Como a Tesla, de Elon Musk, plantou na China as sementes de sua própria queda - The New York Times

Como a Tesla, de Elon Musk, plantou na China as sementes de sua própria queda

 

Instalação de fábrica em Xangai foi fundamental para salvar montadora americana de crise, mas também ajudou a impulsionar a indústria chinesa de carros elétricos

 

Por The New York Times

 

 — Nova York

 

10/04/2024 

 

Quando o bilionário americano Elon Musk instalou na China uma fábrica da Tesla, a fabricante de carros elétricos controlada por ele, fez uma aposta que garantiu à empresa peças e componentes mais baratos e operários qualificados, mas, ao mesmo tempo, pode ter criado a maior ameaça ao futuro de seus negócios, ou seja, a indústria chinesa de veículos elétricos.

 

A aposta salvou a Tesla. Da crise que vivia em meados dos anos 2010, a companhia se tornou a montadora mais valiosa do mundo após as cotações de suas ações dispararem, fazendo de Musk um dos homens mais ricos do planeta, conta a edição desta terça-feira, dia 9, do podcast The Daily, do jornal The New York Times.

 

Alguns anos antes de apresentar os primeiros carros produzidos na fábrica da China, com a Tesla à beira do fracasso, Musk havia apostado no gigante asiático em busca de peças baratas e trabalhadores capazes. Nos primeiros anos de atividade, a montadora americana enfrentava atrasos no desenvolvimento dos carros e desconfiança de investidores.

 

A China, por sua vez, precisava da Tesla como uma âncora para impulsionar sua incipiente indústria de veículos elétricos. Para os líderes chineses, uma fábrica da Tesla em solo doméstico era um prêmio.Inicialmente, Musk parecia ter a vantagem na relação, garantindo concessões da China que raramente eram oferecidas a empresários estrangeiros, mas a Tesla agora está cada vez mais em apuros, perdendo sua vantagem sobre os concorrentes chineses no próprio mercado que ajudou a criar.

 

A mudança de direção da Tesla na China também amarrou Musk a Pequim de uma maneira que está sendo examinada pelas autoridades dos EUA.

 

Entrevistas com ex-funcionários da Tesla, diplomatas e técnicos de governo feitas pelo The New York Times revelam como Musk construiu uma relação simbiótica incomum com Pequim, lucrando com a generosidade do governo chinês enquanto recebia subsídios nos EUA. 

 

Enquanto Musk explorava a construção da fábrica em Xangai, os líderes chineses concordaram com uma mudança crucial na política de regulamentações nacionais de emissões de gases do efeito estufa (GEE), após uma pressão política da Tesla que não foi relatada anteriormente.

 

Essa mudança beneficiou diretamente a montadora americana, trazendo centenas de milhões de dólares em lucros estimados à medida que a produção na China decolava, descobriu o The New York Times.

 

Musk também obteve acesso incomum a líderes de alto escalão do governo chinês. Ele trabalhou em estreita colaboração o primeiro-ministro Li Qiang, quando ele era um importante oficial de Xangai. A fábrica chinesa da Tesla foi construída em velocidade recorde e sem um parceiro local, um feito inédito para uma empresa automobilística estrangeira na China.

 

O bilionário, que já insinuou que os trabalhadores americanos são preguiçosos, aproveitou a unidade chinesa para fugir de problemas com legislações trabalhistas.

 

Em Fremont, na Califórnia, a primeira fábrica da Tesla enfrentou problemas com autoridades e sindicatos por causa de questões trabalhistas. Na China, após a morte de um trabalhador da Tesla em Xangai no ano passado, um relatório citando lacunas de segurança foi retirado do ar.

 

Além disso, Musk obteve a política de emissões de GEEs. Modelada a partir de um programa da Califórnia que tem sido um benefício para a Tesla, a política concede créditos aos fabricantes de automóveis por produzir carros limpos – o Sistema de Negociação de Emissões (ETS, na sigla em inglês) da Califórnia, um dos maiores do mundo, rendeu à Tesla, de 2008 a 2023, US$ 3,7 bilhões, segundo o gabinete do governador local.

 

Para pressionar pela mudança regulatória, a Tesla se aliou a ambientalistas da Califórnia, que estavam tentando limpar os céus poluídos da China e viam na exportação do modelo de ETS a confirmação de seu sucesso. A China introduziu o seu ETS em 2017.

 

Todo esse movimento ajudou a tornar a Tesla a empresa de automóveis mais valiosa do mundo, mas o sucesso da montadora americana por lá também forçou as marcas locais a inovar.

 

A China está agora produzindo carros elétricos baratos, mas bem feitos, enquanto o líder chinês Xi Jinping visa transformar o país em uma “potência automobilística”.

 

Fabricantes de automóveis chineses como BYD e SAIC estão avançando na Europa, ameaçando fabricantes estabelecidos como Volkswagen, Renault e Stellantis – dona das marcas Fiat, Peugeot, Citröen e Jeep. As montadoras americanas, como Ford e General Motors (GM), também estão correndo para acompanhar o ritmo.

