Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency - Financial Times

Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency

Financial Times, 22 January 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/5347d263-7f24-4966-8da4-79485d1287b4

Other Latin American nations will be invited to join plan which could create world’s second-largest currency union 

Brazil and Argentina will this week announce that they are starting preparatory work on a common currency, in a move which could eventually create the world’s second-largest currency bloc. 

South America’s two biggest economies will discuss the plan at a summit in Buenos Aires this week and will invite other Latin American nations to join. The initial focus will be on how a new currency, which Brazil suggests calling the “sur” (south), could boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar, officials told the Financial Times. 

It would at first run in parallel with the Brazilian real and Argentine peso. “There will be . . . a decision to start studying the parameters needed for a common currency, which includes everything from fiscal issues to the size of the economy and the role of central banks,” Argentina’s economy minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times. “It would be a study of mechanisms for trade integration,” he added. “I don’t want to create any false expectations . . . it’s the first step on a long road which Latin America must travel.” 

Initially a bilateral project, the initiative would be offered to other nations in Latin America. “It is Argentina and Brazil inviting the rest of the region,” the Argentine minister said. A currency union that covered all of Latin America would represent about 5 per cent of global GDP, the FT estimates. 

The world’s largest currency union, the euro, encompasses about 14 per cent of global GDP when measured in dollar terms. 

Other currency blocs include the CFA franc which is used by some African countries and pegged to the euro, and the East Caribbean dollar. However, these encompass a much smaller slice of global economic output. The project is likely to take many years to come to fruition; Massa noted that it took Europe 35 years to create the euro.

An official announcement is expected during Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to Argentina that starts on Sunday night, the veteran leftist’s first foreign trip since taking power on January 1. 

Brazil and Argentina have discussed a common currency in the past few years but talks foundered on the opposition of Brazil’s central bank to the idea, one official close to the discussions said. Now that the two countries are both governed by left-wing leaders, there is greater political backing. 

A Brazilian finance ministry spokesman said he did not have information about a working group on a common currency. He noted that finance minister Fernando Haddad had co-authored an article last year, before he took his current job, proposing a south American digital common currency. 

Trade is flourishing between Brazil and Argentina, reaching $26.4bn in the first 11 months of last year, up nearly 21 per cent on the same period in 2021. 

The two nations are the driving force behind the Mercosur regional trade bloc, which includes Paraguay and Uruguay. The attractions of a new common currency are most obvious for Argentina, where annual inflation is approaching 100 per cent as the central bank prints money to fund spending. 

During President Alberto Fernández’s first three years in office, the amount of money in public circulation has quadrupled, according to central bank data, and the largest denomination peso bill is worth less than $3 on the widely used parallel exchange rate. However, there will be concern in Brazil about the idea of hitching Latin America’s biggest economy to that of its perennially volatile neighbour.

Argentina has been largely cut off from international debt markets since its 2020 default and still owes more than $40bn to the IMF from a 2018 bailout.

Lula will stay in Argentina for a summit on Tuesday of the 33-nation Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which will bring together the region’s new crop of left-wing leaders for the first time since a wave of elections last year reversed a right-wing trend. 

Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro was likely to attend, officials said, along with Chile’s Gabriel Boric and other more controversial figures such as Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist president Nicolás Maduro and Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel. 

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador generally shuns overseas travel and is not scheduled to participate. Protests against Maduro’s attendance are expected in Buenos Aires on Sunday. 

Argentina’s foreign minister Santiago Cafiero said the summit would also make commitments on greater regional integration, the defence of democracy and the fight against climate change. Above all, he told the Financial Times, the region needed to discuss what sort of economic development it wanted at a time when the world was hungry for Latin America’s food, oil and minerals. “Is the region going to supply this in a way which turns its economy [solely] into a raw material producer or is it going to supply it in a way which creates social justice [by adding value]?,” he said. 

Alfredo Serrano, a Spanish economist who runs the Celag regional political think-tank in Buenos Aires, said the summit would discuss how to strengthen regional value chains to take advantage of regional opportunities, as well as making progress on a currency union. “The monetary and foreign exchange mechanisms are crucial,” he said. “There are possibilities today in Latin America, given its strong economies, to find instruments which substitute dependence on the dollar. That will be a very important step forward.” 

Manuel Canelas, a political scientist and former Bolivian government minister, said that CELAC, founded in 2010 to help Latin American and Caribbean governments co-ordinate policy without the US or Canada, was the only such pan-regional integration body which had survived over the past decade as others fell by the wayside. 

However, Latin America’s leftist presidents now face more difficult global economic conditions, trickier domestic politics with many coalition governments, and less enthusiasm from citizens for regional integration. “Because of this, all the steps towards integration will certainly be more cautious . . . and will have to be focused directly on delivering results and showing why they are useful”, he cautioned.

Zeitenwende para a Alemanha e para o mundo: a guerra de Putin - Tony Barber (FT)

 Financial Times, Londres –25.12.2022

Language and grammar

Year in a word: Zeitenwende

Tony Barber

 

Just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, German chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed the moment to be a Zeitenwende. The post-cold war era was over. Germany and its allies must stand together in resolute defence of freedom and democracy. Germany would have to rethink its foreign, energy and economic policies, spend more on defence and not be shy of providing leadership for Europe. No chancellor since the Federal Republic’s birth in 1949 had made a speech quite like it. 

Like other German concepts such as Ostpolitik (policy towards communist eastern Europe during the cold war), or Spitzenkandidat (leading candidate to be European Commission president), Zeitenwende quickly entered English usage, despite being tricky for native English-speakers to spell, pronounce or define.

Zeitenwende is one of those compound nouns that adorn the German language like baubles on a Christmas tree — also known as Weihnachtsbaum, which is itself a three-part compound noun. Other examples include Schadenfreude (malicious pleasure in others’ misfortune) and Zahnfleischbluten (bleeding gums). 

