South American Regionalism between Brazil and Venezuela: Divergences during the Lula and Hugo Chávez Administrations

Regionalismo sul-americano entre o Brasil e a Venezuela: divergências durante os governos Lula e Hugo Chávez

Abstract

In the first decade of the 21st century, South America’s political landscape was marked by the rise of genuinely multilateral groups from the region that were organised on the margins of the OAS (Organization of American States), such as CASA (South American Community of Nations) and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations). Although this process has been widely portrayed in the literature on politics and regional integration, less attention has been paid to the differences between the protagonists of these arrangements. The present article’s main point is that Brazil and Venezuela played a leading role in that mobilization process, respectively under the administrations of Lula and Chávez. It argues that, despite ideological convergences and occasional alliances, there was a clash observed between the two leaders that entailed different conceptions of regional projects which polarised South American politics at the time.

Keywords
Lula; Venezuela; Brazil; Hugo Chávez; South America; regionalism; UNASUR

Resumo

Na primeira década do século XXI, o panorama político da América do Sul foi marcado pela ascensão de grupos multilaterais genuinamente sul-americanos organizados à margem da OEA (Organização dos Estados Americanos), tais como a CASA (Comunidade Sul-Americana de Nações) e a UNASUR (União das Nações Sul-Americanas). Embora este processo tenha sido amplamente retratado na literatura sobre política e integração regional, tem sido dada menos atenção às diferenças entre os protagonistas destes arranjos. O ponto principal do artigo é que o Brasil e a Venezuela desempenharam um papel de liderança, sob os governos de Lula e Chávez, apesar das convergências ideológicas e das alianças ocasionais, um choque que envolveu diferentes concepções de projetos regionais que polarizaram a política sul-americana na altura.

Palavras-chave
Lula; Venezuela; Brasil; Hugo Chávez; América do Sul; Regionalismo; UNASUR

Introduction

The dawn of the 21st century was marked by an important inflexion of US foreign policy, which placed a focus on Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East, and consequently expanding the margins for the exercise of foreign policies with a greater degree of autonomy in the Americas, especially in South America (Soares de Lima 2013). Along with this expansion of the margins for manoeuvre, the rise of governments whose rhetoric contested neoliberal policies, the rejection of the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), and the resumption of alternative projects for regional multilateral concertation also marked the period. It shaped a scenario combining the proliferation and overlapping of these instruments with the widening divergence about the character they should assume (Nolte 2014; Nolte and Comini 2016).

While the inflection of the South American political landscape — illustrated by the electoral victories of Chávez, Lula, Evo Morales, Néstor Kirchner, Tabaré Vasquez, Rafael Correa, among others — and its relation to this proliferation of multilateral instruments of regional cooperation has been greatly scrutinised, less emphasis has been placed on understanding the vast divergences in their internal politics and foreign policies. In particular, the dissimilar strategic visions of an international insertion of Venezuela and Brazil consistently influenced the pace and direction of the disputes to shape multilateral integrationist institutions. Simultaneously, these visions represented a symbiosis between the orientation that these countries historically assumed in the regional political concert and the significance of Lula and Chávez’s rise for their respective national policies.

In this sense, the main goal of this paper is to explain how the divergent foreign policies of Brazil and Venezuela were articulated within the regional multilateral context of the period in question. From this perspective, we hypothesise that under the governments of Lula and Chávez, the regional projections of Brazil and Venezuela clashed during the first decade of the 21st century, as they materialised in divergences regarding multilateral security, energy, financial, and political-strategic issues in the region. This dispute reflected the political and ideological distinctions inherent in the compositions of Lula and Chávez’s respective mandates and incorporated past trends of their national foreign policies.

South America in the foreign policy of Lula’s mandates

Besides its internal policies, Lula’s administration did not make radical changes in the overall profile of Brazilian foreign policy, despite the fact that it brought essential innovations to it. As proof thereof, the appointment of Celso Amorim as former foreign minister for Itamar Franco’s administration corroborated the trend of alignment with the features historically established during the country’s international insertion. In the hemispheric panorama, the relations of the North-South axis and the regional integration initiatives followed a pattern in line with the one hitherto outlined, albeit with some specific inflexions, operated essentially in the multilateral scope and the relations of the South-South axis.

According to Visentini (2013), the international relations of the Lula government adopted three dimensions for implementing its strategy. The economic dimension was characterised by pragmatism, maintaining good relations with the First World countries to obtain resources, investments, and technology. At the same time, Brazil ensured the fulfilment of its commitments such as paying foreign debts and maintaining the macroeconomic model inherited from Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration. At the same time, the country reinforced its negotiating stance within the scope of multilateral economic and financial organisations, and internally strengthened its domestic market. In the political dimension, a view of resistance prevailed, characterised by the reaffirmation of national interests and the international role of the country, restoring to Itamaraty a strategic position in the formulation of foreign policy. The third dimension was the social one, which articulated the social programs of the country’s internal plan to correct the distortions of the globalisation process centred on trade and free investments, with a focus on fighting against hunger as its main symbolic element.

In this context of building a more significant bargaining space, Brazil began to prioritise enhancing regional consultation mechanisms in its foreign policy agenda, especially in South America. As Saraiva (2013b) pointed out, in the 1990s, Brazilians had a predominantly pragmatic constitutionalist¹ view on South American integration, advocating for a more discretionary Brazilian leadership in South America and a greater focus on the commercial dimension. With the rise of Lula, the so-called autonomists and the developmentalists gained space, stressing a greater emphasis on Brazilian regional leadership, and seeing integration as an engine for industrial growth.

