Bolsonaro dá guinada em propostas para Itamaraty e abraça o "globalismo" no programa de governo - André Duchiade (O Globo)

 Bolsonaro dá guinada em propostas para Itamaraty e abraça o "globalismo" no programa de governo

Bolsonaro caminha na direção contrária de política diplomática empenhada pelo órgão nos últimos quatro anos

O Globo
Por André Duchiade — Rio de Janeiro
22/08/2022

Em agosto de 2018, o então candidato Jair Bolsonaro prometeu que, se chegasse ao Planalto, o Brasil abandonaria as Nações Unidas.

— Se eu for presidente eu saio da ONU, não serve para nada esta instituição — afirmou. — É uma reunião de comunistas, de gente que não tem qualquer compromisso com a América do Sul.

Na campanha à reeleição, o discurso sobre política externa deu um giro de 180 graus. No capítulo dedicado ao tema do programa de Bolsonaro entregue ao TSE, está o contrário do que se lia há quatro anos, isto é, uma enfática defesa do sistema internacional multilateral. O Brasil agora “se destaca como defensor histórico de uma ordem global multipolar, alicerçada no direito internacional e centrada na Carta das Nações Unidas”.

O abraço ao chamado “globalismo” — termo empregado pela extrema-direita mundial para se referir ao multilateralismo — contrasta não só com a campanha de há quatro anos, mas também com a prática diplomática liderada pelo presidente em boa parte de seu mandato, sobretudo quando o ex-chanceler Ernesto Araújo chefiava o Itamaraty.

Os planos para política externa dos demais principais candidatos à Presidência não trazem surpresas. Lula (PT) promete o resgate com poucas atualizações da linha adotada em seus dois governos, enquanto Ciro Gomes (PDT), especialmente, e Simone Tebet (MDB) são mais sucintos ou genéricos, numa evidência, na avaliação de alguns analistas, de que o tema terá pouco peso na disputa eleitoral deste ano.

O governo Bolsonaro em imagens

Se não chegou a tentar tirar o país da ONU, o governo Bolsonaro ainda assim mudou o rumo histórico da política externa brasileira. O discurso encampado por Araújo e outros assessores presidenciais denunciava a existência de uma “ditadura climática” global e buscava aproximar o país, por exemplo, da Hungria e da Polônia, onde houve ascensão da nova direita, em detrimento de China, Alemanha e França.

Bolsonaro mudou, e agora reconhece a crise climática, mas o ex-chanceler ainda pensa o mesmo. Após deixar o Itamaraty, Araújo criou um canal no YouTube em que critica a gestão mais moderada das relações internacionais pedindo que o país adote “posições pró-Ocidente” em questões como o conflito na Ucrânia.

Em 2022, o programa de governo promete continuar “seguindo o conceito universalista de nossa política externa”.

— Bolsonaro fez muitas promessas. Prometeu uma revolução e uma refundação do Itamaraty. Isso, no entanto, é muito difícil de fazer — avalia Dawisson Belém Lopes, professor de Política Internacional na UFMG. — O novo programa é a comprovação de que, depois uma política externa revolucionária que fracassou, o Itamaraty volta ao curso normal.

Das 48 páginas do programa de Bolsonaro, o capítulo “Política externa e defesa nacional” ocupa três e meia. Além da diplomacia, as propostas abordam a indústria de defesa e parcerias comerciais. O documento também diz que o “Brasil constitui parte incontornável da solução dos principais desafios do planeta”.

Discurso e prática

A despeito do tom mais baixo, um eventual segundo governo do candidato do PL terá o desafio de amenizar certo isolamento do país nos últimos anos. O atual governo tem a imagem arranhada em temas centrais da política global, como política ambiental e climática, direitos humanos e respeito à democracia. Para Carlos Milani, professor de Relações Internacionais do Iesp-Uerj, a solução estará menos na diplomacia e mais na prática do futuro governo.

— Uma imagem não se projeta só com palavras, mas sim com ações concretas. Como o Brasil vai dizer que é uma solução para os problemas do planeta enquanto aumenta o desmatamento? — indaga.

