This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
The collapse of the liberal international order is no longer an academic hypothesis; it is the reality the EU faces daily: the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the war in Ukraine, and the erosion of the multilateral architecture that for decades ensured stability and predictability in international relations. Indeed, Ursula von der Leyen herself has acknowledged this new international reality. In this context, during his visit to China, Pedro Sánchez stated that we are witnessing a plurality of powers on the global stage, as we now live in a multipolar world that requires new approaches towards the Global South. From Brazil, Lula’s long-standing adviser on international affairs, Celso Amorim, has even warned of a qualitatively different form of multipolarity from that of the early twenty-first century, with spheres of influence seemingly re-emerging to the sound of war drums.
If we consider South America’s role in the world during the so-called Pink Tide of progressive presidents—Chávez, Lula, Néstor Kirchner—it can be inferred that the construction of a multipolar world at that time enabled foreign policies grounded in autonomy. The first decade of the 2000s gave rise to foreign policies characterised by multipolar autonomy: a pursuit of autonomy structurally conditioned yet politically driven. In the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, foreign policy was not limited to defensive behaviour. Still, it reflected proactive efforts to reconfigure international insertion, marked by ideological opposition to US hegemony and a political will to engage with the broader Global South. It is suggested here that, in the Latin American context, structural factors such as multipolarity and trade exchanges encourage states to pursue autonomy in foreign policy.
At the theoretical level, multipolar autonomy refers to the capacity of peripheral and semi-peripheral states to construct diversified and multifaceted relations with their counterparts in the Global South, taking advantage of the fragmentation of power in the international order to reduce structural dependence on any single partner or bloc. It is important to note that multipolar autonomy presents itself as an alternative theory to other contributions, particularly peripheral realism (Schenoni and Escudé, 2016), which advocates alignment with a hegemonic power—the United States—whose ability to impose its will globally has proven limited, as evidenced during the unipolar era of the 1990s. Although military intervention in Venezuela appeared to reassert US hegemony in Latin America, this has not resulted in distancing from China—the leading trade partner of several countries in the region. Moreover, Operation Absolute Resolution has underscored the need to diversify international partnerships among various Latin American governments, including those led by conservative presidents (Maresca, 2026).
Returning now to Celso Amorim's considerations, the reduced attention of the United States toward Latin America during the G.W. Bush administration prompted the Pink Tide presidents to seek alternative partners in the Global South. The commodity boom that began in 2003 was also a determining factor in making the region — and South America in particular — attractive to several countries, most notably China. The present, however, shows that the exercise of autonomy in various Latin American countries is gradually eroding. The automatic alignment of conservative governments with Trump, driven by purely ideological reasons, makes it difficult to speak of multipolar autonomy at a regional scale. Nevertheless, Brazil remains the outlier that, through the essential factor of multipolar autonomy — namely, the role of its president — manages to activate an autonomous foreign policy rooted in Latin American tradition.
The Latin American School of International Relations had already developed the concept of autonomy during the Cold War, with the precise aim of determining its positioning vis-à-vis Washington and Moscow. The Latin American tradition, and Brazil's in particular, seeks to build a proactive rather than reactive foreign policy. The same cannot be said of the current European strategy, though some advances in that direction deserve acknowledgement.
European strategic autonomy, as exercised by Brussels, is essentially defensive: reducing energy dependence on Russia, recalibrating the relationship with Washington, protecting technological supply chains from Chinese penetration. These are legitimate and urgent objectives, but reactive ones — Europe acts in response to external shocks, not in anticipation of them. In this regard, the rise in energy prices resulting from the Middle East conflict compels Europe to reassess the real possibilities of its strategic autonomy, particularly in the energy sphere.
