TOPBOOKS - Editora dos livros do Liberty Fund no Brasil

PROGRAMA DE COEDIÇÕES

Instituição educacional privada, o LIBERTY FUND tem por filosofia estimular o ideal de uma sociedade composta de indivíduos livres e responsáveis, ideal que se forma na Antigüidade e atravessa toda a História. Para isso, coordena e patrocina diversos programas educativos, alimentando a discussão sobre questões permanentes, relativas à organização social do mundo. Além do apoio a programas de pós-graduação e intercâmbio universitário, a cada ano mais de 180 conferências são proferidas por intelectuais e acadêmicos, em todos os continentes, e cerca de 20 livros são lançados em edições críticas.

No Brasil, o LIBERTY FUND vem realizando colóquios desde 1990, e em 2003 iniciou, em parceria com a TOPBOOKS, um programa editorial que tornará disponíveis para o leitor brasileiro textos clássicos fundamentais da cultura do homem, até então inéditos aqui, com ensaios introdutórios de renomados intelectuais e projeto gráfico e capas do designer Victor Burton. Dos 20 títulos escolhidos para compor a Coleção Liberty Classics já foram editados 19.

Dos 10 escolhidos na primeira etapa do convênio, em 2003 (leia aqui), somente A fábula das abelhas ou vícios privados, benefício público, de Bernard Mandeville (com comentário crítico, histórico e explanatório de F. B. Kaye e introdução à edição brasileira de Denis Lerrer Rosenfield), ainda está em produção. Por conta da importância, da densidade e do tamanho do texto (mais de 1.400 páginas em dois volumes), este livro – que fechará em grande estilo a Coleção Liberty Classics – foi programado para o segundo semestre de 2015, quando a Topbooks completa 25 anos de fundação. 

Da segunda fase do programa, também composta de 10 títulos, já lançamos todos. O primeiro deles saiu em julho de 2006: O homem racional / Uma interpretação moderna da ética aristotélica, do filósofo americano Henry Babcock Veatch, apontado entre os melhores livros de introdução à ética, em geral, e à ética aristotélica , em particular. O segundo, que chegou às livrarias em novembro do mesmo ano, está entre as mais prestigiadas obras do filósofo, historiador e crítico italiano Benedetto Croce: História como história de liberdade. Já o terceiro desta segunda etapa, Os deveres do homem e do cidadão de acordo com as leis do direito natural, do pensador alemão Samuel Pufendorf, saiu do forno em abril de 2007, e entre setembro e outubro do mesmo ano vieram a lume mais dois títulos: Princípios de política aplicáveis a todos os governos, do suíço Benjamin Constant, um dos líderes do jornalismo liberal, e A crise do século XVII – Religião, a Reforma e mudança social, composto de nove ensaios produzidos entre 1956 e 1967 pelo historiador inglês Hugh Trevor-Roper. 

Em março de 2008 publicou-se mais um: a obra clássica do historiador francês François Guizot, intitulada A história das origens do governo representativo na Europa, e em dezembro do mesmo ano chegaram às livrarias as Conferências sobre retórica e belas-letras do economista e filósofo escocês Adam Smith. O último foi Ensaios – Uma antologia, de Lord Acton, e o penúltimo – Reflexões sobre a Revolução na França, do irlandês Edmund Burke – alcançou o maior sucesso de vendas: a primeira edição esgotou em poucos meses, e a segunda já está no prelo. 

Com tal iniciativa, pretende-se contribuir para o debate sobre as liberdades individuais e coletivas, gesto oportuno neste momento de complexas transformações no país e no mundo.

PRIMEIRA FASE

ALTHUSIUS

Importante teórico do consentimento, do contrato, do federalismo e do corporativismo, o alemão Althusius (1557-1638) conciliou idéias bíblicas, aristotélicas e neocalvinistas em um original sistema político, baseado em princípios das leis natural e contratual. A recuperação de seu pensamento se deve, sobretudo, a dois aspectos, sintetizados na Política: sua filosofia do direito e seu federalismo. Apesar da moldura teológica, fundada na religião calvinista, trata-se do primeiro livro a apresentar uma teoria abrangente do federalismo republicano, enraizada no conceito de associação simbiótica e na idéia do consenso.

Pensador seminal, Althusius foi resgatado por teóricos alemães que, no século XIX, lutaram pela unificação da Alemanha segundo princípios federativos. Seu pensamento também foi assimilado pelos americanos, que construíram o federalismo moderno com base no individualismo e reintroduziram a idéia do Estado como associação política, mais que como instituição reificada. No século XX, a importância do autor foi observada pelo teórico liberal alemão Carl Friedrich, que em 1932 relançou a edição de 1614 da Política acrescentando elucidativo prefácio sobre a vida e a obra do autor. Hoje, quando os cientistas sociais se preocupam em investigar o problema da liberdade em relação com a família, as comunidades étnicas e outras formas de associação, as idéias de Althusius sobre o constitucionalismo e a regulação filosófica dos processos políticos voltam a ganhar atualidade.

BABBITT

Quando Democracia e Liderança foi publicado em 1924, o crítico Herbert Read afirmou, com justiça, que a motivação de Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) era "o restabelecimento de padrões humanistas no lugar das confusões utilitárias humanitárias ou românticas", então muito em voga. O livro tornou-se um marco do pensamento político moderno, o mais representativo do pensador da cultura e ensaísta americano, que não deixou uma obra extensa porque gastou grande parte da sua vida em controvérsias públicas, contestando os valores e convicções mais arraigados nos meios acadêmicos de sua época e atacando filósofos como Rousseau, Francis Bacon, Karl Marx e John Dewey.

Babbitt nunca hesitou em remar contra a corrente dos movimentos intelectuais de seu tempo, submetendo a exame crítico implacável todas as convicções morais e estéticas de seus contemporâneos. Combateu o marxismo, o freudismo, o instrumentalismo e o naturalismo. Desdenhava o sucesso fácil e a popularidade. Já na estética, opôs-se violentamente às diversas doutrinas que defendiam a arte pela arte, afirmando o propósito moral e a dimensão ética da experiência artística. Como teórico da educação, combateu com fervor a decadência da universidade americana. Seu diagnóstico da erosão dos padrões éticos e culturais da América e sua defesa do autodomínio moral contra o culto à despreocupação são temas que permanecem atuais.

