The apocalyptic vision behind Putin’s ‘golden billion’ - Adam Taylor, Sammy Westfall (The Washington Post)

Mais um pouco de teorias conspiratórias:  

The apocalyptic vision behind Putin’s ‘golden billion’ argument

By Adam Taylor
with Sammy Westfall

The Washington Post, July 22, 2022

The 

Participants gather near a screen showing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who delivers a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17. (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, a two-word phrase sums up the current state of world geopolitics: “golden billion.”Speaking this week in Moscow, Putin declared that the “model of total domination of the so-called golden billion is unfair. Why should this golden billion of all the population on the globe dominate over everyone and impose its own rules of behavior?”

The golden billion “divides the world into first- and second-class people and is therefore essentially racist and neocolonial,” Putin continued Wednesday, adding that “the underlying globalist and pseudo-liberal ideology is becoming increasingly more like totalitarianism and is restraining creative endeavor and free historical creation.”

For most readers in the United States or Europe, a “golden billion” probably means nothing. But in Russia, this phrase has been around for decades as a doom-saying shorthand to describe a future battle for resources between a global elite and Russians. And since February, the Russian government has been deploying the theory to argue that Russia’s isolation after its invasion of Ukraine was not because of its actions — but because of an inevitable global conspiracy against it.

These complaints about inequality may seem rich coming from a man who has led an invasion that could help partially restore an empire, who has clung to power for decades while banishing his biggest opponent to prisonand whose personal wealth was once estimated to be $200 billion. But at least some members of the Russian government seem to sincerely believe in the ethos behind these theories. And it may not just be Russians who find the idea persuasive.

Putin’s vague allusions to a golden billion over recent months obscure a far more conspiratorial history. The phrase comes from an apocalyptic book published in 1990, just as the Soviet era came to a crashing halt. Titled “The Plot of World Government: Russia and the Golden Billion,” the book was written by a Russian publicist named Anatoly Tsikunov under the pen name A. Kuzmich.

Tsikunov described an end-times conspiracy against Russia, with the wealthy Western elite realizing that ecological change and global disaster would see further competition for world resources, ultimately rendering the world uninhabitable for all but a billion of them. This elite realize Russia, with its natural resources, immense mass and northern location, needs to be brought under their control by any means necessary for their own survival.

This thesis was a twist on the widely disputed fears about global overpopulation developed by British cleric Thomas Robert Malthus in the late 18th century. However, it’s been given a modern, Russocentric update. In his 2019 book “Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy After Socialism,” New York University scholar Eliot Borenstein writes that the idea fits into a broader, paranoid history.

The golden billion “gathers together many of the most important tropes of benighted, post-Soviet Russia (the need to defend the country’s natural resources from a rapacious West, the West’s demoralization of Russia’s youth, destruction of Russia’s economy, and destruction of public health) into one compelling narrative, a story combining historical touchstones (the Great Patriotic War) with science and pseudoscience,” Borenstein wrote.

Tsikunov died in unclear circumstances a year after his book was published, only adding to the mystique. But his idea was soon popularized by the anti-liberal Russian intellectual Sergey Kara-Murza, who stripped away its stranger edges and wrote in the later 1990s that the golden billion meant the population of higher-income democracies like those in the OECD or G-7 who consume an unfair proportion of the world’s resources.

More than two decades later, the theory is everywhere in the Russian government. Despite its conspiratorial beginnings, high-ranking Russian officials like former president Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have repeated it in public settings since the Feb. 24 invasion.

“You can proclaim yourself a golden billion as much as you like, but the population on the globe is many times larger, and metals are much more expensive than gold,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said on March 19. That no one would actually refer to themselves as the golden billion seems to be beside the point.

More worrying to some experts is the talk from Nikolai Patrushev, the lesser known but powerful Security Council secretary who is viewed by some as, remarkably, a potential successor of Putin. In an interview with the state-owned newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published in May, Patrushev said the West may talk about “human rights, freedom and democracy,” but secretly it was working toward the doctrine of the golden billion.