 

— Há “antes da Tesla e depois da Tesla” — disse Michael Dunne, consultor automotivo e ex-executivo da General Motors na Ásia, sobre o efeito da empresa na indústria chinesa. — A Tesla foi a faz-tudo.

 

Musk agora está andando na corda bamba. Ele soou o alarme sobre os rivais da China, mesmo permanecendo dependente do mercado e da cadeia de suprimentos chineses e repetindo os pontos de vista geopolíticos de Pequim.

 

O bilionário alertou em janeiro que, a menos que as marcas automobilísticas chinesas fossem bloqueadas por barreiras comerciais, elas “praticamente demoliriam a maioria das outras empresas automobilísticas do mundo”. O preço das ações da Tesla despencou após vendas lentas na China, fazendo Musk perder o título de homem mais rico do mundo.

 

A montadora americana está tão enraizada na China que Musk não pode se desvincular facilmente, caso queira. Os carros da Tesla custam significativamente menos para serem fabricados em Xangai do que em outros lugares, uma economia-chave quando a empresa está em uma guerra de preços com seus concorrentes.

 

No Congresso americano, os legisladores estão estudando seus laços com a China e como ele equilibra a Tesla com seus outros empreendimentos. A SpaceX, outra empresa que ele possui, tem contratos lucrativos com as forças armadas dos EUA e detém quase total controle da internet via satélite do mundo através de sua rede Starlink.

 

Musk também é dono da plataforma de mídia social X, anteriormente Twitter, que a China usou para campanhas de desinformação.

 

— Elon Musk tem uma exposição financeira profunda à China, incluindo sua fábrica em Xangai — disse o senador Mark Warner, democrata da Virgínia, que preside o Comitê de Inteligência do Senado.

 

Na China, não está claro se o governo tentou exercer pressão sobre Musk, mas as autoridades locais têm alavancas que poderiam puxar. No ano passado, várias localidades chinesas proibiram carros da Tesla em áreas sensíveis, levando a empresa a enfatizar que todos os dados chineses são mantidos localmente.

 

Em fevereiro, depois que o Departamento de Comércio dos EUA anunciou uma investigação sobre a retenção de dados pelos veículos elétricos chineses, o Global Times, um jornal do Partido Comunista da China, alertou que os consumidores chineses poderiam retaliar contra a Tesla.

 

Tesla, SpaceX e Musk não responderam a uma lista detalhada de perguntas do The New York Times. Durante um evento do jornal em novembro, Musk disse que “todas as empresas automobilísticas” dependem em parte do mercado chinês. Ele também descartou preocupações sobre SpaceX e Starlink, dizendo que não operam na China e que suas empresas não devem ser confundidas.

 

Por outro lado, em uma conversa online com dois membros do Congresso americano em julho do ano passado, ele foi mais direto. O bilionário reconheceu ter “alguns interesses pessoais” na China e se descreveu como “um pouco pró-China”.

Financial Times on Russia: a special edition April 10, 2024

 

Russia EU’s sanctions regime in turmoil after oligarchs win legal battle APRIL 11, 2024

Russia ˃ A Nasty Little War — when the west tried to overturn the Russian revolution Anna Reid’s vivid history of an ill-judged intervention in 1918 demonstrates that we underestimate Russia at our peril APRIL 11, 2024 Europe should talk less and prepare more against Russian threat, says Finnish president Alexander Stubb urges allies to refrain from ‘belligerent’ rhetoric about Russia attacking soon APRIL 11, 2024 David Cameron warns US politicians against ‘appeasement’ of Russia  UK foreign secretary steps up efforts to secure aid for Ukraine but is snubbed by senior Republican APRIL 10, 2024 EU court rules in favour of Russian oligarchs Fridman and Aven in blow to sanctions regime Judgment finds insufficient evidence that billionaires had undermined Ukraine APRIL 10, 2024 Terror attack creates a central Asian dilemma for Putin Tajiks are among those blamed for the massacre but Russia’s war economy depends on immigrant Muslim workers APRIL 10, 2024 Russia is filling the vacuum left by the west in the Sahel The courting of Niger’s military junta epitomises the growing security challenge in this part of Africa APRIL 10, 2024

Henry Kissinger and the Angel of Applied History - Sean M. Case, Yale University (H-Diplo)

Kissinger era o próprio arauto da história aplicada, inclusive com bombas e assassinatos. 

