Brazil's Elections: Why Lula's Win Matters for Global Security

Hello and welcome to RUCI in London. I'm Dr. Andrew Gee, Director of the International Security Research Group at RUCI, and this is Global Security Briefing, the podcast from RUCI's international security team that provides insights on security developments around the world. This week's edition is Security Implications of Brazil's Elections, and I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Daniela Portela-Sampal, Senior Research Fellow for Latin American Security at RUCI. Daniela is a Brazilian-British political scientist specializing in Latin American geopolitics, international security, maritime affairs, and polar governance. Daniela has more than 15 years of international research and policy experience across Brazil, Argentina, the UK, and Germany. She has held two Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of Leeds. And the Alfred Wegener Institute, and served as an advisor to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings on Institutional and Legal Matters. She's co-author of The Worldviews of ICE, published by Springer in 2026, and has a monograph on Antarctic governance under contract with Routledge. Very welcome, Daniela. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. A pleasure. So, some context. On the 25th of October, 2026, Brazil held the highly anticipated second round of its presidential election, the second round of the second round of the presidential elections. As the media's attention dedicates itself to understanding Brazil's electoral process and what implications its results have for overall international security, it is worth noting that Brazil has just held its 10th election since re-democratization in 1985. A presidential republic, Brazil has unique features such as mandatory voting, an electronic ballot system, and a deeply fragmented multi-party coalition dynamic. Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva of the Worldviews of ICE, who is the president of Brazil, has been elected president of Brazil. This year, he was elected president of Brazil. Lula was elected president of Brazil in 2002, in 2006, in 2022, and now in 2026. Lula's political resilience remains central to Brazil's identity, rising from a union leader in Sao Paulo's factories to defeating the far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro. However, the aftermath of this election has taken an unprecedented institutional and diplomatic turn. The election was won by a razor-thin margin, recalling the tight 1.8 percentage point gap of 2022 and the 3.28 point gap of 2014, leaving behind a deeply polarized nation, where the right-wing opposition dominates the nation's key exporting states and the incoming 2027 legislature. The election was also heavily defined by a tech-driven battlefield. The Supreme Electoral Court had to intervene directly, levying a potential 500,000 rounds daily fines against Meta for algorithmic bias, and navigating the controversial suspension of the massive army of Lula WhatsApp channel. Following his defeat, Flavio Bolsonaro did not explicitly contest the results, but immediately fled to the United States. He left after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court mandate to surrender his passport amid an ongoing money laundering investigation. So welcome, Daniela. We'll cover three main points today, the first of which will be why do Brazilian elections matter to an international security perspective and what is at stake politically and economically? The second will be considering that Brazil has been at the center of a strategic race between the U.S. and China. How do these results change the dynamics of their competition? Then we'll move on to in regional terms, organized crime has been one of the greatest challenges that cut across the continent. So looking a bit about that. And then finally exploring what Flavio's presence in the U.S. means for Brazil-U.S. bilateral relations. So Daniela, let's kick off with the first one. Yeah, what is at stake politically and economically? So yeah, it's good to give a context that Brazil is responsible for most of exports or the share of exports in the world in terms of wood pulp. So pretty much it's cardboard. So all the packaging we have from all our deliveries would come mostly from that country. Which means that this is just one example or in terms of getting to more technological terms such as niobium, 93%. And this is important to increase the resilience of steel. And this is fundamental for aerospace and defense industry. So in that case, considering that Brazil, for instance, in this rare earth minerals and critical minerals, the importance of Brazil in terms of its share in the world trade, therefore what happens and who are Brazil's partners, who Brazil decides to establish trade agreements, that matters to world trade in general. So in that case, understanding who is going to govern Brazil in the next four years matters to our pockets, for instance. And how will the conservative legislative majority restrict Lula's economic agenda more broadly? So this is, I think, probably the highest or the strongest challenge to Lula's, we call like Lula IV, like his fourth mandate, because he has never been or he has never handled such an oppositional Congress, not only in terms of the low chamber, like