Patrushev suggested the coronavirus pandemic could have been orchestrated for the cause and warned that a global economic crisis was being created for “a handful of magnates in the City of London and Wall Street.”

“I fear this smart and driven man actually believes … his analysis of current global events.” Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote on Twitter about the interview.

Even wild theories can have tactical uses. When Putin speaks about a golden billion, he uses it to tie Western exploitation of Africa and Asia recently with the backlash to the conflict in Ukraine. Though Putin has long presented himself as a voice of global conservatism, the righteous anger of anti-colonialism is no doubt a more potent force globally.

“Of course, this golden billion became golden for a reason. It has achieved a lot. But it not only took such positions thanks to some implemented ideas, to a large extent it took its positions by robbing other peoples: in Asia, and in Africa,” Putin said Wednesday. “Indeed, it was like that. Look at how India has been plundered.”

In South Asia, Africa and Latin America, stories of anger against domination and colonialism find a receptive audience. And these are three regions where countries have so far failed to rally behind Western efforts to isolate Moscow.

But the contradictions in Putin’s logic could undermine his story. Another tale of colonialism and domination is playing out now in Ukraine, which Putin has suggested is rightfully Russian land. As The Post’s Robyn Dixon reports, Putin is moving rapidly to annex and absorb the parts of Ukraine it currently holds, “casting himself as a new version of the early-18th-century czar Peter the Great recovering lost territory.”

Many analysts view the root cause of the war not even as Putin’s desires for Russians, but as Putin’s desire for continuing domestic legitimacy. “The war allowed Putin to return to the fore of Russian politics as the person in charge who is irreplaceable,” historian Yakov Feygin wrote this week.

Can this imperial, great man style of politics coexist with apocalyptic, anti-colonial fears of the golden billion? For now, the Kremlin hopes so.

What is China’s, Belt and Road Initiative? - Adam Taylor and Canadian Freedom Institute (The Trade Letter)

 Um artigo que reune informações úteis e também muita paranoia. A China não faz muito diferente do que fizeram os colonialistas europeus e os imperialistas americanos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

What is China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

From Belt and Road to Belt and Noose

Adam Taylor and Canadian Freedom Institute The Trade Letter, July 16. 2021

A lot has changed for China in recent years. A decade ago, virtually every industrialized country was clamouring for deeper trade and investment ties. While globalization officially made China the factory to the world decades earlier, China’s rise was not only viewed as inevitable, it was viewed as a net positive for the world. 

After all, China had shown that embracing open markets and engaging in global trade was good for its economy and lifted hundreds of millions of people literally out of poverty. Buoyed by its growing strength and global influence came what has become known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Let us take a closer look at this strategy, a central plank in China’s foreign policy.

What is it?

At its core, the Belt and Road Initiative is a transportation and infrastructure plan to create a viable economic and trade network between Asia, Africa and Europe. The term Belt and Road was first uttered by China’s President, Xi Jinping, in 2013 at a university in Kazakhstan, which was a refreshed version of the ancient Silk Road that had previously connected various parts of the work.  Overall, the intent is to make massive investments in ports, pipelines, roads, railways, airports and other “gateway” infrastructure that will facilitate trade, foster closer economic integration and strengthen people-to-people ties.

As of January 20021, 140 countries worldwide have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to join the Belt and Road Initiative across Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Central Asia, East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S.-based think tank, China has spent some $200 billion on the initiative to date.  In short, it is a big deal.

What does China hope to achieve?

Optimists (idealists) believe China is simply doing what other countries worldwide are doing: Strengthening trade and investment ties around the world to create economic growth and prosperity. However, skeptics believe it is yet another example of China’s creeping plan for global domination as it seeks to stretch its political, military and economic reach to every corner of the world. No doubt both are correct as the two are not mutually exclusive. 