H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary II-4: "Henry Kissinger and the Angel of Applied History"

Christopher Ball

H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary

Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Seth Offenbach | Production Editor: Christopher Ball

10 April 2024 | Vol. II: No. 4 

Henry Kissinger and the Angel of Applied History

https://hdiplo.org/to/CII-4

Essay by Sean M. Case, Yale University 

The news alerts declaring the death of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger flashed across my iPhone in a feverish pitch matching my flu-induced fever. I felt utterly speechless—it did not seem real. Kissinger had most recently celebrated his centenary in May. The obituaries and the post-mortems similarly appeared in a feverish pace shortly after his passing. The New York Times and the Washington Post carried headlines declaring the death of a statesman who shaped the history of the Cold War in the United States and remained a “player on the world stage” until his death.[1] His explicit involvement in world affairs as national security adviser and then secretary of state under the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, Jr. bore special mention. National security journalist Spencer Ackerman, channeling the spirit of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s 1983 The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, condemned Kissinger as a “war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class” in an obituary that was celebratory in tone.[2] The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft conducted a symposium debating Kissinger’s legacy of peace or destruction, and Jacobin Magazinecommissioned essays from prominent historians who condemned Kissinger as the “top strategist of America’s empire of capital.”[3] The divisions over his policy legacy reflected those within international relations (IR) theory. While Kissinger was often hailed or condemned as a foreign policy realist and a consummate practitioner of nineteenth-century realpolitik in the twentieth century, recent intellectual trends sought to shift his theoretical position. Diplomatic historian Thomas Otte exhorted Kissinger as the “ultimate realist,” yet other academics sought to label him as an “idealist” or even a “moralist.”[4] On the other hand, contemporary international relations realists, working in transatlantic solidarity, rejected him as an “occasional realist” who prolonged and expanded conflict in Southeast Asia and destabilized Latin America, thus demonstrating how power politics had corrupted him and his strategic outlook.[5]

These obituaries and memorials collectively omit one of Kissinger’s most enduring policy legacies: his self-perception as a historian, which was bolstered by the same perception from his friends, colleagues, and students. He is thoroughly woven into the warp and weft of both how applied history is understood and taught. Due to his nearly 60 years in official and unofficial government service, Kissinger appeared to both exist within and outside of time. How apt for an individual who was thought of as a statesman and a historian, an image which Kissinger had cultivated ever since the completion of his undergraduate thesis The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant at Harvard University in 1950.[6] His 1957 monograph A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, which was based upon his 1954 doctoral dissertation, and “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” his 1968 biographical sketch of the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, further cemented him as a historically oriented thinker.[7] Rather than subscribing to the policy consensus that the threat of nuclear weapons in the 1950s ushered in a new paradigm, Kissinger believed their existence highlighted deficiencies within policymakers’ historical knowledge.[8] He fluidly moved between the disciplines of history, political science, and philosophy in order to show how nineteenth-century concerns directly correlated with twentieth-century anxieties. His identity as a historian raises the following questions: Why did Kissinger consider himself to be a historian? How did he employ history? What did he believe was the purpose of historical inquiry? A consideration of him as a philosopher of history or a historian demonstrates the far more pernicious aspect of his historical thinking: history-as-analogy. This method of thinking divorced national histories from their contexts and mapped them onto other states and contexts. Kissinger’s privileging of historical analogy ultimately transformed history from an examination of the past to a strategic resource to be mined for executive benefit. 

Historians have debated the “meaning of Kissinger” since the 1970s, creating what one historian referred to as “Kissingerology” and another to the “Kissinger Wars.”[9] The controversial statesman’s role in international affairs invited multiple interpretations that often fell into two polarized camps. In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens accused Kissinger of being a war criminal because of his willful ignorance of human rights and his enabling of atrocities in Cambodia, Chile, and Bangladesh; he was not alone in his assessment.[10] Foreign affairs journalist Robert D. Kaplan, on the other hand, argued that history would ultimately exonerate Kissinger as a misunderstood defender of the international system.[11] Going further than Kaplan had in defending Kissinger, historian Niall Ferguson used the first volume of his biography, Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist to dismantle what he perceived as myths concerning Kissinger, whom he considered to be a friend. Primarily addressing Hitchens’s charges of war crimes, Ferguson argued that a double standard existed between Kissinger and his colleagues in the federal service, particularly Kissinger’s predecessor as secretary of state, John Foster Dulles.[12] He subsequently praised Kissinger for introducing the insight that “states and statesmen act on the behalf of their own historical self-understanding,” which foreclosed any future criticisms of policy.[13] Kissinger’s personal view of himself as a “historian more than as a statesman” led historian William T. Weber in 1978 to seek the intersections between Kissinger’s historical scholarship and his policies.[14]Yet the sheer breadth and depth of Kissingerology paid scant attention to Weber’s line of inquiry until the adoption of “applied history” as a mode of inquiry and advising in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Ferguson’s assessment coincided with his then-recent institutional project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Nearly 30 years after Kissinger left the White House in his position as secretary of state in 1977, political scientist Graham Allison and Ferguson published their 2015 “Applied History Manifesto,” calling for the creation of a “White House Council of Historical Advisers,” which, in turn, led to the creation of Harvard’s Applied History Project. The impetus for their proposal stemmed from Ferguson’s recent biographical treatment of the former secretary of state. Over the course of his decade-long research into Kissinger’s life, Ferguson discovered a purported “history deficit” within US foreign policy. He and Allison endorsed Kissinger’s judgment that policymakers knew “almost nothing not just of other countries’ pasts but also of their own. Worse, they often do not see what is wrong with their ignorance.”[15] Four decades after Kissinger’s previous appearance at Harvard, Allison, in turn, hosted a discussion with Kissinger in 2012. In that forum, Kissinger recommended history and philosophy as the essential disciplines for a career in foreign policy. Allison and Ferguson ultimately judged Kissinger as an applied historian par excellence for his use of historical analogies as he invoked a usable past for the Cold War era. Ferguson’s proposed two-volume biography of Kissinger was thus meant to enable both the policymaker and the private citizen to understand the “meaning of Kissinger.”[16]