In the foreign policy of Lula’s government, a new order of South America under the Brazilian leadership was considered a priority. The rapprochement with neighbouring countries was perceived as an instrument for fortifying the Brazilian potential and forming a coalition to exert more significant international influence. To this end, Brazilian diplomacy attributed a new weight to regional leadership, based on the reinforcement of bilateral assistance and multilateralism. It updated the principles of non-intervention as ‘non-indifference.’ It included in its agenda the articulation of regional leadership with regional cooperation/integration processes and with incentives for Brazilian development. (Saraiva 2013b: 12, author’s translation)

Having relations with its neighbouring countries and the construction of an integrated regional space in the subcontinent as a fundamental goal of its foreign policy, Brazil guided its South American integration project, according to Visentini (2013), based on three pillars: the expansion of MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South),² linked to trade and investments, aiming at the constitution of regional production chains and measures such as the Competitive Import Substitution Program; the implementation of IIRSA (Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America),³ focusing on the interaction of transport, communications, and energy, as a framework for the eventual construction of oil and gas pipelines;⁴ and the creation of CASA in 2004 and UNASUR in 2007, hence deepening the political awareness of integration through the maintenance of high-level dialogue between the states.

Thus, Lula continued to guide Brazilian foreign policy in favour of restraining the American project of the FTAA.⁵ During his administration, Fernando Henrique Cardoso had already pronounced that ‘FTAA is an option, and our destination is MERCOSUR’ (Cardoso, cited in Bandeira 2010b: 588). Following this trend, in 2003, Brazil proposed the so-called light FTAA when the rise of leftist South American governments expressed their opposition to the integration projects led by the US. In 2005, the FTAA would finally be buried after the 4th Summit of the Americas held in Mar del Plata.

All these efforts in the regional context allowed the full insertion and protagonism of Brazil in three fundamental multilateral mechanisms, covering the Southern Cone, South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean, respectively represented by MERCOSUR UNASUR and CELAC. Barros and Ramos (2013) observed that this scenario consolidated a Brazilian foreign policy strategy with a realistic and pragmatic profile, aiming to establish regional integration by scales from different concentric circles (Vigevani and Aragusuku 2014), allowing for the adaptation to sub-regional economic and geopolitical realities.

Despite the features of continuity in the delimitation of South America as a priority regional sphere of Brazilian foreign policy, some essential changes were operated in line with the perspectives of the so-called post-liberal regionalism, rescuing past tendencies of the Brazilian developmental era:

The main change in the Brazilian attitude towards South America was not its prioritisation but the understanding that this relationship could not be based only on political and discursive aspects, requiring implementing policies to establish a solid economic base with the region. This new perception had as consequences an intensification of regional trade, significant investments of BNDES in infrastructure works in several countries of the continent, opening of credit lines to Mercosur partners to finance their sales to the Brazilian market of machines, components, and parts, and some measures that indicated to its neighbours a real commitment to the region. (Desiderá Neto et al. 2014: 52, author’s translation)

Therefore, this new regionalism presented political and social concerns in addition to the former, essentially commercial, facet. In this sense, instruments such as CELAC (Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States) and UNASUR had proposals to adopt common positions of the South American countries in the multilateral forums of global governance; to seek advances in regional administration, avoiding disturbances to the democratic; and the creation by UNASUR of the CDS (South American Defence Council); and the Council for the World Drug Problem (Teixeira and Desiderá Neto 2012: 31).

Teixeira and Desiderá Neto (2012) stressed that the incorporation of IIRSA projects by the COSIPLAN (Infrastructure and Planning Council) had the potential to overcome the former restricted approach to the formation of export corridors on the continent, shaping the physical integration of the regional countryside. Such an initiative could reverse the original pattern of IIRSA, which aligned with the perspective of open regionalism, evolving into a developmental bias. It would allow the South American countries to boost the integration of productive chains of suppliers and producers, the consolidation of economies of scale, and even the integration of South American societies.

In this period, the South American efforts of the Brazilian foreign policy focused on the infrastructure projects linking Brazil to neighbouring countries, the strengthening of BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) as a regional financing player; on the mitigation of conflicts through multilateral mechanisms; and on the feasibility of dialogue between the different formats of regional integration that were underway. The leading Brazilian role in building these regional multilateral mechanisms was an essential precondition for its successful ascension in the international landscape.

Besides representing a privileged market for Brazilian manufactured products, the shared leadership of Brazil in South America was an essential argument for the proposal to occupy a permanent seat in the possible expansion of the UN Security Council. With this in mind, the achievement of Brazilian objectives involved establishing broad and plural instruments of dialogue and cooperation, including all of the leading regional countries without political-ideological vetoes, to avoid the interference of extra-regional powers in the South American issues.

South America in the foreign policy of the Chávez mandates

The foreign policy of Hugo Chávez’s government was a mixture of radical changes with some features of continuity prevailing throughout the hegemony of puntofijismo. As in its domestic policy, the discourse on foreign policy was based on open hostility to the former government’s guidelines. In this way, José Vicente Rangel, the first Chancellor of Chávez’s administration, declared that Venezuela’s one-time international insertion was not responding to its interests due to its supposedly elitist character (Cícero 2016). Consequently, the revolutionary designs of the Fifth Republic were transplanted into the formulation of the foreign policy. Furthermore, despite certain important continuity traits, it intended to carry out a complete inflexion in its guidelines and goals.

Serbin and Pont (2014) highlighted their belief in the so-called Venezuelan exceptionalism as a trace of continuity of the Chavista foreign policy compared to that of its predecessors, maintaining the President’s role in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy and the overestimation of demographic, territorial, and economic resources of the country. This former exceptionalism was based on the belief in the superiority of Venezuelan democratic institutions, with accentuated anti-communist traits. This ideology was inverted during the rule of Hugo Chávez, having incorporated a nationalist agenda that was antagonistic to US interests. The president’s functions increased, with the role of the Venezuelan military forces in the regime expanding its praetorian features. The country’s natural resources resumed their function as the engine of Venezuelan international activism, now guided by a revolutionary ideology aimed at defying US hegemony.

Conversely, according to the authors, the main changes in foreign policy orientation include the implementation of a geopolitical and ideological vision of the international system; the vigorous pursuit of international prominence; the rapprochement with Cuba; and the dismantling of the professionalised mechanisms of Venezuelan foreign relations institutions. The progressive politicisation of the FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces) and its impact on foreign policy guidelines was illustrated by the official belief in the hypothesis of asymmetric conflict against the US, predicted by the new Venezuelan security and defence doctrine (Serbin and Pont 2014).

These changes were expressed in the regional dimension of Venezuelan foreign policy. Chávez criticised the FTAA in the early years of his administration while proposing a Latin American Confederation. From 2001 onwards, he began to consider building a mechanism led by a greater ideological focus, which materialised in 2004 by creating the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America). ALBA was aligned with the perspective of the so-called Socialism of the 21st Century rising in Latin America. Over the years, its members included Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other Central American and Caribbean countries.

The external radicalisation of Chávez’s politics responded to internal impulses in a scenario of robust appreciation of international oil prices, boosting oil diplomacy. At the same time that leftist governments came to power in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, the CAN (Andean Community) countries were conducting a rapprochement with trade negotiations led by the US that were based on FTAs. Chávez took advantage of this situation to build friendly relations with MERCOSUR countries, reinforcing a trend already outlined in the foreign policy of Rafael Caldera’s administration in the 1990s (Villa 2004). In 2000, he had already formalised a request to install Venezuela as an associate member, and in 2005 he concluded a formal request for membership as a full member while withdrawing from the CAN:6

In this scenario, MERCOSUR has become an area of geostrategic interest. Nevertheless, already at this stage of the development of the political process in Venezuela, an aggressive foreign policy towards the US and an increasing distance from the Andean countries had been chosen, evident even before the formal announcement of Venezuela’s withdrawal from CAN in April 2006. The progress of the negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement between the US and the Andean countries isolated Venezuela in the context of the CAN, in addition to being in contradiction with the expressed objectives of the country’s foreign policy, such as the fight against the unipolar order, South-South cooperation, and Latin American integration. Under the slogan ‘our north is south,’ the Venezuelan government decided to seek a greater alliance with MERCOSUR and requested entry as a full member in 2005. This action surprised politicians, economic and social actors, and even academics because the country had been admitted as an associate member of the bloc just a year earlier. (Briceño Ruiz 2010: 89, author’s translation)

Consequently, the deepening of the relations with the Southern Cone countries was concomitant with the departure from the CAN and the G3. Chávez’s decision for Venezuela’s withdrawal from the CAN in April 2006 was based on arguments against the FTAs that Peru and Colombia were negotiating with the US and criticism of the CAN-MERCOSUR free trade agreement (Malamud 2007). The departure of the G3 outlined the same conception since it was attributed to the alignment of Colombia and Mexico with free trade agreements. As Serbin (2011) highlighted, the Venezuelan abandonment of the CAN seriously affected the business sector linked to the increase in trade with Colombia and the Andean countries, especially the non-traditional exports and the agricultural industry. Furthermore, Venezuela’s admission to MERCOSUR resulted in the loss of benefits that the government had enjoyed as an associated country within negotiations between MERCOSUR and CAN.

On the other hand, the conflicts between the regional policy exercised by the Chavista government and the interests of the Venezuelan business sectors were explicit.⁷ In addition to reflecting the revisionist political-ideological composition of Chavism, such events also responded to the greater degree of the state’s relative autonomy in Venezuela, given the sequential concentration of power in the executive achieved by Chávez progressively after the events of the coup d’état attempt in 2002.⁸ Therefore, although decisions such as the abandonment of the CAN and the request for MERCOSUR entry occurred without consultations or compensatory measures with the national business sectors — mainly those linked to the non-traditional exports—the government had legitimacy and considerable support from other sectors of society to implement such measures.⁹ However, the tone of less conciliation of the Chavista strategy with the interests of the entire sectors of the national bourgeoisie is clear.10

In general, the South American strategy of Chavista foreign policy was coupled with its broader claim to challenge the hegemony of the US, collaborate to build alternative poles in the international system, and deepen a profile of regional integration of an eminently political bias with economic issues in the wake of the convergence of strategic orientation to be adopted by its member countries. Consequently, the approximation to MERCOSUR and the distance from the CAN were in parallel to the rise of the left in MERCOSUR and the option of the Andean countries for a closer approximation to the US. It is known that, although led by forces from the left, the governments of Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil had a less radical orientation — both in their national articulations and in foreign policy — compared to the main Venezuelan allies in the ALBA circuit.

It should be considered that the fundamental relevance of the Caribbean region for the Venezuelan regional integration strategy reflected a trace of continuity of Chávez’s foreign policy toward that of his predecessors. Furthermore, the very overvaluation of bilateral and multilateral economic assistance programs resided, as in the past, in the centrality of the Venezuelan oil sector. Despite the political challenges it has suffered,¹¹ the implementation of PETROCARIBE allowed Venezuela to strengthen the accession of Caribbean countries to ALBA.¹² This evidence led the government to expand the program through regional companies such as PETROANDINA¹³ and PETROSUL and elucubrations such as PETROAMAZÔNIA and PETROAMÉRICA,¹⁴ aiming to emulate the models of mixed oil companies and extend the incentives to join ALBA to the Central American and South American regions.

In 2008, ALBA gained a commercial component by establishing a Trade Treaty Between Peoples (TCP) and replacing the word ‘alternative’ with ‘alliance’ in its name, renaming it the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America — Trade Treaty Between Peoples (ALBA-TCP) (Moreira 2018).

