O que o Brasil fará, ou falará, na Cúpula da Democracia? (e isso tem alguma importância?) - Mariana Sanches (BBC-Brasil, Washington)

Essa cúpula não tem NENHUMA IMPORTÂNCIA, a não ser demonstrar, mais uma vez, a atual postura do governo americano: não apenas o distanciamento em relação a duas outras grandes potências mundiais – China e Rússia – como uma tentativa de liderança de supostos aliados para tentar conter esses supostos adversários. Daí o boicote ao convite para participar da "cúpula da democracia" – o que parece normal, mas a China já respondeu com o seu documento "democrático" –, mas também o boicote dos EUA em participar dos Jogos Olímpicos de Inverno, em Beijing, em 2022, o que parece pueril, e até inútil.

Infelizmente, o mundo continuará perdendo tempo com bobagens desse tipo, em lugar de uma real coordenação de esforços em temas que são realmente relevantes: paz, segurança, bem-estar e prosperidade dos países menos desenvolvidos...

PAULO ROBERTO DE Almeida 

O que dirá Bolsonaro em cúpula pró-democracia de Biden
c - @mariana_sanches
Da BBC News Brasil em Washington
7/12/2021

A menos de um mês do primeiro aniversário da invasão do Congresso dos Estados Unidos de 6 de janeiro de 2020, os americanos serão os anfitriões de um encontro de líderes de 110 países cujo o tema principal é a democracia.

O evento tem um duplo caráter. Primeiro, quer mostrar que os EUA continuam se considerando um farol para o mundo democrático, a despeito das cenas protagonizadas por apoiadores do então presidente Donald Trump que tentaram interromper a certificação do democrata Joe Biden como novo presidente dos EUA.

Segundo, quer tentar fomentar compromissos de aliados em relação à democracia - em baixa ao redor do mundo - e se aproximar de alguns países, ao mesmo tempo em que fustiga outros, especialmente as nações autocráticas China e Rússia.

"Biden identificou um declínio na percepção das pessoas em relação à democracia como um regime que pode entregar soluções para a vida delas, especialmente na economia, na pandemia", afirmou à BBC News Brasil o ex-subsecretário do Departamento de Estado para o Hemisfério Ocidental Thomas Shannon, que comandou a embaixada no Brasil entre 2010 e 2013.

Shannon nota, no entanto, que a motivação para o encontro não se limita a esse diagnóstico global. "Não é só isso. A cúpula serve para refletir a mudança no cenário internacional de que o governo fala, mas também para pensar o que está acontecendo dentro do próprio Estados Unidos. E de certa forma o governo está projetando suas preocupações com a própria política americana em um ambiente global", afirma Shannon, relembrando o ataque ao Congresso.

Nesse cenário, um dos convidados para o evento se prepara para fazer uma defesa que toca, ao menos indiretamente, no trauma dos anfitriões. O presidente do Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro, deve usar o espaço como uma oportunidade para defender a liberdade de expressão de modo absoluto, especialmente nas redes sociais.

O tema ganhou força como uma bandeira do governo brasileiro justamente depois que o então presidente americano Donald Trump acabou banido permanentemente ou suspenso por longo período das redes sociais, na esteira da invasão do Capitólio.

As plataformas consideraram que, naquele dia 6 de janeiro, em vez de ordenar que seus seguidores interrompessem qualquer ato de violência, Trump encorajou a ação deles contra o Capitólio ao insistir, sem provas, no discurso de que a eleição presidencial havia sido fraudada.

De dentro da Casa Branca, enquanto as cenas de depredação do Congresso corriam o mundo em tempo real, Trump dizia que "estas são as coisas e eventos que acontecem quando uma sagrada e esmagadora vitória eleitoral é arrancada tão sem cerimônias e de modo cruel de grandes patriotas que foram mal e injustamente tratados por tanto tempo".

O banimento das redes lhe tirou seu gigantesco megafone político: Trump falava diretamente a quase 90 milhões de seguidores apenas no Twitter e usava as redes não apenas para campanha, como para governar.

Com estilo, estratégia e pendor ideológico semelhantes aos de Trump, Bolsonaro tomou o episódio vivido pelo americano como lição e, no Brasil, tentou mudar o marco regulatório da internet.

Domesticamente, decisões do Supremo Tribunal Federal também têm imposto derrota a seus apoiadores, como o criador da página Terça Livre, Allan do Santos, que teve a página extinta por divulgar notícias falsas.

O próprio Bolsonaro teve uma live derrubada das plataformas depois de associar, erradamente, a vacina de Covid-19 e a ocorrência de Aids. Para tentar evitar ser alvo do que aconteceu a Trump, em setembro, Bolsonaro assinou uma Medida Provisória (MP) que vedava que empresas como Google, Facebook e Twitter deletassem contas ou conteúdos que espalhem desinformação na internet, inclusive sobre o processo eleitoral. A MP acabou devolvida ao Planalto pelo Senado e perdeu validade.

Mas isso não diminuiu o interesse de Bolsonaro no tema. Seus auxiliares mantêm estreita relação com aliados de Trump, como Jason Miller, que dirige uma rede social que promete ser espaço livre para o discurso da direita global. Bolsonaro levou o assunto ao plenário da ONU, em setembro, e agora deverá novamente fazer uma defesa internacional do caso nos EUA - sem, no entanto, fazer qualquer menção ao nome de Trump ou a seu caso específico.

O que mais Bolsonaro dirá?
Apesar disso, e do histórico de declarações de Bolsonaro, que um embaixador brasileiro classificou reservadamente como "incompatíveis com o posto de chefe de Estado", existe a expectativa no Itamaraty de que Bolsonaro não atraia polêmicas para si mesmo.

Isso porque o presidente moderou o tom sobre as eleições brasileiras recentemente. Se em agosto passado, durante visita de enviados do mandatário americano Biden a Brasília, Bolsonaro fez afirmações públicas de que o sistema eleitoral brasileiro não seria seguro, em novembro, afirmou que esse "é um assunto encerrado. Passamos a acreditar no voto eletrônico".

Além disso, de acordo com a percepção dos diplomatas brasileiros, a pauta da democracia não parece estar na ordem do dia da campanha eleitoral do presidente, que concorre à reeleição em 2022, e por isso mesmo teria baixo potencial de ser explorado em redes.