the Chamber of Deputies, but also the high chamber, the Senate, who are now in its majority right-wing parties. But again, Brazil is kind of this unique country in terms of its politics, because we call in Brazil, like the Big Center in Portuguese is Centrão. And Big Center are parties that have been in power for even before the democratization, during the military period, they have always been in power and they have no problem to switch to the right or to the left as long as they are in power and they are supported by what we call some of agribusiness in Brazil and some are like very well-established political structure in the countryside. So the importance of the big center is in what extent Lula would have to make concessions to get their approval for all the measures that he would have to do in his following years. So in terms of concessions and how much of the budget he would have to give to these politicians so they can keep their allegiances in the countryside in order to be able to govern. And this creates a lot of disturbance when compared to Flavio, he would have a majority pretty much. And that's a very interesting thing about politics in general. In what extent do you prefer a democratic system that is more efficient, where you have this harmony between the executive and the legislative? Or in what extent we prefer to have a more counter-check and counterbalance system where where parties and different opinions need to negotiate and sit in order to have something approved is nobody holds too much power, but it makes the system slower. So that's like the balance that all democracy has. And that's what Lula would have to face. He's a very experienced politician. So he has been very pragmatic in terms of negotiating with whoever he wants to negotiate. Some people that are more like purists in the left would criticize that, but he's more pragmatic. So perhaps he will be able to attract dissenters to his side and he might be able to govern instead of having to, as a result, rely on executive provisional measures that are not as democratic as some would say. But at least they just last for three months. But what sort of friction can we expect with some of the main exporting states who've elected right-wing governments? What kind of tensions between those sort of powerful agrarian export-heavy state governors and Lula's federal administration? So for them, they are always for deregulation or trying to expedite all the environmental licenses. So in the north, where we have, for instance, the Amazon forest, some would prefer to have like quicker licensing process for mining or for raising cattle and the production of meat. In that case, when you have a government that will be more like a four inclined to environmental issues, this creates a clash with these groups. But these groups are also those that hold somehow the power and the leverage in the Congress. So in that case, would we expect Lula not to fulfill so much of his promises. Another example, so just before the day of the second round, the Congress approved a project of law to reduce the working week in Brazil from, we call like 6-1, like six days of work, one day of rest, to 5-2. This is, of course, very popular. Working class and all society, they were like celebrating that. But for the business, this means that they need to hire more for them like paying the same salary and in that case that created like a little bit of dissatisfaction with these productive sectors so this is again would be a challenge for Lula a challenge for Lula, which was perceived by how markets behaved on Monday. And so looking more regionally now, with left-wing-led Uruguay and Brazil being the exceptions, the Mercosur trading bloc is divided. Because member states cannot negotiate independent bilateral trade agreements, how will Lula's victory reshape or strain regional economic integration? So yeah, in South America, we have this trading bloc called Mercosur in Portuguese or Mercosur in Spanish. Then it has Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and Bolivia. It's now in ways to become a member, is an associate member at the moment, and Venezuela is suspended. This is a bloc where, not similar to the EU, but it's the idea that you need to have no tariffs of law or preferable agreements within the countries and bilateral agreements that need to be agreed by all. And there was Flavio and even Millet, they were very critical of Mercosur in terms of stopping them to establish trade agreements with other countries such as the US in a more free way. So if you have Uruguay and Brazil tending to the left with Argentina and Paraguay tending to the right, again, you're going to have a Mercosur that's not going to be able to function like smoothly. Again, we're going to have some blocs, some, not disruption, but an organization that would, you know, operate slower than it could. And you mentioned the relationship with the US and so on. Maybe we can now move on to some of the implications and significance for the US-China strategic relations, strategic competition in the region. China overtook the US as Brazil's primary trading partner back in 2009. How will Lula's strategy of utilizing BRICS for global south cooperation and pushing for alternative currencies impact the US and the US as a whole? Yeah, this has been one of Lula's pledges, if I'm