Thus, the Chavista strategy of regional insertion became central to the construction of ALBA-TCP, the guiding axis of the Latin American integration project based on the antagonism to the interests of the US and in an alliance with a political and military profile while exercising tactical manoeuvres to influence the shape of multilateral formatting instruments of regional cooperation — such as MERCOSUR, CASA, and UNASUR. Essentially, such movements were guided by a revisionist aspiration, which aimed to reorganise the geostrategic board of South America (González Urrutia 2008) due to a broader objective of articulating regional projects that were capable of exercising a counterweight to US interests in the hemispheric concert, with a possible ‘Community of Latin American Nations’ as a future binding element (Serbin 2011).

The disputes for redesigning South America

Regarding regional integration, the Brazilian posture was far from breaking away from its policy of previous decades, better representing the consolidation of a trend already present in Brazilian foreign policy. On the other hand, Venezuela represented both an ally and a questioner of Brazilian propositions in this integrationist dimension. Although it supported initiatives within the scope of CASA/UNASUR and MERCOSUR, it also potentiated alternatives to Brazilian movements, either through ALBA or by means of persuading the country’s historical allies in the region, such as Argentina, aiming to break the balance of what Bandeira (2010a) characterised as the strategic triangle – namely Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela.

What is certain is that, as Cabarcas (2017) pointed out, the undisputed hegemony of Brazilian propositions prevailed at least until the first South American Energy Council, organised in Isla Margarita in 2007. At that meeting, promoted by Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia, an attempt was made at bringing a profound change toward South American integration. Among the propositions, that were fundamentally put forth by Venezuela, were the OPPEGASUR, the Banco do Sul, the Southern Gas Pipeline, and the transformation of CASA into UNASUR. As Vaz (cited in Cabarcas 2017) pointed out, the Isla Margarita Council was a patent attempt to hijack the integrationist agenda by the Bolivarian axis. Thus, the additional declaration to the Council, signed by all the representatives present, agreed to establish the headquarters of the new entity, UNASUR, in Quito, Ecuador, the heart of one of the ALBA-TCP member countries, instead of the planned centre of CASA, which would be installed in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, the conflicting views between Brazil and Venezuela regarding the directions to be followed by South American integration have deepened, with clear implications for security and defence aspects, energy integration, and regional financial institutions.

Security and defence issues

Since the beginning of his administration, Hugo Chávez has actively pursued the formation of a regional institution to handle security and defence issues. On the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Andean Parliament in 1999, he affirmed the possibility of establishing an Organization of the Caribbean and South Atlantic Treaty — in contrast, of course, to NATO — while he reaffirmed this desire at the Brasilia Summit in 2000, as a means of counterbalancing the US presence in the region, especially in the context of the implementation of Plan Colombia (Comini 2015). During the meeting of Defence Ministers of the Hemisphere in 2001, Venezuela once again touched on the issue, adding to the aspirations for the unification of the Armed Forces of South American countries to incorporate elements of Bolivarian thought to them, such as the notion of Pátria Grande (Pedroso 2015).

In 2004, the proposition appeared more consistently, already under the OTAS (South American Treaty Organization), aiming to form a military alliance that reverberated in the Latin American Armed Forces (Serbin and Pont 2014). In a meeting with Lula and Kirchner in January 2006, Chávez again mentioned the need to form a South American Defence Council in a proposal that included a military integration of the 12 countries, receiving the name of OTAS; a defence pact that provides for sharing of equipment, services, and intelligence; a collective defence mechanism; the elaboration of a Latin American defence and security doctrine (Villa and Bragatti 2015). In the same year, the Venezuelan President raised the possibility of a future merger of the Armed Forces of the MERCOSUR countries (Comini 2015).

According to Comini (2015), throughout the 1990s, Brazil rejected Argentina’s proposal to constitute a Regional Council linked to security and defence issues; however, with the dawn of the 21st century, it changed its stance, a phenomenon with essential precedents in the findings of three Brazilian official documents: the National Defence Policy of 2005, the Brazil 3 Times Project of 2006, and the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) of 2007. In this context, the country publicly proposed the creation of the South American Defence Council in March 2008, having previously informed and consulted Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, about its intentions—before doing so with any South American country (Comini 2015). The Brazilian minister of Defence Nelson Jobim personally presented the proposal to the US Department of Defence, seeking to ensure that it was not an initiative opposed to the US but rather a forum for dialogue on defence issues, with no faculties for binding decisions with the members.

To approve the creation of the CDS at the foundational meeting of UNASUR, Brazil retreated from its intention after a demonstration by Uribe, Colombian President, openly opposed it. Thus, the foundational meeting forwarded, with Colombian permission, the convening of a Working Group to compose a document that, if approved by all, would lead to the creation of the Council.

The Working Group held four meetings in Santiago, Chile, between June and December 2008, in which two models to be discussed were presented and opposed: the Brazilian model, embodied in the Strategic Political Framework of the South American Defence Council, and the Venezuelan model, materialised in The structure proposed by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for the conformation of the Working Group on the South American Council in the framework of the Union of South American Nations. Brazil proposed the incorporation of the CDS into the structure of UNASUR, replacing the Conferences of Ministers of Defence of CASA, which had only held one meeting until then. In the Brazilian understanding, the CDS should adopt a forum of dialogue and political coordination profile, with greater flexibility and non-binding decisions, serving as a complementary institution to the existing hemispheric and regional multilateral mechanisms. Venezuela proposed the establishment of a collective security alliance, mentioning in the document presented issues in favour of civic-military cohesion for the defence of the region, the adoption of a single voice in international forums, and the adoption of common security and regional defence policy, mentioning events such as the reactivation by the US of its IV Fleet to operate in the South Atlantic and the US military presence in South America as threats.

