Brazil, the Reluctant Leader

The moment deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya walked into the Brazilian embassy in Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa, on Sept. 21, Brazil was thrust into the center of the Honduran crisis.

The South American giant has since requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council and called for a U.N. investigation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Roberto Micheletti's de facto government in Honduras. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva demanded Zelaya's "immediate return to the presidency."

While Brazil's reaction was swift and clear, it is hard to find anyone who believes that the country has become Zelaya's outspoken advocate by choice. Just days before Zelaya arrived at the embassy, Brazil was content to hang back with the rest of the international community that, officially, supported Zelaya's return, but that had quietly begun to realize that his reinstatement may not be essential -- particularly with Honduras' presidential election coming up in November.

"This was dropped on their lap," says Kenneth Maxwell, a Brazil specialist at Harvard University. Indeed, there seems to be little reason to doubt the Brazilian officials who say that they did nothing to help Zelaya sneak back into Honduras, and that they were only contacted less than two hours before he arrived at the embassy door.

In choosing that embassy, Zelaya forced Brazil into the kind of role that observers have criticized the country for not taking, in this and other regional crises. The conventional wisdom is that, as a more moderate, center-left nation, Brazil could serve as a counterbalance to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's confrontational meddling, and temper the long, contentious history of U.S. involvement in the region.

But Brazil hasn't done that. It prefers discretion and is reluctant to tread in the internal affairs of other nations. Brazilians are very sensitive on this point. Jose Augusto Guilhon, a professor of international relations at the University of Sao Paulo, told the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo that Brazil may be "becoming some sort of gendarme in the region, without limits, imitating the United States."

Beyond his choice of embassy, Zelaya's timing was impeccable. His return took place just days before the U.N. General Assembly, which "put everybody on the spot," Maxwell says. In addition to Lula, the leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela, among others, used their U.N. speeches to raise concern about the Honduran standoff.

Historically, it is precisely on this kind of global stage that Brazil has asserted itself, in its own way. Brazil favors reform on the international level, speaking up for the underdog and touting its leadership on environmental issues. Indeed, the main thrust of Lula's speech at the U.N. was his oft-repeated call for making multilateral lending institutions and the U.N. Security Council more representative of today's world. He also emphasized his country's efforts at the forefront of combating climate change.

Honduras is probably the last place Brazilian diplomats envisioned raising their country's international profile. South America, rather than Central America, has been Brazil's more natural sphere of influence. The country has been a major proponent of integration through the Union of South American Nations, which was officially created last year in Brasilia.

Certainly, Brazil is not overreaching in its global ambitions. As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, Brazil, together with the other so-called BRIC countries -- Russia, India and China -- has long pressured industrialized nations to open up their deliberations, and the emergence of the Group of 20 as an alternative to the G-7 is largely a result of their efforts. The G-20 became the official arena of choice for coordinating an international response to the global economic crisis at its recent gathering in Pittsburgh.

This is not to say that Brazil has always shied away from taking on a prominent role in regional conflicts. In Haiti five years ago, Brazil led the first-ever U.N. peacekeeping mission with a majority South American force. And in 1995, Brazil was instrumental in brokering a peace agreement to end the territorial dispute between Ecuador and Peru -- an agreement now known as the Itamaraty Peace Declaration, named after Brazil's powerful foreign ministry.

But those are the exceptions.

As much as pundits and regional leaders would like Brazil to become more engaged and proactive, perhaps it is Brazil's resistance to such a role that made its embassy the best choice for Zelaya. Because Brazil doesn't have a history of missteps resulting from a more prominent policing role, the country enjoys a certain clout in the region that even the de facto regime in Honduras seems to respect.

And that clout, combined with Zelaya's presence at the embassy, has put Micheletti in a much more difficult position than he probably ever anticipated.