Os sete pecados da diplomacia bolsolavista - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Meu mais recente trabalho publicado:

1360. “A relação Brasil-EUA e os sete pecados capitais da diplomacia bolsolavista”, jornal Zero Hora (RS; 14/08/202; link: ); e postado no blog Diplomatizzando (15/08/2020; link: ). Relação de Originais n. 3733. 

Eis o texto original: 

Sete pecados capitais da diplomacia bolsolavista

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Diplomata de carreira, professor no Uniceub (Brasília)

A diplomacia bolsolavista, formulada em grande medida fora do Itamaraty e operada apenas formalmente por auxiliares da Casa, é feita de rupturas com respeito aos padrões históricos da política externa brasileira, que sempre foi tradicionalmente caracterizada pela busca de autonomia e comprometida, antes de mais nada, com o interesse nacional. Ela é tão bizarra no horizonte bissecular de nossa diplomacia que sequer pode ser assemelhada a uma espécie de desvio padrão numa linha de tendência da política externa nacional, pois ela se situa completamente fora do quadro. Observando-se cronologicamente seu desempenho em um ano e meio de esquisitices de inspiração bolsolavista, pode-se identificar os sete pecados capitais dessa diplomacia sui generis: 

1) Ignorância: não parece haver dúvidas de que os que conduzem, de fato, as relações exteriores do Brasil são profundamente ignorantes sobre as relações internacionais e sobre a própria política externa do Brasil. O filho 03 do presidente, que exerce esse papel, não tem a menor ideia de quem foi, nem nunca ouviu falar de Henry Kissinger.

2) Irrealismo: esses “decisores” começam partindo de uma fantasmagoria, o tal de globalismo – que nunca demonstram existir empiricamente – e passam daí a atacar o método por excelência da diplomacia contemporânea: o multilateralismo.

3) Arrogância: como a anterior tribo dos lulopetistas, eles acham que tudo o que existia antes deles foi errado; o chanceler acidental vive apontando distorções na política externa dos últimos 30 anos (falou até “depois de Rio Branco”), não mencionando que serviu de forma obediente todas essas distorções até com entusiasmo (existem provas disso). Ele fez uma completa reforma do Itamaraty sem jamais consultar seus colegas de carreira: por cima.

4) Servilismo: a frase símbolo desse alinhamento automático é o famoso “I love you Trump”, disparado pelo presidente a seu colega americano em setembro de 2019 na ONU. Teve início no primeiro dia de governo quando se ofereceu uma base militar americana no Brasil, prontamente rejeitada pelos ministros militares; mas tem muitos outros exemplos.

5) Miopia: já manifestada numa alegada “ameaça globalista”, tem recusado a cooperação multilateral no combate a um desconhecido, até aqui, “comunavirus”; ela se manifestou em especial na animosidade em relação à China e numa adesão unilateral ao governo de Israel, desconhecendo a complexidade dessas relações e ameaçando negócios e investimentos extremamente relevantes para o presente e o futuro do Brasil.

6) Grosseria: Ela se manifestou sobretudo em direção de líderes estrangeiros que não pensam como o presidente, com ofensas a estadistas europeus comprometidos com a defesa do meio ambiente e também a dirigentes vizinhos de outras correntes políticas.

7) Inconstitucionalidade: a primeira já está comprometida no servilismo, ou seja, a renúncia à independência nacional, para subordiná-la a um dirigente estrangeiro, mas também existe a intervenção nos assuntos internos de outros países; a mais grave é o desconhecimento do Direito Internacional, manifestado no apoio às sanções unilaterais do governo americano, o que pode concretizar-se inclusive contra o próprio Brasil, como no caso das salvaguardas abusivas (e ilegais) contra exportações brasileiras de aço e alumínio. 

Todos esses pecados se revelaram abertamente na recusa do multilateralismo, na negligência de normas consagradas do Direito Internacional, no abandono da formulação autônoma da política externa brasileira, na relativização da noção de interesse nacional, na substituição da diplomacia profissional pelos preconceitos de amadores ignorantes, assim como o desprezo pelos princípios constitucionais das relações internacionais. Dois exemplos, entre outros, da subordinação aos EUA: a aceitação do candidato americano à presidência do BID e a adesão ao veto de Trump à participação da empresa chinesa Huawei no leilão do 5G.

  

[Brasília, 3733, 12 de agosto de 2020]

Esse trabalho, na verdade, teve de limitar-se à imposição dos 2.000 caracteres com espaço, mas a intenção seria publicar um trabalho mais amplo, como reproduzido abaixo: 

As eleições americanas e a política externa bolsonarista

  

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Diplomata de carreira, professor no Uniceub (Brasília)

  

O primeiro elemento do título é, como dizem os americanos, self-explaining: desde George Washington, que exerceu dois mandatos sucessivos numa espécie de concessão inaugural a um dos “pais fundadores” de um regime presidencialista até então inédito na história dos sistemas constitucionais modernos, os Estados Unidos têm conduzido eleições regulares a cada quatro anos para escolher, sob o formato de colégio eleitoral, os seus dirigentes executivos. A limitação a dois mandatos foi introduzida em tempos excepcionais, depois que Franklin Roosevelt venceu quatro escrutínios, em meio à crise da Grande Depressão e à Segunda Guerra Mundial. É possível que Donald Trump não consiga renovar o seu, em virtude de erros sucessivos na condução do país, não apenas por causa da pandemia.

