Are Rising Powers Consistent or Ambiguous 2017

Are rising powers consistent or ambiguous
foreign policy actors? Brazil, humanitarian
intervention and the ‘graduation dilemma’

CHRISTOPH HARIG AND KAI MICHAEL KENKEL *
As new powers emerge in international politics, they are often seen as inconsis-
tent or ambiguous actors that struggle to demonstrate a coherent international
profile. Viewed on their own terms, however, their policies are no less rational
or consistent than those of major powers. Often the perception of inconsistency
says more about the categories employed by those making the assessment than
about the policies of rising powers themselves, particularly where motivations
are concerned. These categories reflect the structure of the international system,
and ultimately the rules governing the very emergence of these powers. There
is already an abundance of academic and policy-orientated literature on this
phenomenon, including in the pages of this journal.1
We argue here that the basic evaluation criteria leading to assessments of incon-
sistency and ambiguity reflect the perspectives and interests of established powers
and thus create misleading perceptions of rising powers. Three elements in particu-
lar lead to the impression that the motivations and interests of the latter are less
consistent than those of the former. These are the unitary actor assumption (whose
applicability to established powers is itself often questionable as well); 2 the descrip-
tion of policy options in exclusively binary terms (often defined from the standpoint
of established powers); and the resulting lack of distinction between acceptance
of the content of certain fundamental norms of the international system (such as
the need to balance the principles of non-intervention and human rights) and the
hierarchy and selectivity implicit in the form taken by their implementation.3
In this sense, when viewed as the expression of interests conditioned by the
hierarchical nature of the international system, rising powers’ foreign policy
* Christoph Harig’s research was facilitated by the King’s Brazil Institute PhD Studentship. Kai Michael Kenkel
acknowledges generous funding support from CNPq and FAPERJ.
1
See e.g. the special issue of this journal dedicated to the subject in 2013 (International Affairs 89: 3, May 2013),
esp. Miles Kahler, ‘Rising powers and global governance: negotiating change in a resilient status quo’, pp.
711–29, and Amrita Narlikar, ‘Negotiating the rise of new powers’, pp. 561–76; also Patrick Stewart, ‘Irre-
sponsible stakeholders? The difficulty of integrating rising powers’, Foreign Affairs 89: 6, 2010, pp. 44–53.
2
For the unitary actor assumption in international relations, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of international politics
(New York: Random House, 1979). A more critical view has been presented by Helen V. Milner: Interests,
institutions, and information: domestic politics and international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press),
1997).
3
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International norm dynamics and political change’, International
Organization 52: 4, 1998, pp. 887–917; Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, eds, The persistent
power of human rights: from commitment to compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
International Affairs 93: 3 (2017) 625–641; doi: 10.1093/ia/iix051

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Christoph Harig and Kai Michael Kenkel
is no more erratic or inconsistent than that of established or other powers. In
keeping with the focus of the special section of this issue of International Affairs,
we believe this phenomenon can be explained using the ‘graduation dilemma’.
Thus, not only are assessments of rising powers couched in categories that make
their conduct appear ambiguous, but established powers themselves make use of
ambiguous signals and contradictory expectations in dealing with new global
actors. Emerging powers thus
confront different and even contradictory expectations from international and domestic
audiences. State elites and leadership may therefore send various signals to domestic and
international audiences and the process of sending and interpreting these signals is a
complex two-level game, easily prone to apparent contradictory behaviour . . . [There can
be] no doubts that within . . . ideal binaries there are several options which decision-makers
may conceive of and implement in a grey zone of politics situated in between the extremes
of such dichotomies. 4
This article illustrates the above argument using a prominent example of how
one rising power—Brazil—responded to the policy challenges its own rise posed
for its engagement with a fundamental question of the international order: the
tension between the protection of human rights and the prohibitions on interven-
tion and the use of force.
When Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party (PT) rose to power in 2003, Brazil embarked
on a fundamental shift in its foreign policy goals, with the aim of cementing the
country’s role as a relevant participant in global governance. The prime goal of
this increased activism in international affairs was ultimately Brazil’s permanent
membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). As a result, the
understandings of global politics held in the UNSC—strongly shaped by major
powers—became the standard by which the international community measured
the country’s conduct. Tension ensued between the expectations placed upon
‘responsible’ state actors with global reach and the country’s own historical foreign
policy principles,5 most notably in the area of intervention,6 leading to the kinds
of behaviour that many outside observers have described as erratic. To date, intra-
state politics have received little attention as explanatory factors in this context;
here we will redress that gap in analysis, and in so doing we will demonstrate that
Brazil’s policy has been no less consistent than that of established western powers
or other rising powers such as China.7
4
Carlos R. S. Milani, Leticia Pinheiro and Maria Regina Soares de Lima, ‘Brazil’s foreign policy and the “grad-
uation dilemma”’, International Affairs 93: 3, May 2017, pp. 585–605 above.
5
On these principles, see Kai Michael Kenkel, ‘South America’s rising power: Brazil as peacekeeper’, Interna-
tional Peacekeeping 17: 5, 2010, pp. 644–61; ‘Out of South America to the globe: Brazil’s growing stake in peace
operations’, in Kai Michael Kenkel, ed., South America and peace operations: coming of age (London: Routledge,
2013), pp. 85–110; and ‘Brazil and R2P: does taking responsibility mean using force?’, Global Responsibility to
Protect 4: 1, 2012, pp. 3–29.
6
Stewart, ‘Irresponsible stakeholders’; Kenkel, ‘Brazil and R2P’; Kai Michael Kenkel and Marcelle Trote
Martins, ‘Rising powers and the notion of “international responsibility”: moral duty or shifting goalpost?’,
Brazilian Political Science Review 10: 1, 2016.
7
For illustrations of how Brazilian conduct is seen as inconsistent while the same conduct by established powers
is not, see the contributions in Oliver Stuenkel and Matthew M. Taylor, eds, Brazil on the global stage: power,
ideas, and the liberal international order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
626
International Affairs 93: 3, 2017