In Brazil, since the 1970s, thinkers such as Hélio Jaguaribe (1979) elaborated a doctrine of autonomy grounded in the country's peripheral reality — not an autonomy of defence, but of diversification. Not a response to crisis, but a long-term strategy to reduce dependence on any single partner, whether Washington, Moscow, or, more recently, Beijing. Under Lula, this tradition became a systematic diplomatic praxis. The strategy of autonomy through diversification, theorised by Vigevani and Cepaluni (2011), transformed Brazil into a global actor capable of hosting diplomatic events such as the G20, the BRICS Summit and COP30, while simultaneously maintaining solid commercial relations with the EU, a position of neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict, and a growing presence in Africa and the Middle East.
The problem is that Brussels struggles to interpret this behaviour adequately — though it should be noted that the European position is neither monolithic nor static. When Brazil abstains from voting at the United Nations on resolutions concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe interprets it as a lack of geopolitical reliability. When Lula deepens ties with China within the BRICS framework, the EU tends to read it as a threat to its strategic interests. However, the trade data tell a different story.
According to Eurostat data, in 2024 the European Union received more than €45 billion in Brazilian exports, positioning itself as Brazil’s second-largest trading partner after China. Referring to the most recent available statistics from 2022, the UN COMTRADE database shows that Russia, by contrast, received only €4 billion in Brazilian exports. Brazil is not choosing between Moscow and Brussels; it is practising precisely the diversification that Europe itself advocates, albeit with difficulty in accepting it when exercised by its Global South partners.
The Ukrainian issue is emblematic. Lula has maintained a neutral stance in the conflict, calling on the UN Security Council to facilitate direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Urging Brasília to abandon this position is tantamount to demanding that it renounce its own autonomy. This tension does not render EU–Brazil cooperation impossible, but it does require Brussels to recognise the structural nature of the disagreement before overcoming its practical effects.
A second factor complicates EU–Brazil relations: what some studies describe as the European normative trap (Karjalainen, 2023). The EU tends to export its own regulatory standards to partners, presenting them as conditions for cooperation. The European regulation on deforestation is the most recent example. Conceived with the noble objective of preventing imports linked to deforestation, the regulation has heavily affected some of Brazil’s main exports: soy, beef, coffee, cocoa, and timber. The reaction from the Brazilian agribusiness sector was intense, driven by a disinformation campaign accusing Europe of hypocrisy. Lula’s Brazil III is a middle power that hosts the largest tropical forest on the planet, leads the energy transition in the southern hemisphere, and possesses both the right and the capacity to negotiate on equal footing. Recognising this does not imply that the EU should abandon its environmental standards; rather, it suggests the need to construct them jointly through genuinely bilateral negotiation.
The EU–Mercosur agreement, whose provisional application was announced by von der Leyen in February 2026, represents a significant, albeit belated, step in the right direction. However, it may be argued that the ostracism imposed by the Trump administration on Europe was the real incentive behind the Commission’s bold decision.
Ultimately, beyond specific issues in EU–Latin America relations—such as the Mercosur agreement or EU–CELAC summits—there exists a fundamental problem in the exercise of European autonomy, at least when viewed from the perspective of its Latin American partners. Lula’s foreign policy may offer lessons to Europe if analysed through the lens of multipolar autonomy. This theoretical framework is not exclusive to the Global South; it may also prove useful for Western actors navigating a multipolar world in which their primacy is increasingly contested. The key element, therefore, is political leadership capable of charting an autonomous course in foreign policy without fear of reprisal. If European strategic autonomy is to evolve from a defensive reflex into a genuinely proactive doctrine, it will require precisely the kind of orientation towards the Global South that Brazil has practised for decades.
At a time when European strategic autonomy risks being reduced to a defensive and reactive exercise, engaging with Latin America and the broader Global South in a horizontal manner becomes a political necessity. Otherwise, the risks may be significant. Divergences between Brussels and Brasília may become acute and should not be underestimated, particularly in light of forthcoming Brazilian elections likely to exhibit high levels of polarisation. At the same time, the EU–Brazil relationship represents a unique opportunity to learn how to navigate together an international order that no longer operates according to the rules once established by the West. The turbulent international reality calls for pragmatic and proactive leadership to shape the foreign policies of both the Global North and the Global South in the disordered multipolar world in which we live.