A compound noun fuses two or more separate words to make a new, longer one: Weihe means consecration, Nacht means night, Weihnachten means Christmas and Baum means tree. Sometimes a compound noun can become a bit indigestible, as with Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeit (food intolerance). 

Zeitenwende combines Zeit, the word for time, era or period, with Wende, a word meaning change. Wende has a special resonance for Germans, as it is the word used to describe the peaceful, democratic revolution of 1989 in the former communist East Germany that led the next year to German reunification. 

How far will the Zeitenwende change German policies over the next few years? Perhaps only Scholz, the Bundeskanzler (federal chancellor), knows the answer.

Territórios liberados pelas forças ucranianas contra os invasores russos - Financial Times

Uma cartografia dos avanços e recuos na guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia, pelo Financial Times:  

 
https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5?desktop=true&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content

Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Ukraine has liberated a total of 74,443 sq km of territory from Russian forces, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War think-tank. 

Ukrainian forces advanced into Kherson on Friday after Russia said its forces had completed their withdrawal from the southern city, sealing one of the biggest setbacks to president Vladimir Putin’s invasion. 

Kyiv’s progress and Moscow’s chaotic retreat across the Dnipro river, conducted under Ukrainian artillery fire, means Russia has now surrendered the only provincial capital it had captured in the war, as well as ceding key strategic positions. 

At the end of August, Ukraine launched its first big counter-attack since Russia’s full assault on the country began in February, even as Kyiv complained that its forces lacked sufficient heavy western weaponry to make a decisive strike. 

The advance liberated 3,000 sq km of territory in just six days — Ukraine’s biggest victory since it pushed Russian troops back from the capital in March. 

Ukraine’s forces have continued to push east, capturing the crucial transport hub of Lyman, near the north-eastern edge of the Donetsk province, which it wrestled from Russian control on October 1. The hard-fought victory came after nearly three weeks of battle and set the stage for a Ukrainian advance towards Svatove, a logistics centre for Russia after its troops lost the Kharkiv region in the lightning Ukrainian counter-offensive. Map animation showing Ukrainian counter-offensive in the north east of the country since September 1 

Other key maps and charts from the war The shift in the conflict’s focus towards the Donbas region follows Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv during the first phase of the war. Before Ukraine’s rapid counter-offensive, marginal Russian gains in the east suggested the war was entering a period of stalemate. 

An animated map showing areas of Ukraine under Russian control through six months of war. Russia’s focus has shifted east, with the invasion reaching a stalemate in recent weeks The Russians were thwarted in Kyiv by a combination of factors, including geography, the attackers’ blundering and modern arms — as well as Ukraine’s ingenuity with smartphones and pieces of foam mat. Map showing Ukrainian counter-offensive area around Kyiv 

The number of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict makes it one of the largest refugee crises in modern history. Map showing Ukrainian refugees seeking safety in multiple countries – estimated refugees recorded, source UNHCR In mid-March, an attack on a Ukrainian military base, which had been used by US troops to train Ukrainian soldiers, added to Russia’s increasingly direct threats that Nato’s continued support of Ukraine risked making it an enemy combatant in the war. 

On March 24, Nato agreed to establish four new multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to add to troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. 

Map of Europe showing Nato member countries with locations of different military presences (multinational troops, air and sea forces, and other military) 

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, Rochan Consulting, FT research Cartography and development by Steve Bernard, Chris Campbell, Caitlin Gilbert, Emma Lewis, Joanna S Kao, Sam Learner, Ændra Rininsland, Niko Kommenda, Alan Smith, Martin Stabe, Neggeen Sadid and Liz Faunce. 

Based on reporting by Roman Olearchyk and John Reed in Kyiv, Guy Chazan in Lviv, Henry Foy in Brussels and Neggeen Sadid in London.

Ucrânia 1 vs Rússia 0: abandono de Kherson (FT)

War in Ukraine

Financial Times, November 9, 2022

Russia orders retreat from Kherson 

Withdrawal would cap successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in August 

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, in another major setback for President Vladimir Putin’s nine-month invasion of the country. In footage shown on state television on Wednesday, Shoigu accepted a proposal from Sergei Surovikin, commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, to retreat from the town to the left bank of the Dnipro river. Surovikin said the withdrawal would happen “at the earliest possible juncture” and that Russia’s troops would set up defensive positions in the remaining parts of the Kherson region that they control east of the city. 

The decision to pull back marks a decisive moment in a Ukrainian counteroffensive started on August 29, with Kyiv’s forces pushing back Russian artillery with superior manpower and supplies of western-supplied advanced weaponry. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser in Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, said the Russian army was “being knocked out of Kherson”. “Dear Kherson residents. We are returning. You are returning. Welcome back home,” he added, warning however that “fighting on the right bank will continue for some time”. 

However Mykhailo Podolyak, another Kyiv adviser, urged caution, telling the Financial Times that “it’s too early to talk about the surrender of Kherson today”. “The statement of the Russian command can mean both the adoption of a political decision, and it can be a trap — turning out to be blurring our eyes before being drawn into urban battles,” he added. If confirmed on the battlefield, the retreat would be one of the biggest blows yet to Putin’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine. The largely agricultural region is strategically important to Russia because it connects the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, to the mainland. It also controls most of Crimea’s water supplies through a canal. 

In the early days of his full-scale invasion in February, the Russian president failed to seize the capital, Kyiv. In September Ukrainian troops forced Russia to abandon several military strongholds near Kharkiv in the east, a breakthrough that has cost Moscow significant losses of men and material. Putin subsequently declared a mobilisation of Russia’s reserves to boost the 1,100km frontline and threatened to use nuclear weapons. 

