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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;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador World Order. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador World Order. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 12 de novembro de 2023

Project Synducate tem um número especialmente interessante este 12/11/2023

 

This week at Project Syndicate, Nouriel Roubini warns that markets are assigning far too low a probability to worst-case scenarios in the Middle East; Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson criticize American leaders' failure to consider why China exhibits the strengths that it does; Melissa Parke shows how artificial intelligence can make nuclear war more likely; and more.

Economics & Finance

The Economic Consequences of the Gaza War


Nouriel Roubini outlines four scenarios for how the conflict could play out and affect markets and the global economy.

Economics & Finance

America’s Real China Problem


Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson shine a light on the institutions underpinning US rivals’ apparent strengths and comparative advantages.
The Oligarchs’ Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power


Sponsored by De Gruyter

The Oligarchs’ Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power

By David Lingelbach and Valentina Rodríguez Guerra

“The book argues oligarchs are opportunists. They seize their big chance during times of turmoil.”
– Financial Times

Innovation & Technology

Preventing AI Nuclear Armageddon


Melissa Parke warns that applying artificial intelligence to weapons systems compounds an already unacceptable risk.

Economics & Finance

Doing Economic Nationalism the Right Way


Dani Rodrik touts East Asian developmentalism as an enduring model for shaping domestic strategies.
PS Longer Reads: The Hidden Gender Wealth Gap

The Hidden Gender Wealth Gap


Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollacdocument an underappreciated form of inequality that threatens to set women back once again.

Politics & World Affairs

Preparing for a Russian Nuclear Meltdown


Bennett Ramberg urges American policymakers to start planning for scenarios in which Vladimir Putin’s regime collapses.

Economics & Finance

An Industrial Strategy for Europe


Daniel Gros explains why the EU needs to look beyond direct subsidies to boost the continent’s tech sector.
PS Big Question: Will the Israel-Hamas War Spread?

Will the Israel-Hamas War Spread?


Comfort EroNegar MortazaviDjavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Sinan Ülgen assess the likely behavior of regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey.

Politics & World Affairs

The Wars of the New World Order


Brahma Chellaney examines the forces and trends that are driving a global geopolitical reckoning.

Economics & Finance

Certain Uncertainty in the US Bond Market


Barry Eichengreen thinks that investors who are piling back into US Treasuries could be in for a rude awakening.
PS Say More: Jayati Ghosh on greedflation, debt, corporate taxation, and more

Jayati Ghosh on greedflation, debt, corporate taxation, and more


Jayati Ghosh argues that advanced-economy rate hikes were unnecessary and damaging, proposes ways to reduce the power of agribusiness, and more.

Innovation & Technology

The Attention Economy Goes to Court


J. Bradford DeLong examines the arguments being put to the test in the antitrust case against Google.

Politics & World Affairs

How Poland Won Back Its Democracy


Maciej Kisilowski highlights five critical factors that propelled the country’s anti-populist opposition to victory.

sábado, 28 de julho de 2018

Welcome to the Chinese World Order: interests, not values - BergGruen Institute (WP)

Weekend Roundup: China is laying the groundwork for a post-American world order
A China-led world order would be based on interests, not values.

Nathan Gardels, Editor in Chief
Visit the WorldPost at http://www.theworldpost.com 
A map of the new Silk Road, connecting Asia to Europe. (Maxiphoto/Getty)
As the United States abandons the postwar multilateral system it once led, China is stepping into the breach, laying the groundwork for a post-American world order.

We are already getting a glimpse of what is to come through China’s various initiatives, ranging from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to the Belt and Road project and the 16+1 group, which is developing Chinese-financed projects in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. China is also seeking to connect a global electricity grid powered by wind and solar as a means to sustain development while fighting climate change.

This new order will not be like the old. At least for now, it is not multilateral but comprised of multiple bilateral relationships linked to the Chinese core. And given China’s “one world, many systems” perspective, it is based not on a convergence of values, but of interests.

