Why Apple makes its iPhones in China: reasons by Tim Cook, its president, and debate

 Introdução aos leitores brasileiros:

Por que a Apple “fabrica” iPhones na China (a concepção é feita na Califórnia), e não o faz no Brasil (nem poderia, mesmo que ela desejasse nos agraciar)?  https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2024/07/por-que-apple-fabrica-seus-iphones-na.html?m=1 

O Brasil simplesmente não oferece condições mínimas para tal. 

Um dos Threads mais interessantes que segui, aqui assemblado para instrução dos neófitos e entusiastas do capitalismo nacional com visão de “autonomia” decisória nas politicas estritamente nacionais de desenvolvimento. 

Que isto sirva de lição para nossos economistas ditos “desenvolvimentistas”, mas que não são, de verdade, nem economistas, nem de fato desenvolvimentistas, pois que deixam de ser observadores da realidade educacional brasileira, em condições realmente depressivas.

Os maiores responsáveis pela nossa atual “miséria industrial” são as elites políticas e econômicas nacionais, as classes dirigentes, uma oligarquia unida pelo que eu chamo de “pacto perverso” do não desenvolvimento, pois que marcado pela cegueira educacional, pela ideologia nacionalista tacanha, pelo medo da globalização — que reune e unifica esquerdas e direitas na mesma coalizão de embotados — e incapazes de perceber que o protecionismo oportunista imediatista está levando o Brasil à estagnação.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Brasília, 21 jul 2024

Why does Apple make iPhones in China? No! It is NOT because of cheap labor. 

The "cheap labor" thing is just a rumor spread by media.

🧵 Here is what Tim Cook said 👇

"There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low-labor-cost country many years ago."

He continues…

"And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. 

The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is. (2/4)

…The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. 

And the tooling skill is very deep here. 

In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. (3/4)

The vocational expertise is very very deep here, and I give the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that even when others were de-emphasizing vocational. 

Now I think many countries in the world have woke up and said this is a key thing and we've got to correct that. China called that right from the beginning."

Found this valuable? Follow for such content daily. (4/4)

From: arjtraj_ (Threads, July 20, 2024)

Comment by tim.cronin.750:

That deep technical expertise doesn’t exist in the US because products made with US tech expertise would be too expensive compared to those same tech chops in China. Tim Cook isn’t wrong; he just missed the fundamental point - it’s not the low “manufacturing” cost that makes China attractive… Chinese technical expertise costs so much less than in the US, it’s lower TOTAL COST that makes China the clear outsourcing choice.

New comment by arjitraj_:

I have worked for American product based companies. 

Many times when asking for sourcing, American suppliers straightaway say things like: It cannot be made, it is impossible to be made, not feasible as such. 

With Chinese: they ask for time to deliver and almost always show a working prototype within a reasonable time for the same problem. Their expertise at low to mid end engineering is high. 

US is good at making high end engineering: reactors, rocket engines, turbines, etc.

Comment by george.eakin:

I have worked for American product based companies. 

Many times when asking for sourcing, American suppliers straightaway say things like: It cannot be made, it is impossible to be made, not feasible as such. 

With Chinese: they ask for time to deliver and almost always show a working prototype within a reasonable time for the same problem. Their expertise at low to mid end engineering is high. 

US is good at making high end engineering: reactors, rocket engines, turbines, etc.

New comment by arjitraj_:

It is definitely a chicken egg situation. But diving in the history and finding out why the current situation happened will unbox a lot of debatable stuffs on educational policies, monetary policies, military focus etc. Quite futile tbh.

A diverse comment by selman.gm:

Tim Cook is a good marketer ! 

Don’t believe him this is the real reason behind.

“How much it does to make an iPhone in China?

Productio cost of iPhone 14 per unit in China is $ 10. (January 1, 2024)

Comment by ubrmthr:

What is gained in skill and infrastructure is balanced by risk. We have all our business’ tech manufactured in China, and our suppliers have no problem selling it on. On a recent visit we found our products, complete with our logo, in use by the CCP 😱😳😮🙊

New comment by arjitraj_:

Yes it is quite common.

