O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks

Mostrando postagens com marcador Gideon Rachman. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Gideon Rachman. Mostrar todas as postagens

sexta-feira, 3 de fevereiro de 2023

Putin pretende dobrar as apostas: algumas milhares de vidas não custam nada a um ditador - Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)

 Putin promete vitória sobre Ucrânia em discurso para marcar batalha decisiva na 2ª Guerra Mundial


Putin funde guerra cultural a geopolítica e encontra pares em líderes como Orbán e Bolsonaro

Presidente da Rússia flerta com setor do Ocidente que alega se defender contra suposta decadência das sociedades
Gideon Rachman
Colunista-chefe de relações exteriores do jornal nipo-britânico Financial Times
FINANCIAL TIMES, 1º.fev.2023

Venho há algum tempo observando as guerras culturais de uma distância segura. Às vezes as questões envolvidas são interessantes. Mas o caráter virulento das discussões, que podem acabar com carreiras profissionais, me dissuadiu de participar delas.

Assim, tenho me limitado à minha seara geopolítica, evitando temas explosivos como banheiros para transexuais e optando por tópicos relativamente não controversos como o brexit ou a guerra nuclear.

Agora estou concluindo a contragosto que meu espaço seguro da geopolítica está se fundindo às guerras culturais. Veja os discursos de Vladimir Putin. Os argumentos que o líder russo apresenta para justificar a invasão da Ucrânia não se baseiam apenas na segurança ou na história.

Cada vez mais, Putin vem caracterizando a Guerra da Ucrânia como parte das guerras culturais.

No discurso de 30 de setembro em que celebrou a anexação de quatro regiões da Ucrânia, Putin acusou o Ocidente de "avançar em direção ao satanismo" e "ensinar desvios sexuais às crianças". "Estamos lutando para proteger nossos filhos e netos deste experimento que visa transformar suas almas".

Esses argumentos não se dirigem apenas ao povo russo, que talvez nem sequer seja seu alvo principal. Putin está flertando com um setor importante do Ocidente: conservadores culturais tão enojados com a alegada decadência de suas próprias sociedades que se sentem atraídos pela Rússia de Putin.

Na véspera da guerra na Ucrânia, Steve Bannon, ex-estrategista de Donald Trump, disse em seu podcast: "Putin não é ‘woke’. É anti-woke". Seu entrevistado, Erik Prince, respondeu: "Os russos ainda sabem qual banheiro usar". Mais ou menos na mesma época, Tucker Carlson, possivelmente o mais influente apresentador de TV pró-Trump nos Estados Unidos, pediu a seus ouvintes que questionassem a si mesmos: "Putin alguma vez já me chamou de racista? Ele está tentando acabar com o cristianismo?".

A chamada "guerra ao pensamento woke" hoje é absolutamente crucial à política do Partido Republicano. Nessas questões, muitos republicanos sentem mais afinidade com Putin que com democratas. Como me explicou recentemente Jacob Heilbrunn, analista arguto da América conservadora, a extrema direita republicana "enxerga Putin como defensor dos valores cristãos tradicionais e adversário dos LGBT+, dos transgêneros e do enfraquecimento dos valores masculinos responsáveis pela ascensão do Ocidente".

Em 2021, Ted Cruz repostou no Twitter um vídeo que contrastava um anúncio na TV russa convocando recrutas nas Forças Armadas, cheio de soldados musculosos e de cabeça raspada, com um anúncio semelhante americano destacando uma soldado mulher, filha de um casal de lésbicas. O senador republicano especulou: "Talvez uma Força Armada woke e emasculada não seja a melhor ideia".

A atuação desastrosa das forças russas na Ucrânia sugere uma resposta possível a Cruz: brutalizar seus soldados e tratá-los como bucha de canhão talvez não seja a melhor ideia. Mas, embora já não esteja tão em voga elogiar a Rússia de Putin, a direita dos EUA identificou outros líderes autoritários estrangeiros como seus aliados nas guerras culturais.

Em maio passado o líder húngaro, Viktor Orbán, discursou na Conferência de Ação Política Conservadora dos EUA e exortou os participantes a travarem uma luta comum contra "progressistas, os neomarxistas embriagados com o sonho woke, contra os que estão a serviço de George Soros". "Eles querem abolir o modo de vida ocidental." Orbán é visto amplamente como o líder da UE que tem mais afinidade com Putin.