No programa de Lula, a linguagem do programa remete à empregada pelo Itamaraty durante os seus dois governos, quando o ministério esteve sob o comando de Celso Amorim. “Defender nossa soberania exige recuperar a política externa ativa e altiva que nos alçou à condição de protagonista global”, diz o documento. A cooperação com países do Sul Global, sobretudo na América Latina e na África, tem destaque. O documento também se refere ao fortalecimento de Mercosul, Unasul, Celac e Brics.

Segundo Milani, as promessas carecem de detalhamento sobre como conduzir essa política em um contexto global diferente, de rivalidade entre grandes potências.

— Não fica muito claro como o novo governo conceberá um retorno à cooperação estratégica sem pensar que o mundo mudou. A China ascendeu desde então, e agora não há mais nenhuma decisão que o Brasil tome sem que intervenha a rivalidade entre EUA e China, e às vezes entre EUA e Rússia — avalia. — Não fica claro quais são as ferramentas que tornarão essa política externa “ativa e altiva” factível. Não que não seja, mas não há explicação.

Além dos quatro parágrafos dedicados explicitamente à política externa no documento de 21 páginas, há vários temas que exigem negociações internacionais e aparecem de forma transversal ao longo do programa petista, como sustentabilidade, enfrentamento das mudanças climáticas e transição energética.

Há ainda uma inovação: o realce oferecido ao atendimento consular aos brasileiros fora do país. “São milhões de pessoas que trabalham, estudam e vivem fora do país e contribuem para a economia e desenvolvimento do Brasil. Retomaremos as políticas públicas para a população brasileira no exterior a partir de acordos bilaterais”, diz o texto. De acordo com Belém Lopes, a atenção à diáspora exprime uma busca por esse eleitorado.

— Em outros países, como o Equador, com frequência os candidatos vão fazer campanha no exterior. No Brasil, nunca se tentou mirar no eleitor expatriado — disse Belém Lopes. — O Brasil virou um país de emigrantes, com mais de 4 milhões de cidadãos vivendo fora. Estamos falando de 2% da população brasileira, e o PT percebeu essa mudança.

Entre outros candidatos, o programa de Ciro Gomes se caracteriza por uma ausência de trechos que abordem diretamente a política externa, com duas menções à noção de soberania nas negociações entre países. Assuntos internacionais aparecem em outros itens, como quando o documento se refere ao meio ambiente, ao fortalecimento de complexos industriais nacionais, a uma política de incentivo à cultura nacional e à intenção de transformar o Brasil em uma potência educacional.

No plano de Tebet as propostas aparecem numa página no eixo “Governo parceiro da iniciativa privada”. Com ênfase no comércio internacional, ela propõe “implementar plano de redução gradual de tarifas aduaneiras”. O texto defende ainda “consolidar e aprofundar o Mercosul”.

A despeito dos programas, que se tornaram menores e mais vagos nos últimos ciclos eleitorais, é improvável que a política externa vá desempenhar papel crucial nestas eleições, ao contrário de há quatro anos, quando Bolsonaro foi a Taiwan, hostilizou a China e deixou claro que se aproximaria do então líder americano Donald Trump.

— O tema externo deve aparecer bem pouco nas campanhas. Talvez um pouco no contexto ambiental, mas, de resto, não antecipo uma discussão mais ampla sobre a temática — afirmou Oliver Stuenkel, professor de Relações Internacionais da FGV-SP. — Em 2018, havia a narrativa anti-China, a promessa de aproximação a Trump, e também uma discussão proeminente sobre a Venezuela. Dessa vez, o Brasil está mais focado em assuntos internos, em questões econômicas e nas guerras culturais.

https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/eleicoes-2022/noticia/2022/08/bolsonaro-da-guinada-em-propostas-para-itamaraty-e-abraca-o-globalismo-no-programa-de-governo.ghtml

A Reconstrução da Política Externa e a Restauração da Diplomacia Brasileira - Paulo Roberto de Almeida (20 CBDI)

 Minha participação no 20º Congresso Brasileiro de Direito Internacional, dia 25/08, 19:00hs, sobre o tema da Reconstrução da Política Externa e a Restauração da Diplomacia Brasileira.