Essa será a segunda cúpula proposta por Biden a que Bolsonaro participa. Na primeira, sobre o clima, sua participação foi considerada moderada. Agora, o Itamaraty aposta que ele tenderá a seguir mais o roteiro montado pelos diplomatas do que fez no discurso nas Nações Unidas, em setembro, um evento caro a seus seguidores.

O presidente brasileiro terá apenas 3 minutos para falar, em uma mensagem previamente gravada - portanto, sem chance de improvisos. De acordo com pessoas que viram o rascunho do discurso, ele dirá que o Brasil é uma "democracia plena" em todos os aspectos, com eleições livres, independência entre Poderes e imprensa atuante.

Não deverá haver pressão dos americanos por qualquer tipo de compromisso específico do Brasil.

"Será uma discussão muito franca sobre alguns dos desafios que enfrentamos. Aqui nos Estados Unidos temos nossos próprios desafios à democracia, e queremos olhar para o trabalho e fazer compromissos sobre o caminho a seguir. Acho que é uma oportunidade para o Brasil. As instituições brasileiras enfrentaram desafios ao longo do tempo e demonstraram sua robustez. Mas acho que sempre podemos ter uma conversa sobre como cada uma de nossas democracias pode ser melhor", afirmou Juan Gonzalez, chefe da Casa Branca para Assuntos de América Latina, sobre o encontro.

Embora fale em conversa franca, diplomatas ouvidos pela BBC News Brasil afirmam que o formato virtual da Cúpula deve permitir pouca ou nenhuma interação entre os líderes e, portanto, ter poucos efeitos práticos.

Há a previsão de uma discussão virtual em tempo real, mas a participação dos líderes é voluntária e há dúvidas sobre como essa reunião transcorreria. Bolsonaro não deve participar dessa parte da cúpula.

É também improvável que, com mais de uma centena de países participantes, o evento termine com alguma lista de compromissos democráticos que todos os líderes aceitem assumir.

"Infelizmente, a cúpula parece estar se transformando em nada mais do que uma boa oportunidade para posar para fotografia. Não vejo uma agenda profunda em jogo aqui. Lamentavelmente, acho que se fosse um formato presencial, haveria uma chance de as delegações se verem forçadas a reuniões paralelas das quais poderiam sair questões mais relevantes", afirma Ryan Berg, especialista em América Latina do centro de estudos Center for Strategic and International Studies, em Washington.

Por que o Brasil foi convidado?
A lista de mais de cem convidados dos americanos também foi alvo de discussões e controvérsias. Em um gesto interpretado por Pequim como provocação, Biden convidou Taiwan para o encontro, que a China não reconhece como independente. Há alguns dias, a diplomacia chinesa lançou um documento intitulado "China: uma democracia que funciona", na qual defende que o país é mais democrático que os Estados Unidos por responder melhor aos desejos de seu povo.

Para a audiência americana, o convite ao Brasil foi incluído como polêmico. A ABC News escreveu que "algumas escolhas controversas do governo, devido aos flertes com o autoritarismo - ou pelo menos ao distanciamento de valores democráticos - incluem Brasil, Índia, Filipinas, Polônia e Sérvia".

Questionado sobre o tema, Gonzalez defendeu a presença brasileira na lista de Biden. "Acho que o Brasil definitivamente precisa ter um assento à mesa porque, se você olhar para a trajetória da democracia brasileira, acho que as instituições democráticas brasileiras têm muito a ensinar ao mundo sobre a democracia", afirmou o assessor da Casa Branca.

Para o embaixador Sérgio Amaral, que comandou a embaixada brasileira em Washington entre 2016 e 2019 e é conselheiro do Centro Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (CEBRI), diplomaticamente falando, nem os EUA poderiam recusar um convite ao Brasil, nem o Brasil poderia negar sua participação.

Para ele, "apesar de todas as ameaças às instituições, elas seguem resistindo, temos uma imprensa atuante e teremos, ao que tudo indica, eleições livres no ano que vem", o que credenciaria o Brasil como democracia plena.

Segundo Amaral, há "uma postura mais esclarecida do chanceler (Carlos) França, em relação aos anos de trevas do período anterior (de Ernesto Araújo). O problema não é o que o Brasil está dizendo, porque isso sem dúvida melhorou, mas o que o Brasil está fazendo".

Ele cita especificamente o descompasso entre as promessas ambientais brasileiras na recente Conferência do Clima, a COP-26, e os números de desmatamentos divulgados pelo Brasil dias após o evento que mostravam o pior acumulado em 12 meses na devastação florestal no governo Bolsonaro.

A BBC News Brasil apurou que os americanos, que demonstraram entusiasmo público com o Brasil na COP-26, fizeram perguntas sobre os dados de desmatamento após a divulgação e demonstraram desconforto.

"É constrangedor para o Brasil ter esses números aparecendo. Eles os esconderam durante a COP? Suponho que o Brasil não esteja feliz com o fato de ter andado mais um pouco para trás na Amazônia. Não me soa estranho que o governo não venha (a público) dizer: 'Oh, as coisas estão terríveis'. Os governos normalmente não fazem isso. Mas o fato é que os números estão aí e esse vai continuar a ser um problema do Brasil com os Estados Unidos e a Europa", afirma o embaixador americano Melvyn Levtisky, que comandou a embaixada dos EUA no Brasil entre 1994 e 1998 e hoje é professor de relações internacionais na Universidade de Michigan.

Prioridade no governo Biden, a questão climática deve ser apenas lateralmente tratada no encontro sobre a democracia, que acontece nos dia 9 e 10 de dezembro. A pauta ambiental foi assunto central na primeira cúpula organizada pela gestão, em abril.

https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-59555926

Os EUA estão ficando latino-americanizados? - David Brooks (NYT)

 Não me digam!

Depois de um século e meio de avanços espetaculares à frente dos atrasados hermanos hemisféricos south of Rio Grande, os EUA estariam, incrivelmente, ficando mais “latino-americanos”, na desigualdade social, na corrupção política, na violência policial e na deterioração geral das condições de vida?

Até onde vai esse declínio?

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Joe Biden Is Succeeding [???]

David Brooks

The New York Times, 20.11.2021

Joe Biden came to the White House at a pivotal moment in American history. We had become a country dividing into two nations, one highly educated and affluent and the other left behind. The economic gaps further inflamed cultural and social gaps, creating an atmosphere of intense polarization, cultural hostility, alienation, bitterness and resentment.

As president, Biden had mostly economic levers to try to bridge this cold civil war. He championed three gigantic pieces of legislation to create a more equal, more just and more united society: the Covid stimulus bill, the infrastructure bill and what became Build Back Better, to invest in human infrastructure.

All of these bills were written to funnel money to the parts of the country that were less educated, less affluent, left behind. Adam Hersh, a visiting economist at the Economic Policy Institute, projects that more than 80 percent of the new jobs created by the infrastructure plan will not require a college degree.

These gigantic proposals were bold endeavors. Some thought them too bold. Economist Larry Summers thought the stimulus package, for example, was too big. It could overstimulate the economy and lead to inflation.

Larry is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and someone I really admire. If I were an economist, I might have agreed with him. But I’m a journalist with a sociological bent. For over a decade I have been covering a country that was economically, socially and morally coming apart. I figured one way to reverse that was to turbocharge the economy and create white-hot labor markets that would lift wages at the bottom. If inflation was a byproduct, so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.

The Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed and has been tremendously successful. It heated the overall economy. The Conference Board projects that real G.D.P. growth will be about 5 percent this quarter. The unemployment rate is falling. Retail sales are surging. About two-thirds of Americans feel their household’s financial situation is good.

But the best part is that the benefits are flowing to those down the educational and income ladder. In just the first month of payments, the expanded Child Tax Credit piece of the stimulus bill kept three million American children out of poverty. Pay for hourly workers in the leisure and hospitality sector jumped 13 percent in August compared with the previous year. By June, there were more nonfarm job openings than there had been at any time in American history. Workers have tremendous power these days.

The infrastructure bill Biden just signed will boost American productivity for years to come. As Ellen Zentner of Morgan Stanley told The Economist recently, it’s a rule of thumb that an extra $100 billion in annual infrastructure spending could increase growth by roughly a tenth of a percentage point — which is significant in an economy the size of ours. Federal infrastructure spending will be almost as large a share of annual GDP as the average level during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But Summers was right. The stimulus — along with all the supply chain and labor shortage disruptions that are inevitable when coming out of a pandemic — has boosted inflation. In addition, Americans are exhausted by a pandemic that seems to never end.

And they are taking it out on Democrats. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that voters now prefer Republican congressional candidates in their own districts by 51 percent to 41 percent. That’s the largest G.O.P. lead since this poll started asking the question, 40 years ago.

If presidencies were judged by short-term popularity, the Biden effort would look pretty bad. But that’s a terrible measure. First-term presidents almost always see their party get hammered in the midterm after their inauguration. That’s especially true if the president achieved big things. Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann looked at House popular vote trends since 1953. Often when presidents succeeded in passing major legislation — Republicans as well as Democrats — voters swung against the president’s party. Look, just to take a recent example, at how Obamacare preceded a Democratic shellacking in 2010. People distrust change. Success mobilizes opposition. It’s often only in retrospect that these policies become popular and even sacred.

Presidents are judged by history, not the distraction and exhaustion of the moment. Did the person in the Oval Office address the core problem of the moment? The Biden administration passes that test. Sure, there have been failures — the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, failing to renounce the excesses of the cultural left. But this administration will be judged by whether it reduced inequality, spread opportunity, created the material basis for greater national unity.

It is doing that.

My fear is not that Democrats lose the midterms — it will have totally been worth it. My fear is that Democrats in Congress will make fantastic policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit temporary to make budget numbers look good. If they do that the coming Republican majorities will simply let these policies expire.

If that happens then all this will have been in vain. The Democrats will have squandered what has truly been a set of historic accomplishments. Voters may judge Democrats harshly next November, but if they act with strength history will judge them well.

Brasil é excluído de viagem de secretário de Biden - Thomas Traumann (Veja)

Tremenda esnobada, como diríamos popularmente. Mas, na linguagem diplomática, significa mais um "chega prá lá", ou seja, não queremos papo com você, pois você é rude, grosseiro, inconveniente, mal educado, agride nacionais e estrangeiros, é autoritário,  tudo o que detestamos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Brasil é excluído de viagem de secretário de Biden
Secretário de Estado dos EUA vai visitar a América do Sul mas deixa Bolsonaro fora da agenda
Por Thomas Traumann | 13 out 2021, 11h11 

O secretário de Estado dos EUA (cargo equivalente ao de ministro das Relações Exteriores), Antony Blinken, deve excluir o Brasil da sua primeira viagem à América do Sul. O anúncio deve ser feito nos próximos dias e confirma a falta de diálogo entre os líderes dos dois países mais importantes das Américas. A mensagem clara do presidente Joe Biden é que o Brasil de Bolsonaro está fora da sua agenda.

A diplomacia é uma arte de sinais. Na semana passada, Blinken estava no México para tratar de imigração e cooperação econômica. Como observou o brazilianista e jornalista Brian Winter, na revista Piauí, desde que tomou posse em janeiro, Biden já conversou por telefone com quase 40 chefes de Estado, incluindo os do México, Colômbia e Guatemala. Com o presidente da Argentina, Alberto Fernández, Biden falou antes da posse, dando seu aval para as negociações da dívida do país com o FMI. Com Bolsonaro, a relação é nula.

A decisão da Casa Branca de manter distância de Bolsonaro tem nome e sobrenome, Donald Trump. No domingo, o filho e principal conselheiro de política externa de Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, postou orgulhoso no Twitter um bilhete assinado por Trump, em mais uma prova da adoração que a família sente pelo ex-presidente americano. Bolsonaro foi o penúltimo líder mundial a cumprimentar Biden pela vitória (antes, apenas, da Coréia do Norte) e afirmou publicamente que houve fraudes na vitória do democrata. Eduardo Bolsonaro está contratando vários ex-assessores de Trump para ajudar na campanha de reeleição do pai.

No mês passado, os presidentes dos Comitês de Relações Exteriores e de Justiça do Senado _ as duas comissões mais importantes da Casa_ enviaram uma carta pública ao secretário Blinken alertando sobre as ameaças de Bolsonaro de fazer um golpe de Estado. Insistimos com o senhor a deixar claro que os EUA apoiam as instituições democráticas brasileiras e que qualquer ruptura antidemocrática com a atual ordem constitucional terá sérias consequências”, diz a carta. A exclusão do Brasil na viagem do secretário do Estado não está relacionada às constantes críticas dos políticos democratas ao presidente, mas serve como uma resposta aos senadores.