O segundo elemento requer uma explicação, justamente porque não se refere à política externa brasileira e sim bolsonarista. Isso se deve a que, nunca antes na história do Brasil, estivemos confrontados a uma diplomacia tão distante dos padrões habituais a que estamos acostumados no Itamaraty e nas relações exteriores do país. Alguns exemplos desse caráter inédito das posturas externas do governo Bolsonaro, aliás desde antes, são ilustrativos dessa caracterização. Logo após as eleições de outubro de 2018, o filho 03, tido como chanceler real do Brasil e candidato, por um tempo, à embaixada em Washington, passeou por Washington, em contato com familiares do presidente Trump, exibindo, já naquele momento, um boné da campanha “Trump 2020”. Ele também se manifestou publicamente, no mesmo sentido da xenófoba campanha do presidente americano contra os imigrantes, sobre a presença de brasileiros ilegais nos Estados Unidos, declarando-os “uma vergonha nacional”.

Logo depois, veio ao Brasil, John Bolton, então conselheiro de Segurança Nacional dos EUA, velho falcão da Guerra Fria, um dos entusiastas da invasão do Iraque por George Bush Jr, em 2003, e antigo “inimigo” do Brasil, no período anterior à aceitação do Tratado de Não Proliferação Nuclear por FHC, em 1996. Ele reuniu-se com o presidente eleito no Rio de Janeiro, já acompanhado pelo chanceler escolhido – um diplomata jovem, sem expressão reconhecida no Itamaraty –, e ali iniciou-se um grande “namoro”, depois confirmado pelo próprio presidente com um sonoro “I love you Trump”, por ocasião da abertura dos debates na Assembleia Geral da ONU, em setembro de 2019. No próprio dia da posse, na presença do Secretário de Estado Mike Pompeo, o chanceler acidental alardeou, com a aparente concordância do presidente, a instalação de uma “base americana” no Brasil, apenas para ser imediatamente desmentido, e o projeto recusado, pelos assessores militares do governo, a começar pelo ministro da Defesa e pelo ministro do GSI.

O primeiro assunto de política externa a ocupar o governo Bolsonaro foi a crise da Venezuela, e mais uma vez se revelou o alinhamento automático da diplomacia brasileira com um projeto eleitoreiro do presidente Trump no sentido de forçar a queda do regime chavista; mais uma vez, os militares, a começar pelo vice-presidente Mourão, tiveram de se mobilizar para impedir que o território brasileiro fosse usado como plataforma de uma suposta ofensiva “humanitária” de ajuda ao povo venezuelano, capaz de deslanchar uma guerra civil e provocar desestabilização nos países fronteiriços, entre eles a Colômbia. O vice-presidente Mourão teve de pessoalmente liderar uma delegação brasileira a uma reunião do Grupo de Lima para barrar a aventura militar dos americanos, apoiada pelo chanceler, e confirmar a via diplomática para alguma solução, se possível, ao problema venezuelano.

Logo no primeiro semestre de 2019, o presidente pretendia fazer designar o seu filho Eduardo, o chamado chanceler efetivo, como embaixador do Brasil em Washington, o que recebeu rejeição unânime da classe política e da opinião pública de modo geral, uma vez que o deputado não tinha a menor condição de desempenhar tal cargo. Confirmando a política de submissão da diplomacia bolsonarista aos interesses do governo americano, e ao desejos do presidente Trump em especial, o Itamaraty – mais provavelmente os verdadeiros decisores pela política externa, todos eles estranhos ao Itamaraty – emitiu notas de apoio e de adesão a várias iniciativas ou ações do governo Trump sobre temas de relevância na agenda internacional: o assassinato do general iraniano Suleimani em Bagdá; a votação na ONU em resolução sobre sanções unilaterais (quando o Brasil ficou totalmente isolado, com Israel e os próprios EUA); um desequilibrado “plano de paz” para a Palestina (que não recebeu sequer o apoio de nenhum aliado da OTAN) e diferentes propostas levantadas no Conselho de Direitos Humanos sobre temas de igualdade de gêneros e direitos das mulheres e de minorias. O mais grave defeito dessas notas de apoio é o fato de elas terem ignorado completamente o Direito Internacional e até resoluções do Conselho de Segurança sobre seus temas, ou até contrariado os interesses nacionais (como a aceitação de sanções unilaterais americanas, o que pode até voltar-se contra o próprio Brasil). 

Dois outros temas, da maior relevância para o Brasil, traduzem a compulsão do chanceler, e de seus patronos de fora do Itamaraty, de sempre alinhar a política brasileira aos interesses americanos, aliás desde antes mesmo de ser inaugurado o governo: presidente, familiares, chanceler, todos anunciaram a mais estreita aliança não apenas com os EUA, mas sobretudo com o governo Trump. Foi por causa dessa submissão total, para todos os efeitos práticos, mas também por crenças equivocadas de todos eles, que teve início antes mesmo da campanha eleitoral, esse largo exercício diplomático de servidão voluntária, começando pela animosidade demonstrada em relação à China, nosso maior parceiro comercial e o país que, sozinho, fornece praticamente um terço do saldo comercial externo. Essa hostilização, por razões puramente ideológicas, causou reações não só na China, como principalmente entre a comunidade dos homens de negócios que transacionam com a China, sobretudo no agronegócio (grãos e carnes), mas também em mineração (minérios e petróleo). Foi também pelas mesmas razões que os mesmos decisores equivocados começaram a sinalizar um veto brasileiro à participação da empresa eletrônica chinesa Huawei – já presente no Brasil há mais de uma década e grande fornecedora de equipamentos de comunicações e eletrônicos em geral – no leilão de seleção das empresas habilitadas a operar o sistema 5G no Brasil. Outras sinalizações irracionais foram manifestadas a propósito da pandemia do Covid-19, chegando o chanceler ideológico a falar de um “comunavirus” a esse respeito.