A new comment by danke_memphis_danke_dad:

CEOs make decisions based on profits. It is more profitable to make iPhones in China. Thats it. If it was more profitable to make iPhones in Cambodia they would make them there.

Again from arjitraj_:

Here the issue is feasibility + profitability. If iPhone “cannot” be manufactured say in Africa, even if labor is cheaper, one can’t make it there.

From sksommers:

Then add in the additional cost of packaging, transportation, and levies of various types the cost rises AND does a tremendous amount of environmental and biosystems damage to the earth. There's more to consider than bean counting. It's also indubitably true that working conditions in China are horrible, even for skilled workers.

Addition by arjitraj_:

Transportation cost is pretty much very close to negligible when you use containers, via ship and over extraordinary large volumes.

From gagandeeps1ngh_:

You making the things clearer more than my teacher.

Thanks, I appreciate your work.

(…)

From thephotoonist:

So to summarize: American finance following its prime directive to 'unlock value' shipped fulfillment for demand for manufactured goods to China. And lo and behold over time the Chinese became skilled at doing while those skills wasted away in the US.  This state was created by chasing low labor costs, but ultimately training people in China,  while reducing everyone in the US to takers not ma is makers.

Again arjitraj-:

But… the work went there because there were people who could do that. So, first skills were developed then work was provided.

From England freeman:

We buy Chinese goods in the UK and believe me the quality is fantastic,they are far superior then our Indian counterparts,and they many things for every thing you require for your daily work/problems.

From martintintintinn:

So basically, it's not the cheap labor per se. It's the ABUNDANCE and SKILLS of that cheap labor they love. You won't have to raise wage when for every worker you hire, you can easily replace them with 3 or 4 more workers! And in China, they are expected to work at least 65hrs per week in low and as much as 87hrs/w in high season. Workers in the US, past the 50hrs/week mark, good luck keeping them more than a year.

From toofarousettosea:

Some years ago Cook said Apple needed 35k electrical engineers for a new factory. That’s more than some states here in the US. It’s probably a rounding error off this year’s graduating class in China.

Some stuff is made here though. The glass comes out of West Virginia and the CPUs are made in Texas, I think.

From gimballoker:

"which came first, the chicken or the egg"  they got those skills making things because  we sent the jobs there. Why would a young person go into those fields in the US when there weren't the jobs?

From luyandamandela:

As a result of the over-supply of tooling engineers and vocational expertise the labour becomes slightly cheaper than places like the US where there isn’t a lot of readily available tooling engineers, No?

From champa2k:

Tim forgot or didn't want to mention the system, the communist system where workers cannot say much or protest.

From zbilbo9:

And besides the political climate, why is manufacturing being moved out of China to Vietnam and other parts of Southern Asia. After the technological needs are met labor costs matter.

From neilpincus:

iPhones may be made by better paid workers but many Chinese products are so cheap that the only way to achieve the low price is by using cheap labour. Take musical instruments for example. Even with CNC shaping, a guitar is always sanded, painted assembled and set up by manual labourers. Selling a whole guitar for £150 means someone was paid very little for a lot of work.

From arjitraj_:

Only assembly is being done here in India. (I am from India).

From baumgartner.bill:

But why is tooling readily available in China? Because we shipped manufacturing to them  decades ago due to cheap labor costs and China developed expertise to support that work. There are always layers.

From ptee17:

That skill was developed over the last 30 years, BECAUSE manufacturing was moved there in the first place, owing to low costs. People in that region aren't born with relevant skills. Makes it easier for the CEO to parrot this narrative today. 

Margins are everything, would be borderline naivety to think otherwise.

From randolfus:

Here ya go, wanna guess how much lies there is in the TC story. 

