Diplomacy as an Independent Variable

Abstract

A few years ago, I was commissioned by a Dutch publisher to compose a short biography of Rubens Ricupero for an editorial project on former secretaries-general of international organizations (LOPES, 2015). This offered me the chance to interview this scholarly, polite, and sober character with an impressive career within both domestic and global bureaucracies. It is difficult not to be charmed by his personality. Therefore, like Homer's Ulysses, I confess I had to tie myself to the mast so as not to provide an overly celebratory appraisal of Ricupero's latest work – A Diplomacia na Construção do Brasil: 1750-2016 (Diplomacy in the Building of Brazil: 1750-2016).