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Mostrando postagens com marcador Foreign Affairs. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Foreign Affairs. Mostrar todas as postagens

quinta-feira, 29 de fevereiro de 2024

What Happened to Lula? - Matias Spektor (Foreign Affairs)

Não é que algo tenha "acontecido" com Lula: ele sempre foi assim, apenas estava um pouco contido anteriormente. (PRA)

 

What Happened to Lula?

How He Dashed High Hopes for Brazil’s Foreign Policy—and How He Can Get Back on Track

By Matias Spektor

Foreign Affairs, February 28, 2024

 

Few leaders could claim, on taking office, to have induced sighs of relief from both Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden. Yet in January 2023, that is exactly what Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did. His narrow victory over Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing extremist and an admirer of Donald Trump, sparked optimism across borders. Democratic leaders everywhere saw Lula’s win, which returned him to power for a third term after a 12-year hiatus and a stint in prison over corruption charges, as the herald of an antiauthoritarian tide. Autocrats the world over relished him as a seasoned statesman with a reputation for standing up to the West. And developing countries of all kinds recognized him as someone who knows better than most how to exact concessions from the global North. “Brazil is back,” read headlines, as Lula seized the spotlight.

But during his first year in office, Lula has struggled to translate his vision for a more progressive global order into action. His foreign policy thus far has been beset by diplomatic missteps that have strained relations with partners in both the West and the developing world. His statements and actions have cast doubts on his role as peacemaker, coalition builder, and champion of the marginalized. His commitment to environmental leadership has been marred by his decision to turn Brazil into the latest petrostate. And his grand design overlooks his country’s most pressing threat: the explosive expansion of criminal networks that are working hard to turn Brazil into a failed state and that are undermining the ecological integrity of the Amazon rainforest.

To fix these problems and deliver on his vision of a progressive international order, Lula will have to change course. He must reengage partners in the West and Latin America after a year of growing estrangement. He must unequivocally come out in defense of democracy in neighboring Venezuela. He has to craft a new set of climate policies, ones that allow him to use Brazil’s newly discovered oil reserves without becoming another regressive member of OPEC. And Lula must revamp the country’s intelligence apparatus and better coordinate with outside partners to reverse the dangerous growth of Brazil’s criminal networks.

TRIALS AND ERRORS

Before taking office, Lula suggested that his foreign policy ambition was to bridge the vast gaps between the rich North and the developing South. He promised to actively pursue international cooperation, facilitating dialogue between the West and the rest, and he declared that Brazil would, again, lead Latin America. His administration hoped to secure major policy victories at the next G-20 summit and at the 2025 UN climate change conference—both of which Brazil will host. To this end, Lula has unveiled plans to launch a global initiative to combat hunger, facilitate the flow of climate finance toward developing countries, and help Africa secure seats in global governance institutions.

Yet since assuming power, Lula has made a sequence of costly mistakes. He committed his first foreign blunder with the United States. The Biden administration broke with tradition to all but endorse Lula during his campaign, cautioning Bolsonaro against using unconstitutional interventions to stay in power. Lula, however, has not leveraged the United States’ rare opening to advance his vision. Instead of pushing Biden on the long list of deliverables Brazil wants for the G-20 and the climate conference, Lula squandered his goodwill by blaming the war in Ukraine on President Volodymyr Zelensky, NATO, and ultimately the United States. A much-anticipated presidential meeting between Biden and Lula produced meager outcomes, leaving the bilateral relationship in a fraught and constrained state.

Brasília has legitimate grievances with Washington. In October, the United States single-handedly blocked a Brazilian-led UN Security Council resolution for a Gaza cease-fire, which Lula’s government had heavily campaigned for in close consultation with American officials. And Lula is persuaded that the U.S. Department of Justice was behind his imprisonment over a vast corruption scandal, marring his relationship with Washington (although evidence of U.S. involvement remains thin at best). But with the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on the horizon, just after the U.S. elections in November, Brazil cannot afford this estrangement. Biden, after all, could easily torpedo Lula’s initiatives by either ignoring or opposing them.

The initial enthusiasm that greeted Lula’s return has dissipated.

The United States is not the only Western country Lula is alienating. His comments on the war in Ukraine and his penchant for describing NATO as a source of instability have made him less popular among European countries, as well. Germany and Portugal, Brazil’s closest partners on the continent, have felt particularly slighted, unable to decipher the president’s aims. These tensions have been compounded by the collapse of trade talks between the EU and Mercosur (a South American trade bloc led by Brazil), which was prompted by French agricultural protectionism and Mercosur disunity. Given that the EU plays a central role in doling out foreign aid, financing climate projects, and reforming international institutions, this discord could cost Lula his ambitious G-20 agenda.

