Brazil’s Lula visits China, Earth Hour, Second Summit for Democracy, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Brazil's President Lula visits China, people around the world take part in Earth Hour, and the second Summit for Democracy is held. It's March 23rd, 2023 in time for The World Next Week.

I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

Bob, let's start in Beijing, where next week, Xi Jinping will host Brazil's President Lula. This follows Xi's red carpet tour of Moscow and China's surprise success brokering a maybe rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Xi's clearly eager to establish his credentials as a diplomatic player, but what's Lula's interest in this trip?

MCMAHON:
Well, Lula is very interested in keeping the ties open with China. Even though he represents a big vibrant democracy in China, an increasingly authoritarian country, he is going to continue to try to keep these ties open. These are the countries, by the way, that are the B and the C in the BRICS movement, which is still a thing. And we should note that Lula has been twice before visited China in an official capacity as president. He's coming with a delegation of something like 240 business representatives. This is a big trade relationship. 2022, bilateral trade between the two countries was $172 billion. If you compare that to the U.S.-Brazil, which was 88 billion, you see the scale of this, so twice the bilateral trade relationship and volume of the U.S.-Brazil relationship, and he wants to say Brazil and China are back in business.

Bolsonaro had a pretty cagey relationship with China, on the one hand acknowledging the many things that China could deliver, but he was also, in his own way, wary of China as a country that he saw as sort of taking advantage of Brazil. And he was, in his reputation as Trump of the tropics, Bolsonaro was trying to exert a Brazil-first persona, and some of that meant he ran afoul of China. We should also note, under Bolsonaro, Brazil acquire a large number of vaccines that China had made available throughout South America early phases of the pandemic. So it was a complicated relationship to say the least under Bolsonaro. It was definitely warmer under Lula. Lula's back. Lula again, he presides over a big robust democracy that just had a major test, and he wants to create some signals with China.

I would say another thing beyond the business ties, which again are going to be considerable, that's going to be a key feature of discussion, these two countries have tried to strike a path of sort of a neutral role as peace brokers, and no place requires that more than Ukraine. Xi Jinping just went to Moscow under the auspices of talking about a Ukraine peace route among other things, although a number of observers had said there's probably little to anything happened on that front. But to the world, the two leaders would like that to move forward. Potentially, Lula gets into some meaningful discussions in this, we don't know, but I just think that's one aspect worth watching amidst all of the many discussions on trade.

ROBBINS:
What does China want other than trade? Is it thinking about basing? Does it want to sell weapons here? I mean, there's been a lot of concern throughout Latin America that the Chinese are trying to turn this into some sort of strategic platform. Is there going to be some conversation about that?

MCMAHON:
Well, they very much have in pre-COVID, and going back to previous Lula period of leadership, China and Brazil had a major relationship, and China and South America writ large has had a booming relationship. South America, obviously, loaded with commodities and valuable commodities. Can you say lithium, among other things? And so China has elevated Brazil to a strategic partner in this respect, wants to do a lot of trade with Brazil, and is not one of these countries that wags its finger at countries that might create problems in human rights or environmentally if they run afoul of those as they are boosting relationships.

So again, Lula is a different type of person than Bolsonaro, especially in those two respects, but China would love to have a growing relationship, especially as tensions mount with the United States, especially as tensions mount with the European Union, it must be said. China is trying to keep its options open. Xi is showing, as he's newly emerged as third-term president, as leader of the party, as almost leader for life, he is out kind of stepping forth and letting China stride the world stage broadly, and so in this case, he's got the world coming to him in the form of one of the most populous countries, one of the largest countries in the world. Again, he wants to show China's back, it's ready to do business regardless of what sort of form of governance Brazil has, certainly one that contrasts with China.

ROBBINS:
So is the United States just going to grit its teeth? Because it certainly doesn't hesitate to complain directly publicly to Europeans when they cozy up to China. It's working very hard actually to decouple Europe from China. Is it been complaining about this Lula visit or is it just trying to go cool on it?

