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Mostrando postagens com marcador Trump. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Trump. Mostrar todas as postagens

terça-feira, 18 de agosto de 2020

Trump manipulado pelo KGB-FSB de Putin - Mark Mazzetti and Nicholas Fandos (NYT)

A democracia sendo tolerante com os que minam a democracia.
Um dia acabam destruindo seus fundamentos, mesmo sem potências estrangeiras
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russian Interference

A nearly 1,000-page report confirmed the special counsel’s findings at a moment when President Trump’s allies have sought to undermine that inquiry.
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WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to the country’s intelligence services.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly four years ago.
Like the investigation led the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who released his findings in April 2019, the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that Republicans seized on to argue that there was “no collusion.”

But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the report identifies as a “Russian intelligence officer.”

The Senate report for the first time identified Mr. Kilimnik as an intelligence officer. Mr. Mueller’s report had labeled him as someone with ties to Russian intelligence.

terça-feira, 11 de agosto de 2020

Present at the Disruption - Richard Haass (Foreign Affairs)

Present at the Disruption

How Trump Unmade U.S. Foreign Policy

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-08-11/present-disruption

Present at the Creation is an 800-page memoir written by Dean Acheson, U.S. President Harry Truman’s secretary of state. The title, with its biblical echo, was immodest, but in Acheson’s defense, it was deserved.
Working from planning begun under President Franklin Roosevelt, Truman and his senior advisers built nothing less than a new international order in the wake of World War II. The United States adopted the doctrine of containment, which would guide U.S. foreign policy for four decades in its Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. It transformed Germany and Japan into democracies and built a network of alliances in Asia and Europe. It provided the aid Europe needed to get back on its feet under the Marshall Plan and channeled economic and military assistance to countries vulnerable to communism under the Truman Doctrine. It established a host of international organizations, including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the forerunner to the World Trade Organization). And it constructed a modern foreign and defense policy apparatus, including the National Security Council, the CIA, and the Department of Defense.
It is impossible to imagine one of the national security principals of the Trump administration writing a memoir that includes the word “creation” in its title. The problem is not just that little has been built over the past three and a half years. Building has simply not been a central aim of this administration’s foreign policy. To the contrary, the president and the frequently changing cast of officials around him have been much more interested in tearing things apart. A more fitting title for an administration memoir would be Present at the Disruption.
The term “disruption” is in and of itself neither a compliment nor a criticism. Disruption can be desirable and even necessary if the status quo is incompatible with one’s interests and there is an alternative that is both advantageous and achievable. But disruption is anything but desirable if the status quo serves one’s interests (or would with only minor adjustments) or the available alternatives are likely to be worse. By this standard, the disruption set in motion by the Trump administration was neither warranted nor wise.
As with health care and the Affordable Care Act, when it came to foreign policy, Trump inherited an imperfect but valuable system and tried to repeal it without offering a substitute. The result is a United States and a world that are considerably worse off. This disruption will leave an enduring mark. And if such disruption continues or accelerates, which there is every reason to believe it will if Donald Trump is elected to a second term, then “destruction” might well become a more apt term to describe this period of U.S. foreign policy.