President Xi Jinping has cast these initiatives with a positive spin as building “a community of shared future for mankind.” The most cynical critics regard them as a thin fig leaf disguising China’s quest for global dominance and merely a means to find markets for overproduction as its domestic economy slows. Xi’s vision is also clouded by manifold reports of debt overload and kickbacks for corrupt leaders. In Sri Lanka, China has taken over a port it built because Sri Lanka couldn’t afford the debt. The same dynamic seems to be developing in Pakistan and Laos; the new Malaysian government, meanwhile, has put its Chinese-financed rail project on hold, citing corruption and disadvantageous terms negotiated by the previous regime.

There is no mileage in being naive about China’s ambitions and its self-interested motives. But lining up with hostility against China’s initiatives the way Joseph Stalin and his minions did toward the Marshall Plan after World War II — which did wonders for a devastated Europe while also benefiting the United States through purchases of imports from American companies that were required to cross the Atlantic on American merchant ships — is a mistaken course for the West. And let’s not forget that the American expansion of railroads westward in the 19th century also led to a crisis of corruption and over-indebtedness. Despite the turmoil and losses, when it was all sorted out, the result in the end was a connected continent that became a foundation of American prosperity.

Twenty years from now, the same will likely be true of Eurasia and Africa as a result of China’s initiatives, even with all of their faults. That is why, to diminish the downsides, the proper stance would be for the West to join with China’s efforts at global development so that the process is more transparent and less corrupt, with terms that don’t foster debt traps and amount to creditor imperialism. The experience of the “clean, lean and green” AIIB, which many Western nations — though not the United States — have joined, shows that high standards can be imposed if the West is a participant instead of an outsider as the new order is being built.

After all, it is not as if Western nations on their own are going to finance and construct infrastructure around the world. No one needs reminding that the United States has been unable to build a single high-speed rail project anywhere on its vast territory. By and large, it can’t even manage to finance the repair of old infrastructure, much less invest in anything new. The European Union remains mired in deep disagreements about how to manage its own internal finances.

While critics carp from the sidelines, those in need of help are grateful. “When we were faced with financial crisis, amidst the wider challenges of the E.U., China helped us,” Greece’s former prime minister George Papandreou recalled in a recent conversation with me. “China was one of the few nations to buy our sovereign bonds. This was an important vote of confidence. Then China began its investment in the Port of Piraeus, an early investment that is now one of the major components of the new maritime Silk Road. These investments showed great trust in my country’s capacity to overcome the crisis, where few others would.”

In The WorldPost this week, we address these issues of a growing vacuum in the world order and China’s attempt to fill it, for good and for ill.

Ali Wyne sees the demise of the American-led postwar order as less a consequence of President Trump’s wrecking ball and more a victim of its own success. That order, built to avoid another devastating world war among major powers, achieved its goal. Along with an open trading regime, it was this stable absence of global conflict that enabled China’s peaceful rise.

The result of success, Wyne contends, has been a complacency that has eroded the founding urgency that sustained a broad and deep commitment of states and their publics. That makes revitalizing the order a challenge. “The modernization of the world order would ideally result from farsighted diplomacy,” writes Wyne. “It is more likely, though, that policymakers will do little more than push for incremental improvements to an inadequate system” thereby allowing “forces — ranging from external challenges to populist uprisings — to continue testing its foundations. The potential result of indefinite erosion — a vacuum in order, without a coherent alternative to replace it — is unpalatable.”

Noting that the creation of new orders has historically followed upon cataclysmic events like the world wars, Wyne concludes: “In a nuclear age, though, it is terrifying to consider what might have to occur for a new order to emerge.”

To the extent that China is fostering an alternative to the vacuum, Jonathan Hillman doesn’t like what he sees. “The Belt and Road is a masterstroke in geopolitical advertising. Wrapping the effort in Silk Road mythology, Xi is effectively selling a Sino-centric order to the world,” he writes from Budapest. “In practice, the Belt and Road is a sea of bilateral deals between China and participating countries, including many markets where few others dare to go. More than half of the countries participating in the Belt and Road have sovereign debt ratings that are either junk or not graded. China’s emphasis on building big-ticket infrastructure projects resonates with foreign leaders looking to impress at home and establish a legacy.”

