| ||||||||||||
|
Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks
| ||||||||||||
|
Vitória da Rússia na Ucrânia levaria Ocidente a guerra contra China, diz ex-aliado de Putin
To isolate Russia is not in the west’s power or interest
Treating the entire country as a geopolitical Chernobyl would be a strategic blunder
Ivan Krastev
Financial Times, Londres – 25.4.2022
As the world reeled from the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one question was left unanswered. On whose behalf was the war declared? Are the majority of Russians hostage to Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions, or is Russian society the equivalent of Putin writ large?
During the invasion’s first days, most Europeans leaned towards the hostage theory and expected ordinary Russians to voice their opposition. It took the revelation of the unfathomable atrocities in Bucha for public opinion to shift, reconceiving of Putin’s war as Russia’s war.
The Kremlin’s total media control and growing repression were seemingly no longer sufficient to explain, let alone justify, the silence of Russian society. Did Russians not know the truth about Bucha or did they do not want to know it? Many Europeans were outraged by the way the country’s citizens swallowed hard and shut their eyes to their army’s barbarism.
After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, an exclusion zone was created around the reactor that exploded. For Europeans and for the western political mind generally, Russia has become a geopolitical Chernobyl: a site of moral disaster, a place of danger to be sealed off. And so many Europeans today are dreaming about a world without Russia.
In their imagination the west no longer consumes Russia’s energy resources. Cultural contacts are severed and Europe’s borders are fortified. It would be as if Russia had disappeared. Even pathologically optimistic business leaders see little opportunity of reinvesting in Russian markets in the coming years. And while Putin remains in power, a significant easing of western sanctions appears a remote prospect.
Many western policymakers have already given up on the hope of change in Russia. Instead they focus on measures aimed at limiting the country’s ability to achieve its foreign policy objectives.
But any attempt to seal off Russia would be very different from the west’s cold war policy of containment of the Soviet Union. As George Kennan conceived it, containment was predicated on an assumption that over time the Soviet regime was destined to collapse because of its internal contradictions. A Chernobyl-style isolation would assume that Russia can never change.
The cold war was rooted in a discourse in which the regime was to be blamed but the people declared innocent. The Soviet Union was depicted as a prison-house, and Soviet leaders were never recognised as legitimate representatives of their society.
In contrast to this idea of an evil regime and a repressed people in which change is still imaginable, a policy that seeks to create an “isolated Russian zone” unconsciously adopts a discourse in which Russia as a civilisation is immutable.
There are myriad moral reasons why Russia should be ghettoised as a geopolitical Chernobyl. But treating Russia as a collective Putin will be a strategic blunder. Here is why.
First, this notion will primarily benefit the Russian leader. It unwittingly gives him the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Russian people. Worse, it justifies his twisted narrative that the only Russia the west can tolerate is a weak or defeated one. If Russia is a geopolitical Chernobyl, the only reasonable strategy for any freedom-loving Russian is to bolt for the exits.
Second, an isolation strategy is probably self-defeating because it closes off interest in what is happening in Russia. It predicts that Russians’ failure to speak against the war means that the country will never change its attitude towards it. It will miss the fact that more than a few Russians support the war not because they support the regime but because they irrationally hope that the war will change the regime.
Opposition-minded people hope that a defeat for the Russian army in Ukraine will bring Putin down. Many of his supporters relish the destruction of the despised, Putin-enabled offshore elite. In the words of a famous rock singer, after the west seized the property of the oligarchs, Russians finally became “equal like in 1917”.
Third, to bet on a world without Russia is ultimately futile because the non-western world, which may not favour the Kremlin’s war, is hardly eager to isolate Russia. Many see the current barbarism as disgusting but not exceptional. They practice value-free realism. Many of the states that US president Joe Biden invited to his Summit for Democracy have not placed sanctions on Russia.
Russia’s military offensive in the Donbas only intensifies the clash between those who view the country as morally irreparable and those who see it as an unavoidable reality in global politics. The offensive will force European public opinion to choose between “the peace party” (those who insist that the west’s priority should be to stop hostilities as soon as possible, even at the cost of major concessions from Ukraine) and “the justice party” (those who insist the priority should be to expel Russian troops from Ukrainian territory even at the cost of prolonged war).
Peace and justice do not rhyme in European history. Whether you call the invasion of Ukraine Putin’s war or Russians’ war is not a matter of taste but a strategic choice. It signals the west’s expectations about its relations with post-Putin Russia, whenever that arrives.
The writer is chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and permanent fellow at IWM Vienna.
