Autonomy and Development:

The Thought on Foreign Policy of San Tiago Dantas and Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães

Abstract

This paper investigates the contributions of San Tiago Dantas and Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães to Brazilian foreign policy. Through a comparative qualitative analysis of speeches, official documents, and academic literature, the study highlights how both thinkers formulated international insertion projects aimed at promoting economic development through autonomy. Dantas and Guimarães' proposals are historically contextualized, and their converging arguments are identified, such as the recognition that the stratification of power in the international system hinders the convergence of strategic interests between Brazil and the established powers. This entailed considering a relative distancing of the country from the United States and closer ties with the region and other countries of the Global South. Dantas and Guimarães believed that the solutions to the country's severe internal problems, such as income and power concentration and social inequality, were directly connected to the way Brazil engaged in its international insertion.