As of February 19, 2024, Shanghai has the highest monthly minimum wage among 31 provinces (RMB 2,690/US$370 per month), and Beijing has the highest hourly minimum wage (RMB 26.4/US$3.7 per hour). china-briefing.com

From suocostudio:

Could both be true- that china has the engineers/laborers AND they are cheaper labor/cheaper parts? I don’t think cheap labor in China (or anywhere) is a rumor- it very much exists. It’s possible Tim Cook is just very good at marketing and seems like a trustworthy guy.

From saitama84831:

To be honest, even Tim Cook has a limited viewpoint on this phenomenon if he’s only thinking of Apple and why these conditions even exist in China. Companies started offshoaring decades ago and yes China was once and still is a place of cheap labor they have also invested a lot in technology. 

Now, do we think Apple would still be there if the people working at the manufacturer were making a decent wage? Answer that yourself, young man.

From ghostrwriter:

The World 🌎 is a Lie, This glorious Democracys supply-chain is reliant on a Communist Country?! Gtfo, sounds like a movie script but then u see it’s literally the case. America could be so much better but they sold us out.

From felizardo8655:

One of many reasons but not the only and main reason. Cheap labor is still a motive, so is deregulation. As with many other things, there is never one single contributing factor for something to happen.

From rbrtfcbk:

He’s right. We don’t have the team attitude here in the US, especially when it comes to high tech. One of the big challenges in IT nowadays is fighting egos.

From sachiliano:

I'm sure you could find similar skill in abundance in Germany if need be. Just that the price of an iPhone 15 Pro Max would then inflate to upwards of $12,000.

Frontal luna_the_tuna_dog:

iPhones are made in China because the supply chain is in China. But the supply chain moved to China because of the cheap labor.

From abberadon1:

China invested in people where other previous low cost countries didn’t. The low wage enticement doesn’t last as those economies start to grow. We’ve seen that as production has moved from Taiwan, India, Pakistan through Vietnam, Korea etc into China. Low cost/skill manufacturing is starting to move out now, moving in to the next cheap market. Chinas tech sector will survive and grow because of the steps taken by their government.

From glencoejoe:

Absolute pish , if Apple had wanted Americans to make ipads iPhone etc etc they would have done so years ago. However, when all their kit started to take off it was costing pennies to make in China and whilst it may have gotten more expensive over the years they dare not move manufacturing and reduce their exorbitant prices and profits. That's the American way money before everything else.

From l.munirr:

I dont think skill is the only thing, the other thing that apple come to China is because of the supply chain that happen to be more easy in China. For example, export from china is easy, but now because of the geopolitik tension and zero covid restriction when the covid hit, the production of Apple in China dropped.

If it only because of the skill, Apple will still hold their ground in China, but its not the thing.

From libero.gori:

Ok the reality is that only in China you can manufacture 60 million of iPhones every year with just three months to set up the production lines switching from the old generation to the new one.

From tremblay9200:

Cook knows what he’s talking about. The spirit of the American Craftsman was smashed to bits in the 20th Century. Now the only people with high manufacturing skills are the hipster kids of rich people who live in zip codes where the cost of living is too high to be able to offer them salaries for “good middle class jobs” with a straight face. Being a skilled prototyper, tool-modifier, foreman, assembler, finisher, etc etc, are elite boutique skills in the US & it’s a frugal unmarried lifestyle.

From paulreid007:

I worked for a very large US company. We outsourced a lot of work India. It was definitely an operating cost decision initially but we still needed to be able to source and hire well educated professionals. Over time these resources demonstrated their value in all aspects of the business. Compensation is increasing rapidly and there are more and more well educated young people coming into the booming economy. Anyone who doesn’t think this is about competitiveness doesn’t understand clients.

From iamhitshdewasi:

Very interesting and insightful, so good I gave you a follow right away.. As someone who into manufacturing of products in different sector I completely agree with the reasoning, happens all the time with us.

From jonathanloo723:

Interesting. It’s like Russia and its energy, other countries just lag behind on development so they all still rely on them despite their human rights concerns.