Os mais recentes escolhos nas frustrações acumuladas nas relações bilaterais com os EUA – que nunca corresponderam às demonstrações de submissão unilateral do Brasil – foram a renovada comunicação de que visitantes provenientes do Brasil não seriam admitidos nos EUA, em virtude da extensão da pandemia entre nós, assim como o anúncio, por Trump, de que poderia impor sanções a produtos brasileiros se o Brasil não reduzir as tarifas sobre o etanol americano, o que configura uma espécie de chantagem contra nossa soberania em matéria de política comercial. Registre-se que, contrariamente às normas do Gatt-OMC, a política comercial de Trump já impôs salvaguardas unilaterais e ilegais às exportações de aço e alumínio, de diversos países, não só ao Brasil, mas também a sócios dos EUA no Nafta, ou seja, Canadá e México. No plano mais geral, o governo Trump está desmantelando as instituições que os próprios EUA criaram desde Bretton Woods, em especial a OMC e seu sistema de solução de controvérsias. Nesse capítulo, a diplomacia submissa do Brasil também seguiu os EUA ao denegar o status de economia de mercado à China, um gesto considerado inamistoso pelo gigante asiático, e que talvez sirva de motivo para retaliações ponderadas. 

Não obstante todas essas demonstrações de desapreço ao Brasil – assim como a outros supostos aliados dos EUA, na OTAN ou em outras instâncias –, a diplomacia bolsonarista continua a praticar um alinhamento praticamente automático às posturas do governo Trump, uma opção absolutamente inédita nos anais da política externa brasileira, mesmo considerando os tempos da luta comum contra o comunismo, durante a Guerra Fria, quando o suposto alinhamento nunca foi automático e quando ocorreu consistia numa espécie de barganha negociada em troca de alguma vantagem ou benefício ao Brasil, geralmente de natureza econômica. A suprema ironia dos bolsonaristas é que eles recusam a caracterização de ideológica para essa diplomacia feita de ruptura de padrões históricos da política externa brasileira, tradicionalmente caracterizada pela busca de autonomia e comprometida, antes de qualquer outra coisa, com o interesse nacional. 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 3732, 11 de agosto de 2020

Why Nations Fail Or Succeed When Facing A Crisis - Jared Diamond (Noema magazine)

Jared Diamond: 
Why Nations Fail Or Succeed When Facing A Crisis

An interview with Jared Diamond about his latest book: 
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

John Karborn for Noema Magazine, July, 28, 2020

The following interview, between Noema Magazine Editor-in-Chief Nathan Gardels and author (previously of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”) Jared Diamond, has been edited for clarity and length.

Nathan Gardels: In assessing how nations manage crises and successfully negotiate turning points — or don’t — you pass their experience through several filters. Some key filters you use are realistic self-appraisal, selective adoption of best practices from elsewhere, a capacity to learn from others while still preserving core values and flexibility that allows for social and political compromise.

How do you see the way various nations addressed the coronavirus pandemic through this lens?

Jared Diamond: Nations and entities doing well by the criteria of those outcome predictors include Singapore and Taiwan. Doing poorly initially were the government of Italy and now, worst of all, the federal government of the U.S.

Gardels: What is the main lesson from how nations dealt with this pandemic?

Diamond: The main new lesson concerns an extension of national identity, which is important for nations facing a crisis. The current crisis may help us develop a global identity by making it obvious that we are all in the same boat, all people everywhere in the world. We are realizing now that COVID-19 is everyone’s problem — as is climate change, resource depletion, inequality and the risk of nuclear weapons.

Gardels: In the historical frame, what are some examples of nations successfully navigating challenging experiences?

Diamond: Germany is high on my list. Over decades, it came to grips with the legacy of World War II, while at the same time laying the groundwork for reunification when the Cold War ended. Germany acknowledged the Holocaust in such a convincing and thorough way, including in its education system, that it left no doubts about all those “never again” pledges. I remember Willy Brandt kneeling in humility and penance in 1970 at a monument to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. By contrast, though Japan has been successful on other counts, it has really failed in this respect.

Though no West German chancellor alone was able to bring about reunification, Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” in the 1970s prepared the way. If he had not opened to the East, Russia and even France and Britain would not have tolerated reunification later on. This is another element in how nations resolve crises: the qualities of leadership at historic junctures.

So Germany has exhibited both the qualities of realistic historical self-appraisal and national identity, while adjusting to evolving geopolitical circumstances.

“The current crisis may help us develop a global identity by making it obvious that we are all in the same boat, all people everywhere in the world.”

Gardels: In Japan, there has been a kind of seesaw experience. First, you had the Meiji reforms of the 19th century, which had the quality of a realistic self-appraisal and selective adoption: Its leaders understood they had fallen behind the West in industrial modernization but gradually renovated their system by borrowing from the West, cognizant of the restraints of local resistance from the traditional political order. They didn’t go too far, too fast.