The Brazilian proposition prevailed, as it was deemed more suitable given the divergences and convergences established by the different UNASUR member countries. Thus, the CDS emerged as a forum for consultation, cooperation, and coordination. As already stated, until then, the countries of the region did not have a broader history of cooperation in security and defence, precisely because of their divergent views, usually subordinating them to relations with the US and other regimes and institutions created by the US aspirations, such as the OAS (Mariano et al. 2014). This issue did not go unnoticed by Brazil, the leading proponent of the CDS, hence the adoption of a low profile and flexible structure of the Council and prior consultation with the US itself. Fuccille (2015) highlighted the US tactic of using political and ideological ties with Uribe’s Colombian government to influence the adoption of this smoothened and non-operative structure in the negotiations for the institution’s formation.

It is worth mentioning that, unlike the other central bodies of the UNASUR structure, arising from proposals approved by all its members, the creation of the CDS was a proposal that came exclusively from Brazil (Villa and Viana 2010). According to Vaz (2013), the National Defence Strategy of Brazil, published in 2008, reserved central importance to the development of the national armaments industry – with the support of the FIESP (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo) and the ABIMDE (Brazilian Association of Defence and Security Materials Industry), imposing as imperative the need to generate economies of scale and prevent the reinvigoration of the armaments industry from fuelling regional distrust. In this sense, the Brazilian government privileged the treatment of the subject within the framework of the CDS and stimulated partnerships with neighbouring countries for the development of the KC-390, a large cargo plane (Vaz 2013).

Despite the assertive rhetoric of the Chavistas, even within the framework of the ALBA-TCP, similar proposals had great receptivity, with the most consistent military ties restricted to Venezuela’s bilateral agreements with Cuba and Bolivia (Serbin and Pont 2014). In 2008, the year in which the CDS was founded, ALBA set out to establish a defensive military alliance comprising Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic, specifying the adoption of a joint defence strategy, a collective security mechanism, the conformation of a regional army and a defence school. At the VII Extraordinary Summit of the ALBA-TCP, held in Bolivia in 2009, the adoption of a mutual defence pact was discussed, although not officially included in the meeting documents (Villa and Bragatti 2015). The project would advance only years later, with the establishment of the Regional Defence School in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 2011 and the rebuke of the TIAR by Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in 2012. However, as Villa and Bragatti (2015) pointed out, these coincidences did not guarantee consensus on a common doctrine for the Armed Forces of all the countries that constituted the bloc. Countries such as Ecuador and Nicaragua would have difficulties shaping their visions and structures with those that prevailed in Cuba and Venezuela, holders of doctrines that privilege instruments of a civic-military union.

The antagonism of the Brazilian and Venezuelan propositions replicated, once again, the difference in the scope of regional integration endorsed by each nation. The Brazilians’ flexible structure and low profile aimed to accommodate the plurality of views on security and defence within South American countries and avoid confrontation with other hemispheric initiatives. The character of a military alliance and collective defence enhanced by the Venezuelan proposition did not find an echo in the understandings of most of the actors involved in the negotiations, readily rejected, among other actors, by Argentina itself (Comini 2015), a country with which Chávez eventually triangulated positions to isolate hegemonic pretensions from Brazil. Pedroso (2015) highlighted the structure adopted as a middle path between Colombia’s and Venezuela’s roles within the discussions, highlighting the breadth and the Brazilian negotiation strategy. The majority prevailed in this concert, which led Comini (2015) to mention that the Council adopted a Brazilian model with a South American way.

Energy Issues

When creating the South American Community of Nations (CASA), on the occasion of the Third South American Presidential Summit, the Cuzco Declaration mentioned commitments made by countries for physical, energy, and communications integration in South America. This trend was deepened with the Ayacucho Declaration in December 2004, which reiterated support for IIRSA and its project portfolio. At the first Presidential Summit of the CASA, organised in Brasilia in 2005, energy integration was categorised as a priority of the organisation. In 2006, at the second Summit, the Cochabamba Declaration reiterated this commitment. Meanwhile, in August 2005, the First Meeting of CASA’s Energy Ministers in Caracas was organised. At it, the Declaration of Caracas recognised the PETROAMÉRICA initiative, promoted by Venezuela, as an essential instrument of energy integration.

Against this backdrop, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina encouraged the First South American Energy Summit organisation to be held in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, in 2007. This initiative had the proposals of Venezuela as an epicentre for the meeting, which, in addition to its energy ambitions, was concerned with reorienting the course of South American integration as a whole. Consequently, among the main proposals presented by the Venezuelans at the Summit were: a) the creation of the OPPEGASUR (Organization of South American Gas Producers and Exporters);b) the creation of the Bank of the South; c) the redefinition of the model of CASA, to be transformed into UNASUR; d) the approval and enhancement of the Southern Gas Pipeline project; e) the condemnation, by South American countries, of the proliferation of biofuels.

As OPPEGASUR was created, a South American OPEC came to light at a meeting held in Buenos Aires a few weeks before the Summit, with the governments of Chávez, Kirchner, and Morales as its main sponsors. Through its chancellor Celso Amorim, Brazil characterised the initiative as counterproductive to regional integration efforts by emphasising a distinction between producers and consumers in the South American panorama (Malamud 2007). Among the main Venezuelan interests behind the proposal, in addition to the immediate strengthening of ties with ally Evo Morales, were the conformation of a structure that would allow the export of liquefied natural gas by Venezuela from the conformation of a vast network of gas pipelines – among which the Great Southern Gas Pipeline, the Transandino Simón Bolívar, and the Transguajiro Gas Pipeline would stand out.

