War in Ukraine churns Asia’s troubled waters - Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall (WP)

 O ministro da Defesa da Indonésia (um dos países citados por Lula para integrar o natimorto "Clube da Paz) é candidato à presidência do seu país. Lula já é presidente, mas quer ser o líder do assim chamado Sul Global e, se possível, estadista mundial, candidato a algum Nobel da Paz.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

War in Ukraine churns Asia’s troubled waters

By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall 

The Washington Post, June 5, 2023,
The 

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto speaks during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday. (Caroline Chia/Reuters)

SINGAPORE — Almost since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, analysts in the West wrung their hands about a perceived lack of support for Kyiv from the global South. The explosion of open war in Europe galvanized the transatlantic alliance and ushered in a major shift in strategic thinking on the continent. But it also exposed gaps in the priorities and concerns of governments elsewhere, many of which hoped to see an immediate end to a war that had destabilized the global economy and critical food supply chains — even if it meant Ukraine making concessions to Russian aggression.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, a leading Asian security forum hosted in this Southeast Asian city-state that concluded over the weekend, that dissonance was palpable. Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto took the dais during a Saturday plenary and put forward a peace plan to draw an end to the war in Ukraine — somewhat to the surprise of even some members of the Indonesian contingent in attendance.

Prabowo, who is gearing up for a presidential run in 2024, proposed a settlement that would usher in an immediate cessation of hostilities, compel both Russia and Ukraine to withdraw 15 kilometers from their current positions to create a demilitarized buffer zone, and lead to the staging of U.N.-backed referendums in disputed territories. He said his country would be prepared to dispatch military observers to Ukraine to help oversee such an effort.

“Let us not put blame on any side,” Prabowo said. “There are always two versions to any conflict. Both sides feel strongly of their righteousness.”

The proposal triggered a swift backlash. Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s top diplomat, sat on stage alongside the Indonesian defense minister and rejected what he described as a “peace of the cemeteries, a peace of surrender” and argued that Russian aggression ought not be rewarded by further territorial concessions. Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament, suggested the offer for Indonesian intervention was a “policy stunt” intended for a domestic audience. In Singapore, Bütikofer told me, Prabowo “made a fool of himself.”

Then came Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who at another session later in the day scoffed at Prabowo’s suggestion, describing it as “a Russian plan.” He said there was already a long “queue” of outside powers eager to help end the conflict, but that Ukraine does not “need a facilitator right now because we are still conducting war — a war with murderers, looters and rapists.” Reznikov reiterated Ukraine’s long-standing demands for more military aid to help push out Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. “We need the tools to finish this war,” he said.

In a Q&A session, Prabowo coolly advised against an overly “emotional reaction” to the current situation. He reminded the audience gathered at the forum in Singapore that Indonesia had already voted at the U.N. General Assembly to condemn the Russian invasion and that he was simply, in good faith, trying to find a way “to resolve this conflict.”

But Prabowo communicated an impatience with Western moralizing over the war in Ukraine that is keenly felt in some corners in Asia and Africa, subject to a history of Western meddling and exploitation. “There are violations of sovereignty not only in Europe. Ask our brothers in the Middle East, ask the Africans … how many countries have invaded them?” Prabowo said. “Please understand we have been victims of aggression many times.”

Sitting next to Reznikov, Cui Tiankai, a retired Chinese diplomat who recently served a lengthy stint as Beijing’s ambassador in Washington, seemed to exult in the tension. “I appreciate very much efforts from our friends in the region, like Indonesia and South Africa,” said Cui, who also highlighted China’s own halting efforts to broker a truce. “With all due respect to our Euro-Atlantic friends: I don’t think you are managing effectively your own security situation. Maybe mismanaging is a better word.”

The considerable crowd of Westerners attending the Shangri-La Dialogue seemed sensitive to this perspective. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas spoke Sunday about Ukraine’s fight as a struggle of anti-imperial resistance, rhetoric some Europeans hope resonates with audiences elsewhere. “Russia is testing us all to see whether it can get away with conquering and colonizing an independent country in the 21st century,” said Kallas, who later inaugurated her small Baltic nation’s new embassy in Singapore.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the war in Ukraine and the reckonings it forced on the continent was a wake-up call with far-reaching implications. Europeans now recognized their vulnerability to chaos in other parts of the world, as well, and saw the need to bolster security relationships in Asia. “We have been too focused on economical relations and not enough on global political developments,” Pistorius said.

