By historical standards, American foreign policy is not very old. This is not just because America is a relatively young country but also because, until the outbreak of the First World War, it was a relatively isolationist country. The earliest serious statement of American foreign policy is known today as the Monroe Doctrine, and, despite being first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, it has been a constant on the American foreign policy scene ever since.
The Monroe Doctrine states that any interference on the part of potentially hostile foreign powers on the American continent would be considered a hostile act against the United States. The goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to carve out a "sphere of influence" for the U.S., something that sounds particularly fresh today as we face an emerging multipolar world.
Under the Biden administration, however, the Monroe Doctrine appears to have been turned on its head. Why? Seemingly—and it seems almost odd to state this given what many see as the robustness of the American State Department—because the Monroe Doctrine has started to conflict with domestic culture war priorities. If this interpretation is correct, then it seems unlikely that the United States will be able to weather the enormous geopolitical changes coming down the pipeline in the 21st century.
This has all become clear with the election of Lula da Silva to the Brazilian presidency this week. Lula's election elicited sighs of relief in D.C., because his opponent was the arch right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro—otherwise known as the "tropical Trump." Yet, until very recently, Lula was viewed with grave suspicion by the Beltway elite. This is because Lula is a Latin American leftist of the old school.
If you are in any way familiar with Brazilian politics, you will know that Lula is no friend of America's. He views himself as being part of a long tradition of Latin leftism, stretching from Che Guevara to Nicolás Maduro, that views the influence of the United States in Latin America as an act of capitalist imperialism. Lula does not make any secret of this position. In 2019, while he was serving time in prison on corruption charges, he penned an open letter chastising the Bolsonaro administration for participating in U.S.-led sanctions against Venezuela. "We cannot allow Brazil to submit to the United States," Lula wrote. "We cannot turn Brazil over to imperialism."
In a 2020 interview, Lula went further. He stated that the American Department of Justice was behind his imprisonment. "Today we know there were clear US Department of Justice interests in...my imprisonment and in the closing of Brazilian companies, especially in the construction industry," he said. "Today this is all clear. It's very clear that there were American prosecutors interested in my imprisonment."
Lula has long been a proponent of alternative, non-Western economic alliances, most especially BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS is now in a rapid phase of expansion as the bloc tries to nudge Western economies off the throne. Lula views these alliances as an alternative to Western imperialism. It is no secret that his presidency will usher in a new period of cooperation with the BRICS+ bloc, as has been confirmed by his senior aide and also his former foreign minister.
The BRICS+ institutions are rumored to have lined up behind Lula. "Virtually everyone I engage with here is hoping that Lula wins," Karin Costa Vazquez of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization told The China Project. "While this doesn't necessarily reflect the views of their institutions or the government," Vazquez said, "there's a sense he'd be more open-minded to cooperation." The writing is on the wall.
So, what has happened in D.C.? Why are American foreign policy elites lining up behind a candidate they viewed with extreme suspicion only a few years ago? The simple and sad answer appears to be that domestic political concerns have completely destroyed the capacity for the United States to pursue a coherent foreign policy. Lula's opponent reminds the Beltway of Trump and the anxiety that this triggers apparently overrides both common sense self-interest and realpolitik.
The second decade of the 21st century looks like make or break for the United States. The emergence of a rival power bloc in the form of the BRICS+ is inevitable. America will need to play its cards right to maintain its sphere of influence. Yet if the reaction of the country to the Brazilian election is anything to go by, it is not hard to "hack" American foreign policy. If you are an aspiring anti-American leader all you must do is school yourself in the language of the American culture war and portray yourself as vaguely liberal and your opponent as some sort of Trump figure, and you can get the American stamp of approval as you pursue your explicitly anti-American agenda.
Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist with nearly a decade of experience working in investment markets, he is the author of the book The Reformation in Economics: A Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Economic Theory.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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