Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
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.
(From left to right): Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany. German Federal Archives/Wikimedia Commons
Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will “never accept” any decisions in talks without its participation to end Russia’s three-year war in the country.
A decision to negotiate the sovereignty of Ukrainians without them – as well as US President Donald Trump’s blatantly extortionate attempt to claim half of Ukraine’s rare mineral wealth as the price for ongoing US support – reveals a lot about how Trump sees Ukraine and Europe.
But this is not the first time large powers have colluded to negotiate new borders or spheres of influence without the input of the people who live there.
Such high-handed power politics rarely ends well for those affected, as these seven historical examples show.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (centre) arriving in Riyadh for the US-Russia talks over Ukraine.Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service handout/EPA
1. The Scramble for Africa
In the winter of 1884–85, German leader Otto von Bismarck invited the powers of Europe to Berlin for a conference to formalise the division of the entire African continent among them. Not a single African was present at the conference that would come to be known as “The Scramble for Africa”.
Among other things, the conference led to the creation of the Congo Free State under Belgian control, the site of colonial atrocities that killed millions.
Germany also established the colony of German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), where the first genocide of the 20th century was later perpetrated against its colonised peoples.
How the boundaries of Africa changed after the Berlin conference.Wikimedia Commons/Somebody500
2. The Tripartite Convention
It wasn’t just Africa that was divided up this way. In 1899, Germany and the United States held a conference and forced an agreement on the Samoans to split their islands between the two powers.
This was despite the Samoans expressing a desire for either self-rule or a confederation of Pacific states with Hawai'i.
As “compensation” for missing out in Samoa, Britain received uncontested primacy over Tonga.
German Samoa came under the rule of New Zealand after the first world war and remained a territory until 1962. American Samoa (in addition to several other Pacific islands) remain US territories to this day.
3. The Sykes-Picot Agreement
As the first world war was well under way, British and French representatives sat down to agree how they’d divide up the Ottoman Empire after it was over. As an enemy power, the Ottomans were not invited to the talks.
Together, England’s Mark Sykes and France’s François Georges-Picot redrew the Middle East’s borders in line with their nations’ interests.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement ran counter to commitments made in a series of letters known as the Hussein-McMahon correspondence. In these letters, Britain promised to support Arab independence from Turkish rule.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement also ran counter to promises Britain made in the Balfour Declaration to back Zionists who wanted to build a new Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine.
The agreement became the wellspring of decades of conflict and colonial misrule in the Middle East, the consequences of which continue to be felt today.
Work is under way to make all men in Poland undergo military training, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
In a speech to the Polish parliament, Tusk said the government aimed to give full details in the coming months.
Efforts are being made to "prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland," he told the Sejm.
"We will try to have a model ready by the end of this year so that every adult male in Poland is trained in the event of war, so that this reserve is comparable and adequate to the potential threats."
Tusk said the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million and he wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 now.
"We're talking about the need to have an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists," he said.
"It seems if we organise things wisely, and I'm talking constantly with the Minister of Defence, we will have to use several courses of action. That means the reservists, but also intensive training to make those who do not go into the army fully-fledged and competent soldiers during a conflict," he added.
Tusk said women may also undergo military training, but "war, is still to a greater extent the domain of men".
The prime minister said his government was also "carefully examining" France's proposal to include Europe under its nuclear umbrella.
"I would like to know first of all in detail what it means in terms of the authority over these weapons," he said.
"Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal, that is beyond doubt. In any case the road to that would be very long and there would have to be a consensus too," he said.
Poland is already planning to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence this year, the highest proportion in the Nato alliance.
Tusk told parliament that spending should increase to 5% of GDP.
Earlier, President Duda proposed amending the constitution to make defence spending at a level of 4% of GDP compulsory
The prime minister also said he supports Poland withdrawing from the Ottawa convention that bans the use of antipersonnel landmines, and also possibly from the Dublin convention that bans the use of cluster munitions.
Poland has ramped up defence spending since Russia's full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.
It has signed arms contracts worth around $20bn (£15.5bn) with the United States to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 32 F-35 jets, 96 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles, and artillery rocket systems.
Warsaw has also signed contracts with South Korea to purchase K2 tanks and FA-50 light combat aircraft.
There is growing anxiety among Poles about their future security following US President Donald Trump's decision to suspend military supplies to Ukraine. Most Poles believe supporting Ukraine is in their own security interests.
Mirosław Kaznowski, the deputy mayor of Milanówek, a small town outside Warsaw, told BBC News this week that a friend of his has decided to invest in a start-up to build low-cost underground bomb shelters for businesses and homes.