A DISTORTED LENS

Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017 convinced that U.S. foreign policy needed to be disrupted. In his inaugural address, speaking from the steps of the Capitol, the new president offered a grim account of the United States’ record:
For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own. And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. . . . From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.
After three and a half years at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, Trump had apparently seen nothing to change his mind. Addressing graduating cadets at West Point earlier this year, he applied a similar logic to the use of military force:
We are restoring the fundamental principles that the job of the American soldier is not to rebuild foreign nations, but defend—and defend strongly—our nation from foreign enemies. We are ending the era of endless wars. In its place is a renewed, clear-eyed focus on defending America’s vital interests. It is not the duty of U.S. troops to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have never even heard of. We are not the policemen of the world.
Many of the foundational elements of Trump’s approach to the world can be gleaned from these two speeches. As he sees it, foreign policy is mostly an expensive distraction. The United States was doing too much abroad and was worse off at home because of it. Trade and immigration were destroying jobs and communities. Other countries—above all U.S. allies—were taking advantage of the United States, which had nothing to show for its exertion even as others profited. The costs of American leadership substantially outweighed the benefits.
Missing from this worldview is any appreciation of what, from a U.S. perspective, was remarkable about the previous three quarters of a century: the absence of great-power war, the extension of democracy around much of the world, a 90-fold growth in the size of the U.S. economy, a ten-year increase in the lifespan of the average American. Also missing is a recognition that the Cold War, the defining struggle of that era, ended peacefully, on terms that could hardly have been more favorable to the United States; that none of this would have been possible without U.S. leadership and U.S. allies; and that despite this victory, the United States still faces challenges in the world (beyond “radical Islamic terrorism,” the one threat Trump singled out in his inaugural address) that affect the country and its citizens, and that partners, diplomacy, and global institutions would be valuable assets in meeting them.
Trump inherited a valuable system and tried to repeal it without offering a substitute.
Numerous other dubious assumptions run through Trump’s worldview. Trade is portrayed as an unmitigated negative that has helped China take advantage of the United States, rather than as a source of many good export-oriented jobs, more choices along with lower costs for the American consumer, and lower rates of inflation at home. The United States’ domestic ills are attributed in large part to the costs of foreign policy, even though—while the costs, in lives and dollars, have been high—the share of economic output spent on national security has fallen in recent decades and is far below what it was during the Cold War, which happened to be a time when Americans were able to enjoy security and prosperity simultaneously. There is ample reason to find fault with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without blaming them for the condition of American airports and bridges. And although Americans spend far more on health care and education than their counterparts in many other developed countries do, the average American is worse off. All of which is to say, doing less abroad would not necessarily lead to doing more of the right things at home.
It is possible to understand this distorted framing of U.S. national security only by considering the context that gave rise to “Trumpism.” The United States emerged from the Cold War with no rivals, but also with no consensus as to what it should do with its unrivaled power. Containment, the compass that had guided U.S. foreign policy for four decades, was useless in the new circumstances. And policymakers and analysts struggled to settle on a new framework.
As a result, the most powerful country on earth adopted a piecemeal approach to the world—one that, over time, led to overextension and exhaustion. In the 1990s, the United States fought a successful limited war to reverse Iraqi aggression in the Persian Gulf and carried out humanitarian interventions in the Balkans and elsewhere (some relatively successful, others not). After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush sent large numbers of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq—both ill-advised wars of choice (Iraq from the outset, Afghanistan over time), in which the human and economic costs dwarfed any benefits. In the Obama years, the United States initiated or continued several costly interventions and at the same time signaled uncertainty as to its intentions.
Frustration over perceived overextension abroad was reinforced by trends at home, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. Middle-class wages stagnated, and widespread job losses and factory closings created a narrow but intense hostility to trade (despite the fact that productivity increases tied to technological innovation were the primary culprit). Altogether, there was a widespread sense of the establishment having failed, both by neglecting to protect American workers at home and by undertaking an overly ambitious foreign policy abroad, one detached from the country’s vital interests and the welfare of its citizens.

DEPARTING FROM WHAT MOSTLY WORKED

The foreign policies of the first four post–Cold War presidents—George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—blended the principal schools of thought that had guided the United States’ approach to the world since World War II. These included realism (emphasizing global stability, largely by maintaining a balance of power and attempting to shape other countries’ foreign, rather than domestic, policies); idealism (putting greater weight on promoting human rights and shaping the domestic political trajectory of other countries); and humanitarianism (focusing on relieving poverty, alleviating disease, and caring for refugees and the displaced). The four presidents differed in their emphasis but also had a good deal in common. Trump broke with all of them.
In some ways, Trump’s approach does incorporate elements of long-standing currents in U.S., and especially Republican, foreign policy—particularly the nineteenth-century nationalist unilateralism of President Andrew Jackson, the pre– and post–World War II isolationism of figures such as Republican Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, and the more recent protectionism of the presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. But what distinguishes Trump more than anything else is his emphasis on economic interests and his narrow understanding of what they are and how they should be pursued. His predecessors believed that if the United States helped shape the global economy, using its power and leadership to promote stability and set rules for trade and investment, American companies, workers, and investors would flourish. The Gulf War, for example, was fought not for oil, in the sense of creating opportunities for U.S. companies to gain control of supplies, but to ensure that oil would be available to fuel the U.S. and global economies. Both grew markedly as a result.
Trump, by contrast, routinely complains that the United States erred by not seizing Iraqi oil. More fundamentally, he obsesses over bilateral trade balances, on increasing American exports and decreasing imports, even though deficits matter little as long as other countries are playing by the rules and the United States can borrow to cover the shortfall. (All countries have comparative advantages, and different rates of saving and spending, that lead to deficits with some and surpluses with others.) He berates allies for not spending more on their militaries, incorrectly telling fellow members of NATO that their failure to spend two percent of their GDPs on defense means that they owe the United States money. He was quick to cancel large military exercises central to the U.S.–South Korean alliance, in part because he thought they were too expensive. In trade negotiations with China, he cared more about getting Beijing to commit to specific purchases of American agricultural products than tackling larger structural issues, even though addressing the latter would be much more beneficial for American companies and for the U.S. economy as a whole.
Trump in Normandy, France, June 2019
Trump in Normandy, France, June 2019
Carlos Barria / Reuters
The corollary to this focus on narrowly defined economic interests has been an almost total neglect of other aims of U.S. foreign policy. Trump has shown little interest in advocating human rights, advancing democracy, alleviating humanitarian hardship, or addressing global challenges such as migration, climate change, or infectious diseases (the toll of such disinterest in the last has become especially, and tragically, clear in recent months). When it came to Saudi Arabia, he did not allow blatant human rights violations to get in the way of arms sales. And he has been reluctant to respond at all to Russia’s military intervention in Syria, its interference in U.S. politics, or recent evidence that Russian agents paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers.
The contrast between Trump and previous presidents is no less pronounced when it comes to the means of foreign policy. The two Republican and two Democratic presidents just before him all broadly believed in multilateralism, whether through alliances or treaties or institutions. That did not mean they eschewed unilateral action altogether, but all understood that, in most cases, multilateral arrangements magnify U.S. influence and treaties bring a degree of predictability to international relations. Multilateralism also pools resources to address common challenges in a way that no amount of individual national effort can match.
Trump, by contrast, has made a habit of withdrawing or threatening to withdraw from multilateral commitments. Even a partial list would include the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Open Skies Treaty. Trump’s United States also refused to join a global migration pact or European-led efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

