2023-06-23 03:30:16
The United States, concerned about the elections in Brazil, discreetly mobilized for a year an extraordinary machinery of officials of the highest level, including various ministers and even the head of the CIA, to shield the victory of Lula da Silva last October and prevent the military from rising up driven by allegations of fraud by the outgoing Jair Bolsonaro.
The newspaper Financial Times, in an extensive investigation that cites numerous sources in both countries, revealed little-known details of that unusual operation in which the former ambassador to Brasilia and former Undersecretary of State, Tomas Shannon, an expert on Brazil, played a role.
However, not everything turned out as expected. In the US they reproach that the new government of Lula ”showed little public recognition about that campaign,” said one of those consulted.
The axes of irritation or “underlying resentment”, as Shannon calls it, include the president’s positions on the war in Ukraine, considered favorable to Russia, the decision to coordinate with China the use of national currencies by discarding the dollar or the green light for two Iranian military ships to dock in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s as if they didn’t know or didn’t want to recognize what we did,” says the former ambassador.
The report “is completely true, the key movements of those days are there,” he told Thursday. Clarion a Brazilian diplomatic source who added that, in any case, the article is being studied by the Foreign Ministry. He added that what the US did “was really unusual and many times went beyond the script that could be expected”.
But at the same time, regarding the reproaches, he considered “that it is almost childish that this support is supposed to mean automatic alignment with the views of the United States. He remarked that it is true that there was pressure on the military, not only from the US, but Washington has more power there because the officers have a close relationship with their North American peers and “that enhances the American influence.”
the Time.news of Financialtitled “The discreet US campaign to defend the democratic elections in Brazil”, remarks that Bolsonaro before the elections “openly flirted with subverting the country’s democracy. He was attacking the electoral process, claiming that the electronic voting machines used by the Brazilian authorities were unreliable and asked for a paper ballot instead.”
He immediately characterized the similarities of this attitude with the accusations without proof of Donald Trump in the US. Which adds an additional element to explain the interest of the Joe Biden government.
Although the information was known, the article notes as new that the final acceptance of Lula’s victory was partly the result of “a year-long silent pressure campaign by the US government. to urge the country’s political and military leaders to respect and safeguard democracy, something that has not been widely reported.”
very unusual operation
Former president Jair Bolsonaro. AFP
This operation, which a former high-ranking official of the US Foreign Ministry described as “very unusual”consisted of a message offensive in the months prior to the vote using public and private channels.
“The United States had a clear geopolitical incentive to want to demonstrate its ability to shape events in the region. The dominant power in Latin America has long seen eroded its influence in recent years due to a growing Chinese presence”, he maintains.
Everything was done with some discretion because the regional center-left, Lula included, has historically seen Washington as behind attempts to undermine democracy in the region. To avoid becoming a political front man in a fiercely contested election, the solution was an unpublished operation involving multiple branches of government: “the US military, the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House.”
“This was a very unusual engagement,” says Michael McKinley, a former US ambassador to Brazil. “It was almost a calendar year of strategy, which was carried out with a very specific goal in mind: make sure the electoral process worked.”
The operation, Shannon explained, began with a visit to Brasilia by Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, in August 2021, more than a year before the presidential election. The trip included a meeting with Bolsonaro.
According to Shannon, the senior US official “He left that meeting worried. Bolsonaro continued to talk about fraud in the US elections and continued to understand his relationship with America in terms of his relationship with President Donald Trump “whom he admires.”
“Sullivan and the team that accompanied him came away thinking that Bolsonaro was fully capable of trying to rig or deny the election results as Trump had. So a lot of thought went into How the United States could support the electoral process without appearing to be interfering.”
Fear for Bolsonaro
the Time.news ofl Financial Times highlights the high risk of a breach of the Constitution and points out that the vice president of the right-wing leader, General Hamilton Mourao, admitted to Shannon during a meeting in New York that “I’m worried too”.
Bolsonaro continued with his campaign against electronic ballot boxes and raised these doubts in a meeting to which he summoned 70 accredited ambassadors in Brasilia. The US Foreign Ministry then issued a statement defending the electronic system as a example of efficiency.
File photo of the trip of Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, in 2021 to Brazil, when the secret operation began to prevent an action by Jair Bolsonaro against the following year’s elections. REUTERS
“That statement was very important, especially for the military,” the newspaper said, citing a high-ranking Brazilian official. “They get their equipment from the US and they train there, so having good relations with the US is very important” for the military, he added.
A week later, Biden’s Defense Minister, Lloyd Austin, landed in Brasilia under the pretext of a regional summit and urged the military to “they had to remain under strong civilian control.”
In a private meeting with the leadership of the Armed Forces, Austin warned them that “there would be important negative consequences for bilateral military ties if something were done” against the Constitution.
An additional reinforcement of the message to the high command in Brazil came from General Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command who also came to Brazil twice before the elections. “The defense minister, the CIA chief, the national security adviser, they all visited Brazil in an election year,” says McKinley. “Is this normal? No, it is not.”
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