BURCKHARDT

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) considerava a beleza e a liberdade os dois valores fundamentais da existência humana, e a tentativa de estabelecer um vínculo entre eles está presente em toda a sua obra, sejam os textos teóricos sobre a História da Arte, sejam as cartas escritas ao longo de quase 60 anos, que refletem uma impressionante coesão de pensamento. Defensor da moderação, esse historiador suíço de expressão alemã era pessimista em relação aos grandes fenômenos sociais de seu século: a democracia de massa, o igualitarismo e o culto do crescimento econômico e do progresso. Filia-se, nesse sentido, à tradição de liberalismo aristocrático de Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville e Ortega y Gasset.

Endereçadas a alguns dos mais importantes pensadores da sua época, entre eles Friedrich Nietzsche, estas Cartas tratam com entusiasmo de temas que mobilizavam os debates intelectuais nas mais diversas áreas: arte, arquitetura, história, poesia, música, religião. Burckhardt fez do indivíduo o centro de suas investigações: para ele, grandes personalidades podem alterar o rumo de épocas inteiras. Ao mesmo tempo, acreditava que as culturas amadurecem e entram em declínio como tudo na natureza. Daí a descrença no progresso histórico, na contracorrente do otimismo que prevalecia na época, e a rejeição ao sistema hegeliano, segundo o qual a História expressa a realização de um espírito absoluto. Sua defesa das verdadeiras e vigorosas raízes espirituais da liberdade e seu elogio da beleza continuam na ordem do dia.

LORD ACTON

Considerado o homem mais culto da Inglaterra vitoriana, Lord Acton (1834-1902) fez da defesa da liberdade uma verdadeira religião, e seus ensaios são fundadores de uma tradição liberal no Ocidente. Escrevendo sobre os temas mais diversos, Acton empenhou-se em demonstrar uma linha evolutiva da liberdade no mundo sem que esta convicção comprometa o rigor de seu método histórico. Ele concilia a pesquisa criteriosa dos arquivos primários com a necessidade de uma fundamentação da História no juízo moral, mesmo quando este juízo contraria as convicções do próprio historiador.

É a liberdade o tema que unifica esta abrangente Antologia, reunião de seus ensaios mais representativos, como "A história da liberdade na Antigüidade" e "A história da liberdade do cristianismo" - partes de uma inacabada e ambiciosa História da Liberdade. Lord Acton enfatizou a objetividade na busca da verdade histórica e desempenhou papel fundamental na transformação da historiografia inglesa em disciplina científica, inspirada na escola alemã, e ao mesmo tempo preocupada com o sentido da História, que reside, segundo ele, na liberdade humana. Por sua obra e pela influência que exerceu, é um pensador católico de suprema importância e suas originais análises da natureza da liberdade individual e política permanecem atuais.

POLANYI

De uma família de ilustres cientistas na Hungria, o químico Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) experimentou em primeira mão os horrores do totalitarismo e das duas guerras mundiais (serviu como médico do exército austro-húngaro na primeira), o que determinou em parte a sua contestação a qualquer modelo social centralizado e planificado de maneira supostamente científica. O interesse de Polanyi pela vida política na Europa se intensificou nos anos 30, quando a civilização tremia ante as ameaças do futuro, e se consolidou nos anos 40, quando os europeus passaram a olhar melancolicamente para o passado.

Os ensaios reunidos em A lógica da liberdade (1951) representam os esforços renovados do autor "para esclarecer a posição da liberdade em resposta a diversas questões levantadas por nosso conturbado período da História". Polanyi combatia a visão instrumentalista e pragmática da ciência então em voga, por acreditar que ela ameaçava a liberdade pública e perdia de vista os mistérios da existência. Essa relação entre a ciência e liberdade, entre a ideologia e a pesquisa, é o ponto de partida dessa obra e da correspondência que Polanyi manteve com economistas e intelectuais como F. A. Hayek, John Maynard Keynes e T. S. Eliot.

HUME

As implicações do pensamento do escocês David Hume (1711-1776) são unanimemente reconhecidas como revolucionárias. Seu empirismo cético engendrou problemas filosóficos que subverteram as correntes dominantes do pensamento ocidental da época, influenciando os rumos da história, da política, da demografia, da economia, da literatura, da moral e da estética. Sua independência o fez questionar as mais arraigadas convicções do cristianismo e das ciências naturais de seu tempo, e até mesmo o projeto cartesiano de conciliação entre ciência e religião foi alvo de seus ataques.

Para se chegar a uma compreensão correta das idéias de Hume, faz-se necessária a leitura atenta destes Ensaios, que lançam os fundamentos de uma filosofia prática, estreitamente ligada à vida cotidiana. Publicados pela primeira vez em 1741, são textos fluentes, em tom informal, dirigidos fundamentalmente ao leitor comum, que Hume desejava atingir após o fracasso de seu Tratado sobre a natureza humana, por acreditar que o intercâmbio permanente entre os "homens de letras" e os "homens do mundo" era benéfico para todos. Essa aproximação entre filosofia e cotidiano é uma das principais contribuições dos escritos aqui reunidos.

PASSMORE

O filósofo e cientista político John Passmore realiza em A perfectibilidade do homem (1970) um ambicioso balanço das diversas formas de se interpretar os conceitos de perfeição e perfectibilidade ao longo da História, desde os antigos gregos aos dias atuais, passando pelo cristianismo, o Renascimento, o Iluminismo, o anarquismo, as utopias, o comunismo e as teorias evolucionistas do homem e da sociedade. O autor recorre não somente a obras filosóficas e teológicas mas também a literárias, como os romances de George Orwell e Zamiatin.

Nascido na Austrália em 1914, Passmore traça neste livro um panorama amplo e refinado no qual explora as variações do conceito de perfectibilidade do homem e as diferentes conseqüências da idéia de que indivíduo e sociedade podem ser aperfeiçoados, aí incluídas as conseqüências negativas - das quais o turbulento século XX é fértil em exemplos - muitas vezes catastróficas para as liberdades e responsabilidades individuais e para o destino político e econômico das nações. E mostra como a ação social e o progresso científico se tornaram caminhos para o aperfeiçoamento do homem. Obra profunda e incisiva, nem por isso deixa de ser acessível ao leitor comum, por conta de sua linguagem clara e distante do jargão acadêmico.

OAKESHOTT

Para Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990), o desafio específico dos historiadores é deixar de lado quaisquer preocupações de ordem prática ou ideológica em sua abordagem do passado, pois uma das maiores ilusões do ser humano é a crença em sistemas que nos levarão à perfeição final numa terra prometida. Desafio extremamente difícil, porque geralmente nosso interesse predominante não está na História em si, mas na política retrospectiva, e temos a tendência a transformar sistemas filosóficos em evangelhos. Sobre a História(1983) reúne cinco ensaios do pensador inglês que abordam temas centrais da ciência política, como a natureza da História, o primado da lei e a luta pelo poder inerente à condição humana.

