Marco Antonio Vieira

The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and trilateralism

Abstract In the aftermath of 9/11 surely of great significance is the reassertion of the South – North divide as a defining axis of the international system. In this context the emergence of a coterie of Southern countries actively challenging the position and assumptions of the leading states of the North is an especially significant event. The activism on the part of three middle-income developing countries in particular—South Africa, Brazil and India—has resulted in the creation of a ‘trilateralist’ diplomatic partnership, itself a reflection of broader transformations across the developing world in the wake of globalisation. This article will examine the rise of the co-operative strategy known as ‘trilateralism’ by regional leaders within the South. Specifically it will look at the relationship between emerging regional powers in the context of multilateralism, as well as at the formulation and implementation of trilateralism. As with previous co-operative efforts in the developing world, the prospects of success are rooted in overlapping domestic, regional and international influences on South African, Brazilian and Indian foreign policies. The article will conclude with an assessment of these influences over the trilateral agenda.

The South in world politics

The South in World Politics is a timely analysis of the influence and effectiveness of developing states in shaping the international order from the politics of the Cold War to the challenges of globalization and the rising power of emerging economies. Serving as a mobilizing symbol for a diverse set of developing countries, the idea of the South is part of a strategy for managing relations with the more powerful industrialized North through collective activism in multilateral and regional organizations. Key themes addressed by the book include the dynamic role of leading states like India, Brazil and China, the growing importance of regional organizations and the rise of Southern civil society in shaping the political agenda and the ideological outlook of the global South. Finally, the book focuses on the implications of a raft of new challenges for the security and economic aspirations of developing states.

Rising States and Distributive Justice: Reforming International Order in the Twenty-First Century

Contrary to predominantly materialist accounts of the impact and implications of rising powers in shaping the global order, the present study explores how ideas related to South-South solidarity formed the interests and directed the collective actions of emerging states. It specifically looks at attempts by India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA), through their trilateral development assistance mechanism, the IBSA Fund, to challenge traditional normative frameworks of best behaviour associated to Western/liberal development models. I argue that contemporary South-South initiatives in general and the India, Brazil and South Africa partnership in particular, are promoting changes in the current political-normative configuration of international relations. Unlike South-South coalitions of the early post-colonial era, such as the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) and the G77, when newly independent states in Africa and Asia had moral leverage but were economically weak, leading Southern states have achieved economic gains that have significantly raised their normative pull. However, their actual impact cannot be fully understood detached from the historical process by which Southern norms were first created and that later guided the foreign policy agendas of these emerging powers. This article shows the resilience of perceptions, values and ideas, which have been translated into conceptions of ‘distributive justice’ promoted by Southern powers through initiatives such as IBSA.

IBSA at 10: South–South development assistance and the challenge to build international legitimacy in a changing global order

Introduction This commentary engages with the IBSA model of South–South development assistance. It focuses on the IBSA Trust Fund to demonstrate the growing political relevance of the partnership in development assistance initiatives. This is followed by an analysis of Brazil’s increasing participation in South–South development assistance in many developing countries around the world. I argue that the strategic mission for the IBSA states in the coming decades, as a new normative/ordering power in international relations, is to further its political authority and legitimacy by expanding and refining its South–South development assistance framework. This can be done by integrating new thinking on environmental sustainability as a central—albeit neglected—pillar of their common framework. Established 10 years ago, the India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) has become an innovative South–South mode of diplomatic action for the 21st century.1 In contrast to the more talked-about Brazil–Russia–India–South Africa grouping (BRICS), the IBSA forum is based on a shared world-view that focuses on the need to ‘broaden the collective voice of the South’.2 Despite the clear and sometimes challenging differences in foreign policy orientations and geopolitical viewpoints, India, Brazil and South Africa share a common, albeit qualified, viewpoint on the South– South movements of the past, such as the G-77, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM). In IBSA, the principles of South–South solidarity have translated into consistently coordinated positions on international policy/political issues such as the Palestinian problem, humanitarian intervention in Libya,3 the civil war in Syria, global financial regulation, climate change and the World Trade Organisation’s trade liberalisation talks. According to Cox, new poles of power and influence in a system in transition promote goals and values, which in turn reshape international order.4 Ten years after its creation, the IBSA group is confronted with a fast-changing multilateral system that is facing a serious crisis of legitimacy. Under Barack Obama, the predictions of prominent scholars such as Ikenberry5 regarding the resilience and efficacy of liberal

The energy-security–climate-change nexus in Brazil

How do competing claims about energy-security and climate-change policies play out in the Brazilian domestic system? Has the Brazilian government’s recent attempt to unite climate and energy-security narratives around the notion of ‘sustainability’ had a substantive impact on Brazil’s energy and environmental policies? Domestic and international environmental actors have played increasingly important roles while lobbying the government to include an environmental/climate-change dimension to its energy-security approaches. However, climate-change concerns, as conventionally articulated by environmental actors, are not at the core of the government’s energy policy agenda. Environmental results, which emerged in Brazil as fringe benefits of past energy-security policies, have been skilfully captured by the political leadership as a way to promote Brazil’s climate-change credentials. To inform analysis of the alleged environmental sustainability of hydroelectricity and home-grown biofuels as a showpiece of Brazil’s contribution to tackling climate change, the varied interpretations of energy security and their implications for climate-change interventions are explored. Empirical examination of the interaction between energy and climate policies in Brazil is followed by analysis of the Brazilian negotiating position in multilateral climate meetings.

