ABSTRACT
Portugal’s relationship with the Americas is largely driven by political-strategic, trade-commercial, and psychological dimensions of foreign policy with a concentration of its ties to the United States and Brazil. Brazil as a former colony has close commercial, linguistic and cultural links to its former metropole. US-Portuguese relations have a long history commencing in the late eighteenth century when the European country recognized the new republic. In fact, Portugal’s interest in the United States began prior to the birth of that nation. Portugal’s Latin American policy is heavily weighted in favor of Brazil. This is because Brazil was a former Portuguese colony and Lisbon’s resources for policy initiatives in Latin America are not deep. Simply stated, Europe, the United States, the former African colonies, and perhaps the Middle East are greater preoccupations for Portuguese policymakers than Latin America. Portuguese-Brazilian relations underwent new strains in the 1970s because of Lisbon’s African policy.