Such failures in the global North might be less concerning if Lula had racked up victories in the global South. But he hasn’t. In South America, the initial enthusiasm that greeted his return to office has dissipated. He failed to dissuade Uruguay from seeking trade deals with China outside Mercosur, a move that severely weakens Brazil’s influence in its region. Lula’s bid to revive the Union of South American Nations proved futile. And his vocal endorsement of the unsuccessful Argentine presidential contender Sergio Massa, coupled with his absence from the inauguration of the victorious right-wing candidate, Javier Milei, have unsettled Brazil’s closest relationship. Its regional plans are contingent on the tacit support of Argentina, which has enough diplomatic influence to bolster or hinder its neighbor’s initiatives. As a result, any enmity between Lula and Milei could seriously undermine the former’s ambitions.

Lula has also run into trouble with fellow leaders on the South American left. He is engaged in a public rift with Colombian President Gustavo Petro over oil drilling in the Amazon. Brazil’s geographic distance from Mexico has made it hard for Lula to cooperate with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO, on critical issues for Lula, such as his G-20 agenda or the election of the next secretary-general of the United Nations. Lula has offered unwavering support for Venezuela’s purportedly left-wing but brutal, kleptocratic autocracy, yet this stance has earned the ire of progressive leaders elsewhere in the region—including Chilean President Gabriel Boric. Lula’s support for Venezuela has also backfired. In December, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro threatened to invade Guyana, dragging Brazil into a regional dispute that could lead to war.

Lula believes he can strengthen his international hand by partnering with China to secure concessions from the West, so he wants to closely coordinate policy with Beijing. “The BRICS is the most important development in world politics in recent times,” reasoned the presidential adviser Celso Amorim last January, referring to a consortium of non-Western states. (The acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.) “The group has awakened Western nations to the need to strengthen the G-20, which ought to be the main institution [for global governance].” But even if Amorim’s assessment is correct, Brazil can gain support from the global North for Lula’s progressive vision only if his country maintains clear autonomy; any hint of subservience to China will draw Western backlash. And for all the government’s positive talk about China’s rise, ties between Beijing and Brasília are not particularly close. The Chinese continue to play hardball on UN Security Council reform, which could land Brazil a permanent seat, as well as when it comes to bilateral trade and investment. China’s growing diplomatic clout in South America could also make it hard for Brazil to advance its interests in the region.

It still makes sense for Lula to partner with China and other BRICS members, especially since they can help him achieve his G-20 goals. Yet his uncritical collaboration with these states exposes him to accusations of hypocrisy. Lula is known for his readiness to call out Western violations of international law, but he has been silent about China’s brutal oppression of Uyghurs and India’s crackdown on dissent. He has also been quiet when it comes to Russia’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Ukraine. Confronted by the media about Alexei Navalny’s death in prison, Lula said the world should wait for forensic results before blaming Putin. And although Lula condemned the October 7 Hamas attack, he created an uproar in mid-February by declaring that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has not occurred at any other moment in history—actually, it has, when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”

Leaders everywhere, of course, have loudly criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, so Lula is far from alone. But to be a successful progressive voice and advocate at a time when the world is so profoundly divided, Lula has to establish himself as a broker who is intensely focused on finding pragmatic solutions. He cannot express moral outrage only when it is convenient.

RIGHTING THE SHIP

Fortunately for Lula, changing tack is possible. In Brazil, the executive branch has unilateral authority to set foreign policy. And for all his missteps, Lula still wields a unique set of strategic and diplomatic assets that can help him claim global leadership.

At a time when almost all major powers are coping with war or its specter, Brazil’s geographical and political distance from the primary zones of conflict allow Lula to try to refocus global attention on the scourges of poverty and inequality. The country has sovereignty over the Amazon—the planet’s most extensive rainforest—and is a top-tier food producer, giving it a major say in climate governance. And Brazil, with its turbulent but instructive history of democratic resilience and poverty alleviation, can provide other developing states with insights on how to push back against the threat of populist extremism.

Lula’s eight-decade journey from hardship to the presidency remains a source of universal admiration, earning him a superstar reception everywhere he goes. This personal allure is not cosmetic; it is a testament to his pivotal role in lifting millions of people from poverty, which he continues to do. In the first year of his third term, Lula secured legislative backing to pass a sweeping tax reform, skillfully quelled a populist insurrection, and aligned military factions. He introduced policies that have effectively slowed Amazon deforestation. Following in Biden’s footsteps, he unveiled an ambitious industrial policy alongside plans for a green transition. And despite uncertainty about Brazil’s future economic trajectory, GDP growth in Lula’s first year impressively neared three percent—more than triple earlier market projections. These triumphs have reinforced Lula’s political capital. A recent Atlas Intel poll shows that 58 percent of Brazilians rate his administration positively.

Lula still wields a unique set of strategic and diplomatic assets.

Yet the best card in Lula’s deck is simple serendipity. The fact that Brazil will host both the G-20 summit in 2024 and the COP30 conference in 2025 means that Lula will have two global stages on which to unveil and champion a progressive foreign policy agenda centered on poverty reduction, equitable representation for emerging states, and climate justice—a reshuffling of the deck in favor of the global South. These summits demand the painstaking construction of big-tent coalitions. But this is a task at which Lula should excel, provided he can rework relations with other world leaders.

