O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

sexta-feira, 16 de abril de 2021

Roberto Campos e pensamento econômico brasileiro: um dos maiores estadistas do Brasil: conversa com o deputado Bruno Souza (Novo-SC)

 Participei, neste final de sexta-feira, de uma live com o deputado Bruno Souza, do Novo de SC, sobre o economista e diplomata Roberto Campos, suas ideias e suas contribuições para o desenvolvimento do Brasil. 

Podem assistir neste link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNvva9bnlmj/ 

Eis o roteiro que o deputado preparou para a nossa live, via Instagram: 

Roberto Campos

 


Quem foi:

O maior político brasileiro! 

Dotado de mente privilegiada, foi um dos maiores – senão o maior – intérprete do Brasil. Reconhecido como um dos nossos maiores economistas, era também teólogo e diplomata. 

 

Pergunta: Que outros pensadores influenciaram as ideias de Roberto Campos? 

 

Trajetória pessoal e política: 

Mato-grossense, Roberto de Oliveira Campos dedicou a maior parte de sua vida ao serviço público do país. Teve atuação destacada nos governos de Juscelino Kubitschek, no qual foi um dos formuladores do Plano de Metas, e de Castello Branco, o primeiro do ciclo militar iniciado em 1964 e extinto em 1985.

Nos anos 60 e 70, foi embaixador em Washington e em Londres. A partir dos anos 80, foi eleito senador e deputado federal por dois mandatos consecutivos.

Roberto Campos foi um dos mais conceituados economistas e se destacou na história política do Brasil como defensor ferrenho do liberalismo econômico. Foi essa a bandeira que defendeu durante o período em que foi colunista da Folha, a partir de dezembro de 1994, até interromper a sua colaboração com o jornal em fevereiro de 2000, por motivo de saúde.

"Ele era uma pessoa polêmica, identificada com suas idéias e sobretudo extremamente sincero", disse o acadêmico e escritor Josué Montello, que conheceu Roberto Campos na época em que era subchefe da Casa Civil no governo Kubitschek.

Além de ministro do Planejamento do governo Castello Branco, o primeiro do regime militar iniciado em 1964, Campos foi senador por Mato Grosso, pelo PSD, e deputado federal pelo Estado do Rio, eleito pelo PPB.

Em 1992, doente, foi conduzido em cadeira de rodas ao plenário da Câmara dos Deputados, quando votou pela aprovação do processo de impeachment do ex-presidente Fernando Collor de Mello.

 

Ideias 

O maior legado de Roberto Campos foi no mundo das ideias. Ele foi um dos maiores defensores do liberalismo no país. Encarnou, mais que ninguém, o papel de pregador incansável do pensamento liberal e usava de fina ironia para combater o comunismo, o socialismo e o esquerdismo. Num período em que a defesa do liberalismo era vista como uma espécie de heresia, Campos pregava quase no deserto.

 

Tinha a convicção de que a economia de mercado, a concorrência interna e externa e o Estado mínimo eram a melhor maneira de promover o desenvolvimento sustentável e a prosperidade geral da população, e não se constrangia em expressá-la a qualquer tempo e lugar.

 

Roberto Campos era um fiscalista e combatia a gastança sem lastro do dinheiro público. Acreditava que o controle da inflação era fundamental para alavancar o crescimento sustentável da economia.    

 

-“A Constituição Contra o Brasil” 

 

Livro publicado em 2018, reúne artigos e ensaios escritos por Roberto Campos sobre a Constituição de 1988 e o processo político que deu origem a ela.

 

Roberto Campos e Paulo Roberto de Almeida compartilham da mesma ambição: arrancar o Brasil da "pobreza corrigível" para a "riqueza atingível". Para esse propósito, a Constituição de 1988 é mais um obstáculo do que uma ferramenta.

 

“Na Constituinte de 1988, a lógica econômica entrou de férias”

 

Pergunta: O que Roberto Campos percebeu no processo da Constituinte de 1988 que outros intérpretes não viram? 

 

Roberto Campos denunciava uma doença que chamava de Constitucionalite - a crença de que uma nova Constituição resolveria nossos problemas (entre eles, nossa pobreza e subdesenvolvimento) como que por mágica. A Constituição de 1988 é "Um robusto catálogo de direitos com uma magra lista de deveres"

 

A inflação, o estatismo e o próprio subdesenvolvimento brasileiro são rigorosamente inconstitucionais. Roberto Campos percebeu que problemas sociais e econômicos não se resolvem com apenas por vontade de legisladores ou por decisões jurídicas. 

 

Pergunta: Por que a Constituição é contra o Brasil? 

Porque ao invés de criar o ambiente institucional necessário para o desenvolvimento econômico e a geração de riqueza, ela faz justamente o contrário: regula e taxa demasiadamente a produção; aumenta a burocracia sobre empreendedores; coloca “responsabilidades sociais” demais nas costas do Estado.

 

Frases emblemáticas de Roberto Campos:

 

“Haverá salvação para um país que se declara “deitado eternamente em berço esplêndido” e cujo maior exemplo de dinâmica associativa espontânea é o Carnaval?”