A sobreposição de nacionalismo e cruzada anti-woke não é coincidência. As duas coisas têm em comum a nostalgia de um passado mitologizado de grandeza nacional e homogeneidade cultural, um tempo em que "os homens eram homens" e as mulheres e minorias tinham consciência de seu "devido lugar".

Não surpreende que trumpistas, adeptos do "America First", sintam afinidade com nacionalistas na Hungria ou na Rússia. Mas, embora as questões em pauta na Guerra da Ucrânia e na guerra aos wokes se sobreponham, estão longe de ser idênticas. O governo polonês tem uma visão semelhante à de Orbán sobre questões LGBT+, mas muito diferente no que diz respeito a Ucrânia e Rússia.

Alguns dos esforços feitos por Putin para se aproximar de supostos aliados no Ocidente têm sido no mínimo ineptos. Certa vez ele tentou comparar o destino da Rússia ao de J. K. Rowling, argumentando que seu país estaria sendo "cancelado" como a escritora britânica. Rowling respondeu asperamente que "críticas à cultura ocidental do cancelamento não devem vir de quem está massacrando civis".

Israel é um exemplo interessante de um país que tem evitado a divisão, tendendo à esquerda em questões da guerra cultural e à direita intransigente em relação ao nacionalismo. Os israelenses já foram acusados de "pinkwashing" —usar seu progressismo para acobertar a política áspera em relação aos palestinos. A abordagem poderia ser resumida como: "Ignore a Faixa de Gaza. Veja nossa parada do Orgulho Gay!".

Mas o atual governo de coalizão encabeçado por Binyamin Netanyahu está colocando em risco esse posicionamento delicado. A coalizão inclui ministros de partidos da direita religiosa que já sugeriram que médicos devem ser autorizados a recusar o tratamento de pacientes gays.

Netanyahu cultivou relações estreitas com Orbán, Putin e Jair Bolsonaro, ex-líder brasileiro conhecido por atacar gays. Mas ele também sabe que precisa conservar um relacionamento com uma Casa Branca em que os tão temidos progressistas woke estão em evidência. As guerras culturais viraram parte das lutas geopolíticas de hoje. Mas as alianças mistas nesses conflitos estão criando colaborações esdrúxulas.

Tradução de Clara Allain

terça-feira, 13 de setembro de 2022

The Ukraine war has reached a turning point - Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)

 PUTIN NÃO VAI USAR A ARMA NUCLEAR. Mesmo seus generais mais servis não o permitirão, pois sabem que o seu poder vai acabar se o fizerem. Aliás contra quem, ou contra o quê eles usariam a arma nuclear? Em Kiev, em cidades ucranianas?

O que Putin vai fazer é causar o máximo de destruição material possível na Ucrânia e o máximo de perdas humanas, mas o seu caso vai se agravar num novo Nuremberg, no TPI, possivelmente.

Acredito que a derrota humilhante da sua Operação Militar Especial vai levá-lo a ser retirado do poder, mas a Rússia ainda vai permanecer como um "império do mal", como dizia Ronald Reagan durante algum tempo ainda.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

 

Financial Times, Londres – 13.9.2022

The Ukraine war has reached a turning point

After Russia’s setbacks a new and dangerous phase of the conflict is beginning

Gideon Rachman

 

The sight of Russian troops in headlong retreat in Ukraine is stunning — but it should not be surprising. 

This war has gone badly for Russia from the outset. Vladimir Putin failed to achieve the lightning victory that he was aiming for on February 24. By April, the Russians had been forced into a humiliating retreat after making incursions towards Kyiv. 

The limited gains Russia has made over the past six months have come at a terrible cost. The original invasion force mustered by the Kremlin was around 200,000 troops. The US estimated last month that 70,000-80,000 of that force has been killed or wounded since the beginning of the invasion.

Unwilling to acknowledge that Russia is at war, Putin has refused to institute conscriptionBy contrast, Ukraine has mobilised its entire adult male population. As a result, Ukraine now probably has more troops on the battlefield than Russia.

The Ukrainians also have the advantage in morale and munitions. They are fighting to defend their own country. The supply of advanced weaponry from the US and Europe — in particular, accurate long-range missiles — means they are now better equipped than the Russians. 

The prospect of Russian defeat is real and exhilarating. But Ukraine’s advances also open a new and dangerous phase in the conflict. 

The pictures of weeping civilians embracing Ukrainian soldiers as they liberate towns and villages from the Russians underline what this war is all about. Permanent Russian occupation would snuff out political freedom and would be enforced with killings, torture and deportations. 

An easy Russian victory in Ukraine would also have opened the door to further aggression against its neighbours — including Moldova and perhaps even Nato members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That prospect was alarming enough to persuade Finland and Sweden to apply for Nato membership. 