But Russia does not have full control of the four Ukrainian regions, including Kherson, which the Russian leader annexed in a pompous ceremony in the Kremlin in September. Surovikin on Wednesday told Shoigu the decision to retreat was “difficult” but justified it by saying Russia would “preserve the lives of our troops and the combat readiness of our units”. He claimed Russia was forced to retreat in the face of a supposed threat from Ukraine flooding the area by releasing water from nearby reservoirs or firing on a huge hydroelectric dam at Nova Kakhovka, which remains under Russian control. 

Ukraine has accused Russia of plotting to blow up the dam and blame Kyiv for the ensuing damage. Surovikin claimed retreating from Kherson would also allow Russia to free up forces to conduct offensives in other areas. Russian occupation officials had urged civilians to leave the area in recent weeks and moved their headquarters out of Kherson city to Skadovsk, a town deeper into Russian-controlled territory. Surovikin said 115,000 people had evacuated to the Russian occupied territory on the left bank of the Dnipro river. Shortly before the announcement of the retreat, the Russian occupation administration said Kirill Stremousov, a former anti-vaccine activist appointed the region’s deputy governor, had died in a car crash, without giving further details. 

Commenting on the withdrawal from a town Moscow had gained early in the war, Ben Wallace, UK defence secretary, cautioned that the west and Ukraine should not “underestimate the Russian army”. “It’s a perfectly logical military decision to pull back behind the Dnipro river,” he said. “But fundamentally Russia has now lost the only objective they achieved. Basically it’s Russia 0 and Ukraine 1 so far.” 

With additional reporting by John-Paul Rathbone in London

Geopolitics is the biggest threat to globalisation - Martin Wolf (Financial Times)

 Geopolitics is the biggest threat to globalisation

The consequences of a great power rupture may be even worse now than during the cold war

Martin Wolf

Financial Times, Londres – 4.11.2022

 

How might globalisation end? Some seem to imagine a relatively peaceful “decoupling” of economies until recently stitched so tightly together. But it is likely that the fracturing of economic ties will be both consequence and cause of deepening global discord. If so, a more destructive end to globalisation is likely. 

Humanity has, alas, done this before. Since the industrial revolution in the early 19th century, we have had two periods of deepening cross-border economic integration and one of the reverse. The first period of globalisation preceded 1914. The second began in the late 1940s, but accelerated and widened from the late 1970s, as ever more economies integrated with one another. In between came a lengthy period of deglobalisation, bounded by the two world wars and deepened by the Depression and the protectionism that both accompanied and worsened it. Finally, since the financial crisis of 2007-09, globalisation has been neither deepening nor reversing. 

This history hardly suggests that a period of deglobalisation is likely to be a happy one. On the contrary, 1914-45 was marked by the collapse of political and economic order, both domestic and global. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917, itself a consequence of the first world war, launched communism on the world. On some estimates, communism killed around 100mn people, even more than the two world wars.

This period of chaos and calamity had some beneficial outcomes: it made European empires untenable; it brought forth modern welfare states; and it made humans a little more aware of their shared destiny. Yet, in all, it was an epoch of catastrophe. 

A controversial question is how and how far peace is linked to globalisation. As John Plender recently argued, trade does not necessarily secure peace. The onset of the first world war at a time of relatively buoyant trade surely demonstrates this. The causality goes rather in the opposite direction, from peace to commerce. In an era of co-operation among great powers, trade tends to grow. In one of mutual suspicion, especially one of open conflict, trade collapses, as we see now between Russia and the west.

People sometimes point to the English liberal Norman Angell as a naive believer in the view that trade would bring peace. Yet, in The Great Illusion, written shortly before the first world war, he argued that countries would gain nothing of value from war. Subsequent experience entirely vindicated this view: the principal participants in the war all lost. Similarly, ordinary Russians will not benefit from the conquest of Ukraine or ordinary Chinese from the conquest of Taiwan. But this truth did not preclude conflict. Under the leadership of psychopaths and the influence of nationalism and other dangerous ideologies, we are capable of grotesque follies and horrific crimes. 

A possible response is that nothing similar to what happened during the “great deglobalisation” of the 20th century can happen this time. At worst, the outcome might be a bit like the cold war. This, however, is unduly optimistic. It is quite likely that the consequences of a rupture of great power relations will be even worse in our time than it was then. 

One obvious reason is that our capacity for mutual annihilation is far more than an order of magnitude greater today. A disturbing recent study from Rutgers University argues that a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia, especially given the probability of a “nuclear winter”, could kill over 5bn people. Is that unimaginable? Alas, no. 

Another reason why the outcome could be even worse this time is that we depend on a high level of enlightened co-operation to sustain an inhabitable planet. This is particularly true of China and the US, which together generate over 40 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. The climate is a collective action challenge par excellence. A breakdown of co-operative relations is likely to end whatever chance exists of avoiding a runaway process of climate change.

One then has to fall back on the hope that today’s deepening global divisions can be contained, as they were, by and large, during the cold war. One rejoinder to this hope is that there were some close-run moments during the cold war. The second is that the Soviet economy was not integrated into the world’s, while China and the west are both competitors and integrated with one another and the rest of the world. There is no painless way of decoupling these economic links. It is folly to imagine there is. The effort seems sure to create conflict. 

Indeed, the recently announced controls on US exports of semiconductors and associated technologies to China looks a decisive step. Certainly, this is far more threatening to Beijing than anything Donald Trump did. The aim is clearly to slow China’s economic development. That is an act of economic warfare. One might agree with it. But it will have huge geopolitical consequences.

Deglobalisation is most unlikely to be the outcome of carefully calibrated and intelligent decoupling. This is not how we humans work. People might pretend deglobalisation has something to do with reducing inequality. That is nonsense, too: the more open economies are frequently relatively equal. 

It is conflicts over power that most threaten globalisation. By seeking to enhance their security, great powers make their rivals more insecure, creating a vicious downward spiral of distrust. We are already a long way down this spiral. That reality will shape the fate of the world economy. We are not headed towards a benign localism, but towards negative-sum rivalry. Our world may not survive a virulent bout of that disease.