At the forum, Pistorius announced that his nation would dispatch a frigate and a supply ship to the South China Sea for freedom of navigation exercises. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also touted his government’s permanent deployment of two warships in the region. Such moves add to Beijing’s fears of geopolitical encirclement by the United States and its allies, but signal a degree of engagement and attention to other Asian powers that may have not existed in prior decades.

“I’ve got a powerful sense that countries in the region welcome the fact that the U.K. is very present in the region, alongside other European partners,” David Lammy, a prominent Labour Party politician and Britain’s shadow foreign secretary, told me on the sidelines of the Dialogue. “But alongside that, it’s clear that there’s no request for NATO to stretch beyond the Atlantic.”

Ukraine loomed over proceedings often as metaphor and cautionary tale. One prominent official after the next summoned the effects and costs of Russia’s invasion as something no one wants to see repeated in Asia. Mounting U.S.-China tensions and a worrying lack of substantive communication between both sides has put the region on edge.

“As many ministers have said, if you have a simultaneous war in Europe and Asia, it will be catastrophic globally,” Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen told reporters Saturday. “There was a real sincerity and urgency that what happened in Ukraine must not happen in Asia,”

Hanna Shelest, an influential foreign policy expert in Kyiv who attended the forum in Singapore, made a more direct plea. She told me that she hoped China, in particular, would understand that their current course of providing cover for the Kremlin was worth correcting. She urged Beijing to separate its views of the war in Ukraine from its broader confrontation with the United States. “Ukraine should not become hostage” to the U.S.-China dynamic, she said.

The case for Ukraine (for America) - Marc Thiessen (WP)

 

The case for Ukraine (for America) A lot of conservatives argue that the United States doesn’t have a good reason to keep supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. To them, columnist Marc Thiessen, also a conservative, says: Here are 10. Marc’s essay lays out in clear, discrete points what he calls the “America First” rationale for supporting Ukraine. You will not find soaring rhetoric about defending democracy here. This argument is aimed at the people who need supporting Ukraine to be good for the United States. Marc argues that continued support would be very good. His first point is that a Russian victory would embolden U.S. enemies the world over. The second point, related, is that a Ukrainian victory would help deter China: If the United States protects Ukraine, China will think it more likely to protect Taiwan, too. His next eight reasons run the gamut from a revitalized defense industry to nuclear nonproliferation to — conservative catnip — the restoration of the Reagan Doctrine. Maybe if Marc can consolidate enough conservatives to support Ukraine, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis will finally pick a side in the fight. Columnist Josh Rogin writes that the Florida governor has refused to reveal an actual position on whether the United States should continue its aid to Ukraine. “By trying to placate everybody,” Josh writes, DeSantis “is pleasing no one.” Josh reports that many Republican insiders assume DeSantis will come out as pro-aid if he can make it past the very anti-aid Donald Trump in the presidential primaries. But what if that’s wrong? Right now, the electorate is left to guess — and that’s an insult to voters. Chaser: The Editorial Board sees nuclear danger rising regardless of how Ukraine plays out. It has a blueprint for the U.S. response.

Despite war, Ukraine allows Russian oil and gas to cross its territory - David L. Stern, Sammy Westfall (WP)

