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Mostrando postagens com marcador EUA-China. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador EUA-China. Mostrar todas as postagens

quarta-feira, 24 de novembro de 2021

A nova Guerra Fria, desta vez EUA contra China - Maya Kandel (Montaigne)


La politique étrangère de Biden se précise, la Seconde Guerre froide aussi

Maya Kandel

Institut Montaigne, Paris - 19.11.2021

 

Redéfinition des priorités régionales, multilatéralisme rénové, mise à jour des partenariats, sommet avec Pékin : la politique étrangère de Biden se précise, y compris dans sa dimension "pour les classes moyennes" qui semblait jusqu’ici surtout tenir du slogan. Comme sur le plan intérieur avec la loi d’infrastructures, considérée comme l’un des plans les plus ambitieux de l’histoire moderne américaine, l’administration Biden a engrangé plusieurs avancées de politique étrangère ces dernières semaines. Mais comme sur le plan intérieur, elle peine à capitaliser sur ses succès face à une popularité en berne. Après un premier volet sur la politique intérieure, ce billet se penche sur les progrès de l’agenda international de Biden. 

L’automne a d’abord délivré les premiers succès de la "politique étrangère pour les classes moyennes". Cette approche, définie par l’équipe Biden en réponse à la victoire de Donald Trump en 2016, semblait tenir du slogan de campagne ; elle se concrétise aujourd’hui autour d’un partenariat transatlantique rénové. À cet égard, la série automnale de sommets européens a constitué une mise en pratique de cette politique étrangère destinée à "donner des résultats pour les citoyens", traduction internationale du slogan démocrate "Build Back Better". 

L’accord sur la taxation plancher des multinationales a ainsi été entériné au G20, une victoire pour l’équipe Biden même s’il reste encore à mettre en œuvre cet engagement : la symbolique est forte, avec le ralliement de 140 pays qui représentent plus de 90 % du PIB mondial. Fruit des efforts diplomatiques de la secrétaire au Trésor, Janet Yellen, cet accord est aussi un cas d’école de l’intérêt pour le président américain de faire de la politique intérieure en utilisant la politique étrangère, puisqu’il n’avait pu faire passer cet aspect de son programme au Congrès en raison de l’opposition unanime des Républicains et de quelques Démocrates additionnels.

Autre traduction pratique de la "politique étrangère pour les classes moyennes", l’accord sur l’acier et l’aluminium signé avec l’Union européenne (UE). Il met fin au différend hérité de Trump, autre dossier qui empoisonnait toujours la relation transatlantique (après la trêve sur le dossier Airbus/Boeing en juin dernier), tout en incluant les dimensions climatiques et sociales dans les règles commerciales, forme de partenariat resserré face à Pékin. La question est de savoir si cet accord signale vraiment une nouvelle ère post-libre-échange facilitant la transition vers des économies bas-carbone. Il propose en tout cas des pistes intéressantes, y compris dans les deux voies d’élargissement possible déjà envisagées : vers des économies comparables, sous forme de "club climat", et avec des aménagements vis-à-vis des économies en développement, pour faciliter leur propre transition.

Ce deuxième angle est également illustré par l’un des nombreux accords signés lors de la COP26, qui a suivi le G20, avec l’initiative transatlantique pour aider à la transition du secteur énergétique sud-africain, autre succès et autre volonté de répondre de manière transatlantique aux nouvelles routes de la soie chinoises. Comme l’accord US-UE sur le méthane, ce type d’association signale la vitalité de nouvelles formes de multilatéralisme pragmatiques et adaptés à une nouvelle ère marquée par la priorité climatique - et la compétition stratégique. 

 

Trêve sino-américaine

 

Autre surprise de la COP26, la déclaration conjointe de Washington et Pékin sur la mise en œuvre de l’Accord de Paris. Si on ne peut la considérer comme un "succès", elle écarte, pour l’instant, le scénario du pire d’un découplage total des deux superpuissances. Cette déclaration témoigne surtout d’une volonté conjointe de faire baisser la tension et rétablir la communication, à travers une impulsion donnée d’en haut aux représentants des deux nations. En octobre, on avait noté la signature d’un accord historique de fourniture de gaz américain à la Chine, et la tenue de deux longues conversations entre Américains et Chinois. Ces éléments ont pu déboucher sur un sommet virtuel le 15 novembre entre Joe Biden et Xi Jinping, qui a permis à chacun de repréciser ses lignes rouges et ouvert la voie à une stabilisation de la relation, qui ne pouvait venir que des deux leaders.