Brazil, humanitarian intervention and the ‘graduation dilemma’
In what follows we will use an analysis of academic literature, newspaper
reports and, to a limited extent, interviews to examine Brazil’s supposed incon-
sistency along the lines of two measurable factors: first, Brazil’s contributions to
diplomatic debates on intervention norms such as the ‘responsibility to protect’
(R2P); and second, its record of participation in UN peacekeeping operations.
The next section describes how we combine theories of norm development and
evaluations of intrastate politics. From there we go on to show how Brazilian
diplomats contributed to the development of humanitarian intervention norms;
in particular, we show that Brazil accepted core elements of the ‘responsibility to
protect’ while also trying to propose its own corollary principle, the ‘responsibility
while protecting’. The following section introduces the reader to recent develop-
ments regarding the use of force in UN peacekeeping and to the different motiva-
tions of Brazil’s military and foreign policy establishment in taking on a leading
role in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). We then proceed by
assessing how Brazil’s military implemented this mission’s robust mandate. While
the military’s actions clearly contradicted the normative stance of Brazil’s diplo-
macy, it will be shown that the UN eventually rewarded an individual Brazilian
general with the leadership of the most coercive UN peace operation. Finally, we
summarize our findings in arguing that—despite sending mixed signals—both
diplomats and military behaved in an eminently rational fashion.
How rising powers debate, contest and implement norms of humanitar-

ian intervention
In order to fully understand the context of the challenges rising powers face as
their position in the world order shifts, it is crucial to grasp the role played by
norms—that is, the rules and understandings governing the international arena.
Rather than simply following rules set up to favour existing powers, rising powers
try to shape the ideas that underpin global politics.8 In this article, we focus on
aspects of discourse highlighted by the ‘graduation dilemma’ of rising powers,
such as the presumption of unitary ‘actorhood’, the reduction of complex issues
to binary options, and the distinction between a global norm’s moral content and
how it is translated into practice.
As rising powers seek not only to improve their relative global standing, but
to influence the normative foundations of the international order itself, they have
invested substantial diplomatic capital in contributing normatively—in terms
of ideas—rather than exclusively in material terms.9 While hard power clearly
remains a significant element of emergence, the new dynamics of global power
have raised important questions about both the ideas that undergird the system
8
See e.g. the review in Matthew D. Stephen, ‘States, norms and power: rising powers and global order’, Millen-
nium 42: 3, 2014, pp. 888–96; also Kai Michael Kenkel and Philip Cunliffe, ‘Rebels or aspirants: rising powers,
normative contestation and intervention’, in Kai Michael Kenkel and Philip Cunliffe, eds, Brazil as a rising
power: intervention norms and the contestation of global order (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 1–20.
9
Ramesh Thakur, ‘R2P and the interplay between policy and norms in a shifting global order’, in Kenkel and
Cunliffe, Brazil as a rising power, pp. 157–77.
627

itself and the evenness with which they are implemented. Rising powers have
begun to find increasingly convincing ways of navigating these challenges.10
While many rising powers have not yet achieved the status necessary to take on
single-handedly the role of norm ‘makers’, most have graduated beyond the status
of mere norm ‘takers’ and the subordinate role this implies.11 Many, including
Brazil, now seek at least to ‘shape’ norms, supporting the (largely liberal) princi-
ples upon which the global order is built while trying to see them implemented
in a fashion that is fairer towards new actors.12
This new attitude from rising powers has fed back into academic studies of
norms themselves in ways that match shifts in power in the international system,
so that the understanding of how norms are propagated has become more egali-
tarian and democratic. Initial conceptions of norm diffusion held that ideas flowed
in one direction from (essentially northern) ‘giver’ states to (ultimately southern)
‘receiving’ states, where they were either rejected or assimilated.13 Such fixed
definitions, in which rising powers were usually left with the binary choice of
either fully adhering to the norm or rejecting it completely, are at the source
of misunderstandings of these states’ behaviour as inconsistent. Later concep-
tions correctly point out that norms could flow in both directions, and that their
progress might not necessarily be linear, but rather proceed unevenly with setbacks
and contrary interpretations.14
This new perspective frees rising powers from the role of mere recipients and
allows for accurate assessments of the development of complex norms such as
those surrounding intervention.15 Another important realization has been that the
contestation of norms does not necessarily come to a close when they are imple-
mented; that is, moments of consensus such as the passing of a UNSC resolution
may be fleeting, and stakeholders may revise their viewpoints in the light of the
10
See e.g. Andrew F. Cooper and Daniel Flemes, ‘Foreign policy strategies of rising powers in a multipolar
world: an introductory review’, Third World Quarterly 34: 6, 2013, pp. 943–62.
11
Stefan A. Schirm, ‘Leaders in need of followers: rising powers in global governance’, European Journal of Inter-
national Relations 16: 2, 2010, pp. 197–221.
12
Brian L. Job and Anastasia Shesterinina, ‘China as a global norm-shaper: institutionalization and implementa-
tion of the responsibility to protect’, in Alexander Betts and Phil Orchard, eds, Implementation and world politics:
how international norms change practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 144–59. The contributions
in Stuenkel and Taylor, eds, Brazil on the global stage make this claim with regard to Brazil’s engagement in
the global liberal order, arguing that Brazil essentially supports the normative content of the order but takes
issue with the prevalence of hegemonic interests. In ‘For liberalism without hegemony: Brazil and the rule of
non-intervention’, pp. 79–94, Marcos Tourinho in particular makes the point that this is not, as some observ-
ers in established powers claim, a sign of ambiguity, but rather a sign of the normal pursuance of rational
interests—a contention that provides an important insight into the notion of ambiguity as expressed in the
graduation dilemma.
13
Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International norm dynamics’; Risse et al., The persistent power of human rights.
14
Amitav Acharya, Whose ideas matter? Agency and power in Asian regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2009), and ‘Norm subsidiarity and regional orders: sovereignty, regionalism, and rule-making in the Third
World’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 55, 2011, pp. 95–123; Jochen Prantl and Ryoko Nakano, ‘Global
norm diffusion in East Asia: how China and Japan implement the responsibility to protect’, International Rela-
tions 25: 2, 2011, pp. 204–33; Pu Xiaoyu, ‘Socialisation as a two-way process: rising powers and the diffusion
of international norms’, Chinese Journal of International Politics 5: 4, 2012, pp. 341–67. On non-linearity see e.g.
Charles T. Hunt, ‘Rising powers and the responsibility to protect: non-linear norm dynamics in complex
international society’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29: 3, 2016, pp. 870–90.
15
Amitav Acharya, ‘The R2P and norm diffusion: towards a framework of norm circulation’, Global Responsibil-
ity to Protect 5: 4, 2014, pp. 466–79.
628