From PRA (I have myself written to the initiator of this thread to thank him for the initiative and inform of this work of assemblage):

Wonderfull Threads arjitraj_. Thanks for it. I’m from Brazil and have transcribed the most relevant stuff to my blog:

https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2024/07/por-que-apple-fabrica-seus-iphones-na.html?m=1

arjitraj_ responded: 

Thank you for appreciation and supporting.

From the assembler, Paulo Roberto de Almeida:

One of the most interesting and instructive Threads that I have copied and assembled in my blog Diplomatizzando, mostly devoted to foreign policy and diplomacy from Brazil, but also dealing with all matters concerning development issues in all countries, as well as cultural matters in general.

Paulo Roberto De Almeida 

Brasília, July, 21, 2024

(And the Threads continues…)

Distribuição de riqueza é mais concentrada - Roberto Macedo (OESP)

Grato a Mauricio David pela transcrição.

 

quinta-feira, 18 de julho de 2024

Roberto Macedo - Distribuição de riqueza é mais concentrada

O Estado de S. Paulo

As desigualdades de renda e de riqueza no Brasil remontam ao período colonial do País, e não há solução à vista

É sabido que há mais estudos sobre a distribuição de renda do que a distribuição de riqueza, em que a disponibilidade de dados é menor e mais difícil de organizar, em particular se envolve também outros países. Um novo e bem-vindo estudo sobre a mesma, realizado no exterior pelo Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), foi objeto de reportagem no jornal Valor Econômico de 11/7/2024. Constatou que aqui houve aumento da concentração da riqueza e adicionou outras considerações, inclusive sobre o índice de concentração de Gini, que abordarei mais à frente neste texto.

Segundo esse novo estudo, digno de maior atenção, realizado como parte de um relatório desse banco sobre a riqueza mundial, no Brasil a “concentração de riqueza aumentou 16,8% nos últimos 15 anos e o País já ocupa o terceiro lugar no ranking de desigualdade entre 56 nações, atrás apenas de Rússia e África do Sul”. É interessante ver também a Rússia nessa lista, pois depois de décadas de um regime dito comunista acabou desembocando numa situação desse tipo.

O estudo, que abrangeu o expressivo número de 36 países, também aponta que enquanto entre “2000 a 2010 houve uma expansão de riqueza no Brasil de 384%, com uma média anual de 15%, nos 13 anos seguintes (acrescento, entre 2011 a 2023) a taxa caiu para 55%, com um ritmo anual de apenas 3%”. Outro aspecto interessante é que o estudo prevê que “até 2028 o Brasil terá 83 mil novos milionários, em um total de 463.797 indivíduos, (...) com patrimônio igual ou superior a US$ 1 milhão”. Tanto na renda como na riqueza o Brasil sai mal na foto da distribuição. O UBS aponta que o menor crescimento da riqueza no segundo e mais recente período citado veio de fatores como a depreciação da sua moeda, inflação, queda da produtividade e menor crescimento econômico. Outro dado interessante é que “14 indivíduos no mundo contam cada um com fortunas de mais de US$ 100 bilhões. Esse grupo, no total, concentra US$ 2 trilhões em riqueza”.

O estudo também utiliza o índice de concentração de Gini para examinar o grau de concentração dentro de cada país. Esse índice varia entre 0 e 1, que indica menor e maior concentração, respectivamente, e no Brasil ele passou de 0,7 para 0,81 nos últimos 15 anos, revelando outro aspecto do aumento da concentração de riqueza. Quanto ao índice de Gini da distribuição de renda, um estudo da Fundação Getulio Vargas, usando dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (Pnad Contínua) e da Receita Federal, mostrou que o índice chegou a 0,7068 em 2020, valor é superior ao 0,6013 calculado apenas pela Pnad Contínua. Em qualquer caso, são valores inferiores ao último dado do UBS (0,81). Ou seja, a concentração de patrimônio é superior à da renda.

As desigualdades de renda e de riqueza no Brasil remontam ao período colonial do País, marcado inclusive pela escravidão. Os mais pobres têm maior crescimento populacional e são menos educados nos seus lares, nas escolas, no trabalho e no seu meio social. Além disso sua oferta no mercado de trabalho é maior relativamente à demanda do que os demais grupos sociais. Com tudo isso, têm menor renda, sendo-lhes muito difícil acumular patrimônio.