not mistaken, in his Lula 3, in his third mandate, the one that he's now just finishing. Try to diversify and move away from a trade that is based on dollar because that creates vulnerability to the countries in terms of their debt. And if we think about BRICS is initially a forum that was between Brazil, China, India and Russia. Now it has expanded. It expanded, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and other countries. And in that case, the forum, the idea was, how can we have an economy or international trade that does not need necessarily to go through the US? And, for instance, for Russia that needs to deal with sanctions, that is very attractive because it's a way to try to get away or to exchange without having to suffer the sanctions that the West has done. So now for Lula 4. Would be interesting to see how much BRICS will develop. Lula has an attractive element. He cannot be reelected, first because in Brazil you have a limitation of only two mandates, such as in the US. He would finish his mandate 85 years old, so he would have a physical limitation as well. So in that case, this would give him freedom to try to engage in this South-South multilateralism. He would have a political and a political-lateral agenda in international politics. For instance, another plan for Lula was trying to push Brazil to have a permanent seat in the Security Council because he thinks that he needs to be a representative of the South. But again, Lula would have so much to do inside that I don't know how ambitious his foreign agenda could be, or even if he has an ambitious agenda, in what extent he would be able to fulfill. Considering the challenges that he would have domestically. You touched on OECD and Security Council membership, but how will Lula maintain those links to sort of maintain that ambition for Western institutional realignment? Well, in Brazil, we use this diplomatic pragmatism, and this has dated from since the Second World War. So at the time of the Second World War, the president was Getúlio Vargas. And he was comfortable to deal with Nazi Germany, as well as Europe, and trade. And there was not like a moral limitation to that. And that you can see this falling from Cold War with the Soviet Union and the U.S. again. And you see again with China, this idea that who offers more and how the country would benefit from these great powers in terms of I can trade more. So in that case, Lula would not. Close the doors to the U.S. or not close the doors to the West. But there will be not any restriction in dealing with China or Russia. And in respect to that, Lula's government would not feel or would try to stop any pressure to try to reduce their relationship with these other countries. So although he sort of said it's still out during the election in terms of pushing back against U.S. influence and quite ideologically, against that, you still think there will be that sort of pragmatism in terms of that cooperation? Yes, like during the debate, Lula was some way smart to understand that he would have a better dialogue with Trump if he calls him directly, rather to go through, for instance, the State Department, the Marco Rubio, that he would have a more ideological stance. So in this respect, when Trump made a comment about the result of Brazil's election, he said and said, well, I like Lula. He does not have in this personal relationship that will be probably the way that Lula could find and keep a reasonable relationship with the U.S. But again, we need to see also, as all the situations are complex, the results of the midterms in the U.S. and see how Trump will then understand and project U.S. power over Latin America, considering his own challenges and his own reputation in international politics for the end of his term. And so where do you see the common ground for Brazil and the U.S.? Well, initially, Trump decided to tariff Brazil in 50 percent. This was in the beginning. And in the latter, the justification was the treatment that Jair Bolsonaro was receiving. He decided to launch the Magnitsky measure that pretty much suspended the financial economic rights of Supreme Court ministers because they were persecuting Jair Bolsonaro. Which was considered quite tough. But this automatically, as I was saying, that if you think about the trade and how Americans would buy their products through Internet, and if you don't have a cardboard for your product that would come from Brazil, that would be an inflationary tragedy, such as coffee, that we are the biggest provider. So, again, trade somehow sorts out or keeps the door open. And on top of that, there is a big concern from the U.S. in terms of critical minerals. And in that case, considering that China at this moment is the one that controls not only most of the extraction, but 90 percent of processing critical minerals, and this is important for the U.S. defense industry, tensing that relationship too much is not good for either. So I think that economy will somehow keep the doors opened. OK, very good. And maybe we can talk a bit more now about other areas where we sort of see that sort of transnational cooperation, regional cooperation. Regarding organized crime and other related threats, where there might be those areas of pragmatic cooperation. Maybe starting with this Triple C initiative, given the regional threat of