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.

Mostrando postagens com marcador Anthony Faiola. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Anthony Faiola. Mostrar todas as postagens

quinta-feira, 17 de março de 2022

Os efeitos políticos da guerra nos países do Ocidente - Anthony Faiola (WP)

Nosso colega e amigo Guilherme Casarões está citado nesta matéria do grande jornalista Anthony Faiola. 

sexta-feira, 11 de fevereiro de 2022

Ucrânia: a diplomacia do megafone de Joe Biden - Anthony Faiola (WP)

 O presidente Joe Biden parece um locutor de partida de futebol: todos os dias ele irradia os segredos mais sensíveis capturados pela Inteligência americana sobre os movimentos da tropas russas, de forma a que o Putin fique sabendo que todos os seus passos estão sendo cientificamente observados.

Não haverá nenhuma surpresa, assim, se a invasão se efetivar: tudo terá sido observado, previsto e ANUNCIADO pelo grande locutor de jogos de guerra Joe Biden. Talvez seja uma tática interessante...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Why the Biden administration is being so public about the Russian threat in Ukraine

President Biden at the White House on Feb. 7. (Al Drago/The New York Times/Bloomberg News/Bloomberg)

President Biden at the White House on Feb. 7. (Al Drago/The New York Times/Bloomberg News/Bloomberg)

The Biden administration’s warnings of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have taken on the feeling of the Weather Channel tracking a hurricane. Since U.S. officials first bannered the gathering strength of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces at the border more than three months ago, they’ve repeated the threat with escalating alarm. Last week, new U.S. assessments emerged that Russian combat firepower had reached 70 percent of the gale force needed for a full-scale Category 5 assault. The Russian storm, the United States concluded, could overwhelm Kyiv, Ukraine, within two days, leaving as many as 50,000 civilians dead or wounded.

Few things in geopolitical crises are more sensitive than intelligence. And yet, from the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, the Biden administration has been extraordinarily vocal about U.S. knowledge of Russian movements, tactics and planning. One analyst dubs it “Biden’s megaphone strategy.” Others say you need to go back years to find a similar crisis where a U.S. administration has shared this much information with this level of specificity this quickly.

“This is unprecedented, even going back to before my professional life,” said John E. Herbst, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine between 2003 and 2006, told me. “Maybe you could compare it to the [1962] Cuban missile crisis … [or] the build up to war in Iraq.”

 

There can be strategic reasons for being tight-lipped. Too much detail can compromise intelligence assets and risk future access to information. But there’s another big reason for discretion. Intelligence gathering and processing is more art than science, a tapestry of secrets held together by analytical assumptions. Intelligence can be — and often is — spun, and can be — and often is — wrong. The textbook example: U.S. warnings of Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, which were both spun by the Bush administration, as well as wrong.

That doesn’t mean U.S. assessments are off now — or that the Russian bear won’t claw its way into Ukraine. In fact, so far, the sense of Herbst and others is that the administration has gotten this right.

The administration has also been increasingly clear about what it doesn’t know: Whether Putin has made the critical decision to actually invade. That finer point came into focus after an exasperated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried Washington’s breathless warnings for causing “panic.” Last week, the White House backtracked on using the word “imminent” to describe the prospect of a Russian attack.

Some argue the administration is erring on the side of caution because it is sensitive to its foreign policy failures over the past year, particularly the sense that the U.S. government defense apparatus completely miscalculated the speed of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, which led to a messy withdrawal and broad recriminations.

That doesn’t mean its warnings are being taken at face value. As it borders on oversharing — President Biden even said a “minor” Russian incursion would be tolerated in a gaffe that had the ring of candor — the administration is in a jam over the credibility of U.S. intelligence and the reliability of its disclosures.

 

That distrust went on full display last week, when the administration outlined a deep fake operation allegedly being weighed by the Russians as a pretext for invasion, and for which the Ukrainians would be falsely blamed. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters about the production of a Russian video with “graphic scenes of false explosions — depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners and images of destroyed locations or military equipment — entirely fabricated by Russian intelligence.”