Why be worried?

In the past few years, it has become abundantly clear that investments made under the BRI come with strings attached, specifically through Chinese government loans. The Center for Global Development has reported that various partner countries are now vulnerable to full-blown debt crises due to high debt loads owed to Beijing.

Moreover, just this week, Montenegro, one of the countries listed in the Center for Global Development report, tried to refinance the $944 USD it borrowed from China with an American or European bank.  Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations quipped on Twitter that the Belt and Road “becomes the Belt and Noose.” He stated further, more seriously, that “Chinese commercial banks are state controlled, and the full dimensions and terms of their lending must be revealed.” He added that this will be a a “huge post Covid issue.” The Ambassador is correct on all counts. 

What is next?

In recent years, China has gone from a country that much of the world hoped would continue to reform to one that has laid bare its ambitions and values, which are not shared with much of the developed world. From unfair trading practices to intellectual property theft to outright human rights violations, the open door policy many countries had for China a decade ago is now seen as naïve. Add the Belt and Road Initiative to the list of supporting evidence that will no doubt continue to grow.

Trump’s silence on Navalny’s alleged poisoning - Adam Taylor (WP)

By Adam Taylor with Ruby Mellen  Email Trump’s silence on Navalny’s alleged poisoning A protester in St. Petersburg last week holds a poster that reads “poison is the weapon of a woman, a coward and a eunuch!” (Elena Ignatyeva/AP) The suspected poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has drawn global condemnation. In the week since the Russian opposition leader fell violently ill on a flight from Siberia, world leaders have issued statements demanding a fair and impartial investigation into the case while pledging support for Navalny and his family. But so far, the leader of the United States has not added his condemnation to the list. Asked about the case last Thursday, President Trump said he would be “looking into it” with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but offered no details. Since then: Crickets. Trump’s silence is easy fuel for his critics, who have long said that he is too weak on Russian President Vladimir Putin after alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. “Any other U.S. President would have condemned the attack immediately,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) tweeted on Wednesday. It has also angered Russian opposition leaders who argue Putin acts with impunity. “There is a historical term for this kind of policy, and that historical term is appeasement,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, an activist and writer who has himself survived two suspected poisonings, told MSNBCover the weekend. The muted presidential response is hardly a surprise, however. From the earliest days of his presidency, Trump has shown little desire to criticize Putin, even when his own officials pushed for sanctions and other reprimands for Moscow. Trump has shown scant sympathy for political activists anywhere in the world, let alone in Russia. After German doctors said Navalny was probably poisoned with a nerve agent this week, the U.S. did finally offer substantial official statements on Tuesday — albeit not from Trump. Pompeo said the United States was “deeply concerned” about the case, while U.S. ambassador to Russia John Sullivan called for an “immediate, comprehensive, and transparent investigation.” There could be more to come. In Moscow this week, Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun warned Russian officials that the U.S. response could be harsher than after the alleged election interference, according to an account from the Russian Foreign Ministry — though State Department accounts of the meeting do not mention the threat. But even such private warnings, if accurate, contrast with the strong public stances of other nations. At a news conference last Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron both said they would support Navalny and offer him asylum. Britain’s Boris Johnson joined the chorus Wednesday by publicly demanding an investigation. “You really have to ask yourself what has gone on here, and I think what we want to see is a full, thorough, transparent investigation into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny,” Johnson later told reporters. The outcry is in part due to Navalny’s stature within the Russian opposition. Trained as a lawyer, he had become one of the most high-profile foes of Putin after investigations into corruption among the Russian president’s allies, snaring high-profile figures like former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. But world leaders are also just exasperated with Russia. Navalny is the latest name in an increasingly long list of Putin foes who are believed to have been targeted with poisoning — still in a coma, it is not certain yet that he will be among those who survive. A little over two years ago, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were hospitalized after being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in their home in Salisbury, England. They survived, but an unrelated woman later died. British authorities were able to convincingly link the poisoning to Russia. The United States joined other nations in a coordinated diplomatic response to the Skripal poisoning, expelling 60 diplomats and later imposing punishing rounds of sanctions on Russia. Some administration officials point to these facts proudly as evidence that the United States is tough on Russia, despite criticism. “No president since Reagan has shown such resolve to Moscow,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post that was published on Aug. 2. The problem with that argument is the president’s own words and actions. Reporting from the New York Times and The Washington Post suggests that Trump personally doubted Russia’s involvement in the Skripal killing, disputing it with members of his intelligence community and then-British Prime Minister Theresa May. Throughout his presidency, Trump has often favored the Kremlin explanation for events. He famously dubbed Russian intervention in the 2016 election a “hoax” and later claimed, without evidence, that it was in fact Putin’s foes in Ukraine who actually interfered. Since last year, he has also lost some of the most high-profile skeptics of Russian power in his administration, ranging from the hawkish, like former national security adviser John Bolton, to the bookish, like former National Security Council staffer and well-respected Russia expert Fiona Hill. The influential foreign policy figures that remain, including Pompeo, are far more focused now on perceived foes like China and Iran or the fight to win a second term in the White House in November — despite recent reports that Moscow may again seek to interfere in the election. This summer, Trump dismissed widespread reports that Russia was placing bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan and largely ignored a Senate report released this month that offered more evidence of collusion between members of his campaign and Russian actors during the 2016 election. The United States has taken a back seat in the ongoing crisis in Russian neighbor Belarus, even as the European Union pushes ahead on sanctions. The Navalny poisoning may be even easier for Trump to dismiss than the Skripal case: Even some seasoned and cynical Russia watchers have doubts that Putin had a direct role in it. Any investigation into the plot will take place on Russian soil, probably under the auspices of authorities loyal to the Kremlin. There are some small signs, however, that international pressure can make a difference. Putin said in a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Wednesday that Russia might be interested in a “thorough and objective” investigation into Navalny’s illness. For Putin, who has never invoked Navalny’s name in public remarks, that is a notable thing to say. Now if only Trump could say it, too.

