Guancha: What has been the effect of the war in Ukraine or Brazil, and how has China's 12 point peace plan and proposed conflict mediation been received in Brazil?
Cristovam Buarque: This is something on which I have a different position as the Brazilian government today. I think that Brazil should not be involved in this conflict. There’s two ways to be involved. In the first way, Brazil is not: President Lula is quite clear, he’s not involved as a party militarily with one of the countries. This is OK.
But I have another position, no involvement even in the peace talks, because I think that Russia and Ukraine, they look so much like each other, in terms of literature, religion, language, history, that I think they will find that, in a certain moment, the internal forces in Russia and Ukraine will pressure their governments to come together and find the peace. Sure, if some countries, especially China and Europe, can help that, it would be okay.
But in the case of Lula, I have been saying that he has another role in the world. Lula should put a planetary statement to propose ways to come to three other peaces, different from the war between Russia and Ukraine: social peace, fighting against poverty; ecological peace, fighting for sustainable development; and migration peace, find a way to avoid millions of the people being forced to move from their country to another country, and some or most of the time not able find a new home. First of all, migrants might not arrive at the new country. Second, they might arrive but can not come in, because at the border they are stopped. And third, they will enter the new country, but will not be accepted legally.
Lula, I think, is the best man the world to produce a planetary statement. You might ask, but why not China? China is so special and so great and so big that perhaps it will not have this voice into the world: China is a hard power, Brazil can be a soft power, and we need soft power. For these 3 peaces, we need more soft power than hard power.