Johns Hopkins University also staked a claim to Kissinger’s meaning and legacy in 2015. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endowed his alma mater with the initial funding for the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs. By 11 October 2016, matching funds to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies totaled more than $50 million, making Bloomberg’s gift, at the time, the largest combined gift in the university’s history.[17] “Henry has helped shape our history not only as a statesman but a teacher,” Bloomberg declared. “After all, he was a renowned scholar before he became a public official, and throughout his career he has never stopped learning or teaching.”[18] The center focuses on the application of history to contemporary international affairs, with ten endowed chairs, including two Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships.[19] In the wake of Kissinger’s death, the Kissinger Center hailed him as the “epitome of the scholar-statesman” and stated that it would continue to pursue “his vision for a deep engagement with history to meet the challenges of the future.” The Belfer Center, on the other hand and in a similar fashion to the Quincy Institute, focused on Kissinger’s “mixed” policy record, acknowledging how his diplomacy with China and within the Middle East decreased conflict while noting his neglect of peace and human rights in Southeast Asia and Latin America.[20] Both centers also praised Kissinger for his historian’s eye, a characteristic that bears interrogation. 

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Kissinger’s most recent and final book served as the culmination of his historical and intellectual thought. It formed a loose trilogy with A World Restored (1957) and Diplomacy (1994), and encapsulates Kissinger’s thinking from The Meaning of History, which marked the start of his academic life, to the end of his natural life.[21] Leadership most importantly revealed how his thought remained in stasis for 70 years because he continued to view the world according to binary categories. Yet it also demonstrated how his thinking shifted from advising and analyzing to the naked pursuit of his personal power and influence. Kissinger, in A World Restored, initially defined diplomacy as the “art of restraining the exercise of power.”[22] At the close of the 1950s, he espoused the consensus belief from the late 1940s that the European and thus the international political system stemmed from the Westphalian system of sovereign states. This line of historical reasoning argues the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the religiously fueled Thirty Years’ War in Europe following the Protestant Reformation, functioned as the purported seventeenth-century origin for the twentieth-century international system.[23] Kissinger, in turn, viewed the balance of power that was institutionalized in Europe at the 1815 Congress of Vienna as analogous to early Cold War. Over the next 27 years, his understanding of diplomacy shifted from a system that applied restraint on power to one which entailed personalized negotiations on the individual level.[24]

Kissinger then took his investment in the personal to the hyper-personal in Leadership, with his focus on six world leaders whom he had interacted with in his role as secretary of state: former chancellor of Germany Konrad Adenauer; former president of France Charles de Gaulle; former US president and foreign policy mentor Richard Nixon; former president of Egypt Anwar Sadat; former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew; and former prime minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher. Kissinger had already displayed a penchant for mining his personal history through his three-volume memoir of his government service: The White House Years; Years of Upheaval; and Years of Renewal.[25] Taken as a whole his federal career revealed how he transformed his concept of a usable past derived from nineteenth-century European diplomacy to one that was grounded in his personal experiences as a policymaker. Kissinger’s memoirs and other writings frequently displayed declassified and sanitized policy memoranda and/or telephone transcripts. He used them to elaborate on policymaking in a general sense and to establish his authority as scholar-diplomat. Kissinger frequently modified these documents in order to display himself in the most positive light.[26] In his convenient formulation, only statesmen could correctly interpret the past. The inherent danger of his proposal rested in the construction of a highly insulated conception of the past that was grounded in a singular perspective. This perspective could not be questioned because it was the interpretation of an individual’s life based upon the unique experience of having lived it. Kissinger long argued that history “teaches by analogy, through the ability to recognize comparable situations.”[27] Yet these comparisons could only be teased out and applied by historically informed statesmen, creating a closed feedback loop of individuated historical reasoning. It was not for later generations to judge the decisionmaking of previous generations. A privilege granted by experience, according to Kissinger, enabled statesmen to interpret history for their citizens; he argued that they operated on the public’s behalf in order to safeguard a nation-state’s respective national interests.[28]

