Brazil’s Shock to the System
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President elect Bolsonaro swept on from the far right.
When Donald Trump was first elected U.S. President, there were few like-minded elected leaders in other countries. Seated next to unapologetic globalists like Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump always seemed the odd man out–and more so after President Emmanuel Macron’s election in France six months after his.
Things have changed. In one polarized nation after another, strongmen are now in vogue. While Macron suffers domestically and Merkel plans to wrap up her chancellorship of Germany by 2021, populist nationalists are thriving at the top of the world’s largest democracies–from Trump himself to India’s Narendra Modi to the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte to Italy’s strongman Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. To that list, we can now add Brazil and Jair Bolsonaro.
Most media coverage of Bolsonaro’s decisive victory in Brazil has focused on his macho rhetoric, confrontational style and promises to sweep his country clean of urban crime and endemic political corruption. But his views on foreign policy also represent a sharp break with Brazil’s recent past.
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