Oakeshott se destaca entre os filósofos políticos modernos por ter levado até os limites do entendimento humano suas dúvidas quanto aos fundamentos racionais. É um equívoco, porém, classificá-lo como cético; ao contrário, sua compreensão da liberdade decorre do fato de acreditar que não estamos condenados a "obter e gastar" - à "dança macabra das necessidades e satisfações" - e que existem diferentes maneiras de respondermos ao mundo. A original abordagem histórica deste pensador inglês foi forjada pela leitura de Sócrates, Santo Agostinho, Montaigne e Hobbes, mas ele não entendia os clássicos como repositórios de conhecimentos e lições de uso prático, e sim como introduções a modos de pensar.

MANDEVILLE

"Não pode haver dúvidas de que a obra de Mandeville teve uma enorme circulação e levou muitas pessoas a refletir sobre problemas importantes", escreveu o economista F. A. Hayek a propósito de A fábula das abelhas. Já Samuel Johnson afirmou que a leitura de Mandeville na juventude alargou muito sua visão das coisas. Ainda hoje, quase três séculos após sua primeira edição, este livro ainda impressiona pelo frescor do estilo, pela vitalidade do pensamento e por sua interpretação original e mordaz da dinâmica social e econômica da História.

Publicado originalmente em 1714, A fábula das abelhas defende a tese de que vícios privados trazem benefício público, como já sugere o subtítulo da obra. Quando cada indivíduo trabalha tendo em vista somente os próprios interesses, acaba contribuindo para o bem coletivo, afirma o holandês Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). Daí sua rejeição a qualquer interferência dos poderes públicos na vida social, antecipando a teoria do laissez-faire e aproximando-se das idéias de Adam Smith sobre a "mão invisível" do desenvolvimento econômico, que por sua vez resultou na tese do "egoísmo ético" da economia moderna, isto é: a de que o vício é o alicerce da prosperidade nacional e da felicidade. Quase 300 anos depois, as teses de Mandeville continuam a alimentar debates sobre os rumos do mundo em que vivemos.

HUMBOLDT

Friedrich Hayek classificou Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) como "o maior filósofo da liberdade", e Lord Acton se referiu a ele como "a figura mais importante da Alemanha". A leitura de Os limites da ação do Estado, publicado originalmente em 1852, ajuda a entender por quê. Valiosa introdução ao pensamento político liberal clássico, trata-se de um livro crucial para o desenvolvimento do liberalismo na Europa no século XIX. Neste livro - que teve influência decisiva sobre outro ensaio clássico, Da Liberdade, de John Stuart Mill - Humboldt aborda a relação entre a liberdade e o desenvolvimento da personalidade individual, discute a ação do Estado no cerceamento dos cidadãos e sugere instrumentos para frear este papel limitador.

Crítico radical de qualquer forma de intervenção estatal na vida dos cidadãos, Humboldt parte do princípio de que todas as regulamentações governamentais contêm algum grau de coação, o que pode levar os homens a esperar orientação e ajuda externa em vez de buscá-las eles próprios. A vida em comunidade é um tema central na sua filosofia política, e é justamente em Os limites da ação do Estado que Humboldt desenvolve seu conceito do homem como um animal social, empenhado em progredir e cultivar-se. Daí a crítica aos grandes Estados, pois o autor estava convencido de que eles impediam o pleno desenvolvimento dos indivíduos.

James Fenimore Cooper e a "tirania da maioria" - Melissa Matthes (Law and Liberty)

James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

Law and Liberty, February 19, 2020

George Caleb Bingham, "The County Election"

In 1838 James Fenimore Cooper was worried about American democracy. He was apprehensive, not about American’s democratic institutions during the Jacksonian era so much as he was concerned that features of American civil society—especially newspapers, religion, and political economy—were becoming the greatest threats to the maintenance of American democratic legitimacy. Although Cooper, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that natural rights were a given, he feared that the young republic’s post-revolutionary culture might not be able to preserve those natural rights because of an increasingly conformist and fatuous public sphere.

After a half dozen years living aboard, Cooper described how returning to America, he found himself a “foreigner in his own country.” He noted two alarming features, “the disposition of the majority to carry out the opinions of the system to the extremes and a disposition of the minority to abandon all to the current day.” His instructional book, The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America was his attempt to offer both a diagnosis and a remedy.

In The American Democrat, Cooper began to thread the needle between his commitment to the rule of the majority and its imperative for the maintenance of democracy and his increasing worry about how the majority might become a mob and thus threaten minorities:

The majority rules in prescribed cases, and in no others. It elects to office, it enacts ordinary laws, subject however to the restriction of the constitution, and it decides most of the questions that arise in the primitive meetings of the people; questions that do not usually effect any of the principal interests of life.

Cooper was safeguarding liberty and majority rule but restricting it to “questions that do not usually effect any of the principal interests of life.” Rather than a paean to democracy, Cooper notes, “we do not adopt the popular polity because it is perfect, but because it is less imperfect than any other.” (Apparently, Winston Churchill had been reading James Fenimore Cooper, as well.) “As no man is without spot in his justice, as no man has infinite wisdom, or infinite mercy, we are driven to take refuge… in the government of many.” This is rather steep decline from Cooper’s optimism regarding humanity’s natural justice, which he had celebrated more robustly in his earlier work, Notions of the Americans.[1]

According to Cooper, one of the primary threats to democracy is the power of public opinion. On the positive side, democratic institutions tend “to equalize advantages and to spread is blessings over the entire surface of society.” But, because of the well-known concurrent tendency of democracies to “lend value and estimation to mediocrity,” the people of large democracies can lack the insight and intelligence to accurately judge character and thus are “exposed to become the dupes of demagogues and political schemers, most of the crimes of democracies arise from the faults and designs of men of this character, rather than from the propensities of the people, who having little temptation to do wrong, are seldom guilty of crimes except through ignorance.” It is also why democracies are particularly prone to the influence of foreign nations, “secret means are resorted to, to influence sentiment in this way, and we have witnessed in this country open appeals to the people… in matters of foreign relations, made by foreign, not to say, hostile agents,” an insight that comes over a century before the revelations about Cambridge Analytica.