The six individuals who constitute Kissinger’s case-studies exemplified the executive and insulated qualities that Kissinger most admired in world leaders. He placed them in the generation of the “Second Thirty Years’ War,” which began with the First World War in 1914 and ended with the Second World War in 1945. Kissinger viewed these three-decade time blocks as acting as cyclical engines of social transformations: the first Thirty Years’ War ushered in secular national sovereignty while the second one instituted international order upon the rest of the world.[29] The obscured seventh figure in these case studies was Kissinger himself—he operated as interlocutor of events and narrator of lessons learned. He, after all, also belonged to that generation, and his prior experience as a statesman, in his framing, granted him the unique ability to comment on and investigate these world leaders as they conducted themselves during the Cold War and after. His penchant for historical analogy thus extended from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, and it placed Europe as the world’s unbroken center of modernity for 300 years. Kissinger also transformed his ideal categories of the “stateman” and the “prophet” or “visionary” from A World Restored to his investigation into world leaders of the Cold War. He framed international relations and international history as a philosophical debate over the “statesman,” who “manipulates reality” through incrementalism, and the “prophet,” who “creates reality” through the upheaval of the existing social and political orders. The social and political changes highlighted by this tension between these ideal categories became a central concern for Kissinger’s historical thinking.[30] The statesman and the prophet collapsed historical actors and movements into easily digestible categories, simplifying and sacrificing complexity for sake of summary. It paid scant attention to the why and the how of historical events.

History does not teach by analogy. Kissinger consistently argued for the eminence of historical analogy as the guiding form of history. He surmised that history served as the memory of an individual nation-state while analogy described the interactions between nation-states. The domestic and the foreign existed as hermetically sealed separate spheres in his thought.[31] He further ignored the fact that a state is a palimpsest, a continuously revised narrative, and perhaps even a fiction. Although Kissinger demonstrated a facility with biography, his historical analysis was based upon personal concerns and not an appreciation of the past as an alien environment. His focus upon sovereignty as an outgrowth of the Peace of Westphalia promulgated an originalist interpretation that was akin to contemporary concerns with constitutional originalism. Legal historian Jonathan Gienapp astutely observed that historical thinking means knowing how to respect the “assumptions, values, and logics that framed the very different mental universe of those living in a different time and place.”[32] More recently, historian Joseph Stieb rejected the prevailing historiographical trend of examining the past as a breeding ground for lessons to learn. He instead argued that history should remain “central to the education of national security professionals not for lesson-learning but for enriching their understanding of the world and themselves while cultivating the wisdom to inform sound decisions.”[33] Kissinger bracketed the first half of the twentieth century as the “Second Thirty Years’ War,” yet we in the twenty-first century find ourselves quickly closing in on the 30-year mark in our current era of endless war (2001-?). History situates us in worlds that are familiar yet alien. It becomes even more necessary and urgent to interrogate how we apply history and historical thinking to decisionmaking. Let us cast a critical eye on the unexpected errors and willful mistakes lest we repeat them. Let us no longer be haunted by ghosts from foreign policies’ past and lay those ghosts to rest. Let us now reserve our attention, questions, and criticisms for the institutions and systems that perpetuate Kissinger’s ways of thinking and the ideologies that animate them.

 

Sean M. Case is a Henry A. Kissinger Vising Scholars Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy and International Security Studies. He received his doctorate in 2023 from Boston University’s American & New England Studies Program. His current book project, based upon his dissertation, traces the transfer of American geopolitical and strategic thinking from military intellectuals in the interwar period to university-trained defense intellectuals in the early Cold War. Prior to his doctoral studies, he served for approximately twelve years in the US Army as an officer with key assignments in Germany, Afghanistan, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is interested in the intellectual history of international relations and critical security studies.

 

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[1] David E. Singer, “Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped the Nation’s Cold War History,” The New York Times, 29 November 2023; Thomas W. Lippman, “Henry Kissinger, Who Shaped World Affairs under Two Presidents, Dies at 100,” The Washington Post, 29 November 2023; and Peter Baker, “Kissinger: A Player on the World Stage Until the Very End,” The New York Times, 30 November 2023.

[2] Spencer Ackerman, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies,” Rolling Stone Magazine, 29 November 2023 and Spencer Ackerman, “My Kissinger Obit for ‘Rolling Stone’,” Ghost, 30 November 2023. For Hersch’s earlier scathing response to the first two volumes of Kissinger’s memoirs, see The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Touchstone, 1984).

[3] Andrew Bacevich, et al., “Symposium: Peace or Destruction—What Was Kissinger’s Impact?” Responsible Statecraft, The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, 1 December 2023; and René Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Jonah Walters, eds., The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger, introduction by Greg Grandin, (New York: Jacobin Magazine/Verso Books, 2024), 4.

[4] T. G. Otte, “Kissinger: The Ultimate Realist,” Engelsberg Ideas, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 12 December 2023. Kissinger’s official biographer Niall Ferguson placed Kissinger as an adherent to Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant’s theory of ethics while historians John Bew and Francis J. Gavin argue that his thought aligned with the moral philosophies Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau. All three based their observations on Kissinger’s undergraduate thesis. See Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist(New York: Penguin, 2015) and John Bew and Francis J. Gavin, “Foreword” to Henry A. Kissinger, The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2022).

[5] For the Realist rejection of Kissinger, see Michael Desch and Stephen Walt in “Symposium: Peace or Destruction—What Was Kissinger’s Impact?”; Patrick Porter, “The Man Who Loved Power,” The Critic, 30 November 2023; and Justin Logan, “Henry Kissinger as ‘The Man Who Loved Power’,” Cato at Liberty, The Cato Institute, 4 December 2023.