Then, within decades, you had the next stage, an overbearance and an overconfidence on the part of the military elite after the Russo-Japanese War, in which an Asian nation bested a European power for the first time. That led in turn to overreach, which resulted in the disaster of World War II, total defeat and the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But then, after the war and the American occupation, you had yet another phase of adaptation based on realistic self-appraisal, making Japan a prosperous member of the advanced nations. Is there a pattern there?

Diamond: Well, yes, in the sense of recurrent crises. The fact that Japan succeeded so well in the Meiji era didn’t guarantee that it would succeed or fail later on in the period between the wars. And the jury is still out on how Japan will fare in the years ahead.

There are some major areas where Japan has been dragging its feet. The Japanese did the opposite of Germany by not achieving a meaningful reconciliation with Korea and China. The remaining hostility seems dangerous. As a result, Japan remains relatively underequipped compared to heavily armed neighbor countries that have good reason to loathe it.

Japan has also never really come to terms with the role of women in modern society. Then there is Japan’s policy of immigration — or, rather, of non-immigration. It’s perfectly OK for any country to decide whether it wants to take in immigrants. There are pros and cons. But in a shrinking nation, who will provide childcare so women can reenter the workforce, or eldercare in a society where people live longer on average than almost anywhere else? Then, of course, there are the large fiscal issues of how to pay for pensions when the active workforce is shrinking.

I’d say Japan is at yet another turning point.

Gardels: At one point in your book, you raise the generational factor in change, noting that a succeeding generation may either complete or reverse the changes of the previous generation.

Diamond: Yes and no. The pattern is not always consistent. Let’s look at the case of Germany, where there were four intervals of generational change.

Otto von Bismarck, the conservative Prussian statesman who came to be known as the “Iron Chancellor,” learned from the Revolution of 1848 that Germany, then a confederation of small states, was not going to become unified as one nation unless it became a military power. He made this clear in his “iron and blood” speech in 1862. Germany’s consequent rise as an economic and military power in Europe led to wars with the other powers, France and Austria, and finally to World War I.

It took a generation for Hitler and the Nazis to attempt to reverse the defeat of World War I. Then after the end of World War II, it took the post-war generation of students born after 1945 who revolted against their parents — like Joschka Fischer, a radical student leader in the 1960s who became foreign minister in 1998. In this way, Germany is a clear example of the effect of a generational change.

Yet, I don’t think one can generalize about some cause and effect of successful and then failing generations. In the case of Japan, you’re correct that after their victory in the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese learned the wrong lesson. But there is the opposite case: After being defeated in Vietnam, the U.S. nonetheless didn’t learn the lessons and went on to invade Iraq and suffer many of the same consequences.

Gardels: The Japanese military leaders misread not only how America would react to being attacked at Pearl Harbor but also woefully underestimated the industrial might it could mobilize behind the war effort. In your book, you cite the story of a Japanese businessman who visited the U.S. in the prewar years and was astonished to learn it had 50 times the capacity for steel production than Japan. He knew then and there that Japan would never prevail.

The essence of realistic self-appraisal is to know others and how, as a nation, you fit into the balance of power that exists. How did Japan’s leaders miss this before the war?

Diamond: Realistic self-appraisal was lacking for a particular reason. In the Meiji era, the reformist leaders had all been to the West after the opening of 1853. One of the first things that Meiji Japan did was to send out an observer team that spent a year and a half going around the West, studying best practices. They made a conscious effort to learn from the West. In the 1930s, many of those in the Japanese military who took control had not spent much time in the West. Isoroku Yamamoto, who had been the naval attaché in Washington and knew better than to risk challenging America’s industrial capacity, which dwarfed Japan’s, warned against the consequences of the Pearl Harbor attack — to no avail. Nonetheless, he designed and carried out the attack as instructed.

What matters is whether those in charge in the governing class share a worldview based on knowing the world, not just the part of it that fits with their inclination.

“What matters is whether those in charge in the governing class share a worldview based on knowing the world, not just the part of it that fits with their inclination.”

Gardels: Clearly, the Japanese militarists, with little understanding of the U.S. mindset or the depth of its industrial bench, misread the challenge they were inviting.

A parallel strikes me today. While Deng Xiaoping followed the notion of “bide your time and hide your strength” as China developed, Xi Jinping has discarded any such restraint and boasted that the Middle Kingdom has returned to the center of the world stage and would even overtake the U.S. in technological supremacy. This proved too much for the Washington foreign policy establishment, no less Donald Trump and his team, who fought back with a trade war.

Xi’s problem is that he seems to have moved too soon — China’s technology advances still depend heavily on the West, for example with semiconductor chips. This seems a costly misapprehension not unlike the Japanese militarists vis-à-vis American steel production capacity before World War II.

Diamond: What was true of the Japanese militarists and may be true of Xi as you suggest, also applies to the U.S. today — people’s mindset, the narrative they choose to believe, often overrides their perception of reality and the facts in front of their faces. This is likely true of the virtual paranoia many Americans feel today about China and the prospect of an “Asian century” in which it dominates.

China’s disadvantage, however, is that, having never been a democracy, it is much harder to challenge any misperception of reality. Despite its faults, in a democracy, you can debate big ideas and alternative scenarios. There is no real experience of the body politic as a whole debating big ideas in China. What springs from the top rules.