APPETITE FOR DISRUPTION

Trump’s narrow and inadequate understanding of U.S. interests and the best means of pursuing them has also shaped—and in most cases hindered—the administration’s approach to other issues. When it comes to the military, Trump’s appetite for disruption has been most evident in the actual or threatened withdrawal of forces, often with little thought to why they were there in the first place or what the consequences of withdrawal might be. All presidents make decisions about the use of military force on a case-by-case basis. Trump, like Obama in this one area, has been largely wary of new military entanglements; his uses of force against Syria and Iran were brief and limited in scope, and his threats to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea quickly gave way to summitry, despite North Korea’s continued work on its nuclear and missile arsenals.
His calls for withdrawal, meanwhile, have applied to areas of conflict as well as places where U.S. troops have been stationed for decades in order to deter war. In Syria, the United States’ Kurdish partners were left in the lurch when Trump abruptly announced U.S. troop withdrawals in late 2018; in Afghanistan, little thought seems to have been given to what might happen to the government in Kabul once U.S. troops depart. But it’s one thing to conclude that the United States erred in Afghanistan and Iraq and should avoid such wars in the future, quite another to equate those interventions with the stationing of U.S. forces in Germany, Japan, or South Korea, which have helped maintain stability for decades. The administration’s announcement in June that it would withdraw 9,500 troops from Germany, seemingly triggered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refusal to travel to Washington for a G-7 meeting amid a global pandemic and not by national security considerations, was entirely consistent with Trump’s coolness toward overseas military commitments. That this decision was taken without prior consultation with Berlin, just as the decision to cancel major military exercises with South Korea was taken without consulting Seoul, only made a bad situation worse.
These moves reflect Trump’s broader indifference to allies. Alliances depend on treating the security of others as seriously as one’s own; “America first” makes clear that U.S. allies come second. Trump’s relentless focus on offsetting the costs of the United States’ overseas military presence has reinforced the corrosive message that U.S. support for allies has become transactional and conditional. His warm treatment of foes and competitors—he has consistently been friendlier toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un than toward their democratic counterparts—has exacerbated the problem, especially given Trump’s reluctance to reaffirm U.S. fidelity to NATO’s Article 5, the treaty’s collective-defense provision. Even Russian interference in American democracy hasn’t stopped Trump from being less confrontational with Putin than with European leaders. In the one notable case in which the administration acted against Putin, in providing arms to Ukraine, any reassurance was undercut by the fact that subsequent aid was conditioned on a commitment by Ukraine’s new president to investigate Trump’s likely Democratic opponent in the 2020 election.
At some point, disruption becomes so far-reaching that there is no turning back.
On trade, the administration has mostly rejected multilateral pacts, including the TPP, which would have brought together countries representing 40 percent of the world’s GDP and pressured China to meet higher economic standards. It has regularly resorted to unilateral tariffs, even imposing them on allies and using dubious legal justifications. And although the United States has not withdrawn from the World Trade Organization, the administration has tied it in knots by refusing to approve judges for the panel that adjudicates trade disputes. The one exception is the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement. The USMCA is a curious exception, however, in that it departs only modestly from the harshly criticized NAFTA and borrows heavily from the text of the rejected TPP.
With China, Trump’s welcome willingness to challenge Beijing on trade has been undermined by what can only be described as an incoherent policy. The administration has used confrontational language but has diluted any real leverage it might have had by bowing out of the TPP, incessantly criticizing (rather than enlisting) allies in Asia and Europe, and blatantly showing its hunger for a narrow trade deal that commits China to accepting greater American exports ahead of Trump’s reelection campaign. The administration has been tardy or inconsistent in its criticism of China for its crackdown in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, and it has been mostly passive as China has solidified its control of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, reduced spending on basic research at home, the placement of new limits on the number of skilled immigrants allowed into the United States, and the inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have made the country less competitive vis-à-vis China.
In the Middle East, Trump’s disruption has similarly undermined U.S. objectives and increased the likelihood of instability. For five decades, the United States had positioned itself as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; everyone understood that the United States stood closer to Israel, but not so close that it would not push Israel when necessary. Convinced that a new approach had to be taken, the Trump administration abandoned any pretense of such a role, forgoing any real peace process for a series of faits accomplis premised on the mistaken belief that the Palestinians were too weak to resist and Sunni Arab governments would look the other way given their desire to work with Israel against Iran. The administration sanctioned the Palestinians even as it moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and put forward a “peace plan” that set the stage for Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. The policy risks sowing instability in the region, foreclosing future opportunities for peacemaking, and jeopardizing Israel’s future as both a democratic and a Jewish state.
With Iran, the administration has managed to isolate itself more than Tehran. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, introducing a new round of sanctions as he did so. The sanctions hurt Iran’s economy, just as the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was a setback for its regional ambitions. But neither was enough to force fundamental changes in Tehran’s behavior, at home or abroad, or bring down the regime (which appears to have been the real goal of the administration’s policy). Iran has now started flouting the limits on its nuclear programs established by the JCPOA and, through its meddling in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, continues to try to reshape much of the Middle East.