Esse quadro foi se formando há séculos e não tem solução imediata. Uma das razões é que as lideranças políticas não revelam uma efetiva preocupação com ele, com o que são escassas as medidas que podem modificá-lo com profundidade. Algo que poderia ajudar seria uma forte aceleração do crescimento econômico, mas, no governo federal, o Congresso, constituído predominantemente por cidadãos de maior renda, não pauta seriamente esse assunto, estando mais preocupado em atender a seus interesses pessoais e de grupos politicamente atuantes em busca de vantagens. O presidente atua de modo populista, procurando ganhos eleitorais com distribuição de benefícios sociais que trazem pouco alívio a essa situação e causam prejuízo ao crescimento econômico, pois reduzem a taxa de investimento público. Os mais pobres tampouco têm atuação política para mudar essa situação, atuando apenas como eleitores que caem nas mãos de políticos populistas.

O baixo crescimento do Brasil é uma praga que nos assalta há mais de 40 anos, e a sociedade e até mesmo analistas econômicos parecem se conformar com isso, dizendo que o crescimento potencial da economia é de apenas 2% ao ano e incorporando essa previsão para os anos vindouros. Falta um sério plano de governo para o País sair desse conformismo com a mediocridade desse crescimento. Eu estava cursando o ensino superior num período em que a economia chegou a crescer a uma média anual de 7%, o que me trouxe grandes oportunidades em termos de educação e trabalho.

Mas hoje não há solução à vista ou mesmo algo mais distante no horizonte para esse quadro. Quando o denuncio, como neste artigo, isso apazigua um pouco a minha consciência, o que dura pouco, pois logo depois voltam as minhas preocupações com esse impasse que vem prejudicando o País e os brasileiros.

Crítica da sociologia de um Brasil que não é - José de Souza Martins (Jornal da USP)

 Crítica da sociologia de um Brasil que não é

Por José de Souza Martins, Professor Emérito da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da USP

Jornal da USP, 17/07/2024

Há alguns anos publiquei o livro Poder do Atraso – Ensaios de sociologia da história lenta, que contém duas conferências que fiz na Universidade de Londres, em 1994. Uma, sobre “Clientelismo e corrupção no Brasil contemporâneo” e outra sobre “A aliança entre capital e propriedade da terra no Brasil: A aliança do atraso”. Nelas analiso a dimensão política das peculiaridades estruturais e históricas da sociedade brasileira, o que muda apenas lentamente, sem superações significativas e definitivas.

Desde minhas primeiras pesquisas, em 1965, tenho me interessado pelos fatores e causas do atraso desta sociedade. Os que discrepam em relação às sociedades que produziram o conhecimento inaugural de um objeto científico original e primevo, a sociologia.

A sociologia já estava nascendo quando o Brasil ainda tinha legalmente escravidão. E apenas esboçava a adoção de um pensamento propriamente sociológico em obras até hoje referenciais de Joaquim Nabuco e de Euclides da Cunha. E até numa obra surpreendente de Machado de Assis, O Alienista, um personagem alienado, louco e poderoso ao mesmo tempo. Até hoje um persistente traço do nosso caráter nacional e das nossas limitações políticas.

No nascimento da república antirrepublicana de 1889, os republicanos militares do golpe de Estado contra os republicanos civis do partido nascido em Itu, em 1873, acabou se definindo na bandeira pelo mote positivista e sociológico de “ordem e progresso”. Uma opção estrangeira e estranha.