For Hillman, this mix of a debt trap with the megalomania of corrupt local autocrats will not spell stability and progress but a costly waste of resources as nations become tributaries beholden to Chinese largesse.

As China extends its influence globally, it will inexorably be drawn into local conflicts, just as the United States was in its period of dominance. “For decades, Beijing refrained from meddling with sovereign nations’ internal affairs,” Denise Hruby writes from Juba, South Sudan, where the China National Petroleum Company owns a 40 percent share of the country’s largest oil fields. “As long as economic ties flourished, it would turn a blind eye toward human rights abuses and corruption. But with increasing investments abroad comes more clout, and as the United States scales back its international commitments, China is emerging as an obvious development partner.”

Hruby reports that while China initially sought a direct role in ending the South Sudan conflict, which threatens its investments, it was soon overwhelmed by the complexity of militia and tribal politics. China fields its largest contingent of U.N. peacekeeping forces there, but it has reverted to a stance that “African problems must have African solutions” and looks to the African Union and other local mediators to resolve the crisis while it stands on the sidelines.

Jeffrey Sachs sees Trump’s effort to staunch China’s newfound influence while abandoning America’s own successful model of development as achieving the opposite of its intent. “American prosperity since World War II has been built upon science and technology breakthroughs spurred by a powerful innovation system linking the federal government, business, academia and venture capital,” he writes. “U.S. innovation policy has been successfully emulated in Europe and Asia, most recently by China. President Trump’s trade war against China aims to slow China’s technology ascent but is misguided and doomed to fail; instead, American prosperity should be assured by doing what America does best: innovating at home and trading with the rest of the world.”
Nathan Gardels, Editor in Chief
Kathleen Miles, Executive Editor 
Dawn Nakagawa, Vice President of Operations
Peter Mellgard, Features Editor 
Alex Gardels, Video Editor 
Clarissa Pharr, Associate Editor 
Rosa O’Hara, Social Editor 

The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post, is an award-winning global media platform that aims to be a place where the world meets. We seek to make sense of an interdependent yet fragmenting world by commissioning voices that cross cultural and political boundaries. Publishing op-eds and features from around the globe, we work from a worldwide perspective looking around rather than a national perspective looking out.

sábado, 4 de abril de 2015

World Order, by Henry Kissinger, reviewed by Otto Ischinger (Foreign Affairs)

Permito-me recomendar, a propósito desta resenha do mais recente livro do Kissinger, meu artigo sobre o mesmo tema:




The World According to Kissinger
How to Defend Global Order
Foreign Affairs,  MARCH/APRIL 2015 ISSUE
How many authors could title their book simply World Order without sounding utterly presumptuous? Henry Kissinger still plays in a league of his own. For admirers and critics alike, he is more than just a former U.S. secretary of state and previous national security adviser. Some see him as the quintessential wise man of U.S. foreign policy; others, as a diehard realpolitiker hanging on to yesterday’s world; and still others, as a perennial bête noire. To all, he remains larger than life. And regardless of how one views Kissinger, his new book is tremendously valuable.
To call World Order timely would be an understatement, for if there was one thing the world yearned for in 2014, it was order. In the Middle East, the Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and allowed jihadist groups to threaten the stability of the entire region. In Asia, an economically resurgent China has grown more assertive, stoking anxiety among its neighbors. In West Africa, the Ebola pandemic has nearly shut down several states. And even Europe, the most rule-bound and institutionalized part of the world, has seen its cherished liberal norms come under direct assault as Russian President Vladimir Putin reclaimed military aggression as an instrument of state policy. 