Em agosto, o principal assessor de segurança do governo Biden, Jake Sullivan, esteve em Brasília para uma reunião com Bolsonaro e, sutilmente, falou da confiança dos EUA nas instituições democráticas brasileiras - uma forma diplomática de pedir que cessassem as intimidações ao Supremo Tribunal Federal. No que foi considerado uma provocação pelos americanos, no dia seguinte ao encontro, Bolsonaro fez uma ameaça direta ao ministro do STF, Alexandre de Moraes: “a hora dele [Moraes] vai chegar”.

No encontro, Sullivan havia alertado Bolsonaro e vários ministros dos cuidados antiespionagem caso a indústria chinesa Huawei dominasse o fornecimento de material na licitação do 5G, marcada para novembro. Os conselhos foram ignorados. Os EUA também não conseguiram avançar nas negociações para projetos de proteção ambiental. Ao contrário. Bolsonaro promoveu a aprovação pela Câmara da Lei da Grilagem, que legaliza a posse e o desmatamento de áreas de parques nacionais invadidas por fazendeiros e madeireiros. A legislação é o maior retrocesso ambiental na Amazônia em décadas.

Com o diálogo travado sobre democracia, direitos humanos, ambiente e tecnologia 5G, restaram poucos temas para os diplomatas americanos e brasileiros conversarem. Desde julho os EUA estão sem embaixador em Brasília e, sem um motivo de diálogo urgente, a escolha do novo representante deve demorar meses.

https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/thomas-traumann/exclusivo-brasil-e-excluido-de-viagem-de-secretario-de-biden/

Don’t Kill Me For Saying It — But Biden’s Presidency is Failing - Umair Haque (Medium)

Don’t Kill Me For Saying It — But Biden’s Presidency is Failing

America and the World are Losing Confidence in the Biden Administration — Because it Keeps Making Baffling Mistakes

 Umair Haque

Medium, September 18, 2021

https://eand.co/dont-kill-me-for-saying-it-but-biden-s-presidency-is-failing-d08537b29056

It falls on me to be the bearer of news I don’t want particularly want to give you. Sigh. Who wants to have tell people — especially liberals — that Biden’s presidency is now in danger of failing. And yet it is.

Now, before you get your hackles up, let’s…talk about it. Like grown ups. Adults. American Liberals get incredibly defensive about Joe Biden. They have a seriously unhealthy relationship with their politicians. A cultish one. They don’t brook any criticism, and lash out in rage. It’s understandable. America is indeed under siege from a militant, fanatical, authoritarian far right. And yet it doesn’t do liberals any favours to treat Biden and his team like blessed saints, above and beyond mere mortals, perfect, divine, and unquestionable. Don’t regress into the infantile rage of spoiled American liberal man-baby, OK?

It’s been a terrible month or two for Biden — that much should be clear to all. His approval rating is plummeting. It’s now hovering down there, approaching Trump’s. Again, this isn’t my opinion, it’s an objective fact. “His” means his whole team’s, obviously, so again let’s not fall into the trap of cultish personality centred thinking. Biden’s Presidency isn’t in free fall just yet. But it’s getting perilously close.

And if this trend keeps going, where does America end up? With President Trump, all over again. Or maybe even worse. This is not a drill. It’s bitter reality.

So please, take it seriously, as painful as it may be to hear, because it is an objective, empirical fact that Biden’s Presidency is now beginning to fail.

When I say “Biden’s presidency is beginning to fail, and it’s an objective empirical fact,” I mean it in three ways. One, Americans are losing confidence in Biden, and not just Trumpist fanatics but average people. Two, the world is beginning to lose confidence in Biden, America’s allies left shaken and bewildered. And three, all the numerous crises hitting us at once from Covid to climate change show no signs of abating.

Why is Biden’s Presidency beginning to fail? Because he and his team are making amateur level mistakes. Too many of them, too fast. And so Americans are beginning to lose confidence in Biden’s supposed strengths — competence, calmness, poise, a kind of assured control. A firm hand on the wheel in stormy waters. So why does the boat still feel so rickety?

Let’s discuss a few of those mistakes. I’ll begin with the one Americans care about least, to highlight just how amateur hour these mistakes are.

Biden’s team recently signed a pact with Australia and the UK to essentially make new nuclear submarines, to ward off China. What the hell is this nonsense?

It’s not just me asking — it’s the entire rest of the world, beginning with America’s closest allies. Something unprecedented then happened: France recalled its ambassador to America, because it was so offended and shocked. Germany said the deal challenged the “coherence and unity of the west.” The French foreign minister had strong words: “There has been duplicity, contempt and lies, and when you have an ally of the stature of France, you don’t treat them like that…this is a real crisis.” A former French ambassador to the UK said, “This puts a big rift down the middle of the Nato alliance.”

Now, you might think this is all meaningless. It’s not. Read the quotes above. This isn’t a game. It’s our duty as responsible adults to understand this stuff.

What the hell is Biden doing making new nuclear weapons to have some kind of macho pissing contest with China over? What on earth? Biden’s doing it because his team thinks China is a big, big threat. Are they kidding? To whom? To America? China’s not exactly a model global citizen, it’s true — but it’s hardly going to attack America, let alone Australia, or the UK. And if the US really wanted to make China scared, all it has to do is shut down trade for less than 24 hours and the Central Committee will quake in its boots.

Biden has signed this pact — AUKUS — to please Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison. These are two fanatically ultra conservative leaders. One a climate change denier, the other who behaves as if Covid is “just a flu.” They could care less about Biden or liberal progress at all. Why appease them? At the cost of Europe? This ain’t just bad policy. It’s terrible, amateur hour politics.

This is a bad, bad look for America. It reeks, to the rest of the world, of both paranoia, racism, and American empire. Three white nations…making nuclear weapons…to fight against…the largest non white nation. For no good reason. Unprovoked.

It’s not just about nuclear non-proliferation, though it is about that. New weapons? Nuclear ones? Seriously? Three white nations teaming up to intimidate the largest non-white one? What century is this?

It’s about much, much more than that though. This whole dumb episode reveals just how amateur hour the Biden teams’ mindset really is.