Le conseiller à la sécurité nationale de la Maison Blanche, Jake Sullivan, expliquait dans un compte-rendu le lendemain à la Brookings Institution qu’il s’agissait avant tout d’éviter toute erreur de jugement pouvant conduire à une confrontation ouverte, mais aussi de préciser les domaines de coordination entre les deux superpuissances dominantes du 21ème siècle. Les "vieux amis" - expression utilisée par Xi Jinping - ont ainsi évoqué le climat, la pandémie, le respect de la phase un de l’accord commercial signé sous Trump mais aussi les dossiers iranien, nord-coréen et Taïwanais - véritable ligne rouge chinoise -, le tout dans un cadre de compétition économique assumée. Il a été beaucoup question de la crise énergétique actuelle. 

 

... ou entrée dans la Seconde Guerre froide ?

 

Cet échange, suivi dès le lendemain par des rumeurs de boycott américain des Jeux Olympiques de Pékin, peut également s’entendre comme l’entrée officielle dans la "Seconde Guerre froide", définie comme un état de compétition globale permanente entre deux superpuissances rivalisant pour la puissance et l’influence sur l’ensemble du globe. Une deuxième  Guerre froide" qui n’a pas vocation à être identique à la première opposant les États-Unis à l’Union Soviétique, même si c’est la seule référence historique dont nous disposons (il y a bien eu une Seconde Guerre mondiale, différente de la Première). 

Il s’agissait avant tout, pour deux dirigeants en prise chacun avec de fortes contraintes intérieures, de relâcher une pression dangereuse dans la relation bilatérale la plus cruciale pour leur avenir politique, mais aussi pour le monde et le siècle présent. Le seul résultat concret de ce sommet semble être le lancement de discussions sur le contrôle des armements avec la Chine, autre réminiscence de la Guerre froide.

Le seul résultat concret de ce sommet semble être le lancement de discussions sur le contrôle des armements avec la Chine.

Les nuances du "consensus" sur la Chine sont toujours nombreuses à Washington, où le débat sur la politique étrangère n’a pas été aussi ouvert depuis plusieurs décennies, autre héritage de la présidence Trump. Le moment politique très fluide que vit l’Amérique contemporaine, entre redéfinitions et radicalisation partisanes, se traduit également dans les variations de l’opinion sur des sujets allant du libre-échange à la défense de la démocratie, où la Chine commence à occuper une place à part. Dans l’étude annuelle du Chicago Council on Global Affairs sur les opinions des Américains en matière de politique étrangère, une majorité d’Américains affirme vouloir se porter à la défense de Taïwan en cas d’attaque de Pékin ; de même, les Américains demeurent favorables au libre-échange en général, mais pas avec la Chine. 

Ces complexités et nuances éclairent aussi le problème de "narratif" de l’administration Biden, sur la Chine comme sur d’autres sujets, alors qu’en face les républicains ont embrassé une rhétorique d’affrontement civilisationnel qui s’applique aussi bien à l’extérieur (contre la Chine) qu’à l’intérieur (contre le "marxisme" des démocrates), alors même qu’ils sont en réalité tout autant divisés sur la pratique, notamment vis-à-vis de Taiwan. Ces nuances sont à l’image de la fragmentation de l’opinion, parfaitement mises à jour dans une récente étude du Pew Research Center, qui montre le poids d’un bloc "nationaliste" au sein de l’opinion, face à un autre bloc "internationaliste", tandis qu’aux deux extrêmes des convergences marquées se confirment. 

 

Maya Kandel est historienne, spécialiste de la politique étrangère américaine, chercheuse associée à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 (CREW), Maya Kandel est directrice du programme États-Unis.

