BRAZIL NEEDS TO START THINKING LIKE BRAZIL AGAIN

Wesley S.T Guerra

There is something deeply troubling about contemporary Brazilian politics, and I am not referring merely to the intensity of the disputes between the left and the right, but to the progressive transformation of political disagreement into a kind of existential conflict, in which the opponent ceases to be someone who thinks differently about the country’s future and instead comes to be perceived as a threat that must be defeated, discredited, or even eliminated from the legitimate space of democratic debate. In such an environment, politics ceases to be the space where different visions of the country compete, engage in dialogue, and eventually find points of convergence, and becomes instead a permanent struggle in which acknowledging that an opponent is right about something seems automatically to amount to a betrayal of our own convictions.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this distortion can be found in the reaction provoked by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, in which he once again placed at the center of the international debate issues that should transcend the ideological boundaries of any government, such as the defense of national sovereignty, respect for international law, the strengthening of multilateralism, and the need to adapt international institutions to a geopolitical reality profoundly different from the one that existed when they were created after the Second World War.

We may agree or disagree with Lula on countless issues; we may question his economic policies, his domestic decisions, his social priorities, or even certain aspects of his foreign policy, because that is precisely what democracy is about. What is far more troubling is that polarization has taken us to a point where part of society seems incapable of recognizing the relevance of a particular position simply because the person expressing it belongs to the political camp they regard as the adversary.

The reform of international governance, for example, is not an invention of a Brazilian government, nor is it an exclusive demand of the Latin American left. The very structure of the United Nations reflects a balance of power constructed in 1945, in a world that no longer exists, and for decades there has been an international debate about the need to increase the representation of regions and countries that have acquired considerably greater economic, demographic, and political weight. Africa continues to demand permanent representation on the Security Council, while countries such as Brazil, India, Japan, and Germany have for years been part of the debate over a possible expansion of its membership.

Therefore, when Brazil advocates reforming international governance, this should not automatically be interpreted as a partisan gesture, but as part of a much broader discussion about what kind of international system we want to build for the twenty-first century. We can debate what the reform should look like, which countries should be represented, what powers international institutions should have, or even whether certain proposals are viable. But it is difficult to argue that the world of 2026 can indefinitely continue to be represented by the same structures of power conceived for the world of 1945.

And here we arrive at a word that, in Brazil, seems to have been hijacked by political conflict: sovereignty.

Defending Brazilian sovereignty does not mean being an enemy of the United States, China, Europe, or any other power; nor does it mean advocating international isolation or rejecting cooperation, trade, or strategic alliances. It simply means recognizing that a sovereign state must preserve its ability to make its own decisions according to its national interests, interests that also reflect the opposition as a formulator of opinions and representative of different groups of interest, negotiating with other countries from a position of autonomy and refusing to accept that a foreign power should unilaterally determine what should be considered good or bad for its own society.

This should be obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of how international relations work. The United States defends the interests of American citizens, China defends Chinese interests, India defends Indian interests, European countries defend their own interests, and Brazil, regardless of who occupies the Planalto Palace, should have the capacity to define what it considers a priority for Brazilians.

This is not a declaration of hostility toward the United States. On the contrary, mature international relations are not built on permanent hostility, but on the ability to recognize that even friendly countries have their own interests, which may coincide with ours at certain moments and diverge at others. Brazil can maintain a strategic relationship with Washington without subordinating its foreign policy to Washington, just as it can expand its relations with China without making Beijing the center of its international decisions; it can deepen its ties with Europe, strengthen its relations with Africa, and expand its presence in Asia without turning its diplomacy into an extension of the interests of any other power. And no one knows this better than Lula...

This should be a matter of state, not a partisan issue.

The problem is that polarization has reached a point where even the defense of relatively elementary national interests is interpreted through the lens of ideological conflict. If Lula defends a particular international position, some people feel compelled to reject it simply because Lula was the one who defended it; if a foreign government criticizes a Brazilian decision, others feel compelled to automatically accept that criticism as legitimate because it coincides with their own political views. In this way, we stop asking which position best protects the country’s interests and instead ask only which position benefits the political group with which we identify.

This is one of the most dangerous forms of political alienation: when our perception of reality ceases to be constructed from facts, data, and arguments and becomes instead constructed exclusively around the identity of the person speaking.

The phenomenon is particularly visible on social media, where millions of people receive every day a version of the world constructed by algorithms that reward outrage, confrontation, and confirmation of our own convictions. It matters little whether information is documented by recognized institutions, whether statistical evidence exists, or whether the data contradict our perceptions; when a particular narrative confirms what we already believe, we tend to accept it with a degree of ease that we would hardly display if that same information challenged our positions.

And Brazilian reality, as is almost always the case, is far more complex than the narrative of either extreme.

Brazil remains outside the FAO Hunger Map after significantly reducing the prevalence of undernourishment; in 2025, it recorded an annual unemployment rate of 5.6%, the lowest in the historical series that began in 2012, with 103 million people employed, while agribusiness reached US$169.2 billion in exports and the country continued to expand and diversify its international markets.