Six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the world is on a knife edge - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

 Seis meses de guerra, seis meses de rebaixamento moral da diplomacia brasileira, obrigada pelo psicopata que comanda a política externa e renegar seus valores e princípios e permanecer numa posição objetivamente pró-Rússia, para nossa maior vergonha.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the world is on a knife edge

World View

By Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall  The Washington Post, August 21, 2022

A Ukrainian serviceman jumps from a military vehicle near the front line in the Mykolaiv region in Ukraine on Aug. 10. (Anna Kudriavtseva/Reuters) (Stringer/Reuters)

This week marks six months since the start of Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine. The resulting war has dominated international headlines, disrupted global supply chains and galvanized a new spirit of solidarity in the West. For many Europeans, the moment marked a “turning point in history” — as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared in the early weeks of the conflict.

The stark moral dimensions of the war — the brazen, destructive Russian advance and the courageous Ukrainian response — led to the scales falling off the eyes of European elites who had sought peaceful accommodation with Russia. What was unleashed was on a scale not seen in the heart of Europe in decades. It definitively ended, as the New Statesman’s Jeremy Cliffe wrote, “the easy optimism of the immediate post-Cold War years.” But, he added, even as we drift “towards something new,” its contours are “still hazy.”

The fog of war is still thick over Ukraine. Beyond the country’s trench-strewn landscapes and blockaded, battered coastal cities, a clash of ideologies, even of visions of history, is still playing out. In their refusal to bow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialistic ambitions, Ukrainians see themselves on the front line of a global war between democracy and autocracy. That’s a vision echoed by their backers in the West, including President Biden himself, who declared in March that Ukraine was waging a “great battle for freedom … between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Putin, of course, sees it all differently. Russia’s army poured across its neighbor’s borders on Feb. 24 after he delivered a now infamous speech. It was steeped in historical grievance and revisionism, and cast Ukraine as an artificial nation whose “Nazi” regime was a pawn of the West. Putin raged at NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and warned of an “anti-Russia” emerging in territories that were “our historical land.” This would not do; bringing Kyiv, Ukraine, to heel wasn’t just about checking Western influence, but redeeming the tragedy of the fall of the Soviet Union, which, Putin said, disrupted “the balance of forces in the world.”

Putin’s imagined rebalancing hasn’t gone as planners in the Kremlin thought it would. Ukraine bravely resisted the invasion and forced Russian troops into an ignominious retreat after a failed campaign to capture Kyiv. Rather than being chastened, NATO has expanded, bringing Sweden and Finland beneath the umbrella of the world’s preeminent military alliance. In the Baltic states, local authorities have begun dismantling Soviet-era monuments. The war has catalyzed a long-delayed process of “decolonization” for Ukraine and some of its neighbors, who now seem eager to cut away the claims imposed on their countries by a legacy of subjugation to Moscow.

The toll of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy has been stiff: half of the country’s foreign reserves are frozen, hundreds of Western companies have pulled out of the Russian market, and key oil and gas exports are now being sold off to opportunistic buyers for discounted prices. U.S. intelligence estimates reckon as many as 80,000 Russian soldiers may have already died in the fighting. Western analysts also believe that the Russian war machine is severely depleted, with munition stocks running low.

But that’s cold comfort to Ukrainians, who have paid an almost unfathomable price to defend their nation’s very right to exist. Six months of war have seen thousands killed and millions exiled from their homes. Russian forces have carried out alleged atrocities and war crimes. They are now entrenched across a wide swathe of south and southeast Ukraine, with analysts foreseeing a long, bitter war of attrition ahead.

Six months into the war, the Ukrainian message to Western elites has barely changed. “Everything we need is weapons, and if you have the opportunity, force [Putin] to sit down at the negotiating table with me,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a recent interview with my colleagues, reiterating his government’s frequent requests for more advanced arms and munitions. This equipment gives Ukraine more leverage on the battlefield, but also in future theoretical negotiations with a more chastened Russian regime.