Avant de rejoindre l’Institut, Maya Kandel a été responsable des États-Unis et des relations transatlantiques au CAPS (Centre d’Analyse, de Prévision, et de Stratégie) du Ministère de l’Europe et des affaires étrangères (2017-2021) ; elle était également rédactrice en chef des Carnets du CAPS. De 2011 à 2016, elle a dirigé le programme États-Unis de l’IRSEM (Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’École Militaire). Maya Kandel a également travaillé comme journaliste auprès de médias tels que Forbes, Libération ou encore France Télévisions, tout en menant des recherches doctorales sur la prise de décision aux États-Unis.

 

 

quinta-feira, 7 de outubro de 2021

Análise das relações EUA-China sob Biden - Xulio Rios (Jiexi Zhongguo Nº36) - Forbes Magazine

Nueva entrega de Jiexi Zhongguo, número 36 Análisis y Pensamiento Iberoamericano sobre China

In Jiexi ZhongguoOtros by Xulio Ríos

Reproducimos a continuación el índice del número 36 de Jiexi Zhongguo
Jiexi Zhongguo Nº36
  • La relación EUA-RPC: el futuro escenario internacional, Rocío Camerlengo Demmler
  • Entre la conciliación y la rivalidad: Perspectivas de las relaciones sino-norteamericanas bajo el Gobierno de Joe Biden, Esteban Poole Fuller
  • Nacionalismo Chinês: Pragmatismo e Instrumentalismo na Política Externa, Susana Silva Ramos
  • La ruta de la seda polar: interpretaciones desde la teoría de los bienes públicos globales, Eduardo Tzili-Apango
  • Situación actual en el Mar de la China Oriental. Avances y retrocesos en la gestión de la Islas Senkaku, José Luis Plata Díaz
  • Les jumelages Europe-Chine : questions juridiques et exemples comparés, João Casqueira Cardoso

Sus contenidos son de libre acceso en el banner correspondiente de la web (a la izquierda), o en el PDF adjunto.

https://politica-china.org/otros/nueva-entrega-de-jiexi-zhongguo-numero-36


12:05am EDT|4,502 views

Trump’s Exit From Asian Trade Pact Damaged America, Boosted China

Stuart Anderson

Removing the United States from the Asia-Pacific trade pact designed to promote U.S. economic and strategic interests over China’s will go down as one of the worst decisions by an American president in the past 50 years, according to trade and foreign policy analysts. Now that China has applied to join the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, Donald Trump’s decision looks even worse than it did in 2017.

Background: President George W. Bush proposed a trade agreement with like-minded Asia-Pacific countries in 2008. “While quick to embrace TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] and successful in concluding an agreement among the parties, President Barack Obama fatally delayed pushing for trade promotion authority from Congress in 2014,” writes Matthew P. Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And in one of his first, catastrophic acts as president, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified TPP—not understanding that it was one of the most powerful tools he had to compete with his nemesis, China.”

The Latest Developments: On September 16, 2021, China submitted an application to join what is now called the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP). The group of countries in the trade pact currently includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. China’s notification was sent to New Zealand’s trade minister, the designated CPTPP member for such matters, notes Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.


quinta-feira, 11 de março de 2021

Visões de uma nova geopolítica mundial em construção - Frederick Kempe, Janan Ganesh, Fareed Zakaria, Samir Puri (book)

 Dois artigos e uma resenha que vale por um artigo, para tentar penetrar nos meandros de um novo cenário estratégico ainda em definição. 

 

The Atlantic Council, Washington DC  - 10.3.2021

Who is going to organize the world? And what forces and whose interests will shape the global future?

That’s what is at stake in the Biden-Xi contest

Frederick Kempe

 

Those were the underlying questions behind two events this past week, one in Washington and the other in Beijing, that set the stage for the geopolitical contest of our times.

The Washington piece was President Joe Biden’s release of the “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance,” which is unprecedented at this stage in a new administration.Biden’s purpose was to provide early clarity about how he intends to set and execute priorities in a fast-changing world.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out the thinking behind the guidance in his first major speech since entering office. It was a compelling one, underscoring the urgent need to shore up US democracy and revitalize America’s alliances and partnerships.

“Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself,” Blinken said. “When the U.S. pulls back, one of two things is likely to happen: either another country tries to take our place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values; or, maybe just as bad, no one steps up, and then we get chaos and all the dangers it creates. Either way, that’s not good for America.”

Relations with China, which Blinken called “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” are the wrench in this organizational thinking.

Said Blinken: “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system—all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.”

Biden’s biggest departure from former President Donald Trump’s approach to China is his emphasis on working with partners and allies. This week’s move by the United States and European Union to ease trade tensions, suspending a long list of tariffs related to the Airbus-Boeing dispute over government subsidies, underscores Biden’s seriousness of purpose.

 

China’s take on organizing the world

 

Unsurprisingly, Beijing is offering up a different view of the future around the second key event this past week: China’s National People’s Congress that convened Friday and will continue this coming week.  

Chinese President Xi Jinping sees momentum building for Beijing in a world where “the East is rising, and the West is declining.” His argument was that China offers order, in contrast to the United States’ chaos, and effective governance, in contrast to Washington’s ineffectiveness, demonstrated by how much better it has handled the pathogen it unleashed.

Xi’s most comprehensive swipe at how China would organize the world came in late January at this year’s virtually convened World Economic Forum. The speech’s title underscored its all-embracing ambition: “Let the Torch of Multilateralism Light up Humanity’s Way Forward.”

If Biden’s vision is for the United States to create a band of reinvigorated democratic sisters and brothers, inspired by the country’s revitalization, Xi’s vision is for a world where each country’s political system, culture, and society are its own business.

In this world, America’s value judgments are passé.

The subtext for Xi is simple: How countries organize themselves internally, along with whatever authoritarian strictures and human rights violations they include—whether against the Uighur minority in Xinjiang, democracy activists in Hong Kong, or perhaps even ultimately Taiwan’s independence—just is not Washington’s business.

Each country is unique with its own history, culture and social system, and none is superior to the other,” Xi told the virtual Davos crowd. “The best criteria are whether a country’s history, culture and social system fit its particular situation, enjoy people’s support, serve to deliver political stability …” Xi made clear this approach is meant to “avoid meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.”

By contrast, in a letter that accompanied the strategic guidance this week, President Biden wrote, “I firmly believe that democracy holds the key to freedom, prosperity, peace, and dignity… We must prove that our model isn’t a relic of history; it’s the single best way to realize the promise of our future. And if we work together with our democratic partners, with strength and confidence, we will meet every challenge and outpace every challenger.”

As democracy weakens globally, the world’s democracies must act

The context for these competing visions was this week’s release of Freedom House’s annual survey that said, “less than 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a Free country, the smallest proportion since 1995.”

In the study, called “Democracy under Siege,” Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz wrote, “as a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny.”

It was the fifteenth successive year in which countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumbered those with gains. The report said that nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced a deterioration of democratic freedoms last year.

It may seem that this is absolutely the wrong time to expect the world’s democracies to rally to shape the global order. Yet just the opposite is true: At a time when democracy is being tested across the world, there’s no better time to work together to address these challenges and ensure that the global gains in freedom over the past seventy-five years don’t continue to erode.

Chastened by the global situation, the Biden administration knows its work must begin at home. Blinken also was modest in how the United States would go about advancing democracy.

“We will use the power of our example,” he said. “We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.”

What the United States won’t do is promote democracy “through costly military interventions,” said Blinken, “or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past. However well intentioned, they haven’t worked.”

In the end, the world is not going to be organized either by Chinese or American fiat, but rather by a concert of national interests influenced by the trajectory of the world’s two leading powers.

Xi’s bet is that China’s momentum is unstoppable, that the world is sufficiently transactional, and that his economy has become indispensable to most US allies. Biden must not only shift that narrative but also work in common cause to reverse the reality of democratic weakening.

 

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council.

 

*

 

Financial Times, Londres – 11,3,2021

The decline of democracy is not America’s responsibility

The spread of freedom after the cold war was the exception to the autocratic norm

Janan Ganesh

 

Were it not for Israel, a rash motorist could drive from Russia’s north-eastern, Alaska-facing tip to the south-western point of Angola without passing through a “free” or even “partly free” country. That daunting map alone earns Democracy Under Siege, a report by the Freedom House watchdog, its lurid title.