Corona virus em Hong Kong: lições para os EUA e para o Brasil - Adam Taylor (WP)

By Adam Taylor with Benjamin SolowayThe Washington Post, March 12, 2020  Email

Hong Kong learned from SARS. Can the United States learn from Hong Kong?

Two women wear masks in Hong Kong on March 25, 2003. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

HONG KONG — The traumas of recent history have informed Hong Kong’s response to the current coronavirus pandemic. An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, better known by its acronym SARS, tore through the city in 2003, leaving 299 people dead.

Keiji Fukuda, a U.S. expert on infectious diseases and former assistant director-general for health security at the World Health Organization, told Today’s WorldView that SARS and other outbreaks provided lessons for Hong Kong that it is applying today. “Virtually everybody here has been through the drill,” he said. “They know the consequences.”

As cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, spread around the world, countries including the United States will need to internalize some of those same approaches, Fukuda said. The United States has marked well over 1,000 cases, despite administering a limited number of tests, while Hong Kong, despite its proximity to and interconnections with mainland China, has confirmed only about 120 cases.

The local government recognized the risk early, raised the alarm Jan. 4. The fears soon proved justified. The city logged its first case on Jan. 23 — the same day that China declared a lockdown in Wuhan, the epicenter of the initial outbreak.

Fukuda, now head of the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said the city took the novel coronavirus so seriously in part because many people there were already accustomed to worrying about infectious diseases. “In Hong Kong it is pretty common, even without an outbreak, to see people going around in masks because they may be sick and they don’t want to infect other people,” he said. For many in Hong Kong, the habits that can help control an epidemic are quite common.

That intrinsic level of consciousness may be hard for the United States and other countries to import. “I think there are lessons that the U.S. and other countries can pick up from Hong Kong,” Fukuda said, “but applying them may be difficult.”

