Bolsonaro Flees Brazil Following Election Loss

Hey everybody, Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. And today we’re gonna talk about what’s going on in Brazil. They’ve recently had a new election, and the guy who lost immediately fled the country, which is generally not a good look. There’s a lot of drama here. It’s Latin America. So let me try to outline what’s going on. 

First things first. The guy who won Lula, this is his fourth term as president. In the past, he’s been in jail for corruption. In fact, in one of his recent election campaigns, he campaigned from jail. So, you know, we’ve got that going on for the clean side. On the other side, we’ve got the Bolsonaro clan, which is where most of the drama is today. Jair Bolsonaro is the guy who has been president. And when he lost to Lula, who was campaigning from jail, he moved to the United States and tried to arrange for a January 6th style overthrow of the government. This is honestly not very controversial, even in Brazil, that he did this. Keep in mind that Brazil is a democracy that only dates back to the 90s, so a lot of their institutions are relatively fragile compared to some of the more advanced countries out there. Anyway, when he returned home, he was convicted and he’s in jail now. The next generation down. His three sons have basically used a lot of their political heft to try to take over the government and free their father. One of them Eduardo, went so far as to go to other governments and get them to put sanctions on specific members of Brazilian courts, as well as general economic sanctions in an attempt to put pressure on the Brazilian government. And if you happen to like the Bolsonaros, you can understand why he would do that. But if you’re willing to take a more broader view, can you imagine what happened if that was in the United States? Like, let’s imagine for the moment that Joe Biden was in jail for something and Hunter Biden went to, I don’t know, China to lobby the Chinese to put sanctions on specific court justice of the Supreme Court and then economic sanctions on the United States, and then touted that they won’t be coming off until such time as his father is released. That’s basically what went down with Brazil, just that the country on the other side was the United States, which means it’s been wrapped up in MAGA drama in the United States. Anyway, the case against him is very strong, although I can’t say that he’s 100% guilty because the court systems in Brazil work differently from the United States. There’s kind of this merger between attorneys general and the court, so the judges actually can lead investigations. Anyway, he is now living in self-imposed exile in the United States, and if he returns, he’d probably be arrested pretty quickly. The next son down is Flavio. That is the one who ran for president this most recent time. His corruption allegations are a little bit more pedantic. They involve corruption, money laundering and private business issues. Again, the case is under a degree of judicial lock and key, so all the information isn’t there. But he clearly felt that he needed to flee the country within hours of losing the election. And he is now in the United States as well. Let’s see, who does that leave us with, Eduardo, Flavio, Carlos. Carlos Bolsonaro. Still in the United States. He’s an elected senator in the Brazilian government. And his supposed charge is that during his father’s administration, he used and directed the intelligence systems in Brazil to actively monitor the personal communications of a lot of opposition lawmakers. There is no argument on either side that that happened. The argument is the degree to which Carlos directed it personally, because, you know, this is a public institution. So the records are there. They know it was done. Carlos is just saying, oh, it just happened to happen. It wasn’t me, you know, bullshit. But anyway, bottom line is we’ve got this family of people who was trying to manipulate the system for their own political needs, which doesn’t absolve the other side at all. I just have to underline that if this had been flipped and Lula had three kids that were doing this, we’d probably be just doing the same video with different names. 

The reason I wanted to bring this all up is two things. Number one, this is wrapped up in the Trump administration right now. Trump has had a long, brutal series of domestic and foreign policy defeats, and he’s scrambling for anything that makes him feel good. We’re really at that stage now. And because Trump has been manipulating Brazil on and off for the last couple of years with help from the Bolsonaros, this is now rising to the level of front page news in the United States as well. Second issue. As I mentioned, Brazil’s political system as a democracy is relatively new, only goes back to the 90s. They have done a pretty good job until about ten years ago of finding their way forward as a young democracy. But now this blood feud between Lula and the Bolsonaros has basically become a Hatfield-McCoys sort of situation. And it’s brought in the courts and it’s brought in the intelligence system, its broad and foreign affairs, and we are looking at a top to bottom fissure in the capacity of the Brazilian state to function in an in a nonpolitical manner. That’s a real problem because Brazil is the second largest country in population in the Western Hemisphere. It is right up there with Mexico in terms of its overall economic heft, and it is a global producer of pretty much everything that the world needs right now, whether it’s food or energy derivative products or mining products, you know, the sort of things that you really need if you need to expand industrialization because we’re going to lose globalization. What happens here really matters to a great number of people. And right now, because of this blood feud, it looks like the whole system is starting to crack. I don’t want to say they’re going to fail. We’re nowhere near that. And they had a really strong track record until 10-15 years ago. But Brazil has absolutely entered the danger zone of states that are fracturing under pressures, internal and external. And no matter how that goes, it’s going to matter to a great number of people, including us.