THE NEW NORMAL

Trump encountered a difficult inbox at the start of his presidency: growing great-power rivalry, an increasingly assertive China, a turbulent Middle East, a nuclear-armed North Korea, numerous conflicts within countries, a largely unregulated cyberspace, the lingering threat of terrorism, accelerating climate change, and plenty more. On the eve of his inauguration, my book A World in Disarray was published, which I mention only to underscore that many difficult challenges greeted the 45th president. Today, the disarray is considerably greater. Most of the problems that Trump inherited have gotten worse; to the extent that he has simply ignored many of them, neglect has not been benign. And the standing of the United States in the world has fallen, thanks to its inept handling of COVID-19, its denial of climate change and rejection of refugees and immigrants, and the continued scourges of mass shootings and endemic racism. The country is seen not just as less attractive and capable but also as less reliable, as it withdraws from multilateral agreements and distances itself from allies.
American allies, for their part, have come to view the United States differently. Alliances are predicated on reliability and predictability, and no ally is likely to view the United States as it did before. Seeds of doubt have been sown: if it could happen once, it could happen again. It is difficult to reclaim a throne after abdicating it. What’s more, a new president would be constrained by the ongoing pandemic, large-scale unemployment, and deep political divisions, all at a time when the country is struggling to address racial injustice and growing inequality. There would be considerable pressure to focus on righting the home front and limiting ambition abroad.
A partial restoration of U.S. foreign policy is still possible, however. The United States could commit to rebuilding its relationships with its NATO allies, as well as its allies in Asia. It could reenter many of the agreements it exited, negotiate a follow-on pact to the TPP, and spearhead a reform of the World Trade Organization. It could adjust its immigration policy.
There is no going back to the way things were.
But there is no going back to the way things were. Four years may not be a long time in the sweep of history, but it is plenty long enough for things to change irreversibly. China is wealthier and stronger, North Korea has more nuclear weapons and better missiles, climate change is more advanced, the U.S. embassy has been relocated to Jerusalem, and Nicolás Maduro is more entrenched in Venezuela, as is Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This is the new reality.
Moreover, restoration on any scale will be inadequate given the extent to which disarray has spread under Trump. The United States will need a new framework for contending with a more assertive and repressive China, as well as initiatives that narrow the gap between the scale of global challenges—climate change and infectious diseases, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, cyberwar and trade—and the arrangements meant to address them. Rejoining an inadequate Paris agreement, a soon-to-begin-expiring JCPOA, or a flawed WHO would not be nearly enough. Instead, a new administration will need to negotiate follow-on agreements on both climate change and Iran and partner with others to reform the WHO or bring about a new body to assume some of the global health burden.
And if Trump is reelected? Buoyed by an electoral victory that he would interpret as a mandate, he would likely double down on the central elements of the foreign policy that has defined his first term. At some point, disruption becomes so far-reaching that there is no turning back. Present at the Disruption could become Present at the Destruction.
Countless norms, alliances, treaties, and institutions would weaken or wither. The world would become more Hobbesian, a struggle of all against all. (This was actually previewed in May 2017 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by two senior Trump administration officials: “The world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”) Conflict would become more common, and democracy less so. Proliferation would accelerate as alliances lost their ability to reassure friends and deter foes. Spheres of influence could arise. Trade would become more managed, at best growing more slowly, but possibly even shrinking. The U.S. dollar would begin to lose its unique place in the global economy, with alternatives such as the euro, and possibly the renminbi and various cryptocurrencies, growing in importance. U.S. indebtedness could become a major liability. The global order that existed for 75 years would surely end; the only question is what, if anything, would take its place.
A great deal hinges on which course the United States follows. Even a partial restoration would make Trump’s foreign policy something of an aberration, in which case its impact would prove limited. But if his brand of foreign policy persists for another four years, Trump will be seen as a truly consequential president. In this scenario, the model embraced by the United States from World War II until 2016 will prove to be the aberration—a relatively brief exception in a longer tradition of isolationism, protectionism, and nationalist unilateralism. History makes it impossible to view this latter prospect with anything but alarm.