outcomes of implementation.16 Whereas established powers are often interested
primarily in the efficacy of a decision-making body and the solutions it proposes,
rising and smaller powers are prone to focus on their legitimacy, often in terms of
representativeness.
Antje Wiener states that the validity of a norm—such as R2P—comes from its
legitimacy as viewed by all of those involved in its definition and implementation. Legiti-
macy, therefore, derives from the regular access of all stakeholders (in the present
case, including rising powers) to the contestation process.17 While traditionally
validity is seen to come from the end of contestation and the fixed definition of
a norm’s content, Wiener argues the opposite.18 Her conception of how norms
are debated and contested is particularly relevant for analysing the role of rising
powers in these debates.19 Drawing on this conceptual understanding, the present
article will show that the perception of the apparent difference between Brazil’s
contributions to the development of intervention norms and to their actual imple-
mentation as inconsistency is a false one.
We argue that Brazil’s participation in debates on intervention is best under-
stood within the fluid context of continuous contestation, fluctuating meaning
and non-linearity identified by Wiener; her concept is far more representative of
the actual context of policy-making than rigid models of binary choices regarding
the acceptance of norms. We also suggest that the impressions of ambiguity
regarding rising powers’ contribution to the development and implementation of
intervention norms derive from a misleading understanding of states as rational
unitary actors. Proponents of this assumption consider that portraying states
simplistically in this way is a necessary condition for theory-building.20 Even
though the failure of the unitary actor assumption to take into account domestic
conditions for foreign policy decision-making has been criticized for decades,21
this assumption continues to influence our understanding of rising powers’ behav-
iour in relation to humanitarian or other forms of military intervention. It has
been acknowledged that conflicting domestic interests do shape decision-making
processes with regard to the provision of UN peacekeepers.22 Yet the significant
effects that conflicting domestic interests also have on how countries implement
intervention norms are widely disregarded.
Diplomats may control the formulation of foreign policy and their countries’
contribution to the development of norms. The case of Brazil, however, will show
that the foreign policy establishment cannot entirely control outcomes when the
16
Antje Wiener, ‘Enacting meaning-in-use: qualitative research on norms and international relations’, Review of
International Studies 35: 1, 2009, pp. 175–93. See also the contributions in Betts and Orchard, eds, Implementation
and world politics.
17
Antje Wiener, A theory of contestation (London: Springer, 2014).
18
Wiener, Theory of contestation, p. 22.
19
Jennifer M. Welsh, ‘Norm contestation and the responsibility to protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 5: 4,
2014, pp. 365–96 at pp. 380–84.
20
See Waltz, Theory of international politics.
21
See Milner, Interests, institutions, and information.
22
See Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘Explaining the national politics of peacekeeping contributions’,
in Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, eds, Providing peacekeepers: the politics, challenges, and future of United
Nations peacekeeping contributions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 417–36.
629

actions of the implementing agencies—in this case, the military—come under
pressure from foreign entities, or when those agencies choose to pursue their own
institutional interests. As will be shown in this article, Brazilian diplomats’ empha-
sis on non-intervention (in respect of R2P) and the non-use of force (in peace
operations), while contributing to the development of humanitarian intervention
norms, stands in stark contrast with how the Brazilian military implemented robust
mandates in UN peacekeeping operations. Rather than simplistically seeing this as
inconsistency, we argue that both diplomats and armed forces consistently pursued
their respective interests. We explain the fact that the military’s actions eventually
contradicted the diplomats’ efforts with reference to the disconnection between
foreign and security policy in Brazil’s polity—an aspect of norm implementation
that deserves closer scrutiny in studying both rising and established powers.
Brazil’s agency in debates on humanitarian intervention

Faced with the choice between rising in observance of a set of rules established
for others’ benefit and attempting to shape those rules while rising, the Lula and
Rousseff governments (of, respectively, 2003–2011 and 2011–2016) chose to try to
influence some of the norms underpinning global politics. A key focus within
this attempt has been the country’s involvement in UN and NGO debates around
R2P, in particular the launch of Brazil’s own corollary principle, the ‘responsi-
bility while protecting’ (RwP), in 2011. Put very briefly, R2P seeks to resolve the
tension between state sovereignty, embodied in non-intervention and the inviola-
bility of borders, and the protection of individual human rights, specifically from
violations committed against citizens by their own governments. It does so by
establishing fixed criteria for the suspension of the non-intervention rule in the
case of human rights violations. R2P accords primary responsibility for protecting
human rights to the affected state itself, giving the international community a
vestigial responsibility to act should that state not be able or willing to perform
this role. It sets the UNSC as the final arbiter in potential cases of intervention,
including explicitly those involving the use of military force.23 R2P has under-
gone significant formal institutionalization and operationalization within the UN
and its component organizations, including its limitation to four specific crimes
against international law,24 and the establishment of ever more specific guidelines
for its application.25
Despite increasing formal consensus on its content, the moral meaning and
implementation of R2P remain hotly disputed among UN member states.26
23
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Responsibility to protect: report of the Interna-
tional Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre,
2001).
24
UN General Assembly, 2005 world summit outcome, UN Doc. A/60/1, 16 Sept. 2005, paras 138–9.
25
UN Secretary-General, Implementing the responsibility to protect: report of the Secretary General, UN Doc. A/63/677,
12 Jan. 2009.
26
On the UN debates on R2P, see Welsh, ‘Norm contestation’; Ramesh Thakur, The responsibility to protect:
norms, laws and the use of force in international politics (New York: Routledge, 2011); Alex Bellamy, Global politics
and the responsibility to protect: from words to deeds (London: Routledge, 2011).
630

Particularly following NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011, rising powers
began to question the neutrality of the intentions behind R2P’s mobilization by
established powers. For Brazil, this meant confronting the tension between its
own principles—non-intervention and especially the non-use of force—and its
commitment to multilateral institutions that increasingly endorsed R2P; a similar
tension would emerge with respect to peace operations, as we shall see below.27
Brazil responded to this tension by oscillating between accepting R2P, on the
one hand, and, on the other, adapting it to its own beliefs and seeking to influ-
ence its definition at the global level.28 In essence, this boiled down to accepting
the norm’s content—protection of human rights and prevention of mass atroci-
ties—while voicing grave concerns over the selectivity and hierarchy evident in
its implementation (in Libya as opposed to, for example, Syria and Darfur). As a
result, Brazil’s response did not conform to the binary dichotomy that determined
western governments’ appraisal of that response: acceptance ‘as is’ or rejection.
What appeared from this perspective as an ambivalent or inconsistent response
in fact reflects an eminently rational attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests
arising from Brazil’s shifting position in the global hierarchy.
The most important element of this supposedly ‘ambivalent’ response—which
tended towards the minimum possible concession to R2P compatible with the
maintenance of historical convictions and a deep suspicion of western motives29—
was the issuance of the ‘responsibility while protecting’ concept note in November
2011. Focused on the internal UN debate rather than on R2P as a norm, the RwP
note is a clear example of how rising powers see the validity and legitimacy of a
global norm as being based on access to participation in its definition, rather than
the definition itself. The RwP note makes no reference to the original formulation
of R2P by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in
2001;30 that it should repeat several elements clearly spelled out ten years earlier—
such as the use of force only as a last resort31—is testimony to the lack of a univer-
sally accepted fixed meaning for the definitions offered back then. In other words,
there is a wide chasm between what is perceived by many, particularly established
powers, to be the definition of, for example, the requirement for allowing the use
of force, and how its implementation is perceived by rising powers.32
The Brazilian RwP idea, however, does bring a number of innovations to
the debate. Its main concern is with the utility of the use of force in putting an
27
Philip Cunliffe, Legions of peace: UN peacekeepers from the global South (London: Hurst, 2014); Paul Amar, ed.,
Global South to the rescue: emergent humanitarian superpowers and globalizing rescue industries (London: Routledge,
2012).
28
See Acharya, Whose ideas matter?, ‘Norm subsidiarity and regional orders’ and ‘The R2P and norm diffusion’;
Kai Michael Kenkel and Felippe de Rosa, ‘Localization and subsidiarity in Brazil’s engagement with the
responsibility to protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 7: 3–4, 2015, pp. 325–49.
29
Oliver Stuenkel, ‘The BRICS and the future of R2P: was Syria or Libya the exception?’, Global Responsibility
to Protect 6: 1, 2014, pp. 3–28; Oliver Stuenkel and Marcos Tourinho, ‘Regulating intervention: Brazil and the
responsibility to protect’, Conflict, Security and Development 14: 4, 2014, pp. 379–402; Ramesh Thakur, ‘R2P
after Libya and Syria: engaging rising powers’, Washington Quarterly 36: 3, 2013, pp. 61–76.
30
See Welsh, ‘Norm contestation’.
31
See Kenkel, ‘Brazil and R2P’.
32
See Kenkel and de Rosa, ‘Localization and subsidiarity’; Acharya, Whose ideas matter?, ‘Norm subsidiarity and
regional orders’ and ‘The R2P and norm diffusion’.
631