 

“Uma vez criada a entidade burocrática, ela, como a matéria de Lavoisier, jamais se destrói, apenas se transforma.”

 

“Sou chamado a responder rotineiramente a duas perguntas. A primeira é ‘haverá saída para o Brasil?’. A segunda é ‘o que fazer?’. Respondo àquela dizendo que há três saídas: o aeroporto do Galeão, o de Cumbica e o liberalismo. A resposta à segunda pergunta é aprendermos de recentes experiências alheias.”

 

Pergunta: com as restrições em viagens internacionais, duas das três saídas apontadas por Roberto Campos estão, na prática, fechadas. Nos resta o liberalismo. Que experiências recentes podem servir de exemplo para o Brasil se tornar um país mais liberal?

 

“Quando cheguei ao Congresso, queria fazer o bem. Hoje acho que o que dá para fazer é evitar o mal.”

 

“Empresa privada é aquela que o governo controla, empresa estatal é aquela que ninguém controla.”

 

“Nossas esquerdas não gostam dos pobres. Gostam mesmo é dos funcionários públicos. São estes que, gozando de estabilidade, fazem greves, votam no Lula, pagam contribuição para a CUT. Os pobres não fazem nada disso. São uns chatos.”

 

 

“É divertidíssima a esquizofrenia de nossos artistas e intelectuais de esquerda: admiram o socialismo de Fidel Castro, mas adoram também três coisas que só o capitalismo sabe dar – bons cachês em moeda forte, ausência de censura e consumismo burguês. São filhos de Marx numa transa adúltera com a Coca-Cola.”

 

“Continuamos a ser a colônia, um país não de cidadãos, mas de súditos, passivamente submetidos às ‘autoridades’ – a grande diferença, no fundo, é que antigamente a ‘autoridade’ era Lisboa. Hoje, é Brasília.”

Pergunta: como Roberto Campos avaliava o pacto federativo brasileiro?

 

Pergunta: para quem é fã do pensamento e do estilo de Roberto Campos, que outros escritores e intelectuais o senhor recomenda?

 

John Williamson, 83, Dies; Economist Defined the ‘Washington Consensus’ - Clay Risen (NYT)

O mal chamado 'consenso de Washington" é uma excelente peça de avaliação crítica das políticas econômicas pró-reforma, pró-crescimento, pró-justiça social que podem ser concebidas. Mas, se o nome fosse "Consenso de Cochabamba" teria tido uma sorte menos cruel do que aquela que afetou o original. Esta matéria não menciona o segundo seminário que ele fez em 2002, chamado "Post-Washington Consensus", com reformas da segunda e terceira geração. Grande economista.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

John Williamson, 83, Dies; Economist Defined the ‘Washington Consensus’

A careful pragmatist, he regretted the way his term, aimed at developing countries, was misinterpreted by free-market ideologues and anti-globalization activists.

John Williamson, who drew up a list of 10 “best practices” for the economies of developing countries.
Credit...via Williamson family

John Williamson, a British economist who in 1989 coined the phrase “Washington Consensus” to describe a set of policy reforms for developing economies, then spent the rest of his career trying to rescue it from misuse by both free-market ideologues and anti-globalization activists, died on Sunday at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 83.

His daughter, Theresa Williamson, said the cause was multiple system atrophy, a rare degenerative disease.

More than most economists, Mr. Williamson had a knack for crafting catchy names for complicated ideas. In 1965 he developed what he called the “crawling peg,” in which a central bank would keep an exchange rate fixed but establish a formula for devaluing its currency over time and in response to changing external pressure.

He later mocked the view that changes in a country’s trade deficit would have no impact on exchange rates — a position advocated by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, among others — as “the doctrine of immaculate transfer.”

Continue reading the main story

But only the Washington Consensus achieved wonkish immortality, so much so thatmost people who used it knew neither what it originally meant nor who created it. It started innocently enough: In the late 1980s, in the face of pressure on developing economies by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury to enact sweeping reform, Mr. Williamson organized a conference of Latin American policymakers to demonstrate what their countries were already doing to make their countries more competitive.
He drew up a list of 10 things that both Latin American governments and international economists would say constituted “best practices” — among them, keeping deficits under control, protecting property rights, investing in education and health care, reducing subsidies and making it easier for foreign direct investments to enter developing economies. He called the list the Washington Consensus. Mr. Williamson was careful about what he included, and specific in what he left out, and most economists, then and now, agreed with him — though some later criticized the list as one-size-fits-all and faulted it for not including more pro-growth measures. “To the extent that it made us focus on a universal blueprint, it didn’t give us a good strategy for growth,” said Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard. He nevertheless credited Mr. Williamson for his nuanced approach.
That nuance was lost on others, though. By the mid-1990s the Washington Consensus had come to refer to a broad portfolio of pro-market, deregulatory reforms imposed with often brutal efficiency by developed countries on emerging economies, including the “shock therapy” implemented in post-Soviet Russia. Especially after the financial crisis of the late 2000s, the Washington Consensus became a term of derision, used by progressive scholars and activists to attack both neoliberals and free-market conservatives for undermining public welfare to benefit the global financial elite. 
Mr. Williamson, a critic of neoliberalism, particularly on tax policy and deregulation, was aghast. In a series of papers, books and speeches during the 1990s and 2000s, he strained to clarify his position, though he eventually conceded that the term had taken on a life of its own.