Crimes de guerra e contra a humanidade da Rússia na Ucrânia (FT)

 E pensar que a diplomacia brasileira permanece impassível em face desses crimes…

https://www.ft.com/content/99349f01-c587-4ab4-86df-85ff3c0fcd3b

War in Ukraine

 Financial Times, November 3, 2022

Kherson residents describe reign of terror under Russian rule Alleged hanging of woman in southern Ukraine signifies Moscow’s brutality in occupied territory

Russian soldiers guard the shore of the Black Sea in Skadovsk, Kherson region 

Kherson residents describe reign of terror under Russian rule on twitter (opens in a new window) Kherson residents describe reign of terror under Russian rule on facebook (opens in a new window) Kherson residents describe reign of terror under Russian rule on linkedin (opens in a new window) Kherson residents describe reign of terror under Russian rule.

Natalia Chorna had warned her more outspoken twin sister to be careful after Russian forces occupied their home town of Skadovsk near Kherson, southern Ukraine, in February. But Tetyana Mudryenko found it hard to keep her anger about the war to herself. Last month, Mudryenko paid the ultimate penalty for proclaiming Skadovsk Ukrainian territory. According to several witnesses, she was dragged into the street by the self-appointed pro-Moscow authorities and hanged in a public execution. 

“In occupied Skadovsk, you can’t have your own opinion,” said Chorna, 56. As Ukraine pursues its counteroffensive in Kherson and Russia forcibly relocates tens of thousands of people, those living in the southern region have said the occupying authorities are terrorising anyone who defies them. Residents of Skadovsk, a Black Sea port of some 15,000 inhabitants, told the Financial Times that people were being jailed and having their possessions confiscated for speaking out against their Russian occupiers. 

Russian soldiers are also seizing the homes of Ukrainians who had moved to territory controlled by Kyiv, or who have been deported to Russia or occupied Crimea. The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russian forces had expanded the area from which they were forcing residents to evacuate, ostensibly to protect them from the fighting but also to make it easier to defend the region. 

Moscow has also moved its occupation administration from the city of Kherson to Skadovsk as it reinforces its positions on the east bank of the Dnipro river. Despite reports of a potential Russian withdrawal from Kherson, Ukraine’s military said in a statement on Friday that some 1,000 newly mobilised Russian troops had arrived, setting the stage for what will probably be a difficult and crucial battle in Kyiv’s bid to recapture territories from Moscow. 

The Kherson region is of strategic importance to Russia because it connects to Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, with fresh water. Following sham referendums last month, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed to “annex” Kherson along with the eastern provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. 

Chorna said Mudryenko, a former paediatric nurse who was as passionate about helping disabled children as she was about being Ukrainian, had had several confrontations with Russian troops during their occupation. On a walk near the seaside one spring day, the sisters ran into a group of Russian soldiers wearing balaclavas and Mudryenko confronted them. “She looked at the orc, right in his eyes and asked: ‘Why are you here? Will you shoot me?’,” said Chorna, referring to Russian troops by a derogatory term Ukrainians have used since the February invasion. 

The most recent incident prior to her death came in early October, when Mudryenko scolded Ukrainian police for collaborating with Russian forces and cried out “Skadovsk is Ukraine!” On October 7, Chorna, who had left Skadovsk in April for the twins’ hometown of Dnipro in Ukrainian-controlled territory, called Mudryenko to see how she was doing after the altercation. But the connection was bad and the call dropped out. Some time later, according to Chorna and local eyewitnesses, Mudryenko and her partner, 60-year-old Anatoliy Oryekhov, were abducted from the front yard of their home by Ukrainian police officers collaborating with Russia. Neighbours told Chorna that the home had also been ransacked by occupiers, who stole the couple’s car and bicycles. For days, no one knew of their whereabouts. Then, on October 15, Chorna got a call from a woman who said that Mudryenko was not only dead but that she had been dragged into the street by occupation authorities and killed in a public display of terror. “She told me that ‘Tanya’ was hanged,” said Chorna, using her sister’s nickname. “They poured something into her mouth and then hanged her in front of the courthouse.” The woman who called went on to say that Oryekhov had been released from captivity with a broken arm and other signs of being beaten and allowed to bury Mudryenko’s body. But he then disappeared again and has not been seen or heard from since. When Chorna called the local morgue to confirm Mudryenko’s death, an employee first declined to speak to her. But eventually the worker sent her a death certificate that stated Mudryenko’s cause of death was “mechanical asphyxiation”, meaning severe physical pressure had been applied to her neck. 

Some of the details surrounding Mudryenko’s alleged abduction and death could not be independently verified because they occurred in areas off-limits to western reporters. But the FT reviewed Mudryenko’s death certificate as well as text messages and discussions between local residents and eyewitnesses that support Chorna’s story. 

The Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian non-governmental organisation, has documented the case. Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, wrote on Telegram on October 14 that it “had established numerous instances of murder and torture of local residents during the temporary occupation” of the Kherson region. Chorna’s story echoes scores of accounts by Ukrainians who have lived under Russian occupation and witnessed or personally experienced violence at the hands of Putin’s invading forces, including many documented by international human rights groups and journalists. Skadovsk residents were angry and depressed in the first days and weeks of Russian occupation, said Chorna. Many people, including herself and Mudryenko, protested in the streets to show their discontent. The sisters were among many residents who live-streamed the demonstrations on social media to show that resistance remained strong. 

But after Russian troops began firing warning shots and hurling smoke grenades at the crowds the public protests stopped. Ukrainians still in occupied Kherson and some who have recently fled and asked not to be named for security reasons said Russian forces had intensified their cruelty toward locals in recent weeks. One resident who moved to Ukraine-controlled territory last month said the “occupiers are closing shops and business on a large scale [and] trying to create conditions unsuitable for people to live in”. 