end to atrocities considered to fall within the purview of R2P.33 While the note
tones down the categorical nature of previous Brazilian resistance to any use of
force, it retains a strong scepticism about the potential for its misuse by western
powers.34 The document’s central contributions are the proposal for strict political
and chronological sequencing of R2P’s three pillars (state responsibility, capacity-
building, and timely and decisive response)35 as well as a conceptual distinction
between collective responsibility and collective security.
The key value added from the note was the definition of a set of guidelines for
the UNSC and other involved states in contemplating and setting up an interven-
tion based on R2P.36 It played a crucial role in structuring how the R2P debates
moved forward in the aftermath of the Libyan intervention, with subsequent
discussion revolving around three central aspects: the sequencing of R2P’s pillars,
increased restrictions on the use of force, and the more proactive monitoring
of ongoing missions’ compliance with UNSC guidelines. The RwP initiative
remains perhaps the most prominent instance of Brazilian norm entrepreneurship
at the global level. However, as a consequence of policy shifts and other domestic
considerations, it was prematurely withdrawn and did not develop its full poten-
tial, despite later endorsement from broad sections of the R2P community, practi-
tioners and academics alike.37
RwP solidified Brazil’s position both as a defender of the traditional values of
post-colonial states, such as non-intervention and the non-use of force, and as a
global actor keen on building bridges between these normative commitments and
those of established powers. Throughout the episode, Brazil was motivated by
its interest in exercising the responsibility inherent in taking on greater interna-
tional influence. Even this brief review of Brazil’s extensive record on interven-
tion and R2P illustrates how preconceived approaches used by outsiders—such
as the acceptance–rejection binary and the equation of acceptance of a norm’s
moral content with acceptance of ultimately selective and hierarchical imple-
mentation—can skew readings of a rising power’s diplomatic actions, leading to
mistaken perceptions of ambiguity or inconsistency.
The use of force in UN peacekeeping operations

Almost in parallel to normative debates surrounding R2P, there have been signifi-
cant changes in the scope of peace operations. Brazil’s participation therein has
shown a similar accommodation between historical foreign policy principles and
the new-found responsibilities inherent in global player status. The failure of UN
missions to prevent mass atrocities, particularly in the former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda, triggered a major doctrinal change in the use of offensive force for the
33
Permanent Mission of the Federative Republic of Brazil to the UN, Responsibility while protecting: elements for
the development and promotion of a concept, UN Doc. A/66/551-S/2011/701, 9 Nov. 2011.
34
Brazil, Responsibility while protecting, para. 10.
35
UN Secretary-General, Implementing the responsibility to protect.
36
Brazil, Responsibility while protecting, para. 11.
37
Kai Michael Kenkel and Cristina Stefan, ‘Brazil and the “responsibility while protecting” initiative: norms
and the timing of diplomatic support’, Global Governance 22: 1, 2016, pp. 41–78.
632

protection of civilians. In 2000, the Brahimi Report paved the way for increasingly
coercive missions with the goal of protecting civilians.38 The large majority of
subsequent peacekeeping operations were partially or entirely based on Chapter
VII of the UN Charter, thus eroding the three pillars of peacekeeping (consent
of parties to conflict, impartiality and the non-use of force). Instead of keeping
peace, ‘blue helmets’ are nowadays increasingly involved in making, or in practice
rather enforcing, peace—often against the will of warring factions.
The meaning of robust peacekeeping, as proposed by the Brahimi Report, has
been the subject of dispute between western states and many countries in the ‘global
South’, the latter being concerned at the potential intrusion of such missions in
the internal affairs of sovereign states.39 Moreover, there is no clear threshold for
establishing when the use of force in defence of a mandate becomes a strategic
option in acting against armed groups—thereby opening the way to peace enforce-
ment.40 Beginning with MINUSTAH, the UN’s gradual move towards connecting
missions with the ill-defined goal of ‘stabilization’ of host countries has taken UN
peace operations closer to peace enforcement, if not actual war-fighting:41
What is interesting is that stabilisation is in many ways actually contrary to what UN
peacekeeping operations are meant to do, at least in its more military (and NATO-influ-
enced) form. Stabilisation is about using military means to stabilise a country, often with
all necessary means to neutralise potential ‘spoilers’ to a conflict.42
Despite the efforts of Brazil’s diplomacy in creating intervention norms that do

not primarily rely on an extensive use of force—most notably the RwP concept—
members of its armed forces have spearheaded the development towards higher
levels of coercion. UN peace operations involve not only the country’s diplomats
but first and foremost its military, whose outlook significantly differs from that
of the Foreign Ministry (MRE, known as Itamaraty).
The respective interests of Itamaraty and the Brazilian armed forces in taking
part in MINUSTAH were different from the beginning. This can be explained in
part by the incomplete civilian supremacy in a country where military rule ended
as recently as 1985. In the early 1990s, the armed forces still had the power to
successfully oppose Itamaraty’s wish to participate in a UN mission in Namibia.43
It is fair to say that Brazil’s armed forces would no longer block such requests
38
UN, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (New York, 2000), p. x.
39
Thierry Tardy, ‘A critique of robust peacekeeping in contemporary peace operations’, International Peacekeeping
18: 2, 2011, pp. 152–67 at p. 157.
40
The UN’s Capstone Doctrine sought to distinguish carefully between robust peacekeeping as proposed by
the Brahimi Report and actual peace enforcement. Robust peacekeeping would allow the use of force only at
tactical level, while peace enforcement would imply using force at a strategic level. See UN Department for
Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), United Nations peacekeeping operations: principles and guidelines (New York,
2008), p. 19.
41
Missions with the explicit goal of stabilization have taken place in the Central African Republic, Mali, Haiti
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
42
John Karlsrud, ‘The UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN
peacekeeping operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali’, Third World Quarterly 36: 1, 2015, pp. 40–54 at p. 42.
43
Arturo C. Sotomayor Velázquez, ‘Why some states participate in UN peace missions while others do not: an
analysis of civil–military relations and its effects on Latin America’s contributions to peacekeeping’, Security
Studies 19: 1, 2010, pp. 160–95 at p. 187.
633