“It is difficult even for the creator of the term to deny that the phrase ‘Washington Consensus’ is a damaged brand name,” he said in 2002. “There are people who cannot utter the term without foaming at the mouth.

Mr. Williamson was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and a passionate bird watcher.

Credit...Peterson Institute for International Economics

John Williamson was born on June 7, 1937, in Hereford, a small English city near the Welsh border. His mother, Eileen (Heap) Williamson, was a volunteer Methodist preacher, and his father, Harry Williamson, ran a plant nursery and grew roses — he even created his own breed, the Wyevale.

His father instilled in him a lifelong love of birdwatching. Throughout his career, he would often choose to attend conferences based on the ornithological opportunities they presented. He recorded more than 4,000 species of birds during his lifetime, nearly half of the estimated 10,000 species on the planet.

Mr. Williamson attended the London School of Economics, graduating with a degree in economics in 1951. After completing two years of compulsory military service, he entered graduate school at Princeton, where he received his Ph.D. in 1963.

Though he had frequent offers from Oxford and Cambridge, especially later in his career, Mr. Williamson was drawn to the sort of creative research being done at some of the newly established, so-called plate-glass universities, after their modernist architecture.

He joined the University of York in 1963, the year it was founded, and later taught at the University of Warwick, founded in 1965. But he was increasingly drawn to policymaking. In 1968 he took a job as an adviser to the British Treasury, where he worked on economic relations with the European Economic Community, and later moved to Washington to work at the International Monetary Fund.

While at the I.M.F. he met Denise Rausch, a Brazilian economist. They married in 1974.

Along with his daughter and wife, Mr. Williamson is survived by two sons, Andre and Daniel; two sisters, Chris Evans and Wyn Jones; and seven grandchildren.

The Williamsons spent the late 1970s in Brazil, where she worked for a research institution and he taught at a Catholic university. Ms. Williamson taught her husband Portuguese, something he considered his greatest achievement, having struggled with foreign languages in school.

They returned to Washington in 1981, when the economist C. Fred Bergsten hired Mr. Williamson to be the first employee of the newly founded Institute for International Economics, later renamed the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He remained there until he retired in 2012. (In 1996 he took a leave from the institute to join the World Bank, where his wife had worked, though he left after just three years, frustrated with the bank’s bureaucracy.)

Until he coined the Washington Consensus, Mr. Williamson was best known for his work on exchange rates. He was a passionate advocate for a middle ground between the rigidity of fixed rates — especially for developing economies — and the chaos of floating rates, which he believed put even developed economies at the mercy of global financial markets.Continue reading the main story

He presented his initial solution, the crawling peg, to the British government after it had decided to let the pound float in 1971. The U.K. Treasury was uninterested, but several developing economies did adopt it, and today it is used by both Nicaragua and Vietnam.

He applied similar thinking to developed economies in the 1980s, arguing that policymakers should try to constrain free-floating exchange rates by intervening to keep them within “target zones” — an idea that was ratified by six leading economies in the 1987 Louvre Accord, then largely dropped, much to Mr. Williamson’s chagrin.

Mr. Williamson was widely regarded for his careful pragmatism, and as a critic of those who sought to upturn apple carts with unconventional ideas — most of the time.

“I’m more often than not on the side of the conventional wisdom,” he said in a 2012 interview. “Most often it’s right. But sometimes people get things totally wrong, and then it’s necessary to stand up and say so.”


A version of this article appears in print on April 16, 2021, Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: John Williamson Dies at 83; Economist Coined ‘Washington Consensus’. 

Mini-reflexão sobre o Impeachment e a Justiça Divina - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Mini-reflexão sobre o Impeachment e a Justiça Divina

 

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

(www.pralmeida.orghttp://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

[Objetivo: debate sobre impeachment no Brasil; finalidadevisão histórica]

 

 

O que fariam Deus ou São Pedro, supostos controladores do ingresso no Paraíso, com dezenas de pedidos de ingresso naquela augusta última residência final por parte de indivíduos de reputação duvidosa, que talvez merecessem destino melhor, ou mais adequado em retribuição de seus crimes e malfeitos, junto aos domínios de Satanás? 

Deixariam os caras esperando indefinidamente numa longa fila à entrada do Paraíso ou tomariam uma decisão imediata, à vista das fichas desses indivíduos de reputação duvidosa?

O mais justo, para todos — Deus, São Pedro e os candidatos ao Paraíso ou ao Inferno —, seria uma decisão imediata, para evitar aglomerações no caminho de tão importante recinto: liquide-se imediatamente a agonia de quem espera tão importante decisão. 

Bolsonaro merece uma decisão quanto à centena de pedidos de impeachment contra seu desgoverno — que se aproxima do Genocídio, dependendo dos trabalhos da CPI do Juízo Final — e não viver agoniado, em face da indecisão de um mero porteiro dos escritórios onde realmente se decide a questão: o plenário da Câmara.