Freedom and Self-Government

One of the mistakes citizens make regarding their understanding of liberty is the assumption that those nations with either the mildest or fewest laws are therefore the freest, “This opinion is untenable, since the power that concedes this freedom of action, can recall it.” Cooper then recounts a long story of a slaveowner who grants one slave liberty to travel to town and denies to the other the same privilege. The rather Aesop-like moral of the story is that neither slave is free since each is still subject to the will of the slave owner. Consequently, Cooper leaps, “it follows, that no country can properly be deemed free, unless the body of the nation possess, in the last resort, the legal power to frame its laws according to its wants.” Rule by simple majorities does not work, because of their inability to consider what is beyond their own self-interest and minority rule, even by “the educated and affluent classes of a country” is also insufficient since they, too, are prone to the same self-aggrandizement.

Fortuitously, the resolution is that:

Nature has rendered man incapable of enjoying freedom without restraint, and in the other, incapable of submitting, entirely without resistance, to oppression. The harshest despots are compelled to acknowledge the immutable principles of eternal justice, affecting the necessity and the love of right…

For Cooper, much rests on the configuration of the constitution, a hallowed document from the founding era, which maintains the balance between the reckless mob of the majority and the partisan interests of the minority. Even as Cooper has thoughtfully detailed how civil society jeopardizes the mechanisms and constitutional instructions of democracy, he does not develop a robust conception of power, offering only a tidy summation: “Certain general principles that shall do as little violence to natural justice, as is compatible with the peace and security of society.”

Although Cooper was always clear that no one in his family had ever owned slaves, his views on American slavery were those one would expect from an aristocratic land owner in 1838:

It is quite possible to be an excellent Christian and a slave holder and the relations of master and slave, may be a means of exhibiting some of the mildest graces of the character… In one sense, slavery may actually benefit a man, there being little doubt that the African is, in nearly all respects, better off in servitude in this country, than when living in a state of barbarism at home.

Cooper has a rather complicated, if not convoluted, assessment of slavery. On the one hand, he maintains that the virtues of Christianity are compatible with slavery, in part, because the slave owner can cultivate his compassion, generosity and understanding of those without his (natural) advantages.  Yet, on the other hand, Cooper maintains his confidence in black inferiority while noting that Africans, too, can benefit from being in democratic America. Similarly, Cooper gives Native Americans significantly more agency in his fiction, than his contemporaries do, but he also continues to limit their full human development to the colonial imagination of the 1830’s and 1840’s.[2]

Cooper acknowledges that the institution damages the ethical sensibility of the slave holder, “it leads to sin in its consequences, in a way peculiarly its own, and may be set down as a impolitic and vicious institution. It encourages those faults of character that depend on an uncontrolled will, on the one side, and an abject submission, on the other.” Cooper acknowledges that the institution is damaging the foundations of American democracy—autonomy, restraint, and education. It is an early iteration of what will become pivotal to the case for racial equity from Frederick Douglass to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cooper discusses, too, how “nature has made a stamp on the American slave” that will make it difficult for him to integrate into American society once slavery is abolished. He proclaims, “American slavery shall cease, and when that day shall arrive (unless early and effectual means are devised to obviate it) two races will exist in the same region, whose feelings will be embittered by inextinguishable hatred, and who carry on their faces, the respective stamps of their factions.” This is as accurate of a forecast of the period of Reconstruction as historically exists. And, so Cooper recommends the legal process; he is adamant that “slavery can be legally abolished by amending the constitution, and Congress has the power, by a vote of two-thirds of both houses, to propose amendments to that instrument. Now, whatever congress has power to do, it has power to discuss.” But, he says, “it would be equal madness for congress, in the present state of the country, to attempt to propose an amendment to the constitution, to abolish slavery altogether, as it would infallibly fail.”

It is tempting to read The American Democrat, as some have suggested, as biographical vengeance rather than political philosophy. Many of the criticisms that Cooper makes about the threats to democracy, especially regarding public opinion, had deeply affected his own personal life. For by 1837, as one of Cooper’s early biographers noted, “Cooper had pretty sedulously improved every opportunity of making himself unpopular. His criticisms had been distributed with admiral impartiality.” Cooper had disparaged nearly everyone and everything: from the Old Federalist party, which he accused of secretly longing for monarchy; to the sons of Puritans who he had exasperated by styling them “the grand inquisitors of private life”; as well as nearly all of the people of the Northern states, as he declared repeatedly that it was in the Middle States alone that the English language was spoken with purity. He despised that newspapers and public opinion and religion might be personal, and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic disdained him. But, while this is a casually rewarding way to interpret this book, especially when one includes his expulsion from Yale at 16 after locking a donkey in a recitation room and exploding the door off another student’s room, the fact is that Cooper has insightfully assessed features of American democracy that remain salient to this day. He raises concerns and offers insights that are remarkably similar to those of the travelling aristocrat reporting on American democracy at the same time, Alexis de Tocqueville.

Threatening Democracy

Reading Cooper today, one marvels at his prescient insights regarding the elements that could potentially threaten American democracy. Consider his assertion that in a democracy people became “impatient of all superiorities… and manifest a wish to prefer those who affect a deference to the public rather than those who are worthy.” Perhaps nothing makes that observation more salient than a hectic primary season bloated with sycophants adjusting their views to the whims of public polls.

In addition, Cooper recognized the risks of a populism led by demagogues. Etymologically, a demagogue is “a leader of the rabble,” but Cooper adds a more precise nuance as one “who seeks to advance his own interest by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people.” Cooper notes that “the true theatre of a demagogue is a democracy, for the body of the community possessing the power, the master he pretends to serve is best able to reward his efforts.”

Cooper then offers “rules” by which one can determine if a leader is acting in the interests of the people or on their own account: “The man who is constantly telling the people they are unerring in judgment, and that they have all power, is a demagogue.” A second rule is that a “demagogue always puts the people before the constitution and the laws, in face of the obvious truth that the people have placed the constitution and the laws before themselves.” And, finally, there is a revelatory test, Cooper details, by which “while proclaiming his devotion to the majority, he (the demagogue) in truth, opposes the will of the entire people, in order to effect his purposes with a part.”

It’s a powerful analysis of how the very features of democracy—the rule of the majority and the educated opinion of the people—is what renders them liable to the coercive power of the demagogue:

Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguards, after placing its foundations on a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants, and all its real friends ought to know that the most insidious attacks are made on it by those who are the largest trustees of authority, in their efforts to increase their power.

