Potências Médias Emergentes e Uso da Força: Brasil e Índia no Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas (1946-2012)

Abstract

Created by great powers, the UN is embedded in the power politics of States. In this context, the purpose of this thesis is to understand how changes in the balance of power impacted the ability of nonpermanent members to influence the work of the Security Council. As comparative cases, the analysis is based on the participation of Brazil and India during their mandates. Both are intermediate countries in comparison to the great powers, and they have an emergent path and search for protagonism, but there is a central element that sets them apart: military power and, above all, nuclear power. Thus, the hypothesis of this thesis is that the Indian nuclear power would have given the country a greater possibility of interference in the Council negotiations. The methodology consists in the analysis of the votes and their justifications conferred by Brazil and India in the UNSC, within the timeframe of their mandates, between 1946 and 2012. The interpretation will be based on the application of a multilevel comparative foreign policy framework, which combines the role of the actors, government, socio-economic aspects, regional relations and the shaping of the international order. It can be formulated that, in this research, the vote of Brazil and India works as a dependent variable, while the asymmetries in military power would be the independent variable. Because it is an environment of asymmetrical interaction due to the division between permanent and non-permanent members, the institutional design of the UNSC acts as an intervening variable. The results show that the hypothesis of the work was not fully confirmed, but this fact made room for investigations that became a more robust conclusion than the one originally proposed. The pattern of votes and alignment with permanent members did not vary significantly between Brazil and India, as the UNSC negotiating logic and concentration of decision-making power operate more on the permanent/ non-permanent axis than on the nuclear/non-nuclear one. Indian nuclearization, however, cannot be ruled out of power relations, for the country has gained in its bargaining power and weight in the consideration of security issues, especially regionally.