Relato de um jornalista que foi prisioneiro dos terroristas que acabam de tomar o poder na Síria, por 2 anos - Theo Padnos (Persuasion)

Persuasion: 

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When I Was a Hostage THEO PADNOS · FEB 14 Read full story

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In the fall of 2012, when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the military power now in charge of Syria, was a mere minor terrorist organization, a band of their fighters in Aleppo took me prisoner. Back then they were known as Jabhat al-Nusra. I remained in the group’s custody for two years—often in solitary confinement cells, but not always. During this time, it often happened that news of some stupendous victory would make its way, via the fighters’ two-way radios, into our prisons. It was a surreal experience then to listen as a government checkpoint got blown into the sky, for instance, or a truckload of government troops fell into my captors’ hands. 

What’s going on now, however, is surreal beyond anything I saw or heard when I was in Syria. I’ve spent the past few days watching my former captors’ wildest dreams come true. Actually, I suspect that all Syrians, in every corner of the world, are watching these events unfold in a mood of unremitting shock and awe.

Nevertheless, certain sights have become familiar. Those who’ve been following the rebels’ advance have gotten used to seeing them standing in the midst of the government armories and air force bases surrounded by expensive-looking military kit.¹ “By the grace and favor of God, the Almighty,” the men scream into the camera as they pump their Kalashnikovs into the sky, “we are in complete control here.”

Technically speaking, they ought not to be quite so astonished. I’m sure they know this. This is a religious army, after all. According to the dogmas, God wrote down every last detail of what’s occurring now at the beginning of time. In the presence of an act of God, however miraculous, the correct attitude is calm submission to His will. Somehow, in their enthusiasm, the footsoldiers sometimes forget this. But the leadership never does. They know the religion much better than their underlings do, have internalized the law more deeply, and enforce such discipline as there is. It won’t be long before the leaders put a stop to the soldiers’ love of making a show of themselves.

In the early days of my capture, the flags on all the fighters’ pickups bore the legend “Victory Front, the al-Qaeda System in the Levant.” It was imprinted on the stationery and scrawled across their t-shirts and bandannas. Even back then, however, the thinkers within the high command were doubting the wisdom of presenting themselves to the world as terrorists.

On one hand, people within the army generally liked the brand image of al-Qaeda, since it suggested fearsomeness and a dark, globe-spanning power that could spit in the eye of each great Western nation, one by one. On the other hand, the Western nations could not be brought around to seeing even a shred of good in al-Qaeda. By the summer of 2014, their intelligence agencies had all but cut off the flow of weapons and cash with which they had earlier nourished the Syrian rebellion. That summer, after the day’s work had been done, when they were lounging on their pillows and scrolling through their iPads, the high command sometimes allowed me to sit with them. Though many learned men debated the question at great volume late into the night, even then it was obvious, at least to me, that the al-Qaeda brand was about to be kicked into the gutter.

“They called us terrorists/ I told them, what an honor you’ve done me.” This was the opening line of one of Jabhat al-Nusra’s most crowd-pleasing, brand-amplifying anthems. It certainly filled the rank and file with esprit de corps. It brought along the schoolkids too, as it had a catchy tune and audacious lyrics (“We destroyed the trade towers/with civilian airplanes we did it/ reduced them to dust, ahh!”) Increasingly, however, the outside world was failing to understand. Thus, that summer, whenever a media contact outside Syria rang up a commander inside the truck, whoever was closest to the stereo system made sure to kill the volume. 

Eastern Europe Is In The Crosshairs: Ukraine and Poland - Michal Kranz (Persuasion)

 Eastern Europe Is In The Crosshairs

A deal in Ukraine seems all but inevitable. That puts Eastern Europe in real danger. 

MICHAŁ KRANZ NOV 25 ∙ GUEST POST PERSUASION

Polish troops at NATO Multinational Corps Northeast, February 2, 2024. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.)

For much of the past year in Warsaw, the first question I’d be asked by Poles and Ukrainians alike when they learned I’d grown up in the United States was who I thought would win the 2024 election. The follow-up, inevitably, was whether a victorious Trump would really let Ukraine and Eastern Europe fall to the Russians.

In the day or two following Trump’s win, this fear was palpable among Polish friends and loved ones. But, after months of warnings of the apocalyptic consequences of Trump’s return to power for Ukraine and NATO’s East, a new narrative has emerged along Europe’s frontier with Russia—don’t panic, but prepare.