Lula can start by rebuilding ties with the United States. He should do so by focusing on his administration’s mutual interests with Biden, such as the green transition and food security, and by encouraging the White House to follow through on its professed commitment to UN reform. He should make the case that Brazil’s G-20 conference will offer a showcase for the Biden administration to promote a progressive global order, one that distinguishes it from the policies Trump would pursue. But Lula should also initiate dialogue with Republican counterparts now in the event the GOP wins in 2024, capitalizing on his innate capacity for engaging ideological adversaries. Although Trump is an unpredictable politician, Lula managed to craft excellent and profitable relations with former Republican President George W. Bush, even as Brazil staunchly and publicly opposed the Iraq war.

Lula must rebuild ties with other countries in South America, as well. Here, humility will be key. Lula should acknowledge that Brazil’s recent domestic turmoil has tarnished its brand, not least because the cross-border corruption scandals unearthed during Lula’s tenure eroded trust in the country and implicated numerous South American leaders. A better Latin America policy also entails a new approach to Venezuela. Lula has historically protected Venezuela from external criticism, even as it immiserates its people, by arguing that any liberalization is contingent on the regime’s acquiescence. But the reality remains that without concerted international pressure, liberalization is unlikely. As a result, Lula must stop defending Venezuela’s autocrats.

Brazil will have to cooperate with NATO in the South Atlantic.

To be a true progressive leader, Lula will need to make strides on climate change. His administration may have slowed deforestation rates, but it must make fundamental changes to Brazil’s increasingly carbon-intensive economy if it wants to stop rising emissions. It will have to realign the country’s voters, agricultural sector, and industrial sector toward sustainability in a way no Brazilian government has done before. To succeed, Lula must introduce legislation to compensate the losers of the ecological transition, such as farmers and ranchers, so they do not fight as Brazil makes the switch. He should reconsider his November 2023 initiative to fully integrate Brazil into OPEC and instead harness the country’s oil reserves as a catalyst for its green transformation, channeling revenues into sustainable energy initiatives. He should modernize Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, to lead in eco-friendly innovation. Finally, Lula must root out criminal actors in the immensely complex Amazon region, which are responsible for much of Brazil’s deforestation.

Lula must also take on organized crime more broadly. Successive Brazilian administrations, including Lula’s, have allowed the country’s gangs to grow in size and scope, resulting in groups that are now powerful enough to seriously challenge the authority of the state. Criminal rings influence politics at all levels of government, co-opting state institutions that oversee roads, ports, airports, border controls, financial systems, and even law enforcement and the armed forces. They also control cross-border illicit trades in narcotics, counterfeit goods, auto parts, and human beings. The toll on ordinary Brazilians has been brutal. With an average of 110 murders per day, Brazil’s homicide rate is one of the highest in the world. The country is home to 17 of the globe’s 50 deadliest cities.

With respect to crime, there will be no strictly national solutions. Brazil’s criminal networks span many borders, so reversing the trend will require deep international cooperation of the kind not only that Brasília is unused to but that its foreign policy elites have also traditionally rejected. Yet the country will have to work with poorer and weaker neighbors to clean up their security forces, which have sometimes fallen under the sway of criminal organizations. Lula must also reorient Brazil’s intelligence apparatus—which Bolsonaro tried to train on domestic opponents—toward tracing and rooting out gangs, wherever they operate. And Brazil will have to cooperate with NATO in the South Atlantic. Working with the alliance may be toxic to Brazilian diplomats and military officials, but it’s simply a fact that many of Brazil’s criminal networks are transatlantic. As a result, the country needs to collaborate with Europe.

Revamping Brazil’s grand strategy is a formidable task, and the timing is urgent—the G-20 summit is just ten months away. But if Lula plays his cards right, he can still mend strained partnerships and rebuild his reputation as a diplomatic broker. He can help stabilize his region and his country. He can, in other words, deliver on the core promise of a progressive global order: using diplomacy to solve problems, even as fires proliferate in a politically fragmented world.


MATIAS SPEKTOR is Professor of International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 


terça-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2024

How U.S. Allies and Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics - Graham Allison (Foreign Affairs)

 Artigo relativamente pessimista sobre o futuro do Ocidente.

How U.S. Allies and Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics

Adversaries Are Responding to the Chance of His Return

By Graham Allison

In the decade before the great financial crisis of 2008, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, became a virtual demigod in Washington. As U.S. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, famously advised, “If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter. If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him.”

During Greenspan’s two decades as chair, from 1987 to 2006, the Fed played a central role in a period of accelerated growth in the U.S. economy. Among the sources of Greenspan’s fame was what financial markets called the “Fed put.” (A “put” is a contract that gives the owner the right to sell an asset at a fixed price until a fixed date.) During Greenspan’s tenure, investors came to believe that however risky the new products that financial engineers were creating, if something went awry, the system could count on Greenspan’s Fed to come to the rescue and provide a floor below which stocks would not be allowed to fall. The bet paid off: when Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities and derivatives led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, triggering the 2008 financial crisis that sparked the Great Recession, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed stepped in to prevent the economy from sliding into a second Great Depression.

