Siria: um vespeiro geopolitico - Scott Stewart (Stratfor)

The Consequences of Intervening in Syria

Stratfor, January 31, 2013 | 1030 GMT

By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis

The French military's current campaign to dislodge jihadist militants from northern Mali and the recent high-profile attack against a natural gas facility in Algeria are both directly linked to the foreign intervention in Libya that overthrew the Gadhafi regime. There is also a strong connection between these events and foreign powers' decision not to intervene in Mali when the military conducted a coup in March 2012. The coup occurred as thousands of heavily armed Tuareg tribesmen were returning home to northern Mali after serving in Moammar Gadhafi's military, and the confluence of these events resulted in an implosion of the Malian military and a power vacuum in the north. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other jihadists were able to take advantage of this situation to seize power in the northern part of the African nation.

As all these events transpire in northern Africa, another type of foreign intervention is occurring in Syria. Instead of direct foreign military intervention, like that taken against the Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011, or the lack of intervention seen in Mali in March 2012, the West -- and its Middle Eastern partners -- have pursued a middle-ground approach in Syria. That is, these powers are providing logistical aid to the various Syrian rebel factions but are not intervening directly.
Just as there were repercussions for the decisions to conduct a direct intervention in Libya and not to intervene in Mali, there will be repercussions for the partial intervention approach in Syria. Those consequences are becoming more apparent as the crisis drags on.

Intervention in Syria

For more than a year now, countries such as the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and European states have been providing aid to the Syrian rebels. Much of this aid has been in the form of humanitarian assistance, providing things such as shelter, food and medical care for refugees. Other aid has helped provide the rebels with non-lethal military supplies such as radios and ballistic vests. But a review of the weapons spotted on the battlefield reveals that the rebels are also receiving an increasing number of lethal supplies.

Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.

For example, there have been numerous videos released showing Syrian rebels using weapons such as the M79 Osa rocket launcher, the RPG-22, the M-60 recoilless rifle and the RBG-6 multiple grenade launcher. The Syrian government has also released videos of these weapons after seizing them in arms caches. What is so interesting about these weapons is that they were not in the Syrian military's inventory prior to the crisis, and they all likely were purchased from Croatia. We have also seen many reports and photos of Syrian rebels carrying Austrian Steyr Aug rifles, and the Swiss government has complained that Swiss-made hand grenades sold to the United Arab Emirates are making their way to the Syrian rebels.
With the Syrian rebel groups using predominantly second-hand weapons from the region, weapons captured from the regime, or an assortment of odd ordnance they have manufactured themselves, the appearance and spread of these exogenous weapons in rebel arsenals over the past several months is at first glance evidence of external arms supply. The appearance of a single Steyr Aug or RBG-6 on the battlefield could be an interesting anomaly, but the variety and concentration of these weapons seen in Syria are well beyond the point where they could be considered coincidental.
This means that the current level of external intervention in Syria is similar to the level exercised against the Soviet Union and its communist proxies following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The external supporters are providing not only training, intelligence and assistance, but also weapons -- exogenous weapons that make the external provision of weapons obvious to the world. It is also interesting that in Syria, like Afghanistan, two of the major external supporters are Washington and Riyadh -- though in Syria they are joined by regional powers such as Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, rather than Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, the Saudis and the Americans allowed their partners in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to determine which of the myriad militant groups in Afghanistan received the bulk of the funds and weapons they were providing. This resulted in two things. First, the Pakistanis funded and armed groups that they thought they could best use as surrogates in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Second, they pragmatically tended to funnel cash and weapons to the groups that were the most successful on the battlefield -- groups such as those led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose effectiveness on the battlefield was tied directly to their zealous theology that made waging jihad against the infidels a religious duty and death during such a struggle the ultimate accomplishment.
A similar process has been taking place for nearly two years in Syria. The opposition groups that have been the most effective on the battlefield have tended to be the jihadist-oriented groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra. Not surprisingly, one reason for their effectiveness was the skills and tactics they learned fighting the coalition forces in Iraq. Yet despite this, the Saudis -- along with the Qataris and the Emiratis -- have been arming and funding the jihadist groups in large part because of their success on the battlefield. As my colleague Kamran Bokhari noted in February 2012, the situation in Syria was providing an opportunity for jihadists, even without external support. In the fractured landscape of the Syrian opposition, the unity of purpose and battlefield effectiveness of the jihadists was in itself enough to ensure that these groups attracted a large number of new recruits.
But that is not the only factor conducive to the radicalization of Syrian rebels. First, war -- and particularly a brutal, drawn-out war -- tends to make extremists out of the fighters involved in it. Think Stalingrad, the Cold War struggles in Central America or the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans following the dissolution of Yugoslavia; this degree of struggle and suffering tends to make even non-ideological people ideological. In Syria, we have seen many secular Muslims become stringent jihadists. Second, the lack of hope for an intervention by the West removed any impetus for maintaining a secular narrative. Many fighters who had pinned their hopes on NATO were greatly disappointed and angered that their suffering was ignored. It is not unusual for Syrian fighters to say something akin to, "What has the West done for us? We now have only God."
When these ideological factors were combined with the infusion of money and arms that has been channeled to jihadist groups in Syria over the past year, the growth of Syrian jihadist groups accelerated dramatically. Not only are they a factor on the battlefield today, but they also will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

The Saudi Gambit

Despite the jihadist blowback the Saudis experienced after the end of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- and the current object lesson of the jihadists Syria sent to fight U.S. forces in Iraq now leading groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra -- the Saudi government has apparently calculated that its use of jihadist proxies in Syria is worth the inherent risk.
There are some immediate benefits for Riyadh. First, the Saudis hope to be able to break the arc of Shiite influence that reaches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Having lost the Sunni counterweight to Iranian power in the region with the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the installation of a Shiite-led government friendly to Iran, the Saudis view the possibility of installing a friendly Sunni regime in Syria as a dramatic improvement to their national security.
Supporting the jihad in Syria as a weapon against Iranian influence also gives the Saudis a chance to burnish their Islamic credentials internally in an effort to help stave off criticism that they are too secular and Westernized. It allows the Saudi regime the opportunity to show that it is helping Muslims under assault by the vicious Syrian regime.
Supporting jihadists in Syria also gives the Saudis an opportunity to ship their own radicals to Syria, where they can fight and possibly die. With a large number of unemployed, underemployed and radicalized young men, the jihad in Syria provides a pressure valve similar to the past struggles in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. The Saudis are not only trying to winnow down their own troubled youth; we have received reports from a credible source that the Saudis are also facilitating the travel of Yemeni men to training camps in Turkey, where they are trained and equipped before being sent to Syria to fight. The reports also indicate that the young men are traveling for free and receiving a stipend for their service. These young radicals from Saudi Arabia and Yemen will even further strengthen the jihadist groups in Syria by providing them with fresh troops.
The Saudis are gaining temporary domestic benefits from supporting jihad in Syria, but the conflict will not last forever, nor will it result in the deaths of all the young men who go there to fight. This means that someday the men who survive will come back home, and through the process we refer to as "tactical Darwinism" the inept fighters will have been weeded out, leaving a core of competent militants that the Saudis will have to deal with.
But the problems posed by jihadist proxies in Syria will have effects beyond the House of Saud. The Syrian jihadists will pose a threat to the stability of Syria in much the same way the Afghan groups did in the civil war they launched for control of Afghanistan after the fall of the Najibullah regime. Indeed, the violence in Afghanistan got worse after Najibullah's fall in 1992, and the suffering endured by Afghan civilians in particular was egregious.
Now we are seeing that the jihadist militants in Libya pose a threat not only to the Libyan regime -- there are serious problems in eastern Libya -- but also to foreign interests in the country, as seen in the attack on the British ambassador and the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Moreover, the events in Mali and Algeria in recent months show that Libya-based militants and the weapons they possess also pose a regional threat. Similar long-lasting and wide-ranging repercussions can be expected to flow from the intervention in Syria.

Read more: The Consequences of Intervening in Syria | Stratfor

EUA: uma grande provincia petrolifera? - Der Spiegel

Full Throttle Ahead: US Tips Global Power Scales with Fracking

By SPIEGEL Staff - February 1, 2013

DPA

The United States is sitting on massive natural gas and oil reserves that have the potential to shift the geopolitical balance in its favor. Worries are increasing in Russia and the Arab states of waning influence and falling market prices.

Williston, North Dakota, is a bleak little city in the vast American prairie. It's dusty in the summer and frigid in the winter. Moose hunting is one of the few sources of entertainment. But despite its drawbacks, Williston has seen its population more than double within a short period of time.

ANZEIGE

The city is so overcrowded that new arrivals often have no place to stay but in their motor homes, which, at monthly parking fees of $1,200 (€880), isn't exactly inexpensive. And more people continue to arrive in this nondescript little town. The reason for the influx is simple: Geologists have discovered a layer of shale saturated with natural gas and oil deep beneath the city. The Bakken formation, spanning thousands of square kilometers, has become synonymous with an American economic miracle that the country hasn't experienced since the oil rush almost 100 years ago.
North Dakota now has virtual full employment, and the state budget showed an estimated surplus of $1.6 billion in 2012. Truck drivers in the state make $100,000 a year, while the strippers being brought in from Las Vegas rake in more than $1,000 a night. President Barack Obama calls the discovery of Bakken and similar shale gas formations in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Utah a "stroke of luck," saying: "We have a hundred years' worth of energy right beneath our feet."
A Vital Nerve
The future of the American energy supply was looking grim until recently. With its own resources waning, the United States was dependent on Arab oil sheiks and erratic dictators. Rising energy costs were hitting a vital nerve in the country's industrial sector.
But the situation has fundamentally changed since American drilling experts began using a method called "fracking," with which oil and gas molecules can be extracted from dense shale rock formations. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the United States will replace Russia as the world's largest producer of natural gas in only two years. The Americans could also become the world's top petroleum producers by 2017.