The Washington Post, May 25, 2023 

By David L. Stern with Sammy Westfall   Email

Despite war, Ukraine allows Russian oil and gas to cross its territory A section of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline, Russia’s main natural gas export pipeline, near Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 2014. (Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg News) KYIV, Ukraine — Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country, Ukraine continues to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors — generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties. Senior Ukrainian officials have demanded that their Western partners impose tougher sanctions and cut virtually all economic ties to Russia, saying “more must be done” to cripple Moscow’s war machine. But as surreal as it might seem, Ukraine insists that it has virtually no choice but to maintain its own commercial deals and has lobbied to preserve them, arguing that they provide some leverage over the Kremlin and help constrain where the Russian military carries out airstrikes. Oleksiy Chernyshov, the chief executive of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz, conceded the bizarre optics of Ukraine still doing business with Russia. “It is for me, it’s impossible, as a Ukrainian citizen — that is my first reaction,” Chernyshov said, adding that this was a personal and emotional response. But Naftogaz — and senior political leaders — insist that Ukraine cannot and should not shut the pipelines, both to lay claim to residual revenue (although the amount Moscow is paying, if anything, is not public information) and because some of Kyiv’s European supporters are still dependent on Russian oil and gas. Russia’s continuing profits, and Kyiv’s frustrations, were spotlighted recently in classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the Discord messaging platform, which said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky considered blowing up the Druzhba oil pipeline earlier this year. According to the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. officials questioned the seriousness of the threats, which may have been an outburst of frustration at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has voiced pro-Kremlin positions and insisted on an exemption from a European Union effort to end purchases of Russian oil. Moscow sent about 300,000 barrels of oil per day last year through the Druzhba — or “Friendship” — pipeline, which crosses Ukraine. Russia is also obligated to pump some 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually through Ukraine’s gas transit system because of supply agreements that predate the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukrainian officials say they are in a quandary. Russian hydrocarbons crossing their territory earn the Kremlin millions of dollars and help fund its war machine. But Kyiv also needs the money it earns on transit and wants to be a reliable economic partner to European nations, some of which could face destabilizing price increases if Russian energy supplies were suddenly cut off. Chernyshov said Kyiv must uphold its contractual obligations, and the decision to end the deliveries lies with the countries on the receiving end, such as Hungary, which need Russian oil and gas for heat in the winter. “This stream has not been stopped in order not to make other countries that are supporting Ukraine freeze,” he said. The Kremlin has used energy supplies as a weapon, including in the 2000s when it twice cut off supplies to Europe. But Kyiv has also insisted that Russia’s gas must continue to flow, even in the years since Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and fomented a separatist war in the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine insisted that it should sustain its role as a transit country, while also demanding that countries like Germany not help Russia build new pipelines — a view critics called hypocritical. Now, Ukraine says all of its supporters should reduce or eliminate their use of Russian energy. A working group on Russian sanctions, chaired by Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, and Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, published an “action plan” last month that laid out additional steps that should be taken to punish Russia — but the plan pointedly called for preserving the transit of Russian energy across Ukraine. It also called for suspending “all remaining Russian-controlled pipeline routes” taking Russian gas to the European market, as well as the TurkStream pipeline through Turkey. “End the direct supply of Russian gas to the European Union, except through Ukraine,” the action plan said.   Anders Aslund, an economic expert focusing on the former Soviet Union who was part of the sanctions working group, said the logic of maintaining transit across Ukraine was clear: Gas would go to European markets regardless, because the E.U. included several exceptions, or “carveouts,” to its embargo regime for countries like Hungary. What’s more, Russia is committed to paying Ukraine a total $7 billion over a five-year contract signed in 2019, called a “pump or pay” agreement, which requires Moscow to pay whether it ships any gas. “So why not get the money?” Aslund said. “The contracts have been agreed with the European Union for these carveouts.” The goal of the sanctions is not to introduce “a general ban against trade with Russia,” Aslund said, but “to cause Russia maximum damage without causing Ukraine more damage than necessary.” On May 10, E.U. envoys met in Brussels to discuss a new package of sanctions against Russia, its 11th so far. Previous measures targeted individuals, businesses and sectors of the Russian economy, and restricted exports and imports. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, at a news conference with Zelensky in Kyiv the previous day, said the E.U. would “continue to do everything” in its power “to erode Putin’s war machine and his revenue.” Zelensky praised the E.U. proposals, which he said would hit Russia’s atomic energy sector. But he and other officials have said this is still not enough. Under its gas contract with Kyiv, Russia is obligated to pay Ukraine some $1 billion to $1.5 billion annually. After the war began, one key entry point for Russian gas in occupied territory in the east was shut down, with conflicting claims over who was responsible. saying Ukrainian officials insisted there was capacity to send all Russian gas through another entry point. However, Russia drastically reduced the amount of gas that it pumped through Ukraine. In September, Naftogaz filed a case at the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, saying that “funds were not paid” by Russian state gas company Gazprom “neither on time nor in full” under the terms of the contract. Naftogaz declined to specify how much was missing from payments, however. “We will make Gazprom pay,” said Yuriy Vitrenko, the head of Naftogaz at the time. Gazprom, in response, said there were no “appropriate reasons” to pursue the case and threatened to impose financial penalties against Naftogaz. Gas has been at the center of Russia and Ukraine’s troubled relationship for decades. At one point, Russia sent more than 80 percent of its gas across Ukraine to European countries. Russia hoped to bypass Ukraine by opening two gas pipelines across the North Sea to Germany. As the second, called Nord Stream 2, was being built, Ukrainian officials argued that some of Russia’s gas should continue to traverse Ukraine as a way of preventing a full-scale war. Nord Stream 2 was built but never used. The war happened anyway. Still, Nataliia Shapoval, vice president for policy research at the Kyiv School of Economics, said Russia’s use of Ukrainian pipelines “creates some additional protection” and has appeared to limit Moscow’s airstrikes. “During their campaign against the energy sector this winter, gas transportation and storage were not their primary targets, for sure,” Shapoval said. The Druzhba oil pipeline has likewise been spared, halting operations for only “a couple of days, when they didn’t have the power to run the pumps,” said Matthew Sagers, an energy transport expert at S&P Global Commodity Insights in London. Sagers said Druzhba carried about 80 percent of oil for Hungary’s largest oil company, MOL, last year and is supposed to carry between 50 and 55 percent this year. In addition to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia depend on oil shipped through Druzhba. Plus, Ukraine earned close to $180 million on transit fees from Druzhba last year, Sagers said. “Money is money.” In the end, Sagers said, the Ukrainians “don’t need to blow up the pipeline — they could just simply stop doing business if they wanted to.”