The likely conclusion of the war in Ukraine during Trump’s first year in office will only be the tip of the iceberg of the transformations on the horizon for Eastern Europe. States in the region, most notably Poland and the Baltics, are already looking beyond Ukraine to a scenario in which Russia might soon be ready to unleash its war machine on NATO’s East itself, which, without ironclad American security guarantees, would be more vulnerable than ever. And yet, for Eastern Europe, this tense moment offers surprising opportunities. In the absence of America’s guiding and often constraining hand, they will have the chance to redefine their own defense future, reap the rewards of the post-war economic order in Ukraine, and finally force Western Europe to confront the realities of the multipolar world head-on.

What we are looking at, in other words, is a complete shift of the balance of power in Eastern Europe. In the short term, Poland and the Baltics will have no choice but to pick up slack and assume a stronger position in Europe than they have in memory, as they stare down the barrel of a Russia that will only be further emboldened by a de facto triumph in Ukraine and the weakening of the American security blanket in Europe. Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing its worst-case scenario, with the spigot of U.S. support likely to turn itself off—forcing Europe to take the reins of Ukraine’s, and its own, defense for the first time in generations.

The chances of Trump doing an about-face on aid for Ukraine and continuing to fund its defense are, unfortunately, very slim—and Ukraine is expected to be forced to the negotiating table. European efforts, led by Poland, to continue supporting Ukraine’s military, will at best stave off the inevitable, and the Biden administration knows this. Recent changes in policy like the lifting of prohibitions on Ukraine’s use of long-range ATACMS against Russian territory and shipments of anti-personnel mines are, more than anything else, measures meant to help Ukraine secure as favorable a position as possible prior to negotiations and to give it at least a modicum of deterrence against future Russian aggression.

It goes almost without saying that any peace deal is likely to end in the permanent occupation of the territories Russia currently holds and in forcing Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions—in short, a win for Russia. But even then, many questions remain about how such a “peace” would be administered in practice, and how Ukraine could avoid being swallowed up by Russia down the line. The leading proposal of the Trump transition team, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, would compel Ukraine to promise not to join NATO for twenty years, while a continuing flow of U.S. armaments deters future Russian aggression and some kind of European peacekeeping force polices the demilitarized zone where the fighting has frozen. 

A proposal along those lines suits Poland well, with Polish president Andrzej Duda last year suggesting that Polish troops could be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping effort. Meanwhile, Poland is poised to benefit immensely from post-war reconstruction efforts, with 3,000 Polish companies registering with the Polish Investment and Trade Agency to participate in Ukraine’s reconstruction. Helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security on the ground does of course carry considerable risk—bringing Poland all the closer to a clash with Russia. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of role Polish leaders have spent years preparing the country’s military for.

The belief among Eastern Europe’s leaders is that, no matter what they do, they are in Russia’s crosshairs—and the priority must be an active defense. Leaders further west on the continent have tepidly come around to the same conclusion, with recent pledges to invest not only in national defense spending, but also in developing Europe’s military-industrial complex. There is no reason to think that Putin will be placated through a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Quite the contrary. With, effectively, a win in Ukraine behind him and a U.S. leadership unwilling to engage militarily in Europe beyond the bare minimum, Putin may well decide the time is ripe for further reconstitution of the Soviet sphere of influence. Western Europe has been inching up its readiness, with France for instance on track to bring its defense spending up the 2% GDP mark this year, but Eastern Europeans know that if Russia strikes, it will be up to them to hold the line. Poland at the moment has the third largest military in NATO, and, if Ukraine’s army was able to keep Russian forces at bay for nearly three years, the hope is that Poland’s more robust and technologically advanced military could do the same.

It is hard to overstate just how uncertain the security of Eastern Europe suddenly becomes with Trump’s election. A full-scale American retreat from NATO is less likely than widespread discussion might make it seem—the recent landmark opening of a U.S. base in Poland and efforts to Trump-proof American aid to Ukraine and NATO mean that it will be difficult for Trump to distance himself from the alliance entirely. But, with Russia updating its nuclear doctrine, firing a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine, and last week placing the new U.S. base in Poland on its potential target list, Putin clearly believes that he has the upper hand—and that Europe lacks the will or the ability to properly defend its Eastern frontier. 