Video Special

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  The Big Rush: Energy companies have their eyes set on a new target: the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. They are using the controversial fracking method to extract the area's oil and gas -- but dividing local residents as well.

Low natural gas prices -- the price of natural gas in the United States is only a quarter of what it was in 2008 -- could fuel a comeback of American industry. "Low-cost natural gas is the elixir, the sweetness, the juice, the Viagra," an American industry representative told the business magazine Fortune. "What it's doing is changing the US back into the industrial power of the day." The government estimates that the boom could generate 600,000 new jobs, and some experts even believe that up to 3 million new jobs could be created in the coming years. "My administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy," Obama said during his most recent State of the Union address.
Shifting Calculations
The gas revolution is changing the political balance of power all over the world. Americans and Russians have waged wars, and they have propped up or toppled regimes, over oil and gas. When the flows of energy change, the strategic and military calculations of the major powers do as well.
It is still unclear who the winners and losers will be. The Chinese and the Argentines also have enormous shale gas reserves. Experts believe that Poland, France and Germany have significant resources, although no one knows exactly how significant. Outside the United States, extraction is still in its infancy.
The outlines of a changed world order are already emerging in the simulations of geo-strategists. They show that the United States will benefit the most from the development of shale gas and oil resources. A study by Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, concludes that Washington's discretionary power in foreign and security policy will increase substantially as a result of the country's new energy riches.

Photo Gallery

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3  Photos

Info Graphic Galley: America Steps on the Gas

According to the BND study, the political threat potential of oil producers like Iran will decline. Optimists assume that, in about 15 years, the United States will no longer have to send any aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf to guarantee that oil tankers can pass unhindered through the Strait of Hormuz, still the most important energy bottleneck in the world. The Russians could be on the losing end of the stick. The power of President Vladimir Putin is based primarily on oil and gas revenues. If energy prices decline in the long term, bringing down Russian revenues from the energy sector, Putin's grip on power could begin to falter. The Americans' sudden oil and gas riches are also not very good news for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.
European industry is also likely to benefit from falling world market prices for oil and gas. But according to prognoses, without domestic extraction the Europeans' site-specific advantages deteriorate.
German chemical giant BASF has already invested a lot of money in the United States in the last two years. In Louisiana, for example, it has built new plants for the production of methyl amines and formic acid. "The local natural gas price is a criterion that affects the question of where we invest in new production facilities," says BASF Executive Board member Harald Schwager. At the moment, the United States has a clear advantage over Europe in this regard."
German Reservations
So far, the political debate in Germany has been dominated by concerns over adverse environmental effects. Fracking has become a dirty word for citizens' initiatives and environmental groups.
The concept of pumping water laced with chemicals into the earth at high pressures to crack open layers of rock several thousand meters beneath the surface makes many citizens uneasy, even though the technology has, in principle, already been used for decades in conventional gas extraction in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.
At the same time, Germany's energy and climate policy would in fact be a reason to use the new gas reserves. Flexible gas power plants would be the best approach to offsetting unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar electricity, thereby maintaining a reliable power supply. Besides, burning natural gas generates up to 60 percent less climate-damaging CO2 than burning coal.
With the help of natural gas, the Americans have been able to reduce their CO2 emissions associated with energy production to the lowest level in years. This is one of the reasons the country plans to replace one in six coal-fired power plants with gas power plants by 2020.
At the Munich Security Conference this weekend, fracking will be at the top of the agenda for the first time. In fact, one of the agenda items is called "The American Oil and Gas Bonanza." In past years, nuclear weapons and threats from international terror were discussed at the conference, but this year one of the hot topics is the "Changing Geopolitics of Energy." This shows how important the issue has become. "It is perhaps a permissible exaggeration to claim a natural gas revolution," John Deutch, a former undersecretary at the Energy Department and CIA director, and now a professor at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine. Deutch has been monitoring the development for years.
America 's Energy Miracle
In the late 1990s, American oil and gas companies used new technologies to advance into previously unexplored layers of the earth. They drill up to 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) into the shale, then make a sharp turn and continue to drill horizontally. Then they inject a mixture of water, chemicals and sand into the drilled well at high pressure. This creates small fractures in the surrounding rock, allowing gas and oil to be released and rise to the surface through pipes.
New technologies are drastically reducing drilling costs. In 2012, shale gas already made up 34 percent of total production, and the technology is constantly improving. The sector is booming, and there are dozens of new companies searching for additional, previously undiscovered deposits.
In the future, the United States could even go from being a net energy importer to a net exporter. But that would require a true policy shift. Since the oil shock of the 1970s, the export of domestic petroleum resources has been banned in the United States. Many companies also have an interest in keeping as much of the cheap natural gas in the country as possible, as it provides them with a competitive advantage over foreign competitors.
According to a study, lower natural gas prices last year created a benefit worth more than $100 billion for US industry. "The country has stumbled into a windfall on the backs of these entrepreneurs," says study co-author Professor Edward Hirs of the University of Houston.
And perhaps things will indeed improve substantially. The US government has identified a new deposit in Utah, although additional major advances in technology are needed to make extraction economically viable. The Utah deposit contains an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of extractable oil, or as much as the world's entire proven oil reserves to date.
Russia on the Losing End
A building in the southwestern section of Moscow juts into the sky like a rocket. The architectural message of the headquarters of energy giant Gazprom, which towers over everything else around it, is clear: The only way is up. Until recently, there was still an overwhelming consensus that nuclear weapons and energy commodities like oil and gas are the two currencies that gave a country its superpower status. Russia, the world's largest exporter of natural resources, has both in abundance.

President Putin built his dominance at home and his foreign policy on Russia's wealth of natural resources. Oil and gas revenues make up about 50 percent of the national budget. The president needs Gazprom's billions in revenues to keep his supporters, mostly government employees, retirees, blue-collar workers and farmers, happy with expensive social benefits. Gas also plays a central role in the plan to expand Russia's sphere of influence into the former Soviet republics. But now the American natural resources boom threatens Putin's dreams of an imperial resurrection of his country. It is already struggling with falling gas prices. Gazprom's operating profit shrank by more than 25 percent in the first nine months of 2012.
The Russians are now forced to give their customers, like Germany's E.on and Italian energy company Eni, discounts in the billions. Still, the Europeans are reorienting themselves. In the first three quarters of 2912, Gazprom sales fell by 43 percent in the Netherlands, 30 percent in Slovakia and 20 percent in France.

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• Part 1: US Tips Global Power Scales with Fracking
• Part 2: The Kremlin Is Alarmed

FGV-Rio: Call for Papers - 2nd Workshop on European Union Research

2nd Graduate Workshop on European Union Research
Center for International Relations at FGV
The Social Sciences and History School/CPDOC
Fundação Getulio Vargas
Rio de Janeiro
10 May 2013 – 9h to 12h

As part of the activities organized to celebrate the Europe Day (May 9th), the Center for International Relations at FGV will host the 2nd Graduate Workshop on European Union Research.

This event will be held on May 10th, at FGV, Rio de Janeiro. During the workshop selected Master’s and PhD students, working on subjects related to the European Union, will have the opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing work with internationally renowned scholars in the field. The workshop will follow the EU Commission funded “PhD School” model, in which students are required to submit a chapter or article in advance and briefly present it during the workshop proceedings. Experts then present their comments, feedback and advice for the future academic development of the participants. The workshop will offer participants the unique opportunity to exchange views and discuss doubts regarding their work with specialists from major universities of the EU and US.