Europe’s hawkishness on China comes into focus - Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall (WP)

 The Washington Post, May 23, 2023

Europe’s hawkishness on China comes into focus

By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall 
 Email

The leaders summit of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies, hosted over the weekend in Japan, triggered a new round of jostling with China. A sternly worded G-7 communiqué urged Beijing to do more to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, condemned its supposed “malign” trade practices and vowed to “foster resilience to economic coercion” — that is, insulate their economies from being overexposed to China’s booming market and export industry. Still, the main communiqué insisted that the bloc’s nations “stand prepared to build constructive and stable relations with China.” But the reaction from Beijing made clear China’s dim view of the approach taken by the United States and some of its closest allies.

China summoned the Japanese ambassador in Beijing on Monday for a dressing down about what a Chinese diplomat described as the G-7’s “bloc confrontation and Cold War mentality.” A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement over the weekend lambasted G-7 bullying: “The era when a few developed countries in the West willfully interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and manipulated global affairs is gone forever,” it read.

Yet little that was announced regarding China by the G-7 leaders in Japan ought to be a surprise. The summit offered the latest evidence of a more hawkish Western view of China coming into focus. It came on the heels of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s remarks in March about the need to “de-risk” — if not “decouple” — her continent’s economies from China, protecting supply chains, digital networks and limiting the transfers of sensitive technology to Chinese companies. Last month, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan touted the necessity of export controls on any goods and technology that “could tilt the military balance” in China’s favor.

“All of the G7 countries do not have a hardline approach on China but they can agree on where they need to protect themselves against China and the newest element [to that debate] is how they need to respond against economic coercion,” Ryo Sahashi, associate professor of international politics at the University of Tokyo, explained to the Financial Times.

In Europe, the shift has been palpable. While trade remains robust between the European Union and China, policymakers in many of the continent’s capitals share the United States’ skepticism and growing apprehensions about Chinese influence, the reach of Chinese technology companies and the footprint of Beijing’s ambitious global infrastructure projects. Italy appears to be preparing to exit China’s Belt and Road Initiative, after becoming the first G-7 nation to sign up for it in 2019.

“We are no longer this naive continent that thinks, ‘Wow, the wonderful China market, look at these opportunities!’” Philippe Le Corre, a French analyst with the Asia Society Policy Institute, said to my colleagues. “I think everyone has got it.”

