The Washington Dissensus: A Privileged Observers Perspecti...

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/139982

January/February 2015
CAPSULE REVIEW

The Washington Dissensus: A Privileged

Observers Perspective on US-Brazil
Relations; His Own Man
Richard Feinberg
Barbosa, who served as Brazils ambassador to Washington from 1999 to 2004, assesses U.S.
diplomacy with a condescension born of wounded pridea common feeling among his peers in
Latin American diplomatic corps. But the distinguished diplomats hard-hitting memoir focuses its
main attacks on his own countrys leadership, firing point-blank shots at then President Luiz Incio
Lula da Silva and his foreign minister, Celso Amorim. Barbosa contends that the Lula
administrations anti-American posture harmed Brazilian national interests by foolishly wasting many
opportunities to make real progress on promising U.S.-Brazilian agreements and by undermining
Brazilian efforts to win a permanent seat on the un Security Council. In devastating detail, Barbosa
portrays Brazils diplomats as confused about their fundamental purpose and undecided as to just
what their country wants out of its relations with the United Statesa lack of self-knowledge that
only exacerbates the mistrust between Braslia and Washington. Barbosas provocative broadside
will likely accelerate the ongoing debate in Brazil over how best to exploit its position as an emerging
regional power.
The troubled U.S.-Brazilian relationship also provides the backdrop for the novel His Own Man. The
books climactic scene involves a confrontation between the novels narrator, a Brazilian diplomat
stationed in Los Angeles, and a former chief of the CIA station in Braslia, now retired in La Jolla,
California, whose garage is stacked with documents detailing Washingtons covert attempts to
foment anticommunist military coups in Latin America in the 1970s. Maybe thats why we stand
alone today . . . isolated as hell, the old spook muses, unable to deal with a world that for the most
part despises us. The historical memories of Americans are famously short, and Ribeiro, a veteran
Brazilian diplomat, clearly wants to remind readers in the United States of the cost of U.S. support
for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 until 1985and of the scars carried by people
throughout Latin America whose lives were forever altered by the torture and murders carried out

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The Washington Dissensus: A Privileged Observers Perspecti...

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/139982

during the Cold War by Washingtons authoritarian allies in the region. As His Own Man makes clear,
that legacy helps explain the attitudes and behaviors of todays elites in Brazilmembers of the
generation that suffered under military ruleand their lingering distrust of U.S. power.

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