Scholars
Jolyon Howorth (PhD, University of Reading) is Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics ad personam and Emeritus Professor of European Studies at the University of Bath (UK). He has been a Visiting Professor of Political Science at Yale since 2002. During his career he worked at the University of Sorbonne, Harvard, Science-Po, Columbia and NYU. Howorth has held a Senior Research Fellowship at the European Union´s Institute for Security Studies. He has published extensively in the field of European politics and history, especially security and defense policy and transatlantic relations. He is the author of:
“Security and Defence Policy in the European Union”, Palgrave, 2007
“Defending Europe: the EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy”, Palgrave, 2003
“European Integration and Defence: the Ultimate Challenge?”, WEU-ISS, 2000

Kalypso Nicolaïdis (TBC) (PhD, Harvard University) is Professor of International Relations and director of the European Studies Center at the University of Oxford. She was previously associate professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Paris. She is also chair of Southeastern European Studies at Oxford and Council member of the European Council of Foreign Relations. From 2008 to 2010 she was member of the European Council reflection group on the future of Europe 2030. Her main areas of interest are dynamics of European integration, issues of identity, justice and cooperation in the international system, the sources of legitimacy in European and global governance, the relations between the EU and the Mediterranean /Turkey as well as preventive diplomacy and dispute resolution. She is the author of:
“European Stories: Intellectual Debates on Europe in National Context”, Oxford University Press, 2011
“Whose Europe? National Models and the Constitution of the European Union”, Oxford University Press, 2003
“The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the US and the EU”, Oxford University Press, 2001

Vivien A. Schmidt (PhD, University of Chicago) is Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, and Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University. Schmidt has held appointments as visiting professor at a number of European institutions, including Sciences Po in Paris, the European University Institute in Florence, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, and the Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, where she is currently a faculty affiliate and chair of the EU studies group. Her areas of interest are European political economy, institutions and democracy, as well as political and institutional theory. Her current work centers on the impact of the European Union on the quality of member-state democracy and the impact of the economic crisis on European capitalisms and welfare states, explanations of institutional change, in particular with regard to the role of ideas and discursive interactions.  She is author of:
“Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revised: Input, Output and Throughput”, Political Studies, forthcoming
“Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities”, Oxford University Press, 2006
“In the Light and Shadow of the Single Currency: European Identity and Citizenship”, in: The Other Side of the Coin: The Euro and Citizenship (ed. Giovanni Moro), Continuum, 2012

Loukas Tsoukalis (PhD, University of Oxford) is president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), professor of the Jean Monnet Chair in European Organizations at Athens University and visiting professor at the College of Europe. He has worked in several institutions, such as: John Hopkins University, University of Oxford, London School of Economics and the European University Institute, were he was responsible for the Pierre Werner Chair of Robert Schuman Centre. He has worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), presided the think-tank Synthesis – European Studies, Research and Strategy, from Athens, and participated of the Economic and Social Research Council, in the UK. He has organized several conjuncture analysis for the European Commission and was special envoy of the Ministry of National Economy of Greece at Washington D.C. during this country’s presidency in the European Council. He is the author of:
“What Kind of Europe?”, Oxford University Press, 2003
“The Delphic Oracle on Europe: Is there a Future for the European Union?”, Oxford University Press, 2011
“European Disintegration? Markets, Institutions and Legitimacy”, Journal of Democracy, 2012

Application
The workshop on European Union Research is open to students enrolled in Master’s or PhD programs in Politics, International Relations, Law, Social Sciences, History or Economics and based in Brazil.

Interested students should send an abstract (500 words) of their research and a CV by March 15th. Applications should be sent to ri@fgv.br. Approved students will have to submit their piece – in English - until April 15th. We have limited slots for this workshop.

The Center for International Relations will provide some financial support to cover part of the travel costs for students that come from outside Rio de Janeiro. The amount will depend on the number of participants.

For more info go to www.ri.fgv.br or contact us:

Center for International Relations at FGV
The Social Sciences and History School/CPDOC
Fundação Getulio Vargas
190, Praia de Botafogo – 14th floor
Rio de Janeiro | 22250-900
Brazil
Phone: +55 (21) 3799-5605
Fax: + 55(21) 3799-5679
ri@fgv.br
www.ri.fgv.br/
www.twitter.com/cpdocfgv

Barao, barao, onde andas o' barao? O que fazem em teu nome? - Clodoaldo Bueno (RBPI 2/2012)

Na RBPI 2/2012 - O Barão do Rio Branco no Itamaraty (1902 - 1912)

Clodoaldo Bueno

Este ano, em que se rememora o falecimento do barão do Rio Branco, é oportuno revisitar o legado do patrono da diplomacia brasileira, até porque seu país movimenta-se no contexto regional de forma diversa de sua tradição, embora a América do Sul de hoje possua alguns traços conjunturais formalmente semelhantes àqueles da primeira década do século XX.

Rio Branco pensou e agiu como um geopolítico, mas guiado pelo senso de observação, instinto e faro político. Leu o contexto internacional apegado à concretitude dos fatos e despreocupado em traduzir para seus atos de política externa idéias então em circulação no Ocidente, como o Destino Manifesto, a superioridade de raça ou a importância da guerra como elemento de coesão nacional. Realista, tinha consciência dos limites da influência do Brasil na América do Sul. Apesar de gozar de prestígio e respeito dentro e fora do país, lastreados num histórico de sucessos e bom senso diplomático, nunca alardeou desejo de ver seu país exercendo liderança nessa área nem levou a efeito uma política externa agressiva e arrogante escudada em ideais de projeção nacional.

Ao assumir a pasta, acumulara uma experiência de mais de duas décadas fora do país. Vivera sobretudo em Paris, Londres e Liverpool, de onde conhecera de perto o núcleo do capitalismo industrial na sua etapa imperialista e acompanhara as atividades das grandes empresas, que não raro atuavam com cobertura diplomática dos governos de seus países de origem. Na questão do Acre, a primeira que enfrentou imediatamente após a assunção da chancelaria, agiu como alguém que conhecia a linguagem e maneira de atuar dos financistas e especuladores internacionais.

Os anos de 1902 a 1918 correspondem ao auge da Primeira República brasileira, até porque nele se destaca o brilho da larga gestão de Rio Branco no Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Em termos econômicos, o Brasil expandiu sua economia agroexportadora, cuja especialização no café foi levada aos seus limites extremos. O alinhamento Washington-Rio de Janeiro, uma das marcas da gestão Rio Branco, em boa parte foi adequação aos vínculos comerciais já solidamente estabelecidos entre os dois países. Os Estados Unidos, com a livre entrada concedida ao café proveniente do Brasil, somada às dimensões de seu mercado consumidor, dispunham de um eficaz meio de pressão para forçar a obtenção de vantagens aduaneiras. Para o Brasil, a livre entrada concedida ao café tinha um custo, nomeadamente o desestímulo à industrialização em razão da entrada maciça de produtos manufaturados favorecida pelo rebaixamento de direitos de alfândega concedido às mercadorias norte-americanas.

Embora o Chanceler não tenha inaugurado a inflexão da política externa brasileira em direção aos Estados Unidos, deu a ela um sentido utilitário, além de ter consolidado e aprofundado tendências. Rio Branco não temia o expansionismo dos Estados Unidos e era compreensivo com a ação deles na América Central, uma vez que subscrevia os termos do corolário Roosevelt, o que facilitava aos dois países a aproximação, que, segundo ele, funcionaria como elemento neutralizador de eventuais ingerências nas questões internacionais do Brasil. A amizade norte-americana, apesar do aparente paradoxo, provocava alargamento virtual nas margens dos movimentos brasileiros. Dir-se-ia que Rio Branco perseguia uma política de hands off nessa área. A aproximação, como ele a concebia, não implicava ver seu país na posição de caudatário, até porque não estava vinculada a compromissos. Por outro lado, não se traduziu em apoio norte-americano ao Brasil em suas pendências internacionais, aliás nunca solicitado por Rio Branco. Independente de estratégia, a aproximação levada a efeito por Rio Branco (entusiasticamente coadjuvado por Joaquim Nabuco, embaixador do Brasil em Washington), foi unilateral, isto é, sem a equivalência do governo de Washington. O próprio Chanceler, perto do final de sua gestão, desencantou-se com a diplomacia norte-americana. De qualquer forma, a aproximação entre os dois países não pode ser vista como um objetivo em si mesmo, nem primordial; o mais importante acabou sendo sua visibilidade, embora não planejada. Rio Branco movimentou-a como uma peça, cujo alcance só pode ser aquilatado ao se considerar o jogo inteiro, cuja meta primeira foi a solução das questões de fronteira ainda pendentes. A grande obra de Rio Branco como ministro foi concluir a tarefa na qual se envolvera antes de assumir a chancelaria, dando sequência à obra iniciada no período colonial e continuada pelos diplomatas do Império, de fixação dos limites do território nacional mediante o fechamento definitivo de suas fronteiras por meio de arbitramentos com a Argentina (questão das Missões, 1895) e França (questão do Amapá, 1900), na condição de advogado do Brasil, e de tratados, quando chanceler, com a Bolívia (questão do Acre, 1903), Equador (1904), Holanda (Guiana, 1906), Colômbia (1907), Peru (1909) e Uruguai (1909). O sucesso nos movimentos impostos pela defesa da soberania e naqueles motivados ou conectados à política de prestígio, deu nova presença ao Brasil no cenário internacional, no qual podia se apresentar como uma nação territorialmente satisfeita, rearmada no oceano com o que tinha de mais moderno no mundo, com os compromissos financeiros em dia, sediando a 3ª Conferência Internacional Americana, marcando presença na 2ª Conferência de Paz em Haia, sem problemas de fronteira e desobrigado de compromissos internacionais. Segundo o próprio Rio Branco seu país elevava-se a outro patamar no concerto internacional, desinteressando-se das estéreis questões entre as nações sul-americanas para atuar em um círculo mais elevado, o das grandes amizades internacionais.

• Clodoaldo Bueno é Professor Titutlar da Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP).

Meridiano 47 - Chamada de artigos (IBRI)

O Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais informa chamada de artigos para as edições do  Boletim Meridiano 47 (http://www.meridiano47.info).