If Russia is defeated, the invasion threat hovering over the rest of Europe will recede. The global political atmosphere will also change. Russian defeat will go down badly in Beijing and Mar-a-Lago. In the weeks before the invasion, China announced a friendship “without limits” with Russia. Donald Trump chortled that Vladimir Putin was a “genius”. That judgment now looks not just immoral, but stupid. 

But some caution is in order. Almost a fifth of Ukraine is still occupied. The Russians will try to regroup and the Ukrainians could over-reach. 

The really complex question is what happens if Russia is facing a humiliating defeat — perhaps including the loss of Crimea, which was occupied in 2014 amid much rejoicing in Moscow? 

Rather than accept defeat, Putin may try to escalate. His options, however, look limited and unappealing. The refusal to call a general mobilisation must reflect nervousness about the opposition that could stir in Russian society. Calling up troops, training and equipping them will take many weeks — and the war is moving fast. 

From the beginning of the conflict, Putin has hinted that Russia might use nuclear weapons. The White House has always viewed this possibility seriously. As the war has dragged on and gone badly for Russia, fears that Putin might resort to nuclear weapons have receded a little, but they have not gone away. As one senior western policymaker put it to me last week: “We have to remember that almost every Russian military exercise we’ve observed has involved the use of nuclear weapons.” 

Using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would, however, create the obvious danger that Russia itself would be contaminated by the fallout. The global political reaction would be very negative and a western military response, probably non-nuclear, would be all but inevitable. 

Like Russian leaders in the past, Putin is hoping that winter will come to his rescue. Russia’s recent announcement that it will stop almost all gas supplies to Europe is clearly intended to freeze the western supporters of Ukraine into submission. 

But Putin needs a lot to go right for the gas gambit to work. A very cold winter or a surge in political protests in the west would help. Neither can be relied upon. The German government says the country “is now better prepared for a halt to Russian supplies” and that the total gas storage level is almost 87 per cent. Energy price subsidies are being rolled out across Europe. 

So the Russian leader’s position looks perilous. From the start some western leaders have quietly hoped that Putin would lose power as a result of the war. President Joe Biden even blurted it out. 

But if Putin is deposed, perhaps by a palace coup, his replacement is more likely to be a hardline nationalist than a liberal. The most vocal dissent being expressed in Russia is from militarists and nationalists — calling for escalation of the war. One theory doing the rounds in western intelligence circles is that the murder of Daria Dugina, a nationalist journalist, was organised by the Russian security services as a warning to Putin’s ultra-right critics. 

A defeated Russia would not disappear off the map. And it would still possess large numbers of nuclear weapons, as well as a replenished stock of grievances.

So many dangers clearly lie ahead. But sometimes good news has to be recognised for what it is. In what has been a bleak year, the Ukrainian military victories of the past week are certainly that.


quarta-feira, 15 de setembro de 2021

The Xi personality cult is a danger to China - Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)

  The Xi personality cult is a danger to China

A one-party state, combined with ritual veneration of the leader, is a recipe for misrule

Gideon Rachman

Financial Times, Londres – 14.9.2021

 

Chinese children as young as 10 will soon be required to take lessons in Xi Jinping thought. Before they reach their teenage years, pupils will be expected to learn stories about the Chinese leader’s life and to understand that “Grandpa Xi Jinping has always cared for us.” 

This should be an alarm bell for modern China. The state-led veneration of Xi has echoes of the personality cult around Mao Zedong — and with it, of the famines and terror unleashed by Mao during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. From Stalin’s Russia to Ceausescu’s Romania to Kim’s North Korea and Castro’s Cuba, the combination of a personality cult and Communist Party rule is usually a recipe for poverty and brutality. These comparisons may seem far-fetched, given the wealth and sophistication of modern China. The country’s economic transformation in recent decades has been remarkable — leading Beijing to promote a “China model” from which the world can learn.

But it is important to make a distinction between the “China model” and the “Xi model”. The China model of reform and opening, put in place by Deng Xiaoping, was based on a rejection of the cult of personality. Deng urged officials to “seek truth from facts”. Policy should be guided by a pragmatic observation of what works, rather than the grandiose statements of Chairman Mao. 

To allow officials to experiment with new economic policies, it was crucial to break with the fear and dogma associated with an all-powerful leader. Term limits for the Chinese presidency were introduced in 1982, restricting any leader to two five-year terms. In the post-Deng years, China has managed two orderly leadership transitions — from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, and from Hu to Xi in 2012. 