Another woman lamented the “concentration camp” and “military base” that she said the once quiet town of Skadovsk — with beach resorts that people from all over Ukraine used to flock to — had become. “But everything will be Ukraine,” she said, adding that most Ukrainian residents who stayed remain defiant. “Today, I refused to pay [for my groceries] in roubles.”

Ukraine consolidates its gains against Russia's troops - Financial Times

Ukraine consolidates its gains agains Russia's troops

Financial Times, 15/09/2022:

Away from London, our biggest story this week had been the spectacular rout of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Slowly first and then suddenly, Ukrainian troops over the weekend won their biggest victory since forcing the Russians out of Kyiv.

They liberated 3,800 square kilometres of the country’s north-east in just six days with a co-ordinated attack of tanks, infantry and air cover that sent Russian troops fleeing. So the question now is whether this is a turning point in the war. I would argue that while hugely significant, it is too early to tell. Will the Russians regroup and learn from their mistakes?

The prospect of a Russian defeat is real and exhilarating, but as Gideon Rachman, our chief international columnist, writes, Ukraine’s advances also open a new and dangerous phase in the conflict.

Ukraine seeks to consolidate its gains in the east. Source: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, WorldPop, FT research © FT

 

The Ukraine war has reached a turning point - Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)

 PUTIN NÃO VAI USAR A ARMA NUCLEAR. Mesmo seus generais mais servis não o permitirão, pois sabem que o seu poder vai acabar se o fizerem. Aliás contra quem, ou contra o quê eles usariam a arma nuclear? Em Kiev, em cidades ucranianas?

O que Putin vai fazer é causar o máximo de destruição material possível na Ucrânia e o máximo de perdas humanas, mas o seu caso vai se agravar num novo Nuremberg, no TPI, possivelmente.

Acredito que a derrota humilhante da sua Operação Militar Especial vai levá-lo a ser retirado do poder, mas a Rússia ainda vai permanecer como um "império do mal", como dizia Ronald Reagan durante algum tempo ainda.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

 

Financial Times, Londres – 13.9.2022

The Ukraine war has reached a turning point

After Russia’s setbacks a new and dangerous phase of the conflict is beginning

Gideon Rachman

 

The sight of Russian troops in headlong retreat in Ukraine is stunning — but it should not be surprising. 

This war has gone badly for Russia from the outset. Vladimir Putin failed to achieve the lightning victory that he was aiming for on February 24. By April, the Russians had been forced into a humiliating retreat after making incursions towards Kyiv. 

The limited gains Russia has made over the past six months have come at a terrible cost. The original invasion force mustered by the Kremlin was around 200,000 troops. The US estimated last month that 70,000-80,000 of that force has been killed or wounded since the beginning of the invasion.

Unwilling to acknowledge that Russia is at war, Putin has refused to institute conscription. By contrast, Ukraine has mobilised its entire adult male population. As a result, Ukraine now probably has more troops on the battlefield than Russia.

The Ukrainians also have the advantage in morale and munitions. They are fighting to defend their own country. The supply of advanced weaponry from the US and Europe — in particular, accurate long-range missiles — means they are now better equipped than the Russians. 

The prospect of Russian defeat is real and exhilarating. But Ukraine’s advances also open a new and dangerous phase in the conflict. 

The pictures of weeping civilians embracing Ukrainian soldiers as they liberate towns and villages from the Russians underline what this war is all about. Permanent Russian occupation would snuff out political freedom and would be enforced with killings, torture and deportations. 

An easy Russian victory in Ukraine would also have opened the door to further aggression against its neighbours — including Moldova and perhaps even Nato members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That prospect was alarming enough to persuade Finland and Sweden to apply for Nato membership. 

If Russia is defeated, the invasion threat hovering over the rest of Europe will recede. The global political atmosphere will also change. Russian defeat will go down badly in Beijing and Mar-a-Lago. In the weeks before the invasion, China announced a friendship “without limits” with Russia. Donald Trump chortled that Vladimir Putin was a “genius”. That judgment now looks not just immoral, but stupid. 

But some caution is in order. Almost a fifth of Ukraine is still occupied. The Russians will try to regroup and the Ukrainians could over-reach. 

The really complex question is what happens if Russia is facing a humiliating defeat — perhaps including the loss of Crimea, which was occupied in 2014 amid much rejoicing in Moscow? 

Rather than accept defeat, Putin may try to escalate. His options, however, look limited and unappealing. The refusal to call a general mobilisation must reflect nervousness about the opposition that could stir in Russian society. Calling up troops, training and equipping them will take many weeks — and the war is moving fast. 

From the beginning of the conflict, Putin has hinted that Russia might use nuclear weapons. The White House has always viewed this possibility seriously. As the war has dragged on and gone badly for Russia, fears that Putin might resort to nuclear weapons have receded a little, but they have not gone away. As one senior western policymaker put it to me last week: “We have to remember that almost every Russian military exercise we’ve observed has involved the use of nuclear weapons.” 

Using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would, however, create the obvious danger that Russia itself would be contaminated by the fallout. The global political reaction would be very negative and a western military response, probably non-nuclear, would be all but inevitable. 

Like Russian leaders in the past, Putin is hoping that winter will come to his rescue. Russia’s recent announcement that it will stop almost all gas supplies to Europe is clearly intended to freeze the western supporters of Ukraine into submission. 

But Putin needs a lot to go right for the gas gambit to work. A very cold winter or a surge in political protests in the west would help. Neither can be relied upon. The German government says the country “is now better prepared for a halt to Russian supplies” and that the total gas storage level is almost 87 per cent. Energy price subsidies are being rolled out across Europe. 

So the Russian leader’s position looks perilous. From the start some western leaders have quietly hoped that Putin would lose power as a result of the war. President Joe Biden even blurted it out. 