“Hopes that China would help boost Europe’s economies have been clouded by concerns about competition, influence and exposure,” my colleagues wrote Monday. “Beijing’s authoritarian turn under President Xi Jinping, its belligerence toward self-ruled Taiwan and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have all raised alarms. European policymakers are wary after seeing how dependence on Russian energy limited their leverage when President Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled toward Kyiv.”

In a statement after the meeting, the G-7 cited a particular episode of Chinese “coercion” — when China halted most of its imports from Lithuania in 2021 after the small Baltic state allowed self-ruling Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius under the name of “Taiwan.” For Beijing, such a designation crosses a red line; other countries, including the United States, host Taiwanese offices that go under the name of “Taipei,” which is more acceptable to China.

A container from China arrives at the Port of Duisburg on May 4. (Fabian Ritter for The Washington Post)

But Lithuania decided not to back down in its standoff with China, and two years later, seems vindicated in its approach. Taiwan’s office remains — its name intact — but trade with China has been restored, though ambassadors have not returned to either country. “We were decoupled by China,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, recently told the Wall Street Journal, “but we showed that it was possible to withstand it, and not lower our threshold when it comes to values.”

Landsbergis is one of Europe’s most outspoken top diplomats on China, and recently blasted Beijing on social media after a Chinese diplomat on French television seemed to question the sovereignty of post-Soviet states like Lithuania. He cited the remarks as evidence for “why the Baltic States don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine.’” He issued a lengthy tweet thread after French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial visit to China, which critics argued was too conciliatory to Beijing. “We chose not to see the threat of Russian aggression, and now we are choosing not to see the threat of Chinese aggression,” Landsbergis wrote in the days after Macron’s trip. “We are on the verge of repeating the same mistake.”

Like other officials from countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Landsbergis pointed to his country’s experience emerging out of the shadow of the Soviet Union as a reason for its tougher view of both Moscow and Beijing. “Maybe I’m flattering my country, but I tend to believe that we feel the wind of geopolitical upheaval maybe better than others,” Landsbergis told the Wall Street Journal. “Maybe that’s because we were born out of it. And it’s still alive, very much alive.”

Lithuania is not alone in overtly embracing Taiwan. In March, the speaker of the lower house of the Czech Parliament led a 150-member delegation to the island nation. The two countries agreed to a slate of deals that irked China, including arms transfers and agreements to collaborate on drone research and deepen ties between national security think tanks.

In an interview earlier this month with The Washington Post, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said that his government had no interest in “provoking” China or crossing “red lines,” but hailed the “strong relationship” between Taiwan and the Czech Republic. He described Beijing’s signature attempt to build a wedge in Europe with an investment initiative involving a bloc of what was once 17 mostly Eastern European countries — now just 14 — as “not something that now has any kind of relevance.”

Lipavsky was sanguine that the 27 member states of the European Union are still struggling to find consensus on China. “It’s a fact that European countries do not have a strong common position which we could be using as a tool in a relationship toward China,” he told me. “But we have a common understanding that China represents opportunities and that China represents threats. And on the latter one, we have a common understanding that we need to be aware of that and work on possible measures [in response].”

Washington finalmente está superando a falsa "armadilha de Tucídides"? Um novo Consenso de Washington? - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

 Tradução para o Português in fine:

The Washington Post, May 1st, 2023

By Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall   Email

Eyeing China, Biden official floats a new ‘Washington consensus’ National security adviser Jake Sullivan during a news briefing at the White House on April 24. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) In some tellings, we all live in the shadow of the “Washington consensus.” The term was coined in 1989 by an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank that would eventually be seen as a leading cheerleader for globalization and free trade. At the time, it referred to a slate of policy choices adopted by leaders in Latin America to grapple with debt crises; they were undergirded by support from Washington-based institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These policy solutions involved some key, familiar prescriptions — reining in public spending, privatizing state enterprises, liberalizing trade, deregulating business, and opening up for foreign investment. They were tethered to classically liberal dogmas on the primacy of the market, as well as to an international order shaped by American financial and military preeminence. And they presupposed a world where mutual economic interests would smooth over the nasty inconvenience of geopolitics. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the “consensus” became the global orthodoxy — the foundation for a “flat” world where history had “ended.”Its high-water mark, as Financial Times columnist Edward Luce recently noted, may have come more than two decades ago as the United States cheered on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. That prefigured a wave of globalization that is now viewed in broadly negative terms in the West, where, as China became the manufacturing hub of the world and a rising global power, deindustrialization and mounting inequity gripped societies on both sides of the Atlantic. The impact of the old “Washington consensus” hangs over the Biden administration. “The so-called ‘China shock’ that hit pockets of our domestic manufacturing industry especially hard, with large and long-lasting impacts, wasn’t adequately anticipated and wasn’t adequately addressed as it unfolded,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week. “And collectively, these forces have frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests now.” In Sullivan’s view, reckoning with that legacy, as well as the near-term and long-term challenges of the pandemic and climate change, “demands that we forge a new consensus.” He was speaking at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, delivering an address that was widely viewed by analysts as the clearest illustration yet of the Biden administration’s big picture view of the way forward and the dilemma of confronting China. Sullivan is the leading champion of President Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class,” an approach that structures U.S. interests abroad around strategies that revitalize the country at home. Its signature elements, so far, have been pieces of legislation like the mammoth Inflation Reduction Actand the Chips Act, which mark an agenda that, as Sullivan put it, “invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength” and “deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.” Critics, though, see in the administration’s newfangled embrace of industrial policy a return to an era of dangerous protectionism that has grim implications for the global economy and the future of international trade. “Business leaders have criticized Biden for not pursuing any new trade deals, which generally offer other nations improved access to the U.S. market in return for similar benefits for American exporters,” my colleague David Lynch explained. “Instead, the president has proposed ‘framework’ agreements in Asia and Latin America, which would link U.S. trading partners in a cooperative arrangement involving standards for digital trade and measures to promote stronger supply chains.” The new dispensation, argued the Financial Times’s Luce, is a “pessimistic” one where the United States “cannot make trade deals, cannot negotiate global digital rules, cannot abide by WTO rulings and … has lost faith in economic multilateralism.” He added: “The old consensus was a positive sum game; if one country got richer others did too. The new one is zero sum; one country’s growth comes at the expense of another’s.” Sullivan, who seems to have read Luce’s column before delivering the speech, rejected the dichotomy. He said “the idea that a ‘new Washington consensus’ … is somehow America alone, or America and the West to the exclusion of others, is just flat wrong,” and laid out an arguably nuanced view of the prevailing state of play. Sullivan acknowledged the fact that, for whatever the growing tensions and confrontation with China, trade between the two countries remains robust and reached record levels last year. And he echoed the rhetoric of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has spoken of “de-risking” Europe’s supply chains from overexposure to China rather than fully “decoupling” from what, by some indicators, is already the world’s largest economy. The United States’ moves to curb trade with