Olhando o retrospecto dos pedidos de impeachment na CD, o que temos é isto:

1) Getúlio Vargas, 1954: votado, recusado;

2) Jânio Quadros, 1961: renunciou antes de qualquer pedido, numa estratégia caolha, para retornar com poderes ampliados, à la De Gaulle; estratégia não funcionou;

3) João Goulart, 1963-64: foi derrubado por um golpe militar, antes que se decidisse pela manutenção das eleições de 1965, como previsto constitucionalmente; governadores e militares golpistas se assanharam ilegalmente, pois JK ameaçava voltar triunfalmente nas eleições;

4) Collor, 1992: o presidente não foi afastado porque seu tesoureiro, Paulo Cesar Farias, começou a roubar demais; foi porque ele não se entendia com o Parlamento, assim como ocorreu com Jânio e Goulart e ocorreria depois com Madame Pasadena, vulgo Dona Dilma (ou vice-versa); 

5) FHC, 1995-2002: dezenas de pedidos de impeachment por parte do PT ficaram se acumulando nas gavetas dos presidentes da CD, por não cumprirem requisitos formais segundo a Lei do Impeachment, ao não se ter crimes tipificados constitucionalmente;

6) Lula, 2005, no Mensalão, uma sucessão de crimes contra o patrimônio público e a honra e a dignidade do cargo: FHC mandou desistir da ideia de impeachment, pois gostava de Lula (ainda gosta, e vai fazer campanha por ele em 2022);

7) Dona Dilma, 2015-16: se desentendeu com o Satanás Eduardo Cunha, não porque fosse corrupta, mas porque o PT falhou em protegê-lo na Comissão de “Ética” da CD, o que lhe foi insuportável e resolveu se vingar; Bolsonaro votou elogiando um torturador condenado;

8) Bolsonaro, 2021-22: os pedidos de impeachment se acumulam, e Deus mandou avisar que não é com ele; uma auxiliar de Deus no STF, pediu explicações sobre a fila dos pedidos;

9) Eleições 2022: serão realizadas na santa paz dos ritos constitucionais, ou perturbadas pela polarização ameaçadora, ou ainda, o incumbente atual será degolado por seus muitos crimes já verificados?

Oh Deus, oh céus: quem poderá nos salvar dessas dúvidas crueis? O Centrão? Os milicos? O Grande Capital? A Justiça Divina? O dedo de Satanás?

Talvez um astrólogo possa ajudar...

Pela especulação:

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 3892, 16 de abril de 2021


O pífio crescimento econômico da América Latina - FMI

Apenas um trecho: 

The region’s contraction of 7 percent in 2020 was the sharpest in the world, by far exceeding the global slowdown of 3.3 percent. Growth for 2021 is projected at 4.6 percent, well below the 5.8 percent estimated for emerging markets excluding China. Income per capita will not catch up with its pre-pandemic level until 2024, resulting in a 30 percent cumulative loss relative to the pre-pandemic trend.


Short-term shot and long-term healing for Latin America and the Caribbean

By Alejandro Werner, Takuji Komatsuzaki, and Carlo Pizzinelli

Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean recovered briskly in the second half of 2020, yet still more slowly than the global economy and other emerging markets. That’s despite unprecedented policy support, strong performance of trading partners, soaring commodity prices and accommodative global financial conditions. The persistence of the health crisis in many countries casts a shadow on the near-term outlook. People and economies continue to require a short-term shot to exit from the COVID-19 crisis, while the aggravation of several underlying structural fragilities poses significant long-term challenges.

The region’s contraction of 7 percent in 2020 was the sharpest in the world, by far exceeding the global slowdown of 3.3 percent. Growth for 2021 is projected at 4.6 percent, well below the 5.8 percent estimated for emerging markets excluding China. Income per capita will not catch up with its pre-pandemic level until 2024, resulting in a 30 percent cumulative loss relative to the pre-pandemic trend.

Slow and divergent recovery

The outlook, however, is subject to an extraordinary degree of uncertainty as the race between vaccines and the virus continues. On the upside, faster control of the pandemic globally as well as stronger than anticipated domestic policy support would boost growth. Fast vaccination and significant policy support are giving Chile a short-term boost. The country is expected to bounce back already this year to its pre-pandemic GDP level.

On the downside, the recent resurgence of the virus in Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, combined with slow vaccine rollouts (except in Chile) cast a shadow on the near-term outlook—though new lockdowns are likely to be less damaging than at the start of the pandemic as economies have learned to adjust. Brazil is projected to recover by 2022 due to the withdrawal of fiscal and monetary policy support and slow vaccine rollout. Mexico will only return to its pre-pandemic GDP level by 2023, despite impulse from the US’ large fiscal policy plan, due to the absence of significant domestic fiscal support and the reversal of structural reforms. The American Rescue Plan will boost growth in some Central American countries through trade and remittances, helping these countries to rebound by 2022. Caribbean tourism-dependent economies will be the last to recover (only in 2024) due to the slow resumption in tourism.