Despite delays and logistical hurdles, that aid — led by the United States — has come to Ukraine. The Biden administration has so far committed more than $10 billion worth of security assistance to Kyiv, while also coordinating and mobilizing broader support among NATO and European partners. From Washington to Warsaw, lawmakers believe Ukraine should be given the tools for a decisive military victory, even if such an outcome remains only a distant prospect.

But that bullishness may wane: In Europe, the approach of winter and the bleak certainty of skyrocketing energy costs have raised questions over whether the West can sustain the same resolve in supporting Ukraine’s war effort for the next six months as it has for the past half year.

The centrality of the United States in helping Ukraine hold the line is a reminder that, for all the rhetoric about Europe entering a brave new age, the old 20th century equations still apply: When it comes to the continent’s geopolitics, American superpower plays a paramount role.

Yet no single government can manage the wider shocks of the war, which included jolts to the global agricultural supply chain that have sent food prices soaring in parts of Africa and governments toppling in South Asia. As a result, officials from non-Western nations express frequent bemusement with the zeal on show in Western capitals, where talk of compromise with or concessions to Russia is anathema. “Most puzzling to us is the idea that a conflict like this is in essence being encouraged to continue indefinitely,” a senior African diplomat in New York told Reuters.

Frustratingly for Ukrainian diplomats, fewer African officials are making the obvious case that Russia could simply withdraw its troops from the sovereign territory of another nation. It’s unclear if Russia’s isolation will widen or narrow in the coming months. Both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is engaged in his own escalating confrontation with the United States over Taiwan, are planning on attending this year’s summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Indonesia.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo hoped that won’t deter leaders like Biden from attending. “The rivalry of the big countries is indeed worrying,” Widodo told Bloomberg News last week. “What we want is for this region to be stable, peaceful, so that we can build economic growth. And I think not only Indonesia: Asian countries also want the same thing.”

Stability, though, could prove elusive. As the war in Ukraine drags on, experts fear a widening arc of risk and retaliation, from destructive attacks on civilian areas to assassination and sabotage plots across borders to the ever-present threat of nuclear miscalculation. “Six long months of war,” mused geopolitical commentator Bruno Maçães, and we are still left with “a sense it was only a prologue.”

Foreign Policy: algumas recomendações de leituras sobre a China e o conflito com os EUA

 

AUGUST 19, 2022 | VIEW IN BROWSER
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“Xi Jinping’s China is about to give the world an education in the nuances of decline,” Hal Brands wrote in April, contributing to a heated debate on Beijing’s trajectory and what it means for the United States. In this collection from our archives are essays at the heart of the debate, exploring the cracks in China’s economic miracle, Beijing’s prospects vis-à-vis Washington’s over the next decade, and the question of whether great-power competition is a useful framework for thinking about the U.S.-China relationship at all.—Chloe Hadavas The Dangers of China’s Decline As China’s economic miracle fades, its leaders may become more inclined to take risks. By Hal Brands A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here Beijing knows time isn’t on its side and wants to act fast. By Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins A Shrinking China Can’t Overtake America But if U.S. democracy continues to decay, what’s the point of being on top? By Howard W. French The U.S. Doesn’t Need China’s Collapse to Win A misguided theory of great-power competition will only lead to grief. By Robert A. Manning Great-Power Competition Is a Recipe for Disaster The latest poorly defined buzzword in Washington is leading pundits and policymakers down a dangerous path. By Emma Ashford Photo: Deena So’Oteh illustration for Foreign Policy

Alguns livros que DEVEM ser lidos: seleção por Theo Seeds (Medium)

The 9 books that completely changed the way I see the world

Theo Seeds, 18 Apr 2022

I read a lot — last year I read 53 books, and I’m hoping to clear 50 again this year.

If you love learning, then in my opinion, books are the way to go. That’s because you get a wide variety of perspectives — unlike podcasts and YouTube channels, where you’re generally gonna get the same viewpoints over and over again.