Num clássico do pensamento social brasileiro, Alberto Torres estranhava as nossas estranhezas, o que em nós tem sido postiço, ao comentar que só tivéramos ordem na escravidão, o que era verdade: a ordem da sujeição pessoal do escravo e do confinamento estamental dos brancos. Uma ordem antirrepublicana e a ordem diversa da concebida por Augusto Comte e os positivistas. Aqui a ordem foi concebida pelo positivismo militar como expressão da carência de repressão, para enquadramento do povo nos rigores da lei para contrabalançar a liberdade mais ou menos inevitável, como a da abolição. A ordem desse imaginário fora do lugar era e tem sido o sucedâneo da chibata e do tronco do feitor de senzala. Ainda em 1557, escrevendo de Salvador, diz o padre Manoel da Nóbrega sobre os nativos serrem “gente de condição mais de feras bravas que de gente racional, e ser gente servil que se quer por medo…”

O uso da violência física, ainda hoje, no Brasil, nas situações de escravidão por dívida, repete o que se tornou um modo de dominação nas relações laborais. Uma lenta demora própria de nossa história lenta. Não é estranho que num País formalmente capitalista subsistam formas não capitalistas de trabalho.

O Brasil é um País capitalista de um peculiar capitalismo atrasado, marcado por contradições peculiares, subdesenvolvidas, não as contradições típicas das citações e reproduções contidas nos manuais de ideologia política nem nos manuais de economia desenvolvimentista determinantes de uma sociedade condenada à ordem, mas sem progresso.

Nesse plano, as ciências sociais, entre nós, não têm enfrentado o desafio de interpretar nossa sociedade como ela é, optando sobretudo pela interpretação do que ela não é e provavelmente não será. Nós tendemos a analisá-la como se fosse de fato uma sociedade capitalista porque achamos que o é. Mas achar não é próprio da ciência.

As sociedades têm singularidades que as tornam diferentes dos modelos clássicos de definição teórica do que a sociedade é. Até no senso comum acadêmico, isto é, no que é o nosso achismo universitário. Portanto, características que expressam singularmente os desafios interpretativos de suas diferenças e não só daquilo que aparentemente repete o que também são as sociedades dominantes de referência do sociólogo.

Nesse sentido, a expectativa do inesperado é uma referência que os cientistas sociais, especialmente o sociólogo, num País como este, não podem dispensar no elenco dos seus procedimentos de pesquisa. O Brasil que esperamos encontrar no trabalho científico é mais o Brasil que fala a língua mestiça de português e nheengatu do que, propriamente, o português de Camões e do Padre Antonio Vieira. E isso quer dizer uma língua de seres humanos dominados, fala de sujeição e medo, dissimulação e duplo sentido. Língua do faz de conta, do acho e da incerteza.

O autoritarismo brasileiro, particularmente agudo nas nossas incertezas desta hora, prenhe de mentiras, em que o povo tem estado sujeito à manipulação social, com base no pressuposto de que é povo vulnerável ao poder do outro. Os poderosos e manipuladores acreditam nisso como se vê em suas ações. Mas o nosso caráter social duplo e da duplicidade permite ao povo manipular o manipulador. No duplo sentido existe o outro lado, o lado invisível e ativo da sociedade e da práxis. O que, com Henri Lefebvre, podemos definir como o avesso do visto e percebido.

Governo Lula silencia sobre ameaças ao processo eleitoral na Venezuela

Silêncio do Itamaraty sobre ameaça de Maduro contradiz fala de Lula por democracia

Coluna do Estadão, 19/07/2024

Governo Lula silenciou sobre a ameaça do presidente da Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, de que haverá um 'banho de sangue' e uma 'guerra civil fraticida' caso não vença as eleições. No Itamaraty, interlocutores dizem manter os olhos atentos, mas argumentam não caber comentário público sobre o processo eleitoral de outro país. A justificativa não se sustenta e expõe o comportamento ideológico da atual gestão, na visão de especialistas. 'O Itamaraty deveria manifestar a preocupação com as declarações de Maduro. Afinal o presidente Lula afirmou que Brasil vai reconhecer o resultado das eleições', disse a Coluna o presidente do Instituto de Relações Internacionais e Comércio Exterior, Rubens Barbosa, que foi embaixador do Brasil em Londres e em Washington.