[6] Henry A. Kissinger, The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1950).

[7] See Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822(Gloucester, MA: Houghton Mifflin, first ed. 1957, second ed. 1973) and “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus 97.3 (1968).

[8] See John G. Stoessinger, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (New York: Norton, 1976), 3, 9. In the transition from dissertation to first book, the title changed from “Peace, Legitimacy, and Equilibrium: A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich” to A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace. The change highlighted Kissinger’s shifting emphasis from an exclusive academic readership to an appeal to policymakers and an informed public.

[9] See Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “‘Dr. Kissinger’ or ‘Mr. Henry’? Kissingerology, Thirty Years and Counting,” Diplomatic History 27.5 (2003): 637-676 and Barbara Keys, “The Kissinger Wars,” Process: A Blog for American History, November 2016.

[10] See Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (New York: Verso, 2001) and the more recent 2021 re-release from Atlantic Books. Gary J. Bass’s The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (New York: Vintage, 2014) critcized the Nixon White House’s policy toward Bangladesh during the Bangladeshi 1971 war for independence from Pakistan. Greg Grandin more recently held Kissinger responsible for the current War on Terror in Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman (New York: Picador, 2016).

[11] For Kaplan’s defenses of Kissinger, see Robert D. Kaplan, “Kissinger, Metternich, and Realism,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 1999 and “The Statesman in Defense of Kissinger, The Atlantic Monthly, May 2013.

[12] Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist (New York: Penguin, 2015), 11. See the H-Diplo roundtable at https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/contributed-files/roundtable-xviii-3_1.pdf.  

[13] Ferguson, The Idealist, 26. Ferguson’s treatment of Kissinger is a far cry from the developing twenty-first century biographical consensus. Jussi Hanhimäki, in a similar fashion as Ferguson, argued for the importance of historical context when examining Kissinger’s policy record, especially how he consistently pursued peace. See Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford UP, 2004), 489. Jeremi Suri, on the other hand, placed Kissinger in the context of the Jewish diaspora from Nazi rule in Germany, and teased out Kissinger’s antidemocratic principles from the failures of the Weimar Republic. See Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard, 2007), 4-6. In one of the most recent biographical studies, Thomas A. Schwartz viewed Kissinger in the context of his fellow Cold Warriors and positioned Kissinger as a remarkable political operator both in and outside of government service. See Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (New York: Hill and Wang, 2020), 14-15.

[14] William T. Weber, “Kissinger as Historian: A Historiographical Approach to Statesmanship,” World Affairs141.1 (1978): 40-41, JSTOR.

[15] Graham Allison, “The Key to Henry Kissinger’s Success,” The Atlantic, 27 November 2015; See also and Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson, “Applied History Manifesto: Establish a White House Council of Historical Advisers Now,” Applied History Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2016.

[16] Niall Ferguson, “The Meaning of Kissinger: A Realist Reconsidered,” Foreign Affairs 94.5 (2015): 134-143.

[17] Hub staff report, “Johns Hopkins Launches Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins University, 11 October 2016.

[18] Hub staff report, “Johns Hopkins Launches Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins University, 11 October 2016. 

[19] Dennis O’Shea, “New Johns Hopkins Global Affairs Center to Honor Henry Kissinger,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins University, 9 April 2015.

[20] See “The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs Mourn the Passing of Dr. Henry Kissinger,” The Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs/JHU SAIS, 30 November 2024, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Graham Allison, Rana Mitter, Fredrik Logevall, and Joseph S. Nye, “The Impact of Henry Kissinger,” The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs/Harvard University, 30 November 2024.

[21] See Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822(Gloucester, MA: Houghton Mifflin, first ed. 1957, second ed. 1973); Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); and Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (New York: Penguin, 2022).

[22] Kissinger, A World Restored, 2.

[23] Leo Gross, an international lawyer and early expert in international relations, popularized the concept of the Westphalian system among Western academics with his “The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–1948,” The American Journal of International Law 42.1 (1948), 20-41, JSTOR. Beginning in the 1990s, political scientists increasingly questioned the veracity of the concept, leading some to label it as a myth. See Stephen D. Krasner, “Compromising Westphalia,” International Security 20. 3 (1995–1996), 115-151 and Andreas Osiander, “Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,” International Organization 55.2 (2001), 251-287. Historian Brendan Simms most recently argued in favor of the Westphalian model as a means to foster peace in the Middle East. See Simms, “Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East,” Engelsberg Ideas, 19 June 2020, and, in particular, the rejoinder from Suzanne Maloney, “Dreams of Westphalia Can a Grand Bargain Solve the Middle East’s Problems?” Foreign Affairs 99.1 (2020), 148-153.

[24] Kissinger, A World Restored, 2, 138, 187, and Diplomacy, 276. For a particularly insightful and astute deconstruction of the “Westphalia myth,” see Claire Vergerio, “Beyond the Nation-State,” Boston Review, 27 May 2021, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/beyond-the-nation-state/.