But books are pretty hit-or-miss. Some of the books I read are useless. Most books I read, I learn a little bit from.

 Vou apenas colocar as capas de alguns dos livros, não todos, com os comentários do autor: Theo Seeds

https://medium.com/@theo.seeds/the-9-books-that-completely-changed-the-way-i-see-the-world-6bd2314ad39c 

Fooled By Randomness author Nassim Taleb worked as a Wall Street analyst for a long time. He developed a trading strategy unlike anything the world had ever seen before: he used options trading to make bets that highly unlikely events, like stock market crashes, would happen.

Traditionally, investors make projections about stock prices using financial models. The models assume that the company in question will grow at a constant, predictable rate.

The problem is, these models typically base their assumptions off historical data — meaning implicitly, they assume that the future will be like the past.

But Taleb’s main point in Fooled By Randomness is that the future probably won’t be like the past. We have “unprecedented” market crashes that everyone says are impossible — like the housing market collapse of 2008 — all the time. Moreover, the world changes too quickly to use historical data: by the time we can understand the way it works, it doesn’t work that way anymore.

But most people don’t live long enough to see the ebb and flow of history. As a result, we tend to think the world of our childhood will last forever. That goes double for relatively stable societies, like the United States, which haven’t seen major turbulence in the lifetimes of anyone around today.

My big takeaway from Fooled By Randomness was, don’t be surprised if something weird happens. The world is a deceptive place, and often it doesn’t work the way we think it does. You can’t always trust what you’ve learned, and you can’t always bank on what’s worked for you in the past.

Another Nassim Taleb book. The basic theme of Antifragile is that some things — like the restaurant industry and the human body — become better under conditions of volatility and turbulence.

This is such an unintuitive concept that we didn’t even have a word for it until Taleb wrote Antifragile. But in the real, there are actually a bunch of things that gain from disorder in the long term — from the human body (which responds to some stressors, like exercise, by getting stronger) to the restaurant industry (when economic turbulence happens, bad restaurants go out of business, improving the industry as a whole).

Since humans don’t understand that short-term variance can be a good thing, many human systems are designed to minimize short-term variance. But unfortunately, by taking away short-term variance, we often increase the chances of a major catastrophe.

Think of forest fires, for instance: once upon a time, we tried to put out every forest fire that we found. But then, lots of dead wood accumulated in forests, leading to major, catastrophic fires down the road.

Economic systems work the same way: we don’t like major price changes, so politicians like to prop up markets in the short-term by passing stimulus packages and printing money. Unfortunately, this usually just leads to a greater crash down the road. Two years ago we printed a ton of money so we could send out stimulus checks, and now, we’re seeing almost double-digit inflation as a result.

The major lesson I took away from Antifragile is how important it is to have a Plan B. If you build a fragile system, with one or two major points of weakness, it will eventually collapse. (Think of the Death Star, for instance.) So it’s a good idea to make any large system redundant, idiot-proof, and flexible in response to change.

Sapiens is basically a history of all of mankind, from our early days as proto-humans in Ethiopia to our internet society today — with some speculation about the future, as well.

Sapiens views humans (and in particular, the genus Homo sapiens) as a species totally different from every other species on Earth. Only about 100,000 years ago, we were just another animal. But little by little we are turning ourselves into gods — capable of impacting the climate, traveling to every remote corner of the Earth (and even to the Moon), building weapons that can annihilate us all, and driving thousands upon thousands of species into extinction.

Sapiens looks at the unique elements of Homo sapiens that allowed us to do all this. It’s not just because humans are intelligent: we’re also able to believe in myths, like religion, money, and human-made entities like countries and limited liability corporations.

These myths enable us to cooperate on massive scales. Ants can cooperate with one another, but only if they come from the same colony. But any two humans on the planet can cooperate with one another through trade. And large groups can form bonds based on religion and nationality, even if they’re not genetically related to one another.

Combine that with intelligence, and you have the makings of a species that can do incredible things on amazing scales.