O Boletim é uma publicação bimensal em formato digital, dedicada a promover a reflexão, a pesquisa e o debate acadêmico sobre os temas da agenda internacional contemporânea e publica contribuições inéditas na forma de artigos científicos breves e resenhas de livros, cuja temática se situe na grande área de Relações Internacionais, e mais particularmente sobre Política Internacional, História das Relações Internacionais e da Política Exterior, Análise de Política Externa, Economia Internacional, Instituições e Regimes Internacionais e sobre questões envolvendo áreas geográficas e países.
Todos os artigos serão submetidos a arbitragem científica e a publicação de contribuições será sempre amparada pelas recomendações do Conselho Editorial e pela análise dos pareceres produzidos.

Normas de Colaboração
O Boletim publica artigos científicos e resenhas de livros;
Os artigos devem conter entre 20 mil e 25 mil caracteres (incluindo espaços) e as resenhas de livros devem conter cerca de 6 mil caracteres (espaços inclusive);
As notas de rodapé restringem-se a esclarecimentos adicionais ao texto;
A bibliografia deve ser citada de acordo com o sistema Chicago (Autor, data), referenciando a literatura citada ao final do texto;
As contribuições devem ser inéditas  e podem ser submetidas em português, inglês ou espanhol;
As contribuições devem conter o nome completo do autor, sua titulação e filiação institucional;
No caso de resenhas de livros, devem ser informados os dados completos e o ISBN da obra analisada;
As contribuições devem vir acompanhadas de:  3 palavras-chave em português e 3 key words em inglês; Título em inglês; Resumo em português e abstract em inglês, ambos com até 50 palavras.
O processo de análise editorial se estende por cerca de 20 (vinte) dias úteis. As submissões se fazem em fluxo contínuo e aqui.

Brasil: voluntarismo em politica economica (nao costuma dar certo...)

Da coluna diária do jornalista gaúcho Políbio Braga (1/02/2013):

Dilma adota o modelo kirschnerista de combate à inflação. É tudo puro voluntarismo econômico
Nesta sexta-feira, o ex-deputado, ex-prefeito do Rio e ex-secretário da Fazenda de Brizola, Cesar Maia, que é também economista, desenhou algumas linhas sobre o caótico modelo de combate à inflação movido pelo governo Dilma Roussef, que parece ter abandonado os fundamentos do Plano Real e enveredou pelo aventureirismo já em prática na Argentina. Trata-se do modelo kirschnerista de combate à inflação. Acompanhe as medidas voluntaristas das ações mais recentes de Dilma.
1. Telefona para prefeitos e governadores e pede para segurarem o reajuste anual das tarifas de ônibus, metrô e trens.
2. Liga para o Banco Central e manda comprar uns bilhões para derrubar o dólar e, com isso, baratear as importações.
3. Vai à TV e manda baixar a conta de luz.
4. Passa um e-mail para a presidente da Petrobras e manda aguentar o prejuízo mais um pouquinho e segurar o preço dos combustíveis.
5. Pede ao presidente do Banco Central para não elevar o juro básico mesmo com a inflação passando de 6,5%.
6. As medidas anti-inflacionárias de Dilma seguem rigorosamente a receita da equipe de Cristina Kirchner. Uma exceção: ainda não houve a intervenção no IBGE como foi feita no INDEC argentino.

Egito: da ditadura militar à teocracia islamica - Raymond Stock (FPRI)

On Mistaking Mohamed Mursi For His Mask

Raymond Stock

Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Notes, February 2013

 

“You know, when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there.”  —President Barack Obama, “60 Minutes,” January 27, 2013

With President Mohamed Mursi’s proclamation of a “new republic” on December 26, after the passage of a Constitution that turns Egypt into an Islamist-ruled, pseudo-democratic state, the “January 25^th Revolution” came to a predictably disastrous (if still unstable) terminus.  As momentous for world history as the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (should it hold), it represents the formal—if not the final—victory for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in its 84-year struggle for power in the land of its birth. Indeed, 2012 will likely be remembered as the year that Islamists made the greatest gains in their quest for a new caliphate in the region.  And without a drastic change of course by Washington, 2013 might surpass it by far in progress toward the same, seemingly inexorable end.
Egypt, the largest Arab state, the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid, and our second most important ally in the Middle East, is now in the hands of a hostile regime—an elected one at that—which we continue to treat as a friendly one.  Even if the sudden outburst of uncontrolled violence along the Suez Canal since January 26—coupled with escalating political and economic tumult in Cairo and elsewhere—leads to a new military coup, it would likely be managed by the MB from behind the scenes. The irony and the implications are equally devastating.  This new reality threatens not only traditional U.S. foreign policy goals of stability in the oil-rich Middle East and security for Israel, but also America’s declared support for democracy in the Arab world. Moreover, the fruits of Islamist “democracy,” should it survive, are catastrophic to the people of Egypt, the region and beyond.

How did all this happen? And what role did the U.S. play?

AMERICA: A BEAST OF BURDEN?

In an earlier E-Note[1] I wrote that Egyptians compare a farsighted leader to the camel—a creature that gazes serenely at the horizon as it plods patiently towards its goal.  Conversely, they think of a poor leader like the donkey--a timid but obstinate animal that stares at the ground as it blunders along. Though popular jokes often cast President Hosni Mubarak as a donkey, when it came to seeing what and who would follow him if Obama hastily pushed him from power, he was actually like the camel. In a February 3, 2011 televised interview with Christiane Amanpour, Mubarak said that he had personally warned Obama there would be chaos and Muslim Brotherhood rule if he was forced to step down at that time. Soon he proposed instead turning over some of his powers to a vice-president until the presidential elections, then set for that September, in which neither he nor his son Gamal, who had seemed set to succeed him, would take part. (As his V.P., Mubarak named General Omar Suleiman, the head of Military Intelligence, who had extensive experience both repressing and negotiating with the MB, and was seen by the West as a safe pair of hands.)  Though a great many   demonstrators seemed to accept this compromise, many others--and the White House would not.  On the evening of February 10, Obama issued a statement that the Egyptian people thought the transition to democracy was not happening fast enough. By the next evening in Cairo, Mubarak had stepped down.
Mubarak’s prediction turned out to be right. When he resigned, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which had always been subservient to the president, took over state power, which it promised to relinquish after elections for parliament and president, and the approval of a new Constitution. Throughout the demonstrations against Mubarak, the SCAF had been negotiating with a coalition of opposition groups, represented by the MB, and with the U.S. as well.  For the next year and a half the SCAF cooperated closely with the MB in running the country, while the secular liberals and some Salafi groups waged an almost uninterrupted campaign of often-violent protests (that were met with crushing force) to demand a speedier turnover of power to “civilian rule.”  They should have realized that could only mean a handover to the MB and its own Salafi allies—even those who did understand this innocently thought the Islamists would keep faith with their promises to honor democracy in the end.  Amid constant bloody demonstrations, incessant, widespread strikes, intensified persecution of Christians and skyrocketing crime, the Brotherhood rode confidently to state power in large part on the back of the Obama administration. The load was shared by the willing Egyptian armed forces that were filled with Islamist sympathizers (leavened with Mubarak loyalists at the top), not to mention the demonstrators in Tahrir Square and around the country.  But the American role was crucial.
Few observers knew the MB itself had actually mobilized the protesters in much larger numbers than had the secular liberals on Facebook and Twitter who got the credit for starting the revolution.  Indeed, by the second day of demonstrations (on Friday, January 28, 2011), the MB's ability to bring protesters onto the streets dwarfed that of their secular liberal allies, key figures among whom had their own, little-known links to the Brotherhood that the media, government and experts missed entirely. Chief among these was Wael Ghonim, the charismatic young, Dubai-based Google executive, who (as documented in my earlier E-Note) few people knew then knew had been a member of the MB in his late teens.  Another— whom a leading MB figure, Essam El-Erian, has described as owing his political loyalty to the Brotherhood—was Alexandrian activist Abdel-Rahman Mansour.  Along with Ghonim, Mansour ran a Facebook page, “Kullana Khaled Said” (“We are All Khaled Said”) that played a key role in launching the January 25 protests.
America's role as the MB's primary beast of burden didn't begin even with the January 25th Revolution.  Or rather, the revolution did not start on that date.  Arguably, it really began on June 4, 2009.  On that day, Obama gave his famous “speech to the Islamic world” from Cairo University (Egypt's first secular university, founded in 1908), but also sponsored by al-Azhar University (Sunni Islam's most prestigious center of learning, established by the Shi`ite Fatimid dynasty in the 10^th century). Not only was the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership invited to attend, but to sit in the front row—thus excluding Obama’s official host (according to protocol)—President Mubarak.
Essentially, this meant that the president of the United States invited the heads of an illegal revolutionary organization to be not only present, but front and center, when he delivered a historic speech of global reach in the capital of a key ally.  Thus, the president of that key allied country, whom Obama called a “friend,” could not possibly attend.  By this dramatic act, he essentially elevated these criminal elements to the level of a shadow government.  Thus, in effect, he was saying to the MB, “You are the future.”  At the same time, he was telling our long-time, largely reliable ally Mubarak that he was already virtual history.  And this message was not lost upon any of them, even if it was missed entirely by nearly everyone else--especially those who should have seen it easily.
Just as importantly, Obama’s speech was not addressed to a recognized diplomatic entity. The Muslim world is a religious and cultural concept, one that spans dozens of countries around the world, all quite different from each other:  it has no broad geo-political unity.  Thus--in another first for an American president—he asked Muslims everywhere to define themselves not by national or even ethnic identity, but by their religion.  This idea resonates very closely with his flattering (and equally unprecedented) recognition of the globally-subversive Muslim Brotherhood. This too was noted by only a few back home—but it was obvious to those he intended to reach, and to those it most adversely affected, too.

