Brazil - bric

ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2007, pp. 43-70.

BRAZIL: TO BE OR NOT TO BE A BRIC?

Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo

Brazil will gain a place as a significant player in the multipolar international system taking shape since the end of the cold war simply on the basis of its economic size and material capabilities. However, its potential to influence international outcomes is likely to be determined more by the capacity of the country’s elites to identify and harness qualitative assets associated with its stable and democratic governance than by any hard-power assets. Brazil is the quintessential soft-power BRIC. Among the four BRICs, Brazil is the only one positioned to become a potential environmental power in a world increasingly preoccupied with global warming.
Key words: Brazil, BRICs, international relations, economic development

Introduction
Brazil will very likely be a major power by the middle of the twenty-first century, albeit not one of the world’s top three. Along with its fellow BRICs countries (Russia, India, and China), as early as 2040 Brazil may overshadow the traditional major powers of Western Europe in terms of its relative material capabilities within the global system.1 Yet unlike China, Russia, or
1. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming with BRICs:

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Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo

India, Brazil’s future political alliances are significantly predetermined: It will be a Western power, closely linked to the United States and Western Europe. Moreover, Brazil’s power projection is fundamentally one of soft power and largely depends on the quality of the democratic institutions it has adopted since the return of civilian rule in 1985, institutions that, in the eyes of Brazilians themselves, confer legitimacy on the country’s recent diplomatic assertiveness. Brazil’s policy makers already actively participate in and shape international institutions at both the regional and global levels.