Yesterday President Trump got to take a small break from the ninnies and race-hustling socialists who make up his opposition by welcoming to the White House Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. The South American leader is so close to the president on so many issues he has been dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics.”
The duo got along famously, as Trump announced he would back Brazil in its bid to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). They also planned mutually beneficial moves on trade, investment, and military alliance. I wish they would also have mandated that bossa nova be played non-stop in every beach bar in both countries.
But that’s just me.
Even more swell is what, along with other Latin leaders like Mauricio Macri and Juan Guaidó, Bolsonaro represents for the formerly sad sack continent. Not too long ago communist insurgencies and liberation theology were rampaging through their barrios, pampas, and cities. Castroism and knee-jerk anti-Americanism were the flavors of the day from the 60s until relatively recently. But watching the Sovs fall over two decades ago, seeing the Cubans trim their regional fangs, gazing upon Marxists lose civil wars on their borders, and glaring at the current nightmare in Venezuela have all made many people down yonder lose a taste for Tortilla Trotskyism.
As Trump has realized, if this trend can be sustained, combined with the raw materials just waiting to come out of the South American jungle, then this alliance could rewrite some of the rules of geopolitics. Markets for our goods in an increasingly prosperous Brazil and joint military operations with our boys could bring this BRIC up and comer to the international executive washroom firmly in our camp. As the Indians and we are getting close, that puts the other two BRICs, Russia and China, in a rather precarious position for challenging our global strategic goals and frontrunner status.
When, not if, Venezuela comes around, and given Macri’s hard work in Argentina, they can with our help form the nucleus of a hemispheric free market and allied front against encroachment from beyond. And don’t forget my Colombian kinsmen in that deal.
That is if, as Latin America becomes a home to freedom, we don’t embrace socialism. And sadly as of late, the jury is surprisingly out on that.