That dynamic is worth recalling when considering the effect that the 2024 U.S. presidential election is already having on the decisions of countries around the world. Leaders are now beginning to wake up to the fact that a year from now, former U.S. President Donald Trumpcould actually be returning to the White House. Accordingly, some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the “Trump put”—delaying choices in the expectation that they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them. Others, by contrast, are beginning to search for what might be called a “Trump hedge”—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly.

THE GHOST OF PRESIDENCIES PAST

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations in his war against Ukraine provide a vivid example of the Trump put. In recent months, as a stalemate has emerged on the ground, speculation has grown about Putin’s readiness to end the war. But as a result of the Trump put, it is far more likely that the war will still be raging this time next year. Despite some Ukrainians’ interest in an extended cease-fire or even an armistice to end the killing before another grim winter takes its toll, Putin knows that Trump has promised to end the war “in one day.” In Trump’s words: “I would tell [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, no more [aid]. You got to make a deal.” Facing a good chance that a year from now, Trump will offer terms much more advantageous for Russia than anything U.S. President Joe Biden would offer or Zelensky would agree to today, Putin will wait.

Ukraine’s allies in Europe, by contrast, must consider a Trump hedge. As the war approaches the end of its second year, daily pictures of destruction and deaths caused by Russian airstrikes and artillery shells have upended European illusions of living in a world in which war has become obsolete. Predictably, this has led to a revival of enthusiasm for the NATO alliance and its backbone: the U.S. commitment to come to the defense of any ally that is attacked. But as reports of polls showing Trump besting Biden are beginning to sink in, there is a growing fear. Germans, in particular, remember former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conclusion from her painful encounters with Trump. As she described it, “We must fight for our future on our own.”

Trump is not the only U.S. leader to ask why a European community that has three times the population of Russia and a GDP more than nine times its size has to continue to depend on Washington to defend it. In an oft-cited interview with The Atlantic’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, in 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama lacerated Europeans (and others) for being “free riders.” But Trump has gone further. According to John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser, Trump said, “I don’t give a shit about NATO” during a 2019 meeting in which he talked seriously about withdrawing from the alliance altogether. In part, Trump’s threats were a bargaining ploy to force European states to meet their commitment to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense—but only in part. After two years of attempting to persuade Trump about the importance of the United States’s alliances, Secretary of Defense James Mattis concluded that his differences with the president were so profound that he could no longer serve, a position he explained candidly in his 2018 letter of resignation. Today, Trump’s campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” When considering how many tanks or artillery shells to send to Ukraine, some Europeans are now pausing to ask whether they might need those arms for their own defense were Trump to be elected in November.

Leaders are waking up to the fact that Trump could return to the White House.

Expectations derived from a Trump put were also at work during the recently concluded COP28 climate change summit in Dubai. Historically, COP agreements about what governments will do to address the climate challenge have been long on aspirations and short on performance. But COP28 stretched even further into fantasy in heralding what it called a historic agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels.”

In reality, the signatories are doing precisely the opposite. Major producers and consumers of oil, gas, and coal are currently increasing—not reducing—their use of fossil fuels. Moreover, they are making investments to continue doing so for as far ahead as any eye can see. The world’s largest producer of oil, the United States, has been expanding its production annually for the past decade and set a new record for output in 2023. The third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India, is celebrating its own superior economic growth driven by a national energy program whose centerpiece is coal. This fossil fuel accounts for three-quarters of India’s primary energy production. China is the number one producer of both “green” renewable energy and “black” polluting coal. So although China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the United States has in the past five decades, it is also currently building six times as many new coal plants as the rest of the world combined.

Thus, although COP28 saw many pledges about targets for 2030 and beyond, attempts to get governments to take any costly, irreversible actions today were resisted. Leaders know that if Trump returns and pursues his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill,” such actions will be unnecessary. As a bad joke that made its way around the bars at COP28 went: “What is COP28’s unstated plan to transition away from fossil fuels? To burn them up as rapidly as possible.”

A DISORDERED WORLD

A second Trump term promises a new world trading order—or disorder. On his first day in office in 2017, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The weeks that followed saw the end of discussions to create a European equivalent as well as other free-trade agreements. Using the unilateral authority that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the executive branch, Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports—tariffs that Biden has largely kept in place. As the Trump administration’s trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer—whom the Trump campaign has identified as its lead adviser on these issues—explained in his recently published book, No Trade Is Free, a second Trump term would be much bolder. 

In the current campaign, Trump calls himself “Tariff Man.” He is promising to impose a ten percent universal tariff on imports from all countries and to match countries that levy higher tariffs on American goods, promising “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff.” The cooperation pact with Asia-Pacific countries negotiated by the Biden administration—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity—will, Trump says, be “dead on day one.” For Lighthizer, China is the “lethal adversary” that will be the central target of protectionist U.S. trade measures. Beginning with the revocation of the “permanent normal trading relations” status China was granted in 2000 ahead of joining the World Trade Organization, Trump’s goal will be to “eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas,” including electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals.