MCMAHON:
You know, it's a really good question. I think we might discuss it a little bit more in this podcast when we talk about democracy issues. I would say that Biden and Lula are off to a strong start. It was one of his earliest visits after he formally took office and after he dealt with his own insurrection in the Brazilian capital. And so they seem to have become a bit simpatico so far, and maybe there's some sort of side dialogue going on where potentially Lula carries a message to China. Who knows? I don't know that. That's just conjecture, Carla. But I haven't seen a lot of, certainly out in the open statements by the U.S., in any way kind of chastising Brazil for the visit, but I think the U.S. is going to be watching it very closely with a lot of interest.

Carla, I want to take us to Earth Hour. On Saturday, millions of people around the world are expected to take part in what's being dubbed Earth Hour. This is an initiative, by the way, of the World Wide Fund for Nature. It's supposed to show symbolic support for the planet. You're going to have businesses, private homes, I think state, local, national landmarks even switching off lights for an hour, maybe longer. We'll see. We'll see if anybody forgets and leaves them off for a while. But-

ROBBINS:
But not while they're listening to the podcast.

MCMAHON:
Not while they're listening to the podcast. They need to get that out of the way first, although they could listen in other ways, but I digress. You know, we've had a half century of Earth Day in the United States, Carla, and certainly other gestures like this before. So do they mean anything, and will this one mean anything?

ROBBINS:
So it's March 25th at 8:30 PM local time. It's local time everywhere. Everybody does it on their own time.

So Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and their first idea, I was reading up on this, for a name was The Big Flick, but they went for Earth Hour after that. And that first year, more than 2 million people turned off their lights, and it caught on incredibly quickly. By 2009, the World Wildlife Fund, and these are the people with the panda, we know this group, eighty-eight countries and 4,000 cities participated and the lights were turned off dramatically at UN Headquarters, in the Acropolis, in the Colosseum, in St. Peter's Basilica, the Louvre and Notre-Dame. The Eiffel Tower only did it briefly for safety reasons because there were people up on the Eiffel Tower. The Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx also turned off their lights. So this really caught on.

That said, this year, with the realities of the climate crisis getting ever more urgent, WWF have... It sounds like it's wrestling. Okay, World Wildlife Fund have gone through a rebranding exercise in which they're not only calling on people to switch off their lights, but as their website somewhat plaintive says, "Sixty minutes doing something, anything for our planet." So they have suggestions on what else to do to learn more about our planet, restore our planet, or reconnect with our planet, and these are pretty simple things, like tips on recycling trash, or making your home lighting more energy-efficient, or meditating outside, and they even have a playlist of sounds to help you reconnect with the planet. And I looked just now, their website has counters with the number of people who have pledged to do one of these things and the countries they come from, and as of this morning, the overall count is pretty meager, 85,086 people in 158 countries, and the number one country is Madagascar, with 23,000 hours pledged, and not surprisingly because they have a terrible environmental crisis going on there right now.

You know, it's easy to be cynical about all this. It certainly feels like a campaign written by an advertising company. But at the pace at which we are hurdling toward a climate disaster, and the IPCC issued a particularly worrying report this week and we should talk about that, anything, I suppose, that raises awareness and mobilizes the public to demand that their leaders make changes should be a good thing. But the issue, of course, is that people shouldn't come away from this thinking that this problem is going to be as easy as recycling their trash.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think that lays it out, Carla, and yeah, let's go to that discussion on the IPCC report. Before that, though, I'll just say briefly, I think sometimes, these types of exercises have beneficial effects, and part of this is, if you observe what some of the world's major religions do, whether under Muslims and Ramadan, Catholics and Lent, or on Sabbath for Jews, where they, in various ways, unplug, change their patterns, fast, do other things that get out of the norm and out of the routine and sometimes engender sort of new discipline behavior, it's like a gut check for the world to try to do this, and it's enormous, and it's not going to go too much farther, as you say Carla, but I would think the combination of this, let's say, gimmicky Madison Avenue event as well as that UN report, which was even more sobering than most UN reports on this, should focus attention. But can you tell us a little bit about what we need to take away from that report?