James Fenimore Cooper remains one of those treasures of the American literary canon, a writer able to capture the particularities of his historical age through his tales and novels, like The Last of the Mohicans and The Deer Slayer as well as one who offers enduring insights into not only the American national character but the perils that could potentially jeopardize the longevity of the great American experiment.

[1] For more on Notions of the Americans, see John P McWilliams, Political Justice in a Republic: James Fenimore Cooper’s America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

[2] For a more extended treatment of Cooper’s characterization of the Negro in his novels, see Therman B. O’Daniel, “Cooper’s Treatment of the Negro” Phylon(1940-1956) vol. 8, no. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1947), pp.164-176.

5G da Huawei: a luta de retaguarda dos EUA (NYT, The Atlantic, Asia Times)

Aqui o conjunto de três artigos selecionados por meu amigo e colega de carreira Pedro Luiz Rodrigues sobre a tentativa dos EUA de impedir que outros países aceitem e contratem a tecnologia 5G da Huawei.

The New York Times – 18.2.2020

Huawei Is Winning the Argument in Europe, as the U.S. Fumbles to Develop Alternatives

Germany seems poised to follow Britain in letting the Chinese maker build next-generation networks, despite last appeals from the United States.

David E. Sanger and David McCabe

Washington - America’s global campaign to prevent its closest allies from using Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, in the next generation of wireless networks has largely failed, with foreign leaders publicly rebuffing the United States argument that the firm poses an unmanageable security threat.

Britain has already called the Trump administration’s bluff, betting that officials would back away from their threat to cut off intelligence sharing with any country that used Huawei equipment in its network. Apart from an angry phone call between President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Britain appears to be paying no price for its decision to let Huawei into limited parts of its network, under what the British say will be rigorous surveillance.

Germany now appears ready to follow a similar path, despite an endless stream of cajoling and threats by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other U.S. officials at a global security conference in Munich last weekend.

In public speeches and private conversations, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Esper continued to hammer home the dangers of letting a Chinese firm into networks that control critical communications, saying it would give the Chinese government the ability to spy on — or, in times of conflict, turn off — those networks. The security risks are so severe, they warned, that the United States would no longer be able to share intelligence with any country whose network uses Huawei.

 “If countries choose to go the Huawei route,” Mr. Esper told reporters on Saturday, “it could well jeopardize all the information sharing and intelligence sharing we have been talking about, and that could undermine the alliance, or at least our relationship with that country.”

Yet officials sense their continued drumbeat of warnings is losing its punch in Europe, so the administration is shifting its approach. The United States is now aiming to cripple Huawei by choking off its access to the American technology it needs and trying to cobble together a viable American-European alternative to compete with it.

The Huawei fight is just one part of a bigger U.S.-China battle, as Washington tries to contain Beijing’s influence and power and ensure that the world’s second-largest economy does not come to dominate advanced industries that could give it an economic and military edge. That includes the next-generation telecommunications networks that Huawei is building, known as 5G. Those superfast networks will control communications, critical infrastructure and, most worrying for American officials, the “internet of things” devices that are already controlling factories, autonomous vehicles and the day-to-day operations of military bases.

The United States is also trying to limit China’s access to American technology more broadly and is considering restricting sales of microchips, artificial intelligence, robotics and some types of advanced software, along with preventing tech companies from teaming up — or even sharing research — with Chinese firms.

Last week, the United States turned up the legal pressure on Huawei by announcing new charges of racketeering and theft of trade secrets, including allegations from more than a decade ago. The new charges were added to a sweeping indictment filed in 2019 that accused the company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, of fraud and sanctions evasion. As part of that case, the Trump administration has been pressing Canada to extradite Ms. Meng, who was arrested in late 2018 in Vancouver at the behest of American officials, so that she can face charges in the United States. Ms. Meng is the eldest daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei.

This month, the administration is expected to try to squeeze Huawei even further by closing a loophole that has allowed the firm to continue buying parts and products from American companies, despite a Trump administration ban on selling to Huawei. While the Pentagon initially opposed the effort, fearing it could hurt defense suppliers, it has now reversed its position amid pressure from other administration officials.

But the effort to handicap Huawei has been complicated by the lack of an alternative to the company, which offers low-cost telecom equipment partially subsidized by the Chinese government. Right now the only real competitors are Nokia and Ericsson, two European firms that claim they have deployed more 5G networks than Huawei, but are clearly struggling to match its prices or keep up with the Chinese firm’s research and development.

That has sent the administration scrambling to present European and other nations with another option. Over the span of 10 days, Attorney General William P. Barr, Vice President Mike Pence and other officials have offered differing American strategies to build a credible competitor to Huawei. Yet at times, they have contradicted one another’s ideas, often in public.

In private meetings, Mr. Trump has been urging American firms to get into the competition themselves. But the administration is deeply divided internally over whether the United States needs to invest in the technology or leave the market to sort it out.

Mr. Barr further confounded things with a speech this month where he called for American acquisition of Nokia and Ericsson “through American ownership of a controlling stake, either directly or through a consortium of private American and allied companies.”

“We and our closest allies certainly need to be actively considering this approach,” Mr. Barr said.

American officials have gently walked back Mr. Barr’s comments. Asked about the prospect of a “controlling stake,” Robert Blair, an assistant to Mr. Trump for international telecommunications policy, told The New York Times that “we are focused more on putting everyone in the tent than putting U.S. taxpayer dollars in the midst.”

Mr. Pence, in remarks to CNBC, said the best response to Huawei was to free up airwaves for use in 5G networks operated by American carriers.

Frustration with America’s anti-Huawei campaign is building. Speaking in Munich, Mr. Esper trotted out the same security warnings the United States has been using for more than a year, telling a packed conference hall of European diplomats and business leaders that the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese intelligence were trying to extend their authoritarian state and that Europe must fight back.

“Huawei and 5G are today’s poster child for this nefarious activity,” he said. “Let’s be smart. Let’s learn from the past and let’s get 5G right so we don’t regret our decisions later.”

Yet his audience remained skeptical.

“Many of us in Europe agree that there are significant dangers with Huawei, and the U.S. for at least a year has been telling us, do not use Huawei. Are you offering an alternative?” asked Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonia’s former president. “Are you going to subsidize Nokia and Ericsson? I mean, what do we get? What is it that we should do other than not use Huawei?”

Huawei has proved increasingly effective at pushing back against the United States. After U.S. officials said last week that they had long ago found a “back door” that would allow the company to siphon information off any network, without American telecommunications firms knowing it, the company called it “impossible” and demanded evidence. But none has been declassified.