Since trade is a major driver of global economic growth, most leaders find the possibility that U.S. initiatives could essentially collapse the rules-based trading order almost inconceivable. But some of their advisers are now exploring futures in which the United States may be more successful in decoupling itself from the global trading order than in forcing others to decouple from China.

Trade liberalization has been a pillar of a larger process of globalization that has also seen the freer movement of people around the world. Trump has announced that on the first day of his new administration, his first act will be to “close the border.” Currently, every day, more than 10,000 foreign nationals are entering the United States from Mexico. Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts, Congress has refused to authorize further economic assistance to Israel and Ukraine without major changes that significantly slow this mass migration from Central America and elsewhere. On the campaign trail, Trump is making Biden’s failure to secure U.S. borders a major issue. He has announced his own plans to round up millions of “illegal aliens” in what he calls “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” In the thick of their own presidential election, Mexicans are still searching for words to describe this nightmare in which their country could be overwhelmed by millions of people coming across both their northern and southern borders.

FOUR MORE YEARS

Historically, there have been eras when differences between Democrats and Republicans on major foreign policy issues were so modest that it could be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This decade, however, is not one of them. Unhelpful as it may be to foreign-policy makers and their counterparts abroad, the U.S. Constitution schedules quadrennial equivalents of what in the business world would be an attempted hostile takeover.

As a result, on every issue—from negotiations on climate or trade or NATO’s support for Ukraine to attempts to persuade Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to act—Biden and his foreign policy team are finding themselves increasingly handicapped as their counterparts weigh Washington’s promises or threats against the likelihood that they will be dealing with a very different government a year from now. This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch U.S. politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope. They know that this political theater will choose not only the next president of the United States but also the world’s most consequential leader.

·  GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?


segunda-feira, 18 de dezembro de 2023

Foreign Affairs some of the best books on international relations

 

The Economic Government of the World, 1933–2023


By Martin Daunton

Daunton’s sweeping narrative assesses the history of international economic cooperation and the institutions that organize and sustain it.

READ THE REVIEW

Daunton has written a sweeping history of international economic cooperation and of the meetings and institutions through which it is organized. The author’s original design for this book, many years in the making, was evidently to begin his narrative with the London Economic Conference of 1933, which failed to preserve an open international order, and conclude with the more successful G-20 summit in London in 2009, which mobilized international efforts to contain the 2008 global financial crisis and stabilize the world economy. Whereas the first of these conferences was sunk by doctrinal disagreements and international political disputes, the second benefited from the intellectual and political convergence that followed the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War. Developments in the past decade, however, have thrown the author’s optimistic narrative a series of curve balls: the resurgence of populism, tensions between China and the United States, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which put an end to political convergence and inaugurated what some call a “new Cold War.” Progress in strengthening global governance, it turns out, is not inevitable. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization retain a role in fostering international cooperation, but Daunton insists that they must not interfere too extensively in domestic policy choices lest they spark a backlash. To sustain international cooperation, governments must complement openness with policies that create good jobs, provide social insurance, tax footloose corporations, and avoid destabilizing capital flows.

From Amazon.com:

An epic history of the people and institutions that have built the global economy since the Great Depression.

In this vivid landmark history, the distinguished economic historian Martin Daunton pulls back the curtain on the institutions and individuals who have created and managed the global economy over the last ninety years, revealing how and why one economic order breaks down and another is built. During the Great Depression, trade and currency warfare led to the rise of economic nationalism―a retreat from globalization that culminated in war. From the Second World War came a new, liberal economic order. Squarely reflecting the interests of the West in the Cold War, liberalism faced collapse in the 1970s and was succeeded by neoliberalism, financialization, and hyper-globalization.

Now, as leading nations are tackling the fallout from COVID-19 and threats of inflation, food insecurity, and climate change, Daunton calls for a return to a more just and equitable form of globalization. Western imperial powers have overwhelmingly determined the structures of world economic government, often advancing their own self-interests and leading to ruinous resource extraction, debt, poverty, and political and social instability in the Global South. He argues that while our current economic system is built upon the politics of and between the world’s biggest economies, a future of global recovery―and the reduction of economic inequality―requires the development of multilateral institutions.

Dramatic and revelatory, 
The Economic Government of the World offers a powerful analysis of the origins of our current global crises and a path toward a fairer international order.”


Neal’s highly entertaining biography of the writer Carleton Beals, whose work on Latin America foreshadowed later anti-imperialist critiques, sheds light on the United States’ relationship with the ruling elites of Latin America throughout the twentieth century.