What is the actual biggest threat to America, right now? There are three. “Climate change,” or global warming, if you want to use the more accurate term and not the one made up by a Republican pundit to keep us from taking it seriously. It’s already making parts of America uninhabitable. Who’s going to live in California in a decade or two? How is the West going to have water? Then there’s the far right, which is doing an end run around the rule of law, and doing things like making people bounty hunters to harass and try to catch…vulnerable women. And number three is Russia. You know, the nation that essentially installed Trump in the Presidency, a fact which we now have stark evidence in support of.

Two of those three threats — global warming, the far right’s ascendant fascism — are domestic. Only one is external. And it has nothing — literally nothing — to do with China. So Biden’s team has managed to alienate allies over…nothing. For no good reason. Over something useless.

China paranoia, at this point, is more about racism than reality. No, China is not some kind of beacon of goodness and light. But it’s hardly a country so menacing to the West that a whole new nuclear arms race has to happen. This is not reality. It’s paranoia. It’s rank stupidity.

What’s the big deal about alienating, well, all of Europe, to build new nuclear weapons to intimidate China with?

There are three Very Big Problems with such Epic Goddamned Stupidity. One, America needs Europe on its side to fight the world’s — and America’s — actual biggest problem, which is global warming. Two, America needs China on its side to fight global warming, too. And three…let me think about how to put this kindly…nobody on the planet needs more nuclear weapons. More nuclear weapons aren’t going to save anybody’s ass. Our asses are going to be cooked by megafire, drowned by megaflood, poisoned by new pandemics, parched and starved — they already are.

What are you going to do, bomb global warming to death?

This isn’t just a failure of foreign policy, in other words — it cascades into the domestic and global policy failure of not fighting climate change hard enough. Meaning, half the country was either flooded or on fire a week or two ago, and it’s only going to get worse. These are failure cascades, which is how Presidencies fail. One mistake — bang!! — becomes a much, much bigger one.

The UN is warning that the world is on a “catastrophic climate pathway” — and there’s Team Biden alienating the very allies the world needs, on both sides, to fight climate change with…for the sake of macho posturing…more nuclear weapons…that aren’t going to save a soul from the planet melting down…which is the world’s, and America’s, actual biggest threat.

Let me say that last part again because I think most people are still in deep denial about this, caught in the minutiae of the latest crisis, constantly distracted by the next media buzz. Climate change, aka global warming, is the world’s biggest threat. Global warming is the biggest threat to America, to the world, to our civilization, right now.

It’s epic, epic stupidity. In all this, Biden comes off to the entire world as…just another idiotic cowboy American. Who else alienated Europe, do you remember? Trump did.

Why? Because his philosophy — and that’s a generous term — was “America First.” But it turns out, chillingly, fatally, that Biden’s isn’t all that that different.

You’re probably hopping mad right about now, because I compared Biden to Trump. So let me keep going and prove it to you.

What is Biden’s next massive failure — this time, the one Americans actually care about? Covid. Covid is out of control in America all over again. And American liberals ascribe this to the kind of moronic red staters who think making kids wear masks in schools is like Jews being sent to gas chambers during the Holocaust.

That’s only half right, though: yes, Covid’s out of control because Red Staters are idiots. But it’s also out of control because there’s a new variant, Delta. What happens when idiots meet a new variant of Covid? The cycle of death repeats. They turn a new variant into a wave. How do you really solve this problem? You stop the new variants.

How do you do that? You vaccine the world, fast. So that new variants don’t have breeding grounds. Because those variants will affect you, too.

Now I have some really bad news for you. News which should infuriate you, but leaves most American liberals indifferent, which just proves to me and the rest of the world that, yes, basically, they’re not that different from the idiot Trumpist fascists they imagine they’re opposing.

Biden hasn’t been on the side of vaccinating the globe. He’s been against it. Sure, he might have talked about it once or twice. But in practice? His people are at the WTO, literally enforcing patents with legal power. America will not let the world have vaccines.

But who does “America” mean? Well, it means figures like Bill Gates, who it seems intervened to make it happen, when researchers wanted to give the vaccine formula away. And it means Joe Biden, whose administration is actively preventing the world from being vaccinated.

What’s the outcome of all that? Well, as the head of the WHO has pointed out, Covid cases globally outpace vaccinations. That simple math has a devastating conclusion. New variants keep on igniting. Because obviously if people are getting a disease faster than they’re getting vaccinated, it’s spreading, breeding, and mutating. Worse, plenty of those new variants are vaccine resistant, like Israel’s experience shows.

Why is Biden’s preventing the world from getting Covid vaccines? Because they’re more interested in protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies. Don’t Pharma companies already make enough money? Of course they do. Do they deserve to earn history’s greatest fortune from vaccinating eight billion, every year, over and over again? Of course they don’t. The worst part of all this might just be that Covid vaccines were literally created with public money at public institutions, which means they’re public goods, which means they’re there to be shared. With the whole world. Just like, say, the polio or smallpox vaccines. Because diseases spread right back to us.

Do you see how goddamned idiotic all this is? Biden might get on TV and talk a good game about Red States and Covid. But the truth is that if he and his team really wanted to stop Covid, they’d vaccinate the whole planet. Tomorrow. Do you know how much that would cost? Literally a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket. The IMF estimated $50 billion, of which it had a shortfall of $13 billion. Zuck or Bezos could do that single-handedly. That’s way less than all those new nuclear weapons.

This is an epic, incredible, shocking, jaw-dropping, amazing, astounding mistake. No superlative can possibly be enough. All Biden needs to do is spend $50 billion — call it a hundred if you like, it’s pennies for a nation like America — to stop Covid dead in its tracks. No more Red State lunacy, because no more new variants. No more domestic chaos and panic and anxiety, because Covid never goes away.

But he won’t do it. Because he’s too busy defending Pharma profits and building new nuclear weapons.

Do you know how much $50 billion — the cost of vaccinating the world — is? It’s a quarter of one percent of America’s GDP. It’s a tiny, tiny fraction. This is what Biden is sacrificing the planet’s public health for, sacrificing his Presidency, utlimately, for.

Let me make really clear why I say that.

Biden could go down as one of America’s few — very few — Presidents who did something good and noble and beautiful for the whole world. The man who eliminated Covid. He’d be up there with FDR. The entire world would applaud. America would be a respected and admired nation again. He would have defanged his opponents, too, by taking the game to a much, much higher strategic level, a higher level of vision and ambition and purpose. Conservatives would look like the narrow-minded fools they are, and they would be badly disempowered as Americans felt good about being a country that could do genuinely beautiful and noble things again.