In the millennia since state government was first established in the Fertile Crescent, the record certainly shows that dictatorships can do things faster. Yet no one has yet figured out how to ensure that the faster decisions of dictatorships are good ones. China seems a good illustration of the problem.

Democracies also make bad decisions, of course. But they can more easily correct them — or at least we have been able to do so in the past because of the checks and balances of our governing institutions.

Gardels: Yet, as you point out in the book, democracies can and have unraveled virtually overnight. The most chilling example is Chile, Latin America’s longest-standing democracy, where in only the matter of a few years, polarization led to social breakdown and a brutal military coup that lasted 17 years.

Diamond: That’s true. I saw it all unravel quickly between the time I lived in Chile in 1967 and the coup in 1973. But polarization had been building up for quite a long time before those years. In 1967, tension was already in the air. Eduardo Frei, the president at the time who was respected then and respected also in retrospect, was too conservative for the radicals and too radical for the conservatives. Salvador Allende came to power by a tiny margin — 36 percent of the vote versus 35 percent of his closest challenger, followed by 28 percent of the next candidate. Though he had only a bit more than a third of the vote, he made the big mistake trying to lead Chile in a direction most Chileans rejected.

Allende was perhaps deluded in what he could accomplish by his popularity as minister for public health and his early success when he was elected president in 1970, getting the Chilean parliament to vote for major measures such as nationalization of the copper mines within a few months of his coming into office. So that’s part of it. The other part is that Allende’s supporters themselves were polarized — shadows of the U.S. today, not just Republicans versus Democrats but splits within the parties. He felt he had to satisfy the radical wing of his party, even though he should have known better that this was not going to fly with the Chilean military.

Gardels: But the lesson for the U.S. these days, and for other divided democracies, is that peril beckons when the spirit of compromise evaporates. Compromise and the ability to arrive at a governing consensus fails when the civic discourse is degraded and there’s no trust in impartial institutions. The whole thing can collapse.

Diamond: I see the possibility of that in the U.S. today. It is a process of erosion that at some moment reaches a point of no return. If democracy ends in the U.S., it’s not going to be the way it ended in Chile with a military coup. It will end through a slow erosion, a continuation of trends we see now: restrictions on the ability of people to register to vote, decreasing voter turnout, executive interference with the judiciary, struggles between the executive and the Congress. I don’t take it for granted that democracy in the U.S. is going to overcome all obstacles. I see a serious risk.

Yes, things have accelerated since Trump’s election, but the decline of compromise in the U.S. has been happening for some time, dating back to when Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the House. He explicitly embarked on a policy of “no, no, no” in his relationship with the Clinton administration. Gingrich, of course, was only one person. He was leveraging and amplifying what had become sharp divisions in the political culture.

So we must ask, why the breakdown? My best analysis all these years later is that we had then already entered a period of sharp decline in face-to-face communication in the U.S. — more than in any other country and before any other country. This was a result both of the culture of mobility — people moving far from their original communities, often to the other end of this large country — as well as growing inequality resulting from de-industrialization in the Rust Belt and the rise of the global economy that had the impact of segregating communities along class and educational lines.

John Karborn for Noema Magazine

Gardels: I would add that, today, you have two elements reinforcing each other: the demise of socializing institutions and the rise of polarizing ones. For example, we don’t have a military draft anymore, or nearly universal attendance in public schools, where once all ethnicities, races and classes were thrown together in face-to-face interaction. At the same time, the mainstream media plays to cultural niches in highly competitive markets while the big social media conglomerates promote virality among the like-minded as their business model.

Diamond: I agree. There are things that were worse in Chile, and there are things today worse in the U.S. In Chile, the army had a history of intervening in politics from time to time. So there was a precedent, though not at the scale and scope of what Pinochet did in 1973. The army in the U.S. has never intervened, so that’s something in our favor.

But in the U.S., we have a long-standing low level of social capital and trust compared to other countries, partly because of our geographic distances. Sometimes when Americans move, they move 3,000 miles away, from coast to coast. When Germans move, they move a short distance, like from Hannover to Berlin. You can still take the train for the day and see your friends in Hannover.

An example: At my 65th high school reunion this year, there’s not a single member of my class of 23 who lives within 600 miles of me. Most are scattered all over the country. That’s pretty typical of the U.S. We move often, and we move long distances, whereas Germans and Italians, for example, move less often, and their countries are small so they go shorter distances.

I stress this because spatial mobility in America is so common, we take it for granted and don’t grasp its social consequences. Now they are coming to bear.

Gardels: In the last presidential election, analyses show that one indicator of sympathy with Trump’s populist agenda was how far voters moved from their birthplaces. In the upper Midwestern states, there was a clear correlation between Trump voters and those who hewed to home. The British journalist David Goodhart discovered the same correlation in the Brexit vote, between the “anywheres” — mobile elites — and the “somewheres,” who remained local. The mobile folks voted to remain in the European Union, while the locals voted to exit.

Diamond: This is not at all surprising. And it is worsening since the anywheres and the somewheres have little crossover in their daily life experience.

Gardels: To return to the Chilean case, do you see an analogy between Allende pressing ahead with a more radical agenda that much of society didn’t support and Trump’s radical policies, for example on the environment, immigration and international relations? After all, he lost the popular vote and won by only a few tens of thousands of votes in the key upper Midwestern states.

