Rio de Janeiro discusses international security

Last Friday (29), I had the opportunity to return to Rio de Janeiro, where I lived for almost 8 years, to participate in the X International Security Conference of the Fort of Copacabana, an initiative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation-KAS and the Brazilian Center for International Relations-CEBRI, supported by the Delegation of the European Union to Brazil.

It was in CEBRI that I started my professional career and where I had the chance to organise and attend important debates on the role of Brazil in the world. The focus of the Conference this year was Brazil emerging in the Global Security Order and had more than 20 panellist and 200 participants. A logistical nightmare for those who, like me, has worked with event organisation.

In the morning, the board discussed the evolution of the global security order. Minister Rodrigo Baena Soares (CGDEF/MRE, Brasil) expressed concern on the increase of NATO’s involvement and retained that ‘conflict’ continue to be a constant in the history of the world. Baena Soares reaffirmed the Foreign Ministry’s position which states that the United Nations remains as the central axis for conflicts resolution and that the Security Council (UNSC) is the only ‘legitimate forum’ to discuss international interventions.

He also took the opportunity to remind that the merely military activity does not respond to the demands of social development in the 21^st century. Roland Schäfer (SEAE/MRE, Germany) stressed that we live in a very complex world and strategic partnerships are necessary to overcome and avoid conflicts. Professor Alfredo Valladão (Sciences Po/France), one of the people who envisioned the event 10 years ago, recalled that Brazil is not peaceful, but a country in peace.

For him, it is not enough to keep the dialogue in defence of universal values. It’s time to discuss and cooperate on specific themes, such as the fight against drug trafficking and piracy, peace-keeping operations, response to failed States, among others.

During the afternoon, the discussions revolved around the imperatives and the dangers of interventions. Professor Kai Kenkel (PUC-Rio/Brasil) explained the clash of concepts (sovereignty versus human rights violations) when deciding whether or not to intervene and the ambiguous relationship of certain countries with multilateral institutions (requirement made by UNSC and UNGA, however, when the peripheral countries’ demands are not met, there is a movement to reform institutions).

Kenkel mentioned that the Brazilian-proposed concept entitled Responsibility while Protecting (RwP) is a great opportunity for the country to develop a co-ordinating role between northern and southern powers, which should include social and development of the military aspect. Also, the United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK) analysed the impact of this new concept on the existing regulation called Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

The researcher André de Mello e Souza (IPEA/Brasil) corroborated the opinion of Kai Kenkel by demonstrating the causal and bidirectional relationship between (lack of) development and conflicts. The number of conflicts is higher in the least developed countries with low life expectancy and low economic growth.

For Souza, the promotion of equitable development, mitigation of horizontal inequalities and definition of policies focused on funding source are tools to slow or even stop the incidence of conflicts.

During the closure, Ambassador Marcos de Azambuja recalled the recent creation of the Ministry of Defence (1999) and the launch of the National Policy (2005), National Strategy (2008) and Defence White Book (2012), reinforcing the importance of the theme in Brazil.

With the old threats still present and with the emergence of new ones, we should maintain open and constant the Brazil-UK dialogue, initiated in January 2012, in order to deepen the cooperation between both countries, but not only in the defence area.