The Nature of Brazil-U.S. Diplomatic Relations

 It is hard to understand Brazil without knowing how big it is. This continent-sized country covers more land than the lower 48 states of the United States. In South America, Brazil shares a land border with ten countries. This border is five times longer than the border between the US and Mexico. It has the fifth most people of any country in the world (2,012,000,000). (Just so you know, Indonesia is fourth.) It has a lot of different kinds of natural resources, including the biggest fresh water reserves in the world. There are two-thirds of the world's biggest tropical rainforest, the Amazon, in this country. It has the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world, based on how you do the math. It has the second largest economy in the Western Hemisphere. The income of just the state of Sao Paulo is bigger than Argentina's. 

More than one million people live in towns in Brazil than in the United States

It sends more farming goods abroad than any other country except the US. It gets 75% of its energy from hydroelectric sources, which are some of the cleanest energy sources for a big country. It is also one of the top ten energy producers in the world right now, thanks to its oil and gas production. With the growth of its pre-salt oil reserves, Brazil could become an even bigger oil producer in the world. Brazil has Embraer, the third-biggest airline in the world, after Boeing and Airbus. It also has Gerdau, the largest steel company in the Americas. And this is just a small sample to show what I mean. It's important to remember these basic facts about Brazil in order to understand what's going on in the world, including what's in the news today. A lot of times, when people talk about the connection between the US and Brazil, they can't help but notice how much we are alike. There may not be another pair of big countries in the world that have so much in common, including a size that is hard to put into a single category. Like the US, Brazil is often focused on itself and the center of its own world, but it is also open and friendly to people from other countries. Brazil has a unique national identity and character that goes beyond the stereotypes. Its people are a mix of races, but its roots are in Portugal. Still, it's possible for anyone to become a Brazilian. People who have become naturalized in Brazil are not seen as foreigners like people are in the US. Instead, they are seen as Brazilian, even if they have more than one citizenship. There are more Japanese people living in Brazil than anywhere else in the world, and there are more Lebanese people living in Brazil than anywhere else in the world besides the Middle East. 

In the past few years, Brazil has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other country in the region 

They are now getting ready to take in even more. A lot of different races and groups live in Brazil, including African, Native American, Asian, and European people. This makes most Americans feel at home. We also have a past that is very similar to theirs, including being "discovered" by Europeans and then having waves of people come to live in what was then a "empty" continent. A terrible past of slavery connects us both. It has changed our social and cultural landscapes and still causes big problems in the societies of both of our countries today. We are also the two biggest democracies in the Western Hemisphere. Our media is free and open, and we are very critical of ourselves. We also strongly believe that we can do better for our own people and for the world. Most opinion polls show that most Brazilians have a special appreciation for and usually positive views of the United States. This is because of these and other factors. There are many deep connections between the US and Brazil, such as our shared democratic values, which is why diplomats say that we are "natural partners." These things hold the two partnerships together like blood, muscle, and bones. However, we shouldn't hide our real differences with empty words either. Some of the things we disagree about are the relative roles of the market and the government in the economy, whether it is okay to use force or other forms of coercion to deal with threats to international peace and security, and whether multilateral forums, especially the UN, are the best place for diplomatic efforts. When working with Brazilians, US diplomats also have to deal with their sometimes confusing insistence on Brazil's natural sovereignty and their desire to go their own way, not feeling like they have to rely too much on any of their partners, among them the US. Americans find it hard to understand why Brazil's "strategic balancing," or defense of sovereignty, sometimes seems to be more important than what we might see as its simple pursuit of its own national interests.

In the big picture, though, most of our differences aren't that big of a deal

These differences are not about goals or ends, but about how to get there instead of where we want to go. We mostly agree on the big picture: a more representative democracy, more prosperity for more people, protecting the environment, more social inclusion both inside and outside of our own countries, and a more peaceful and fair world order with institutions that better reflect the realities of the 21st century. There have been times in the past few years when tensions have grown between the US and Brazil, which has added to the idea that our two-way relationship isn't working as well as it could. But that is now changing. We had high hopes that President Rousseff's official trip to the US from June 30 to July 2 and her talks with President Obama in Washington, DC, would help get the relationship back on a positive, forward-looking path. We are now ready to make the fact of better cooperation between the US and Brazil more in line with its deep-seated, wide-ranging potential. There is one thing that is clear: the US and Brazil can accomplish a lot more when they work together on a variety of problems at the regional, global, and multilateral levels than when they work alone.