Biden's calculation

The Brazilian election in today's world.

The global trade liberalization of the early 2000s seemed to forge a unique economic dominance for the US. Its dominance had grown immensely since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there was no looming threat to the global interests of American corporations.

Just as in the age of 16th-century navigations, when technical advancements in navigation allowed the Portuguese, Spanish, and Italians to give a globe to the world in the name of their kingdoms, the flourishing of the digital economy was shaping up to allow American companies to dominate globalized trade. Meanwhile, GPS guaranteed guidance for the largest war machine ever seen. Land, sea, air, and space seemed to be tamed under a single master. With the right imperialist motivation and the right technical and technological means, globalization became an inevitability ready to satisfy the greed of American capitalism.

All of this would be possible if it weren't for China.

The Asian power has proven to be the one that has best adapted to globalization. First, by taking industrialization as a primary task, which elevated it to the "factory of the world," then by asserting its international commercial presence, culminating currently in the competition for cutting-edge technology: from nanotechnology to space; from civil construction to the equipment necessary for environmental transition. Its international ascendancy has allowed it to acquire strategic sectors from third countries (such as energy and mining), guaranteeing resources for its significant economic growth, having been the engine of global growth for the last twenty years. Its GDP has increased annually by an average of 6,5% in the last decade.

Indicators suggest that China will not only be the largest but also the most developed economy on the planet by the end of this decade. Chinese scientists and researchers already have a higher number of published scientific papers than the US, guaranteeing China's dominance in the economy of the future. 

None of this would have happened if it weren't for the war.

Russia's military incursion into Ukraine appears as Putin's "get out of here" response to the constant US incursions, which, through NATO, attempts to place its bases and weaponry ever closer to Russian borders. The ongoing violence of Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces against populations of Russian descent in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions (on Ukraine's eastern border) would also sound, in official Russian discourse, like a firestarter for the incursion into Ukraine. These justifications become even more diluted when confronted with the annexation of two more provinces, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya. The latter has the added bonus of housing Europe's largest nuclear power plant, with a total capacity of 6000 Megawatts.

The White House, however, cannot disguise its objective of containing the rise of China and its Russian economic and political allies, not even with the most powerful propaganda system in human history. Through weaponry, training, intelligence, and military decisions supplied to Ukrainian forces, the US is attempting to create the conditions for a long war, with the potential to spread across Eurasia. This situation is causing immense military, political, economic, and diplomatic strain for Russia. They are also dividing the globe into two economic circuits with increasingly fewer bridges between them, putting pressure on all countries to position themselves within one circuit or the other. This situation allows them to disrupt part of China's commercial activity. China, in turn, has built many commercial relationships worldwide over the last twenty years and seems to be resisting the US "belligerent" offensive, with a projected growth of 4,5% for 2023.

It is within this context of global competition that the White House is monitoring the elections in Brazil. Elections in a country that is crucial to establishing a new world order; due to its territory, raw materials, agriculture, population, and capacity for regional influence.

Biden would prefer a submissive Brazilian president. One who would hand over strategic and highly profitable companies like Petrobras, who would destroy the industry by making Brazil dependent on imports of American products, who would offer the vast Brazilian territory to the empire's war machine, who would offer the Alcântara rocket launch center and, above all, who would adopt anti-China positions and devalue the BRICS. Biden would prefer Bolsonaro!

None of this would have happened if it weren't for Trump.

The nightmare of capitalist democracies 

Trump's arrival in politics brought about a huge institutional crisis to the liberal democratic system that had been consolidated for over a century in the United States of America. His image as an outsider gave Trump an anti-establishment aura, capitalizing on the growing distrust of the population in a system that excludes hundreds of millions of workers from the immense wealth of the country.

Using an almost laboratory-like methodology, the American far-right has slowly and systematically eroded all the pillars of liberal democracy. In the judiciary, the appointment of ultra-conservative ministers to the higher courts guarantees a retreat from civil and social rights and a constant marking of the political agenda with the moral agenda; in the legislature, the election of neo-fascist representatives guarantees congressional support for the reactionary agenda, paralyzing any progressive initiative from more left-leaning parliamentarians or the government; the corporate media has been completely discredited and replaced by the direct contact established on networks and platforms; and organized civil society has been persecuted and dismantled. 

The entire process was only possible thanks to the lucrative complicity of Big Tech companies in criminal activities carried out online: selling population databases, mass messaging, microtargeting, and the now widespread fake news. And the judiciary was complicit with Big Tech.

