Turkey and Brazil playing a role on the world stage
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
The efforts by leaders of Turkey and Brazil to broker a nuclear deal with Iran reflects growing dissatisfaction with the traditional world order in which the United States is the only superpower, which they view as outdated and unjust.
And their intervention on the Iran issue reflects a growing perception among many countries that the United States is unable to resolve international conflicts alone.
The visit this week to Tehran by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was a rare show of personal, high-stakes diplomacy by a pair of world leaders.
Turkey and Brazil hailed the agreement they reached for Iran to ship some of its nuclear fuel out of the country as a major step toward resolving Iran’s years-old standoff with the West.
But it was promptly pooh-poohed by the United States, which, a day after the deal was announced, introduced a sanctions resolution to the United Nations Security Council in what was perceived widely in Ankara and Brasilia as an American snub of two close allies…
While U.S. officials were prepared to be pleasantly surprised if Lula and Erdogan were able to produce a deal that addressed all their concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, they didn’t think that it would happen and were concerned the deal would complicate efforts to pass the U.N. resolution…
Perhaps most importantly, Lula has become a champion of developing nations, many of which have a different world view than the United States.
This “different” world view includes the notion that sanctions are not an effective means of diplomacy and only leaders to escalation, a belief which Turkey shares.
The U.S. lost much of its credibility over the war in Iraq, Guantanamo and, more recently, the world economic crisis. While Brazil and Turkey both have good relationships with the United States, they have sought to fill what they see as the leadership vacuum left by America.
RTFA. I disagree with a great deal of LaBott’s understanding of the history of foreign policy since WW2. She doesn’t have her facts wrong as much as she avoids unpleasant facts which contradict her premises.
Much of the world has been fed up with US foreign policy once it became clear the Cold War was to be the excuse for the USA to assume Britain’s role as Imperial Power, supporting colonialist remainders, opposing national liberation movements. Whether the focus was Greece or Iran, Cuba or VietNam, Uncle Sugar played the role of Ugly American, supporting military intervention wherever corporate greed demanded an advantage.
Opposition to these policies ranged from fairly moderate groups like the Non-Aligned Nations to revolutionary groupings ready to support wars of national liberation – like OSPAAAL, the Organization for Solidarity with People of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The latter was based in Cuba; but, had a longtime network of support that ran from east to south of the Mediterranean.
Folks knew the difficulties of opposing Imperial America, then. They still do. But, economic growth in the 3rd World, the growth of commercial centers free of Amero-Euro control has provided a backbone that parallels the globalization of western economies.