READ THE REVIEW

Neal admires the fierce intellectual independence and penetrating, skeptical eye of Carleton Beals, who died in 1979 at the age of 85. Beals was a remarkably prolific freelance writer of some 40 books and innumerable magazine articles that skewered the ruling elites of Latin America and their U.S. sponsors. As recorded in Neal’s highly entertaining biography, Beals’s best books, enriched by his extensive travels, offered colorful, often acerbic portraits of the leading political and intellectual figures of the day. His biggest scoop, a 1928 exclusive interview with Augusto Sandino, pictured the Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter as a romantic patriot battling against a misguided U.S. military intervention. Something of a celebrity in progressive intellectual circles, Beals foreshadowed the later anti-imperialist critiques of William Appleman Williams and Noam Chomsky and the popularity in academic circles of dependency theory, the notion that globalization impoverishes poorer countries. Like many left-leaning, politically engaged writers, Beals wavered between demanding that the U.S. government keep its hands off Latin America and urging Washington to put its thumb on the scales for progressive democrats.

In this splendid, well-balanced history of an extraordinary but seldom studied period in inter-American relations, Herman argues that pragmatic accords between the United States and Latin American countries enabled a brilliant if brief chapter of solidarity in the Western Hemisphere throughout World War II.

READ THE REVIEW




In this wide-ranging and shrewd analysis of the Chinese state, Huang predicts that the crackdown on freedom under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s modernized version of imperial rule may bring an end to the country’s brief spurt of dynamism.

READ THE REVIEW


domingo, 6 de agosto de 2023

A desintegração da Iugoslávia: o último embaixador americano - Warren Zimmermann (Foreign Affairs)

 

segunda-feira, 24 de julho de 2023

The Illusion of Great-Power Competition - Jude Blanchette and Christopher Johnstone (Foreign Affairs)

Estamos de volta ao Great Game?

The Illusion of Great-Power Competition

Why Middle Powers—and Small Countries—Are Vital to U.S. Strategy

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/illusion-great-power-competition

It may be a confusing and unpredictable moment in global politics, but there is no shortage of frames and narratives that purport to explain or at least characterize the major developments. For many observers, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increasingly aggressive saber rattling across the Indo-Pacific have divided the world into blocs, dragging the United States and its allies into a “new Cold War” pitting Washington against Beijing and Moscow. Others see this as an era of competition among great powers, in which the United States and China are the central protagonists in a global struggle. The latest U.S. National Security Strategy reflects this view, concluding that “a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”

But these frames are oversimplified and outdated: they overemphasize the unilateral power of the United States and China, underappreciate both countries’ own dependencies, and overlook the vital importance of middle and small powers, as well as commercial entities and other nonstate actors. Although some aspects of the Cold War hold true today, such as the geopolitical rivalry between two powerful countries with dramatically different political systems and ideologies, the integration and interdependence that characterize the international system in this century places today’s policymakers on a vastly different landscape than the one their twentieth-century predecessors navigated.

The competition that confronts the United States is not simply a bilateral contest with another great power. Nor is it one that pits cleanly demarcated authoritarian and democratic blocs against one another. It is instead an ever-shifting competition of coalitions and of informal and often ad hoc groupings of partners that come together to address a specific issue or set of issues. As Hal Brands and Zack Cooper noted in 2020, these coalitions differ depending on the issue at hand; the partners involved in the geopolitical balancing of China’s growing military power in the western Pacific may be different from those that partner to safeguard and promote advanced technologies. Some groupings form naturally, consisting of willing and like-minded partners. Others bring together reluctant partners in relationships formed out of necessity or convenience. 

In this world of ad hoc groupings and coalitions, Washington sometimes needs to work with actors who do not support—or are even outright hostile to—some U.S. interests or values. Occasionally, the United States will need to use inducements and even outright pressure to bring actors into alignment with U.S. goals. But if these coalitions, groupings, and individual relationships are managed adeptly and with a clear objective in mind, the United States can advance its own interests while helping build a resilient and stable international order that sustains prosperity for its allies and partners.

These new realities require a shift in U.S. tactics and strategy—and, perhaps most important, a new long-term mindset. For starters, an effective Indo-Pacific strategy will require Washington to pay increasing attention to medium and small powersin Europe, in Southeast Asia, and across the African continentwhich will play a crucial role in responding to Beijing’s advancing capabilities. More broadly, to prosecute a grand strategy in a world of not just close partners and allies but also expedient bilateral relationships and unstable ad hoc coalitions, the United States will need to be comfortable operating in the murky middle between interdependence and autonomy, between multipolarity and division into blocs, and with partners whose willingness to join Washington will shift from issue to issue.

A coalition-centered approach does not mean simply appealing to the lowest common denominator, but rather focusing on coordination and calibration with key partners to sustain a robust network of aligned actors focused on a set of clear objectives. The Biden administration has generally been an effective practitioner of this approach, but it is contested in today’s Washington, where some voices advocate for a more unilateralist, zero-sum competition with China that demands U.S. partners choose sides. That posture, however, would provide room for Beijing to navigate between and around U.S. partners, thus leaving the United States more isolated and ultimately less secure.

