Hemispheric Giants

The Misunderstood History of U.S.-Brazilian Relations

By (author) Britta H. Crandall

Hardback - £87.00

Publication date:

16 January 2011

Length of book:

230 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442207875

Tracing the full arc of U.S.-Brazilian interaction, Hemispheric Giants thoroughly explores the enigmatic and often-misunderstood nature of the relationship between the two largest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Britta H. Crandall asks the crucial question of why significant engagement between the United States and Brazil has been so scarce since the inception of the bilateral relationship in the late 1800s. Especially, she critically examines Washington's so-called "benign neglect"—a policy often criticized as unbefitting Brazil's size and strategic importance.

Drawing on a rich array of archival sources and personal interviews, Crandall pinpoints the key examples through time of high-level U.S. policy attention to Brazil. Her comprehensive analysis of the ebbs and flows of policy engagement allows Crandall to tease out common threads among her cases. In so doing, she shows that the label "neglect," implying a one-sided, fitful relationship, is far from the reality of a mutual, ongoing policy engagement between the U.S. and Brazilian governments. To be sure, their different relative power positions and foreign policy traditions have limited high-level bilateral engagement. However, Crandall argues convincingly that the diminishing power disparity between the United States and Brazil is leading to closer ties in the twenty-first century—a trend that will bring about growing cooperation as well as competition in the future.
Much of what is written on U.S.-Latin American relations relies on media reports or recycles other academic works. Crandall, in contrast, took the time to interview U.S. policymakers and career diplomats. Her discovery: the mainstream complaint that the United States has forever neglected Brazil is way off the mark. In fact, U.S. officials—at both the senior and the middle levels of the bureaucracy—have recognized Brazil's relative weight and have repeatedly sought to engage its Foreign Ministry. But hung up on fears of being overwhelmed by U.S. power, or driven by their own dreams of Brazilian hegemony over South America, Brazilian diplomats have often turned their backs on U.S. advances. In this well-researched and balanced treatment, Crandall foresees the potential for bilateral cooperation on emerging global issues, ranging from financial stability to energy supplies, on which U.S. and Brazilian interests may converge. But will Brazil sufficiently redefine its strategic posture to pick up these gains?