Tough questions from reporters ensued.

“Where is the declassified information?” Matthew Lee of the Associated Press asked.

“I just delivered it,” Price said.

“No, you made a series of allegations,” Lee responded.

“The exchanges were … a sign of increased skepticism of the Biden administration when it comes to intelligence and military matters, particularly after officials failed to anticipate how swiftly the Afghan government would fall to the Taliban last year and initially defended a U.S. missile attack in Kabul as a ‘righteous strike’ before the Pentagon confirmed the action had killed several civilians but no terrorists,” ruled Chris Megerian of the Associated Press.

But many observers say the administration is tactically smart to get out in front of any Russian operation in precisely the way it’s doing.

Overwhelming disclosure has enabled Washington to present a highly public case for a real and present danger, narrowing the daylight between the U.S. and European allies on decisions for high sanctions for Putin that could ultimately serve as a successful deterrent to invasion. Differences between allies on a coordinated response no doubt still exist — but even the reluctant Germans are beginning to talk tougher.

And if Putin had hoped for a stealth attack, he now has the eyes of the world watching.

“The Biden administration has waged a campaign of deterrence in what the Russians sometimes call the 'information space,’ ” wrote The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. “To mobilize allies, U.S. officials have shared sensitive intelligence about Russia’s moves; when they’ve detected Russian plots, they’ve disclosed them. These aggressive tactics have checked Russia’s usual advantages of surprise and stealth.”

“Radical transparency” may be the best way to deal with Putin’s dark tactics.

“Russia’s hybrid war is based on sowing confusion and disinformation,” Richard Gowan, an International Crisis Group analyst, told Spanish newspaper El Pais. “By adopting radical transparency, the U.S. is complicating Russia’s task of disseminating disinformation about its actions. The Russians have tried to ignore or dismiss the accusations, but they have also had to go on the defensive in public. And this extreme transparency also makes things easier for Washington when it comes to keeping NATO’s allies more or less united.”

Still, the decision to play this one anything but close to the vest harbors risks. For one, if it is a bluff, then calling Putin on it might trigger action he never intended. “This megaphone diplomacy could make it complicated for Putin to do nothing,” Gowan added. “Now it will be harder for him to back off without a certain sense of humiliation.”

Another risk: That Russian troop movements are simply a ruse to capture the West’s attention, ice Ukraine’s hopes of ever joining NATO, test the will of the United States and Europe, and force a dialogue over its claimed security concerns.

“What if this diplomatic show was exactly what Putin wanted out of his move?” wrote Foreign Policy columnist Caroline de Gruyter. “What if the West played into his hands by trying to deter him? What if the West actually fell into his carefully laid trap?”

If there is no invasion, the United States and Europe could still be dragged into a long, diplomatic morass over Ukraine’s future that will suck time and energy from other important global affairs.

But that’s still better than war, which the administration could claim to have headed off by calling Putin out — or at least say it tried if he does invade.

“The downside is not so high. If it doesn’t happen, everyone will be saying ‘Thank God it didn’t happen,’ ” Herbst said. “I actually believe it’s highly unlikely the Russians will do a major operation, and less than 50 percent of something minor. But I believe that is because the Biden administration has been solid on this.”

quarta-feira, 2 de fevereiro de 2022

Sanções contra a Rússia, contra Putin? Not so easy, como indica Anthony Faiola (WP)

 Eu recomendaria que os interessados lessem "Putin's Kleptocracy" de Karen Dawisha. Um livro impressionante...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Why it’s not so easy to slap sanctions on Vladimir Putin

Businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin serves food to Vladimir Putin during dinner at Prigozhin's restaurant outside Moscow in November 2011. (Misha Japaridze/AP)

Businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin serves food to Vladimir Putin during dinner at Prigozhin's restaurant outside Moscow in November 2011. (Misha Japaridze/AP)

In the amped-up war of words between Washington and Moscow, President Biden has leveled what appears to be a next-level threat: If Russian troops defy the West and surge into Ukraine, the United States could slap personal sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

An increasingly common U.S. tactic, individual sanctions can ban travel and freeze assets in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans and U.S. companies from transactions with designees, targeting everything from New York bank accounts to family trips to Disney World. They can also have global reach through foreign banks and companies that fear running afoul of U.S. law.