The increase in US long-term yields so far has had a somewhat muted impact on asset prices and capital flows in the region. But a continued increase in long-term interest rates remains a risk.

Unequal effects

The recovery has also been heterogeneous within countries. Manufacturing has rebounded faster than contact-intensive services, aided by exports in some cases, particularly in Mexico. However, labor markets remain fragile—only two-thirds of those who lost jobs at the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru were employed again by the end of last year. The informal sector, which suffered the largest losses initially, has driven the job recovery.

Average labor income fell since the beginning of the pandemic, with pronounced divergences in labor market outcomes across countries, sectors, and demographic groups. Countries that implemented employment retention schemes (for example, Brazil) had a less dramatic fall in employment but the recovery has also been slower. However, even in the case of a relatively quick recovery in Mexico, those who have been reemployed have had larger earning losses than those whose employment remained uninterrupted during the crisis. Women and low-educated workers have struggled the most. Low-skilled female workers in particular lost more jobs or had to cut back on working hours even when able to retain employment, suffering the largest income losses.

chart 1

 

Long-lasting consequences

Poverty is estimated to have increased by 19 million people, and inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, increased by 5 percent compared to pre-crisis levels. The pandemic will also leave long-lasting damage to human capital from school closures, which were longer than in other regions.

chart 2

 

While the precise learning losses are difficult to estimate, staff analysis suggests that students aged 10 to 19 might expect a 4 percent lower income on average over their lifetimes if the lost days of schooling in 2020 are not compensated.


The income losses differ among countries, depending on how much the pandemic reduces the chance of completing secondary education and on the size of the skill premium for higher education. The losses will be greatest for students whose families are less able to support out-of-school learning, exacerbating already high income inequality and low levels of educational attainment.

chart 3

 

The most urgent task continues to be controlling the pandemic, by ensuring that health care systems are adequately resourced, and everybody can be vaccinated. Fiscal and monetary policies should remain supportive in countries where there is sufficient policy space—a short-term shot for their economies—while countries with tight budgets should reprioritize spending towards healthcare and support for households, and work to create additional fiscal space. Given the continued heavy toll on low-income workers, targeted support to facilitate job creation and retraining may be warranted.

Healing longer-term scars will be more challenging and will require accelerating structural reforms, expanding access to high-quality education and health, broadening social safety nets, and improving the business climate. A deeper structural transformation that could be facilitated by a broad fiscal pact is needed to reverse years of slow growth.

chart 4

 

Alejandro Werner is Director of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.

Takuji Komatsuzaki is a senior economist in the Regional Studies Division of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department.

Carlo Pizzinelli is an economist in the Regional Studies Division of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.

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Trump e a teoria das relações internacionais: duas galáxias separadas no tempo e no espaço - Michael N. Barnett (H-Diplo)

 

ISSF Policy Series 2021-22: The Trump Presidency: Trump 1, IR Theory 0

by George Fujii

 

H-Diplo | ISSF Policy Series
America and the World—The Effects of the Trump Presidency

The Trump Presidency: Trump 1, IR Theory 0

 

Essay by Michael N. Barnett, George Washington University


Published on 15 April 2021 issforum.org

Editor: Diane Labrosse | Production Editor: George Fujii

 

 

Four years ago I was asked to address whether IR theory might help us understand the coming Trump presidency. I answered “no” for several reasons.  IR theory is better at explanation than prediction.  Even if it was reasonably good at prediction, its theories were completely outmatched by Donald Trump.  Most IR theories are premised on rationality assumptions, but Trump exhibited little rationality.  There were those who thought that he would be tamed by “adults” in the room, but I dismissed this as wishful thinking.  Trump had demonstrated the ability to escape almost every single constraint he ever met.  Trump would be Trump.[1]  All we could know is that he would act in ways that met his needs, however he defined them at the time. 

My recommendation, therefore, was to put away our models and get out Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) to grapple with how the mind of Donald Trump would shape the next years of U.S. foreign policy.  As I wrote, “Our theories were never meant to explain the Madness of King Donald.  IR theories are of little use for understanding this White House.  Instead, we are better off with a team of psychiatrists from Bellevue.”   Many psychiatrists had already provided diagnoses from a distance, and for the remainder of the term analysts would reference a stream of disorders to try to explain Trump’s behavior.  There was narcissistic personal disorder.  He demanded not just loyalty but fealty and translated any difference of opinion as a call to arms.  He also exhibited symptoms of sociopathology.  During the campaign he infamously mocked a disabled reporter.  As president he became the posterchild for anti-social personality disorder.  Following DSM-V, the Mayo Clinic describes it in the following terms: 

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.  People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference.  They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals.  They may lie, behave violently or impulsively...Because of these characteristics, people with this disorder typically can't fulfill responsibilities related to family, work or school.[2]