Diamond: I’d say Allende was more unrealistic than Trump, especially as a small country taking on the U.S., large multinational companies and stoking the fears of the conservative military establishment. Trump has a better chance of getting his policies across than Allende.

Gardels: Let’s move on to the planetary crisis of climate change. You note in your book that the ability to properly assess realities and take effective action is most successful for those individuals and nations who have a precedent for coping with a crisis. “We were challenged in the past and surmounted the challenge, so we can again,” goes the logic.

There have been empires, superpowers and multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations and the G20, that faced international challenges. But on the planetary scale, there is no precedent for all nations and societies facing a common crisis and overcoming it. What resources or experience can we draw on in this present challenge to civilization as a whole?

Diamond: When I discussed this issue in the first version of the book, I was pessimistic because I said that there is no precedent; the world has never faced and dealt with a challenge of the scope of climate change. However, I revised my thinking by the time I finished the book.

In fact, the world has a track record over the last 40 years of having solved really difficult problems in diffuse and unflashy ways — for example, eradicating smallpox. To eradicate the threat of smallpox contagion, you had to eradicate it in every country in the far reaches of the world, including Somalia, where the last cases appeared.

Then there was the agreement about defining economic zones in shallow waters. So many countries in the world have overlapping zones to which they claim sovereignty. Nevertheless, though it took quite a while, an agreement was reached by international treaty.

All nations also joined an agreement to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons from the atmosphere to reduce damage to the ozone layer. Mining the seabed is another case where international agreement was reached, even by landlocked countries.

Still, in the end, what has enabled nations to face and surmount a crisis is a sense of common identity that can mobilize allegiance to a course of action. Today, especially given the revival of nationalism, there is no such solid global identity. That is the chief challenge in battling climate change.

“What has enabled nations to face and surmount a crisis is a sense of common identity that can mobilize allegiance to a course of action.”

Gardels: What about the fundamental cultural attributes that contribute to a failed or successful nation? I’m thinking of how the Confucian-influenced societies of East Asia — Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China — all rose from underdevelopment to prosperity over recent decades. Yet many nations in Africa or Latin America seem to have stalled.

Diamond: This is a valid point, though mainstream anthropology disdains any talk of “sick societies,” only those with different cultural roots and practices.

Confucian cultures have a low level of individualism and a higher level of community compared to others. There’s an interesting argument that attributes this to the development of rice agriculture, a form of economic activity that requires cooperation and collective effort, in contrast to wheat agriculture, which needs only individual farmers.

As a geographer, I have other thoughts on North America and Latin America. In my undergraduate geography course, I have one session on North America and then a session on South America in which I discuss why North America is more successful economically. There are several factors involved.

One factor is that temperate zones, in general, are economically more successful than the tropics because of the higher productivity and soil fertility of temperate agriculture, which in turn relates to the public health burden. All of North America is a temperate zone. South America only has a small temperate zone. It’s in the far south in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Those are the richest countries in Latin America. The richest part of Brazil also lies in the temperate zone.

The second factor is a historical one related to the sailing distance from Europe to the Americas. The sailing distance was shorter from Britain to North America. It was longer from Spain to Argentina and still longer from Spain around the horn to Peru. A shorter sailing distance meant that the ideas and technology of the Industrial Revolution spread much more quickly from Britain, where it originated, to North America, than from Spain to Latin America.

Still another factor is the legacy of Spanish government versus the legacy of British government. One could argue why democracy developed in Britain rather than in Spain, but the fact is that democracy did develop in Britain rather than Spain, and so North America inherited British government and British democracy while Latin America inherited Spanish centralist government and absolutist politics.

Then still another factor is that independence for the U.S. was a more radical break than it was in South America. After the Revolutionary War, all the royalists in the U.S. either fled or were killed. So there was a relatively clean break from Britain. Canada did not have that break, and the break in Latin America was much less abrupt and came later.

Gardels: Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel laureate poet, always added the cultural element when he spoke about “the border of time” between north and South. The U.S. was a child of the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, he often said, while Latin America was the child of the Counter-Reformation. This imprinted a distinctive mentality on each culture, one with a mind open to the future and less enamored by authority, the other closed and traditional.

Ricardo Bergamini e Claudio Janowitzer sintetizam o Brasil atual: derrocada mental

Enquanto a elite brasileira desprezar números, gráficos e tabelas não haverá salvação para o Brasil, conforme pensamento abaixo: 

Andrei Pleshu, filósofo romeno.

“No Brasil, ninguém tem a obrigação de ser normal. Se fosse só isso, estaria bem. Esse é o Brasil tolerante, bonachão, que prefere o desleixo moral ao risco da severidade injusta. Mas há no fundo dele um Brasil temível, o Brasil do caos obrigatório, que rejeita a ordem, a clareza e a verdade como se fossem pecados capitais. O Brasil onde ser normal não é só desnecessário: é proibido. O Brasil onde você pode dizer que dois mais dois são cinco, sete ou nove e meio, mas, se diz que são quatro, sente nos olhares em torno o fogo do rancor ou o gelo do desprezo. Sobretudo se insiste que pode provar”. 