With Trump on track to alter the entire regional paradigm a few short months from now, NATO’s East is scrambling to mitigate the fallout. That puts Poland, in particular, in the hot seat and in need of not only proving its worth as a rising military powerhouse, but also of working with countries like Romania, Sweden, the Baltic states, and besieged Ukraine to collectively keep Moscow at bay. But this moment is, above all, a crucible for Europe. For decades, Western Europeans have been able to bask in the security blanket the United States offered and to indulge in pacifistic visions. That illusion ended first for the states bordering Putin’s Russia, but Europe is now facing the same fork in the road—either make security a priority and forge an independent path forward on defense, or let Putin continue to have his way.

Michal Kranz is a Warsaw-based journalist who covers Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from the ground during the war in Ukraine, covered politics and society in Lebanon, and regularly reports on regional developments from Poland.

O que queremos dizer com liberalismo? - Jonathan Rauch, Augusto de Franco (Persuasion)

O que queremos dizer com liberalismo?

Jonathan Rauch, em "Por que você deve se sentir bem com o liberalismo", Persuasion (06/08/2024).

[Um trecho e um comentário]

"Não progressismo ou esquerdismo moderado, como o termo passou a significar no discurso dos EUA do pós-guerra. Em vez disso, liberalismo na tradição de Locke, Kant e os Fundadores. Não é uma ideia, mas uma família de ideias com muitas variantes. Sua filosofia central é que todas as pessoas nascem livres e iguais. Seus princípios operacionais incluem o império da lei, pluralismo, tolerância, direitos das minorias, autoridade distribuída, governo limitado e (sujeito aos outros requisitos) tomada de decisão democrática. Seu método distinto de organização social é confiar em regras impessoais e processos abertos e descentralizados para tomar decisões coletivas.

Incorporando essas noções estão três sistemas sociais interligados: democracia liberal para fazer escolhas políticas; capitalismo de mercado para fazer escolhas econômicas; e ciência e outras formas de troca crítica aberta para fazer escolhas epistêmicas (isto é, decisões sobre verdade e conhecimento). Ao transcender a tribo, renunciar ao autoritarismo, substituir governantes por regras e tratar pessoas como intercambiáveis, o liberalismo alcança o que nenhum outro sistema social pode oferecer, pelo menos em larga escala: coordenação sem controle . Em um sistema liberal, todos podem participar, mas ninguém está no comando.

No contexto da história humana, tudo sobre o liberalismo é radical: sua rejeição da autoridade pessoal e tribal, sua insistência em tratar as pessoas como intercambiáveis, sua demanda de que a dissidência seja tolerada e as minorias protegidas, sua aceitação da mudança e da incerteza. Todas as suas premissas vão contra os instintos humanos arraigados. O liberalismo é a ideia social mais estranha e contraintuitiva já concebida, uma desvantagem compensada apenas pelo fato de que também é a ideia social mais bem-sucedida já concebida.

Claro, é imperfeito. Não resolve todos os problemas antigos e novos problemas sempre surgem. Mas todos os grandes problemas sociais, da pobreza e desigualdade à degradação ambiental, guerra e doença, são demonstravelmente melhor tratados por sociedades liberais do que por sociedades não liberais. Não é exagero dizer que essa tecnologia social estranhamente bem-sucedida permitiu que o Homo sapiens formasse redes globais de cooperação de soma positiva que elevaram ordens de magnitude de conquistas humanas acima de nossa capacidade projetada. O liberalismo literalmente transformou nossa espécie".

Meu comentário para ulterior desenvolvimento

Vinte anos antes de Locke (1690), Spinoza (1670) recuperou a raiz do liberalismo antigo, dos primeiros democratas atenienses, ao dizer que o sentido da política não é a ordem e sim a liberdade.

Não é uma filosofia, um sistema explicativo, descritivo ou prescritivo, e sim uma apreensão do mundo que inspira um comportamento político de aceitação do outro-imprevisível sem a obrigação de que ele concorde com uma ordem pré-concebida por nós. Quando se configuram ambientes favoráveis à manifestação desse comportamento político ocorre a auto-organização, ou "coordenação sem controle" (como assinalou Rauch). Os ambientes sociais que permitem isso são redes mais distribuídas do que centralizadas. O liberalismo político surge na experimentação da democracia como modo-de-vida e é indistinguível dela.