Putin promete vitória sobre Ucrânia em discurso para marcar batalha decisiva na 2ª Guerra Mundial
Presidente da Rússia flerta com setor do Ocidente que alega se defender contra suposta decadência das sociedades |
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Putin promete vitória sobre Ucrânia em discurso para marcar batalha decisiva na 2ª Guerra Mundial
Presidente da Rússia flerta com setor do Ocidente que alega se defender contra suposta decadência das sociedades |
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 conscription. By 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.
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.