ROBBINS:
You know, the IPCC is this intergovernmental panel on climate change, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and this is a UN-sponsored or authorized group of climate experts from around the world, and this is the seventh very grim report on climate change and warned with very high confidence that there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all. And it warned with very high confidence that there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all, and it warns that the world is currently on track to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit rise in temperatures that was the cutoff number nearly every country signed onto in the Paris climate process by the beginning of the 2030s. We were supposed to be moving toward that and not go beyond it, and it is just around the corner.

I'd also noticed that the average global temperature is already 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than it was, and it was faster than since 1970 than during any 50-year period. We're just hurtling forward. I'd also noticed how unequal this is, that 10 percent of households are responsible for 34 to 45 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a really, really grim report, and it does go through a list and the list of really hard things that we have to do. We certainly have to quickly expand renewables, like solar and wind power, improve energy efficiency, lower the use of cars, cut back sharply on nitrogen pollution from agriculture, reduce food waste, give up fossil fuels for cars, power plants, and factories. It's across the economy, and we have to cut, reduce greenhouse gases by half by 2030 and add no more carbon dioxide or reach what is called net-zero by the early 2050s. This is hard.

MCMAHON:
And as you say, it's happening at a time when these changes are hurtling forward, which I think is, it sort of gives the lie to the claim that people don't really care about climate issues when it comes down to it because it's all sort of a slow burn, pardon the expression, and it's happening incrementally enough that it's not becoming part of somebody's daily concerns. I think that's starting to change. I mean, again, just a snapshot of things happening over the last couple of weeks and months, you have this combination of bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers hitting California wave after wave this winter, for example. Or you have what's happened in Southeastern Africa with this Cyclone Freddy that blew through, went away, regathered strength, and came back in an unprecedented way. Things like that are happening and dealing out major damages to rich and poor countries alike, and I'm just wondering whether we do hit a tipping point on maybe it driving policy change. It's not looking like it is in the immediate future, though.

ROBBINS:
It used to be that scientists would say you can't attribute any one weather event to climate change. And so it was easier for people to say, "Well, this is far off in the future. I'm going to burn my gas right now and let future generations deal with it." And you're right, we are seeing it now, and no scientists, no serious meteorologist is going to say this isn't the result of climate change, this extreme weather that we're living in.

That said, if you look at the contrast between what's going on even within our own country, what's going on in California, which is extraordinary, President Biden last week approved a giant oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska, and this is after this extraordinary legislation for the Inflation Reduction Act, which was enormous bounty of green for green investment. The contrast there is incomprehensible to me. China's giving permits to dozens of additional coal-fired plants. Countries that say they're committed to doing what needs to be done to reach net-zero, and okay, China's hurtling forward, but we're hurtling forward, too. And we have made great progress in reductions, but not if we're going to also do these other things. Approving a giant old drilling project on federal land is not the right message for this country and really not the right message for the rest of the world.

MCMAHON:
It's not the right message. It's the politically salvageable message, it seems to be, in terms of the calculations being made, whether in democracies or autocracies, and it's one of the things that makes this a incredibly frustrating, worrisome issue.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, maybe this will be more hopeful. Let's continue this conversation about important challenges and symbolic events that we hope matter by talking about the upcoming Summit for Democracy. Next Wednesday, the United States, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Zambia will co-host the second Summit for Democracy. When President Biden launched the first iteration in December 2021, there were a lot of skeptics and it looked like a bad wedding. There was a lot of conversation about who made it onto the guest list, Bolsonaro's Brazil, and who didn't, Orbán's Hungary. Did that meeting do anything to strengthen democracies or hold back the rising tide of autocracy? And should we expect that this summit is going to do better?

MCMAHON:
That's the awesome question of the moment, and there are some mixed responses, I guess. If you listen to the State Department, which is playing a big role in convening all of this, they will say that if you look at the data, the various metrics that many reputable watchdog groups compile about democracy benchmarks, that in aggregate, the world has gotten better, things have gotten better in the world since the first summit. Even though that summit took place amid COVID and just months prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, things have started to move in the right direction. You could certainly, though, find any number of people talking about the way it's moving in the wrong direction. I would just note in passing two recent blog posts at cfr.org, one from Michelle Gavin on Zimbabwe and one from Josh Kurlantzick on Thailand, talking about huge challenges in both those countries, one a severe dictatorship that's sort of toying around with the idea of elections, and one that is still a quasi-democracy that is moving further away from it, that being Thailand, show the challenge that's facing many countries in the world.

