Melvyn Levitsky, former U.S. ambassador to Brazil (1994-98) and a professor of international policy and practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, writes “Brazil: No longer the country of the future?” for The Conversation.
Levitsky, who first served in Brazil in the mid-1960s, writes “Despite the galloping inflation that resulted in zeroes being regularly lopped off the currency and an authoritarian regime that brooked little public dissent, many considered Brazil to be ‘the country of the future.’”
Today, he says, Brazil is “in the throes of a perfect storm of problems.”
Read Levitsky’s piece cataloguing the many issues—prolonged drought, falling commodity prices, a dysfunctional political system, widespread corruption, and more—Brazil is facing.
Melvyn Levitsky is a professor of international policy and practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a retired career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service. He spent 35 years as a U.S. diplomat, including as ambassador to Brazil, executive secretary of the State Department, ambassador to Bulgaria, and deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights.