Support for Russia makes Lula lose protagonism in the area of ​​the environment

The support he gave to Russia in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine is making President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) lose diplomatic protagonism with the West. Even in the international debate on the environment, in which the president invests to try to make Brazil more relevant on the international stage, Lula has already been replaced by other voices, such as the Prime Minister of Barbados (in the Caribbean), Mia Mottley.

Lula had an ordinary participation in the summit of the New Global Financial Pact in France this week. The event brought together around 100 world leaders and focused on one of Lula’s main international goals: encouraging rich countries to transfer financial resources to poor countries in order to face the challenges of climate change.

The Workers’ Party, in turn, says that Lula continues to be an international exponent of the defense of the environment. Without identifying themselves, party members argue that Brazil will host the COP 30 (United Nations Climate Conference) in 2025.

In these last few days, Lula has returned to cling to the Conference to be held in Brazil and invited everyone to “see the Amazon up close”. In the opinion of political scientist Marcelo Suano, director of Projects at the Center for Strategy, Intelligence and International Relations, the PT candidate has used the COP as a breathing space in the face of his loss of protagonism in the environmentalist discourse.

“Regardless of him presenting himself as a poster boy, that [o Brasil sediar a COP 30] it would already happen, I didn’t need it. Lula is using one more element to build a narrative. It is losing environmental protagonism and that is why it is getting tougher”, evaluates Suano.

The expert credits Lula’s loss of protagonism to his lack of concrete actions to solve deforestation in Brazil. “He has been incapable of demonstrating to the world the concrete results of the proposals to face environmental problems. The protagonism is being thrown away by himself, who should be more concerned with organizing his government and not going to the world to propagandize himself to win a Nobel Peace Prize”, analyzes the doctor in Political Science.

Lula did not participate in discussions at an environment summit in France

In France, the Brazilian president did not participate in any of the six round tables, which involved authorities from developing countries who are replacing Lula in the global discussion. Among them is Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who has been demanding more support from developed countries for poor nations facing climate catastrophes.

Brazil also did not participate in any of the 50 thematic events held at the summit. Lula spoke at the opening event of the summit and at a rock concert, where the other presidents also spoke.

The Foreign Ministry said he preferred to emphasize bilateral meetings. In one of them, Lula met with the Cuban dictator Miguel Días-Canel and promised to review Cuba’s debt to Brazil.

Even the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, had a prominent place in the debates at the summit. He was initially criticized by European nations for not disapproving the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but later confronted President Vladimir Putin over the kidnapping of Ukrainian children for adoption into Russian families.

“The lack of diplomatic intelligence certainly damages Lula’s image, who does not know how to deal with the complexity of the moment. The left has always used the environmental agenda as an ideological counter for diffuse interests”, said analyst Cezar Roedel, Master in International Relations from the University Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

At an environmental meeting, Lula is classified as the “false friend of the West”

Lula mistakenly claimed in several statements this year that Ukraine would be as guilty as Russia for the war. He has also repeatedly criticized Western countries for sending weapons to Ukraine to defend its territory.

During his visit to the summit, Lula was criticized even by former allies of the French left. The main reason was the same: support for Vladimir Putin and, to a lesser extent, the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The Brazilian president was even called a “false friend of the West” in an article in the newspaper Liberationappreciated by the French left, which carried the title: “Lula, the disappointment”.

According to Roedel, Lula approached Putin due to ideological inclination and subjective interests. “Trying to take your personal interest into foreign policy creates a lot of confusion,” she said.

“Lula ends up being very discredited due to his position on the war in Ukraine. European countries and Western powers do not take what Lula is saying seriously,” he said.

The fact that the Brazilian president defended the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union also displeased his allies on the French left. This is because the agreement is seen as positive for Brazilian agribusiness and harmful to French farmers.

Arnaud Le Gall, a parliamentary member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, said he was disappointed with the PT. He classified Lula as “one of the first alternatives to neoliberalism in Latin America”.

For Suano, Lula also lost his democratic tone by “pointing the finger” at Macron while he was “at his house”. “He criticized the letter made by the European Union and pointed the finger at Macron saying that they were making threats.

Lula also stated, this time correctly, that the rich countries are the main responsible for the planet’s pollution. “It was not the African people who polluted the world. It was not the Latin American people who polluted the world. In fact, those who polluted the planet in the last 200 years were those who made the Industrial Revolution and, therefore, have to pay the historical debt with planet Earth”, he said during a musical concert that was part of the agenda of events.

US was resentful of Brazil’s rapprochement with China and Russia

In a report this week, the British newspaper Financial Times he stated that US government officials were resentful of Lula’s rapprochement with Russia and China.

According to the newspaper, American diplomacy acted covertly to try to influence Brazilian authorities to respect the result of the polls in the 2022 presidential election. Lula would not only have failed to recognize this initiative, but also made efforts to approach enemies of the United States.

When he visited China in April this year, Lula attacked the global financial hegemony of the United States, exercised through the dollar, and visited the Chinese company Huawei, which is the target of American sanctions.

Former US ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon was the first to criticize Lula. He stated that the Brazilian was repeating China’s narrative “without achieving anything important for Brazil’s interests”. He also stated that Lula should “be careful what she says” regarding the war in Ukraine.

Even so, the Brazilian president continued to relativize the Russian invasion of Ukraine and even received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Brazil.

When participating in the G7 summit in Japan, in May, Lula again irritated the West when he did not even speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting in which both were in the same room, along with other world leaders.

“These last trips by Lula are an accumulation of completely obtuse and mistaken manifestations, they do not contribute to Brazilian foreign policy and do not contribute to the national interest. They only contribute to his personal interest”, stated Roedel.

In this sense, he said, by making contradictory statements, the Brazilian president gives space for other authorities to buy the role of protagonist that he seeks to occupy.

For political scientist Marcelo Suano, Lula has sold something to the world that he will not be able to deliver either. “Lula presents himself as an environmental protagonist and is making a speech that will put an end to the burnings in the Amazon, but these elements are being presented only as a piece of rhetoric”, he explains. The expert details that there are aspects of burning that cannot be controlled and that deserve attention beyond environmental support.

Among these points, Suana explains that, “albeit very small”, there are fires in the region that happen naturally, mainly in the dry period and those that are carried out by the indigenous people themselves, during a ritual or in the process of the plantation itself. For the expert, however, the big problem is caused by deforestation carried out by organized crime.

“The problem is the criminal occupation of these groups that bring problems to the Brazilian internal order. What we must question is how he is going to fight these groups. He is not presenting solutions for that, because he is very lost in terms of public security in Brazil,” he explains.