There’s no major lesson I took away from Sapiens, but it’s an earth-shattering book. Reading it may make your head explode, because it looks at the world without presupposing a set of values — unlike most books, which see the world through a Western lens. It questions a lot of things that people don’t usually question, and it says a lot of provocative stuff.

Plus, it’ll give you a unique look into how human history works. It may help you better understand the world around you, and it may even help you predict the future. Who knows.

Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico used to be the same town. They got split up when the US/Mexico border was arbitrarily drawn.

The two towns are culturally and demographically similar. But today, Nogales, Arizona is well-developed, and residents of Nogales, Arizona enjoy a high standard of living. Meanwhile, Nogales, Mexico is not well-developed, and residents of Nogales, Mexico do not enjoy a high standard of living. How is that possible?

Why Nations Fail explains how certain institutions, set up by governments, affects whether or not a country develops. Countries with strong property rights, capitalism, and non-corrupt governments generally develop. Countries that don’t have capitalism or strong property rights, or whose governments are highly corrupt, generally fail to develop.

In addition, successful countries need to embrace new innovations that lead to creative destruction. And they need to offer ordinary citizens some way to improve their lot in life by creating value for others, rather than reducing them to slaves or serfs or peasants. (One reason why 11th-century Venice thrived so much, say the authors, is because ordinary people could become rich on trading expeditions.)

That explains how culturally similar places — like East and West Germany, or North and South Korea — can have such different economies: their citizens have different incentives, so they behave differently. It also explains why countries like Chile, China, and Singapore grow so rapidly once they transition to market economies.

People have spent a lot of money trying to decrease poverty in the third world. But according to Why Nations Fail, investing more in education or infrastructure isn’t the answer. If a country wants to develop, it has to get its act together and embrace free-market economic policies.

Zelenskyy Gamble in Crimea — Everything Is Done to Draw Attention to the Real Start of Putin’s War - Sylvain Saurel (Medium)

 Sylvain Saurel

Medium, Aug 18, 2022

Zelenskyy Gamble in Crimea — Everything Is Done to Draw Attention to the Real Start of Putin’s War.

The war did not start on February 24, 2022, but on February 27, 2014.

Image: Getty Images

Almost six months after the outbreak of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the determination of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains intact. Every day, he is there to give an update on the situation of this odious war led by Vladimir Putin’s Russian army while giving the necessary motivation to his people to continue the struggle for the survival of their identity.

This asymmetrical war, imposed by an invader much more powerful than its victim, remains particularly difficult in the Donbas, where the Russian steamroller, after the bitter failure of its initial offensive on Kyiv, does not stop advancing, even very slowly.

One after the other, two attacks on Russian military sites in Crimea have just shown that the Ukrainian authorities refuse to resign themselves to being subjected to Russia. As Zelensky had already said several times, the Ukrainians are already prepared to carry out counter-offensives against the territories illegally occupied by the Russian army.

However, the attacks in Crimea remain for the moment tactical moves, not officially claimed. They in no way presume an offensive of which the Ukrainian army remains incapable as it stands. But they do reflect a desire to broaden military options, display a strategy of reconquest, and also to wage battle on the terrain of symbols.

These attacks reinstate the current conflict in the Ukrainian narrative, which fixes the beginning of the Russian aggression not on 24 February 2022, but eight years earlier, on 27 February 2014, with the launch of Russian military operations in the peninsula, the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet. These would lead to a unilateral annexation that a controversial referendum would try to cover with a veil of legitimacy. The United Nations never recognized it.

This battle of narratives is as strategic as the one fought with weapons.

Until now, the calm enjoyed by Crimea, the starting point of the invasion by Russian troops of southern Ukraine, validated Vladimir Putin’s thesis of territorial conquest that was no longer debated. The stays of many Russian nationals on its shores bathed by the waters of the Black Sea supported it. The deterioration of the situation, which has led to hasty departures in the last few hours, is brutal and blurs Moscow’s propaganda.

Zelenskyy wants to remind the world of the reality: Crimea is a Ukrainian territory illegally occupied by the Russian army for over 8 years.