[25] See Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982); and Years of Renewal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999). Simon & Schuster reissued all three volumes in 2011. 

[26] Barbara Keys focused on Kissinger’s investment in the personal in Barbara J. Keys, “Henry Kissinger: The Emotional Statesman,” Diplomatic History 35. 4 (2011): 587-609; Keys and Claire Yorke, “Personal and Political Emotions in the Mind of the Diplomat,” Political Psychology 40.6 (2019), 1235-49; and Keys, “The Diplomat’s Two Minds: Deconstructing a Foreign Policy Myth,” Diplomatic History 44.1 (2020), 1-21. The National Security Archive also released a trove of documents to depict Kissinger’s policy legacy more accurately, including his complicity in foreign atrocities. See “Henry Kissinger: The Declassified Obituary,” National Security Archive, 29 November 2023, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile-cold-war-henry-kissinger-indonesia-southern-cone-vietnam/2023-11-29/henry, and “The Kissinger Telcons: The Story Behind the Story,” National Security Archive, 13 February 2024, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/henry-kissinger/2024-02-13/kissinger-telcons-story-behind-story.  

[27] Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (New York: Penguin Press, 2022), xvii.

[28] See Kissinger, A World Restored, 316-7 and 331-2.

[29] Kissinger, Leadership, xix.

[30] See Henry A. Kissinger, “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” Daedalus 95.2 (1966): 503-5, 514, 526-7. See also Henry A. Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus 97.3 (1968): 888-924 for how Bismarck and de Gaulle functioned as “conservative revolutionaries” willing to upend the international system for the national interests of Prussia and France, respectively.

[31] In a surprisingly frank admission near the end of his life, Kissinger disclosed his frustration with being excluded from the Nixon administration’s deliberation over domestic policy and the election process. One wonders what purpose it would have served to include a national security adviser on these discussions. This revelation demonstrated a deep and abiding interest in accumulating personal power. See Kissinger, Leadership, 130.

[32] Jonathan Gienapp, “Constitutional Originalism and History,” Process: A Blog for American History, 20 March 2017.

[33] Joseph Stieb, “History Has No Lessons For You: A Warning for Policymakers,” War on the Rocks, 6 February 2024.

A marcha da insensatez (o embate STF-X) - Fernando Schüler (Veja)

A marcha da insensatez

Vivemos em um país onde os cidadãos não podem defender uma mudança nas leis? Defender, por exemplo, algo similar à Primeira Emenda americana?

Por Fernando Schüler

 VEJA, 13 abril 2024

 

“Para que tanta censura?”, começou perguntando Elon Musk. Depois o caldo entornou. A bronca de Musk vem na sequência da revelação dos Twitter Files, pelo jornalista Michael Shellenberger, e das denúncias que todos de algum jeito conhecemos. O Estado brasileiro querendo dados de usuários, para saber quem divulga esta ou aquela hashtag, censura a parlamentares, desmonetização e apagamento de contas, e por aí vai. Os temas envolvidos são políticos, os personagens são políticos, e não há muita novidade aí. A área jurídica da rede disse que “não havia indício de ilegalidade” naquelas opiniões. Mas obviamente o conceito do que é legal ou ilegal se tornou bastante flexível, ao menos por aqui, nos últimos tempos. O direito “líquido”, me disse um colega, bem-humorado, por estes dias. E quem sabe nesse ponto resida boa parte do problema.

SENSATEZ - Oliver Wendell Holmes, da Suprema Corte: “Livre mercado de ideias” (Bettmann/Getty Images)

 

O imbróglio, nesta confusão toda, não é Musk. Ronaldo Lemos matou a charada ao dizer que não cabia ao Estado brasileiro fazer todo esse alarde com as declarações de Musk. Bastaria agir na forma da lei, caso a empresa de fato cometer uma ilegalidade. O problema é que as perguntas, alertas e denúncias de Musk incomodam. Ele faz o papel daquele vizinho que, em um dia qualquer, diz que “está acontecendo alguma coisa estranha naquela casa”. Sejamos claros: o que ele diz sobre censura prévia e controle de opinião, no país, basicamente já sabemos. E fomos empurrando com a barriga. A diferença é que agora a coisa toda foi jogada em um imenso ventilador. Xingar o Musk, chamar de “menino mimado”, “drogado”, “extremista de direita” e os impropérios de sempre, pode ser um bom divertimento, mas não passa muito de um truque. As perguntas que realmente importam dizem respeito a nós mesmos e à nossa democracia. E nós sabemos quais são: há ou não censura prévia no Brasil? Há devido processo? Acesso de advogados aos autos? E o que vamos fazer com os famosos inquéritos, que já vão para mais de cinco anos? Há uma fila de perguntas, e nada disso tem a ver com Elon Musk, nem será resolvido por ele.