But if Putin is deposed, perhaps by a palace coup, his replacement is more likely to be a hardline nationalist than a liberal. The most vocal dissent being expressed in Russia is from militarists and nationalists — calling for escalation of the war. One theory doing the rounds in western intelligence circles is that the murder of Daria Dugina, a nationalist journalist, was organised by the Russian security services as a warning to Putin’s ultra-right critics. 

A defeated Russia would not disappear off the map. And it would still possess large numbers of nuclear weapons, as well as a replenished stock of grievances.

So many dangers clearly lie ahead. But sometimes good news has to be recognised for what it is. In what has been a bleak year, the Ukrainian military victories of the past week are certainly that.

Guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia: entrevista com presidente Volodimyr Zelensky (Financial Times)

Roula Khalaf, Editor  June 9, 2022

Hello from London where I interviewed Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the FT’s Global Boardroom conference on Tuesday. The Ukrainian president, who appeared exhausted but as determined as ever, told me over video link that a stalemate in the war with Russia was “not an option” and appealed again to the west for more military support. The war has entered an attritional phase in the last month. Fighting is now focused in the eastern Donbas region, where Russia is using its superior artillery forces to grind down Ukrainian troops and make territorial gains. During our conversation, Zelenskyy hit out at what he saw as attempts by some western allies to explore the terms of a ceasefire without involving Kyiv. “There cannot be talks behind Ukraine’s back anytime,” he said. I asked the president how he would define victory in this war. He said if his forces could push Russian forces back to positions they occupied before the invasion, this would be a “serious temporary victory”. But he was clear that winning back sovereignty over all Ukrainian territory was his ultimate goal. Watch our full interview here (Free to view) Watch our full interview here

Martin Wolf: doze “teses” sobre o estado do mundo (Financial Times)

 Marx tinha escrito ONZE teses sobre o estado do mundo em sua época; a 11a justamente incitava os filósofos a parar de interpretar o mundo, para passar a transformá-lo. Ele tentou, não conseguiu, mas deixou sementes. Um de seus seguidores, Lênin, tentou durante anos, sem conseguir. Já tinha quase desistido do empreendimento, em seu exílio na Suíça, quando o Império Alemão veio inesperadamente em sua ajuda, em 1917: fez um “pacote”, blindado, e providenciou entrega em Petrogrado. Daí começou verdadeiramente a transformação, mas para pior. Até hoje nos ressentimos da mais gigantesca transformação do mundo no século XX. Putin está tentando consertar a coisa, com a mesma brutalidade e corrupção que existia na Rússia czarista, que o Lênin queria derrubar e que o Putin se empenha em restaurar. 

Vamos examinar com calma as 12 “teses” do Martin Wolf.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Twelve propositions on the state of the world

Global leaders face formidable challenges, from dizzying technological progress and geopolitical tension to climate change

Martin Wolf

Financial Times, Londres – 3.6.2022

 

How do we make sense of the world? Time spent in Davos last week crystallised my answers in the form of twelve propositions. 

 

Proposition one: the world is menaced “by the sword, by famine and by pestilence”, as Ezekiel warned: first Covid, then war on Ukraine and then famine, as exports of food, fertilisers and energy have been disrupted. These remind us of our vulnerability to unpredictable — alas, not unimaginable — shocks. 

Proposition two: “it’s the politics, stupid”. James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist famously said that it’s “the economy, stupid”. The primacy of economics can no longer be assumed. Ours is an age of culture wars, identity politics, nationalism and geopolitical rivalry. It is also, as a result, an age of division, within and among countries. 

 

Proposition three: technology continues its transformative march. The Covid shock brought with it two welcome surprises: the ability to carry out so much of our normal lives online; and the capacity to develop and produce effective vaccines with amazing speed, while failing to deliver them equally. The world is divided in this way, too. 

 

Proposition four: the political divides between the high-income democracies on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, are now deep. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the survival of an overarching concept of “one world” seemed at least conceivable, however difficult. But wars are transformative. China’s offer of a “no limits” partnership to Russia may have been decisive in Putin’s decision to risk the invasion. His war is an assault on core western interests and values. It has brought the US and Europe together, for the moment. It should be decisive for Europe’s attitude to China: a power that supports such an assault cannot be a trusted partner. The march towards totalitarianism in both of these autocracies must also widen the global split. 

 

Proposition five: despite the rise of China, the west, defined as the high-income democracies, is hugely powerful. According to the IMF, these countries will still account for 42 per cent of global output at purchasing power parity and 57 per cent at market prices in 2022, against China’s 19 per cent, on both. They also issue all the significant reserve currencies. China holds more than $3tn in foreign currency reserves, while the US holds almost none. It can print them, instead. The ability of the US and its allies to freeze a large proportion of Russia’s currency reserves shows what this power means. Yet western power is not just economic. It is also military. How would Russia’s vaunted military have fared against Nato’s? 

 

Proposition six: yet the west is also deeply divided within countries and among them.Plenty of its politicians were enthusiastic supporters of Putin: Marine Le Pen was one of them. In Europe, Viktor Orbán is the most vocal survivor of this troupe. In the US, xenophobic authoritarianism — “Orbanism” — remains a leading set of ideas on the right. Donald Trump’s assault on the fundamental feature of democracy — a transfer of power through fair voting — is also very much alive. Many of these people view Putin’s nationalist autocracy as a model. If they get back into power, western unity will collapse. 

 

Proposition seven: over the long run, Asia is likely to become the dominant economic region of the world. The emerging countries of east, south-east and south Asia contain half of the world’s population, against 16 per cent for all high-income countries together. According to the IMF, average real output per head of these Asian economies will jump from 9 per cent of that of high-income countries in 2000 to 23 per cent in 2022, mostly, but not only, because of China. This rise is likely to continue. 