Regarding the Southern Gas Pipeline, it is worth noting that Hugo Chávez had already presented the proposal at the 2005 MERCOSUR Asuncion Summit to overcome the current supply problems in the MERCOSUR countries. Furthermore, in December 2005, during its 29th Presidential Summit held in Montevideo which marked the induction of Venezuela as a full member of the bloc, the Presidents of Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding to commence studies on the feasibility of building a gas pipeline that would connect Venezuela’s gas reserves with the main consumption centres in Brazil and Argentina (Ruiz-Caro 2006). The feasibility study, presented at the MERCOSUR Summit in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of 2007, indicated that the approximately 10,000 km connecting the fields of Marechal Sucre in Venezuela to Buenos Aires could be built in six years at the cost of roughly $25 b.

Similar to the proposal to create OPPEGASUR, the Venezuelan efforts to strengthen the Southern Gas Pipeline have not found greater acceptance in the debates held in Isla Margarita. The immense extension of the pipeline would result in enormous expenses, estimated at $25 billion, and considerable maintenance costs. Malamud (2007) pointed out that criticism of the initiative increased even in Bolivia, harming the country’s interests in the regional context. He also stressed that the most significant existing pipeline in Europe at the time did not exceed 1,700 km. The latter took about ten years to be built, raising questions about the feasibility of the six-year deadline for the Southern Gas Pipeline. Bodemer (2010) emphasised the Venezuelan limitations to export and guarantee the South American gas supply due to the direction of its production for the extraction and processing of oil in the Orinoco strip and the Brazilian disinterest in strengthening Hugo Chávez in the South American scenario, especially after the discoveries linked to the Pre-Salt, which would relieve the expectations of energy demand in the country.

Figure 1
Project of the Great Southern Gas Pipeline

A point of maximum tension at the Summit was the discussion about biofuels, which was, once again, polarised by the positions of Brazil and Venezuela. In March 2007, Brazil and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in developing biofuel technology. Since then, Cuba and Venezuela have repeatedly criticised what would result, in their view, in the transformation of food into fuels. For this reason, Chávez, with the subsequent endorsement of Fidel Castro, publicly expressed the supposed link between biofuels and the degradation of the environment by strengthening the automobile industry and attributing its potentiation to the interests of American imperialism. In addition to the centrality of the oil issue, Cuba and Venezuela attacked biofuels because the project of Brazil and the US favoured the then depressed sugar markets of several Caribbean and Central American countries then inserted in the sphere of influence of ALBA, the result of Venezuelan petrodiplomacy (Malamud 2007). The possible success of the project could lead to a rift between them and the Bolivarian plans, with significant reflections on the Venezuelan-Cuban strategy of regrouping votes within the multilateral organisations.

In this dispute, Brazil had the support of Argentina, a significant global producer of soybean, corn, and wheat derivatives. In addition to the possibility of Brazil and Argentina cooperating in the scope of the biofuel enhancement project, they also aligned positions regarding the defence of agricultural production on the international scene, materialised by the arguments against the subsidies imposed by rich countries on their imports. Similarly, non-oil exporting countries such as Uruguay and Paraguay also supported the Brazilian position.

Thus, once again, the Venezuelan initiative was dehydrated, with the Summit’s final declaration recognising the potential of biofuels for the diversification of the South American energy matrix. As Malamud (2007) pointed out, the content of the Chavista criticism of biofuels responded more to political issues – the convergence between Brazil and the US, energy supremacy in South America, and dispute of influence over Caribbean countries – than to technical issues, a question evidenced by the fact that Venezuela bought, in 2006, about 100 million litres of ethanol from Brazil, even though it later suspended the acquisition. Far from focusing on the whole energy integration of the region, Venezuelan propositions were almost wholly centred on the expansion of their oil and gas supply networks while attacking parallel initiatives, such as that of Brazilian ethanol.

Financial Institutions

Regarding the formatting of regional financial institutions, the differences in conception between Brazil and Venezuela appeared more clearly in the debates about the conformation of the Bank of the South. The origins of his proposition date back to the presidential election campaign of Hugo Chávez in 1998 (Carcanholo 2011), appearing with greater force only in 2004, on the occasion of the speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela at the 11th Meeting of the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). In 2005, Hugo Chávez reinforced the proposal in the framework of ALBA (Calixtre and Barros 2010). More consistently, the proposal for the creation of the Bank of the South was launched by the Venezuelans in 2006 as part of a broader context of elaborating a new regional financial architecture. Proposed within the scope of UNASUR, the New Regional Financial Architecture advocated the creation of a regional contingency fund, a regional monetary space, and a regional development bank.

Initially, the proposal did not find greater acceptance by Brazil, which signalled a preference for maintaining the strategy of enhancing its participation in the scope of the CAF (Andean Development Corporation), which had, in the Brazilian view, more significant experience and credibility to promote the deepening of financial cooperation (Alves and Biancarelli 2015; Strautman 2008). Nonetheless, in February 2007, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Venezuela and Argentina, concerning positions in favour of the uplift of the Bank of the South and fixing 120 days for its constitution. The first text drafted to materialise the project was prepared in March 2007, affirming the Bank of the South as a development bank and a monetary stabilisation fund, also suggesting an institutional structure similar to those of traditional financial institutions to link the right to vote to the amount disbursed by each country (Carcanholo 2011). Argentina’s approach to the project changed the Brazilian strategy: the government set out to collaborate in constructing the initiative, conditioning this movement to adopt more technical guidelines and less political and ideological in its structures.

In May 2007, a meeting between the President of Ecuador and the Ministers of Economy and Finance of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Ecuador itself resulted in the Quito Declaration, defining advances for the structuring of a New Regional Financial Architecture. Among all definitions, the Bank of the South was categorised as a development bank to analyse the possible creation of a stabilisation fund, or to strengthen the Reserve Fund of Latin America, the choices to advance in the development of a regional monetary system and the invitation to the other countries of UNASUR to join the institution. This would mean that the document already indicated the triumph of the Brazilian proposals on the institutionalisation of the Bank of the South as a development bank and restricted to the countries of UNASUR (Alves and Biancarelli 2015).