Andy Purdy, a former homeland security official who now works for Huawei, said the company has suggested a way around security concerns by offering to license its technology “so the Americans or Europeans can build it themselves.” The United States has not responded to the offer, Mr. Purdy said.

The fight over Huawei has put many European countries in a no-win position, forcing them to either rebuff a key intelligence ally’s warnings and risk their key alliance, or alienate China, a critical trading partner. Further complicating the decision is the lack of definitive U.S. intelligence showing that Huawei has ever gained access to data that flows across its networks during the two decades it has provided telecommunications equipment to Europe.

Fear of Chinese retaliation has gripped Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and her government. While Germany’s intelligence chiefs have largely joined the American assessment of Huawei’s national security dangers, Ms. Merkel is focused on the effects on German exports to China, especially after Chinese officials have hinted that Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, the maker of the Mercedes-Benz, would bear the brunt of retaliation.

“I have always been more concerned about the possibility of network manipulation,” Norbert Röttgen, the chairman of the German Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said at the Munich conference. “You don’t even have to actually take that step, if you control the network. The knowledge that you can is power in itself. How free would we really be in our choices with respect to protecting human rights and other issues if we know that the functioning of crucial parts of our economy depends on the good will of an external power?”

Yet European officials say Germany is likely to mirror Britain’s decision to use Huawei and engage in strict monitoring. Germany, like Britain, is expected to keep Huawei out of the most sensitive parts of the telecom network but allow the firm to provide equipment and software for the radio networks that control cell towers and base stations around the country.

That decision will still be a huge loss for the United States. Germany and Britain are America’s closest intelligence-sharing partners, and both nations sit atop critical points along fiber-optic cables that are key to intercepting communications from Russia to the Middle East. American officials, including the National Security Agency, have expressed concern about the Chinese government’s ability to infiltrate those communications.

The United States has had some success in keeping Huawei out of other networks. Australia has flatly banned Huawei and Japan has done so indirectly. Poland, eager for a deeper American alliance, is likely to keep Huawei at bay. Italy, lured by the promise of a $3 billion Huawei investment in its telecommunications system, at first announced it was giving Huawei a major contract to build its “radio networks,” the base stations and antennas that connect to cellphones and internet-of-things devices. Then it suggested it would review each of those deals, but has been murky about how.

In the absence of a cohesive U.S. strategy, a group of major wireless carriers has considered another approach that would allow more companies to challenge Huawei. The group is pressing for a common architecture for the software and hardware that run 5G networks — an idea that has gained traction with some U.S. policymakers.

Such a system would allow smaller companies to make individual pieces of networking equipment that interact with one another, breaking Huawei’s market dominance.

Mr. Barr, in his speech, said the idea is “just pie in the sky.”

The proposal has gained traction among others in Washington and the administration. The two top lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, introduced a bill in January that would allocate at least $750 million to research and development of such an open system. It also allocates $500 million to “accelerate the adoption of trusted and secure equipment globally.”

Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, recently told The Wall Street Journal that the United States was supporting efforts to use software to undercut Huawei.

*

The Atlantic, Washington D C – 19.2.2020

America’s Allies Are Unconvinced

Uri Friedman

In the contest between the United States and China over who gets to shape the world in the coming century, America seems to be playing to win. But it’s running into a big problem. Despite the global network of alliances Washington has built up, it’s been unable to convince those allies to hop aboard the “great-power-competition” express and leave China behind.

U.S. officials are learning just how challenging it is to persuade friendly nations that America is a reliable partner capable of providing them with viable alternatives to what China has on offer—that the rewards of drawing closer to Washington outweigh the risks of alienating Beijing. That’s in part because of the mixed messages from the American president himself: He’s notoriously iffy about his commitment to allies, even as he often expresses his adoration of the Chinese president (notwithstanding the ongoing U.S.-China trade war).

The consequences of all these doubts have been especially evident in the past few weeks, as America’s closest ally in the world (the United Kingdom) and one of the most pro-American countries in the world (the Philippines) have essentially declared, “We’re good, thanks.”

In not following America’s lead, these allies have set precedents for how countries caught between the superpowers could act in the future. They have also signaled that international relations today are too intertwined, and Chinese power too magnetic, for them to enlist in a U.S.-led coalition and usher in a Cold War–style bifurcated world. If the United States is intent on reconstructing that world, it will likely find itself largely isolated. If the United States wishes to not be isolated, it will have to develop compelling alternatives for allies to stick with it instead of China.

The countermovement against a U.S.-China cold war gained strength in late January, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the United Kingdom would allow the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to provide equipment for Britain’s next-generation 5G mobile network.

This was a slap in the face to the U.S. officials who had spent months lobbying their British counterparts to ban Huawei because of alleged security risks associated with its connections to the Chinese government. The Trump administration reportedly went so far as to share classified intelligence with the United Kingdom indicating that Huawei could potentially spy on and disrupt foreign networks—a claim Huawei denies.

Ultimately, the U.K. chose to split the difference between China and the United States. The British government said it would keep Huawei technology out of the most sensitive parts of the country’s new 5G network, but it won’t follow the United States, Australia, and Japan in outright prohibiting the provider.

But the fact that the U.K., which famously enjoys a “special relationship” with the United States, went with that option—with intelligence sharing and trade talks with Washington on the line after Brexit, no less—emboldened other allies. The European Union and France swiftly disclosed similar plans, and Germany looks poised to do the same. Other conflicted allies, such as India and South Korea, are undoubtedly watching the cascade.

For these countries, the benefits of partnering with Huawei—the dominant player in the global 5G market, and also the cheapest because of Chinese government subsidies—are obvious while the costs are more opaque, if no less real. As Johnson put it, “If people oppose one brand or another then they have to tell us what is the alternative, right?”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has recognized this weakness in America’s message to allies, proposing that the U.S. government quickly offer a “market-ready alternative” to Huawei by taking a controlling ownership stake in Huawei’s European competitors Nokia or Ericsson.

But Barr also acknowledged that the Trump administration’s grievances with Huawei are about more than security risks—amounting to a battle over which superpower will dominate the backbone of the future digital economy, with trillions of dollars in new opportunities in play. This is true, but it’s also an admission that is likely to strengthen allies’ suspicions that the United States’ position is really about maintaining America’s technological leadership, not securing partners.

Hence the transatlantic divergence. While the Trump administration claims that a rising China poses an existential threat to American preeminence, my colleague Tom McTague has written, “London appears to have already calculated that China is a land paved with gold it cannot afford to stay away from.”

