Portugal in the world (I)
Portugal is a “small country”. It has a limited territorial dimension – although it has a maritime dimension – significantly, it has 10 million inhabitants and, as far as we know, it does not have access to statistical natural resources. And yet, we move towards 900 years of development with a policy of the most stable borders in Europe, we have a single enviable international and social unity, we do not know what it concerns us and we are at the top of that of the countries of Europe UN . We have to be optimistic and more ambitious collectively.
Externally Portugal is a defender of encouraged laws and a world built on cooperation, not a rule of law, in solutions, a primacy of the search for consensus. A constant voice in the promotion and defense of a system based on the United Nations, surely in the principles of the Charter of the European Union, the Council of Europe and the European Union. And otherwise it could not be, because we do not have to our strategic will or defend our interests in an anarchic international environment.
At the same time, the language, culture, history and also the political and economic interests that unite the States and the millions of Portuguese-speaking people in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe have a potential that must be in depth, only within the framework of its concerns, but also within the CPLP.
It should also be noted that Portugal has increasingly and consistently contributed to peace operations within the framework of the UN, with the presence of military, militarized or security forces in the Central African Republic, Mali, Colombia, Somalia, Iraq, Mozambique, the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Guinea and off the Horn of Africa, among others.
None of this is new or impressive. What is interesting for Portugal to find solutions as interesting as the ability to seek from its instruments to improve international relations: a negotiator as honest and committed to the mechanisms of international cooperation in the world. We will not be the only ones, but we have a historical characteristic, which is more unique, which reinforces our role: few States that had such a universal past and present, which comes to us from history, the diaspora, business, the culture of politics.
This is how Portugal fought, often misunderstood and almost always alone, for Timor-Leste’s self-determination. Those responsible for their own destinies can decide the future that their own recipients can make. Timor-Leste shows that an honest negotiator can make a difference in a multilateral framework.
Portugal from its community of international interest based on the concert of nations, as an agenda of honest agreements to its public: a community that reflects our multilateral interest in the international proxy in the concert of nations, where no one has imposed any solution of international interest. But multilateralism is admittedly imperfect…
Associate Researcher at CIEP / Portuguese Catholic University
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