THE NEW, IMPROVED (DEMOCRATIC) DESPOT

To America's mainstream media (The New York Times above all), policy makers and many specialists on the Middle East, President Mursi is the new, improved (because popularly-elected) Hosni Mubarak. On August  26, a front-page NYT assessment of Mursi’s diplomacy by Cairo correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick implicitly cast him as a brilliant new player on the world stage, who despite his lack of experience, has shown his independence of Washington (seen as a positive quality) by going for more diversified international support. Not only had he asked for more aid from Europe, Kirkpatrick enthused, but has also from China and, has even reached out to Mubarak’s (and America’s) bête noire, Iran (both of which he was to visit in late August).  Kirkpatrick’s real message can be seen in his approving quotation of an expert’s opinion: “Egypt has credibility as ‘an emerging player in the Arab world and a somewhat successful model of a democratic transition in the Arab Spring,’ said Mr. [Peter] Harling of the International Crisis Group.”
But the climax of Mursi’s international cachet came in November, when Mursi posed as the honest broker—a traditional American role that Obama outsourced to Islamist Egypt—in the search for a ceasefire in a fierce flare-up between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hailed as a peacemaker for hammering out a deal that shook dangerous concessions out of Israel (relaxing restrictions on Gaza that may allow more dangerous weapons inside, and an end to targeted killing of terrorists), Mursi is now touted as a pragmatic preserver of Arab-Israeli peace—while America overlooks his dictatorial excesses. That is what critics said about American relations with Mubarak (who tolerated or even encouraged anti-Semitic sentiment in Egypt’s media as a safety valve that allowed him to keep the peace on the ground, rather than openly espousing it himself.)  Yet the irony is lost on both the U.S. administration and most of the media as well.
In reality, since joining the Muslim Brotherhood during his days as an engineering student at the University of Southern California in the 1980s, Mursi has been part of an organization dedicated to destroying Israel--and the United States too, and to killing all the Jews in the world as the fulfillment of God’s will.  For decades before he became Egypt’s president, he was one of the key leaders in the MB, the hard-line ideological enforcer who purged many more liberal members from the group. He has often spoken of his devotion to jihad, and cheered fellow militants as they spoke of liberating Jerusalem and Gaza and threatened fearsome retribution to the Jews. That is hardly apt to change now that he is head of state—and when a leading member of the MB recently told a local television interviewer that Mursi is still completely under the orders of the group’s murshid, or Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie. In October 2010, Badie declared the MB’s open support for the global jihad against Israel and America.  At least twice since Mursi’s election as president, he has called for jihad against Israel and the Jews.
In January, The New York Times reported remarks that Mursi had made in 2010—two years before he became his country’s president—referring to Jews as “apes and pigs,” first brought to light by the Washington-based translation service, MEMRI, which monitors statements made in numerous languages by figures via mass media in the Muslim world.  Shortly afterward, another MEMRI report revealed that, also in 2010, Mursi had exhorted a crowd in his hometown of Zagazig in the Delta, “Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred toward those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them.”  He went on to call Obama a liar, based on his failure to live up to the grand promises of good will toward the Muslims in his Cairo speech.  These comments reflect essential elements of the MB’s ideology that it has preached since its founding, as well as Mursi’s personal worldview.  The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, expressed dismay at them—then went on to imply that since assuming office, Mursi had shown that he didn’t really mean them.  (Predictably, the NYT took a similar tack.)
An almost amusing postscript occurred when a group of U.S. senators—including John McCain and Lindsay Graham, among others—queried Mursi about those remarks during a recent visit to Cairo.  Mursi tried to explain that the American media, which are “controlled by certain forces,” were to blame for blowing them out of proportion. The senators reportedly “recoiled” at this suggestion, and pressed him repeatedly if by “certain forces” he had meant the Jews. He kept dodging their questions until they finally gave up, but the bad taste remained.  But the senators present have yet to demand that aid to Egypt be stopped or even changed.  McCain reportedly even requested that the U.S. funnel another $480 million dollars to Mursi’s government after that testy—and presumably eye-opening—encounter.
As Barry Rubin has noted, many in Washington are treating these routine statements of basic beliefs by Mursi as isolated incidents that can be dismissed as aberrations. But a prominent Egyptian columnist, Abdel Latif El-Menawy, in a January 21 column on alarabiya.net,[2] has documented numerous instances in which Mursi personally has said similar things earlier.
Moreover,  just a few months prior to the “apes and pigs” flap, MEMRI had posted a current video clip of Mursi (as president) sitting in a mosque in Mansoura in the Delta, in which an imam preaches from the minbar (the Muslim equivalent of the pulpit) for the destruction of all Jews, and of Israel and the United States. As he speaks, Mursi’s gestures and facial expression clearly signal assent to what is being said as he prays in the front row of the squatting congregation.
Nonetheless, Mursi is content to let us delude ourselves about who he really is and what he wants to do--until he feels secure enough to finally drop his mask (one he has only worn when facing West). Until then, he will continue soaking up all the money and military technology that our government will throw at him, gathering the strength that could set him free at last.  Meanwhile, he's expecting $4.8 billion from the IMF (delayed until he can implement his economic reform program), $5 billion in emergency aid from the European Union, plus several billions more each from Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which has also pledged to invest $18.5 billion in Egypt's economy in the next several years, adding that $2.5 billion would be transferred immediately). In addition, Mursi has asked for $3 billion from China just for his soon-to-be-expanded nuclear program (with an offer of technical and perhaps other assistance from Iran).  If he is able to stabilize these arrangements (which are more important to his strategic view than the problem of stabilizing Egypt’s economy), he really won't need our $1.6 billion aid tied to the 1979 Peace Treaty with Israel (except for the elements of new military technology and maintenance).  He may well reach that point soon: the IMF deal may open further lines of credit—and its failure will not prevent others from trying to save the people of Egypt by propping up Mursi.
That Mursi is demonstrably more dictatorial than Mubarak doesn’t seem to faze his donors, real or potential. On November 22, he granted himself powers more immense than those enjoyed by Egypt’s rulers in all of the nation's five thousand years of Pharaonic-style rule. Yet just as he did during the 2009 democracy demonstrations in Iran, our president said little: on December 6, he phoned Mursi to express his “concern” and to urge him to engage the opposition in dialogue. There were no reported threats of consequences if Mursi did not comply. He might at least have noted that he had asked Congress for $1 billion dollars in debt relief for the country, to help her weather the worst financial crisis in that country's modern history--the economic price of overthrowing Mubarak. Meanwhile, Mursi awaits delivery of two Class 209 diesel-electric submarines from Germany—which Israel fears (quite reasonably) will be used to menace her developing gas and oil fields in the Mediterranean—for a price of $1 billion.
Clearly it was not Obama, but the massive protests that his decree--and the blatantly Islamist draft Constitution it was meant to help see through the referendum—that led Mursi on December 9 to cancel most of the powers he gave himself in the declaration. The opposition had demanded that he cancel both. As such it was a meaningless compromise, meant to suck the oxygen out of the opposition, while preserving the most important goal of that decree: the Constitution's ratification. Meanwhile the army retains its pose as a neutral guardian of the nation, though in effect it has really been protecting Mursi and his goals. Thus it is beyond the reach of U.S. persuasion—should it ever be seriously tried. As the demonstrations against the Constitution reached their peak in mid-December, the SCAF called for dialogue with the opposition—and in so doing was merely echoing Mursi’s own, obviously hollow appeals. (In other words, the army, which the U.S. hoped would be a check on any of Mursi’s excesses, simply is no longer willing or able to play that role—if it ever really was.)
Contrast this with Obama's fateful statement that hastened Mubarak’s fall from power.  But since Mursi’s August 12 purge of Mubarak-era leaders in the military (ironically facilitated by Washington, in the interest of further speeding that “transition to democracy”), and with his diversification of foreign aid—radically reducing his dependence on the U.S.—it is doubtful that Obama has any ability to do that again. Nor would he want to replace Mursi, the elected president (who has shown a complete lack of democratic scruples and whom at least half of Egypt feels has lost his legitimacy) anyway.
In a September 24 interview for PBS, Mursi—then in New York for the annual opening of the U.N. General Assembly—was asked by Charlie Rose if Egypt really was (still) an ally. “The U.S. president says otherwise,” he shot back (referring to his American counterpart’s remark that Egypt was no longer an ally, uttered a few days earlier in exasperation with Mursi’s slow response to the incident at our embassy on September 11). He then explained that, “This depends on how you define an ally.”  He clarified that while Egypt may still be an economic or political partner of the U.S., “the understanding of an ally as part of a military alliance--that does not exist right now.”  Given that the vast majority of American aid to Egypt is military, this is an extraordinary declaration that should have led to an immediate review of the bi-lateral relationship.  He added that it is better to be friends than allies (although “friend” is a diplomatically insubstantial term).
In the same, almost completely unremarked (and shockingly fawning) interview during Mursi’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly in New York spoke of his compatriots' widespread "hatred" of the U.S.  And he defended their right to express that hatred by demonstrating at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, where a mob—in a pre-planned, not spontaneous, protest organized by the MB and al-Gama`a al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group)—went over an outer wall, burned an American flag flying there, and replaced it with the black jihadi banner used by al-Qa`ida and its affiliates.(Falsely, he claimed in the interview to have protected the embassy, but such an outrage could not have happened under Mubarak.  Mursi also tweeted messages in Arabic that incited the protesters: one said, “The noble Prophet Muhammad—may God bless him and grant him salvation—is a red line: whoever transgresses against him, we shall treat as an enemy.”)  Rose asked him about a reportedly “heated” call that Obama had made to declare his concern about Mursi’s slowness to denounce the incident. (Speaking of that event, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Intelligence Committees on January 23: “With Cairo, we had to call them and tell them, ‘Get your people out there.’” Mursi hastened to say that their conversation was “warm, it was not hot.”  When Rose wondered if Obama had threatened to cut off U.S. aid, Mursi said, “There was no threat of any kind.”)
Left unsaid in that interview—or almost anywhere else—is that protest against alleged defamation of the Prophet in the “Innocents of Muslims” movie trailer was only one of two reasons for the several days of demonstrations that besieged our embassy in Egypt last September. The other was to demand the release of the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, head of al-Gama`a al-Islamiya and mastermind of the 1981 assassination of Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar al-Sadat; of the Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s that claimed a thousand lives (including scores of foreign tourists), of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and whose fatwas provided the justification for the 1992 killing of Egyptian anti-Islamist activist Farag Foda, the 1994 attempted murder of Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib Mahfouz, and for the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the U.S.
Osama bin Laden is believed to have funded al-Gama`a al-Islamiya, beginning in the 1990s.  A major figure in the protests against our embassy was Mohammed al-Zawahiri, brother of current al-Qa`ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, released from prison in Egypt in March 2012.  Mursi has personally pardoned dozens of other jihadis convicted of terrorist murders in Egypt.  Among them was Mustafa Hamza, who directed al-Gama’a al-Islamiya’s attempt to assassinate Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1996, and the cell that killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at Hatshepsut’s Temple in Luxor in 1997 from Afghanistan. (His family is said to have been given safe haven in Mashhad, Iran.) Is it any surprise, then, that Mursi has denounced the current French military operations aimed at reversing the jihadi conquest of Mali?

