Bolsonaro’s authoritarian pursuits put the West in a bind

While Donald Trump’s decision not to recognize his electoral defeat in 2020 and to mobilize his followers to invade the U.S. Congress surely came as a shock to foreign diplomats, no international observer in Brasília will be able to feign surprise if Jair Bolsonaro decides not to recognize his defeat in the presidential elections two months from now, as polls currently suggest. 

Mr. Bolsonaro has gone to such great lengths to attack the country’s voting system and to convince his followers not to trust electronic voting machines that his formal acceptance of defeat could very well fail to impress many of his voters. 

Indeed, the president’s eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of Rio de Janeiro, recently argued that the president could not control people who wished to use violence in protest against the electoral result, implying that the president should not be held accountable.

At first sight, the high probability of a post-electoral crisis in Brazil creates an advantage for Western governments, allowing them to discuss — and perhaps even coordinate — how to react to Mr. Bolsonaro’s likely course of action. Yet, in practice, the situation creates a fiendishly difficult dilemma. 

After all, while the president can be expected not to accept defeat, it would be a mistake to assume that this scenario can only play out in one way. Put differently, while there is only one way for a sitting president to accept the result, there are countless...