Many countries around the world are now caught between the United States as their main security ally and China as their top trading partner. And this past week one of those countries, the Philippines, a former U.S. territory, began backing out of its decades-old security alliance with Washington.

President Rodrigo Duterte, a critic of the United States ever since coming to power in 2016, served notice that his government will terminate an accord that governs the rules for U.S. forces participating in joint military exercises and training in the Philippines. The parties may still find a way to salvage the pact before the termination takes effect in 180 days. And even if they don’t, other elements of the military alliance, such as a separate mutual-defense treaty, may endure.

But Duterte’s decision nevertheless constitutes the gravest threat to the alliance in years and jeopardizes the U.S. military’s efforts to deter Chinese aggression in the region. As the Asia scholar Brad Glosserman has written, Duterte’s move was in part motivated by his doubts about America’s commitment to the Philippines’ defense and concerns about antagonizing an ascendant China. In fact, the country’s military chief has suggested that the Philippines could broker new military-cooperation agreements with China despite their maritime territorial disputes. Even if this is just a troll of the United States, it’s working. As Defense Secretary Mark Esper noted, the Duterte government is heading “in the wrong direction.”

But one U.S. official who doesn’t seem especially concerned is Esper’s boss. Asked about Duterte’s announcement, Trump told reporters that he was “fine” with it and even thanked the Philippines for saving the United States “a lot of money.”

It’s the kind of gripe from Trump that countries that share long-standing military alliances with America have grown accustomed to. But now they’re also concluding that despite what administration officials say, Trump himself thinks about competing with China in the narrow terms of not getting fleeced on trade rather than in the broader terms of contending with the Chinese geostrategically as a superpower.

His administration is also torn between the impulse to scale back America’s investments abroad and prevailing over a China that is ramping up its own investments. While China is investing more than a trillion dollars in Belt and Road infrastructure projects across Eurasia, the Trump administration’s 2021 budget proposal suggests setting aside a relatively measly $800 million to provide an alternative to “predatory Chinese international lending.” Similarly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is currently on a trip to Senegal, Ethiopia, and Angola that is intended, as one State Department official briefing reporters phrased it, to emphasize America’s interest in “dramatically increasing U.S. trade and investment” in these and other African countries. But all three countries have close ties with China, whose diplomatic and economic investments in the region far outweigh America’s.

More broadly, allies are less inclined to side with the U.S. now that they’ve witnessed how major foreign-policy initiatives are no longer likely to carry over from one administration to the next. This is the case even with what is arguably the most bipartisan belief in Washington these days: that competition between a rising China and a dominant United States will define the 21st century. During a recent visit to London, for example, Pompeo described the Chinese Communist Party as “the central threat of our times.” Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’s foreign-policy adviser, told me around the same time that a Sanders administration would consider climate change “the number-one security threat” facing the United States, which would make China, as the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, a crucial partner. Why go out on a limb and pick a side when one U.S. election could scramble the sides?

In a new report on U.S. policy toward China, the Center for a New American Security noted that while U.S. partners generally don’t want to be part of a new international system led by an authoritarian China, they also cannot ignore Beijing as a mammoth “economic opportunity and geographic reality.” Any American strategy needs to recognize that, the authors advised.

The guidance also came with a warning: “Attempts to construct an explicitly anti-China alliance will fail.” On the day the report was released, the United Kingdom announced its Huawei decision.

*

Asia Times, Bangkok – 20.2.2020

Can US export controls on chips stop Huawei?

Trade restrictions might push the company to accelerate the use of advanced chip-making techniques

David P. Goldman

The world’s semiconductor industry is struggling to understand reports from Washington that the Trump Administration may try to block sales of chips to Huawei Technologies if they are manufactured with American equipment.

It isn’t clear that the United States has the technological clout to make export controls work. The result might be to push Huawei and other Chinese companies to speed up the adoption of more advanced chip-making techniques that American companies do not offer, producing faster and more efficient chips.

The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 17, “The Trump administration is weighing new trade restrictions on China that would limit the use of American chip-making equipment, as it seeks to cut off Chinese access to key semiconductor technology, according to people familiar with the plan. The Commerce Department is drafting changes to the so-called foreign direct product rule, which restricts foreign companies’ use of US technology for military or national-security products. The changes could allow the agency to require chip factories world-wide to get licenses if they intend to use American equipment to produce chips for Huawei Technologies Co., according to the people familiar with the discussions.”

In a separate action, the US Department of Defense reportedly suspended its opposition to a plan to block sales of components to Huawei if 10% of their value is derived from American technology. In January, the Pentagon reportedly blocked a Commerce Department proposal to impose a 10% threshold because it would harm US technology companies, and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said that the proposal was rejected because “We don’t want to put our great companies out of business.”

Taiwan Semiconductor, the world’s leading foundry and Huawei’s biggest supplier, has told the industry press that its most advanced chips embody US content under the proposed 10% threshold. “According to TSMC internal assessment, its 7 nm uses less than 10% of US technology thus it will have no issues. However, its 14 nm supply to Huawei may face some problems,” Gizchina reported on Dec. 23.

Taiwan Semiconductor already manufactures 7-nanometer chipsets for Huawei’s subsidiary Hsilicon – the Kirin 980 and 990 sets for 4G as well as 5G broadband. The chip architecture stems from Britain’s ARM, a subsidiary of Japan’s Softbank.

ARM declared last October that its technology was not of American but of British origin and therefore exempt from US controls. Huawei’s Ascend 910 Artificial Intelligence chip for high-speed servers also uses 7-nanometer fabrication from Taiwan Semiconductor. TSMC has been producing 7-nanometer chips since 2016 with what the company claims are acceptable yields. In October 2019, the Taiwanese firm announced that it already was delivering 7-nanometer chips to customers in “high volume.”

The 7-nanometer process requires Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which etches billions of transistors onto the chip’s surface. The denser chips provide 20% more processing capacity with lower power consumption than older chips. In 2020, TSMC promises to introduce 6-nanometer chips with yet another 20% gain in efficiency.

According to Huawei, the Ascend chip design is a game-changer in artificial intelligence. The company markets the Ascend chipset with its proprietary AI software framework Mindspore, and claims that the new development framework doubles the efficiency of developers through the use of natural language processing that requires fewer lines of code.