China in goods that could boost Beijing’s artificial intelligence and tech prowess are, in Sullivan’s framing, an exception rather than the norm. “Our export controls will remain narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance,” he said. “We are simply ensuring that U.S. and allied technology is not used against us. We are not cutting off trade.” And yet he thinks the current moment has to force a revision of “the oversimplified assumptions” of the past — including restoring an acceptance of more targeted state interventions when necessary and dispelling an embrace of trade liberalization as an end in of itself. “Economic integration didn’t stop China from expanding its military ambitions in the region or stop Russia from invading its democratic neighbors,” Sullivan said. “Neither country had become more responsive or cooperative.” A coterie of Biden administration alumni concurred with Sullivan in a recent panel event hosted by the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. “It was very clear that decades of free market fundamentalism had really left our economy vulnerable and weakened our national security, and we no longer had the capacity to produce essential goods” like chips and pharmaceutical ingredients, said Sameera Fazili, a former official of the White House’s National Economic Council. Jennifer Harris, a former economics expert on the National Security Council, said it was in the United States’ interests for other countries to mimic its industrial policies and subsidies for green technologies. “Not only do you have our permission to do it too, we need you to do it too, and in fact, we’re going to help you,” she said. “And we’re going to start reorienting U.S. foreign policy around taking the idea of green industrial policy global.” That’s an ambitious project, which Sullivan recognized will take “dedicated commitment” to realize in the years and decades to come, both in building cooperation abroad and navigating polarization and bitter divides at home. What Sullivan envisions “requires buy-in from a broad constituency of domestic actors and foreign allied economies,” tweeted Emily Benson, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It also requires time, which isn’t on the administration’s side.” ===================== De olho na China, funcionário de Biden faz emergir um novo ‘consenso de Washington’ Expressão se refere a escolhas políticas de líderes latino-americanos para conter suas crises calçados por instituições com base em Washington, como o Banco Mundial e o FMI Por Ishaan Tharoor 01/05/2023 | 20h00 ESTADÃO / INTERNACIONAL De acordo com certas narrativas, todos nós vivemos na sombra do “Consenso de Washington”. O termo foi cunhado em 1989, por um economista do Instituto Peterson para Economia Internacional, um centro de análise de Washington que acabaria sendo considerado um dos principais fomentadores da globalização e do livre comércio. Na época, a expressão se referia a um conjunto de escolhas políticas adotado por líderes latino-americanos para conter suas crises de dívida calçados por instituições com base em Washington, como o Banco Mundial e o Fundo Monetário Internacional. Essas políticas de solução envolviam algumas prescrições críticas e familiares — controlar gasto público, privatizar estatais, liberalizar o comércio, desregular o setor empresarial e se abrir para o investimento estrangeiro. Elas estavam amarradas a dogmas classicamente liberais em relação à primazia do mercado, assim como a uma ordem internacional forjada pela proeminência financeira e militar dos Estados Unidos. E pressupunham um mundo em que interesses econômicos mútuos abrandariam a sórdida inconveniência da geopolítica. Após a Guerra Fria, o “consenso” virou uma ortodoxia global — fundação de um mundo “uniforme”, em que a história havia “chegado ao fim”. Seu auge, conforme o colunista Edward Luce, do Financial Times, notou recentemente, pode ter chegado mais de duas décadas atrás, quando os EUA celebraram a entrada da China na Organização Mundial do Comércio. Aquilo prefigurou uma onda de globalização agora vista em termos amplamente negativos no Ocidente, em que, conforme a China se tornou o polo de manufatura do mundo e potência global ascendente, desindustrializações e desigualdades crescentes têm pressionado sociedades em ambos os lados do Atlântico. O impacto do antigo “Consenso de Washington” paira sobre o governo Biden. “O chamado ‘choque China’ que atingiu com força especialmente os bolsos da nossa indústria manufatureira, com impactos grandes e duradouros, não foi antecipado adequadamente e não foi abordado adequadamente conforme transcorreu”, afirmou na semana passada o conselheiro de segurança nacional da Casa Branca, Jake Sullivan. “E coletivamente essas forças desgastaram as fundações socioeconômicas sobre as quais qualquer democracia forte e resiliente se sustenta hoje.” Na visão de Sullivan, acertar as contas com esse legado e com os desafios em curto e longo prazo da pandemia e das mudanças climáticas “exige que forjemos um novo consenso”. Ele falava na Brookings Institution, na quinta-feira, pronunciando um discurso que foi amplamente considerado por analistas a ilustração mais clara até aqui da visão maior do governo Biden a respeito da