Hong Kong made investments to improve its health system after SARS, Fukuda said, funding new measures and building a major infectious disease program at the University of Hong Kong, the school at which he teaches.

An official investigation led to the resignation of the city’s top health official in 2004. This time around, the city government launched a response plan well before confirming any cases. Amid pro-democracy protests, it was willing to take firm measures early on, announcing it would cancel school in late January and pushing citizens to socially distance from each other in public spaces.

The world is adjusting to a new normal. In Asia, some countries are now closing in on two months of severe restrictions on daily life. Beijing has put swaths of China on lockdown. Despite the heavy toll, mainland Chinese officials are now suggesting their tactics should be emulated abroad.

Critics think otherwise, and point to the chaotic Chinese response in the early days of the virus. Fukuda, for his part, sees the lockdown on Wuhan as a crucial move for stopping the virus’ spread, but doubts that similar tactics could work for long in a democracy. “It’s unimaginable for me in the U.S. that you could lock down 50 million people,” he said.

In South Korea, where there are nearly 8,500 confirmed cases, mass testing of more than 10,000 individuals a day has become the norm. One reason South Korea was motivated to test so many so quickly was the memory of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), an outbreak that killed 33 people in 2015, where faulty tests abetted the spread of the virus.

The United States, meanwhile, stumbled in its own efforts to develop a test. Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration, told The Post that it reflected a slow overall reaction. “They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” he said.

Hong Kong was not the only place to react with relative rigor early on. Taiwan and Singapore have been able to keep their numbers low because of surveillance and contract tracing — in some cases raising privacy concerns. All three countries saw deaths from SARS.

“Singapore has been very open about all of it’s cases and has described in detail and in near-real-time it’s epidemiological investigations,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in an email.

There are no quick fixes, and Hong Kong’s response has been far from perfect. Some critics have argued that the Hong Kong government was too slow to impose border restrictions. The full impact of the outbreak remains to be seen, as a second wave of cases in Singapore may show.

Fukuda cautioned that it is hard to compare the actions of a city of about 7 million with a country of more than 300 million. But just as Hong Kong learned from SARS, the United States may have to learn from covid-19.

“The U.S. has probably two of the strongest health institutions in the world,” Fukuda said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, but their funding goes “up and down.” It was unclear who was leading the response, he said, and who was paying for vital measures including tests — which are covered by the government in Hong Kong.

“The virus is moving a lot quicker than the [United States] is going to move,” he said.

Trump and Russia: short of collusion, but obstruction of Justice - The Washington Post

O Wall Street Journal também confirma:

Mueller Report Lays Out Trump’s Attempts to Curtail Inquiry A1

Congress Grapples With What to Do With Mueller Report A1

Russia wanted chaos from Trump. They got it.

Evan Vucci/AP

The report written by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is unequivocal on one of its most important points: Russia sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Donald Trump. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” the 448-page document states early on.

Adam Taylor

The Washington Post, April 18, 2019

The redacted report, released by the Justice Department on Thursday, does not make definitive conclusions in other aspects of its investigation. It did not prove that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in its election interference activities and declined to reach a position on potential obstruction of justice by the president.

And yet, on the case of Russian interference, the report is clear: Russia intended to influence the election. That detail brings up a couple of big questions. First, what did Moscow want from a Trump presidency? Second, did they get what they hoped for?

These are not new questions. But halfway through Trump’s first presidential term, with the U.S.-Russia relationship still in tatters, it’s likely many in Moscow will be revisiting them. Before the release of the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian officialswould read through it before deciding whether they should share it with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It is America that is looking forward to the report’s release but we aren’t,” Peskov told reporters. But if Russian officials want to understand why Trump has failed to turn his sympathetic Russian rhetoric into action, they should read through the report closely.

