethno-cultural origins (Saxons subordinating to Gaels) and the common law in defense of the proprietors before the dispossessed mass. Mackinder went further and stated that a power is made in the formation of a ruling elite made up of statesmen and, in the background, the hummus economicus capitalist. That simple. The Reason of State guarantees the accumulation and projection of power in the Empire.

In the opposite condition, fed back by demented supremacist ideas and the like, is the absolute priority of hummus economicus and the permanence of endless conflicts, materialized in the United States by the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. It so happens that the even largest economy in the world (it is not known until when) maintains elements of internal tensions accumulated since the civil war, materialized between Democrats (propensity for statesmanship) and Republicans (whose rightmost slope is voracious Trumpism). The new government of Democrat Joe Biden (remember that the former senator was Barack Hussein Obama's deputy for eight years, from 2009 to 2016) will attenuate the internal economic model and generate sufficient cohesion for the resumption of the projection of power in the United States , standing alongside the ruling classes, allies of Washington's Empire. In this sense, unlike the republican government and the extreme right with Donald Trump, the US needs to project itself as a reliable partner and a society with something to offer beyond junk food, blockbusters (the contemporary version of the old canned goods), end of the world series, bombings not authorized by the UN and assassinations of authorities with the use of drones that violate international law. It won't be easy to change this ultra-realistic image. Even more complicated is the situation of far-right governments that emulated Donald Trump and his minions and have now become unwanted figures.

The pariah of the world was left without his reference

As we have already explained in previous texts, the Chancellor of the Jair Bolsonaro government, Ernesto Araújo, ironically stated that he feels good being a world pariah (https://www.monitordooriente.com/20210126-ernesto-araujo-e-a-idolatria-com-mike-pompeo/). Unfortunately, the minister's complex psychological condition is not consistent with the well-being of the population. The career diplomat, who occupies the place that once belonged to people like José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior (Baron of Rio Branco), San Tiago Dantas and Celso Amorim, became persona non grata with the diplomatic corps of the United States, China and India (https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-55865791).

Since Ernesto Araújo's inaugural speech, we know the obvious path to disaster: “That's why we admire the United States of America, those who hoist its flag and worship its heroes. We admire the Latin American countries that freed themselves from the Foro de São Paulo regimes. We admire our brothers across the Atlantic who are building a thriving and free Africa. We admire those who fight against tyranny in Venezuela and elsewhere. That's why we admire the new Italy, that's why we admire Hungary and Poland, we admire those who assert themselves and not those who deny themselves. The world's problem is not xenophobia, but oikophobia – of oikos, oikía, the home. Oikophobia is hating one's home, one's own people, repudiating one's past”. (https://www.funag.gov.br/chdd/index.php/ministros-de-estado-das-relacoes-exteriores?id=317).

The US “heroes” that the chancellor admires so much are, in large part, soldiers killed in invasions of distant territories. Both there and here, the imperialist armed forces have a large presence of low-ranking personnel from poverty. There, due to structural racism, the lack of material resources leads young people with Latin American and Afro-American origins to invade other countries and be hated by entire populations. But it was not just that. The governments praised by the chancellor “new” Italy, Hungary and Poland were composed of proto-fascists. Earlier, by citing King Dom Sebastião and praising his death in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, Araújo offends all of us, the more than 18 million nationals of Arab origin. On August 04, 1578, Moroccan Arab forces subordinated to the Saadian dynasty decimated the Lusitanian invaders, which ended the Mediterranean crusades in the XNUMXth century (https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/bitstream/10216/87474/2/166946.pdf). This prevented European invasion until it resumed in the 1830s with the French invasion of Algeria.

As a career diplomat, Araújo knows that words carry enormous weight, as well as the decorum of the position and the expectation of compliance with agreements. Trump had none of that and spread his “government style” among some Brazilian political representatives. When Bolsonaro’s chancellor says he is “patriotic and nationalist” and behaves the opposite, it is because in his idealization, the world is in a clash of civilizations, and the Western Greco-Roman and Zionist-Anglo-Saxon world must be defended with all forces. Even if for that the country becomes a world pariah. Any resemblance to the difficulties of this Israeli Apartheid lackey government in getting new coronavirus vaccines is no coincidence.

Bolsonaro is not a statesman and his mission is to dismantle the installed infrastructure and the Brazilian public service. Your chancellor is going down more tortuous paths, because at least he has a general culture and a reasonable degree of literacy. He just isn't fit for Brazil's foreign affairs minister and, even less, in a world with a pandemic and a possible new hegemonic order.

*Bruno Beaklini é political scientist and professor of international relations. edit or channel Strategy & Analysis.

Article originally published in Middle East Monitor.