Although the Foundation Minutes stipulated 60 days for the definition of pending issues and the beginning of operations, they took almost two years to prepare a document that granted the Bank of the South the status of a multilateral financial entity. In September 2009, the Bank of the South Constitutive Agreement was established, after a meeting in Porlamar, Venezuela. For the beginning of the formal term of the institution, the need for ratification of the Agreement was stipulated by at least four of the seven founding countries, a situation only reached in December 2011, following the Uruguayan ratification. It is important to note that, in this area, the Brazilian Executive Power only forwarded the proposal to the Legislative Power for ratification in February 2012, that is, more than two years after the signing of the Constitutive Agreement (Mariano, Ramazini Júnior and Almeida, 2014). Faced with the delays, the First Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Bank of the South would take place only on 12 June 2013.

When analysing the sequence of Brazilian movements towards the initiative, it is inevitable to perceive at least three distinct stages: one of rejection toward the industry, reaffirming its preference to strengthen mechanisms of another profile; a second of conditional adherence aiming to change the directions and shape of the institutions, until then aligned with the profile prevailing in the multilateral concerts typical of the ALBA circuit; a third of postponement and emptying of the initiative, delaying its full implementation and dehydrating its ability to last in the regional context. Indeed, this tactic has not gone unnoticed and is very much related to the entry of Argentina — Brazil’s priority partnership in South America — into the negotiations in 2007. Eric Toussaint (2014), a collaborator of the Ecuadorian government for the composition of the proposal to create the Bank of the South, regarded Brazil as the main responsible party for its paralysis. According to Toussaint, Brazil’s participation in the institution’s composition was due to the attempt to stop a potential competitor for BNDES.

Conclusion

The period in which the Lula and Chávez governments (2003-2010) coexisted was marked by the proliferation and overlap of regional multilateral instruments. Although they maintained their disagreements, both Brazil and Venezuela favoured the creation of multilateral coordination instruments properly from South America, without the interference of external agents. In 2010, both would be at the centre of the articulations resulting in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC),¹⁵ an unprecedented instrument of regional political conciliation involving all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, these tactical alliances did not exclude fundamental, strategic divergences, which manifested themselves in the formulation and institutionalisation of these mechanisms.

While Brazil prioritised the construction of broad and plural mechanisms to accommodate the different initiatives existing in the region, Venezuela pursued the adoption of an integration that incorporated part of the revisionist repertoire already endorsed by ALBA. Contrary to the interests of both, the clash between these visions would open margins for a third bloc, which would be articulated in 2012, through the Pacific Alliance, with a view to an integrationist perspective with a liberal approach, giving rise to centrality in relations with the US and putting in check the propositions that were intended to be hegemonic throughout the first decade of the 21st century.

What is evident is that the international insertion of Brazil and Venezuela during the administrations of Lula and Chávez cannot be reduced to the mere ideologies and political impulses of their rulers. Nor should simplifications be sought to the structures of the regionalism disputes in scams such as the simple ideological alignment of certain governments. After all, the systems that govern the orientation and manifestation of national interests in different conjunctures undoubtedly permeate the complex interaction between the events of foreign and domestic policies; the broader context of international politics; and, fundamentally, the historical and geographical circumstances of the states at hand.