organized crime, how could a Lula administration utilize frameworks like the Triple C counter cartel coalition to coordinate defense and border security without compromising his focus on state autonomy? Yes, and that's very interesting. So at this moment, that was a Trump's initiative, the Shield of the Americas, initially as a way to increase cooperation, information exchange for organized crime. Because for Trump, what the problem of Latin America is, narco-terrorism. It's creating health issues in the U.S. in terms of the narcotics that flow from Latin America to the U.S. Although, on the other hand, weapons that are produced in the U.S. would also. feed these organizations that are established in the South of the Americas. And the Triple C, that is the counter cartel coalition, is what we would call the defense arm of this initiative. And from the countries, we have 15 countries now that are part of this initiative for the Shield of the Americas initiative. The Triple C is a little bit under discussion. For instance, Chile, Chile is considering if they should or not join this. This defense operational arm of the Shield of the Americas. And at this moment, Brazil and Mexico decided not to join. So it shows, like, for these countries, there is a fear of loss of sovereignty. If they agreed, like, to what extent they would have to allocate budget and defense forces as a request of the U.S. to control these groups. On the other hand. organized crime, it is a network. organizations in Brazil, organizations in Colombia, and the borders are very important for these groups to keep the flow, not only of their products, but also of their supply of their high caliber weapons that they have access. So yes, most likely, we cannot say like nothing is impossible, but definitely Lula would not join such initiative as a way to protect our sovereignty, but probably would have more pressure of the regional actors for that. Similarly, in terms of tackling transnational drug cartels, how relevant is something like the 1948 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance? Yes, we call the real treaty in Portuguese o CETIAR. This was a treaty during the Cold War period to, as a way again, to secure that Latin America would be aligned to the West. What happened is, well, it's interesting that, for instance, during the war between UK and Argentina over for the UK Falklands, for Argentina Malvinas, there was an Argentinian claim that TR should have been triggered, although they were the ones that initiated the war. So that is the idea that there is this treaty that would provide if any country is attacked, so all the others would come for his help. In the same logic as, NATO. For Trump, he wants to use the real treaty TR to provide the forum or the space where the shield of the Americas could operate. So basically, as if we have already the institutional framework, but this is not as used or underused in Trump's term, and these could be actually reignited and used so countries could cooperate with each other in case of organized crimes that is perceived by the US administration. I'm also interested in terms of these sort of military security enforcement of this transnational crime. I'm interested in how that impacts Lula's ambition in terms of environmental monitoring. So there are these sort of broader implications, and Lula's track record has been quite strong in terms of deforestation. So yeah, again, the idiosyncrasies of Brazil. So Brazil, for every crime that takes place at the border, you have the federal police, you have the military, you have the military, you have the police that needs to be in charge. But when we think about public security, this is the duty or this is a jurisdiction of state police, the state we have, we're a federation, we have 27 states. So it's a state competence. And these police forces, they don't talk to each other. And they don't share information. So you have sometimes a crime that cross cut the country, but the regional police don't talk and don't share information. When it goes to the border, this gets triggered by the federal police, and then more in control of the federal government. So for Lula, in terms of the environmental protection, it depends what kind of crime is happening, where it's close to the border. So then it's the federal police, the executive has more power. If it's inside the country, that goes to the state government that might not be aligned to Lula, and that might not be willing to share information. So Lula's strategy is to make sure that the federal police are more in control of the federal government. As you said, another Lula pledge was to federalize somehow the state police forces. These will probably face a lot of resistance. And this might affect, getting to your question, their capacity to keep protecting or keep pushing deforestation. So Lula wants to get, or his pledge was to get to zero deforestation by the end of his government. And we need to see if he would be able to achieve that. Thank you. Maybe we can talk a bit about UK-Brazil ties now. Bilateral trade between the two countries has steadily climbed toward £14 billion and is heavily dominated by engineering, energy, critical minerals and defence-related activities. Can the UK leverage its defence relationship with Brazil to bolster regional maritime and border security