But Biden won’t do it. He’s shown us, at this point, time and again, what his governing philosophy really is. Tragically, stupidly, astonishingly, it’s not that different from Trump’s. At least if you’re France, Germany, China, Russia, Afghanistan — the entire rest of the world. America First.

The problem with that is that none of this century’s great Existential Threats can be solved that way. They are all global. We are all in them together. You can’t fight global warming with nuclear bombs. You can’t even fight global warming alone. You can’t fight Covid with individualism and selfishness and indifference.

But Biden isn’t teaching Americans that. He’s teaching them the opposite. He’s telling them that the world doesn’t need vaccines — so why should they believe the position that Americans do? He’s telling them that global warming matters — and then going out and spending a fortune on bombs.

Is it any wonder that Americans — the sane ones — are losing confidence in Biden? They’re baffled and bewildered, and they’re beginning to get a little frustrated. I thought this guy was better than Trump, they’re saying. And he is, in some ways. But in others? He’s a lot like him. He doesn’t seem to really think things through. He shoots before he thinks. He has double standards and inconsistencies which are too glaring to really not to see.

Biden’s Presidency is beginning to fail, my friends. I don’t say that with gloating glee — I’ve always liked the guy. I say it as a warning. Nuclear weapons and preventing the world getting vaccinated. America First-ism and giving the fascists a slap on the wrist. Global warming a lower priority — while America burns and floods — than bombs and guns. Don’t even get me started on Afghanistan. What is going on here? The captain of the ship doesn’t seem to know how to navigate this storm. He seems to be going in circles, while the ship buckles, and the waves roar.

I think a lot of Americans feel this way, right about now. Biden should have been better than this. Why isn’t he?

Umair
September 2021

O mundo precisa de uma nova Carta do Atlântico? A primeira, em 1941, era contra o nazismo. Agora é contra a China? - Richard J. Evans (The Wall Street Journal)

Essa tal de nova "Carta do Atlântico", do Biden e do Boris Johnson, é pura demagogia, aproveitando a mística da declaração de 1941, que nem tinha esse nome, e que se destinava a salvar a Grã-Bretanha numa das horas mais dramáticas da sua história, depois da Invencível Armada (destruída pelo próprio canal da Mancha) e da ameaça napoleônica (vencida em Trafalgar). Depois dos espanhóis e dos franceses, os chineses, e contra os americanos desta vez? Joe Biden está exagerando no seu populismo histórico, se rendendo ao que as esquerdas chamariam de "complexo industrial-militar": milhões de dólares canalizados pela paranoia irracional dos generais do Pentágono e pela inacreditável demência dos acadêmicos que caíram no conto de vigário de uma fantasmagórica "armadilha de Tucídides'. Pobre Tucídides, não merecia essa...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Do We Need a New Atlantic Charter?

Eighty years after FDR and Churchill pledged to defend democracy, President Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson want to reenergize the special relationship for a very different world.

President Biden at G-7 Summit: “America Is Back at the Table”

President Biden at G-7 Summit: “America Is Back at the Table”

During a press conference at the conclusion of the summit between leaders of the Group of Seven on Sunday, President Biden discussed working together with allies, global vaccine donations and how the group plans to approach challenges posed by China. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

By Richard J. Evans

The Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2021 

At a summit meeting in England last week, President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a “new Atlantic Charter,” pledging their countries to work together on a range of issues, from combating climate change and preparing effectively for future pandemics to the defense of democracy and “the rules-based international order.” The agreement intends to “build on the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago” in the original Atlantic Charter, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941, at their first wartime meeting, held at a U.S. naval base in Newfoundland.

The much-publicized agreement reflects Mr. Johnson’s determination to reorient British foreign policy away from Europe in the wake of Brexit. For Mr. Biden it represents a renewed commitment to America’s traditional allies after four years of tension during the Trump presidency, with its policy of “America First.” As Mr. Johnson said in a statement, “Eighty years ago the U.S. President and British Prime Minister stood together promising a better future. Today we do the same.” But does the new Atlantic Charter really deserve the comparison with the historic original?

In fact, the Atlantic Charter of 1941 was less about remaking the world than about fighting World War II. At the time it was signed, Britain and Germany had been at war for less than two years, and the U.S. hadn’t yet entered the conflict. But the Americans had already begun to help the British, notably through the Lend-Lease Agreement signed the previous March, which provided for the U.S. to supply Britain and its allies with war materials. A major purpose of the Charter was to prepare the American people for their likely future entry into the war by telling them what they would be fighting for. 

In this sense, the Atlantic Charter was more a propaganda statement than a program for action. Its eight clauses, echoed deliberately in the eight clauses of the 2021 Atlantic Charter, affirmed the right of peoples and nations to self-determination, the desirability of lowering trade barriers, the postwar disarmament of the “aggressor nations,” the freedom of the seas, and the necessity of social welfare measures and the alleviation of poverty.

The U.S. and U.K. also said they would not seek territorial gains after the war. Importantly, the defeated nations were to be included in the lowering of trade barriers, a conscious rejection of the punitive economic measures that followed the end of World War I. But the ambitious statement wasn’t signed by the leaders and had no formal legal power. Even the name “Atlantic Charter” wasn’t official; it was invented by the Daily Herald, a left-wing British newspaper, to describe what was formally known as the Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister.

• The Wall Street Journal

A destruição do Departamento de Estado pela dupla Trump-Pompeo - Ronan Farrow (The New Yorker)

 

News Desk

Can Biden Reverse Trump’s Damage to the State Department?

Reeling from the leadership of Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, career officials wonder whether Secretary of State Antony Blinken can revitalize American diplomacy.

By Ronan Farrow

The New Yorker, June 17, 2021

Mike Pompeo echoed many of Donald Trump’s hard-line foreign-policy views, and was adept at surviving under a mercurial President.Photograph by Tom Brenner / NYT / Redux

Last year, in the early hours of October 27th, Philip Walton, an American citizen living and working as a farmer in southern Niger, was kidnapped in front of his family by armed mercenaries. The militants demanded a million-dollar ransom from Walton’s family and threatened to sell the American to local extremist groups. As Walton’s captors smuggled him across the border into northern Nigeria, Navy SEALs planned a rescue operation. Several days later, as the SEALs stood ready to conduct the raid, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on a government plane, flying back to the United States after travelling in Asia. A State Department staffer entered Pompeo’s cabin and updated the secretary on Walton’s case. The staffer outlined the steps that Pompeo would need to take to facilitate the exfiltration, including a call to the President of Niger.