AROUND THE WORLD

Nowhere is this need for a new mindset clearer than in Taiwan. To be able to better deter and ultimately defend the island from a possible Chinese assault, the U.S. military must look beyond Japan and South Korea, where U.S. bases lie uncomfortably within range of Chinese missiles. With the exception of Australia, where the U.S. military presence is expanding and defense cooperation deepening, the only other places where Washington can seek new opportunities are in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Over the last decade, Singapore, a city-state with a population of five million, has quietly become an important partner in this regard. Although not a formal U.S. ally, today it anchors the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, supporting rotational deployments of littoral combat ships, surveillance aircraft—and, perhaps soon, drones. Singapore also serves as a logistics and refueling hub. Recent agreements to expand access, exercises, and training with the Philippines, and to deepen defense cooperation with Papua New Guinea, also reflect the necessary U.S. effort to diversify.

Economically, the complex supply chains and innovation ecosystems that underpin the development and production of advanced technologies are driving unprecedented cross-border integration, with small economies often playing critical roles in key industries. To develop more secure supply chains in the semiconductor industry, Washington is seeking deeper coordination with the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. And to reduce reliance on China for critical minerals, Australia and Indonesia—along with other potential U.S. partners in South America and Africa—are positioning themselves as key alternative sources of supply. Indeed, one of the reasons Beijing is working so hard to court Europe and the global South is that China understands how vital actors in this region are in shaping the larger strategic competition.

None of this diminishes the significant advantages and power that the United States still possesses. But the role of the small looms large in this twenty-first-century competition of coalitions. Consider the case of the Netherlands, which, with a population of less than 20 million, is home to a single firm, ASML, that is vital to global semiconductor production. ASML is the sole global provider of the latest generation of photolithography scanner equipment, critical to the manufacture of cutting-edge logic chips. That is why alignment with the Netherlands—along with Japan, another key supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment—was critical to the success of the sweeping export controls that the Biden administration imposed in October 2022, which limit the materials and technology available to China’s semiconductor industry. Washington’s pathbreaking effort to restrain China’s capabilities in a critical technology thus depended on support from the eighteenth-largest economy in the world and the compliance of a single private company.

Beijing, like Washington, is stuck in a world of tradeoffs.

Of course, long-standing treaty allies and the world’s major economies will continue to be a key pillar for U.S. strategy. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the G-7 forum has undergone a dramatic revitalization, and today it serves as the primary venue for coordinating policy on confronting Moscow and assisting Ukraine. On many issues related to strategic competition with China, coordination with the G-7 will continue to be a starting point for the United States; for example, when it comes to considering limits on investing in high-tech sectors in China. Such measures will be effective, and avoid losses for U.S. firms, only if other countries impose similar measures in the same sectors—and the coalition-building will start with the G-7. In defense, NATO and U.S. treaty alliances in Asia, which provide a solid legal framework for U.S. military presence and activities, will continue to be the foundation for U.S. strategy.

But the larger dynamic, in which the United States depends on states and commercial partners of all sizes and compositions to forge an effective and sustainable China policy and Indo-Pacific strategy, will play out again and again across the globe and across all critical domains of strategic competition. Whether the United States is trying to build influence in standard-setting bodies or ensuring an effective defense posture that deters Chinese aggression, success will depend on Washington’s ability to partner and align with a varied range of actors, including small and medium-sized players.

But a successful coalition building strategy will require navigating the functional and structural realities these partners face, and doing so with nuance and patience. Perhaps most important, members of any given coalition or grouping will likely also have deep economic and diplomatic ties with China, with little interest in joining an explicitly anti-China bloc—and little ability to do so, given domestic political realities. This is true of countries both large and small; even Japan, arguably the country in Asia most concerned about China’s growing power, is deeply dependent China’s economy for its own prosperity. The same goes for the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, all of which have deep and growing economic links with China. Thus, in addition to its own interdependencies with China, the United States will be influenced and constrained in how far it can push against China by the interdependencies of its coalition partners. Though many countries in the region harbor deep concerns about China’s ambitions, none are willing to explicitly align against it, and most are even cautious about the extent to which they can directly inveigh against Beijing; these partners will continue to pursue hedging strategies that seek to balance engagement among external powers. A recent survey found that a majority of people across Asia believe that the consequences of U.S.-Chinese strategic competition will be negative; more than 60 percent think their country’s national security will be placed at risk. And for countries close to China, the prospect of conflict is existential. As the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., said in a recent interview about U.S.-Chinese tensions over Taiwan: “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.”

For its part, China also faces a similarly complex geopolitical terrain. Even with all its economic and military heft, Beijing depends on key bilateral and commercial relationships to power its economy and modernize its military. China is a net energy importer, requires continued access to a U.S.-controlled global financial system, and is far behind Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and key European states in the design and manufacture of advanced semiconductors. For all of Beijing’s bravado about the superiority of its political system and its talk about self-sufficiency, the Chinese Communist Party faces critical dependences that will not disappear for the foreseeable future. That helps explain China’s awkward pursuit of good relations with European countries (which are some of its largest trade and technology partners) and Moscow (a key security and energy partner), despite the fact that its relationship with the latter threatens its relationship with the former. Beijing, like Washington, is stuck in a world of tradeoffs.

