Why the US needs Brazil as a partner
The US economy has fallen so far and fast that many investors have nose bleeds. However, there are emerging economies, that the US could do a much better job of befriending and leveraging the mutual benefit trade opportunities inherent in such relationships. For example, the US has taken its eye off Latin America as it focused on the Middle East and Central Asia. However, things are going on in the region that should be on Washington’s radar. The power player in the region that the US needs to take note of is Brazil. Many analysts have been following Brazil and which way it would lean as it has a great deal of influence over its neighbors. Well, yesterday Brazil spoke, and it is intending to create both traditional and nuclear defense upgrades, and that is something Washington should take note of.
France, has not neglected an opportunity and has been busy negotiating deals to help Brazil to develop manufacturing capabilities to build their own advanced diesel Scorpene attack submarines. Brazil wants to use this base to to develop what would be Latin America’s first nuclear-propelled sub. Frankly, this is not a deal that the US Defense industry should have let go to France. Both in terms of economic reward and strategic control, the potential for a nuclear armed neighbor should be something that the US would have had better control of had it been the technology partner of choice. Brazil doesn’t want to buy weaponry, it is looking at the capability to make its own. The US missed out on a prime opportunity here to partner with the Latin America power player both in terms of defense and oil development contracts.
Fareed Zakaria, a keen observer of international trends, has noticed the regional developments and cautions the US to take care that it learns the lessons of other great powers that faded as other nations surged ahead.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the story of the global economy is a tale of two worlds. In one, there is only gloom and doom, and in the other there is light and hope. In the traditional bastions of wealth and power—America, Europe and Japan—it is difficult to find much good news. But there is a new world out there—China, India, Indonesia, Brazil—in which economic growth continues to power ahead, in which governments are not buried under a mountain of debt and in which citizens remain remarkably optimistic about their future. This divergence, between the once rich and the once poor, might mark a turn in history.
The United States remains the richest and most powerful country in the world. Its military spans the globe. But from the Spanish Empire of the 16th century to the British Empire in the 20th century, great global powers have always found that their fortunes begin to turn when they get overburdened with debt and stuck in a path of slow growth. These are early warnings. Unless the United States gets its act together, and fast, the ground will continue to shift beneath its feet, slowly but surely.
Zakaria: It’s Booming in Brazil | Newsweek voices.zakaria | Newsweek.com.