To the surprise of his aides, Pompeo pushed back on the staffer’s requests. Pompeo grew visibly annoyed with the request that he make the phone calls, eventually replying, “When am I going to sleep?” The staffer told Pompeo that the American citizen being held was unlikely to be sleeping much. At the end of the discussion, Pompeo agreed to make the necessary calls. On the morning of October 31st, the SEALs parachuted from an Air Force Special Operations Command plane and rescued Walton, killing six of his kidnappers. Donald Trump and Pompeo later boasted about the operation on Twitter, where Pompeo called it “outstanding.” Staffers said the tweet was one of multiple instances when Pompeo appeared to use his position to boost his or Trump’s political fortunes.

Aides who worked under Pompeo said the exchange regarding the raid typified a leadership style that included brusque treatment of personnel and an intense focus on partisan politics that sometimes hampered the day-to-day business of the State Department. In interviews, dozens of other department employees alleged that Pompeo’s chaotic tenure, and that of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, left deep institutional and cultural scars that continue to impede American diplomatic efforts around the world.

During the Trump Administration, a hiring freeze, radical proposals to cut the State Department’s budget, and an unprecedented number of vacancies in pivotal roles undercut the institution’s capacity to conduct diplomacy. In an interview before taking office as the current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken warned that the departure of so many career diplomats had deeply damaged the department. That “penalizes you in all sorts of ways that will go on for generations, not just for a bunch of years,” Blinken told me. Absent a more robust department, he said, “We’re going to get into all kinds of conflicts we might have avoided through development, through diplomacy.”

State Department officials told me that the Biden Administration is acting too slowly to reverse the effects of the purge. Some said that they feared that Blinken and other Administration officials, eager to distance themselves from the reckless decision-making of the Trump era, have been hesitant to make bold policy decisions. “Things aren’t moving forward,” one career diplomat, who works with Blinken and asked not to be named, told me. “There’s starting to be some chatter around the building about, you know, let’s do the hard work. And I’m not sure that these folks are prepared at this point to do that.”

The initial wave of Trump-era damage was wrought by Rex Tillerson, who championed budget cuts of proportions not seen since the first Clinton Administration, which advocated for a downsizing of the department in the name of a post-Cold War focus on domestic priorities. Pompeo, a Republican who had served as a congressman from Kansas and as Trump’s C.I.A. director, promised to restore the institution’s “swagger.” He had little by way of diplomatic experience, but was politically savvier than Tillerson—and, ultimately, more adept at surviving under a mercurial President. An evangelical Christian from Orange, California, Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point and served in the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he moved to Kansas to start an aerospace business, with investment from the Kochs’ venture-capital fund. He successfully ran for Congress amid the Tea Party wave, in 2010, again with Koch backing. Pompeo’s tenure as C.I.A. director was brief, just fifteen months, but he gained a reputation for being sharp-elbowed there as well, discarding the standing precedent of serving as an apolitical director and instead cultivating unusually close ties to Trump, sometimes even accompanying the President to meetings that were unrelated to intelligence. Pompeo echoed some of Trump’s hard-line foreign-policy views. When the President issued pugnacious calls to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal, Pompeo did so, too. And he appeared to internalize some of the lessons cited by White House officials about playing to Trump’s ego. The President, Pompeo declared during his tenure as C.I.A. director, “asks good, hard questions.”

After arriving at the State Department, Pompeo lifted the hiring freeze enacted by Tillerson but then isolated himself from the staff, in what seemed to some officers to be a deliberate show of mistrust. “Tillerson’s problem was function, Pompeo’s was deliberate,” one Foreign Service officer who worked closely with Pompeo told me. “There was never really any input from the field. There was less input from the building.” The new Secretary of State, several staffers said, treated them harshly. “He did a lot of screaming in private,” the Foreign Service officer added. “Pompeo was a dick, that I would agree on,” another senior official who worked closely with Pompeo told me. At times, his outbursts were directed to foreign interlocutors, including one prominent European foreign minister.

By the end of the Trump Administration, morale in the department had collapsed. Pompeo had lost the confidence of his staff, some of whom believed that he was preoccupied with a potential Presidential run and was playing to his conservative political base. Several cited his repeated refusals to sign off on even perfunctory commitments to diversity, at a time when Black and Hispanic diplomats each comprised just eight per cent of Foreign Service officers. Allegations of corruption surrounded him as well. The House Foreign Affairs Committee moved to hold Pompeo in contempt for refusing to comply with multiple subpoenas. The State Department inspector general’s office disclosed the existence of five different investigations into State Department activities, including at least two that directly involved Pompeo.

One investigation focussed on his use of subordinates to run personal errands for him and his wife, such as picking up dry cleaning and walking their dog. After Steve Linick, the department’s inspector general, began examining the Secretary’s conduct, a Pompeo ally dismissed him. Linick, a career public servant, was abruptly placed on administrative leave and locked out of his office. He later told a congressional committee that he was given no explanation for the removal. (In April, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded that Pompeo had violated the department’s ethics rules, but noted that he is no longer subject to penalties because he has left the government.)

After Trump’s loss, last November, staffers’ concerns about Pompeo’s political activities increased. As Trump rejected the election results, Pompeo’s State Department impeded the transition process. Messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden piled up, as Pompeo declined to observe protocol and release them. In the department’s press briefing room, Pompeo told reporters, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration.” No one was sure whether he was joking. Pompeo seemed irritated at follow-up questions, saying that “every legal vote” had to be counted, an adage used by Trump allies claiming, falsely, that the election results were fraudulent.

As Pompeo set out on a post-election international trip, last November, his refusal to acknowledge the balloting results cast a shadow over his diplomacy. E.U. officials declined to meet with him, prompting Pompeo to cancel some stops. As he visited Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Georgia, where the United States has encouraged electoral transparency, career Foreign Service officers wondered what moral authority their country still carried on the subject. After he learned that plans for a routine transition meeting with his successor, Blinken, had leaked to the press, Pompeo cancelled it. Although the meeting later took place, Foreign Service officers who worked with Pompeo were dismayed by the apparent prioritization of politics over an orderly transition. “He didn’t want to be seen as doing his job,” one told me.