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  • RICHARD HAASS is President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The World: A Brief Introduction.
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domingo, 19 de julho de 2020

Sobre a Guerra Fria Econômica Trump-China - Paulo Almeida

Sobre a atual Guerra Fria Econômica (e tecnológica) de Trump contra a China, que alguns querem EUA vs. China, quando não deveria ser...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida
 [Objetivo: informação; finalidade: destinação]


Trump reforça sua ofensiva contra a China, com propósitos eleitorais, mas as medidas vão redundar em grave prejuízo para os EUA e para as empresas e consumidores americanos, como já amplamente demonstrado pelas salvaguardas abusivas e ilegais dos três anos passados.
A China consentiu com um acordo de compensações apresentado como uma vitória (tática) americana, quando é uma patente derrota estratégica.
Os EUA já entram derrotados nessa disputa, pois assumem uma postura claramente defensiva e de retaguarda.
Já perderam, agora e no futuro previsível.
Essa derrota se deve inteiramente à estupidez de Trump e de seus assessores imediatos.
Não há como não ficar estupefato com a passividade das classes dominantes, da complacência do establishment, da miopia dos supostos wisest and brightest, que não conseguem ver como os EUA estão cavando sua própria cova, ao rejeitar a necessária e lógica complementaridade entre as duas grandes economias.
Os EUA se isolam, recuam para uma fatal introversão, e ainda fazem pressão sobre parceiros dubitativos para que estes os sigam na burrice. Fazem chantagem em torno do caso da Huawei, mentem como já mentiram no caso do Iraque, e pretendem ser líderes a partir dessa postura defensiva e chantagista. Vão perder.
Parece incrível, mas os impérios mais poderosos podem ruir pela incompetência e estupidez de imperadores ineptos; os impérios romano e otomano são uma prova de que isso pode ocorrer pela má qualidade de suas elites. A Argentina e o próprio Império do Meio constituem provas adicionais da possível derrocada.
A China já venceu porque possui a estratégia correta, a da abertura para a globalização, a do livre comércio e a dos mercados abertos, com o Estado fazendo o seu papel na infraestrutura, no ambiente de negócios, no mercado de capitais, nos acordos internacionais.
A decadência da Grã-Bretanha pré-Thatcher deveria fornecer um claro exemplo sobre o quê NÃO fazer, mas parece que não aprenderam nada.
Quanto ao Brasil, não precisamos ir muito longe, pois temos aqui ao lado uma prova viva de como afundar um país.
O Brasil atual, com seu dirigentes estúpidos e subservientes a Trump — mais até do que aos EUA — pode ser o próximo exemplo de uma decadência made at home, autofabricada.
Que tristeza constatar isso...


Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 19 de julho de 2020

terça-feira, 16 de junho de 2020

Tradicionalismo: a extrema direita no poder - Venício A. de Lima (Carta Maior)

Tradicionalismo: a extrema direita no poder

Por Venício A. de Lima 

Carta Maior, 15/06/2020 
 
Valor Econômico noticiou no início de junho que Gerald Brant, executivo do mercado financeiro e diretor de uma empresa de investimentos nos Estados Unidos, deverá ser nomeado para assessor especial no Ministério das Relações Exteriores, uma espécie de conselheiro, ligado diretamente ao gabinete do chanceler Ernesto Araújo. (Cf. Daniel Rittner, “Amigo de Bannon, Gerald Brant pode quebrar tabu e ter cargo no Itamaraty”, 5/6/2020). A notícia causou estranheza, dentre outras razões, porque o indicado não é da carreira diplomática. Uma das reações indignadas veio do ex-ministro Celso Amorim. Se confirmada esta nomeação, afirmou, representaria “um estupro” na diplomacia brasileira; “uma coisa inexplicável, uma violência sem tamanho. Um tiro final no Itamaraty” (Cf. “Amorim: nomear aliado de Bannon no Itamaraty é um estupro” in https://www.brasil247.com/mundo/amorim-nomear-aliado-de-bannon-no-itamaraty-e-um-estupro ).

Quais são as credenciais de Gerald Brant e o que ele representa? Para simplificar a resposta, recorro a um episódio relatado pelo professor da University of Colorado Boulder, Benjamin Teitelbaum em seu recente War for Eternity – Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (Guerra pela Eternidade – Dentro do círculo de extrema direita dos poderosos globais de Bannon, Dey St./HarperCollins, 2020). 

