The US–China Rivalry: Health Diplomacy and Vaccine Donations Strategies Augusto Leal Rinaldi, Rodolfo de Camargo Lima, Laerte Apolinário Júnior Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2025 The COVID-19 pandemic has led China and the United States (US) to donate vaccines. This article explores how and why China and the US instrumentalise bilateral donations in their foreign policy strategies. While humanitarian concerns matter, political and economic interests push them to a more strategic reasoning. To test our hypotheses of humanitarian, geopolitical, and economic dimensions on bilateral donations, we employed ordinary least square and logit model regressions using a cross-sectional database with 214 countries containing data from various sources. The findings suggest that Washington has prioritised countries experiencing higher COVID-19 contamination rates and its trade import partners, while Beijing has focused on the poorest ones. Washington aided countries that historically disagreed with it in the United Nations General Assembly, while China has sent more vaccines to those politically aligned with Beijing. The US and China employ health diplomatic efforts to project power, and political dimensions are primarily considered when targeting countries to donate vaccines bilaterally.
FROM SOFT BALANCING TO BANDWAGONING: CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL–US RELATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA Augusto Rinaldi Austral Brazilian Journal of Strategy and International Relations, 2024 Using the soft balancing concept and a comparative methodology, I analyze the diplomatic strategies mobilized by Brazil towards the US in South America from 2003 to 2022. The empirical results suggest that in the last two decades, Brazil moved away from the role of “soft balancer” during Lula’s and Rousseff’s mandates (2003–2016) to a “tactical convergence” in Temer's (2016–2018) to “bandwagoning” in Bolsonaro's (2019–2022). The main drivers for these different strategies are domestic and regional changes. Approaching this thematic contributes to a better understanding of Brazilian regional priorities and abilities to deal with the US in the region.
Chinese and Indian COVID-19 Vaccine Diplomacy during the Health Emergency Crisis Laerte Apolinário Júnior, Augusto Leal Rinaldi, Rodolfo de Camargo Lima Revista Brasileira De Politica Internacional, 2022 Health diplomacy has played a vital role worldwide during the coronavirus outbreak. One crucial mechanism in this regard has been “vaccine diplomacy,” which describes country efforts to share COVID-19 vaccines. China and India are ahead of other countries in bilateral vaccine donations due to their South-South Cooperation policies. Looking forward, how and why are these two countries employing their vaccine diplomacy strategies? We compare the engagement of both in this field using a Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis framework. Our results suggest that neither is acting only for altruistic reasons, because economic and political interests are the main drivers behind their strategies.
The contemporary world order, BRICS and the R2P principle : The cases of Brazil and China (2005/2017) Augusto Leal Rinaldi, Cristina Soreanu Pecequilo Colombia Internacional, 2021 One major pillar of the world orders’ legitimacy is the existence and recognition of international norms and institutions. In the literature on International Relations, many studies call attention to the importance of these features in approaching such topics as (inter)national sovereignty, humanitarian crises, and military interventions. Since the dynamic of contemporary global power is changing due to the rise of new centres of power such as the BRICS countries, it is worth evaluating whether, and to what extent, these new actors will follow the same established norms or challenge them. In this article, we analyse the BRICS’s adherence or failure to adhere to the norms encompassed by the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). Methodology: It is a comparative investigation, based on official documents and a qualitative analysis, and focuses on the period of 2005-2017. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that even though the BRICS group do not present a united front in this field, they have highlighted the divisions in the international approach to R2P as seen in two major initiatives, led by Brazil and China. Originality: We argue that Brazil´s “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP) and China´s “Responsible Protection” (RP) mean that those countries can be classified as “active critics of the norms” of R2P, while the other members are either “active critics” or “active critics and implementers”.