DESCULPA. 'O Brasil tem a postura de não interferência em assuntos internos, mas é uma situação que o país participou do diálogo para construir o processo eleitoral, então teria condições de ser um interlocutor', avalia a professora especialista em América Latina, Denilde Holzhacker. 'A visão é de que Lula tem feito pouco', complementa.

CORPO MOLE. Gunther Rudzit, professor de relações internacionais, diz que Lula deveria falar com Maduro e fazer 'uma declaração pública forte'. 'O problema é que, pelas visões ideológicas, isso não tem sido feito pelo governo e pelo presidente'. Para ele, a ameaça do ditador é real.

How the West Misunderstood Moscow in Ukraine - By Julia Kazdobina, Jakob Hedenskog, and Andreas Umland (Foreign Policy)

How the West Misunderstood Moscow in Ukraine

Ten years ago, Russia’s first invasion failed to wake up a bamboozled West. The reasons are still relevant today.

FOREIGN ZPOLICY, JULY 17, 2024

By Julia Kazdobina,  Jakob Hedenskog, and  Andreas Umland

Ten years ago today, news of the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 in eastern Ukraine shocked the world. All 298 passengers on board the Boeing 777, including 80 children, perished. This tragic event was just one of the many shocks coming out of Ukraine that year, as the largest European war after 1945 unfolded in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The war began in February 2014 with the occupation of Crimea by regular Russian troops, followed by Moscow’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in March. Russian irregular troops then entered Donbas in April 2014—ostensibly to “protect” Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Later on, more Russian armed groups, including Wagner mercenaries and small regular army units, poured into Ukraine. They brought with them heavy equipment, including anti-aircraft missile launchers used to shoot down MH-17, a commercial flight on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, as well as Ukrainian fighter planes and transport aircraft bringing troops and supplies. After Ukrainian defenders began to push back the Russians—at that time still mostly irregulars—large numbers of regular Russian troops started invading eastern Ukraine in mid-August.

Over the course of six months in 2014, there was a manifest, expanding Russian military aggression in the heart of Europe. Yet the West reacted barely at all—with meek diplomatic statements and a few minor sanctions. Besides their limited scope, the sanctions were initially focused narrowly on the annexation of Crimea. The first larger sectoral sanctions followed the shooting of MH-17, which killed dozens of EU citizens. Never were the sanctions a coherent response to the most significant attack on a European country since 1945. During the years that followed, even as fighting continued, little additional action was taken. The West continued business as usual with Russia or even upgraded relations, like Germany’s push to build the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

How could it be that it took the West until Feb. 24, 2022—when Moscow expanded the war it launched in 2014 to a full-scale invasion—to wake up to the reality that Russia is a revisionist state seeking to impose, by any means necessary, its own version of European security order?

Between 2014 and 2022, Western politicians, commentators, and journalists, with few exceptions, continued to believe that Russia’s aims were limited—and that the war simmering in eastern Ukraine was a Ukrainian civil conflict taking place in isolation from Russia’s much larger revisionist aims. Not only did Western efforts to resolve the conflict fail. Since the West continued with business as usual, it also inspired Moscow to press on and paved the way for the 2022 invasion.

Why did the West fail to properly diagnose Russia’s war in Ukraine for eight long years? What lessons from this failure are important today?

One reason was the lack of Western expertise on Ukraine and Russia’s tactics there. Moscow’s interference in Ukrainian affairs since the country’s independence in 1991 had largely escaped Western journalists, political analysts, and international relations scholars. When some Western journalists arrived to cover the events, the situation on the ground was chaotic and its interpretation a challenge for newly minted Ukraine experts. Russian narratives of intra-Ukrainian conflict and regional escalation were simple, understandable, and made sense to many observers—not the least those who had previously worked in Moscow. Many media also relied on their Moscow correspondents, with their skewed, Russia-centric lens, to report on events in Ukraine.

There was also a glaring lack of awareness of Russian hybrid methods. Ten years ago, few Western observers understood the Russian way of war, for which Ukraine was a testing ground. Attempts by Ukrainians, other East Europeans, and Western area experts to explain Russia’s strategy were usually met with skepticism. To outside observers, these descriptions of the Kremlin’s methods, where the intelligence services play a central role, often sounded like speculative assessments or outright conspiracy theories.

