The recent crisis in Venezuela, culminating in the US-led abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, has laid bare a stark geopolitical reality in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Despite Brazil being the region’s undeniable giant possessing a vast territory, population, and resources it has appeared as a passive observer rather than the assertive regional power one might expect. Its response to the crisis was limited to joint statements of criticism, seem to give validation to the argument that Brazil allows itself to be effectively contained by the United States, thereby enabling direct US military and economic intervention in the southern portion of the western hemisphere.

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Brazil’s lack of agency as a regional power is a fundamental failure to capitalize on its natural geopolitical weight. Brazil has been prevented from fulfilling its potential as a leader of an autonomous Latin American and Caribbean bloc, primarily due to internal fragmentation and a susceptibility to external interference. The polarizing impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the disruptive Bolsonaro presidency to the ongoing challenges facing Lula’s third term has consumed strategic bandwidth and rendered Brazilian foreign policy inconsistent.

A nation perpetually in an internal crisis cannot project a stable, long-term leadership or credibly mediate regional conflicts, leaving a vacuum of authority.

Furthermore, this vacuum has been filled by extra-regional powers, chiefly the United States, to which Brazil has too often been subservient. Bolsonaro’s government’s stark alignment with Trump’s Washington as a period where Brazil abdicated its traditional diplomatic independence, weakening collective Latin American institutions. Even under other administrations like Lula’s, there was such as limited pushback against U.S.-led regimes change efforts in Venezuela or participation in Washington-backed initiatives like the Lima Group, which fractured regional unity.

This caution is most evident in Brazil’s frequent alignment with US strategic positions on key regional crises, despite offering rhetorical critiques. A prime example is its stance on Venezuela. While issuing general condemnations of sanctions and advocating dialogue, Brazil’s concrete actions have consistently sided with the US-favored posture. Most notably, under former President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil recognized opposition figure Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, directly supporting the US-led pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro. Even more telling was Brazil’s 2022 veto, against Venezuela’s bid to become a “partner country” within the BRICS framework, a move aligning with US discomfort over Maduro’s integration into a key multipolar network.

Brazil possesses the demographic, economic, and diplomatic resources to act as a cornerstone of a cohesive South American pole in a post-hegemonic world. However, by failing to stabilize itself domestically, create a more productive economy, harness a bigger military apparatus, consistently resist foreign interventionism Brazil has ceded strategic agency. The result, from this perspective, is a Latin America that remains more vulnerable to division and influence from outside powers, with Brazil itself as a principal cause of its own diminished regional stature.

The explanation extends beyond any personal animus between Brazil’s Lula and Venezuela’s Maduro. As fundamentally, Brazil shares many of the same structural weaknesses that plague other Latin American states, making coherent regional resistance to US power exceptionally difficult. Brazil suffers from profound internal contradictions, major cities are racked by violent crime with areas outside government control, and the state struggles with basic sovereign functions. These internal problems drain national capacity, productivity and project a image of instability rather than strength, making it difficult to marshal the consistent, forceful foreign policy required to counterbalance Washington.

Economically, Brazil’s trajectory has been one of unfulfilled potential, especially when compared to other rising powers.Furthermore, Brazil’s political culture and history create a relationship with US power, if one recalls the 1964 coup in Brazil, which was backed by a US naval task force, and the region’s long history of US-backed regime changes. This legacy has created an ingrained, if reluctant, acceptance of US intervention as a recurring fact of hemispheric life. While Brazilian leaders may condemn specific actions, there is a historical precedent that normalizes such interference, breeding a form of geopolitical fatalism. Additionally, the temptation for individual leaders to secure their own position by aligning with US and oligarchic interests undermines the continuity of any autonomous, region-first foreign policy.

As the undisputed geographical, demographic, and economic giant of South America, Brazil is uniquely positioned to galvanize the region into a coherent force within the emerging multipolar world order. Historically, under governments like that of Lula da Silva, Brazil championed regional integration through entities like UNASUR and actively built coalitions with other Global South powers, notably via BRICS. This legacy established an expectation that Brazil would naturally act as the chief architect of a “syndicated regionalism,” bundling Latin America’s collective interests to negotiate with the United States, the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union and China. However, in recent geopolitical practice, Brazil has often appeared to drag its feet, demonstrating a pronounced caution that critics argue prioritizes bilateral stability with Washington over transformative regional realignment. This reluctance to fully mobilize its neighbors risks leaving Latin America as a reactive space in global realignments rather than a proactive, unified bloc.

The underlying rationale for this hesitancy is that aggressively leading a charge for a confrontational multipolar bloc could jeopardize access to US markets, technology, and investment. Internally, political divisions between center-left and right-wing visions of foreign policy have created a stop-start dynamic, preventing the consistent, long-term strategy needed for regional leadership. Moreover, Brazil’s geopolitical restraint may stem from an ambition to become a U.S.-aligned subempire, a regional proxy granted leadership status in exchange for enforcing hegemonic order. Similar to the roles played by Germany in Europe, Japan in East Asia, and Turkey in the Middle East / Central Asia, such a position offers security guarantees and economic benefits for managing a sphere of influence. Brazil’s passivity, therefore, could be a strategic calculation to secure this privileged, subordinate role while not totally shunning Multipolar trade and investment for now at least.

Consequently, the promise of a syndicated, Brazil-led Latin America in the multipolar network remains largely unfulfilled. Without Brasília’s decisive impetus, regional initiatives remain fragmented. While countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Chile pursue their own bilateral ties with China or the EU, and smaller nations seek Chinese investment without a coordinated framework, there is no cohesive “multipolar action plan.” The region lacks a unified voice on critical issues like restructuring international financial institutions or negotiating collective terms with extra-hemispheric powers. Brazil’s choice to act as a cautious balancer rather than a bold integrator has made multipolarity a myth in the western hemisphere, allowing other global actors to engage with Latin America through a hub-and-spoke model.

Brazil’s strategic ambivalence, that of verbally championing multipolarity while frequently siding with US geopolitical preferences, undermines the project of building a strong, independent Latin American pole in world affairs. Until Brazil reconciles its aspirational rhetoric with a coherent and courageous regional strategy that prioritizes collective autonomy over bilateral caution, it will continue to offer condemnations without consequence. The region, in turn, will remain fragmented with individual states navigating multipolarity alone, rather than a syndicated force capable of shaping them.

As it stands, blaming external actors to the region like China or Russia for Latin America’s vulnerability misses the point. Until Brazil undertakes the difficult task of solving its internal structural problems it will remain a hesitant giant. Its cautious stance during the Venezuela crisis is a symptom of this unresolved internal predicament, leaving a leadership vacuum that the United States inevitably fills.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from the author

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