Washington´s Potomac Protocol
In DC, during high-altitude consultations regarding finance and power—which is always the true topic—the sovereign interests of of the developing world do not occupy the vanguard.
Washington, D.C. is not a city; it is an argument. It is a PhD dissertation with wide avenues, disciplined trees, and a pervasive stillness that novices mistake for peace. It is not peace; it is protocol. The U.S. capital possesses a peculiar mechanism designed to convince us of two simultaneous fallacies: first, that everything of global consequence happens within its quadrants; and second, that absolutely nothing can occur there unless someone has previously drafted a multi-agency memorandum (a document that seems entirely theoretical under the current Trump Administration).
I arrived inside the Beltway carrying the synthetic composure of the polyglot. Yet, D.C. tests the insurgent through a relentless sequence of psychological operations. First, with geometry: streets engineered to eliminate intellectual deviation. Then, with liturgy: meetings that initiate with performative cordiality and conclude with an assignment sheet. And finally, with the creeping dread that, between one watery cup of coffee and the next, the world is being aggressively rewritten in crooked lines.
There is an unuttered baseline, perfectly audible to interlocutors on encrypted frequencies, in almost every boardroom on K Street: we have a contact. It is a town where everyone possesses a business card, an agenda, and a connection. Within that jurisdiction, unavoidable risk is not a mathematical calculation; it is a theological sin.
Throughout the week, one is haunted by the uncomfortable impression that the Washington apparatus understands its Brazilian strategic partner the way one understands a distant relative: through vintage gossip and low-resolution photography. They discuss a nation of two hundred million souls as if it were a predictable script, requiring only a periodic rotation of the actors. In this, Washington is intellectually lazy: the city tolerates, without a shred of embarrassment, an emotional illiteracy regarding foreign politics.
#washington #politics #Latinamerica #power
