We all know by now that Dilma Rousseff is not coming for her planned state visit. We can characterize the responses more or less as follows, in no particular order:
1. It's a positive assertion of Brazilian sovereignty.
2. It's bad for the United States (just Google "Brazil snub"!).
3. It's bad for Brazil.
4. It's bad for both countries.
Curiously, at least from what I've seen no one seems to be saying that it won't really matter all that much. In part that could be because the Obama administration is trying to spin it that way--it's a "postponement" and not a "cancellation" and so maybe our instinct is to assume that the spin must be false.
What I'd like to see, though, is analysis of the concrete effects of state visits (or their cancellation/postponement). Do they matter as much as commonly assumed? They are, of course, highly symbolic, but technology makes communication easy without visits and there is a tremendous amount of lower level cooperation going on all the time no matter who visits whom.
For example, in 2009 the Japanese Prime Minister cancelled a state visit, yet as far as I can tell--being an informed observer rather than any kind of expert--U.S.-Japanese relations have not suffered long-term consequences. Are there other examples?
In short, we assume it matters because we all say it matters. We have lots of opinions, some very logical, about why it should matter but little empirical evidence to support it.
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