The Post has an op-ed denouncing Brazil’s reception of Ahmadinejad, which brought to mind an article I had read earlier on “how the West lost Turkey.” The Post’s predictable line was that Brazil was harming its chances of being taken seriously as a major power by welcoming Ahmadinejad. Many similar threats have been made against Turkey on account of the foreign policy moves Erdogan has been making. The interesting thing about these threats is that the Turks and Brazilians don’t seem to care.

Danforth notes near the start of his article:

Understanding Erdogan’s political calculus starts with understanding that in Turkey anger at the West is near universal.

As Turkey becomes more democratic, and as Turkish interests always seem to get short shrift in Washington and Brussels these days, the Turkish public is going to reward politicians who make a show of challenging Western policies and will not punish them for building closer ties with neighboring and other Muslim-majority states. Likewise, understanding Lula’s thinking requires that we see that what the Post calls “anachronistic Third Worldism” is actually a very savvy, timely effort to tap into a broad Latin American backlash against U.S. influence in the region. As in Turkey, the direction Brazil is pursuing can be seen as the “outcome of long-brewing domestic trends.”

What is interesting about both states is that it is their unwillingness to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, which has somehow become the West’s litmus test of respectability, that seems to bother Washington politicians and pundits the most. In other words, two significant regional powers, one of which is a long-standing NATO ally, refuse to toe the line on an absurd and unworkable Iran policy, and this is supposed to prove that they are being unreasonable and irresponsible?

Something that Danforth does not stress enough in his article on Turkey is how much U.S. policies (and to a lesser extent EU foot-dragging on accession) have created the “near universal” anger there. Typically, Erdogan and the AKP are blamed for whipping up and exploiting these sentiments, but for the most part they are simply playing to the crowd and feeding off of sentiments that already existed. The more democratized Turkey becomes, the more likely it is that its government will disagree more often with Washington, but this is practically guaranteed if Washington continues to take the alliance with Turkey for granted and ignores Turkish concerns when formulating policies for the region. Invading Iraq over strenuous Turkish opposition was one of the greatest blows to the alliance, but the ongoing effort to isolate Iran could be the thing that creates a wider breach between our governments.

There is every reason why the U.S. and Brazil should be able to build a constructive economic and diplomatic relationship. If Brazil is trying to use some of its newfound global prestige to push back against a foolish and futile Iran policy, perhaps the wiser thing would be to reevaluate the merits of our Iran policy rather than jeopardize good relations with a rising power in our own hemisphere.