During the same period, Pompeo was posting political messages on Twitter. The messages were reposted to an account in Pompeo’s name, with more than a hundred thousand followers, on Telegram, where a far-right audience, shunned by some mainstream platforms, had congregated. (A spokesperson for Pompeo said that Pompeo was unaware of the Telegram account.) His posts often focussed on domestic issues, including criticism of news outlets, and featured political slogans like “#AmericansFirst” and “#SoMuchWinning.” In one message, from January, Pompeo told his followers, “America is a land of many freedoms - it’s what makes us the best country in the world. Even after I leave office, I will continue to do all I can to secure those freedoms. Follow me @mikepompeo and join me.”

After Pompeo and Trump left office, the State Department was riddled with vacancies. More than a third of all Assistant Secretary or Under-Secretary positions—the organization’s top leadership—were empty or filled by temporary, “acting” officials. For more than half of the Trump years, the senior position responsible for nonproliferation and arms control, including confronting nuclear threats from North Korea, had been vacant or led by an acting appointee. Diversity among senior staff had dwindled, and the department’s workforce was overwhelmingly white, with just thirteen per cent of the senior executive service roles filled by individuals of color. Concerns about a lack of diversity in the department’s workforce predate the Trump Administration, but recent employee surveys showed growing frustration with the department’s failure to address the problem.

Today, the staffing challenges persist. Five months after taking office, the Biden Administration has filled numerous senior roles, but the State Department still employs slightly fewer Foreign Service officers than at the conclusion of the Trump Administration. And diversity has yet to improve, according to figures published in March.

The Trump Administration also left behind a culture of suspicion. “There’s this mistrust of career officers,” Blinken told me, of his predecessor’s era. A 2019 State Department inspector-general investigation found that Trump’s political appointees had retaliated against career employees who typically serve under Administrations of both parties. Those employees, who carry much of the department’s institutional memory, were pilloried as “disloyal” or “traitors,” part of a shadowy and allegedly liberal “deep state.” Pompeo defended Trump’s habit of praising authoritarian leaders—a practice that diplomats told me was generally not part of any wider diplomatic strategy. Trump extended White House invitations to the Egyptian autocrat Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who was presiding over a brutal human-rights crackdown, and the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who has admitted to murdering opponents and had encouraged his troops to rape women. Echoing Trump, Pompeo praised Sisi’s approach to religious freedom and, according to a Philippine spokesperson, told Duterte that he was “just like our President.”

Numerous diplomats acknowledged what they described as unprecedented challenges ahead for the State Department. “There’s a real corrosion of the sense of American leadership in the world and the institutions that make that leadership real,” William Burns, President Biden’s current C.I.A. director and a former Deputy Secretary of State, told me before taking office. “Diplomacy really ought to be the tool of first resort internationally. It can sometimes achieve things at far less cost, both financially and in terms of American lives, than the use of the military can.” Several staffers praised Biden for pledging, on the campaign trail, to empower diplomats, and for embracing diversity initiatives that Pompeo had shunned. “They’re saying all the right things about diversity, they’re doing all the right things about affinity groups,” one official told me. But many diplomats said that there had been little visible progress on these issues. They wondered whether Biden, an establishment figure, was the right President to confront them at a time that they believe merits a radical course correction.

Biden ran on promises to reverse his predecessor’s embrace of dictators. “No more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator,’ ” Biden tweeted during the 2020 campaign, referring to Sisi, in Egypt. But in his long career in Washington, Biden often championed such relationships. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had presided over the rubber-stamping of unfettered military aid to the Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak. As Vice-President, he was one of Mubarak’s last supporters in Washington, saying, two weeks before Mubarak was unseated, in 2011, that he was not a dictator and didn’t need to leave office. Blinken told me that the subject had been a focus of fierce debate within the Obama Administration. “There were some folks who wanted us to much more forcefully defend Mubarak,” Blinken said. “And others suggested that, as one said, we needed to be on the right side of history.” The dispute had been “more generational than anything else,” he added, with a group of younger officials, including the current U.S.A.I.D. administrator, Samantha Power, arguing against “some of the older, more seasoned hands, who had, after all, been dealing with the relationship with Egypt for years,” including “[Robert] Gates, Hillary [Clinton], Biden,” who defended Mubarak. Blinken said that loyalty to Mubarak had been a mistake. “Yeah, maybe we were caught flat-footed in Egypt,” he told me.

Several diplomats said that the Biden Administration, in an effort to strike a different tone than that of Tillerson, Pompeo, and Trump, is being too cautious. “These new folks are doing their best to be not-the-last-folks,” the career diplomat who works with Blinken said. “That’s great in some ways, and, in some ways, it’s sort of keeping them from finding their groove. Sometimes there are tough decisions to make. And if the last folks made that decision, they’re trying not to do it.” As an example, the diplomat cited conversations about the extent of the United States’ ongoing presence in Iraq, which have, several staffers said, largely stalled since Biden took office. The diplomat added, “We can’t get a rhythm until we stop trying to be the anti-Trump, anti-Pompeo people.” (A State Department spokesperson told me, “We’re not going to make apologies for running a process that is inclusive and appropriately deliberative,” a reference to consultations with offices across the State Department and the wider government. “You can’t have an inclusive process and expect dramatic shifts, in every single realm, in a hundred and fifty days.”)

William Taylor, an Ambassador who testified during Trump’s first impeachment, said that rebuilding the Department’s battered workforce would be difficult. “They’ve seen things that have bothered them, that have disturbed them, that have shaken their faith in this institution they have been serving in. And a whole lot of people have left the Foreign Service,” Taylor told me. “It’s a real loss. They’ve left a hole, a vacuum.” But Taylor and other veterans of the State Department expressed optimism that American diplomacy could be revitalized. “Damage has been done. But there are smart people, good people,” Taylor said. “If we get good leadership and reëstablish trust and transparency, they’ll go back.”

This piece was drawn from “War on Peace: Revised and Updated,” by Ronan Farrow, published by Norton.

Ronan Farrow, a contributing writer to The New Yorker, is the author of “Catch and Kill” and “War on Peace.” His reporting for The New Yorker won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service.

More:Mike PompeoDonald TrumpAntony BlinkenRex TillersonJoe Biden