 

Proposition eight: the high-income democracies will have to up their political game if they are to persuade emerging and developing countries to side with them against China and Russia. Few countries like these autocracies. But the west has lost much support with its failed wars and inadequate help, notably during Covid. Most emerging and developing countries will try hard to stay on good terms with both sides. 

 

Proposition nine: global co-operation remains essential. However deep the rifts become, we share this planet. We still need to avoid cataclysmic wars, economic collapse and, above all, destruction of the environment. None of this is at all likely without at least a minimum level of co-operation. Yet is that at all likely? No.

 

Proposition ten: The rumours of globalisation’s death are exaggerated.Americans are inclined to think their perspective is the global norm. Frequently, it is not, as on this. Most countries know that extensive trade is not a luxury but a necessity. Without it, they would be miserably impoverished. The more likely prospect is that trade will become less American, less western and less dominated by manufacturers. Trade in services is likely to explode, however, driven by cross-border online interaction and artificial intelligence. 

 

Proposition eleven: given the immense political and organisational challenges, the chances that humanity will prevent damaging climate change are slim. Emissions fell in 2020 because of Covid. But the curve remains unbent.  

Proposition twelve: inflation has been unleashed in a way not seen for four decades. It is an open question whether central banks will maintain their credibility. High inflation and falling real incomes are a politically noxious combination. Upheaval will follow. We in the west have to manage profound changes and lethal conflicts at a time of division and disillusionment. Our leaders have to rise to the occasion. Will they do so? One can only hope so.

Henry Kissinger ‘We are now living in a totally new era’ - Interview by Edward Luce (Financial Times)

Henry Kissinger ‘We are now living in a totally new era’

Henry Kissinger Cold war strategist discusses Russia, the Ukraine war and China at the FTWeekend Festival in Washington Henry Kissinger says there is insufficient discussion about the risk of nuclear weapons 

 

Interview conducted by Edward Luce in Washington 

This is the edited transcript of a discussion between Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state and national security adviser, and Edward Luce, Financial Times US national editor, which took place on May 7 in Washington. 

Financial Times, May 10, 2022

https://www.ft.com/content/cd88912d-506a-41d4-b38f-0c37cb7f0e2f?desktop=true&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content

 

Financial Times: Earlier this year, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Nixon visit to China, the Shanghai communique. You, of course, were the organiser, the orchestrator of this Sino-US agreement. And it was a major shift in the cold war: you split China from Russia. It feels like we’ve gone 180 degrees. And now Russia and China are back in a very tight relationship. My opening question to you is: are we in a new cold war with China? 

Henry Kissinger: At the time we opened to China, Russia was the principal enemy — but our relations with China were about as bad as they could be. Our view in opening to China was that it was unwise, when you have two enemies, to treat them exactly alike. What produced the opening were tensions that developed autonomously between Russia and China. [Former Soviet Union head of state Leonid] Brezhnev could not conceive that China and the United States could get together. But Mao, despite all his ideological hostility, was ready to begin conversations. In principle, the [Sino-Russian] alliance is against vested interests, it’s now established. But it does not look to me as if it is an intrinsically permanent relationship. 

 

FT: I take it that it would be in America’s geopolitical interest to encourage more distance between Russia and China. Is this wrong? 

 

HK: The geopolitical situation globally will undergo significant changes after the Ukraine war is over. And it is not natural for China and Russia to have identical interests on all foreseeable problems. I don’t think we can generate possible disagreements but I think circumstances will. After the Ukraine war, Russia will have to reassess its relationship to Europe at a minimum and its general attitude towards Nato. I think it is unwise to take an adversarial position to two adversaries in a way that drives them together, and once we take aboard this principle in our relationships with Europe and in our internal discussions, I think history will provide opportunities in which we can apply the differential approach. That doesn’t mean that either of them will become intimate friends of the west, it only means that on specific issues as they arise we leave open the option of having a different approach. In the period ahead of us, we should not lump Russia and China together as an integral element. 

 

FT: The Biden administration is framing its grand geopolitical challenge as being democracy versus autocracy. I’m picking up an implicit hint that it's the wrong framing? 

 

HK: We have to be conscious of the differences of ideology and of interpretation that exists. We should use this consciousness to apply it in our own analysis of the importance of issues as they arise, rather than make it the principal issue of confrontation, unless we are prepared to make regime change the principal goal of our policy. I think given the evolution of technology, and the enormous destructiveness of weapons that now exist, [seeking regime change] may be imposed on us by the hostility of others, but we should avoid generating it with our own attitudes. 

 

FT: You have probably more experience than any person alive of how to manage a stand-off between two nuclear-armed superpowers. But today’s nuclear language, which is coming thick and fast from [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, from people around him, where do you put that in terms of the threat we are facing today? 

 

HK: We are now [faced with] with technologies where the rapidity of exchange, the subtlety of the inventions, can produce levels of catastrophe that were not even imaginable. And the strange aspect of the present situation is that the weapons are multiplying on both sides and their sophistication is increasing every year. But there’s almost no discussion internationally about what would happen if the weapons actually became used. My appeal in general, on whatever side you are, is to understand that we are now living in a totally new era, and we have gotten away with neglecting that aspect. But as technology spreads around the world, as it does inherently, diplomacy and war will need a different content and that will be a challenge. 

 

FT: You’ve met Putin 20 to 25 times. The Russian military nuclear doctrine is they will respond with nuclear weapons if they feel that the regime is under existential threat. Where do you think Putin’s red line is in this situation? 

 

HK: I have met Putin as a student of international affairs about once a year for a period of maybe 15 years for purely academic strategic discussions. I thought his basic convictions were a kind of mystic faith in Russian history . . . and that he felt offended, in that sense, not by anything we did particularly at first, but by this huge gap that opened up with Europe and the east. He was offended and threatened because Russia was threatened by the absorption of this whole area into Nato. This does not excuse and I would not have predicted an attack of the magnitude of taking over a recognised country. I think he miscalculated the situation he faced internationally and he obviously miscalculated Russia’s capabilities to sustain such a major enterprise — and when the time for settlement comes all need to take that into consideration, that we are not going back to the previous relationship but to a position for Russia that will be different because of this — and not because we demand it but because they produced it. 