The closed communication circuit that neofascism created with the population showed its full power during the pandemic, waging a fierce battle against science, causing millions of avoidable deaths and with consequences that persist today in all ongoing vaccination efforts. Elections are also powerful moments for neofascist communication. In the US, a large-scale movement emerged to prevent the re-election of the New York businessman, managing to elect Biden, but only due to Trump's homicidal handling of the pandemic; in Brazil, only a phenomenon of popularity like Lula could confront Bolsonaro's infernal communication machine.

In the economy, too, ideological dominance is felt, fulfilling the role of political support for the brutal accumulation of profits by billionaires, a role that traditional neoliberalism can no longer fulfill. Neoliberal discourse hasn't won elections anywhere for twenty years, and Trump and Bolsonaro delivered to billionaires what Biden and FHC could only dream of. In these men of the system who present themselves as anti-system, capitalism has found yet another way to deceive the population.

Hence the belated and anemic reaction of the institutional powers, particularly the judiciary, as we can observe in the final stretch of the Brazilian elections. It is healthy for social interpretation not to forget what the Lava Jato leaks revealed: ministers of the Supreme Federal Court and other judicial agents met with representatives of the world's largest banks, some from the USA, in 2018, under the agenda of the Brazilian elections. Will there have been meetings in 2022? And what do they discuss in these meetings?

Biden's calculation 

The balance of power in Brazil presented three possible scenarios for the White House to analyze at the end of Bolsonaro's term. All of them presented contradictions and were less favorable than the normal relationship of subordination of Brazil to the interests of American corporations that marked the last 60 years (with an interlude during the PT governments), distancing us further from the old hegemonic world order of the USA.

In the first scenario where Lula wins and Bolsonaro does not resort to a coup, the White House attempts to exert pressure on the new government through local financial elites, trying to capture the largest possible share of the economy for the neoliberal program.

For Biden, this wouldn't be the ideal partner, but it would bring some benefits to the domestic consumer discourse, especially regarding the environmental agenda, a topic that is becoming increasingly important to the American population, a population increasingly battered by climate catastrophes. 

Externally, and in what interests the American empire most, Lula's multipolar stance and his fondness for the development of the BRICS would be problematic, contradicting the attempt to block Russia and China's economic access to the South Atlantic. This would result in a relationship that is initially cordial in diplomatic terms but highly manipulative in economic terms, with a tendency towards rapid deterioration as relations between Brazil and China develop. The empire's interests would be seriously jeopardized in the medium and long term.

In a second scenario, we would have Lula's victory, but Bolsonaro would resort to a military coup, which would have an unpredictable outcome, and the White House would distance itself from the very beginning because of the attempted invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters, and the political and social consequences that still reverberate in American society. The relationship would be one of permanent evaluation according to the evolution of the Brazilian political situation. Instability disregarded by the empire, which already has its share of global instability to manage. 

In the third scenario, Bolsonaro wins and orchestrates the coup from within the institutions, altering the composition of the higher courts and the legislation encompassing civil, social, and political rights. Brazilian liberal democracy would rapidly evolve toward its demise.

It would be a defeat for the American Democratic Party, with the election of Trump's major southern partner. On the other hand, it would be a permanent showcase of the social and environmental horrors that Bolsonaro will continue to promote, which would facilitate the political fight against Trump, who currently oversees the Republican Party and, if the courts do not prevent it, is positioning himself to be the GOP's candidate¹ for the 2024 elections.

Meanwhile, the empire's interests would be more respected, with Bolsonaro being the perfect lackey to place Brazil at the disposal of the US in the conflict against China.

Although he may not admit it politically, Biden would manage the empire's relations better with a "democratic" victory for Bolsonaro, positioning this as the situation that least harms US imperialist interests, even if it creates some internal difficulty and embarrassment for the current president and the existing liberal democracy. But there are things more important to the empire than liberal democracy, and the US president has to consider them when making his calculations. 

Brazilian representatives of the empire seem to have understood this calculation. Perhaps this understanding explains the lack of interest from the (formerly relentless and always available) corporate media in scrutinizing the abundant stories of corruption surrounding the government, especially the presidential family. Perhaps this understanding explains the Olympian inertia that took over the electoral justice system in the final stretch of the election in the face of the avalanche of electoral crimes committed daily by Bolsonaro and his supporters.

These are questions that time will answer. 

It is certain that if Telegram and WhatsApp are not shut down during the election period, perhaps not even the greatest popular figure in Brazilian political history can defeat the neo-fascist Bolsonaro. It is certain that to defeat him, Lula and the left only have their one and only lifelong ally, who has stood by them in every struggle: in the election, in the coup, and in prison. Only the Brazilian people can prevent the empire from subjugating Brazil with the mechanisms of torture and death that Bolsonarism knows how to employ.