cooperation against trafficking routes? That's me being biased, being British and Brazilian. I think there's a lot of space. It's interesting to observe the numbers that UK has increased its exports to Brazil since 2022. In that case, of course, we have Mercosur as a bloc. And then these might interfere, although now the UK is out of the EU. Mercosur and the EU have signed a trade agreement, last year, basically almost pushed by Trump's tariffs. So it would be interesting to understand in what extent the UK could establish agreements with Mercosur. And again, getting the access or the supplies that Brazil could provide and the UK could benefit, not only as coffee and wood pulp, but exactly critical minerals that will be very important to the UK if UK wants to go through an energy transition and wants to. to improve and strengthen its defence industry. So at the same time that the UK can continue and expand its defence settings and trade to Brazil, Brazil can be a very important strategic supply of critical minerals for the continued development of the British industry. And the specific capabilities on the defence side that Brazil is most interested in terms of UK provision? For Brazil, like border control, it's very important. And in that case, every technology and products that would help secure borders that again would benefit combating organised crime. And for Brazil as well, we have most of our oil fields are at the sea. So protecting the sea and our coast, like it's thousands of kilometres, there was a discovery of a new oil field by the North. And again, the industry that could provide or support Brazil in terms of its maritime defence, I think that will be very welcomed by the country, considering the strategic interests of Brazil as well. Now, there's been a lot of media attention most recently about Flavio Bolsonaro's presence in the US. So we should touch on that and those bilateral relations more broadly. Flavio Bolsonaro left for the United States after defying a Brazilian Supreme Court mandate to hand over his passport. What immediate legal and diplomatic leverage does Brasilia have to compel Washington to cooperate with this ongoing domestic investigation? Again, this might have a direct effect on the future relationships between the US and at least the next two years of Trump's government administration and Brazil, because there was a lot of media confusion when there were reports that Flavio was already fleeing, not fleeing because he does not have a mandate, like he's not at risk of being arrested. So legally in Brazil, he should have handled his passport. And that's why, as a precaution, and he has not fulfilled this, but at the moment he has not been convicted of anything. And in that case, Flavio now, there are reports that he has finally arrived with his family to the US. He has been granted visas to stay there with his brother that is already there, Eduardo Bolsonaro, based in Texas. But this was with cooperation somehow from Argentina, because he managed to cross the border to Argentina, stop in Ecuador, Guayaquil, and then proceed to the US. So in that case, it shows that because Brazil is surrounded by countries that are not aligned to the left, this is a kind of situation that might happen. And it's most likely that as long as Trump is in power, he would be able to stay in the US and perhaps try to move forward with the United States. And that would try to ignite the right wing in Brazil in terms of this narrative of his version that he's been persecuted. So yeah, like lots of emotions to follow in the next following years, at least until the end of Trump's administration. But what sort of chance does he have to sort of establish a kind of government exile alongside his brother? Would he be able to galvanize any sort of movement or resistance, if you like, from his new base in Miami? Yeah, although he received like millions and millions of votes, so he has political power. His allies have been elected to the Congress and Senate. So for them, it's not interesting to have, the government is not illegitimate because they have been elected in the first round. So some would say that he has been left by his political allies who are interested to secure that mandate for the following four years. It might be the case, but both to the right and to the left, Lula will not be able to run anymore after this mandate. So he needs to try to find a successor. And Bolsonaro's family, Bolsonaro is under house arrest. The two brothers are in the US. So the right as well needs to find a new name. So we are going to see now the left and the right try to find who is going to be the future figure in the two sides of Brazilian politics. Thank you very much, Daniela. That brings us to the end of today's episode on the implications of Brazil's elections, what the outcomes tell us. Global Security Briefing is available on all major podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. subscribe. For further information about the work of the International Security Studies team at RUSI, please follow us on X, ISS underscore RUSI, and also find out more about the ISS team's research on regional security issues around the world on the RUSI website. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Dr. Andrew Gee. Thank you, Daniela. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.