The authors then lather on the sombre details. In no year since 2005 have more countries improved their democratic institutions than weakened them. Recent malefactors include the strongest nation (the US) and the second most populous (India). China, the potential master of the century, scores nine out of 100 for overall freedom.

Methodological snags abound here. Should “punitive” immigration tactics bring down the US score? And what’s all this about “exacerbated income inequality” in a civic review? Still, to the extent that values are quantifiable, the liberal style of government is in well-charted decline. The US and the wider west have just one consolation. Most of the crisis is not their fault. It follows that its alleviation is a task beyond them.

There is nothing strange, or even new, about unfreedomIt was the democratic boom after the cold war that constitutes the historic aberration. Countries with little or no experience of free institutions trialled them at last. While the subsequent backsliding is tragic, it takes a special kind of innocence to feel much shock. If there is a “democratic recession”, it began from a unique, never-sustainable high. Like most recessions, it has not undone all the gains of the prior expansion. If anything, the real news is how tenaciously democracy has stuck in much of ex-communist Europe and South America. There, despite qualms about Brazil, only Venezuela is “not free”.

Tellingly, the world’s de-liberalisation goes on regardless of what the US does. If the process began in 2006, then what Freedom House calls the “eclipse of US leadership” under Donald Trump cannot bear the explanatory weight. Presidents over the period include a warlike democracy-spreader (George W Bush), an orthodox liberal (Barack Obama) and, in Trump himself, an amoral nationalist. Whether America was using righteous force, upholding the global order or flattering strongmen, the life signs of democracy did not flicker in response. At some point, Washington may have to entertain the possibility that other countries possess free will. The state of the world is not the sum of US foreign policies, whether brutish, well-meaning or brutishly well-meaning.

It is hard to know which political party needs the lesson more. Among Democrats, the delusion is that Trump, either directly or through neglect, had much to do with the world’s democratic malaise (beyond advancing it at home). On the martial right, the belief in cause-and-effect foreign policy extends to the stunningly persistent notion that America “lost” China to communism in 1949. 

For all its blandness, the alternative view feels almost subversive to put forward. That is, democracy need not be the teleological destiny of all countries.Means of stoking it from outside are often reckless (war) or patchily effective (sanctions). And if the west could not entrench freedom as the global standard when it was ascendant, it is hardly likely to as the balance of world power tilts increasingly eastward. 

It is not even as if leadership through example achieves much. There is a line doing the rounds that President Joe Biden can help democracy abroad by securing it at home. It is a sweet thought, one that allows for a measure of idealism without the violent fiascos of Iraq and Libya. It also feels intuitively true.

The trouble is squaring the theory with the facts. American democracy was plainly healthier in 1971 than it is in 2021. But the number of democracies elsewhere was much lower. Through the 1960s, as the US enfranchised millions of black voters, a watching world “should” have been inspired. Instead, autocracies proliferated. Even if we allow for a lag, and squint really hard, it is hard to spot a correlation, much less a causal link, between the internal life of the US and the fate of freedom on earth. The reason to shore up democracy at home is that it is an innate good. That it makes the slightest difference abroad has become one of those tenets that survive only with repetition. 

The universal franchise is just a century or so old. Republics as established as India and America knew the Emergency and Jim Crow before their more recent lapses. Aged 39, I predate several democracies in Europe. When the liberal system is not under siege, that is news. Despair at its decline is only natural. Amazement at its survival is more fitting.

 

*

 

The New York Times – 9.3.2021

Books

How the Dead Hand of Imperialism Continues to Influence World Politics

Fareed Zakaria

 

THE SHADOWS OF EMPIRE

How Imperial History Shapes Our World

By Samir Puri

 

We are all in the throes of a hangover, Samir Puri writes, a “great imperial hangover.” He explains in “The Shadows of Empire” that we are living in the “first empire-free millennium” in history and yet the legacy of these empires still powerfully shapes our times. He is aware of the notion of informal empires but makes a strong case that there was something distinct and notable about formal empires, which existed from the days of the oldest human civilizations until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. This juxtaposition — imperial legacies in a postimperial world — is an intriguing idea that proves a clever prism through which to look at the world. Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Britain’s exit from the European Union and the breakdowns in Iraq and Syria all have deep roots in an imperial past that still casts shadows on the present.