Putin hoped Trump would revive the U.S.-Russia relationship. He was wrong. U.S. sanctions on Russia, clearly the biggest issue in that relationship, are not only still in place — they have been expanded. The Obama administration first installed these economic restrictions in 2014, following Russia’s support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as the annexation of Crimea.

As a candidate, Trump had suggested he would be open to relaxing sanctions against Russia and perhaps even recognizing Crimea. “We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking,” Trump said in July 2016.

But rather than providing sanctions relief, under the Trump administration more sanctions have been placed on Russia. Some of these sanctions were put in place in direct response to the allegations of U.S. election interference. Others are broader: Last year, Washington implemented further sanctions due to Russia’s “malign activity around the globe.”

In total, 700 Russian people and companies are currently targeted by U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, the United States has not recognized Russian control of Crimea. Instead, it has codified its position that the peninsula is part of Ukraine with the Crimea Declaration of July 25, 2018. And the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era decision to not provide lethal weapons to the conflict and began supplying antitank missiles to Ukraine.

Trump has also been a vocal critic of European nations who sought to get oil from Russia through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last July.

“Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,” Trump said last year. As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted last year, that isn’t quite accurate: Trump often distances himself from policies that target Russia. But it is true that his administration is tough on Russia — perhaps tougher than any in the post-Cold War era.

Is there a bright side to a Trump presidency for Russia? Some critics say that Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces arms treaty with Russia this year was a win for Putin. Yes, perhaps, but it doesn’t match sanctions relief. Trump’s criticism of NATO and other U.S. alliances, as well as his wishes to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, are clearly in line with Russian thinking; they’re also inconclusive so far.

Trump remains preternaturally inclined toward praising Putin and often undermines his administration’s Russia policy. Last year, as he met Putin in Finland, he cast doubt upon his own intelligence agencies and suggested that the United States was partially to blame for the poor relationship with Russia. “I think that the United States has been foolish,” he said. “I think we’ve all been foolish.”

But the Mueller report helps explain why Trump’s rhetoric is so far from his actual policy. In the document, we see evidence of fumbles and failures, not necessarily of a grand conspiracy to collude with Russia. The campaign expected to benefit from information released by Russia, but, as Mueller notes, Russian offers of assistance often had trouble getting through.

A Russian proposal for a peace plan in Ukraine was conveyed to Paul Manafort, a Trump campaign adviser and later campaign chairman, but it is unclear if it ever reached Trump; it was never acted upon and Manafort resigned months ahead of the election. Russia’s main point of contact for proposed sanctions relief, Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s national security adviser, left Trump’s orbit after lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russian diplomats.

At points, this chaotic approach seems to have inadvertently benefited the Trump clan. In the case of the Trump Tower meeting that Donald Trump Jr. attended in June 2016, ignorance of the law may be the only reason it wasn’t illegal. Mueller also notes that Trump ordered his staff to undertake many actions that could have been obstruction of justice: They often didn’t do it, potentially saving their boss from legal peril.

Meanwhile, scrutiny of Trump’s links to Moscow may have hemmed in his ability to make concessions in Russia’s favor. The American president may be willing to make big, bold decisions in other aspects of foreign policy, but he recognized the danger Mueller’s investigation posed to him. (“I’m fucked,” is how Trump put it, according to the special counsel’s report.)

Perhaps that’s why the Kremlin isn’t keen to read Mueller’s report. Its intervention in American politics has provided no clear upside: Many Americans feel that the Trump candidacy has made their country weaker. Russians may feel the same.

