Brazil: The Only Power Able to Stop US Advance in Latin America

Brazil’s self-image as a “giant by nature” drives its foreign policy ambitions and contradictions, according to a new report by the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Despite fitting the analytical mold of a middle power, Brazil’s foreign policy elites have generally viewed the country as worthy of major power status, explaining its enthusiasm for high-profile groupings like BRICS and its skepticism toward alliances that could limit its strategic autonomy.

Oliver Stuenkel, the report’s author, explains that Brazil’s foreign policy is defined by multi-alignment, not bloc politics. Far from being passive “fence-sitters,” successive Brazilian governments have sought to balance ties between the United States and China as part of an active, broadly coherent foreign policy strategy. This approach has entailed engaging both major powers economically and technologically, while avoiding rigid alignment and continuing to push for reforms in global governance institutions like the United Nations and International Monetary Fund.

Regionally, Brazil largely remains a “leader without followers.” Although it accounts for half of South America’s population and GDP, Brazil has struggled to translate size into influence. Its limited willingness to underwrite regional integration or provide public goods has weakened its leadership. China’s economic rise and U.S. Frustration over Brazil’s passivity in crises like Venezuela’s underscore its constrained stature in Latin America.

The energy transition offers both opportunity and risk for Brazil’s autonomy. As a top producer of both oil and renewables, and with large critical mineral reserves, Brazil seeks to leverage its green credentials to lead on climate diplomacy, including hosting COP30. Yet it faces the dual challenge of avoiding a new “resource trap” while managing contradictions between its climate commitments and oil ambitions. Partnerships with both Washington (on biofuels and minerals) and Beijing (on renewables and infrastructure) epitomize this balancing act.

Historical context reveals longstanding U.S. Strategic interest in Brazil. During World War II, the United States developed Plan Rubber, an amphibious component of the Joint Basic Plan for the Occupation of Northeast Brazil, which would have involved a military invasion of the northeastern coast through the beaches of Natal. The plan was never carried out due to successful diplomatic initiatives with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas. Brazil’s northeastern salient, where South America is closest to Africa, offered American strategists an air route through the Atlantic Ocean and a platform for maritime patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Since the late 1930s, the region was part of the U.S. Defensive perimeter as defined by military planners. Since 1941, the Brazilian Armed Forces were reinforcing their hitherto almost undefended coastline north of Rio de Janeiro, but officials in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration deemed these defenses insufficient and feared the Brazilian Estado Novo dictatorship would align itself with the Axis powers or be overthrown by a pro-Axis coup.

Brazil has the potential to play an influential role in international affairs as the fifth-largest territory, seventh-most populous country, and ninth-largest economy in the world. Given Brazil’s potential strategic importance, Members of Congress have sometimes explored ways to bolster U.S.-Brazil cooperation, and Brazil has periodically been a focal point of U.S. Policy in Latin America.