Even more ominous, the traditional guardians of global order seem to have become reluctant to defend it. Following long, costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States and other Western powers are suffering from intervention fatigue, preferring instead to focus on domestic concerns. And the rising powers have so far proved either unwilling or unable to safeguard international stability. 



Enter Kissinger. A strategist and historian by training, he takes the long view. The core of the book is his exploration of different interpretations of the idea of world order and competing approaches to constructing it. Kissinger opens the book by defining the term “world order” as “the concept held by a region or civilization about the nature of just arrangements and the distribution of power thought to be applicable to the entire world.” As he is quick to point out, any system of this kind rests on two components: “a set of commonly accepted rules that define the limits of permissible action and a balance of power that enforces restraint where rules break down, preventing one political unit from subjugating all others.” 


Kissinger’s world, it turns out, is not just about power derived from economic wealth and military might but also about the power of ideas—although for him, the ideas that matter most are those of the powerful. In his view, traditional notions such as sovereignty and noninterference still reign supreme, having buttressed the international system for almost four centuries. Today that system is very much in flux, however, as powerful actors promote alternative ways to order it, from theocracy to autocratic capitalism to borderless postmodernity. But only the prevailing structure, Kissinger argues, fulfills the two main objectives of world order: legitimacy and a balance of power. Among the book’s many messages, then, perhaps the clearest of all is a warning: do not dispose of an organizing principle if there exists no ready alternative that promises to be just as effective.


WESTPHALIA 2.0 


For Kissinger, today’s international system owes its overall resilience to the astuteness of seventeenth-century European statesmen. The modern state system emerged in 1648 after a century of sectarian conflict, when the bitter Thirty Years’ War brought together representatives of the European powers to establish the Peace of Westphalia. The treaties they concluded codified the idea of sovereign states as the building blocks of international order. A century and a half later, at the Congress of Vienna, in 1814–15, diplomats such as the French envoy Talleyrand and the Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich explicitly spelled out the principle of balance of power as a way of managing the international system. In recounting these events, Kissinger is on his home turf. Although some contemporary historians and political scientists might object to his idealization of Westphalian institutions, one of Kissinger’s gifts is a knack for revealing the relevance of historic structures to present-day politics. 


There are limitations to that exercise, of course: Western ideas about states and politics have been foisted on other regions ever since colonial times, and they still compete with other, older visions of order and power that cannot be ignored. This is particularly true in the Middle East. Thus, the book examines the enduring impact of the Shiite-Sunni schism on the contemporary Muslim world and the emergence of secular states there after the Westphalian system expanded beyond Europe. Today, the regional order—still composed of European-style nation-states—is threatened by transnational political Islam, in the form of both political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadist groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. The latter’s rise illustrates a new danger, according to Kissinger: a “disintegration of statehood into tribal and sectarian units” that risks tipping the region into “a confrontation akin to—but broader than—Europe’s pre-Westphalian wars of religion.” 


Kissinger’s survey of the Middle East also takes in the relationship between the United States and Iran, a rivalry that pits the putative guardian of the liberal world order against a state that has deliberately placed itself outside of that system. Kissinger traces the tradition of Iranian statecraft back to the Persian empire, emphasizing how Iran has always aspired to be more than just a normal state in the Westphalian sense, struggling to “decide whether it is a country or a cause.” This tradition heavily influences multilateral negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Kissinger suggests that the United States should foster cooperative relations with Iran based on the principle of nonintervention. Where constructive diplomacy is not enough, however, the United States should employ balance-of-power politics to cajole Iran into cooperation, using alliances with the region’s Sunni powers as leverage. The outcome 
of Washington’s current attempt at rapprochement with Tehran might determine “whether Iran pursues 
the path of revolutionary Islam or 
that of a great nation legitimately 
and importantly lodged in the 
Westphalian system of states.” 


