Brazil and the United States: A New Unwritten Alliance?

By Stanley Gacek & Anthony W. Pereira on September 6, 2024

Over the last two hundred years, the United States has maintained a relationship of ups and downs with the second most populous nation in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil. In February of last year, US President Biden and Brazilian President Lula issued a joint statement designed to enhance and deepen the bilateral relationship. In September 2023, the two presidents met again to inaugurate a global partnership for workers’ rights. In 2024, the year that marks the bicentenary of US recognition of Brazilian independence, even more should be done to strengthen the relationship between the two hemispheric giants.

After declaring its independence from Portugal in 1822, Brazil’s sovereignty was recognized by its neighbor Argentina, already independent from Spain, in 1823. By receiving Brazil’s representative in Washington DC in 1824, the United States became the second country to acknowledge Brazilian independence, although formal recognition did not come until the following year.

During the Brazilian First Republic (1889 to 1930), Brazil-U.S. relations constituted what the historian E. Bradford Burns termed the “unwritten alliance”. While mutual military aid and cooperation were not involved, active diplomatic engagements and well-developed commercial ties contributed to a strong friendship between the two hemispheric giants. The Brazilian position was shaped by the Baron of Rio Branco, Brazil’s Foreign Minister from 1902 to 1912, who recognized that the world order dominated by European states was shifting and that the United States was an increasingly influential rising power and market for Brazilian exports.

Over the past century, the two hemispheric powers have experienced periods of both approximation and distance, depending on the period and the policy issue. However, in the words of the scholar Monica Hirst, “the shared American identity, added to the attributes of power of both nations – territory, population and the size of the economy – have always constituted factors of attraction for one and the other.”

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https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/brazil-and-united-states-new-unwritten-alliance