Meu pitaco sobre uma escorregada séria do boletim The Globalist (agora um pouco menos globaliza).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The EU and the U.S. need to address the real technology competitiveness challenge, which is China.
During the era of the Cold War, the United States and Europe cooperated militarily, but competed economically. At the time, the Soviet Union posed a military, not an economic, threat to the West.
Today, in what could become a second Cold War, this time with China, the U.S. and Europe need to put great emphasis on cooperating economically.
The reason for this is straightforward: From the vantage point of each of the transatlantic partners, China poses a threat to our economic competitiveness.
As such, it is incumbent upon the U.S. and the EU to build upon the initial steps of the new US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC). The goal must be, first, to reduce economic tensions between the two regions and second, to foster formal cooperation.
This is especially true with regard to supporting advanced and emerging technology development and production.
As Barry Naughton notes in The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy: 1978 to 2020, China has not only become the world’s manufacturing workshop.
It is also seeking to be the world leader in emerging technologies such as biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence and others.
What’s more, China is not only seeking absolute advantage on a host of technologies. It is seeking that advantage largely through unfair, state-directed capitalism.
To be sure, both the EU and the United States have industrial policies – but these policies mostly support foundational elements like workforce training, infrastructure and R&D.
In contrast, China’s predatory regime, especially subsidies to industry, goes way beyond what is considered acceptable industrial policy.
On top of that, the Chinese Communist Party compels technology transfer for market access, encourages intellectual property theft and operates tax and regulatory policies that discriminate against EU and U.S. firms.
That, combined with real strengths of the Chinese economy – a massive domestic market that lures in foreign investment, a massive technical and scientific labor force and improving research universities – mean that China is gaining rapidly technologically.
That gain has and will come at the expense of the EU’s and U.S.’s global market shares in advanced technologies.
The result of that shift cannot be underestimated. Initially, China systematically assembled the components needed to be the manufacturing workshop of the world.
This systematic approach has made it hard, even with the Trump tariffs and measures by Japan and other countries, to move production out of China.
Now, China is seeking to establish the same robust innovation ecosystem that will give it strong reinforcing strengths. China wants to be not Silicon Valley, but Silicon China – and not just for IT, but for every advanced technology.
The list of tech sectors China seeks to dominate is long. It ranges from aviation, battery technology, biotech, materials, clean energy, transportation, machinery and, of course, advanced IT.
If China were to achieve this leadership position, its lead will become self-reinforcing as competitors weaken and China’s advantages (e.g., capital, STEM workers, patents, tacit knowledge) improve.
If China were simply following the path of the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), there would be less to worry about.
All of these countries, as well as Japan, only sought comparative advantage in some industries – as opposed to absolute advantage in most industries.
More crucially, they were (or quickly became) democracies that did not seek to challenge long-standing principles of the rule of law and human rights.
China not only seeks absolute advantage in most if not all advanced and emerging industries. Under the leadership of President Xi, it has become clear that China is reverting to its Leninist and Maoist authoritarian origins.
If China becomes the global technology leader, it reinforces China’s efforts to be militarily superior and a global hegemon. That would give China the ability to hold the West hostage for key products and supplies.
There are three key steps the United States and Europe should take. First, stop fighting each other economically. Resolving the long-standing Boeing-Airbus feud and focusing on the real challenger – China’s Comac – was a good first step.
The United States eliminating its steel and aluminum tariffs on EU imports was a good second step. For its part, Europe, including member states like Germany and France, needs to dial back its “digital sovereignty” agenda which is targeted at the United States and U.S. companies.
Second, both regions need to ramp up cooperation against unfair Chinese economic practices, including cooperation on cybersecurity, investment screening, bringing trade cases before the WTO and cooperative export controls.
Finally, and most ambitiously, it is time for more formal EU-US technology policy cooperation.
In a world where the development of technology has become much more technologically complex, neither region is large enough to specialize in all major technologies.
Therefore, each region should allow the other region’s companies to participate in government-funded industry research programs, like the EU’s Horizon 2020 program and similar U.S. programs that agencies like the National Science Foundation operate.
Moreover, as the governments roll out or expand specialized technology programs in technologies like 6G, energy storage, battery technology, autonomous systems, quantum computing and semiconductors, there should be joint collaboration between US and EU firms, universities and governments.
Finally, governments should review and minimize or eliminate regulatory barriers to science and technology cooperation, including enabling easier cross-border work of scientists and engineers.
The sooner the EU and the U.S. can stop seeing each other as the competition and work to address the real technology competitiveness challenge – China – the more likely both regions can ensure their economic futures, while upholding critical values.
Robert Atkinson is president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.