Next fortnight, in Rio the 21 American republics will send delegates to the Inter-American Conference on Peace & Security. For gaunt, scholarly Raúl Fernandes, Brazil's 69-year-old Foreign Minister, the meeting will be something of a personal triumph. It will give him opportunity to push his, and Brazil's, two-fold policy: Pan-Americanism and friendship with the U.S. As Brazil's chief delegate, he will wield great, if not always apparent, power.
The chief business of the conference will be the drafting of a permanent mutual defense treaty to replace temporary wartime defense measures laid down by the Act of Chapultepec (TIME, March 12,...