Asia is another region where Western concepts of world order have long competed with indigenous visions. Even the very idea of an Asian region is itself something of a Western import: prior to the arrival of modern Western powers in the fifteenth century, none of the region’s many languages had a word for Asia, and their speakers shared little sense of belonging to a single continent. Kissinger pays particular attention to China and goes to great lengths to distill the traditional Chinese worldview, which posited that the country was not one power center among many but the “sole sovereign government of the world,” where the Chinese emperor ruled over “all under heaven.” According to Kissinger, the rise of China in the twenty-first century comes with refrains of these traditional views, as Beijing searches for a synthesis between its ancient tradition and its new role “as 
a contemporary great power on the Westphalian model.” He warns that China and the United States hold incompatible views on democracy and human rights but stresses that the two countries share a common interest in avoiding conflict. Indeed, World Order suggests that U.S.-Chinese relations may be less risky than China’s relations with its Asian neighbors. East Asia, he reminds readers, is a region where “nearly every country considers itself 
to be ‘rising,’ driving disagreements 
to the edge of confrontation.” 


RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Kissinger is at his most interesting when considering the country he knows best: the United States. World Order offers some pointed commentary on the current debate in Washington over the United States’ proper role in the world. But Kissinger is no mere pundit, and his analysis rests on a deep exploration of two competing strands of thought that have historically shaped U.S. foreign policy: the pragmatic realism of President Theodore Roosevelt and the liberal idealism of President Woodrow Wilson. 


Although Kissinger sometimes couches his views in abstract terms, it is easy to comprehend what he thinks of President Barack Obama’s critics, who blame the president for not offering enough leadership. Pointing to a number of wars with far-reaching goals that the United States first waged and then had to abandon midstream, Kissinger does not hide his skepticism over idealistic enterprises that fail to recognize the limits of U.S. power, leading to disappointments, if not full-fledged foreign policy disasters. “Critics will ascribe these setbacks to the deficiencies, moral and intellectual, of America’s leaders,” he writes. “Historians will probably conclude that they derived from the inability to resolve an ambivalence about force and diplomacy, realism and idealism, power and legitimacy, cutting across the entire society.”


Even though Kissinger strongly takes the side of restraint in the ongoing tug of war between the Rooseveltian and Wilsonian impulses in U.S. foreign policy, he acknowledges the important role that liberal values play, too. “America would not be true to itself if it abandoned this essential idealism,” he writes. And although he recognizes Washington’s special role as a defender of Western norms, Kissinger also emphasizes that “world order cannot be achieved by any one country acting alone.” The European powers remain the United States’ most natural partners, and Kissinger stresses that they all are best served when they cultivate their relationship, working not only to maximize the overall level of Western influence in world affairs but also to restrain one another’s worst impulses. 


Kissinger is certainly right to warn of the excessive self-righteousness that democracies sometimes demonstrate. But he is perhaps too skeptical of some more recent forms of liberal internationalism. He argues, for example, that the “responsibility to protect” doctrine—which holds that a state forfeits its sovereign right to noninterference if it fails to protect its population from mass atrocities, requiring the international community to act on this population’s behalf—could destabilize the international system. But liberal societies devised this principle in order to prevent ruthless leaders from manipulating and making a mockery of Westphalian norms in their efforts to escape punishment for abusing their own people. On balance, applying the doctrine properly would do more to protect the liberal order than to undermine it.


Although he might take issue with such thinking, Kissinger acknowledges that it will become increasingly difficult for Western democracies to pursue policies that undercut their basic commitment to liberal values. And he points out that long-term stability based on oppression is an illusion, as the Arab revolts of 2011 demonstrated. The coming decades will see plenty of argument over this basic dilemma, as Western powers weigh how much liberalism is too much—or too little.


A WHOLE NEW WORLD?


As far as Kissinger is concerned, nation-states are still the main players in the international system. Neither international institutions nor nonstate actors play an important role in his book. In this view, not all that much has changed since 1814, when the European powers convened in Vienna to forge a sustainable system that, minor outbreaks of violence aside, preserved peace on the continent for a century. Nor is today much different from 1914, when the same major powers drove Europe over the cliff, unleashing a major war that became the first truly global conflict. Kissinger’s notes of caution, repeated throughout the book, serve as a warning for those who think that humanity has nearly overcome the old patterns of power politics and state rivalry.