Em janeiro de 2019, Teitelbaum foi convidado para um jantar na casa de Steve Bannon – ex-CEO do portal de extrema direita Breitbart News, ex vice-presidente da Cambridge Analytica, ex-coordenador da campanha de Donald Trump e ex-estrategista chefe na Casa Branca. O evento celebrava o encontro do anfitrião com Olavo de Carvalho, referência doutrinária do recém-eleito governo de Jair Bolsonaro no Brasil. Entre os seletos convidados americanos e brasileiros estava Gerald Brant. Depois do “Pai Nosso” de agradecimento pela refeição, o investidor propôs um brinde e saudou: “Isto é um sonho se realizando. Trump na Casa Branca, Bolsonaro em Brasília. E aqui em Washington, Bannon e Olavo de Carvalho, face-a-face. Este é um novo mundo, amigos” (pp. 164-165). Ao longo do jantar os presentes descreveram as perspectivas do governo Bolsonaro e, em resposta a uma pergunta de Bannon sobre qual a posição de seus partidários, declararam unânimes: “alinhamento com o Ocidente Judeu-Cristão”. (pp. 167).

Para os que já conhecem as relações entre a família Bolsonaro, Olavo de Carvalho, Ernesto Araújo e Steve Bannon, a eventual nomeação de Gerald Brant certamente não causaria qualquer estranheza. O que os une é a adesão a uma doutrina chamada Tradicionalismo.

O Tradicionalismo
War for Eternity é, de certa forma, uma introdução ao Tradicionalismo, com “T” maiúsculo para se diferenciar do simples tradicionalismo (conservadorismo), crítico do novo por acreditar que a vida era melhor no passado. Pesquisado e escrito, nas palavras do próprio autor, no espaço cinzento entre a etnografia e o jornalismo investigativo, o livro resulta de mais de 20 horas de entrevistas gravadas com Steve Bannon e muitas horas com outros adeptos do Tradicionalismo, direta ou indiretamente, a ele relacionados: extremistas radicais da AltRight, nacionalistas brancos (White Nationalists), membros da Ku Klux Klan e neonazistas. Gente como Daniel Friberg (Suécia) e Richard Spencer (EUA); Michael Bagley, Jason Reza Jorjani e John B. Morgan (EUA); Tibor Baranyi e Gabor Vona (Hungria). Somos também introduzidos a figuras como o místico armênio George Gurdjieff (1866-1949), o filósofo esotérico sufista suíço Frithjof Schouon (1907-1998) e a francesa defensora do nazismo Savitri Devi (1905-1982). Entre os mais proeminentes entrevistados, o russo Aleksandr Dugin e o brasileiro Olavo de Carvalho. O conjunto doutrinário que resulta e articula toda essa gente é, para dizer o mínimo, assustador. 

Não há no livro uma resposta organizada para a pergunta “o que é o Tradicionalismo? ”. Escrito primariamente para o público leitor estadunidense, War for Eternity está centrado em Steve Bannon, não só pelas posições que já ocupou no governo Trump, mas, sobretudo, pelo papel de articulador dos Tradicionalistas que busca exercer em nível mundial. O leitor (a) terá que garimpar os elementos que vão surgindo na narrativa para construir uma visão de conjunto desta bizarra forma de pensar. O que se segue é uma breve tentativa de síntese, parcial e seletiva, privilegiando o que se relaciona ao Brasil de Bolsonaro.

Embora haja importantes diferenças entre eles, os pais fundadores do Tradicionalismo são dois pensadores da primeira metade do século XX: o francês René Guénon (1886-1951) e o italiano Julius Evola (1898-1974). O primeiro, ex-católico, ex-maçom, convertido ao islamismo sufista. O segundo, racista, misógino e ligado ao fascismo de Mussolini. Teitelbaum registra: “René Guénon morreu paranoico e envolvido em conflitos com seus ex-seguidores em 1951, e Julius Evola passou seus últimos anos encafurnado no seu apartamento em Roma com um pequeno grupo de seguidores excepcionalmente radicais e perigosos – alguns deles, simples terroristas – e desprezado por muitos Tradicionalistas” (p. 133).

O Tradicionalismo é um “esoterismo religioso” que se “opõe à modernidade Ocidental e à ciência” (p.137). Uma de suas características básicas é a crença – que tem sua origem no Hinduísmo – de que o tempo histórico se desenvolve em ciclos: as idades de ouro, de prata, de bronze e das trevas. Cada um desses ciclos é representado por diferentes tipos de castas, ordenadas por uma hierarquia descendente: os padres, os guerreiros, os mercadores e os escravos. É uma visão fatalista e pessimista, de vez que esses ciclos se repetirão independentemente da agência humana. Apesar disso, Tradicionalistas militam para acelerar a passagem de um ciclo para outro. Eles acreditam que estamos vivendo uma era das trevas que deve ser implodida para que se retorne ao ciclo inicial, à idade de ouro. Nela viveremos numa sociedade não massificada, não homogeneizada materialmente, onde não existem valores universais – como democracia, comunismo e direitos humanos – mas sim diferentes espiritualidades sob a tutela de uma teocracia hierárquica. 