Did he know the difference between right and wrong?  Not according to those who worked for him.  Did he demonstrate any regard for the feelings of others?  Only if he could make them suffer.  The second impeachment hearings revealed just how much he enjoyed seeing the violence and learning of Vice-President Pence trying to escape a lynching.  He looked down on those who demonstrated self-sacrifice.  Not pay his taxes?  It just showed how smart he was.  Senator John McCain a war hero?  He preferred heroes that were “not prisoners-of-war.”  American soldiers that had fallen in battle?  “Losers.”  Did he ever show remorse?  The best he could do was say that he never said what everyone heard.  Did he show an ability to fulfill responsibilities related to work?  He spent nearly 300 days of his presidency at a golf course.[3]  I am a believer that breaks are important for those who do good work, and some even do their best work while fishing, golfing, running, or some other activity.  But he did accuse President Barack Obama, who spent far fewer days golfing or vacationing, of not having a good work ethic.  But it is clear that he was not thinking about what more he could do to limit the deaths from COVID-19. How many tens of thousands needlessly died from COVID-19 because of his ‘see no COVID-19, fear no COVID-19, speak no COVID-19’ policy?  Which better explains Trump, DSM-V or the three images of international relations?  Whose expertise provides more insight – a roomful of psychiatrists or the editorial board of a top-tier IR scholarly journal?

It is difficult to identify a single area where the United States’ global standing, position, and influence has not been more severely weakened as a consequence of the last four years. We should not be surprised.  Trump simply did to the United States what he did to most everyone who has worked for him: lowered the world’s opinion of them.  H.R. McMaster, John L. Kelly, James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, William Barr, and a long list of others.[4]  Add the United States itself to that list.  Trump hastened American decline, much to the amazement of American allies and eternal thanks from its rivals.  However, Trump did not come close to destabilizing the international order as much as many feared he would (or might have).  Here are some possible reasons why. 

He caused mischief and mayhem because it was part of his DNA, his political strategy, and brought him the attention he craved.  But like many bullies, he often retreated when he met resistance.  Also, Trump’s foreign policy was not a great departure from that of his predecessors.  His America-first mantra did reverse almost 75-years of American support for building its power and influence through international institutions, norms, and law, but in many critical areas he simply amplified what previous presidents had done.  His “deal of the century” in the Middle East was a gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the idea of a Greater Israel, but in reality he only finalized a half-century of American indulgence of Israeli policies in the territories. Anyone who cared to look could see a one-state reality evolving in Israel/Palestine before Trump came along.  In other words, Trump just cut the ribbon on a project that past American presidents had (unintentionally) enabled.  His global war on terror and targeting killings were more continuity of, than change from, Obama.  His immigration policies were extreme, but remember that Obama’s critics nicknamed him the “deporter-in-chief.”  Trump respected those who violated human rights, shut down the media, and tortured their political opponents, which set him apart from past presidents.  But few American presidents have exhibited much backbone on human rights, especially when it interferes with American interests.  Yes, Trump was a departure from previous presidents in many ways, but not as radical as is often portrayed.

Furthermore, Trump’s foreign policies harmed American interests far more than they hurt those of other countries.  His idea of making America great again meant untying the United States from the very institutions that had served its interests; many of its rivals filled the vacuum left behind by the United States’ departure.  China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and others on the enemies list of the U.S. have done well by Trump, and the reason has little to do with bad strategy.  It has to do with Trump’s emotional and political needs.  U.S. policies were whipsawed by another disorder – impulse control disorder – with the only constant being that Trump did what made him feel good at the moment.  His bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin still requires an explanation that goes beyond Trump’s fawning over authoritarian leaders.  According to many investigative reports, Trump is somewhere between useful idiot and KGB agent.[5]  I am only half-joking when I say that I thought that Trump and Putin’s private conversation at Helsinki in July 2018 went over the extraction plans.  Given what we have collectively seen, who would be completely surprised if the Trump family (minus Melania and Baron) ended up in Russia and put into temporary housing next to Edward Snowden as Trump built a Trump Tower on the Red Square?  Trump’s initial encounter with the “rocket man,” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was filled with name-calling and bombast, but then quickly blossomed into a mutual admiration society that put the nuclear weapons program of the DPRK into overdrive.  As for China, while relations were certainly tense, with testy exchanges, a trade war, and insults, in other critical areas Trump gave China a free hand.  He never pushed China to explain its shocking internment and destruction of the Uyghurs.  And he did nothing when China stamped out the pro-democracy protests in, and placed its boot across the neck of, Hong Kong. 

Finally, many foreign leaders were able to avoid possible conflict by simply playing him and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  They stayed at his properties, flattered and humored him, told him how great he was and how he was a misunderstood genius.  Israel named a new town after him.  Leaks and open mics revealed how little foreign leaders thought of him as they flattered him to his face and then called him a buffoon and idiot behind his back.  They learned quickly that it was better to suffer the fool than foolishly attempt to engage him in a rational conversation. 