If it is confirmed, as some experts believe, that the attacks were caused by bombings of an unprecedented range (about 200 kilometers), these attacks potentially create a new situation. This could force the Russian aggressor to review a large part of his military system. Anxious not to fuel an uncontrolled escalation, the Western allies have so far limited themselves to military aid, which theoretically does not allow for such bombings.

By attempting to put the fate of Crimea back on the table militarily and by announcing the creation of an “advisory Council on the de-occupation of Crimea”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is showing boldness. By declaring on August 9, 2022, that “this Russian war against Ukraine and entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — with its liberation,” he confirmed that he considers the time for negotiation to be less than ever, as he is playing new cards in the ongoing war of attrition.

Ukraine will not be satisfied with a ceasefire that splits its territory in two. Ukraine wants its entire territory back, and that includes Crimea, as the events of the last few days show!

Vladimir Putin, who denounced on August 16, 2022, at a conference on security in Moscow the role of the United States, accused of “dragging” the conflict, will have to take into account once again, under pressure, the resilience of Kyiv. Putin, who saw his Russian army capable of taking control of Ukraine in less than a month, is in the middle of a nightmare.

Prisoner of a doxa that has made Crimea a red line, he will have no choice but to escalate, if the attacks attributed to Ukraine continue on the peninsula. Putin would then contribute to making more visible a war that he wanted to hide from his population.

A Russian population that supports him for lack of alternatives, but which will end up dropping him when it realizes the shameless lies of the Kremlin czar which are propagated continuously by the Russian propaganda. Putin will indeed have a hard time justifying the chaos in Crimea when he has been talking for almost 200 days about a simple “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The truth will eventually come out, bringing Putin closer to the inevitable humiliating defeat that awaits him. The big question is to know if he will be able to resist this humiliation …

Foreign Affairs: a invasão da Etiópia pela Itália, em 1935, e a fraca reação da Liga das Nações

 Putin invadiu a Crimeia em 2014 e o resto da Ucrânia em 2022. A ONU não pode fazer nada contra o invasor, como a Liga das Nações em 1935 contra a Itália. Parece que o mundo não aprende.

Como escreveu o ativista americano negro W.E.B. Du Bois na revista, “if Italy takes her pound of flesh by force, does anyone suppose that Germany will not make a similar attempt?”.

Pois é, a inação chama mais agressão.

August 21, 2022 | View In Browser

Ginevra Vacalebre

Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, launching a war that would drive Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie into exile, pave the way for Italian occupation, and test the capacity and will of the League of Nations to check the aggression of expansionist states. Evidence of an impending incursion had “been accumulating for some months,” Robert Gale Woolbert wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier that year. But in a world still largely governed by European colonial powers, whether Italy would go to war depended on whether “France and Great Britain . . . permit it.”   Much of the writing in Foreign Affairs during the war revealed the racism implicit in Western understandings of the conquest—and, in some cases, the racist ideas used to justify it (Corrado Zoli, the former Italian colonial governor of Eritrea, extolled the imperial expansion as a “civilizing mission”). A powerful indictment of Italy’s “indefensible aggression,” meanwhile, came from W. E .B. Du Bois. Italy, he wrote, had proceeded with its invasion “in spite of the League of Nations, in spite of her treaty of arbitration, in spite of efforts at conciliation and adjustment”—and its actions perpetuated a colonial system of “economic exploitation based on the excuse of race prejudice.”   The League of Nations—of which both Ethiopia and Italy were members—did vote to condemn the war. The achievement “seemed little less than a miracle,” Alfred Zimmern wrote in 1936. But the fact remained that the body “did not succeed in preventing war from breaking out.” Nor, as A. Lawrence Lowell pointed out, were the sanctions imposed on Italy particularly effective restraints. Both scholars still believed the league could learn from its failure; others, however, saw in Ethiopia signs of another war to come. As Du Bois put it, “if Italy takes her pound of flesh by force, does anyone suppose that Germany will not make a similar attempt?”

Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis By W. E. B. Du Bois (1935)

Italy in Abyssinia By Robert Gale Woolbert (1935)

The Testing of the League By Sir Alfred Zimmern (1936)

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