That message is particularly pertinent for the EU, whose most enthusiastic cheerleaders promote it as the vanguard of a borderless, post-Westphalian world. The EU has without a doubt fundamentally transformed Europe: rising right-wing nationalism notwithstanding, young people in EU states tend to identify with both their home countries and the union as a whole. However, it would be imprudent and dangerous to expect the rest of the world to eagerly follow Europe’s lead. Although regional integration projects are advancing elsewhere, the breadth and depth of the European experience may remain unique. Europe, the birthplace of the Westphalian model, might be ready to move on. But the rest of the world isn’t—and, Kissinger argues, that’s for the best. As he puts it, “Westphalian principles are, at this writing, the sole generally recognized basis of what exists of a world order.”


But Kissinger is fully aware that the international system is influenced by factors other than great-power politics and that there are other powerful sources of order and disorder—most notably the global economy, the environment, and technological change. However, some of these factors take a secondary role in Kissinger’s work. 


The broad reach of globalization and the resulting degree of complex interdependence come with new challenges. For instance, the spread of capitalism and free trade has lifted millions out of poverty but has also generated unsustainable degrees of inequality. And the economic interdependence produced by globalization acts as both a stabilizing and a disruptive force, encouraging growth but also expanding the reach of economic shocks. Such interdependence has changed the politics of coercion, as Western states now commonly use their economic power to force other countries to comply with international rules. This strategy might not always produce good results, but it has brought Iran back to the negotiating table and remains the only option the West has available for pressuring Russia to change course 
in Ukraine. 


World order will also be subject to climate change, a phenomenon that is largely man-made but that lies outside policymakers’ control. It is too late to prevent climate change from affecting the lives of billions of people—a fact that can cut both ways when it comes to global stability. An environmental catastrophe could bring the world together, just as the devastation of World War II compelled countries to forge a more durable international system, create the United Nations, and establish the Bretton Woods institutions, which have functioned fairly well since 1944. Alternatively, a climate crisis could magnify existing tensions, undermine global governance, and further erode the capacity of weak states to responsibly administer their own territories. 


When it comes to technological change, it is obvious that Kissinger does not feel completely comfortable in this brave new world. He recognizes that the Internet has enabled many of the contemporary era’s great achievements, but he faults it for giving rise to a less substantive, more cursory way of thinking about the world’s true complexity. “Knowledge of history and geography is not essential for those who can evoke their data with the touch of a button,” Kissinger writes. “The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.” He likens today’s digital optimists—those who believe that cyberspace can solve the world’s most pressing problems—to the naive Wilsonian idealists of a century ago.


Younger analysts tend to have a different view, of course. And although Kissinger’s skepticism is well intentioned and not unjustified, it is indisputable that new technologies have already fundamentally changed the practice of diplomacy and statesmanship. Today’s diplomats must be prepared to speak to a global audience and to constantly contend with an international media circus. They must be both hard-nosed negotiators and global communicators: tweeting Talleyrands, ready to defend their interests in the real world and the virtual world alike. Most notably, recent cyberattacks and hybrid warfare have demonstrated that cyberspace has already become a battlefield on which familiar concepts such as deterrence and even defense need to be defined anew. 


Kissinger’s secret wish might be to stage a Congress of Vienna for the twenty-first century. And although world politics is complicated by a host of factors that don’t fit easily into the Westphalian model—transnational identities, digital hyperconnectivity, weapons of mass destruction, global terrorist networks—Kissinger is still right to insist that the management 
of great-power relations remains of paramount importance. Indeed, there should not need to be another Thirty Years’ War to provide the impetus for a new Westphalian peace and a world order that is at once legitimate and reflective of the new geopolitical realities. Kissinger’s book is a gift to all of those who care about global order and seek to stave off conflict in the twenty-first century. No one else could have produced this masterpiece.