I think it's interesting to look really quickly at the way this one is formatted. First, you have actually a pre-summit event on Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to speak at. I think he's going to be speaking with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Ukraine will be front and center as an important issue about aspiring democracy, fighting for its life against a superpower autocracy on its border, and I think that will help focus minds certainly. Then it goes into a Wednesday event, which is a virtual event, which is the one that kind of, I think, creates a few yawns, like just what we need to spur democracy is a giant Zoom call for a full day. I'm being cynical. However-

ROBBINS:
I would add that you and I are on Zoom right now looking at each other.

MCMAHON:
That's right. Nothing against Zoom, but it tries the patience sometimes to have long events no matter what the issue. That being said, they have been thoughtful about trying to organize these, and as you said, there's multiple hosts for an in-person meeting on the following day, which will cap the summit, and again, these countries are the U.S., Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea, and Zambia. Different themes are going to be involved. It's going to be free media, it's going to be anti-corruption, free and transparent elections. They do have an agenda and they do have a sense of what they're trying to accomplish. It's not just countries, by the way. It's a whole host of civil society actors who are really important in democracies and non-democracies.

So I think it is an opportunity to try to drive this issue forward, and as we were discussing previously with the Lula visit to China, I think an important point to come up during this summit will be the extent to which democracies talk to non-democracies or outright dictatorships as opposed to shaming them and trying to isolate them. I don't think that works, I don't think that is a productive approach, and I think it's certainly something that will be important to watch vis-à-vis China in particular, which has such an outsized influence in the world and has signaled that it's redoubling efforts to influence things on its own.

One other thing I would note, Carla, is the way China and Russia, increasingly seen as its junior partner, are active at the United Nations. As an old UN correspondent hand, I recall the heady days of the early 21st century where even though China and Russia were in the UN Security Council, they were signing off on UN nation-building missions that involved elections, that involved democracy experts coming into countries, whether it was Iraq or places like Sierra Leone, or East Timor, or whatever. There were UN missions that were involved in bolstering countries that had democracy at their center that were signed off by and resourced by the UN Security Council. That's not happening too much anymore, and it's a different vibe going on globally, and so I think this type of summit is going to be important for these countries that are involved to sort of as a gut check on what they value and what they're going to try to move for.

ROBBINS:
You know, the Russians certainly look back on those days, Putin certainly looks back on those days as a sign of weakness. They got rolled in the Security Council, got rolled on Iraq, got rolled on lots of other things, and that they're not going to get rolled again. That's the first thing. And the Chinese used to just hide behind the Russians, so they did whatever the Russians did. They either voted yes or they abstained. So I'm not sure we're going to jolly either of those governments back into supporting these exercises.

I think the real challenge is the countries, and you were talking about the BRICS before, the countries like the Brazils, and the Indias, and the South Africas. They've been sitting on the fence, were playing a double game here, and have sat on the fence on Ukraine and have played this very disturbing game of whataboutism, and I think that we certainly have to understand where they're coming from and the reasons why they want to play both sides.

And I think there's also, we have to understand the role we play in this as well. We have not, and this is the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, we have not dealt with it at home enough about how much damage we did to our reputation by invading another country. And when the South Africans say, "You did it, they're doing it," it's infuriating to listen to, but I think that one of the conversations we have to deal with is to say, "We have learned our lessons, and we're not just moving on here, we're having a serious internal debate, but what's going on in Ukraine is utterly and completely unacceptable," and I don't feel that our government, including the Biden administration, has embraced that conversation fully.

MCMAHON:
It's a really good point, and yeah, I think they just have to keep on mentioning, amid some of the mea culpas, if they do issue mea culpas, amid that, just talk about how democracies are self-correcting systems and that you can move forward, correct your mistakes, and have a transparent discussion about it, which is not going to take place in a dictatorship and certainly not in modern day Russia or China, and just offer them up as a better system, too, taking care of their people. I think one of the things you're hearing in the democracy narrative is trying to make the case, and definitely are hearing it in the U.S. among Democrats and some Republicans, is that democracies can help support economic wellbeing. I think that's going to be crucial in this country and so many others because people, at the end of the day, are going to just get cynical and like, "Why bother?"

