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Chapter 6: Rising without sabre-rattling? The PT andBrazil’s internationalist foreign policy“…Brazil has asserted its international ambitions without rattling a saber.”Newsweek, April 18, 2009“It appears that Lula has given economic policy to Wall Street and foreign policy to PT.”Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy, March 2008“What is striking about Brazil’s great-power claims is that they are framed almost entirely in economic (and, to alesser degree, cultural) terms. Whereas the other BRICs have invested in hard power, Brazil has traditionally devaluedits military, instead emphasizing multilateral cooperation within international institutions.”Patrick Stewart, The National Interest, July 7 2010 453IntroductionBrazil is the largest economy in South America, and the tenth-largest in the world.The country’s diplomatic elite has long been guided by the ‘continental proportions’of Brazil, and the ever-present foreign policy objective of winning for Brazil its‘rightful place’ in international politics. Referring to Brazil as the ‘country oftomorrow’ has become a truism. Yet, even under a number of military governmentsfrom 1964 to 1985, Brazil’s changing power profile did not lead to aggression in theprojection of its power abroad. This is a function both of how threats are perceivedby the political class, and of Brazil’s relatively peaceful relations with all ten of itsneighbours. Furthermore, Brazilian decision-makers have long been divided in theirallegiances to a bifurcated national identity: identification with the West, and withthe Third World.Under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s president from 1995 to 2002, foreignpolicy assumed a posture of what some analysts term ‘autonomy throughparticipation’. This was a way, according to the policy’s proponents, for Brazil toexercise more control over its future, by actively participating in the framing of new453 Patrick Stewart, “Brazil Seeking Security”, The National Interest, July 7, 2010.Accessed online at: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/brazil-seeking-security-3622on 22 September 2010.191