 

FT: Do you think Putin’s getting good information and if he isn’t what further miscalculations should we be preparing for? 

 

HK: In all these crises, one has to try to understand what the inner red line is for the opposite number . . . The obvious question is how long will this escalation continue and how much scope is there for further escalation? Or has he reached the limit of his capability, and he has to decide at what point escalating the war will strain his society to a point that will limit its fitness to conduct international policy as a great power in the future. I have no judgment when he comes to that point. When that point is reached will he escalate by moving into a category of weapons that in 70 years of their existence have never been used? If that line is crossed, that will be an extraordinarily significant event. Because we have not gone through globally what the next dividing lines would be. One thing we could not do in my opinion is just accept it. 

 

FT: You’ve met [Chinese president] Xi Jinping many times and his predecessors — you know China well. What lessons is China drawing from this? 

 

HK: I would suspect that any Chinese leader now would be reflecting on how to avoid getting into the situation in which Putin got himself into, and how to be in a position where in any crisis that might arise, they would not have a major part of the world turned against them. 

 

Transcribed by James Politi in Washington

 

Pode-se isolar totalmente a Rússia? Seria inteligente fazê-lo? Funciona? - Ivan Krastev (Financial Times)

 To isolate Russia is not in the west’s power or interest

Treating the entire country as a geopolitical Chernobyl would be a strategic blunder

Ivan Krastev

Financial Times, Londres – 25.4.2022

 

As the world reeled from the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one question was left unanswered. On whose behalf was the war declared? Are the majority of Russians hostage to Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions, or is Russian society the equivalent of Putin writ large? 

During the invasion’s first days, most Europeans leaned towards the hostage theory and expected ordinary Russians to voice their opposition. It took the revelation of the unfathomable atrocities in Bucha for public opinion to shift, reconceiving of Putin’s war as Russia’s war. 

The Kremlin’s total media control and growing repression were seemingly no longer sufficient to explain, let alone justify, the silence of Russian society. Did Russians not know the truth about Bucha or did they do not want to know it? Many Europeans were outraged by the way the country’s citizens swallowed hard and shut their eyes to their army’s barbarism. 

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, an exclusion zone was created around the reactor that exploded. For Europeans and for the western political mind generally, Russia has become a geopolitical Chernobyl: a site of moral disaster, a place of danger to be sealed off. And so many Europeans today are dreaming about a world without Russia. 

In their imagination the west no longer consumes Russia’s energy resources. Cultural contacts are severed and Europe’s borders are fortified. It would be as if Russia had disappeared. Even pathologically optimistic business leaders see little opportunity of reinvesting in Russian markets in the coming years. And while Putin remains in power, a significant easing of western sanctions appears a remote prospect. 

Many western policymakers have already given up on the hope of change in Russia. Instead they focus on measures aimed at limiting the country’s ability to achieve its foreign policy objectives. 

But any attempt to seal off Russia would be very different from the west’s cold war policy of containment of the Soviet Union. As George Kennan conceived it, containment was predicated on an assumption that over time the Soviet regime was destined to collapse because of its internal contradictions. A Chernobyl-style isolation would assume that Russia can never change. 

The cold war was rooted in a discourse in which the regime was to be blamed but the people declared innocent. The Soviet Union was depicted as a prison-house, and Soviet leaders were never recognised as legitimate representatives of their society. 

In contrast to this idea of an evil regime and a repressed people in which change is still imaginable, a policy that seeks to create an “isolated Russian zone” unconsciously adopts a discourse in which Russia as a civilisation is immutable. 

There are myriad moral reasons why Russia should be ghettoised as a geopolitical Chernobyl. But treating Russia as a collective Putin will be a strategic blunder. Here is why. 

First, this notion will primarily benefit the Russian leader. It unwittingly gives him the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Russian people. Worse, it justifies his twisted narrative that the only Russia the west can tolerate is a weak or defeated one. If Russia is a geopolitical Chernobyl, the only reasonable strategy for any freedom-loving Russian is to bolt for the exits.

Second, an isolation strategy is probably self-defeating because it closes off interest in what is happening in Russia. It predicts that Russians’ failure to speak against the war means that the country will never change its attitude towards it. It will miss the fact that more than a few Russians support the war not because they support the regime but because they irrationally hope that the war will change the regime. 

Opposition-minded people hope that a defeat for the Russian army in Ukraine will bring Putin down. Many of his supporters relish the destruction of the despised, Putin-enabled offshore elite. In the words of a famous rock singer, after the west seized the property of the oligarchs, Russians finally became “equal like in 1917”. 

Third, to bet on a world without Russia is ultimately futile because the non-western world, which may not favour the Kremlin’s war, is hardly eager to isolate Russia. Many see the current barbarism as disgusting but not exceptional. They practice value-free realism. Many of the states that US president Joe Biden invited to his Summit for Democracy have not placed sanctions on Russia. 

Russia’s military offensive in the Donbas only intensifies the clash between those who view the country as morally irreparable and those who see it as an unavoidable reality in global politics. The offensive will force European public opinion to choose between “the peace party” (those who insist that the west’s priority should be to stop hostilities as soon as possible, even at the cost of major concessions from Ukraine) and “the justice party” (those who insist the priority should be to expel Russian troops from Ukrainian territory even at the cost of prolonged war). 

Peace and justice do not rhyme in European history. Whether you call the invasion of Ukraine Putin’s war or Russians’ war is not a matter of taste but a strategic choice. It signals the west’s expectations about its relations with post-Putin Russia, whenever that arrives.

 

The writer is chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and permanent fellow at IWM Vienna.