A modernidade é o oposto do Tradicionalismo. É ela que caracteriza a era das trevas. Ela promove o enfraquecimento da religião em favor da razão (Iluminismo), o declínio do que não pode ser quantificado matematicamente – espírito, emoções, o supranatural – em favor do que é material. A modernidade também envolve a organização de grandes massas de pessoas com fins políticos ou de consumo. Disso resulta a padronização e a homogeneização da vida social. A modernidade acredita no progresso, na criatividade humana que pode nos conduzir a um mundo melhor do que esse no qual vivemos. Tradicionalistas aspiram a tudo que a modernidade não é. Eles acreditam em verdades eternas, transcendentes e estilos de vida, não na busca do progresso.

A hierarquia é um dos sinais da sociedade sadia. Os inimigos da diferença são os universalismos, valores ou sistemas considerados verdadeiros para toda a humanidade e não para grupos específicos. Na modernidade, a democracia é frequentemente compreendida nestes termos, tratada até mesmo em documentos fundadores de estados-nações liberais como parte de um conjunto auto evidente de direitos emanados de Deus, simultâneos ao conceito de uma igualdade universal. 

Os Tradicionalistas adotam o que René Guénon chamou de “teoria da inversão” que é uma das características da era das trevas. “Tudo que você pensa que é bom, é ruim. Toda mudança que você considera progresso, na verdade, é regressão. Toda instância aparente de justiça, na verdade, é opressão” (p. 78). O sistema de valores do mundo moderno é, portanto, o oposto da verdade.

A este amplo quadro de crenças, se acrescentam, de acordo com diferentes matizes do Tradicionalismo, o racismo – a superioridade ariana – e a misogenia – os homens arianos constituem  a casta dominante da idade de ouro.

Os Tradicionalistas atuam através do que chamam de metapolitica, vale dizer, privilegiam o ativismo através da cultura – artes, entretenimento, espaços intelectuais, religião, educação – e não necessariamente através de instituições políticas tradicionais. “Se você consegue alterar a cultura de uma sociedade, você terá criado uma oportunidade política para você mesmo. Fracasse em conseguir isto e você não terá qualquer chance” (p. 61). 

Uma das manifestações concretas do Tradicionalismo – embora, por óbvio, ele não constitua sua única causa explicativa – é a ascenção ao poder de grupos políticos de extrema direita em diferentes partes do mundo, sobretudo a partir da eleição de Donald Trump nos Estados Unidos, em 2016.

O leitor (a) deve estar se perguntando: de onde sai o dinheiro? quem financia os Tradicionalistas? Teitelbaum não está exatamente preocupado em esclarecer esta questão. Todavia, pelo menos no caso de Steve Bannon, a fonte é publica e conhecida. Nos meses em que o livro estava sendo escrito ele recebia 1 milhão de dólares/ano do bilionário dissidente e exilado chinês, Guo Wengui (p. 94).

O guru Tradicionalista brasileiro
Em pelo menos quatro dos 22 capítulos do War for Eternity (10, 13,14 e 20), Olavo de Carvalho é o personagem principal ou merece destaque. Estudioso da extrema direita, Teitelbaum se interessou por ele quando, na primeira manifestação pública do presidente eleito Jair Bolsonaro, através de uma “live” caseira, viu que haviam quatro livros estrategicamente colocados na mesa à sua frente: a Bíblia, a Constituição Brasileira de 1988, Memórias da Segunda Guerra Mundial de Winston Churchill e O Mínimo que você precisa saber para não ser um idiota de Olavo de Carvalho. O vínculo com Olavo de Carvalho foi confirmado publicamente quando, em 1º de maio de 2019, o governo Bolsonaro concedeu-lhe o mais alto grau da Ordem de Rio Branco, criada para "distinguir serviços meritórios e virtudes cívicas, estimular a prática de ações e feitos dignos de honrosa menção” (Cf. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2019/05/bolsonaro-concede-a-olavo-de-carvalho-condecoracao-igual-a-de-mourao-e-moro.shtml ).