These figures do not mean that Brazil has solved its problems, because clearly it has not. We continue to face profound inequalities, public security problems, educational shortcomings, infrastructure deficiencies, regional disparities, fiscal challenges, social vulnerabilities, and an enormous unfinished agenda of economic, technological, and human development.

But acknowledging these advances does not require us to abandon criticism, just as pointing out existing problems should not force us to deny what is working.

A mature democratic society should be capable of doing both simultaneously: recognizing progress without turning it into propaganda and pointing out problems without transforming every difficulty into proof that everything is failing.

And perhaps it is precisely this ability to look at the country in all its complexity that we are losing.

Because Brazil is not Lula, but neither is it Bolsonaro. Brazil is not the Workers’ Party, but neither is it the opposition. Brazil is not the left, but neither is it the right. Brazil is not agribusiness, nor industry, nor workers, nor entrepreneurs, nor universities, nor the outskirts, nor the major cities, nor the small rural communities; Brazil is the contradictory, unequal, and extraordinarily diverse combination of all these realities.

Brazil is São Paulo and Amazonas, it is the Northeast and the Center-West, it is the technology industry and family farming, it is the entrepreneur who exports and the worker who depends on their salary, it is the public university and the private company, it is the periphery and the financial center, it is the young generation demanding new opportunities and the older population that built much of the country we have today.

Brazil is, precisely, this enormous diversity that no political force can fully represent.

Therefore, perhaps we should stop thinking that politics consists exclusively of discovering who is right and start asking what the country needs in order to move forward, because a democracy is not strengthened when everyone thinks alike, but when we are capable of living with our differences without turning them into a permanent war against those who think differently.

The opposition has a fundamental role in a democracy, and its function is not simply to wait for the government to fail in order to prove that it was right, but to help formulate alternatives, scrutinize decisions, challenge policies, and, when necessary, defend national interests that may even coincide with those defended by the government. Likewise, a democratic government should understand that criticism is not necessarily a threat and that a healthy society needs opposition, a free press, independent institutions, and citizens capable of questioning those in power.

Because Brazil does not belong to the government, but neither does it belong to the opposition; it belongs to Brazilians.

And perhaps this is one of the most important reflections we should recover before each election: we are not simply choosing between people, parties, or narratives. We are deciding what kind of country we want to build and what place we want to occupy in an international system undergoing profound transformation.

We may have different answers to this question, and we should. We may defend different economic models, different social priorities, different diplomatic strategies, and different visions of the role of the state. That is democracy. What we should not do is allow our political differences to make us forget that all these debates take place within the same country. Our sovereignty is not negotiable.

Because when Brazil divides itself between “our side” and “the others,” when we stop recognizing any merit in those who think differently, and when we accept that a foreign power should define what should be considered a legitimate interest for our society, we lose something far more important than an electoral argument: we lose the ability to think strategically as a nation.

No one should demand that Brazilians agree about the future of the country.

But we should be able to agree on something much more basic: Brazil’s future must be decided by Brazilians.

Brazil should have friends around the world, it should trade with everyone willing to trade with it, it should cooperate with every nation with which it can build common interests, and it should keep its doors open to international dialogue; but precisely in order to do all of this as a sovereign country, it must preserve the ability to decide for itself what it considers best for its society.

Because no American, Chinese, European, Russian, or other great-power government wakes up every morning asking what will be best for Brazil. Each of them legitimately has its own national interests.

It is up to us to defend ours.

And perhaps the time has come to understand that sovereignty does not mean choosing one side against another, but preserving enough freedom to engage with everyone, cooperate with many, and, when necessary, say no.

We do not need a Brazil that thinks alike. We need a Brazil that, even amid its profound differences, is still capable of thinking for itself.

Because before we are left or right, government or opposition, we are a country.

And perhaps that is precisely what we are forgetting.

To start thinking like Brazil again.

Wesley Sá Teles Guerra is an expert in internationalization, international cooperation, and paradiplomacy, with a solid academic background from internationally renowned institutions. He is the founder of CERES – Centro de Estudos das Relações Internacionais (Center for International Relations Studies) in Brazil, and currently serves as the manager of the Triangular Cooperation Fund between Europe, Latin America, and Africa at the Ibero-American General Secretariat, based in Madrid.

Throughout his academic and professional career, he completed studies in International Negotiations at the Centre de Promoció Econòmica de Barcelona; in International Relations and Political Science at the Fundação Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo; a Master’s Degree in Social Policies and Migrations at the Universidade da Coruña (UDC); an MBA in International Marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Business; a Master’s Degree in Smart Cities at the Universitat Carlemany; a course in European Project and Fund Management at the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UNIA); and he is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).

He is the author of the works Cadernos de Paradiplomacia, Paradiplomacy Reviews, and Manual de sobrevivência das Relações Internacionais. He regularly participates in international forums on smart cities, global governance, and paradiplomacy, and has also been an invited commentator on CBN Recife. He was a finalist for the ABANCA Academic Research Award and is a member of international networks and platforms such as CEDEPEM, ECP, Smart Cities Council, and REPIT, maintaining an active involvement in international initiatives linked to cooperation, innovation, and governance.