O nível da escuridão e das trevas no Brasil atual é provado, de forma cabal e irrefutável, quando os bolsonaristas me agridem, ofendem, desprezam e humilham, apenas por continuar a fazer um trabalho que faço desde 1998, e que até 31/12/2018 eram utilizados por esses falsos liberais em seus artigos, debates e palestras e que, em sua grande maioria pediram sua exclusão da minha lista de leitores, por não suportarem as verdades catastróficas e apocalípticas dos números macroeconômicos gerados pelo governo do líder sindical petista (CUT da Segurança). Haja vista a fuga de capitais estrangeiros iniciada em janeiro de 2019, bem como dos oito executivos da equipe de Paulo Guedes.

Momento cultural.

Todos os grandes pensadores da história da humanidade relacionaram a existência de Deus aos números e cálculos. Vide abaixo:

Reflexão

“Somente os sábios enxergam o óbvio” (Nelson Rodrigues).

De: Claudio Janowitzer=
Enviada em: sexta-feira, 14 de agosto de 2020 20:24
Para: 'Ricardo Bergamini'
Assunto: RES: Sou apenas o mensageiro das informações oficiais do governo de plantão. - 02

Caro Ricardo Bergamini,

Embora não o conheça pessoalmente, sou leitor desde o início de 2016 de seus objetivos boletins de análises macroeconômicas, que demonstram de forma solidamente bem fundamentada que os atos do ocupante da presidência, filhos, aliados (agora engrossados pelo tal “centrão”) evidenciam o enorme despreparo para a tarefa de PASSAR O BRASIL A LIMPO. Tanto que forçaram o pedido de demissão do jurista Sergio Moro – respeitadíssimo pela maioria dos brasileiros por seu trabalho anti corrupção à frente da “Operação Lava Jato”.

Pelo contrário, o tempo dedicado pelo atual executivo – na ânsia de  abafar as evidências de criminosas práticas pregressas e perpetuadas, como “rachadinhas” e “funcionários fantasmas” (levantadas pelo Ministério Público, Policia Federal, TCU, STF) - é um claro sinal de que os atuais bolsominions são meras continuações do mesmo tipo de fanatismo que caracterizou os lulistas.  

Nota: Nunca votei no Lula e seus indicados mas sim nos candidatos do PSDB. A decepção com figuras como Aécio Neves fez com que eu me filiasse ao Partido Novo a partir de março de 2018 (o único que não depende do tal “Fundo partidário” e sim das mensalidades dos seus afiliados). Participei da campanha do partido nas eleições de outubro de 2018. Acompanho o trabalho de dois deputados estaduais aqui no Rio de Janeiro e conheci dois deputados federais em recentes encontro partidário. Tenho a melhor impressão da seriedade dessas pessoas e do partido.

A mobilização pelo atual governo da máquina pública - posta à disposição de figuras ligadas à milícia como o Sr. Fabricio Queiroz – é um doloroso sinal de falta de objetividade refletida em atitudes negacionistas como a de determinar que o Exército brasileiro fabrique quantidades monumentais de cloroquina – o qual é reconhecido por entidades especializadas no mundo científico como um medicamento não indicado no combate ao Corona-vírus.

Esse doentio negacionismo – o qual motivou o transtornado Sr. Jair Messias e afirmar convictamente  que  a pandemia não causaria mais que 800 mortes,  e que se tratava de uma “histeria” diante de uma “gripezinha” – resultou num desestimulo às medidas de “isolamento” ou “lockdown” adotado nas nações que souberam reconhecer a magnitude dessa praga.

A propósito, tenho utilizado o quadro abaixo nas correspondências que troco eventualmente com um grupo de cerca de 200 “undisclosed recipients”. Fazem parte dessa lista: parentes, amigos, colegas de colégio e faculdade e das nove empresas privadas onde trabalhei na diretoria financeira aqui no Rio de Janeiro - onde nasci há 83 anos:

Temos que nos livrar com enorme URGÊNCIA das duas PRAGAS:

- CORONA-VÍRUS  - Solução:  ISOLAMENTO.

- BOLSONA-VÍRUS - Solução:  IMPEACHMENT.

Tenho 2 filhos e três netos os quais - além da enorme parcela desassistida da população brasileira – são as causas que  me motivam a não esmorecer diante do desafio de reverter o quadro atual de monumental decrepitude social, política e principalmente moral. Por essa razão apoio integralmente o esforço de pessoas como você, cujos excelentes boletins contribuem para PASSAR O BRASIL A LIMPO. Não esmoreça!

Abraços

Claudio Janowitzer

Rio de Janeiro

Livrarias em Shanghai: vale a viagem... - Shanghai Daily

Book fair 'magic' casts spell on the new-look bookstores

 

Yao MinjiKe Jiayun

  Shanghai Daily, 19:38 UTC+8, 2020-08-14       

Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE

Booklovers enjoy the airy atmosphere at the Light Space Xinhua Bookstore in the Aegean Place shopping center in Minhang District.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic,” said Stephen King, the popular American author of horror, suspense and fantasy novels.

His observation might be an apt description of the ongoing Shanghai Book Fair, which is highlighting the magic of the written word in all aspects of life.

The fair, which ends on Tuesday, gives the floor to publishers and bookshop owners encouraging more people to read.

“The book fair has always responded to evolving reading habits, lifestyle and market trends,” said Xu Jiong, head of the Shanghai Press and Publication Bureau. “The promotion of reading should not be limited only to booklovers.”

Reading, of course, is undergoing bifurcation, branching into a competition between traditional books and e-books.

The onset of the digital age has forced many traditional bookshops to implement creative ways of attracting new readers while keeping their loyal customers.