Pushing back against Biden’s threat, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said direct action against Putin would be “politically destructive” to U.S.-Russian ties — but not “painful” for his boss.

 

He might be right.

Broader U.S. sanctions against Russia could indeed sting. The New York Times reported that U.S. officials are prepared to take a “sledgehammer” to Russia’s financial system by targeting state banks and cutting off foreign lending, sales of sovereign bonds and technologies for critical industries, among other steps. Sanctions on that scale aimed at a country the size of Russia are novel and risk disruptions to the global financial system as well as Russian retaliation. European allies, dependent on Russian energy to light Berlin, Paris and Rome, may also be reluctant to join in. But if fully imposed, such sanctions could serve as serious punishment for Russian transgression.

Sanctions targeting Putin himself might be more difficult to make count. For one, to even consider freezing his assets, you’d have to know where they are. And Putin has buried his wealth better than any James Bond villain.

“Putin doesn’t have an account at JPMorgan Chase,” Eugene Rumer, a Russian expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “There’s a lot of talk about him being the richest man in the world with a fortune in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But I’ve never seen any credible proof of that fortune, or where he keeps it. And I don’t think Putin was planning on buying a condo for retirement in Sunny Isles, Florida.”

Forbes recently described Putin’s alleged fortune as “probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting — harder than the heirs, other heads of state and even drug lords that we’ve financially smoked out over the years.” Theories run the gambit: That he’s built an empire by demanding cuts from Russian oligarchs, or illicit financial deals or contract kickbacks.

 

But they’re all just theories. Meanwhile, his stated assets are relatively meager. Bloomberg News reported that a Kremlin declaration of Putin’s earnings claims his income to be roughly $131,000 a year. His declared assets? “A 77-square-meter apartment, an 18-square-meter garage, two vintage Volga GAZ M21 cars, a Lada Niva SUV and a trailer” — all of them in Russia and out of U.S. reach.

“The reality is that there are probably few people other than Putin who know how much loot he has and where he keeps it,” wrote Bloomberg News’s Timothy L. O’Brien. “That will make it difficult to figure out which financial switch to flip to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, or to penalize Putin personally if it does.”

One of the more outlandish possibilities: That Putin actually isn’t as rich as one might think because his awesome powers at home don’t require a fortune to rule.

“In the end, Putin may not need money, so long as he has the appearance of having it and the power that it would otherwise confer,” Forbes Wealth Team mused.

Few believe governments — even U.S. allies — that do business with Russia would agree to steps that turn Putin into a global pariah barred from summits or business events.

“The Europeans are not going to stop him from coming, and the Chinese will welcome him with open arms, so I’m not sure how a travel ban could work,” Rumer said. “Putin is not the kind of leader who goes to Disneyland. If he wanted to, he’d just have one built in Moscow.”

It’s relatively rare for the United States to impose sanctions on a sitting head of state, but it’s happened before — including 1,300 miles off the coast of Florida where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro goes to bed at night as the sitting global leader perhaps most targeted by Washington’s wrath.

In 2017, the U.S. government added Maduro to a list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who faced asset freezes and bans on U.S. citizens doing business with them. Since then, federal authorities in Florida have seized from Venezuelan officials and government-linked business executives more than $450 million in assets — including Miami condos, superyachts and show horses. “But they didn’t seem to find any of Maduro personal assets,” Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, told me.