THE MAJORITY OF A MINORITY RULES

The referendum on Egypt’s draft Constitution was held in two stages—on December 15 and 22, divided according to region--passed officially with 63.8 percent of the votes. Though the first round included both Cairo and Alexandria, where the majority of secularists live, the Islamist document won 56.5 percent that day. The second round, on December 22, held mainly in areas where Islamist support is strongest, resulted in a total “Yes” vote of 63.8%. Even as the balloting began, opponents of the charter were still fecklessly debating whether to vote against it or boycott the referendum. That, of course, means the votes themselves are not an accurate reflection of sentiment against it.  Turnout for both rounds was low—a total of only 33 percent—down from 43.4 percent in the presidential elections last spring. (That itself was much less than the 54 percent who took part in the 2011-2012 parliamentary elections before them.)  Many Egyptians, it seemed, would rather fight than vote.  Moreover, with illiteracy said to be at 45 percent (and probably much higher), roughly half the public could not read the long, rambling text (49 pages, 234 articles)—nor anything else for that matter.
Though pundits have cautioned that “turmoil” will continue, many assumed that, with the referendum, Egypt has finally completed its nearly two-year transition to “democracy.” Yet the result will actually bear little resemblance to the sort of democracy deliriously expected by so many around the world when Mubarak fell. Among those Egyptians so far vainly battling the Islamist tide, more than a few now rue the revolution as a mistake—and a fatal one at that. Again, that should have been obvious too (as it was to a widely-excoriated few).
However, a glimmer of hope has arisen from a spontaneous uprising that began in Port Said on January 26, launched by people furious at death sentences unexpectedly handed down that day to relatives of theirs for involvement in a riot that left 72 dead at a soccer game there last year.  The current melee soon engulfed two other cities along the Canal—Suez and Ismailia. All three are now under curfew in a month-long state of emergency: perhaps a hundred persons have since died in clashes with the police. (In Egyptian society, nothing—not even revolutionary politics—inflames passions so much as either football or family honor and revenge.)  In Port Said itself, for the first time, there are reliable reports of gunfire coming from anti-government rioters.  However, much of the anti-Mursi opposition has distanced itself from these events, and it is unclear if a united political front will spring up to capitalize on the chaos. Perhaps ominously, a masked group of alleged anarchists, the Black Bloc, which appeared as a new force in the mix of organizations standing up to the chief executive’s followers, the “Mursistas,” over the past few months—is blamed for much of the bloodshed in latest crisis.  And on January 30, the U.S. embassy in Cairo suspended all services after the looting of the luxury Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel next door the day before.  As all this unfolds, the combination of the threat to Egypt’s all-important Suez Canal revenues with the ongoing protests across Egypt has prompted the Mursi-appointed Army Chief of Staff, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, to warn on January 29 that unless some sort of political consensus is reached in the country, “the state could collapse.”
Yet, while certainly more intense and widespread, the uproar is not new. In the weeks running up to the referendum, mass demonstrations tore traditionally calm Egypt apart, violent clashes leaving dead on both sides.  Throughout this period the Islamists once again proved themselves to be more organized, ruthless and determined.  Though both Mursi’s backers and foes have their own shock troops formed mainly out of football hooligans called Ultras, the Islamists apparently have been the only side to have used firearms (excluding, evidently, what has since happened in Port Said) and reportedly even roving bands of thugs and rapists on their enemies. They have assaulted Christians and women particularly, including acid attacks on unveiled women in Alexandria.  This accompanied an alleged drive to block all unveiled women (who are presumed to be Christians, or else lax Muslims) from voting in that city.  Most of the nation’s jurists refused to oversee the balloting, with just enough cooperating to give it a veneer of legitimacy, and to make up the core of the new, Islamist judiciary that will likely follow Mursi’s victory.
The catalog of the Islamist government’s tyrannies has been increasingly impressive. In December, the state prosecutor began to investigate the three top opposition leaders, the heads of the National Salvation Front: Mohammed ElBaradei (ex-Secretary General of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Amr Moussa (former head of the Arab League) and Hamdeen Sabahy (a hard-left activist with Islamist connections who came in third in the first-round presidential vote last year) on suspicion of plotting to kill Mursi.  And now he is looking at comedian BassemYousef (often called “Egypt’s Jon Stewart”) on a possible charge of insulting Mursi: to defame any leading public figure is a crime under the new Constitution.
Nonetheless, despite the openly Islamist and dictatorial character of the MB regime, both America and Europe remain uncritically supportive. The IMF is concerned only about Egypt’s economic policies as justification for its loan; the European Union seems to have no pre-conditions at all for its aid. Shockingly, neither does the United States, which—unlike these other institutions—provides Egypt with military aid. Heedless of the dangers of continuing such a relationship with an Islamist regime, the U.S. has not simply failed to cut off its funding. At time of writing, the first four of sixteen F-16s promised to Mubarak at time of writing are en route with an understanding that the rest of the order will be filled.  (We are also giving him two hundred Abrams tanks in the same package.)   On January 26, Mursi called the F-16s a sign of support for his rule—as it most surely is.

MASSACRE OF THE BENEFACTORS

Obama’s dramatic and persistent outreach to the MB, that began at the latest in June 2009, continuing throughout the 2011 revolt and transition and beyond, makes him at the very least a co-author of the Egyptian revolution, and even of the Arab Spring. Indeed, the entire phenomenon arguably could not have happened and unfolded as it did without him. (And in a different sense, it would not have taken off without the previous democracy drive in the region under his predecessor, George W. Bush.)  Obama, interviewed (very softly, a la Charlie Rose) with Secretary Clinton on the CBS program “Sixty Minutes” on January 27, bragged to Steve Kroft, “You know, when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there.”
Mursi certainly ought to thank Obama for empowering him and the MB. But Mursi’s offer of “friendship” (not alliance) as per his interview with Charlie Rose, is similar to an invitation to the Americans to a dinner in which they and their allies will be on the menu.
Arab history is full of tales of massacres of whole dynasties at meetings of friendship. Among the most famous occurred on June 25, 750, when the victorious Abbasid commander Abu al-Abbas Abdullah invited some eighty surviving members of the Umayyad family they had overthrown in Damascus to a banquet of reconciliation at Abu Futrus near Jaffa.  Soon after the meal began, assassins struck down the unsuspecting princes in a serial slaughter.  As many of them lay still groaning, leather covers were thrown over them, and the dinner continued as before.
Also famous, on March 1, 1811, Muhammad Ali Pasha, later the founder of Egypt’s last royal dynasty, invited four hundred and seventy members of the former ruling caste, the renowned fighting Mamluks—who persisted as his rivals—to the Citadel of Salah al-Din in Cairo.  After taking coffee with them, the pasha saw off his guests as they rode out of the fortress through a narrow defile toward al-Azab Gate. Abruptly the gate closed before them, as marksmen fired down on them from the walls on either side.  The noble Mamluks, Islam’s most storied cavalry, galloped their horses back and forth frantically in search of a means of escape—but there was none.
We are now being asked to a banquet by enemies posing as friends, offering a meal that we have paid for with our own treasure.  This is not a banquet of food, however, but a feast of phony democracy that we have called the Arab Spring.  We shall be seated at a table that we have provided, and butchered with our own arms as we imbibe the wine of false accomplishment. Meanwhile our hosts—our erstwhile protégés—will carry on the party over our corpses.
And once more as in my earlier E-Note—written as Mursi was on the eve of winning his battle with old Mubarak appointees in the military for control last August—we again have a choice: we can either succumb to the charms of the “moderate Islamists,” or wisely begin to refuse them at last. All of the aid and recognition we give to these crafty zealots only whets their appetite for more.  Their entire history points to this: nothing they say or do, in order to fool those suspicious of them, should ever make us forget who they really are, and what they have always stood for.
If we do, then we shall have forgotten what we stand for too.