Does Joe Biden’s defeat of Trump mean a return to “normal?”  To answer that question we need to know what normal means and whether Trump changed our understanding of “normal” in America.  It would be comforting to say that Trump’s defeat ends a scary period in American history because it would leave the U.S. off the hook.  In this case, America is not to be blamed for what happened, Trump is.  But Trump is not an alien -- he is a creature of America.  Trump might have been produced by a unique conjunction of forces, but he also represents an America that had always been there.  Many of his critics quickly connected him to a readily identifiable type in American culture and politics.[6]  For many, his creation of a safe space for racism, chauvinism, and sexism was a shock, but his attitudes have a long history in the United States.  He never received a majority of the popular vote, but he did very well – winning office the first time and coming shockingly close the second, despite four years of mayhem, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, corruption, and chauvinism. And he did well not despite these characteristics but rather because of them.  The Republican Party and politicians were not forced into submission or walking examples of Stockholm Syndrome.  Instead, they were accomplices who were quite willing to sell the country for gold pieces and praise from Caesar.  From the very beginning of his candidacy, Democrats wondered when Republicans would say that if Trump had gone too far.  Never, it turns out.  Praise white supremacists?  Not a problem.  Blackmail a foreign government to manufacture dirt on his political opponent, betray the national interest, and help Russia in its war against a U.S. ally?  Minor stuff.  Call on his faithful to overthrow the government, put out a hit on his Vice-President, and cause elected officials to run for their lives from his noose-waving, cross-carrying mob?  No laws were broken.  He left office with 34% approval rating and 79% among Republicans.[7]  If given the choice, they would do it all over again.  Think about that. 

My point is more than Trump simply had active support by Republicans – it is that he represents an illiberal America that has always been there.  This has important consequences for those IR scholars among us who continue to write about American identity – and quite severe consequences for liberal international relations theory because it calls into question America’s liberal identity and the very idea of a liberal international order.  I want to make three points. 

First, IR scholars have a long history of dividing the international order between civilized and uncivilized states, advanced and backward states, and liberal and illiberal states.  In this tradition the U.S. has always been coded as civilized, advanced, and liberal.  Does the U.S. qualify as a liberal state?  Liberal states are an ideal type that are defined by the holy trinity of competitive markets, the rule of law with a full complement of (civil and political) rights, and democratic institutions.[8]  These institutions are valued because they safeguard individual liberty and constrain the abuse of power by the state, and produce various individual, societal, and global dividends such as individual freedom and domestic and global peace and prosperity.  Ideal types are precisely that: they are used for comparative analysis and without any expectation that these types exist in their purest form in reality.  But is the U.S. more proximate to, say, a liberal or illiberal state?

Few doubt the United States’ commitment to market principles, but it has not been a faithful practitioner of the rule of law or democracy.  The rule of law in liberalism means equal rights, the equality of all before the law, and that law protects individuals from abuse by the state.  The conjunction of America’s slow reckoning with its racist history and the Black Lives Matter protests of the last year have exposed how racism and other forms of discrimination have imprinted the rule of law.[9]  The U.S. is credited with not one but two genocides – against African-Americans and Native Americans – and it has used legal means to continue their oppression. There are other countries who have looked to the U.S. as a role model not of the rule of law but how to make discrimination lawful.  The United States’ racial policies were a template for the Nazis in the 1930s.[10]  The United States’ Jim Crow laws helped to inspire South Africa’s system of Apartheid. 

And what about democratic rule?  The recent Trump-led insurrection ends the United States’ long streak of peaceful transition of power.  It was not until 1965 and the Voting Rights Act that the United States finally put law behind the idea of democratic rule, but the right to vote remains something of a privilege that can be easily taken away from too many people through registration laws that have a clear discriminatory intent.  Gerrymandering and the lack of campaign finance laws further stack the deck against free-and-fair elections.  Certainly, all countries have their imperfections – but those who want to code the U.S. as liberal might have to either relax their definition of liberal (perhaps to the point that some states now defined as illiberal become redefined as liberal) or whitewash American history.  Trump did more to expose the distance between America the myth and America the reality than could a crash course in critical race theory.

Second, if the U.S. is cashiered of its liberal rank, then what becomes of the liberal international order?  Theories are not rejected on the basis of a bad apple. But what if the apple is not just any apple but rather the mother of all apples?  So much of liberal international theory is built around the United States that it is difficult to imagine the former’s existence without the existence of this critical case.  Would they also need to delist the many other liberal states with histories of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and systematic discrimination?  How many liberal states are required before it is worthwhile building a liberal international relations theory?  

In addition to replication with a more valid data set, we should also consider whether race and other practices of exclusion have shaped the international order.  President Woodrow Wilson might have been the patron saint of international liberalism, but he also was a racist at home and abroad -- and not the sort of racist who was unaware of his prejudices because of the times in which he lived, but rather one who opposed integration measures and fought to turn the clock back.[11] Thanks to Wilson and South Africa’s Jan Smuts, the League of Nations continued to operate with a civilizational view that divided the world into whites and nonwhites.[12]  The global color line continued after World War Two with the help of many leading liberal states. U.S. foreign policy after World War Two continued to oppose various aspects of international human rights because it did not want the world to judge its racial policies.  President Harry Truman signed the Genocide Convention, but the Senate refused to ratify because it worried that international bodies might use the Convention to indict American policies toward Native Americans and African Americans.  American immigration policies were unapologetically race-based until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.  Trump’s statement that Haiti and Africa states are “shithole countries” is certainly crass, but probably not that removed from what Wilson might have thought.  Decolonization did not end the role of race in international order but instead submerged its presence.[13] Over the last several months I have reflected on the work that Emanuel Adler and I did on security communities and wondered to what extent we missed the importance of race, especially when considering the bonds that bind and the boundaries that are erected.[14] We would include race if we were to do it all over.

