BRIC Building in Brazil

Integration is atop the agenda today as the highly anticipated BRIC summit concludes in Brazil. The conference, only the second-ever between the four emergent countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (plus the additional presence of South Africa), has focused on deepening economic relations and increased multilateralism/democratization within global institutions. The participating countries now represent 40% of the world’s population and about 20% of total world economic output. In an op-ed published yesterday, Brazilian President Lula da Silva explained Brazil’s vision of the BRIC alliance: “We are committed to building a joint diplomatic and creative approach with our BRIC partners in order to tackle such global challenges as food security and energy production in the context of climate change.” He adds that the “real baptism” of the BRIC group came out of the financial crisis that began two years ago—a moment when “collective strategies enabled us to hold our own,” in Lula’s words.

Truths about market deregulation collapsed. The ideal of a minimal state also collapsed. The easing of labor rights is no longer a mantra to fight unemployment.

When all these orthodoxies collapsed, the visible hand of the state protected the economic system [in BRIC countries] from the failure created by the invisible hand of the market.

As the AP reports, Lula has also made his anti-Iran sanctions pitch to China and India, with his foreign minister, Celso Amorim, telling leaders from both countries that Brazil “believes Iran has the right to a nuclear program with pacific ends” but that “it is important also that the international community feels comfortable that they are not using it for military objectives.”

With further analysis of the BRIC meetings, the Christian Science Monitor questions whether differences between the four (or five) developing countries is not, in fact, greater than what unites them. Here’s Oliver Stuenker, professor at the University of Sao Paulo, on the matter:

I’d say the differences outweigh the commonalities. Even basic political structures, two non-democratic regimes and two democratic regimes. In economics, you have two raw material importers in China and India and two raw material exporters, Russia and Brazil. That limits the opportunity to get into detail. These differences limit everything.

Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue adds there may be a risk that Brazil is “stretching itself too thin” given various issues it must also confront within its own country and the hemisphere. But others point out that the countries do represent a formidable political front, particularly in an arena like the G-20, which is set to meet again next month in Canada.

Analysis also from the Council of Foreign Relations, where Roya Wolverson has a new piece.

In related news:

· The Economic Commission for Latin America has a new report out saying China will become Latin America’s second largest market for exports midway through the next decade, leapfrogging the European Union. [The United States is predicted to remain the region’s number one export market]. Geography, however, divides the relative importance of China as an export market. While Southern Cone and Pacific-coast countries (Chile, Argentina, and Peru, for example) have seen trade relationships with China grow significantly in recent years, Central America and Mexico remain heavily dependent on the US. [Mexico, for example, only sees 1% of its exports going to China compared to 13% for Chile and 11% for Peru]. , Bloomberg has more on the report, portraying the Asian power as an economic rival (rather than partner) to Brazil in the latter’s own “backyard” of South America.

· The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (through its Domestic Policy Subcommittee) held a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill about US drug policy entitled “ONDCP's Fiscal Year 2010 National Drug Control Budget: Are We Still Funding a War on Drugs?” Links to statements by drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, and Vanda Felbab-Brown of Brookings are available here, as well as a webcast of the full event.

· Meanwhile, BBC Mundo has an interview with the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the Italian Antonio María Costa, who says there is no other option but to continue the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico and Central America. However, that fight, Costa says, must be a shared effort.

· And one more government statement today: David Johnson, Ass’t. Secretary at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, went before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs about security assistance budget requests earlier in the week. His full statement is now up which includes discussion of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico, as well as Central American and Caribbean countries.

· Ecuadorean Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino was in Chile and Uruguay this week to push the national ratification of a treaty that would formally establish UNASUR. Patino said he received assurances from both countries that they indeed would go through with the ratification process and would also support former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner as UNASUR’s first official chairman.

· In Colombia, Sec. of Defense Robert Gates called President Alvaro Uribe a “great hero” upon arriving in Bogotá, praising the president for his fight against the FARC and drug traffickers. As both the LA Times and the AP report, Gates also made a push for deeper US-Colombia economic ties through the signing of a free trade pact. In fact, the secretary called such an agreement a “linchpin of security and prosperity in South America.” And, he added, Colombia has become an “exporter of security on the global stage.”

· Meanwhile, as Adam Isacson at Plan Colombia and Beyond highlights, new and shocking documentation from Colombia’s prosecutor-general investigation into Uribe government wiretapping and “political warfare” shows a less rosy picture of the president and his intelligence agency, the DAS.

· The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has released its annual report on the human rights situation across the region (full download here). Reporting on the topic thus far has focused on the five countries that appear on the IACHR’s “black list” of nations that “deserve special attention.” Those include: Honduras, Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia, and Cuba.

· BBC Mundo reports on the Inter-American Human Rights Court which has taken up a case brought by an indigenous group against the Paraguayan state over collective property rights.

· The BBC has an interesting piece examining the Colombian special ops forces charged with carrying out that country’s anti-drug policy.

· The new issue of the Economist has an important piece on Haiti and reconstruction efforts that seek to end the countries “Republic of NGO” status. Also, from the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles reports on Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s on-going push for Haitian trade preferences.

· Finally, some opinions. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Steven Chu, US Energy Secretary, co-write a piece that runs in the Miami Herald today on the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA). The Washington summit on the partnership occurs this week with energy ministers from across the hemisphere comoing together to discuss clean energy cooperation, following last year’s Summit of the Americas. The two write:

As part of ECPA, the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank are working with partners across the region to develop a regional clean energy network that will link energy efficiency centers in Peru and Costa Rica with Chile's Renewable Energy Center in Santiago, Mexico's Wind Center in Oaxaca, a biomass center in Brazil and a geothermal center in El Salvador. This new network will bring U.S. and regional experts together to explore technologies and implementation strategies that will benefit us all.

Eric Farnsworth also has a recent piece in Poder on the subject. Shakira, meanwhile, has a piece on Haiti reconstruction in the Huffington Post, as does Natasha Archer, a Partners in Health volunteer and liason, in the Washington Post. And Andres Oppenheimer writes on the US’s Latin American policy under Obama, which, he says, has included lots of nice talk but few substantive policy changes.