NOTES:

[1]Raymond Stock, “The Donkey, the Camel and the Facebook Scam: How the Muslim Brotherhood Conquered Egypt and Conned the World.”  (Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Notes, July 2012): http://www.fpri.org/articles/2012/07/donkey-camel-and-facebook-scam-how-muslim-brotherhood-conquered-egypt-and-conned.  This writer speaks at greater length about Egypt and Islamist rule in an interview by Jerry Gordon, “No Blinders about Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood,” New English Review,” November 2012: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/125820/sec_id/125820.  Yasmine El-Rashidi offers an outstanding current analysis in the February 7, 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books, “Egypt: the Rule of the Brotherhood:”  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/egypt-rule-brotherhood/?page=3

[2]Abdel Latif El-Menawy, “Mursi Needs to Admit His Real Stance from Zionists.” Al-Arabiya News, January 21, 2013: http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2013/01/21/261637.html,

Raymond Stock resided in Egypt for 20 years. He is writing a biography of Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature, Naguib Mahfouz (seven of whose books he has translated), for Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York.  A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania, his articles and translations of Arabic fiction have appeared via Bookforum, The Financial Times, Harper’s Magazine, International Herald Tribune, FPRI E-Notes, Middle East Quarterly,  and many other venues.  His translation of Mahfouz’s novel Before the Throne appeared in paperback via Anchor Books/Random House in July 2012. A former Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies at Drew University, he is currently a Shillman/Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

A visao "etica" do mundo dos homens sem qualquer etica: alguns comentarios pessoais...

Recebi nesta tarde, imediatamente após colocar este post neste blog,

Ecce Homo! (mas acho que ele nunca ouviu falar de Nietszche...)

um comentário que exclui do "rodapé", para promovê-lo a corpo de texto, o que deve deixar seu autor orgulhoso, embora não pelos bons motivos. Suprimo o seu nome -- que conheço de outras aventuras no espaço virtual -- para não constrangê-lo, pois acho que ele vai ficar com mais raiva deste blogueiro, ainda, com quem ele já teve entreveros lamentáveis no passado, justamente por que ele defende um mundo sem ética, um mundo feito apenas de um partido no poder, um mundo que ele vê em branco em preto, eles, os supostos "salvadores" da humanidade, e nós, os liberais -- que eles chamam estupidamente de "neoliberais", sem sequer saber o que isso significa --, ou seja, todos aqueles que não comungam de seus valores aéticos, de sua total falta de princípios, de seu oportunismo rastaquera e imoral, de seu raquitismo mental, de sua desonestidade congênita.
Eis o comentário do "herói" das causas totalitárias: 

Afff! Que texto mais estapafúrdio :D
Uma oposição que depende desta criatura que é o Reinaldo Azevedo continuará chorando o leite derramado em 2014, 2018, 2022...
Beijo para você PRA :)

Argh!!! Beijo??? Desse cara???!!! Jamais de la vie, por princípio, por escolha e... por asco.
Não vou sequer me dar ao trabalho de rechaçar seus argumentos puramente eleitoreiros, pois um indivíduo assim, como vimos, reduz o mundo a um combate entre os "bons", os "heróis" das causas operárias (e totalitárias), e todo o resto da humanidade. O texto do jornalista em questão era sobre o homem sem o qual eles não vivem, o único recurso de que dispõem para se apresentar como ganhadores, depois de 500 anos de dominação oligárquica (curioso que todos os oligarcas estão justamente com eles, desde sempre, como qualquer um pode constatar).
Este blog não tem partido nem candidatos em eleições, e se tiver um partido será simplesmente o da liberdade, o da independência de pensamento, o da recusa de se deixar levar pela falta de ética daqueles que utilizam-se de todos os meios para alcançar os seus fins, aqueles do partido único, se tal fosse possível no Brasi, em todo caso do pensamento único, que eles pensam ser progressista, ou de esquerda, mas que só consegue ser reacionário e fascista.
Indvíduos como esse ficam com raiva de espíritos libertários como o meu, e como não têm nada de inteligente a dizer, não têm nenhum argumento próprio a apresentar, ficam vigiando, como bons mercenários a soldo que são, os veículos daqueles que não comungam de suas porcas ideias (acho que eles não têm nenhuma, justamente, apenas slogans repetidos como paus mandados), de sua total falta de ética, de sua comunhão com o crime.
Eles são capazes de justificar as patifarias mais extremas de um chefe mentiroso, já que as falcatruas foram perpetradas em nome e em favor de suas causas obscuras.
Eles, que defendem todas as ditaduras, todos os oligarcas (à condição que eles estejam do seu lado, mesmo oportunisticamente), eles que justificam todos os crimes se dirigidos aos seus objetivos, esses elementos não conseguem suportar um pensamento livre, uma atitude crítica, um espírito independente. Eles são os vermes morais da humanidade, exatamente como já tinha revelado Arthur Koestler mais de 70 anos atrás, ele que era um ex-comunista, egresso de todos os combates contra a burguesia e o imperialismo, e que descobriu, a partir da guerra da Espanha e dos processos de Moscou a natureza essencial dos antigos companheiros, sua falta total de compromisso com a verdade, sua total falta de caráter, seus únicos compromissos com o partido totalitário que domina suas mentes, e os transforma em cães amestrados a serviço de qualquer causa, desde que seja aquela determinada pelo comitê central.
Esses indivíduos eu abomino, mas ao mesmo tempo eu tenho de agradecer sua constância em formular comentários amorais neste blog, pois isto me dá justamente a oportunidade de me distinguir deles, e de revelar sua verdadeira identidade aética.
Para satisfação de egos como o do comentarista em questão, que certamente vai ler esta postagem, coloco mais um artigo de seu jornalista mais odiado, não que eu tenho qualquer subordinação intelectual, ou qualquer concordância de princípio com esse jornalista, mas apenas porque ele toca nas questões reais, de uma forma competente e argumentada.
Fica para deleite do meu comentarista e como aprendizado aos mais jovens.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Sob a égide da ética do crime. Ou: A ética dos Renans, dos Dirceus e um livro. Ou: É permitido matar a velha a machadadas?
Reinaldo Azevedo, 1/02/2013

Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL), reconduzido à Presidência do Senado, resolveu exibir musculatura filosófica no discurso oficial como candidato ao posto. E disparou: “A ética não é um objetivo em si mesma. O objetivo em si mesmo é o interesse nacional. A ética é meio, não é fim”. Que coisa! O candidato falava, então, em termos abstratos, conceituais, e a paixão especulativa poderia nos devolver lá a Aristóteles, passando por Kant e chegando a Espinosa — depois de devidamente desprivatizado, já que, no Brasil, Marilena Chaui se quer a intérprete oficial do autor; se a obra de Espinosa fosse “A Valquíria”, Marxilena se apresentaria como Maria Callas… Mas que se deixe a abstração de lado. O voo teórico de Renan se fez ética encarnada na voz do senador Lobão Filho (PMDB-MA), que chegou à Casa como suplente de Lobão Pai, hoje ministro das Minas e Energia: “Nessa Casa não há nenhuma vestal. A última vestal que tentou ser vestal nessa Casa foi desossado pela imprensa. Não há ninguém a levantar o dedo para o senador Renan Calheiros”. O Lobinho é o homem do Lobão!

Ele se referia certamente a Demóstenes Torres, defenestrado por bons motivos do Senado, como todo mundo sabe. Mas que se note: Demóstenes não perdeu o mandato porque se apresentasse como vestal; ele foi cassado porque não praticava, na vida pública, aquilo que enunciava e anunciava. Quando aquele senador caiu, os valores éticos não caíram com ele. É espantoso! Hoje em dia, intelectuais de esquerda, os petistas e tipos como Lobinho passaram a demonizar o discurso da ética e da moralidade públicas. Ele seria sempre e necessariamente falso; só poderia se exercer como moralismo de fachada. Nessa perspectiva, não se deve mais censurar este ou aquele pelo crime cometido; cumpriria, então, indagar: “Mas por que ele fez tal coisa? O fim é nobre?”.

De fato, a ética não é uma finalidade em si, mas um instrumento. Só que há uma consideração que certamente não passa pelo amoralismo de Renan Calheiros e dos setores da esquerda que são hoje seus aliados: os meios empregados qualificam os fins. Se Maquiavel retirou a política da esfera quase celeste e a devolveu à terra ao constatar que, na vida real, os fins acabam justificando os meios, tomada tal perspectiva como um norte ético, mergulha-se, então, no vale-tudo.