maneira de avançar e do dilema de confrontar a China. Sullivan é o principal defensor da “política externa para a classe média” do presidente Joe Biden, uma abordagem que estrutura os interesses dos EUA no exterior em torno de estratégias que revitalizam o país domesticamente. Os elementos que a distinguem, até agora, têm sido peças de legislação como as titânicas Lei de Redução da Inflação e Lei dos Chips, que marcam uma agenda que, conforme colocou Sullivan, “investe nas fontes das nossas forças econômicas e tecnológicas” e “aciona capital para entregar benefícios públicos, em áreas como meio ambiente e saúde”. Críticos, porém, veem na corrente adoção de política industrial por parte do governo um retorno a uma era de protecionismos perigosos, com implicações nefastas para a economia global e o futuro do comércio internacional. “Líderes empresariais criticaram Biden por não perseguir nenhum acordo comercial, o que geralmente oferece a outros países acesso especial ao mercado americano em troca de benefícios similares para exportadores americanos”, explicou meu colega David Lynch. “Em vez disso, o presidente propôs acordos ‘de ordenamento’ na Ásia e na América Latina, que ligariam parceiros comerciais dos EUA em um arranjo cooperativo envolvendo padrões para comércio digital e medidas para promover cadeias de fornecimento mais fortes.” A nova derrogação, argumentou Luce, do Financial Times, é “pessimista”, pois os EUA “não podem fazer acordos comerciais, não podem negociar regras digitais globais, não podem estar em conformidade com as decisões da OMC e (…) perdem a fé no multilateralismo econômico”. Ele acrescentou: “o consenso antigo era um jogo de soma positiva; se um país enriquecia, outros países também enriqueciam; o novo jogo é de soma zero, em que o crescimento de um país ocorre à custa de outro”. Sullivan, que parece ter lido a coluna de Luce antes de pronunciar seu discurso, rejeitou a dicotomia. Ele disse que “a ideia de que um ‘novo consenso de Washington’ (…) é de alguma maneira os EUA sozinhos ou os EUA mais o Ocidente à exceção de outros é completamente equivocada” e expôs uma visão, pode-se argumentar, nuançada do estado atual das coisas. Sullivan reconheceu o fato de que, apesar de qualquer tensão e confronto com Pequim, o comércio entre EUA e China continua robusto e atingiu níveis recorde no ano passado. E ecoou a retórica da presidente da Comissão Europeia, Ursula von der Leyen, que falou em “reduzir exposição ao risco” de sobre-exposição das cadeias de fornecimento europeias à China em vez de “desvincular-se” do que, segundo alguns indicadores, já é a maior economia do mundo. O movimento americano para limitar o comércio com os chineses de itens capazes de impulsionar inteligência artificial e excelência tecnológica na China são, segundo a definição de Sullivan, uma exceção, não a norma. “Nossos controles de exportação continuarão estritamente com foco em tecnologias capazes de alterar o equilíbrio militar”, afirmou ele. “Nós estamos simplesmente garantindo que tecnologias dos EUA e dos nossos aliados não sejam usadas contra nós. Não estamos aniquilando o comércio.” E ainda assim ele acha que o momento atual deve forçar uma revisão das “suposições exageradamente simplistas” do passado — incluindo restaurar uma aceitação de intervenções do Estado mais direcionadas quando necessário e expelir a adoção da liberalização comercial enquanto fim em si. “A integração econômica não impediu a China de expandir suas ambições militares na região nem a Rússia de invadir democracias vizinhas”, afirmou Sullivan. “Nenhum desses países ficou mais responsivo ou cooperativo.” Um grupelho de seguidores do governo Biden concordou com Sullivan em um painel organizado recentemente pelo Instituto Roosevelt, de esquerda. “Ficou muito claro que décadas de fundamentalismo de livre mercado tinham deixado nosso país realmente vulnerável e enfraquecido nossa segurança nacional e que nós não tínhamos mais capacidade de produzir itens essenciais”, como chips e medicamentos, afirmou Sameera Fazili, ex-autoridade do Conselho de Economia Nacional da Casa Branca. Jennifer Harris, ex-especialista em economia do Conselho de Segurança Nacional, afirmou que é de interesse dos EUA que outros países reproduzam suas políticas industriais e subsídios para tecnologias verdes. “Vocês não apenas têm nossa permissão para fazer isso também, mas nós precisamos que vocês façam isso também”, afirmou ela. “E nós vamos começar a reorientar a política externa americana no sentido de globalizar a ideia da política industrial verde.” Trata-se de um projeto ambicioso, que, reconheceu Sullivan, exigirá um “compromisso dedicado” para ser realizado nos próximos anos e décadas tanto na construção da cooperação no exterior quanto em navegar domesticamente por polarizações e divisões amargas. O que Sullivan vislumbra “requer aceitação de uma ampla circunscrição de atores domésticos e economias aliadas”, tuitou Emily Benson, especialista em comércio do Centro de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais, de Washington. “Também requer tempo, que não está do lado do governo.” / TRADUÇÃO DE AUGUSTO CALIL https://www.estadao.com.br/internacional/de-olho-na-china-funcionario-de-biden-faz-emergir-um-novo-consenso-de-washington/