Term limits were also intended to solve the succession problem that often plagues one-party states. Henceforth, the party’s collective leadership would matter more than the charismatic leadership of a single man. 

But, in the Xi era, the Chinese Communist party has once again embraced a personality cult. It incorporated Xi Jinping thought into its constitution at a congress in 2017. This was an honour previously granted only to one other leader, while still in power — Mao. In 2018, the Deng-era term limits for the Chinese presidency were abolished — setting the stage for Xi to rule for decades, if not for life. 

The current intensification of the Xi cult, looks like preparation for next year’s party congress — at which the Chinese leader’s desire to stay on in power indefinitely, will have to be rubber-stamped by the party he controls. 

Xi is almost certain to get his way. His supporters and organised sycophants will hail the move. How could they not? The Chinese leader is meant to be a “good emperor” — a wise leader, who is making all the right moves to modernise the country.

It is certainly possible to make a case for Xi’s signature policies — such as a crackdown on corruption and a more assertive foreign policy. The current campaigns to reduce inequality, and to control the power of the big technology companies, can also be justified. 

But all of these policies could also easily go wrong. Intimidating Taiwan could lead to a needless confrontation with the US. Cracking down on big tech could frighten entrepreneurs and hobble the private sector. 

The real difficulty is that if things do go wrong, it will be very hard for anybody to say so openly. All personality cults are based on the idea that the great leader is wiser than everyone who surrounds him. He cannot be acknowledged to have made mistakes. Chinese critics of Xi’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic have been sent to prison. There will be no public inquiries or parliamentary hearings into the pandemic in Xi’s China. 

The Xi cult is also intrinsically humiliating for China’s educated middle-class and senior officials — who have to study Xi thought daily on a special app. They are expected to express reverence for the leader’s musings and to parrot his favourite phrases, such as “green mountains and clear water are equal to mountains of gold and silver”. Anybody who finds this ritual objectionable or laughable, would be wise to keep their thoughts to themselves. The Xi cult means that insincerity and fear are now baked into the Chinese system.

 Extending Xi’s leadership long into the future is also a recipe for a future succession crisis. The Chinese leader is 68 years old. At some point, he will no longer be fit to govern. But how will he be removed? Xi’s creation of a cult of personality and his moves to become, in effect, “ruler for life” are part of a disturbing global pattern. 

In Russia, Vladimir Putin is also pushing through constitutional changes that will allow him to remain as president well into his eighties. Donald Trump used to “joke” enviously that the US should emulate China’s abolition of presidential term limits. 

But the US has checks and balances, which have so far managed to thwart Trump’s worst instincts. In a country such as China — without independent courts, elections or a free media — there are no real constraints on a leadership cult. That is why Xi is now a danger to his own country.

 

terça-feira, 26 de maio de 2020

Jair Bolsonaro’s populism is leading Brazil to disaster - Gideon Rachman (FT)

Jair Bolsonaro’s populism is leading Brazil to disaster

If life were a morality tale, the Covid-19 antics would turn Brazilians against the populist president

