Brazilian Bombshell

©2002 by Dale Franks

At first glance, Brazil's President-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is an unlikely choice for Brazil's president. Brazil is, after all, a nation that has mainly been governed by a cabal of generals, or a conservative collection of the country's elite citizens, for nearly all of its history. Da Silva, on the other hand, is the child of a dirt-poor family from the rural northeast, and has only a fifth-grade education. Mr. da Silva started working at 12 years of age as a lathe operator in Sao Paulo. As a young man, he became involved in the trade union movement, eventually rising into its leadership. As a trade union leader, he led the strikes against Brazil's military dictatorship that, in part, eventually led to the junta's ouster in 1985.

Naturally, we applaud the peaceful transition of power between opposing parties in Brazil through free and fair elections. There has, after all, been far too little of that sort of thing in Brazil's history. But, while Mr. da Silva's election may be a victory for the idea of popular government in Brazil, there is also much about him that should give us pause.

Mr. da Silva's Worker's Party is a left-wing, socialist organization, whose aims of radical democracy and radical social justice come from both Catholic "liberation theology", and left-wing academia. Mr. da Silva has close ties to both Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Venezuela's radical President Hugo Chavez. Indeed, when running for president in previous elections, Mr. da Silva has represented himself as an unashamedly leftist, socialist candidate. (In this election, he presented himself as a "moderate".) Additionally, he has long blamed democracy, free-market institutions, and—of course—the United States for his country's social and economic problems.

If these were Mr. da Silva's only drawbacks, we might be inclined to the opinion that his victory is good for Brazilian democracy, even if his policies turn out to be bad for Brazilians. Unfortunately, Mr. da Silva has some worrying opinions about things other than economics.

He wants Brazil to have the bomb.

Brazil had an active and successful program of research into both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles from the 1970s until the early 1990s. After the junta was replaced by civilian rule in 1985, increasing pressure on Brazil's civilian government from the international community and the United States caused Brazil to curtail its nuclear weapons research. The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso became increasingly inclined towards nuclear non-proliferation as time went on, and in 1998, Brazil disavowed nuclear weapons research. Brazil became a State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and, along with Argentina, created a bilateral inspection agency to verify both countries' pledges to use nuclear research for only peaceful purposes.

Mr. da Silva does not agree with those policies. On September 13th, Referring to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said it would "make sense only if all countries that already have (nuclear) weapons gave them up," concluding, "all of us developing countries are left holding a slingshot while they [the United States] have atom bombs." Da Silva has long been in favor of obtaining nuclear weapons for Brazil, along with a ballistic missile system to deploy them. In furtherance of this, he has suggested that Brazil should have closer ties to Communist China, which is already actively courting Brazil's defense establishment, and has made investments in Brazil's aerospace industry.

Fortunately, the US government has not been blind to the threat of nuclear proliferation under Mr. da Silva. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sent President Bush a message last week, calling his attention to the potential threat Mr. da Silva poses. Rep Hyde spoke of a potential "Axis of Evil in the Americas" composed of a nuclear-armed Brazil acting in concert with Cuba and Venezuela.

According to the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, DC think tank, this development would have the potential to transform South America from a friendly region composed of democratic friends of the US, into a region hostile to the US and it's allies. Brazil is the largest nation in South America, and shares a border with every other nation on the continent. Pressure from a nuclear-armed Brazil on other South American nations to "Finlandize" their foreign policies into a more anti-American stance might be too great to withstand.

Not only is there a fear that Brazil might supply both Cuba and Venezuela with nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but also that nuclear proliferation could spread beyond those three nations. As the Center for Security Policy also points out, Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, has relationships with a whole range of unsavory characters. Chavez not only has ties with most terror-sponsoring nations, but also with a variety of terrorist organizations, most notably Colombia's FARC, and the IRA.

Mr. da Silva's threat to renew Brazil's nuclear weapons program is not an empty one. Brazil has both the technological base and the research background not only to resurrect its weapons research, but also to actually begin building both nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems in fairly short order.

Mr. da Silva is, therefore, a man who bears watching.

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