Southern Africa's response(s) to international HIV/AIDS norms : the politics of assimilation

Southern Africa has the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world. In some states the HIV prevalence is close to 40% of the adult population. This thesis shows that, in spite of the formal commitment of Southern African governments to follow the international guidelines for fighting the epidemic and the financial and technical support of powerful donors, three regional states - Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa - presented significant variations in the domestic assimilation of internationally-devised prescriptions for HIV/AIDS action. These international policy guidelines are based on an innovative conceptualisation of security that proclaims the global epidemic a threat to international peace and stability. Drawing upon a new theoretical synthesis between the constructivist literature on international norms and the securitisation scholarship, the study provides an analytical framework for understanding the global securitisation of HIV/AIDS as an international norm. The HIV/AIDS securitisation norm (HASN) is an attempt by the present work to combine in a single concept the myriad of ideas and international prescriptions about HIV/AIDS interventions. By analysing the incorporation of HASN in these three Southern African states, which are highly impacted by HIV/AIDS, the study demonstrates that pre-existing political cultures and social practices have defined quite different policy outcomes and domestic interpretations of transnational (security) understandings of the epidemic.

(Re-)imagining the ‘Self’ of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity:

In this article, I critically engage with and develop an alternative approach to ontological security informed by Jacques Lacan’s theory of the subject. I argue that ontological security relates to a lack; that is, the always frustrated desire to provide meaningful discursive interpretations to one’s self. This lack is generative of anxiety which functions as the subject’s affective and necessary drive to a continuous, albeit elusive, pursuit of self-coherence. I theorise subjectivity in Lacanian terms as fantasised discursive articulations of the Self in relation to an idealised mirror-image other. The focus on postcolonial states’ subjectivity allows for the examination of the anxiety-driven lack generated by the ever-present desire to emulate but also resist the Western other. I propose, therefore, to explore the theoretical assertion that postcolonial ontological security refers to the institutionalisation and discursive articulation of enduring and anxiety-driven affective traces related to these states’ colonial pasts that are still active and influence current foreign policy practices. I illustrate the force of this interpretation of ontological security by focusing on Brazil as an example of a postcolonial state coping with the lack caused by its ambivalent/hybrid self-identity.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Challenges to Emerging and Established Powers: Brazil and the United Kingdom in the Contemporary Global Order

The question of how new centres of power such as China, India and Brazil will affect the global order, and the international regimes and norms that sustain it, is fast becoming one of the most pressing of the 21st century. Most analyses, however, focus on individual emerging powers or groups such as the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa partnership (BRICS). Rarely is this undertaken through an investigation of the actual differences and similarities in terms of particular emerging powers’ perceptions and sources of influence vis-à-vis the established powers. Brazil and the United Kingdom are prime examples of new and old powers which are trying to adapt their foreign policies to the fast-changing context of global politics and governance. For issues as diverse as climate change, development assistance, humanitarian intervention and international security, both states are clearly and inescapably involved in reshaping and renegotiating the current rules of global governance. This special issue compiles a series of articles that explore the analytical possibilities of contrasting Brazil and the United Kingdom as examples of emerging and established powers, respectively. It is organised around several themes focusing on the roles of Brazil and the United Kingdom in the management of global economic governance, international development, international security, the politics of regional integration, global climate change governance, and the political leveraging of sports mega-events. Each article explores Brazil’s and/or the UK’s particular foreign policies and their resulting impact on the key areas of global governance and politics touched on above. The conceptual focus is on these states’motivations as either status-seekers (Brazil) or status-maintainers (UK) in the context of a fastmoving international landscape. The articles in this issue directly or indirectly indicate that these states wish to draw attention to their aspiring or established position as key global players through either visible foreign policy action and/or symbolic rhetoric. The first two articles, by Mahrukh Doctor and Chris Rogers, examine the contributions and central motivations of Brazil and the UK, respectively, in reforming global economic governance. In the opening article, Doctor argues that Brazil’s foreign policy goals and positions have changed in the past decade from an almost exclusive focus on economic development to the current and increasingly Global Society, 2015 Vol. 29, No. 3, 281–285, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2015.1051002

A South of Peoples

The launching of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre in 2001 was the culmination of a process of articulation, coordination and expansion of a vast array of anti-globalisation NGOs based in both the South and the North. Indeed, while the ‘battle for Seattle’ marked the Northern NGOs discovery of the South and its perspective and issues, the onset of the WSF process was important in defining the position of the South vis-a-vis the key features of the contemporary international system as the NAM summits and its precursor in Bandung were during the Cold War. In the first instance, the WSF reflects the dynamics of change within the South, most especially the rise and diversification of civil society which itself is linked to the increasing economic development and opening of political space within Southern countries. Representing a range of interests from environmental groups to social development organisations, Southern civil society has developed positions and outlooks based upon its assessment of the impact of the changing international system upon its states and societies. In the context of broad international jamborees such as the WSF and the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, Southern NGOs have sought to distinguish their concerns from those of their colleagues in the North while at the same time actively using these settings to build coalitions with like-minded Northern NGOs.

The South and the UN: 1945–64

The establishment of the United Nations (UN) out of the ashes of WWII was not meant to usher in an era of political freedom for the three- quarters of the world’s population still under various forms of colonial rule. This was in spite of the fact that two anti-colonial powers, the US and the Soviet Union had the coveted permanent membership and veto in the newly formed Security Council, and there was one non-Western permanent member in the Republic of China which expressed anticolonial sentiments as well.1 The remaining two permanent members were the world’s largest colonialist states, Britain and France, and they — along with other European colonial states — expected that questions regarding their colonial territories would fall within the domain of domestic affairs and, as such, would be protected by the sovereign prerogative of non-interference. Remaining areas of concern involving territories and peoples outside of Europe would fall under the auspices of the Trusteeship Council, an organ on par with the Economic and Social Council and one which the Permanent Five dominated. Moreover, in the course of developing the structures of the UN, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill confidently expected, along with South African leader Jan Smuts, that the British Commonwealth would serve as a bulwark of support for what they believed were benign imperial interests.2