by the Foreign Ministry, as relations between the two institutions have slowly
evolved towards greater civilian control since the restoration of democracy.44
However, significant hurdles remain in the way of the complete subordination of
defence to foreign policy. One crucial impediment is the lack of civilian influence
in the Ministry of Defence, itself only created in 1999. Along with the minister,
only a few high-ranking members do not have a military background. There is still
no civilian career path in the area of defence, and almost no independent civilian
expertise exists to influence doctrine and strategy development.
As a result, the armed forces are mostly left to their own devices when it comes
to policy formulation and other matters.45 Instead of imposing overarching policies
in their portfolio, defence ministers are regularly called upon to negotiate on issues
that the military deems critical for its corporate interests. Celso Amorim, who at
different times headed both Itamaraty and the Ministry of Defence, offered a tell-
ing paradox to describe the challenge of dealing with the resistance of staff and
stakeholders in either institution: ‘In the Foreign Ministry, I could be a warrior.
In the Ministry of Defence, I had to be a diplomat.’46 Despite undeniable progress
in terms of establishing civilian supremacy, Brazil’s Ministry of Defence can still
more accurately be considered an advocate of the military’s interests rather than
the government’s tool for steering defence policy.47 Such rifts in intrastate politics
show the inadequacy of the unitary actor assumption in attempting to grasp Brazil’s
and other rising powers’ responses to a changing policy environment.
Brazil’s participation in peace operations

With three notable exceptions, Brazil’s participation in peace operations up to
2004 was limited to what Katharina Coleman has called ‘token contributions’.48
This pattern changed definitively when Brazil took on a leadership role in
MINUSTAH. Brazil has supplied the force commander since the beginning of the
mission, as well as its largest troop contingent; it also took on a crucial function
in the coordination of policy between the Latin American states that composed
up to 55 per cent of the mission’s military personnel. Before the mission in Haiti,
Brazil had very rarely used its military as a tool to reach political goals; rather,
44
Thomas C. Bruneau and Scott D. Tollefson, ‘Civil–military relations in Brazil: a reassessment’, Journal of
Politics in Latin America 6: 2, 2014, pp. 107–38.
45
Antonio Jorge Ramalho da Rocha, ‘Prioridades claras, necessidades ocultas e o Plano Estratégico Nacional de
Defesa’, Revista Liberdade e Cidadania 1: 2, 2008, pp. 1–16 at p. 5.
46
Interview by Christoph Harig with Celso Amorim, London, 7 July 2015.
47
Christoph Harig and Pablo Scuticchio, ‘As Dilma Rousseff stumbles, how will Brazil’s military react?’,
The Conversation, 2015, https://theconversation.com/as-dilma-rousseff-stumbles-how-will-brazils-military-
react-51088. (Unless otherwise stated at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 3
March 2017.)
48
Katharina Coleman, ‘Building international legitimacy: the significance of token forces in contemporary mili-
tary interventions’, in Bellamy and Williams, eds, Providing peacekeepers, pp. 47–70. On Brazilian participation
in peace operations, the (now somewhat dated) empirical works of reference remain those by diplomats P.
R. C. T. Fontoura, O Brasil e as operações de manutenção da paz das Nações Unidas (Brasília: FUNAG, 1999), and
A. J. S. Cardoso, O Brasil nas operações de paz das Nações Unidas (Brasília: FUNAG, 1998). Updated numbers
and further information are available at http://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org/2014/04/03/contributor-
profile-brazil/.
634

Itamaraty had used its autonomy in foreign policy agenda-setting to underscore
the country’s traditional penchant for diplomatic solutions.49
Brazil’s limited participation in peacekeeping prior to MINUSTAH was a direct
result of both capacity restrictions and normative choices. The country participated
only in operations authorized under Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter,
which implies a pacific settlement of disputes involving no use of force. Brazilian
troops were deployed following a pattern typical for middle powers, being sent
to areas where the country possessed foreign policy interests and cultural affini-
ties. This, however, changed with the shifts in policy priorities, and above all in
the reward structure, associated with Brazil’s pursuit of a rising-power role under
Lula da Silva. Participation in MINUSTAH—initiated following a telephone call
from French President Jacques Chirac to President da Silva—offered the prospect
of substantial gains for both Brazil’s diplomats and its military.
In taking over responsibility in Haiti Brazil undoubtedly intended to serve its
goal of gaining a permanent seat in the UNSC,50 not least by taking on some of
the load previously carried in Haiti by existing permanent members such as France
and the United States. The latter powers would not be seen as major players in the
mission, but would still be able to exert significant influence.51 Moreover, Brazil’s
replacing US troops in Haiti freed up American resources, enabling Washington
to deploy more units in Afghanistan and Iraq.52
Brazilian diplomats did not want to sacrifice traditional foreign policy princi-
ples for the sake of becoming the leader of MINUSTAH’s military component.
They successfully opposed the US proposal to invoke Chapter VII for the entire
mandate and managed to include development-orientated goals in the final text.53
This outcome gave Brazil the room for a key rhetorical exercise: as only the
security-related parts of the mandate pertained to Chapter VII, Brazilian diplo-
mats would claim that their country was mostly concerned with humanitarian
tasks and Haiti’s development. Downplaying the coercive element helped to
overcome other South American troop contributors’ resistance to peace enforce-
ment missions,54 and also to win over public opinion in Brazil.55 Diplomats
49
Kai Michael Kenkel, ‘Brazil’, in Bellamy and Williams, eds, Providing peacekeepers, p. 343. The traditional status
of foreign policy as state policy has been increasingly contested since the early 2000s, and Itamaraty has lost
some of its influence owing to the increased salience of party politics, presidential influence and the fragmen-
tation of the Foreign Ministry itself: see Claudia Zilla, Brasilianische Außenpolitik. Nationale Tradition, Lulas Erbe
und Dilmas Optionen (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2011).
50
W. Alejandro Sánchez Nieto, ‘Brazil’s grand design for combining global South solidarity and national inter-
ests: a discussion of peacekeeping operations in Haiti and Timor’, Globalizations 9: 1, 2012, pp. 161–78 at p. 174.
51
Marta Fernández Moreno, Carlos Chagas Vianna Braga and Maíra Siman Gomes, ‘Trapped between many
worlds: a post-colonial perspective on the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)’, International Peacekeeping 19:
3, 2012, pp. 377–92 at p. 382.
52
Monica Hirst and Lia Baker Valls Pereira, ‘The unsettled nature of US–Brazilian relations’, in J. I. Domínguez
and R. F. de Castro, eds, Contemporary US–Latin American relations: cooperation or conflict in the 21st century?, 2nd
edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), p. 112.
53
Eduardo Uziel, O conselho de segurança, as operações de manutenção da paz e a inserção do Brasil no mecanismo de segu-
rança coletiva das Nações Unidas (Brasília: FUNAG, 2010).
54
Carlos Chagas Vianna Braga, ‘MINUSTAH and the security environment in Haiti: Brazil and South Ameri-
can cooperation in the field’, International Peacekeeping 17: 5, 2010, pp. 711–22 at p. 715.
55
Luis Kawaguti, ‘A tensa relação entre militares e jornalistas no início da missão no Haiti’, in Eduarda Hamann,
ed., Brasil e Haiti: Reflexões sobre os 10 anos da Missão de Paz e o futuro da cooperação após 2016 (Rio de Janeiro: Insti-
tuto Igarapé, 2015), p. 47.
635