They install cafes, sell crafts and adopt eye-catching decor. A book on floral design might come gift-wrapped in box with a flower bouquet. Coffee may be served in cups bearing quotes from a book, which can be ordered. Bookshops peddle books on livestreaming sites usually specializing in cosmetics.

All this new marketing flare is reflected at this year’s book fair.

“The coronavirus epidemic has pushed the fair to undergo an unprecedented transformation,” Xu said. “We need to break boundaries in order to upgrade the publishing industry.”

At the fair’s “sleeping library” section, books like Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence” and American poet Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” share space with pleasant aromatics, music and art to create the ideal environment for a bedtime read.

The two partners behind the “sleeping library” are Shanghai Salian Bookstore and Atour Hotel, which have worked together to build reading areas in Atour hotels and set up two-week flash bookstores in the city’s shopping malls.

At Atour hotels, patrons can take a book home from the reading area and return it to any of the chain’s sites.

“We also plan to work with tourism companies to create scenarios for reading in the scenic outdoors,” said Wu Hao, manager of Salian Bookstore. “We want to bring reading into forestlands and lakefronts.”

Books also are finding a place at the dinner table.

One of the fair’s new features is Writer’s Gourmet Menu. The seven-episode talk show series, with one segment aired each day of the fair, takes authors to seven restaurants specializing in different styles of cuisine. Over dinner, the authors discuss literature.

“It’s great to see,” said science-fiction writer Chen Qiufan, who was invited to discuss what aliens might eat while enjoying a gourmet meal at Jade Mansion in the IFC Mall in Pudong. “A book fair can ‘graft’ literature onto dining, merging literature and cuisine. This is a nice beginning.”

Bookstores around the city are serving as branches of the fair outside of the main venue at the Shanghai Exhibition Center. At the center, online reservations and restricted capacity have been imposed because of the coronavirus epidemic. Branch activities give more people the opportunity to participate.

“I’ve been going to the fair every year since it started,” said Wang Jianjun, 79, as he walked out of the bookstore in the Jing’an Kerry Center with his 12-year-old granddaughter. “But I was a bit slow to understand the online booking this year, and only day tickets for Tuesday were left when my granddaughter finally helped me. But I didn’t want to wait until Tuesday. It’s kind of a ceremonial thing for me to see the fair on its first day. So we decided to visit the branch venues in mall bookstores near home.”

Shopping malls have long been bookstore buddies. They were among the first to offer help when brick-and-mortar bookshops hit their lows in 2012, providing space for low or even no rent. In return, the malls have benefited from culturally minded customers attracted to the mall by its bookshops.

Over the years, the partnership between bookstores and malls has become more integrated.

Ti Gong

Tian Yimiao, a music writer and scholar, autographs her new book “I, Sea and Library” for fans at a book fair event hosted by Duoyun Bookstore. The bookstore on the 52nd floor of Shanghai Tower is the highest in the city.

One of the most successful collaborations is between Light Space Xinhua Bookstore in the Aegean Place shopping center in Minhang District.

It’s a marriage of books and architecture. The store interior was designed by renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando, best known for his poetic melding of light and space.

The exquisitely designed interior features a spiral stairway, arty bookshelves and cozy seating areas that transformed the more than 70-year-old shop into a cultural landmark.

“We host regular meetings at Aegean Place,” said Chen Yi, executive director of Light Space. “When we have themed book events, we hold them outside our bookshop or in other places in the shopping center, like the atrium. We also contribute our resources to help when Aegean holds cultural events.”

Chen cited a three-day event last year featuring illustrated books held in the mall’s gazebo every evening. It was so successful that the event was extended to several months. The event was suspended due to the epidemic, but Chen said she expects it to restart later in the year.

Her shop had annual foot traffic of nearly a million before the pandemic. She said customer numbers will gradually return as life in the city returns to normal.

“Aegean’s developer and our parent company wanted this shop to be more culturally inviting than shops usually found in shopping malls,” she said. “Commercial complexes used to be focused only on consumer demand, but now many of them are also addressing spiritual needs.”

People who visit Light Space often patronize restaurants in the mall. People who come to see the center’s grand music fountain often stop by the bookshop.

Light Space also works with other shops in the mall. It created a Marvel bookshelf when a Marvel movie was being screened in the cinema next door.

Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE

Duoyun Bookstore on the 52nd floor of Shanghai Tower

Duoyun Bookstore, on the 52nd floor of Shanghai Tower, the highest in the city, is another example of a cultural site that goes beyond just books.

The shop sponsors reading clubs specializing in books by local authors or with themes related to Shanghai.

“We have been a branch venue for the book fair for two years now,” said He Xiaomin, public relations manager at parent company Duoyun Books. “With our location, we can attract more people to join the fair’s events and provide a cultural experience for customers in this commercial complex.”

More bookstores are following suit.

A new outlet of China Publishing Bookstore opened on the first day of the book fair at a commercial complex in Fengxian District. Its design integrates elements of old waterfront towns with modern design concepts.

Japanese chain Tsutaya, which runs 1,400 bookstores in Japan, is expected to open in century-old Columbia Circle in Changning District by the end of this year.

The chain’s first shop in Shanghai is based on the concept of “lifestyle navigation” of its flagship store in Tokyo, fusing books, videos and music albums.

Source: SHINE   Editor: Xu Qing