The Mauricio and Michel show

摘要

PRICKLY nationalism is trending in the rich world, but in South America's two biggest countries the talk is of partnering up. On February 7th Mauricio Macri, Argentina's president (shown on the left), plans to visit his Brazilian counterpart, Michel Temer. They will promise to encourage trade and to improve a relationship that is frostier than it should be. There are grounds for hope, but also for scepticism. For most of the 20th century Brazil and Argentina were more rivals than partners. In the 1970s they nearly embarked on a nuclear arms race; until the mid-1980s Brazil's military-strategy textbooks taught that the likeliest war was with its southern neighbour. Brazil's population and economy dwarf those of Argentina, though Argentines are richer (see chart on next page). That makes it hard to reproduce anything like the Franco-German collaboration that drew Europe together. When Brazil and Argentina agree, it is usually on nationalist ideology rather than on openness. That was the case in the 1950s under the autocrats Getulio Vargas in Brazil and Juan Pe-ron in Argentina; and during the 2000s, when both countries adopted variants of left-wing populism.