ROBBINS:
And the format that you did talk about, I think, does actually build some real goodwill because I guess the plenaries, which kick off at 6:00 AM, with respect to global time zones, covered on the second day, or the official first day, but it's the second day where they're going to be co-hosted in person. I mean, they're sending cabinet members to each one of these countries, and I think that does send a good message that we're going to show up in those countries.

MCMAHON:
It was smart to have partner countries involved in hosting it and not just being a U.S. fest in DC, but actually, it's a global issue, it's of global concern, and this is distributed worldwide on almost every continent. So I do think that is smart. We'll see how far they go.

Well, Carla, we've talked our way into the Audience Figure of the Week portion of the podcast, and this is where listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at cfr_org's Instagram Story. The audience this week selected as its figure, in the form of a person, Putin, as in "ICC Issues Arrest Warrant for Putin." So Carla, can you tell us the significance of that move?

ROBBINS:
Well, good on the ICC. The crime Putin has been accused of is particularly horrifying, criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children, and his Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, and very Orwellian role, was also indicted. Now, he's unlikely to stand any trial anytime soon. The ICC does not try suspects in absentia, and Russia's not going to surrender Putin. They say they're never going to do it, even if he loses power. It's not a member of the court, although there is no reason a Russian government couldn't turn him over, and I might add, we're not a member of the court either. But one should never say never. Former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who's the author of incredible crimes as well, he, too, seemed invulnerable, but he eventually lost power and was turned over to The Hague, and he died in custody before a sentence could be meted out in his four-year trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia. So one can imagine that perhaps someday Putin will show up in The Hague.

In the near term, this indictment means that it has several valuable, I think... I don't know whether there's a deterrent value to it for other really incredibly crime-committing autocrats, but the court was created to highlight, and when hopes brings to justice individuals like this, it certainly will make it harder for Putin to travel at least to countries that are members of the court, which would be obligated to turn him over. It's not going to be the last indictment for Putin and his generals. The ICC investigators have been in Ukraine for months. And it's also a major move for the court. Putin is the first head of state of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and the ICC has indicted more than forty individuals up until now, but they've all been from African countries, and there's been a lot of criticism that this is just seen as a court for Africa, so indicting Putin gives a legitimacy to the court as well.

MCMAHON:
It's a really good point, and you're right about the ICC, and it's hard for countries, especially in African countries, not to be cynical about what this exercise is really all about, that so-called victor's justice writ large, where it was going after the countries that were too weak to put up a fight. Certainly, the U.S. has put up a fight in moments when it looked like it was under scrutiny from the ICC, and it has responded with virulent language, let's say, against the ICC.

ROBBINS:
And sanctions in the Trump administration against the prosecutor.

MCMAHON:
That's correct. So at the same time, though, I think there is a move in the international rule of law community, so to speak, to try to set some bars for accountability in Ukraine, and as you say, what Russia has done on multiple levels has been really worthy of closer scrutiny. It certainly dodged scrutiny for some particularly heinous acts in Chechnya, when it conducted that war, or the two Chechen Wars, I should say, especially the second one.

But it doesn't mean you don't try, and I think this is going to be worth following. It's going to be interesting to see how countries that are strong adherents of the ICC, and there are a number who are, whether or not Putin can travel to those countries. He did make an early show of defiance by making his first trip to Russian-occupied Ukraine to Mariupol after the indictment came down. This is a city, by the way, that was bombed into oblivion, and then among the acts Russia did after that was cart away a number of children and send them into Russia, and the understanding at this point is that many of them have been put up for adoption in Russia.

So these kinds of things have to be recorded, they have to be chronicled, and steps have to be taken to try to bring it to justice at some point. So you're right, it was a good move by the ICC.

ROBBINS:
Yeah, I don't think he's going to be going to Paris anytime soon.

MCMAHON:
To say the least.

Well, that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visits Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia; Cuba hold parliamentary elections; and the Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development takes place in Thailand.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate your feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous and Rebecca Rottenberg for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.