A further step not seen as an imminent possibility with Putin hurt Maduro more: His indictment in 2020 by the U.S. Justice Department on narcoterrorism charges, including a $15 million bounty for information leading to his capture. Since then, Maduro’s rare official foreign trips have been confined to friendly nations including Cuba and Mexico.

The White House on Monday signaled what could be a more likely — and damaging — play than going directly after Putin: Targeting figures “in or near the inner circle of the Kremlin.”That could include barring children of certain Russian elites from attending prestigious universities in the United States and Europe, the New York Times reported. The targeted Russians could be closer to Putin than those slapped with U.S. sanctions in the past, and reportedly could include Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast alleged to have been romantically involved with the Russian leader.

The United States and Europe have already placed sanctions on more than 800 Russian individuals over Russian aggression, including the annexation of Crimea, attempted assassinations of dissidents and disruptions of U.S. elections. A Post report in October illustrated how those sanctions triggered losses that spread across their interconnected financial networks.

The theory: To get to Putin, you make the rich people close to him uncomfortable — striking personal blows to their business affairs and lavish lifestyles.

There is little question such sanctions hurt. But when it comes to compelling those leaders to change course, or, in the most extreme cases, provoking regime change, individual sanctions sometimes have limited purpose.

For instance, the targeting of Maduro’s inner circle has not worked.

Sure, they’re unhappy: I have sat in Caracas with U.S.-sanctioned individuals close to and within the Maduro government. They bitterly complained about their shrinking worlds, and the personal price they’ve paid because of U.S. sanctions.

But in recent years, only one senior Venezuelan official close to Maduro and sanctioned by the United States has actually defected, and Maduro’s grip on power is tighter now than ever. And Putin commands far more formidable powers of persuasion than the Venezuelan leader.

In fact, some argue that cutting key figures in authoritarian regimes off from the West can make them even more reliant on the authoritarians they serve.

“I think for those on the individual sanctions list, it’s an annoyance,” Ramsey said. “But it can also create incentives that can be counterproductive.

sexta-feira, 21 de janeiro de 2022

How far would the United States go to back Ukraine? - Anthony Faiola (WP)

 

By Anthony Faiola 
with Sammy Westfall
 Email
The Washington Post, January 20, 2022  

How far would the United States go to back Ukraine?

Ukrainian soldiers launch a U.S.-supplied Javelin missile during military exercises in Ukraine's Donetsk region on Dec. 23, 2021. (AP)

Ukrainian soldiers launch a U.S.-supplied Javelin missile during military exercises in Ukraine's Donetsk region on Dec. 23, 2021. (AP)

The risk of war in Europe is rising. A blitz of diplomacy has failed to defuse fears of a Russian invasion in Ukraine, whose pro-Western government is sounding the alarm that Moscow has “almost completed” a menacing troop buildup on the country’s eastern frontier. A strike would force Washington and European allies to move from deterrence to action.

But how far is the West willing to go to defend Ukraine?

U.S. officials have warned of a possible Russian invasion for weeks. Espousing a vision of Russia and Ukraine as “one nation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding a promise that its neighbor will never join NATO. Defending the right to self-determination, the Biden administration has refused such a pledge. Russia continues to deny a pending assault. But on Wednesday, President Biden predicted Putin would “move in” on Ukraine because, after all of his saber-rattling, “he has to do something.”

 

Biden on Wednesday suggested the Western response would depend on the level of Russian intervention, before clarifying Thursday that the United States would not accept even a “minor incursion.” What a “war” could look like runs the gambit: Cyberattacks on Kyiv (which have already begun, though by actors as yet undetermined). Missile strikes. A limited occupation of the Donbas region — a part of Ukraine in the grips of Russian-backed separatists for years. The worst case scenario: A full-on march on Kyiv.

Biden has ruled out American troops going head to head with the Russians, a response that risks escalation between nuclear powers. Threats of reprisals have instead centered on sanctions. Yet, with Europe dependent on Russian gas, doubts linger about how far key partners, particularly Germany, would be willing to go. And even if Moscow were slapped with biting sanctions, they tend to inflict sustainable wounds. Just ask Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, whose regime has withstood some of the harshest possible U.S. sanctions and came out stronger by tapping a rogues gallery of alternative financial partners in Moscow, Tehran, Ankara and Beijing.