also joined forces with the military in order to convince a reluctant legislative
branch.56 Overall, preparing for MINUSTAH required an unprecedented degree
of civilian-led cooperation between diplomatic elites and armed forces.57
Yet while Itamaraty aimed at emphasizing continuity in foreign policy, the
armed forces pursued a different rationale. Diplomats were mostly concerned
with the country’s graduation to a more influential global status; the armed
forces predominantly wanted to ‘maximize institutional gains’.58 Specifically, the
military leadership welcomed the prospect of a lengthy external deployment as
it promised ‘live-combat training’ in urban conflicts.59 MINUSTAH also made it
possible to test and refine outdated military doctrines, which were later used in
internal missions such as the controversial occupations of neighbourhoods in Rio
de Janeiro.60 Tellingly, members of the armed forces did not adopt the diplomats’
rhetoric and clearly refer to their actions in Haiti as backed by Chapter VII.61 The
military’s perspective is more realistic, as they eventually took over a leading role
in a mission that exemplifies the growing coerciveness of UN peace operations.
The use of force in MINUSTAH

Facing increasingly assertive opposition at the beginning of the mission in 2004,
MINUSTAH’s leadership feared that both the Haitian interim government and
the blue helmets themselves might lose popular support if the mandated robust
approach were used.62 In line with their diplomatic traditions, South American
states—as the mission’s main troop contributors—also insisted that force be used
only in cases of self-defence.63 By contrast, France and the United States, along
with UN diplomats and other established powers such as Canada, exerted pressure
on Brazilian force commanders who resisted the full exercise of the coercive
powers of the mandate.64 In 2005, the United States subtly threatened to deploy
its own troops if the Brazilian military leaders did not take a stronger stand.65
56
Uziel, O conselho de segurança, p. 95.
57
Antonio Jorge Ramalho da Rocha, ‘Política externa e política de defesa no Brasil: civis e militares, prioridades
e a participação em missões de paz’, e-cadernos CES, no. 6, 2009, pp. 142–58 at p. 153, https://eces.revues.
org/359, accessed 7 March 2017.
58
Kenkel, ‘Brazil’, p. 345.
59
Sánchez Nieto, ‘Brazil’s grand design’, p. 168.
60
Christoph Harig, ‘Synergy effects between MINUSTAH and public security in Brazil’, Brasiliana: Journal for
Brazilian Studies 3: 2, 2015, pp. 142–68.
61
José Ricardo Vendramin Nunes, ‘Treinamento para o batalhão Brasileiro desdobrado na MINUSTAH: a
consolidação de um modelo’, in Eduarda Passarelli Hamann, ed., Brasil e Haiti: reflexões sobre os 10 anos da missão
de paz e o futuro da cooperação após 2016 (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Igarapé, 2015), p. 17.
62
James Cockayne, ‘The futility of force? Strategic lessons for dealing with unconventional armed groups from
the UN’s war on Haiti’s gangs’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37: 5, 2014, pp. 736–69 at p. 745.
63
Danilo Marcondes de Souza Neto, ‘O Brasil, o Haiti e a MINUSTAH’, in Kai Michael Kenkel and Rodrigo
Fracalossi de Moraes, eds, O Brasil e as operações de paz (Brasília: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, 2012),
pp. 243–67 at p. 247.
64
Chagas Vianna Braga, ‘MINUSTAH and the security environment in Haiti’, p. 714; Luis Kawaguti, ‘ONU
quer levar ao Congo experiência Brasileira no Haiti’, BBC News, 25 April 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/
portuguese/noticias/2013/04/130424_general_rdc_lk.shtml.
65
Many also link this immense pressure with the apparent suicide of the second Brazilian force commander,
General Urano Bacellar, in January 2006. See Kawaguti, ‘A tensa relação entre militares e jornalistas’, p. 48.
636

In the following year, Haitian President Préval reacted to a series of kidnappings
and brutal killings by declaring that gangs had to ‘surrender or die’.66 The new
head of MINUSTAH, Edmond Mulet, who had for some months been lobbying
for a more proactive use of force, now had the necessary political backing for
an offensive against gangs in Port-au-Prince. Brazilian force commanders, most
notably General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz (in post January 2007 to April
2009), implemented this change by leading a series of offensive actions. The
Brazilian troop contingent even deployed a special forces unit,67 a practice the
UN later replicated in other critical missions in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Mali and Sudan.68
Brazilian diplomats only hesitantly accepted the involvement of the country’s
troops in the Chapter VII-related part of the mandate, while publicly maintaining
the emphasis on development and humanitarian assistance. Yet despite their
declared discomfort with the robust mandate, the narrative of reluctant Brazilian
force commanders having to be persuaded of the need for higher levels of
coercion does not entirely convince. As early as mid-2005, Brazilian troops were
regularly using lethal force in line with the rules of the engagement of a Chapter
VII-mandated mission.69 Military incursions into gang-controlled territory in
Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, for instance Operation ‘Iron Fist’ in Cité Soleil in
July 2005, were heavily criticized for the disproportionate use of firearms, leading
to deaths and injuries among bystanders. In this operation, Brazilian and Peruvian
troops fired ‘more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, grenades and mortars in
a densely populated area’.70 Moreover, there are suggestions that Brazil’s military
deliberately aimed at killing rather than arresting criminals.71
After the approval of forceful operations by the Haitian government and
MINUSTAH’s leadership, by 2007 the mission’s military component had managed
to take control of virtually the entire area previously held by gangs. Despite the
military leadership’s genuine efforts to reduce civilian fatalities, for instance by
cordoning off the theatre of operations or giving the population advance warning
of impending operations,72 numerous civilians died during the offensive against
the gangs.73 From a strictly military perspective, this was hardly avoidable, as
there always is a risk of ‘collateral damage’ in offensive actions.74 Yet the fact
that political stakeholders apparently share this view is a very telling sign for the
66
Michael J. Dziedzic and Robert M. Perito, Haiti: confronting the gangs of Port-au-Prince (Washington DC:
United States Institute of Peace, 2008), p. 3.
67
Roberto Escoto, ‘Guerra irregular: a Brigada de Infantaria Paraquedista na pacificação do Complexo da Maré’,
Defesanet, 2 Sept. 2015, http://www.defesanet.com.br/mout/noticia/20218/GUERRA-IRREGULAR--A-
Brigada-de- Infantaria-Paraquedista-na-Pacificacao-do-Complexo-da-Mare/.
68
UNDPKO, United Nations peacekeeping missions military special forces manual (New York, 2015).
69
Carlos Alberto de Moraes Cavalcanti, Os 10 anos de MINUSTAH e CCOPAB (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Conjunto
de Operações de Paz do Brasil, 2014), p. 7.
70
Karlsrud, ‘The UN at war’, p. 43.
71
Cockayne, ‘The futility of force?’, p. 748.
72
A. Walter Dorn, ‘Intelligence-led peacekeeping: the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUS-
TAH), 2006–07’, Intelligence and National Security 24: 6, 2009, pp. 805–35 at p. 814.
73
Dziedzic and Perito, Haiti, p. 5.
74
General B, Q&A session during visit by Christoph Harig and team of researchers to an army brigade in the
state of Minas Gerais, Feb. 2014.
637

development of peace operations. For instance, Susan Rice, the US Permanent
Representative to the UN, praised the occupation of Cité Soleil as ‘an impor-
tant example of UN peacekeeping successes’.75 Attaining military objectives and
probably saving lives at the cost of other innocents’ lives has apparently replaced
the hesitant peacekeeping stance that failed to prevent atrocities in Rwanda, the
former Yugoslavia and elsewhere.
Regardless of how one interprets this significant change, it is evident that
members of Brazil’s armed forces were important actors in a development that
clearly contradicts the rhetoric of the country’s diplomats and their penchant for
development and non-violent conflict resolution.76 This gap is further empha-
sized by Brazil’s lack of achievements in the area of Haiti’s sustainable develop-
ment. While Brazil’s engineering company within MINUSTAH (BRAENGCOY)
remains a crucial contributor to building Haiti’s infrastructure, and infantry battal-
ions are regularly carrying out social assistance tasks, many commentators argue
that Brazilian development projects have had no real impact in a country overrun
by NGOs. Even some of Brazil’s leading military officers, including the prominent
force commanders Heleno and Santos Cruz, complained that MINUSTAH did
not change the country’s grim socio-economic situation.77
Unintended consequences for Brazil’s diplomacy

In 2013, the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(MONUSCO) was set to become the most coercive peace operation in the history
of the UN. Its Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) was instructed to ‘neutralize
and disarm’ armed groups ‘in support of the authorities of the DRC’.78 Edmond
Mulet, former head of MINUSTAH and current UN Assistant Secretary-General
for Peacekeeping Operations, was very impressed with the implementation of the
robust mandate in the fight against gangs in Port-au-Prince by Brazilian General
Santos Cruz. As the UN sought appropriate leaders for the unprecedentedly
offensive mission in the DRC, Santos Cruz was personally invited to become
force commander.
Given the FIB’s offensive mandate, the Brazilian government initially viewed
the direct invitation to Santos Cruz with some reservation.79 At that time, the
general had already retired from service after failing to gain promotion to the
most senior rank in the army. Brazil had not made any diplomatic efforts to lead
the mission and had previously even denied the UN’s request to contribute troops
75
Fernández Moreno et al., ‘Trapped between many worlds’, p. 385.
76
Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Danilo Marcondes de Souza Neto, ‘Rising powers and the security–development
nexus: Brazil’s engagement with Guinea-Bissau’, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 9: 2, 2014, pp. 1–16 at
p. 3.
77
Marina Estarque, ‘Dez anos de MINUSTAH põem à prova modelo brasileiro de missão de paz’, Deutsche Welle,
6 June 2014, http://www.dw.com/pt/dez-anos-de-minustah-põem-à-prova-modelo-brasileiro-de-missão-de-
paz/a-17684450.
78
UN Security Council Resolution 2098, 2013.
79
Eduarda Passarelli Hamann, A força de uma trajetória: o Brasil e as operações de paz da ONU (1948–2015) (Rio de
Janeiro: Instituto Igarapé, 2015), p. 17.
638

to the DRC mission.80 In the end, Santos Cruz was officially allowed to become
force commander as a UN officer rather than as part of a Brazilian troop contri-
bution.81 In short, it was on the initiative of the UN—and not of Brazil’s govern-
ment—that a Brazilian general was rewarded for his interpretation of the robust
mandate in Haiti by appointment as leader of an even more assertive endeavour.
Brazil’s leading role in MINUSTAH appears also to have had implications for
military tactics in the DRC. Under the command of Santos Cruz, the military
component of MONUSCO mimicked the Brazilian tactic of establishing pontos
fortes (strongpoints) in contested neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince. There, troops
had used this counter-insurgency tactic for gaining control of strategically placed
buildings in contested areas which they afterwards used as bases for providing
social assistance.82 In the DRC, blue helmets neutralized armed groups and after-
wards established education and health services for the population in ‘islands of
stability’.83
The difference between Brazil’s diplomatic efforts regarding intervention norms
on the one hand and, on the other, its increased contributions to ever more forceful
UN peacekeeping operations and the choices made by members of its military in
implementing the decision to step up the country’s peacekeeping contributions is
epitomized by General Santos Cruz’s individual role in MONUSCO. This was a
mission that undermined the three central pillars of UN peace operations (impar-
tiality, consent and the non-use of force) to an unprecedented degree. With the
FIB actively embracing a combat role and taking sides in the conflict by aligning
itself with the DRC’s armed forces (FARDC), MONUSCO ‘effectively converted
UN forces into one warring party among many’.84 UN troops have been accused of
becoming ‘accomplices’ of human rights violations perpetrated by the FARDC.85
MONUSCO’s refusal to work with Congolese generals accused of such crimes
has led to rifts with the host nation’s government, which repeatedly asked the UN
to scale down the mission or to leave the country altogether.86
Santos Cruz’s proactive interpretation of the protection of civilians mandate
might be welcome in the UN’s Department for Peacekeeping Operations, but one
could hardly conceive of a sharper contrast to his country’s diplomatic stance.
According to Santos Cruz, it is not enough that troops only show strength by
being present in a conflict zone. He argues that the population should be protected
80
Graziene Carneiro de Souza, ‘MONUSCO: a atuação Brasileira em operações de paz robustas’, Brasiliana:
Journal for Brazilian Studies 3: 2, 2015, pp. 169–96 at p. 186.
81
Andrew D. M. Nogueira and Martin Hussey, A Brazilian as commander in chief of MONUSCO in the Congo: what
are the implications for Brazil? (Rio de Janeiro: BRICS Policy Center, 2013), p. 11.
82
Fabricio Leite Silva, ‘Imparcialidade e independência em situações de crise: o sucesso do Batalhão Brasileiro
na MINUSTAH’, Military Review, March–April 2014, pp. 2–11 at p. 8.
83
Alberto Barrera, ‘The Congo trap: MONUSCO islands of stability in the sea of instability’, Stability: Interna-
tional Journal of Security and Development 4: 1, 2015, pp. 1–16 at p. 4.
84
Emily Paddon Rhoads, Taking sides in peacekeeping: impartiality and the future of the United Nations (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 7.
85
Charles T. Hunt, ‘All necessary means to what ends? The unintended consequences of the “robust turn” in
UN peace operations’, International Peacekeeping 24: 1, 2017, p. 8.
86
Giulia Piccolino and John Karlsrud, ‘Withering consent, but mutual dependency: UN peace operations and
African assertiveness’, Conflict, Security and Development 11: 4, 2011, pp. 447–71 at p. 448.
639