Russia contesta anexacao da RDA pela RFA em 1989: back to the future - Adam Taylor (WP)

Em primeiro lugar, a Duma da Rússia não tem nada a ver com um evento que ocorreu em outro país, num momento em que a Rússia não existia como Estado soberano no plano internacional, pois ela era uma república federada da União Soviética, hoje (felizmente) desaparecida.
Em segundo lugar, eles poderiam se ocupar de coisas mais importantes do que fazer girar para trás a roda da História, como disse Marx no Manifesto Comunista.
Em terceiro lugar, quem decidiu foi o povo da RDA, ou os alemães do leste, que estavam cansados de comer repolho, calçar botinas soviéticas e andar naquele fabuloso carro que se chamava Trabant.
Eles votaram com os pés, quebrando muros e cercas, e unificando as duas partes da Alemanha indiferentes ao que pensavam os dirigentes. O chanceler alemão à época, Helmut Kohl, até pagou, e muito, aos soviéticos, para eles deixarem o território da RDA e levarem os seus tanques e mísseis de volta. De mais a mais, Kohl também efetuou uma conversão do OstMark muito favorável aos habitantes da finada RDA, pois a taxa de câmbio real era muito mais baixa.
Talvez os russos de hoje não gostem do fim da Guerra Fria, mas eles vão precisar entrar na De Lorean do filme Back to the Future, para mudar os eventos de 1989.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

WorldViews

Russia’s bizarre proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1989 ‘annexation’ of East Germany

By Adam Taylor January 28 at 2:58 PM

An East German border policeman hands a flower back to West Berlin citizens sitting on the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 10, 1989. (Michael Probst/Reuters)

 

Russian lawmakers will consider a new statement that would condemn an event that happened 25 years ago – the reunification of Germany.
According to Russian news agency Tass, State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin has asked the Duma's Committee on Foreign Affairs to look into condemning the "annexation" of East Germany by West Germany in 1989.
Given the time that's passed and the relative success of German reunification, the idea has struck many as absurd: Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union in 1989, called it "nonsense"  Wednesday. Similar outlandish statements have been made by Russian lawmakers recently – last year, one proposed a ban on high heels, for example.
However, this proposal can't be as easily dismissed: Naryshkin is an ally of President Vladimir Putin and it seems unlikely he would have made such a bold statement without the Russian leader's approval.
And while the events it concerns may be long in the past, the motivation is likely the present. The plan was originally put forward by Nikolay Ivanov, a Communist Party lawmaker, who has argued that the reunification of Germany was insufficiently democratic. "Unlike Crimea, a referendum was not conducted in the German Democratic Republic," Ivanov was quoted as saying, referring to the region of Ukraine that broke away to join Russia last year after a disputed referendum.
Russia and Germany have an important, if complicated, relationship. Chancellor Angela Merkel is perhaps the closest Western leader to Putin – she grew up in East Germany, and – like Putin, who served with the KGB in Dresden –  can speak both German and Russian. However, Merkel has been a prominent voice supporting sanctions on Russia after actions in Ukraine, and the relationship has been strained. Merkel famously told President  Obama that the Russian leader was living "in another world."
Ivanov pointed to comments made by the Luxembourgian president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Anne Brasseur, who had accused Russia of annexing Crimea, and said his proposal was a "form of a retaliatory step." Merkel herself had also recently condemned Russia for its actions in Crime. “The annexation of Crimea is a violation of something that has made up our peaceful coexistence, namely the protection of borders and territorial integrity,” Merkel said last week in Davos, Switzerland.
Even if the proposal is just bluster, a direct comparison between the two events does seem a little hard to make. The reunification of Germany occurred after Hungary removed its border fence, allowing thousands of East Germans escape  to the West, and eventually helped to topple the Berlin wall. After large protests, the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) later held free and fair elections in 1990, which led to the formation of a pro-reunification government that signed an agreement to dissolve East Germany and join with the West.
Meanwhile, Crimea followed violence in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the mysterious arrival of the "little green men" widely assumed to be Russian troops. A rushed referendum was held with these troops in town, which produced overwhelmingly pro-Russian results.
As Gorbachev put it, the times are different. "You can't make judgments about what happened in another era, 25 years ago, from current-day conditions," the former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union told Interfax. "What referendum could have been held while hundreds of thousands of people rallied both in the GDR and the FRG [the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany], the only motto being 'We are one nation?' "

Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.