Most of Huawei’s products still use 14-nanometer chips, but the Chinese national champion can source the older chips on the Chinese mainland, Taiwan News commented Dec. 25: “In the event the US does go ahead with its plans, Huawei could either choose to buy 14-nm chips from China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) or switch to 7-nm or even 5-nm products from TSMC.”

Speaking on background, a senior Huawei executive said, “We, as do others, have plans to produce chips below 7 nanometers, to 5 and below over the course of several years. This is clearly the direction of all chipmakers. The important thing isn’t who gets there first, as long as you have your own independent capability.”

There are several technologies that can produce 7-nanometer and under chips, but the most promising is extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), now employed by TSMC as well as Samsung, the second-largest chip producer.

Although American companies like LAM Research and Applied Materials are the largest providers of chip-making equipment, the only producer of EUV lithography equipment is the Dutch firm ASML. Last year the United States persuaded the Netherlands to delay the sale of EUV equipment to China’s SMIC, but Taiwan’s TSMC has already purchased 30 lithography machines from ASML. Presumably, chips manufactured by TSMC for Huawei using Dutch equipment would not be subject to American controls.

Huawei started preparing a year and a half ago for intensified US sanctions, Nikkei Asian Review reported last September in a cover story headlined “Insight Huawei’s Secret Plan to Beat American Trade War Sanctions.”

According to reporters Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li:

In the first few weeks of 2019, 20 engineers from Huawei Technologies arrived in the riverside town of Jiangyin in eastern China on a secret mission. They took up stations at the state-backed Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology, China’s largest chip packaging and testing company, where they went to work upgrading the facilities and increasing the site’s capacity, ahead of a production surge in the autumn.

“These Huawei staff are on-site almost seven days a week, from day to night, nitpicking and reviewing all the details … demanding strictly that the local company meets global standards as soon as possible,” one chip industry executive familiar with the situation told the Nikkei Asian Review. “It’s honestly like preparing for wartime.”

All across Asia, companies in the computer chip industry were receiving similar messages from Huawei: Boost your production, and we will buy your product. In a slowing global market, Huawei made a commitment that was impossible to resist: The company guaranteed up to 80% utilization rates for the next two years to potential and current suppliers.

In April 2018, the United States punished the second-largest Chinese telecommunications company ZTE by suspending sales of US chipsets for its smartphone handsets, effectively shutting the company down.

President Trump intervened to allow ZTE to pay a multi-billion-dollar fine and accept American monitors in return for the restoration of chip sales. By December 2018, though, Huawei Technologies surprised the world by launching its own Kirin chipset, which competes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon offering.

The speed with which China reached self-sufficiency in chip design surprised the United States. Washington has escalated its attempts to deny Huawei access to critical technology, including the April 2019 announcement that all component sales to Huawei would require special licenses from the Commerce Department. Through domestic substitutes and Asian suppliers, Huawei quickly produced handsets as well as 5G telecommunications equipment with no US components.

The trouble is that the United States stopped investing in high-tech manufacturing after the 2000 tech stock crash, which in part was occasioned by excessive investment in telecom hardware. Investment in physical production of electronics rapidly shifted to Asia. In 2019, virtually no venture capital commitments were assigned to manufacturing, as US investors preferred software.

After nearly two decades of neglect of the US high-tech industrial base, so much capacity and know-how have shifted overseas that the US may lack the clout to deny access to Chinese companies.

General Santos Cruz vitorioso - Editorial DefesaNet

Editorial DefesaNet
General Santos Cruz: A derrota e a vitória de um verdadeiro estadista

Ao longo da história da humanidade, nos milhares de conflitos que ocorreram sempre lembramos do nome do Grande General que venceu uma batalha decisiva.

Os perdedores ficam esquecidos na poeira do tempo.

Porém, existem aqueles raros generais que mesmo sendo derrotados no campo de batalha conseguiram retornar e se tornar figuras marcantes na história militar Universal.

Um deles é o russo Marechal Mikhail Kutuzov, que foi derrotado por Napoleão Bonaparte na Batalha de Borodino (07SET1812), nas cercanias de Moscou.

Mesmo com uma derrota, o Czar Alexandre I manteve o velho Marechal Kutuzov (67 anos) no comando. A vitória em Borodino atrasou as Forças de Napoleão e impediu uma vitória decisiva sobre as forças russas. O que veio a levar à destruição da Grande Armée.

Esta regressão histórica é para comentar a derrota e vitória de um general no momento recente da República Brasileira.

Fazendo uso de sua experiência única no campo de batalha real e profundamente comprometido com o Governo Bolsonaro, ao qual ocupava o estratégico cargo de Secretário de Governo, ele fora derrotado sucessivamente em suas lutas:

- Alertar para um Ministro-Chefe da Casa Civil não-confiável;
- Alertar para intrigas palacianas e golpes como a falsificação de mensagens;

- Alertar para a ideologização que levaria a um impasse estratégico do governo;
- Alertar para influência de diplomatas estrangeiros na Relações Internacionais e na Política Interna do país;
- Alertar para a influência nefasta dos “ZEROS”;
- Alertar para o risco de criar uma imprensa militante “amiga”;
- Alertar para o alinhamento estratégico "incondicional" do Brasil com outras nações sem que sejam observados também os interesses brasileiros;
- Alertar aos militares dos riscos que o governo e as Forças sofreriam;
- Alertar para a falta de experiência de um jovem que fazia o assessoramento de alto nível do Presidente para assuntos internacionais;
- Alertar para interesses “outros” nas áreas de publicidade e comunicação do governo, e,
- Muitos outros alertas...

O Gen Santos Cruz, vê seis meses após o seu afastamento, TODOS os seus alertas se tornarem realidade. Sua visão estratégica de um verdadeiro estadista lhe custaram derrotas, e ao final mostraram que ele fora vitorioso na sua missão enquanto Secretário de Governo.

Assim como a campanha de Napoleão, que cruzou o Rio Nemen, em 24JUN1812, em direção a Moscou, e em 14DEZ1812 cruzava  novamente, sob um frio de -38 °C, com o que restou da “Grande Armeé” o mesmo  rio Nemen , com; apenas 10 mil homens em estado lastimável, incluindo um Bonaparte perplexo.

La Grand Armée foi vencida pelo derrotado Marechal Kutuzov.

Não cabe e é inconcebível a um grande General abandonar suas convicções e ideais se neles acredita como o melhor para a missão que lhe foi confiada e ao país. Como disse um Comandante Militar brasileiro, o General Santos Cruz foi um dos mais brilhantes oficiais-generais da história do Brasil.

Bravo General-de-Divisão R1 Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz.