Peace Operations, Intervention and Brazilian Foreign Policy: Key Issues and Debates

Status and Brazil’s role as a peace mediator - lessons of the foreign perceptions of the failed Tehran deal

“…Brazil does that through its participation in multilateral forums, such as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (Motta and Succi Junior 2023). The attempt to mediate conflict, peace operations, and humanitarian intervention are essential elements of Brazil's foreign policy ambition of achieving high status as an emerging power (Kenkel et al 2020). It can be understood as part of one of the main motivations of Brazilian Foreign Policy (BFP), which is to increase the level of prestige and the standing of the state in the stratified international society (Mares and Trinkunas 2016;Larson and Shevchenko 2019;Stolte 2015;Ricupero 2017;Rohter 2012;Lafer 2000;Milani et al 2017;Buarque 2013;Souza 2008;Motta and Succi Junior 2023;Uziel 2015).…”

“…In fact, the search for peaceful conflict resolution is a constitutive element of Brazil's diplomacy. It has long been seen as a part of Brazil's ambition to achieve high international status (Kenkel et al 2020).…”

Token Forces

“…Yet most analytical attention has focused on overcoming tokenism, reflecting awareness that peacekeeping effectiveness depends heavily on the number of deployed peacekeepers (Hultman et al, 2013) as well as the quality (Haass & Ansorg, 2018) and diversity (Bove et al, 2020) of large military contingents. Thus, studies have highlighted states moving from token to non-token contributions (e.g., Kenkel et al, 2020), investigated the efficacy of economic incentives to increase troop contributions (Henke, 2019;Boutton & D'Orazio, 2020), and assessed the potential for Western states to reemerge as substantial rather than token troop contributors (Raitasalo, 2014;Koops & Tercovich, 2016). Scholars have also increasingly addressed the methodological risk of token forces skewing quantitative analyses of the motivations of (major) TCCs (Coleman & Nyblade, 2018;Duursma & Gledhill, 2019), including by distinguishing between participation and contribution size (Kathman & Melin, 2017), excluding token contributions (Lundgren et al, 2021), or ascertaining the impact of token forces in robustness checks (Ward & Dorussen, 2016).…”

A country on the fence: United Kingdom’s perceptions of the status and international agenda of Brazil

“…Many of the country's international strategies have been associated with this drive for more prestige globally, such as the long-standing bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (Andrade 2012;Garcia 2011;Vargas 2008;Arraes 2005;Mendes 2015). Its approach towards a closer relationship with Africa (Stolte 2015), its participation in peacekeeping operations (Kenkel et al 2020;Hamann and Jumbert 2020), its strong position in international debates (Hamann and Jumbert 2020;Ricupero 2017;Lafer 2001), its role in multilateral fora such as BRICS and IBSA (Pant 2013;Hurrell 2010;Larson 2019), and even its environmental leadership have all been analysed as part of this drive for more international prestige and recognition (Stuenkel and Taylor 2015;Chatin 2016).…”