O que me fascina, nessa confusão toda, é o choque entre duas histórias e duas culturas jurídicas. De um brilhante jurista, escutei que “Musk faz isso porque sabe que está protegido pela Primeira Emenda”. Bingo. É porque está sob a guarda das instituições da mais antiga democracia do planeta que Musk pode dizer o que pensa e dormir tranquilo. Ele sabe que fala ancorado em uma tradição que vem de Madison e Jefferson, do Bill of Rights de 1791, atualizada por gerações de juízes da Suprema Corte americana. Do lado de cá, nós também temos a nossa tradição. Nossas sete constituições, nossas duas longas ditaduras, no século XX. E aquela frase de Sérgio Buarque sobre nosso estranhamento com a ideologia “impessoal” do liberalismo, que “jamais se naturalizou entre nós”.

Choque de culturas significa o seguinte: não há “delito de opinião”, na tradição americana. Diferentemente do que acontece por aqui. Vimos isso ainda agora, quando a Justiça americana negou a extradição do blogueiro Allan dos Santos. Depois de assistir a vídeos do sujeito, levados pela turma do lado de cá, o funcionário americano (imagino que um tanto entediado), foi claro: “São apenas palavras”. E encerrou a questão. É o mesmo caso do youtuber Monark. Em uma conversa meio sem nexo, na internet, ele resolveu “achar” que qualquer agremiação política, mesmo um partido nazista, deveria ter direito à expressão. Foi o que bastou. Banimento, processo, pedido de multa milionário. Do seu jeito tosco, ele defendeu o mesmíssimo princípio consagrado no direito americano. O direito afirmado em decisões históricas, como a tomada pela Suprema Corte em 1978, autorizando uma passeata nazista em Skokie, comunidade judaica, perto de Chicago. O que o youtuber sugeriu, na prática, foi uma mudança na lei brasileira. Da qual discordo, o que é irrelevante. A pergunta é: vivemos em um país onde os cidadãos não podem defender uma mudança nas leis? Defender, por exemplo, algo similar à Primeira Emenda americana? É este o país em que nos transformamos?

É exatamente aqui que entra um novo personagem: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Veterano da Guerra Civil Americana e depois juiz da Suprema Corte, foi ele quem formulou o famoso critério do “risco claro e imediato” para definir os limites da liberdade de expressão. O caso tratava de um líder socialista da Filadélfia, Charles Schenck, que havia soltado panfletos contra o recrutamento obrigatório na Primeira Grande Guerra. O critério de Holmes era claro: o direito à expressão não deveria depender de interpretações abertas sobre os riscos de uma opinião. O critério deveria ser objetivo: o risco imediato da violência. Meses depois, Holmes julgaria um caso envolvendo ativistas comunistas, em Nova York, contrários à interferência americana na Revolução Russa. Um deles era Jacob Abrams, judeu e militante de esquerda. Holmes agiu com base naquele princípio. E o fez na forma de um voto dissidente. Absolveu Abrams e seus colegas, e colocou seu próprio nome na tradição dos direitos e da democracia liberal.

Holmes argumentou que, se há algo que podemos aprender com a tradição moderna, é que não há forma mais segura de nos aproximarmos da verdade do que o “livre mercado de ideias”. E que esta era, em última instância, a “teoria da nossa Constituição”. É um “experimento”, ele diz, “como toda a vida é um experimento”. Sempre me surpreendo com essas palavras. Da ideia da Constituição como um “experimento”. Holmes havia lido muito Adam Smith, e de alguma forma transfere para o mundo das ideias e do próprio direito o princípio que Smith tão bem compreendeu para a economia. A lógica simples de que respeitar a regra do jogo, mantendo-se sempre aberta a praça do mercado à livre competição de ideias, é uma ótima maneira de viver. Onde todos ganham, ainda que isso nos custe o preço de muitas péssimas ideias, no curto prazo. O custo, por exemplo, de ideias “perigosas” como aquelas que Abrams e seus amigos espalhavam em uma noite qualquer de Nova York.

Por vezes as pessoas me sugerem que não há muito sentido em falar da tradição americana. Que somos brasileiros e que por aqui temos outra visão sobre a liberdade de expressão. Discordo. Não me consta que teríamos sido feitos para o cangote. E, tanto lá como aqui, as leis vedam a censura prévia e não reconhecem o delito de opinião. Também nós temos uma teoria de nossa Constituição, filha dos anos 80 e de seu desejo de garantir a liberdade e limitar o poder. De consagrar uma sociedade aberta, não a democracia de tutela em que vamos nos convertendo. A estranha democracia feita de agentes de Estado bisbilhotando conversas no rádio, vídeos no YouTube, contas no Twitter e bate-papos no WhatsApp. Se esse será nosso destino ou se andamos apenas num desvio de curso é a pergunta a que devemos responder. Talvez nos falte um Holmes ou um Madison, lá atrás. Ou, quem sabe, uma grande tradição liberal. Não sei. O fato é que nossa marcha da insensatez já foi longe demais. São sobre isso, no fundo, os alertas que nos são dados, por estes dias, aos quais deveríamos prestar atenção.

Fernando Schüler é cientista político e professor do Insper