Third, disqualifying the U.S. from the liberal international order and considering how race and other practices of discrimination constitute liberal societies and their international orders potentially moves liberal internationalism from the realm of theory into ideology.  Ideology can be briskly defined as a system of integrated beliefs and ideas that serve an existing order.[15]  Or, following on the claim of Robert Cox, theory is always for something and for someone, and ideology is a theory that serves the existing order.[16]  And what order does this ideology serve?  Realists have asserted that liberalism is a Trojan Horse for American power.  [17]  However, the significance of Trump and the U.S.’s illiberalism goes beyond the old saw of ideology masquerading for national power to demand a consideration of its entanglement with race.

This reconsideration of race in the nation and the international order forces the beginning of a reckoning with history.  Citing Ernest Renan, Eric Hobsbawm observed that all nations get their history wrong.[18] The U.S. has a willfully selective memory.  Typically, American leaders simply ignore the uncomfortable truths as they retell the story of America, or they point toward an America that is moving toward a more perfect union.  But Trump found these truths not uncomfortable but rather prideful.  In response, many Americans were forced to confront these uncomfortable truths, become “woke,” and find a way to integrate these truths into a new narrative. 

Can this new narrative continue to sustain the idea of progress?  Progress and liberalism are tightly bound.  Progress means that civilization is moving in a “desirable direction,” and that societies are enjoying “irreversible ameliorative change,” moving from one superior stage to the next, and toward an “outcome that would have been chosen had it been foreseen.”[19]   And what is that outcome?  A world with liberal values.  Liberalism ties together the means and ends and makes liberalism the center of progress. 

The idea of progress in the West has not been so much a “theory to be defended as a fact to be observed.”[20]  It might unfold in fits-and-starts, through zigs-and-zags, and with occasional reversals, but it was as certain as the sun rising in the morning.  Progress for liberals and many in the West is a “species of religion” and a “civil religion.[21] And like all religions, it is sustained by faith and a combination of willful belief and disbelief.  But by embracing a past that many Americans either preferred to forget or not recognize, Trump forced many Americans to remove their rose-colored glasses.  This process of removal had the immediate impact of shaking their faith in the mythological and Whiggish version of America.  For those IR scholars that continue categorize the United States in the way it prefers to be seen rather than the way it is, it is time to remove those blinders, relax the faith in progress, and allow the darkness to enter. 

 

Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University.  Among his books are Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press, 2011), and The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

 

© Copyright 2021 The Authors

 


Notes

[1] Michael N. Barnett, “Trump and International Relations Theory: A Response to Robert Jervis’s “President Trump and IR Theory,” http://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/Policy-Roundtable-1-5L.pdf; and Barnett, “What Is International Relations Theory Good For?” in Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane Labrosse, eds., Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018): 8-21.

[3] https://trumpgolfcount.com/.  Estimated cost: $144,000,000.

[5] Craig Unger, American Kompromat (New York: Penguin Random House, 2021). 

[6] Fintan O'Toole, “The Trump Inheritance,” New York Review of Books, 25 February 2021, https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/fintan-otoole/.

[8] G. John Ikenberry, “The End of Liberal International Order?” International Affairs 94:1 (2018): 7-23; Constance Duncombe and Tim Dunne, “After Liberal World Order,” International Affairs 94:1 (2018): 25-42; Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Liberal World: The Resilient Order,” Foreign Affairs 97 (2018); Riccardo Alcaro, “The Liberal Order and its Contestations: A Conceptual Framework,” The International Spectator 53:1 (2018): 1-10.

[9] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2010); Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents (New York: Random House, 2020); Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion and the Making of the Alien in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018); Claudio Sant, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020). 

[10] James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017). 

[11] Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 

[12] Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line; W.E.B. Dubois, “World of Color.”  Foreign Affairs (April 1925).  Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

[13] Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

[14] Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 

[15] This is only one definition, as Terry Eagleton’s classic review on the concept concludes.  Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction, updated edition (New York: Verso Press, 2007). 

[16] Robert Cox, Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 128.

[17] John Mearsheimer, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order,” International Security 43 (Spring 2019): 7–50; Charles Glaser, “A Flawed Framework: Why the Liberal International Order Concept Is Misguided,” International Security 43:4 (2019): 51-87.

[18] Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 12.

[19] J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its History and Growt  (New York: McMillan)1932, 2; Charles van Doren, The Idea of Progress (New York: Praeger Press,1967), 7; and Nannerl Keohane, “The Enlightenment Idea of Progress Revisited” in G. Almond, M. Chodorow, and R.H. Pearce, Progress and its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 22. 

[20] Carl Becker, Power and Progress (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949), 5.

[21] The first quote is from Becker, Power and Progress, 7; the second from John Michael Greer, After Progress: Reason and Religion at the End of the Industrial Age (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2015), 10.