by offensive military actions against armed groups.87 On the contrary, Brazil’s
permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Patriota, recently reiterated the
country’s critical view of the use of force for the protection of civilians:
Preventing and resolving conflict through peaceful means is the most effective way to shield
civilians from the miseries of war. Conversely, the ill-advised notion that the protection
of civilians is better guaranteed through the use of force finds no evidence in reality, and
more often than not exacerbates the suffering of innocents and leads to negative humani-
tarian consequences.88
These contradictory statements once more underline the error of seeing Brazil
as a unitary actor in its engagement in military interventions. At the beginning of
MINUSTAH, Brazil’s foreign policy establishment would have hardly imagined
that less than ten years later a Brazilian general would be leading the most offen-
sive military endeavour in the history of UN peace operations and articulating
perspectives on the use of force that openly contradict Brazil’s expressed stance
on norm development.
Policy-makers from around the world who engaged with Brazilian diplomats
on matters of R2P and considered the country as a unitary actor on the world
stage might thus have been surprised at how the country’s military implemented
norms of intervention. These mixed signals Brazil sent with its participation
in MINUSTAH may be perceived as inconsistency among established western
powers. However, we argue that both the military and the diplomatic corps ratio-
nally pursued their respective interests throughout the mission in Haiti. While
Itamaraty prioritized gaining international profile by leading MINUSTAH’s
military component, the armed forces’ motivations were focused on institutional
interests. Both diplomats and military saw advantages in taking on a leading role
in MINUSTAH, yet their different interests led to a split trajectory in which
the implementation of the decision to increase Brazil’s peacekeeping contribu-
tions became ever more detached from Itamaraty’s efforts regarding the norms of
military interventions. Even though operations in MINUSTAH clearly contra-
dicted the country’s normative stance of opposing the tendency towards an ever
increasing use of force, diplomats did not stand in the way of this development
as the resulting appreciation for the military’s efforts also yielded positive conse-
quences for the country’s image overall. It was thus entirely rational not to oppose
the military’s implementation of the robust mandate in Haiti or the personal rise
in status and prominence of General Santos Cruz. After all, it has long been a
foreign policy goal of Brazil ‘to increase the country’s role within international
organizations’.89
87
Souza,‘MONUSCO’, p. 177.
88
Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, statement delivered by the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United
Nations, Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, at the Security Council debate on protection of civilians,
New York, 19 Jan. 2016.
89
Nogueira and Hussey, A Brazilian as commander in chief of MONUSCO, p. 12.
640

Conclusion
This article has shown how perceptions of inconsistency and ambiguity in rising
powers’ foreign policy can be replaced by more accurate perceptions if the under-
lying assumptions of outside observers are revealed—in this case, those of the state
as unitary actor, of policy choices as binary options, and of a continuity between
normative content and modalities of implementation. The example of one such
country’s engagement in diplomatic debates on intervention has illustrated how
perceptions are shaped by the conflation of the content and implementation of
international norms,90 as well as by the imposition of binary (acceptance–rejec-
tion) modes of response, while the analysis of its participation in peacekeeping
operations has shown in detail how divergent interests within the Brazilian state
have made a unitary actor approach impracticable.
Brazil’s engagement in the R2P debates illustrates clearly both its commitment
to the ideas that underpin the norm—protection of human rights and prevention
of mass atrocities—and its strong concerns over the selectivity of its implementa-
tion, particularly over the hierarchical undertones in identifying the use of force as
a prerequisite for the exercise of international responsibility expected of a global
player. Supporting Antje Wiener’s focus on the importance of contestation, the
diffusion of R2P from the major powers of the global North to states such as
Brazil in the global South has shown that states’ responses in a multipolar world
range beyond the simplistic wholesale acceptance or rejection of ideas propagated
by the North. The MINUSTAH case-study shows clearly that contestation over
both the content and the implementation of a major global norm takes place not
only between states at the international level, but within powers—established
as well as rising—themselves. The role of Brazil’s military in MINUSTAH and
a Brazilian general’s subsequent leadership of MONUSCO effectively under-
mined the country’s normative stance on the use of force. In other words, just as
Brazilian diplomats put forward proposals such as RwP that supported restrictions
on coercion in military interventions, the country’s armed forces simultaneously
spearheaded the implementation of increasingly robust (force-based) mandates.
Once more, this shows that states can no longer usefully be conceived of as unitary
actors on the international scene.
Looking beyond Brazil, the findings of this article call for further research into
various aspects of the graduation dilemma, highlighting in particular the need to
analyse the role of different policy-making actors within the domestic political
context of rising powers. It would be particularly fruitful to open the black box
of the state to examine the complex nature of tensions between foreign policy
formulation and its implementation. Tracing decision-making processes within
and between different ministries promises to yield highly valuable insights into the
international role of rising powers, which remains as yet only partially understood.
90
See also Sandra Destradi and Kai Michael Kenkel, ‘Responsibility and reluctance: a fundamental tension in
emerging powers’ approach to global governance’, paper presented at 58th annual convention of the Interna-
tional Studies Association, Baltimore, 23 Feb. 2017.
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International Affairs 93: 3 (2017) 625–641; doi: 10.1093/ia/iix051

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How rising powers debate, contest and implement norms of humanitar-

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Brazil’s agency in debates on humanitarian intervention

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The use of force in UN peacekeeping operations

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Despite the efforts of Brazil’s diplomacy in creating intervention norms that do

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Brazil’s participation in peace operations

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The use of force in MINUSTAH

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Unintended consequences for Brazil’s diplomacy

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