The Brazilian presidential election, which kicks off with a first round of voting on October 4, gives citizens a choice between radically different visions of politics. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, the standard-bearer of the Latin American left, seeks a fourth presidential term against Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, the hard-right former president who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting to overturn the results of the previous presidential election. The race is also a contest over how Brazil should conduct its foreign affairs: Lula emphasizes strategic autonomy, including through growing ties with China and other partners, while Flávio Bolsonaro favors close alignment with the Trump administration in the United States.

What unites the two candidates is the assumption that Brazil still has the freedom to choose its foreign policy strategy. Brazil’s vast resources, distance from active conflict, and influx of foreign direct investment should position it well to manage current global upheaval and great-power competition, and to effectively bargain for what it wants. But despite these valuable geopolitical assets, Brazil is losing global influence, and its autonomy to act is at risk. Major powers, including both China and the United States, are increasingly able to dictate their terms of engagement with Brazil. The country is also becoming isolated in South America, where it had until recently led the creation of regional institutions such as the trading bloc Mercosur. Its relationship with Argentina, for instance—which had helped underpin four decades of regional stability—has deteriorated to the point that neither country has an ambassador in the other’s capital.

Brazil is largely responsible for its waning sway. Much of the country’s influence depends on whether foreign partners believe that the deals it strikes today will be implemented tomorrow. That credibility, in turn, rests on the state’s capacity to commit—that is, its ability to mobilize the resources needed to fulfill its promises, coordinate public institutions effectively, and ensure that the bargains it makes survive democratic political turnover. A raft of domestic problems, including mounting fiscal constraints, a political system at war with itself, and widespread corruption, has made it harder for the state to deliver. A major scandal has now engulfed the Supreme Court, an institution meant to enforce rules impartially and which is therefore essential to the durability of Brazilian commitments. The Trump administration’s open meddling in Brazil’s domestic politics has compounded the country’s vulnerabilities by making any deal controversial and partisan and raising the likelihood that future administrations in both Brasília and Washington might try to reverse it.

Whoever wins the upcoming presidential election will inherit these sources of weakness. So far, the candidates have not offered any clear plan to address them. Neither a tilt toward Washington nor an embrace of multilateral diplomacy will solve the deeper problem that is eroding Brazil’s foreign policy autonomy and keeping it from turning its assets into real strength.

Brazil has not always struggled to project credibility to the world. In the 1990s, the country’s economic stabilization plan brought down runaway inflation, its leaders consolidated and strengthened its democracy, and it signed agreements with Argentina on economic integration and nuclear safeguards that improved regional security. All these commitments persisted through multiple leadership transitions. In the eyes of powerful players such as Europe and the United States, Brazil was an appealing place for investment and a growing force in multilateral diplomacy.

Today, however, what partners see is a country beset by dire fiscal problems, deeply fragmented domestic politics, and endemic corruption. Brazil’s economy is roughly the size of Canada’s and larger than Spain’s, and the government has a formidable capacity to tax its citizens and bring in revenue. But more than 90 percent of the federal government’s noninterest spending is mandatory, giving it little room for discretionary spending on areas such as infrastructure, which the country sorely needs to make use of its vast reserves of critical minerals. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund has projected that Brazil’s government debt will reach about 98 percent of GDP by the end of........

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