Notes

• 1
  ‘The pragmatic institutionalists assign greater importance to Brazil’s support for the international ruling regimes, identifying the regulation of international relations as a favourable condition for Brazilian economic development. They also advocate an international insertion based on a new vision of the concepts of sovereignty and autonomy, where all must defend global values. In this case, autonomy would involve integration with the international order, undertaking different initiatives within the framework of international institutions. The rise of Lula’s government, on the other hand, reinforced the role of the autonomist current. Its most striking feature is the defence of Brazil’s autonomous and proactive projection in international politics. Within this perspective, they advocate a reform of the dynamics of international institutions to provide more space for Brazilian actions. Bearing a behaviour based on soft revisionism of the international order, the autonomists have political-strategic concerns about the North/South clash and seek an approximation with emerging countries due to their common characteristics with Brazil. The building of regional leadership and the rise to a global power status are its main objectives’ (Saraiva 2013a: 20, author’s translation).
• 2
  In this way, initiatives to reinvigorate the political weight of MERCOSUR were encouraged, such as the Structural Convergence Fund (FOCEM), created in 2004 and operational in 2007; the Protocol on Human Rights of 2005; the transformation of the Parliamentary Committee into the Parliament of Mercosur (PARLASUL) in 2006; and organising the MERCOSUR Social Summits, starting in 2006, involving the participation of organised civil society. Barros and Ramos (2013) defined this new MERCOSUR driving strategy as based on the relative reduction of trade growth rate inside the bloc, aiming to diversify its priority themes and establish a MERCOSUR alignment with the paradigm of the rising post-neoliberal governments.
• 3
  ‘The two governments of Lula sought to deepen the notion of regional integration beyond the objectives of creating economies of scale with the formation of free trade zones or imperfect customs union (commercial Mercosur) or the construction of export corridors (IIRSA). The integration began to assume the character of a strategy for constructing a region politically coordinated by Brazil, in partnership with other countries of great relative political and economic weight and with political and ideological proximities (Argentina and Venezuela). It was led to achieving better development opportunities by associating with neighbours (Couto 2009), reaching a better status for Brazil in the international political system. To establish its new position on the international scene, Brazil gradually constituted a strategy for Latin America, making South America the priority axis of its diplomacy (Galvão 2009)’ (Barros and Ramos 2013: 13).
• 4
  Barros and Ramos (2013) recorded that only two of the thirty priority IIRSA projects had been completed, with exclusive funding from the Brazilian government. According to the authors, this demonstrated a) the insufficiency of the financing model based on international funding organisations, such as the IDB and the CAF, and b) the political and economic centrality of nation-states for the viability of integration projects from South America.
• 5
  On Couto (2010) and Saraiva (2010) analysed the ruptures and continuities comparing the foreign policy of the Lula administration towards its predecessors.
• 6
  Venezuela announced its withdrawal from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) in 2006 after the group accepted US demands regarding the definition of intellectual property rights for pharmaceutical products without consulting the Venezuelans: ‘As a consequence of these events, at a meeting on April 19, 2006, President Hugo Chavez announced Venezuela’s withdrawal from the CAN. Commission Decision 641 of August 2006 approved a Memorandum of Understanding between the CAN and Venezuela regulating the form of exit of the country. The relationship between Venezuela and the CAN seems to finally have normalised with Decision 746 of the Council of Ministers of April 2011, which maintained the tariff preferences of each Andean Country for Venezuela until the entry into force of a possible Bilateral Trade Agreement between the same Andean Country and Venezuela’ (Goldbaum and Luccas 2012: 20, author’s translation).
• 7
  ‘Unlike the processes driven by the governments of the so-called Fourth Republic, the Bolivarian government’s tendency points to the prioritisation, exclusively, of government initiatives, with limited or no consultation with the business sectors’ (Serbin 2011: 238, author’s translation).
• 8
  ‘(...) [T]he centralisation and concentration of power, started in 1999, continued sequentially during the following years, reinforcing itself after the failed coup d’état of April 2002, passing through the subsequent oil strike, the 2004 referendum, the 2005 legislative elections, and the re-election of Chávez in December 2006, culminating in the proposal for constitutional reform with a greater concentration of powers in the presidential figure, involving permission for its indefinite re-election and the establishment of the so-called ‘socialism of the 21st century in the country, which was to be approved in a referendum on December 2, 2007, but which was defeated by a narrow margin. Added to this, there were the advances of the opposition in the November 2008 regional elections and a renewed attempt by Chávez to approve its re-election, through the February 2009 referendum, to approve a constitutional amendment that would allow such re-election, which Chávez managed to win by a significant margin. Throughout this political process, along with the increasing control of political institutions by the government, the process of nationalisation of the economy was accelerated and deepened’ (Serbin 201: 238, author’s translation).
• 9
  While highlighting the broad Venezuelan business rejection of the process of withdrawal from the CAN and application for membership of MERCOSUR, Serbin (2011) also indicated that such rejection did not find such a welcome in the trade union organisations, which albeit not consulted by the government, were already predisposed to support a broader view of South American regionalism.
• 10
  ‘This orientation responds not only to the statist vision of the Bolivarian government, which indirectly and in parallel involves organisations and social movements in the ideological and political process in favour of a new regional structure (...), but also to two other important reasons: on the one hand, the growing weakness of business organisations and private companies as productive entities (heavily harassed by the government with threats of expropriation or nationalisation in recent months) and the insistence of the traditional Venezuelan business sector, with greater corporate articulation, in guiding their interests to the Andean market, and on the other, the political role played by some of the business organisations in opposition to Chávez, which tends to isolate them from channels of dialogue with the government’ (Serbin 2011: 238, author’s translation).
• 11
  ‘As in the 1970s, the new energy organisation generated tensions in the region, again with Trinidad and Tobago. The country’s prime minister Patrick Manning did not sign the agreement that gave rise to the organisation and remained a strong critic of the initiative. Like his predecessor, Erick Williams, Manning saw Venezuela’s expansion in the region as a threat to Trinitarian interests in the Caribbean. On the economic level, Petrocaribe would threaten the condition of Trinidad and Tobago as an important producer and supplier of oil to the region. Politically, it would endanger Caribbean unity and Trinitarian influence. Although he did not join Petrocaribe, Trinidad and Tobago’s questions were accommodated in bilateral energy negotiations. In August 2010, for example, the energy ministers of the two countries signed an agreement for the joint exploitation of natural gas in reserve located on the common maritime border’ (Moreira 2018: 129, author’s translation).
• 12
  According to Serbin (2011), the Venezuelan expectation that such Caribbean accessions to ALBA would result in greater antagonism of the countries in the region to US interests has not materialised. According to the author, such failure can be glimpsed by evidence such as the decisions taken by many of these countries within the framework of the AEC, as well as by the positions they took before the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata and when the negotiations of free trade agreements with the US were reactivated.
• 13
  Announced in 2006 as an offshoot of the joint venture formed by the state-owned oil companies of Bolivia and Venezuela.
• 14
  As proposed by Chávez in 1999, it aimed to create a mixed international company focused on oil exploration and the development of the petrochemical industry in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• 15
  Barros and Ramos (2013) pointed out that since Bolivarian countries more strongly drove it, the creation of the bloc had broad support from Brazil and was the result of the institutionalisation of the Latin America and the Caribbean Summit (CALC), held for the first time in 2008, precisely in Brazilian territory, in Salvador, Bahia. In the authors’ view, the creation of CELAC symbolised the consolidation of a strategy of Brazilian regional insertion that was guided by integration in scales, involving concentric circles represented by MERCOSUR, UNASUR, and CELAC. It is worth mentioning that, by constituting a mechanism of appropriately regional political conciliation, CELAC indirectly affected the influences of the OAS, the Summit of America, and the Ibero-American Summit in the hemispheric panorama.

Acknowledgements

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Financial Code 001

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  25 Nov 2022
• Date of issue
  Sep/Dec 2022

History

• Received
  13 Feb 2021
• Accepted
  09 June 2022