But talk is growing of a combined response in the event of an invasion that could mix economic pain with a higher cost for Putin on the battlefield in the form of a U.S.-backed, pro-Western Ukrainian insurgency. The roughly $2.5 billion in U.S. aid committed to Ukraine since 2014 has focused on defensive weaponry, including Javelin antitank missiles, retired Coast Guard cutters, armored Humvees, radios and communications equipment. The United States has also helped to train Ukrainian special forces.

But Washington is signaling that an invasion could be a game changer, potentially bringing a host of new assistance, resources and weaponry for guerilla-style warfare in parts of Ukraine the Russians seize, and turning Putin’s incursion there into an Afghanistan-like quagmire.

The Post’s David Ignatius wrote last month that the Biden administration was weighing “ways to provide weapons and other support to the Ukrainian military to resist invading Russian forces — and similar logistical support to insurgent groups if Russia topples the Ukrainian government and a guerrilla war begins.”

 

Last week, Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that help could involve training in NATO eastern flank countries including Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Beyond logistical support and weapons, Cooper wrote, the United States and NATO allies could also supply medical equipment, services and even sanctuary during Russian offensives.

“In discussions with allies, senior Biden officials have also made clear that the CIA (covertly) and the Pentagon (overtly) would both seek to help any Ukrainian insurgency,” Cooper wrote.

As the specter of war grows, military aid to Ukraine is already ramping up. The Biden administration on Wednesday announced an additional $200 million in defensive military aid. That came after Britain this week said it had begun shipping antitank weapons to Ukraine to help it boost defenses. “They are not strategic weapons and pose no threat to Russia,” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Parliament. “They are to use in self-defense.”

But a Russian invasion appears set to compel the West to send more, and broader, firepower: “I think that we’re talking about trying to take the edge or deter a Russian mostly conventional ground offensive,” Peter Zwack, former U.S. Army brigadier general and former defense attache to the Russian Federation, told NPR this week. “And for that, the Ukrainians would need more Javelin antitank missiles.”

They would need surface-to-air missiles such as Stingers, he said: “They need to be able to knock down, threaten Russian air support.”

Going further requires a certain calculus.

Several European countries are unlikely to back an insurgency, stoking divisions among allies.

Moscow has also signaled an aggressive response, threatening military deployments to Cuba and Venezuela. U.S.-backed insurgencies also have no great track record — think Nicaragua, Syria and many more.

Yet the goal might not be victory but, rather, punishment: To ratchet up the cost to Putin of a Ukrainian adventure. Seth Jones, director of International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that punishment could be a prolonged insurgency that grinds away at the Russian military. To make that happen, he calls for a “Twenty-First Century Lend-Lease Act” led by the United States to provide Ukraine with war materiel at no cost. Priority items, he writes, would be the needs of a military involved in sustained combat, including air defense, antitank, and anti-ship systems; electronic warfare and cyber defense systems; small arms and artillery ammunition; spare vehicle parts; petroleum; rations and medical support.

James Nixey, director of the Russia-Eurasia program at London-based Chatham House, told me that the Ukrainians — better trained and equipped than when Russia’s “little green men” moved into Donbas nearly a decade ago — are likely to put up far more of a fight than the Russians encountered during their crushing blow to Georgia in 2008.

Western assistance in a guerilla-style war could amp up the pressure. Ukrainians would pay the highest price.

But Putin “will also not be able to hide all of those body bags,” Nixey said.

sexta-feira, 17 de dezembro de 2021

Erdogan, o sultão está nu, dizem seus opositores - Anthony Faiola (The Washington Post)

Um antigo correspondente na América Latina se ataca a um típico ditador latino-americano, com a peculiaridade dele ser turco...

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