Brazil thus advocates for the reform of institutions. Antonio Patriota’s call for raising “awareness on the importance of associating development to the security strategies we conceive towards sustainable peace,” as well as for increasing cooperation between the UN Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, illustrates this commitment.7 This cry was supported by incumbent Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo in his
inaugura-6 SIPRI 2013 Yearbook, Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
7 Statement by H.E. Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Minister of External Relations of the Federa-tive Republic of Brazil at the Open Debate of the Security Council on “Maintenance of international peace and security: the interdependence between security and development,” 11 February 2011, available at: http://
www.un.int/brazil/speech/11d-AAP-Maintenance-international-peace-security.html (accessed 30 June 2012).
tion speech that concentrated on deepening the contributions Brazil can offer to enhance the current order:
… our voice has been gathering strength in defence of our state at the multilateral level and the great issues of the international agenda, ranging from sustainable development to human rights and social affairs as well as from international peace and security to the multilateral trade system … Brazil is a player that cannot be sidestepped.8
Institutions are necessary to promote stable, roughly predictable political encounters, as well as to avoid unstable environments, where people fear for the future and exaggerate their differences, engendering conflicts and reducing their capacity to negotiate the very rules and institutions they need.
They are necessary to guide development efforts with a sense of community, without which populations often collectively shift the responsibility for their own failures onto others. Reformed institutions may foster sustainable de-velopment, thereby helping current and future generations. Hence, govern-ments should reach a consensus on how to promote economic growth while implementing social inclusion and improving the environment. Rio+20 at-tempted to launch such a process, providing the world with a useful politi-cal agenda to guide its collective action after 2015, when the Millennium Development Goals process will be formally concluded.
In a nutshell, this is the narrative that has informed Brazil’s foreign pol-icy throughout recent decades. It combines common sense with proposals for conservative reforms in the world order. Back in the 1960s, the Brazil-ian Ambassador to the UN, Araújo Castro, denounced the UN Charter as a document concerned with peace and power, rather than justice, and the Security Council, in tandem with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
8 Statement delivered by Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado on the occasion of his inaugura-tion as Minister of External Relainaugura-tions (Brasilia, 28 August 2013), available at: http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/
sala-de-imprensa/notas-a-imprensa/discurso-do-embaixador-luiz-alberto-figueiredo-machado-na-cerimonia-de-transmissao-do-cargo-de-ministro-de-estado-das-relacoes-exteriores (accessed 1 September 2013).
(NPT), as a tool to freeze the distribution of power on the world stage.9 He pointed out that, at the San Francisco Conference, the international com-munity mistakenly focused on military dynamics instead of development, apparently ignoring the extent to which they are intertwined.
At current levels of interdependence, in the long run, only an inter-national order that represents the real distribution of power on the world scene can effectively regulate the allocation of values on a politically sus-tainable basis. Hence, Brazil is pushing for reforms that help multilateralize the multipolarity observed in international relations. At this level of inter-dependence, the whole political process has to be perceived as legitimate, which requires that emerging powers be offered reasonable levels of repre-sentation within world institutions.
Evidence abounds. We live in a global society structured to administer an international system. Hence, the consensus on the need to reform insti-tutions, such as the UN Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as to end the Doha Round of the World Trade Or-ganization (WTO), gathers momentum daily. But no one appears to know how to proceed.
As socio-economic processes unfold, successive political crises affect-ing the whole world cause multilateral institutions to fail in managaffect-ing the world order. If their improvement was an option when the idea of an international community was utopia, the need for sound global govern-ance infrastructure has become paramount. Interdependence requires the appropriate institutions to manage global flows (of information, money, goods, services, persons, etc.) and people’s expectations, cementing what ef-fectively corresponds to a world society. And in this complex environment, different kinds of people matter.10
9 J.A. Araújo Castro, “The United Nations and the Freezing of the International Power Structure,” Interna-tional Organization, Vol. 26, N. 1, pp. 158-166, 1972.
10 So important is this perception that some analysts recall the European Middle-Ages, when sovereigns of different kinds interacted purposefully in a legitimate way. See, for instance: W. Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations:
Simply put, this is the narrative. Brazil proposes using empathy, toler-ance, and cooperation to improve the global order. This needs to take place in several places: at the UN Security Council, to face security challenges;
at the WTO, to unleash the energies of free trade on behalf of economic growth; at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to provide for food security; and on the broader sustainable development agenda, espe-cially through the Sustainable Development Goals, to build “the future we want.”11 All of this is based on Brazil’s foreign policy traditions.