Comunista nos tempos de estudante, passou a se interessar por alquimia e astrologia, frequentando círculos ocultistas em São Paulo. Para a revista Planeta, “entrevistou extraterrestres e pessoas mortas” (p.129). Nesta época deu aulas de astrologia em livrarias e na PUC-SP. “Esoterismo era sua grande paixão” (p. 129). Desde a década de 70 ele tem contato com a obra de René Guénon, a quem considera “crazy”, mas julga que “escreveu muita coisa verdadeira” (p.169). Nos anos 80 esteve envolvido numa estranhíssima celebração Maryamiyya tariqa (uma ordem sufista), liderada por Frithjof Schuon que se considerava o herdeiro de René Guenon (pp. 129-136), em Bloomington, Indiana. Nesta época havia se convertido ao sufismo e se tornou muqaddam (facilitador) de uma tariqa em São Paulo. 

Olavo de Carvalho é um Tradicionalista “excêntrico” (p.128) à sua própria maneira, embora compartilhe pontos fundamentais com os pilares da doutrina. “Despreza a mídia e as universidades” (p.128). Acredita que “esquerdistas se infiltraram no sistema educacional brasileiro em preparação para uma revolução comunista” (p.168). Afirma literalmente: “se eu fosse mostrar a você fotografias das universidades brasileiras, você veria somente pessoas nus fazendo sexo. Eles vão para a universidade para fazer sexo e se você tenta pará-los eles se revoltam, começam a chorar, te veem como um opressor” (pp. 254-255). 

Ele se alinha totalmente com Steve Bannon “na condenação da China e na urgência de resistir à sua influência global” (p.166). Perguntado se temia a China ou o Islã, respondeu: “Eu acredito que a China é mais perigosa. Eles não têm um senso real de humanidade. Eles pensam que pessoas são coisas (...). Eles pensam que você pode substituir uma pessoa por outra. Eles não são boas pessoas” (p. 257).

Ao concluir sua análise sobre o debate público que Olavo de Carvalho travou com o Tradicionalista russo Aleksandr Dugin em 2011, Teitelbaum afirma: “O que, afinal, Olavo apoia? Primeiro e acima de tudo, cristãos de todos os países, Israel e nacionalistas conservadores americanos. Os hábitos sociais rurais dos americanos, em particular, parecem capturar alguma coisa sacrossanta para ele. Ele viu coesão crescente, caridade e voluntarismo quando o Estado se retirou da sociedade americana” (p. 182).

Desde 2005 morando numa zona rural do estado de Virgínia, nos Estados Unidos, agora católico – uma forma de intensificar sua oposição ao comunismo (p. 176) – Olavo de Carvalho passou a oferecer cursos pela internet (Youtube, Facebook) e pelo rádio. Obteve sucesso e “formou” vários quadros que hoje ocupam posições fundamentais no governo de Jair Bolsonaro: Ernesto Araújo (Relações Exteriores) e Abraham Weintraub (Educação) são apenas os mais conhecidos.

Tradicionalismo no Brasil
No capítulo final de War for Eternity, Teitelbaum observa: “Tradicionalismo em sua forma original não estimula preocupações com desigualdades e injustiças. Quando seu comando de arregimentar populações em torno de uma essência espiritual arcaica é combinado com uma ideologia que preserva sua própria versão apocalíptica – como o messianismo de cristãos evangélicos com a crença adicional de que a destruição terrena é necessária para uma utopia terrena, e não celestial – pode existir razão para alarme. Na verdade, para vários dos Tradicionalistas, esta filosofia oferece o pretexto não para a apatia (...) mas para seu exato oposto: a ação transformadora temerária na crença de que o mundo está prestes a mudar e, portanto, medidas audaciosas são justificadas. Tradicionalismo não vê razão para se subordinar à política” (pp. 280-281).
É neste contexto que se deve buscar a compreensão do que ocorre no Brasil de Bolsonaro. No caso específico da nomeação de Gerald Brant – empresário americano de extrema direita ligado a Steve Bannon – para conselheiro da política externa brasileira, há de se lembrar que o chanceler Ernesto Araujo discute Guénon e Evola fluentemente e que “mais do que o próprio Olavo, é um Tradicionalista” (p.165). No seu blog “Metapolítica 17 – Contra o Globalismo” (Cf. https://www.metapoliticabrasil.com/blog/ ) ele se apresenta: “Sou Ernesto Araújo. Tenho 28 anos de serviço público e sou também escritor. Quero ajudar o Brasil e o mundo a se libertarem da ideologia globalista. Globalismo é a globalização econômica que passou a ser pilotada pelo marxismo cultural. Essencialmente é um sistema anti-humano e anti-cristão. A fé em Cristo significa, hoje, lutar contra o globalismo, cujo objetivo último é romper a conexão entre Deus e o homem, tornado o homem escravo e Deus irrelevante. O projeto metapolítico significa, essencialmente, abrir-se para a presença de Deus na política e na história”

O Tradicionalismo, vale dizer, a extrema direita, assumiu o poder no Brasil.

[Brasília, 15 de junho de 2020]
Venício A. de Lima é Professor Emérito da UnB e Pesquisador Sênior do CEBRAP-UFMG