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro speaks with journalists while wearing a protective face mask as he arrives at Alvorada Palace, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Brasilia, Brazil, May 22, 2020. REUTERS/Adriano Machado TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Jair Bolsonaro is responsible for the chaotic response that has allowed the pandemic to get out of hand © Reuters
On a visit to Brazil last year, I had a chat with a prominent financier about the parallels between Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro
“They are very similar,” she said, before adding: “But Bolsonaro is much stupider.” This answer took me aback since the US president is not generally regarded as a towering intellect. But my banker friend was insistent. “Look,” she said. “Trump has run a major business. Bolsonaro never made it above captain in the army.”
The coronavirus pandemic has reminded me of that observation. Brazil’s president has taken an approach that is strikingly similar to that of Mr Trump — but even more irresponsible and dangerous. Both leaders have become obsessed with the supposedly curative properties of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. But while Mr Trump is merely taking it himself, Mr Bolsonaro has forced the Brazilian health ministry to issue new guidelines, recommending the drug for coronavirus patients. The US president has squabbled with his scientific advisers. But Mr Bolsonaro has sacked one health minister and provoked his replacement to resign. Mr Trump has expressed sympathy for anti-lockdown protesters; Mr Bolsonaro has addressed their rallies.
Sadly, Brazil is already paying a high price for its president’s antics — and things are getting worse fast. Coronavirus hit Brazil relatively late. But the country has the second-highest infection rate in the world and the sixth-highest recorded Covid-19 deaths. The number of deaths in Brazil, which accounts for roughly half the population of Latin America, is now doubling every two weeks, compared with every two months in the hard-hit UK.
Brazil’s economic and social make-up means that the country will be severely hit as the pandemic accelerates. The hospital system in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, is already close to collapse. With large parts of the population living in crowded conditions, and without savings, mass unemployment could lead to hunger and desperation over the coming months.
But is it fair to blame Mr Bolsonaro? The president, who was sworn into office on January 1 2019, is obviously not responsible for the virus — nor for the poverty and overcrowding that make Covid-19 such a threat to the country. He has also not been able to prevent many of Brazil’s governors and mayors from imposing lockdowns in local areas. But by encouraging his followers to flout the lockdowns and undermining his own ministers, Mr Bolsonaro is responsible for the chaotic response that has allowed the pandemic to get out of hand. As a result, the health and economic damage suffered by Brazil is likely to be harsher and deeper than it should have been. Other countries facing even tougher social conditions, such as South Africa, have had a much more disciplined and effective response.
If life were a morality tale, Mr Bolsonaro’s coronavirus antics would lead Brazil to turn against its populist president. But reality may not be so simple.
There is no doubt that Mr Bolsonaro is in political trouble. His popularity ratings have tumbled and are now below 30 per cent; some 50 per cent of the population disapprove of his handling of the crisis. The support he once enjoyed from mainstream conservatives — who were desperate to see the back of the leftwing Workers’ party — is now crumbling away. Sergio Moro, his popular corruption-fighting justice minister, resigned last month. Mr Moro’s allegations about the president’s efforts to interfere in police investigations were sufficiently explosive to provoke the Supreme Court into opening an investigation that could lead to his impeachment.
But impeachment in Brazil is as much a political as a legal process. The misdemeanours that led to the removal of Dilma Rousseff as president in 2016 were fairly technical. It was more significant that Ms Rousseff had sunk to a 10 per cent approval rating in the polls and the economy had suffered a deep recession. Mr Bolsonaro’s ratings are still way above Ms Rousseff’s nadir. And while the economy is undoubtedly heading for a deep recession and a surge in unemployment, his anti-lockdown rhetoric may buy him some political protection. Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, says, “What Bolsonaro wants to do is to disassociate himself from the economic crisis that is approaching.”
The social isolation measures that Mr Bolsonaro decries, may actually help him politically. They could prevent the mass demonstrations that provided the impetus for the drive to impeach Ms Rousseff. And they will make it harder for politicians to plot and bargain in the proverbial “smoke-filled rooms” — a process that is necessary to stitch together a successful impeachment. Plotting over the phone is just not the same. Some politicians may feel that plunging Brazil into a political crisis is unseemly, in the middle of a pandemic.
Yet national unity will not emerge while Mr Bolsonaro is president. In classic populist fashion he thrives on the politics of division. Brazil is already a deeply polarised country, where conspiracy theories are rife. The deaths and unemployment caused by Covid-19 are exacerbated by Mr Bolso­naro’s leadership. But, perversely, a health and economic disaster could create an even more hospitable environment for the politics of fear and unreason.

Weekly podcast

Sign up here to the new podcast from Gideon Rachman, the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist, and listen in on his conversations with the decision-makers and thinkers from all over the globe who are shaping world affairs
Follow Gideon Rachman with myFT and on Twitter

sábado, 12 de agosto de 2017

The Rise of the East: and the perils of new conflicts - Gideon Rachman

Novo livro, de acordo com o Zeitgeist:

Easternisation

War and Peace in the Asian Century

Easternisation by Gideon Rachman
Buy this eBook
US$ 28.19
Selected as a Book of the Year by Evening Standard

The West’s domination of world politics is coming to a close. The flow of wealth and power is turning from West to East and a new era of global instability has begun.
Easternisation is the defining trend of our age – the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations and the great questions of war and peace.
A troubled but rising China is now challenging America’s supremacy, and the ambitions of other Asian powers – including Japan, North Korea, India and Pakistan – have the potential to shake the whole world. Meanwhile the West is struggling with economic malaise and political populism, the Arab world is in turmoil and Russia longs to reclaim its status as a great power.
We are at a turning point in history: but Easternisation has many decades to run. Gideon Rachman offers a road map to the turbulent process that will define the international politics of the twenty-first century.
Random House; August 2016
320 pages; ISBN 9781473521162
Read online, or download in secure EPUB
Title: Easternisation
Author: Gideon Rachman