GET REAL

As the United States wrestles with a fluid international system, it should follow a few key principles. First, in a world in which few countries are willing to explicitly align against China, the United States will need to be careful when presenting partners with zero-sum choices, limiting those moments to cases where explicit alignment against China is absolutely necessary to protect vital U.S. interests. It must define narrowly those elements of the strategic competition with China that most require cooperation from others, and in those instances, it must bring the full weight of U.S. diplomacy and persuasion to bear. But otherwise, Washington must give partner governments the space to define their relationships with China in ways that comport with their interests and local realities. Here, the Biden administration’s stated approach to the technology competition—building a “high fence” around a “small yard” of advanced technologies with military applications—makes sense if vigorously applied. But Washington must resist pressure at home to ceaselessly expand the list of controlled technologies and other measures designed to impede China’s advance, for the simple reason that the higher the fence, the harder it will be to build and sustain a coalition. In some key technologies, such as semiconductors, it is worth putting significant pressure on partner countries and commercial actors to follow the U.S. lead, but there will be other technologies and actions—such as outbound investment screening—where Washington may prudently need to calibrate its approach to sustain the integrity and effectiveness of the larger coalition and avoid damaging the interests of U.S. commercial actors.

Similar care must be taken on issues related to Taiwan. Although countries are increasingly willing to speak out in support of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait (as illustrated by the joint statement issued by Marcos and U.S. President Joe Biden in May), political or material support for Taiwan itself is another matter—even for a country such as Japan, which given its geographic proximity would be heavily impacted by a cross-strait conflict. Washington needs to continue to lead on this issue and bolster support for Taiwan in pushing back against Chinese coercion, expanding Taiwan’s international space, and increasing economic integration and resilience. But to expand the coalition of actors supportive of Taiwan’s prosperity and security, the United States must balance the need for resolute action in the face of Beijing’s belligerence with the understandable reluctance of many middle and small powers to be drawn into a conflict between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan. If Washington truly wants to deter Beijing, it will require a large, coherent, and credible coalition of partners who can—in their own way—signal to Beijing the significant diplomatic, economic, and military costs it would pay for carrying out a military assault in the Taiwan Strait. And, crucially, the more steady-handed and predictable Washington is in its approach to cross-Strait issues, the more it will give current and would-be coalition members the confidence and political space to align with U.S. efforts.

Although close relations with the United States remain a priority for most countries in the region, most also see significant material benefit in cooperation with Beijing. If China’s economy continues to slump, this picture may look different a decade from now. But for now, this is a reality the United States cannot avoid. Washington will thus need to incentivize participation in the coalitions that it leads, with positive inducements that advance the national interests of U.S. partners. In this area, U.S. policy has fallen short lately: although many countries in the region appreciate the renewed U.S. security focus on the Indo-Pacific—including strengthening alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea—the absence of a compelling regional economic agenda undermines U.S. influence. The U.S.-initiated Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is a poor competitor for the extensive investment and trade links that China offers. The promise of increased access to the U.S. market, through legally binding trade agreements, continues to be the most persuasive tool that Washington has at its disposal to incentivize cooperation and encourage partners to make decisions at home that they would otherwise avoid. A key element of U.S. strategy must include renewed commitments to the multilateral trading system and a willingness to negotiate meaningful market-access agreements. Of course, in the near term, this approach faces stiff domestic political headwinds, but the United States cannot make the case for its partners to sacrifice economic and commercial opportunities in China without offering tangible incentives of its own.

Washington also needs to show more awareness of the domestic political situations its partners face. The fact that some coalitions and individual partners say one thing in private and another in public is often less a demonstration of cowardice and more a reflection of political and economic realities constraining overtly anti-China actions. Privately, officials across the Indo-Pacific express deep anxiety over China’s intentions and its behavior and welcome efforts by the United States to counter Beijing’s malign effect on the regional order. But public expressions of these concerns invite political, diplomatic, and economic blowback from Beijing. Although the United States, an economic and military superpower, can withstand almost any type of pressure China can muster, most other countries can ill afford to act with such confidence. The United States must help build the resilience of coalition members who face Beijing’s economic coercion. But until such a toolkit is forged, it must remain sensitive to practical risks smaller economies face.

Washington can help aid the leaders of current and would-be coalition members by calibrating its own rhetoric and actions to reflect the domestic realities of its partners. Couching U.S. actions in the Indo-Pacific solely in terms of a strategic competition with China will make it harder, not easier, to build momentum in the region. A recent joint statement issued by the leaders of the countries that make up the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—represents an effective manifestation of this more calibrated approach. The text of around 3,000 words describes the Quad countries’ plans to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific—and China is never mentioned. In a world where Washington must nimbly construct many different coalitions to push back on Chinese revisionism and support a free and open order, it will often be wise to not say the quiet part out loud.