Não, meus caros! Nem Aristóteles, nem Espinosa, nem Kant. O livro que trata de forma mais viva e cruenta a questão da ética é o magistral “O Zero e o Infinito”, escrito pelo ex-comunista Arthur Koestler, que veio à luz em 1941. Ele precisou de muito menos tempo do que outros para constatar os crimes do comunismo. O centro da obra é justamente um questionamento ético. Entre 1936 e 1938, Stálin — tratado no livro como o “Nº 1” — liquida boa parte da velha-guarda revolucionária no curso dos chamados “Processos de Moscou”, uma farsa judicial espantosa para se consolidar como a única fonte de poder da União Soviética. Os “processos” são especialmente espantosos porque conduzidos de forma a criar uma maquinaria argumentativa que levava os acusados a confessar a sua culpa, embora soubessem que isso não os livraria da morte, à qual já estavam condenados. A acusação essencial: conspirar contra o estado soviético, a revolução socialista e o partido.

É esse clima que Koestler reproduz em seu livro. Rubachov é um comunista revolucionário de primeira hora que está preso, acusado de conspiração e traição. Somos apresentados a seus diálogos com seus algozes, todos eles a serviço do partido e da causa. Ocorre que se formara ele também na certeza de que o partido não errava nunca e de que não se iria construir uma nova humanidade sem cometer alguns atos condenados pela moral burguesa.

Um trecho do livro é particularmente significativo. Rubachov conversa com Ivanov, um policial do regime com certas pretensões filosóficas. Este faz algumas considerações sobre Raskolnikov, o jovem assassino de “Crime e Castigo”, de Dostoiévski, aquele que mata uma velha exploradora a machadadas para supostamente usar o seu dinheiro em benefício da humanidade. Raskolnikov acaba confessando a sua culpa e busca a reabilitação.

Para Ivanov, o policial, “Crime e Castigo” é um livro que deveria ser queimado porque não propõe nenhuma questão relevante. Entende que Raskolnikov “é um louco, um criminoso, não porque se comporte logicamente ao matar a velha, mas porque está fazendo isso por interesse pessoal”. E acrescenta: “O princípio de que o fim justifica os meios é e continua sendo a única regra da ética política. Tudo o mais é conversa fiada e se derrete, escorrendo por entre os dedos. Se Raskolnikov tivesse matado a velha por ordem do Partido (por exemplo, para aumentar os fundos de auxílio às greves ou para instalar uma imprensa clandestina), então a equação ficaria de pé, e o romance, com seu problema ilusório, nunca teria sido escrito, e tanto melhor para a humanidade”.

Como vocês percebem, para Ivanov, o assassinato mais torpe se enobrece se a causa é considerada não exatamente justa, mas útil.  O programa do computador deu pau (daí a demora em voltar…), e estou digitando trechos do livro. Rubachov responde que, no poder, os revolucionários conseguiram criar uma sociedade pior do que aquela que buscavam substituir, que as condições de vida se deterioram dramaticamente em todas as áreas, que as pessoas sofrem muito mais.

Ivanov então responde: “Sim, e daí? Não acha maravilhoso? Alguma vez já aconteceu algo mais prodigioso na história? Estamos tirando a pele velha da humanidade e lhe dando uma nova. Não é uma ocupação para gente de nervos fracos”. O policial já havia dito ao líder comunista que caíra em desgraça que só há duas éticas no mundo, opostas e inconciliáveis: uma é a cristã e humana, que declara que o homem é sagrado e que os princípios da aritmética não podem ser aplicadas a unidades humanas; a outra é a coletiva, que subordina cada homem às necessidades do coletivo; esta outra, que é a sua, diz ele, “não somente permite como pede que o indivíduo seja de todas as maneiras subordinado e sacrificado à humanidade”.

De volta a Renan
E o que Renan tem com isso? É um legítimo representante ou herdeiro da esquerda, por acaso? Até namorou com o PC do B quando jovem, mas isso não tem importância. Relembro “O Zero e o Infinito” porque nenhuma  obra levou tão longe e de maneira tão viva o questionamento ético. A elite dirigente que hoje comanda o país transformou em norte moral a máxima de que o fim justifica, sim, os meios empregados. Essa visão de mundo contamina setores da imprensa. Quantos não são aqueles que justificam a aliança da velha com a nova oligarquia em nome do interesse nacional?

A “ética” de que fala Ivanov é aquela que entrega a um partido, a um ente, o destino da humanidade e de cada homem. Sim, ele está certo na constatação, entendo eu, de que, a rigor, só existem duas éticas: a que sacraliza o indivíduo e a que o transforma em peça de uma narrativa contada por aquele ente de razão. O que nos distingue, por óbvio, é que fico com a primeira, e ele, com a segunda.

O Brasil passa por um momento particularmente infeliz no que diz respeito à ética porque, com efeito, o PT é herdeiro moral do vale-tudo bolchevista — sem mais ser, por óbvio, comunista. E, em nome do que vende como “causa da humanidade”, não só pratica os piores crimes como os transforma em ferramenta de progresso social, como faz Ivanov. Esse amoralismo redentor, que apela a amanhãs gloriosos, se casou perfeitamente com os interesses das elites reacionárias brasileiras, de que são expressões os Renans, os Sarneys etc.

Se uns nunca tiveram têmpera revolucionária, os outros a empregam como farsa. Porque, de fato, se os reacionários nunca tiveram como perspectiva um novo mundo, os supostamente revolucionários queriam era dividir o comando da reação. E conseguiram. Os dois grupos se dizem hoje irmanados na defesa do bem comum, em nome do qual tudo é permitido.

O conjunto explica por que José Dirceu sai proclamando aos quatro ventos que as críticas a Renan derivam do moralismo udenista. Dirceu é o candidato a Ivanov dessa nova ordem. E Ivanov já disse: Raskolnikov, o que matou a velha a machadadas, só não era um herói porque não agiu sob o comando do partido, de uma causa.

Não sei se daqui a dois, seis, 10, 14 ou mais anos… Um dia essa gente será apeada do poder. E poderemos, ou outros poderão, refletir com ainda mais rigor sobre a era em que vivemos sob a égide do crime sem castigo. Os que chamamos as coisas por seus respectivos nomes fazemos a crônica de um tempo.

A globalizacao e a pobreza no mundo - The Globalist

Contrariamente às equivocadas afirmações dos altermundialistas, como gostam de se chamar os antiglobalizadores, a pobreza tem diminuido no mundo e nao foi' exatamente graças à ajuda externa, ou à assistência publica internacional, e sim em virtude da globalização.
Já escrevi alguns artigos sobre a redução da pobreza em nível mundial, apoiando-me nos trabalhos do economista catalão da Columbia University, Xavier Sala-i-Martin. Os interessados nesses meus trabalhos podem buscar no meu site (www.pralmeida.org) pelas palavras-chave "pobreza", "redução", ou pelo nome do economista, creio.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The Globalist Quiz > Global Economy
Marketplace Globalist Quiz: How Poverty Shrinks Globally
By The Globalist | Thursday, January 31, 2013

The developed world's attention seems to shift all too briefly to the fight against poverty in the developing world. There are signs of progress in this fight, but there are also concerns about the impact of the global financial crisis. We wonder: What is the share of the population of developing countries that now lives in extreme poverty?

Answers:
A. Over half
B. About one-third
C. About one-fifth

A. Over half is not correct.
As recently a 1981, 52.2% of the population living in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. The World Bank defines this status as people living on no more than $1.25 a day (in constant dollars). Back in 1981, the total number of people living in extreme poverty was 1.94 billion.

Even today, the level of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is still around that level, at 47% as of 2008 (the latest data available). However, many countries around the world — not just China, as is often assumed — have made big strides in reducing poverty levels.

Mexico's extreme poverty rate, for example, fell from 19% in 1999 to only 5%. And even in Ethiopia, Africa's second most-populous country, the level of extreme poverty fell by over 30 percentage points in a decade, from 86% in 1999 to 54% in 2008.

B. About one-third is not correct.
As recently a 1999, 34.7% of the population in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. That year, the total number of very poor people was 1.74 billion. The decline in percentage terms is all the more impressive, as the size of the developing world's population has increased by about 2.3 billion people since 1981, or by 66%.

Still, in the developing world outside China, the absolute number of people in extreme poverty — at 1.1 billion — is still the same as it was in 1981. While that number was on the rise in the 1980s and 1990s, it has been falling since 1999.

In the Middle East, extreme poverty is down to 2.7% of the population. In East Asia, it is down to about 14%, and in South Asia 36%.

C. About one-fifth is correct.
As of 2008, 22.4% of the population in developing countries — or 1.29 billion people — lived in extreme poverty. That is roughly equivalent to the current population of China.

Indications are that the steady decline of extreme poverty in the developing world has not been halted by the global financial crisis. It is estimated that the incidence of extreme poverty in developing countries had fallen to 20% by 2010.

That would not only move another 100 million people out of extreme poverty, but also mean that the first of the UN's Millennium Development Goals — cutting extreme poverty in half from its 1990 level — can been achieved before the 2015 deadline. Moreover, the absolute number of extremely poor people in developing countries is steadily decreasing to the one-billion level.

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