In UAE, Brazil’s Lula looks east for climate investments, peace brokering
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva looks to exert Brazil's power in a geopolitical landscape that has significantly shifted since he last held office.
SAO PAULO — Twenty years after making the first trip by a Brazilian head of state to the Middle East, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s stopover in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday signaled a renewed focus in the region, albeit one curbed by a shift in Brazil’s position on the global stage since Lula first held power.
Lula’s diplomatic endeavors in the region in past decades were bold and demonstrated an unabashed approach with leaders that Western heads of state shied away from.
In 2010, he recognized the state of Palestine within the 1967 borders in response to a request from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after the two leaders met. Amid nuclear nonproliferation talks with Iran, Lula — with a few breaths — encouraged then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to continue to engage with the West and said that Iran had a right to a peaceful nuclear program.
“He had this notion that the Middle East was a place for Brazil to exert its soft power and some of its hard power too. But the geopolitical landscape of the region is no longer the same,” said Guilherme Casarões, political science professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo.