Once you start to think along these lines, you see the shadows of empires everywhere. The day I began the book, I had been reading about a topic that Puri does not discuss but is one more example of his thesis: the roiling debate about what to do with the hundreds of thousands of artifacts that were, over the centuries, taken from across the globe and now sit proudly in the great museums of the West. In recent history, because of the reach of Western power, most countries have either acted as imperialists or found themselves subjugated, and in both cases their national identity was profoundly shaped by the experienceEven the United States has been deeply affected by imperialism, Puri says, arguing that American slavery was an idea imported from Europe’s empires and was “the ultimate manifestation of colonization, not of land but people.” In fact, the MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes has described the historical circumstance of African-Americans as “a colony within a nation.”

Puri, an expert on armed conflict who has worked in the British Foreign Office, makes the case that Britain’s two pivotal decisions of the last several decades — joining the United States in the Iraq war and Brexit — were both crucially conditioned by the country’s imperial hangoverOnce the world’s greatest imperial power, Britain clung to the idea that it had the military strength, the diplomatic skill and above all the ambition to shape far-flung parts of the globe. In addition, modern-day Iraq was a British creation, cobbled together in 1920 out of three provinces of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. London could once again decide Baghdad’s fate.

Brexit was animated by a view that Britain was not a country defined by its proximity to Europe. In fact, what had often characterized British nationalism was its separation from the Continent(In Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” John of Gaunt gives voice to a deep-rooted English nationalism when he describes the island nation as “this precious stone set in the silver sea / Which serves it in the office of a wall / Or as a moat defensive to a house, / Against the envy of less happier lands.”)The leading Brexiteers, including now-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, often spoke about a “global Britain,” continuing its historical mission around the world, forging closer ties in particular with its old colonies and dominions from Canada to India to Australia.

The Russian case is in some ways even easier to make. Puri points out that “the evolution of Russia was inextricably linked to its expansion, so much so that it is unclear whether Russia created an empire or the process of imperialism created Russia.” He dates the start of Russia’s European-facing empire to the kingdom of Kievan Rus, which began in the ninth century in Kyiv, the present-day capital of Ukraine. From those modest beginnings grew an empire that at its height, after the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II, spanned 11 time zones and comprised almost 200 million people. When you consider this history, Vladimir Putin’s remark that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “a major geopolitical disaster of the century” makes sense, especially if you listen to what he said immediately after: “Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.” These deep imperial ties with Ukraine help explain why Putin’s brazen annexation of Crimea was broadly popular within Russia.

We enter the postimperial 21st century with an unusual geopolitical dynamic. The two leading powers on the planet, the United States and China, both derive a great deal of their internal legitimacy and purpose from the notion that they are anti-imperial nations. In America’s case, its identity is tied to its birth story of rebelling against the British Empire. In China’s case, every schoolchild is taught that the country’s modern history began with Western imperialism humiliating and crippling the Middle Kingdom for over a century. And yet both countries have informal empires. The American one is a vast network of economic alliances and military bases scattered around the world. China, for its part, is trying to develop something quite similar with its huge Belt and Road Initiative, which may swell to 10 times the size of the Marshall Plan.

How will these two distinctive postimperial superpowers interact in the 21st century? What will be the consequences of the imperial shadows cast in this new, emerging bipolar era? Unfortunately, Puri does not have much to say about any of this. Having provided a fresh perspective on all the issues I have raised above, he offers brief and intelligent speculation, but mostly proceeds to simply recount the imperial histories of major countries or parts of the world. Much of this is well written, comprehensive and judicious, but it is still potted history. Having introduced a fascinating subject, Puri declines to fully engage and explore his own thesis. He seems to imply that this task is left to the reader, but that leaves too much to us, and lets the author of this stimulating book off the hook too easily.