Description
The consolidation of Brazil’s project of regional leadership involved the promotion of an institutional design that could reflect the South American interests and the regional foreign policy autonomy detached from the US influence. Since 1948 the multilateral layout in the Americas was dominated by the US ideological input with the creation of the Organisation of American States. OAS performed a decisive role in the US – Latin American interactions, but after the end of the Cold War the institution started losing its credibility among Latin American states. Given the US failure to build a new version of Panamericanism, new institutional arrangements emerged, and one of the Brazilian bids to gain regional leadership was embodied in UNASUR, the first South American permanent organisation that gathered the totality of the states of the region. How did the US reacted to this initiative? How did UNASUR increased the Brazilian possibilities of leading the South American countries as a block vis-à-vis the US? Following a Neoclassical Realist approach to foreign policy decision making this paper will address the process of institutional creation and foreign policy aspirations in the Western Hemisphere, looking specially at the interaction between a US led OAS versus a Brazilian led UNASUR.