The parachute reporters arriving in eastern Ukraine in 2014 witnessed pro-Russian protests and listened to pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens. Some foreign observers could not even tell the difference between Ukrainian residents of Donbas and people from neighboring Russian oblasts who crossed as adventurers or were bussed into Ukraine to participate in the supposedly indigenous separatist movement.

Pro-Ukrainian journalists and other anti-separatist local voices in Donbas, in contrast, faced threats, physical violence, and worse. These Ukrainians feared the consequences of expressing themselves publicly and often remained invisible to visiting reporters. A number of eastern Ukrainians resisting the Russian takeover were threatened, attacked, abducted, severely injured, or secretly killed by Russian irregulars or their local collaborators. Most of these collaborators were encouraged, financed, delegated, or otherwise coordinated by Moscow. This suppression of local opposition laid the groundwork for Russia’s eventual annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Western media only started to have a substantial presence in Ukraine in December 2021, on the eve of the full-scale invasion. Before that, much of the reporting was done by correspondents based in Moscow, who usually spoke only Russian and were heavily exposed to Russian narratives.

The Washington Post did not open a Kyiv bureau until May 2022—and sent its former Moscow correspondent to report on Ukraine. Similarly, the New York Times only opened an office in Ukraine in July 2022, headed by the paper’s veteran Moscow correspondent, Andrew Kramer, whose coverage of the war since 2014 had outraged Ukrainians. The newspaper’s reference to Russia’s hybrid attack as a “civil war” (later corrected) and Kramer referring to Russian-occupied territories as “separatist zones” echoed Kremlin language, reminding some Ukrainians of the Times’ sordid history of misreporting genocides and Soviet atrocities. Another widespread adoption of Kremlin talking points on Ukraine was the Western media’s myopic fixation on right-wing extremism that was supposedly out of control in Ukraine—a claim that has been solidly debunked but that would be used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his full-scale attack in 2022.

Many journalists eventually learned to be more critical of Russian narratives. But there remains what behavioral psychologists call an anchoring bias: When people learn about something for the first time, they remember their initial interpretations. These take concerted effort to unlearn and can still be exploited by Russian propaganda.

There were multiple signs of direct Russian involvement in the events in the Donbas in 2014. Most Ukrainians understood intuitively, from the early days of the alleged rebellion, that the unrest and unfolding war were initiated, directed, and funded by Russia. In contrast, it took Western observers time to establish, specify, and verify the facts—and to distinguish them from the many lies.

A circumspect approach to information and conflicting claims from war zones is, in principle, good practice to avoid misinformation. In 2014, however, this overabundance of caution often turned into laziness—a cover not to do the hard work of digging deeper to establish the facts on the ground. With many Western governments and media commentators invested in the idea of a “thaw” with Moscow at the time, there was also an incentive not to look too closely at Russia’s involvement.

The inability, for many years, to define 2014 as a first Russian invasion also underlines the inability of Western observers, including the media, to cope with the sophisticated tactics of hybrid, grey-zone war. As long as the Russian irregulars and mercenaries did not wear official Russian army insignia—and as long as the Kremlin issued a stream of denials that the Russians in eastern Ukraine were anything more than “tourists”—media editors and fact checkers could take refuge behind a false equivalence of opposing claims and perpetuate the notion that the war was an intra-Ukrainian conflict. The media’s difficulties in properly framing a war if it’s waged beneath the threshold of an openly declared one continues to be an issue today.

Western willful ignorance was particularly evident concerning the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic. From their creation in 2014 to their end in September 2022, these were Russian proxy regimes. Yet many in the West—including governments, diplomats, academics, and journalists—treated them as statelets set up by supposed eastern Ukrainian “insurgents.” Only in January 2023 did the European Court on Human Rights put an official end to this pretense, establishing that Russia had effective control over these fake republics since the day they were created.

Regardless of motivation, the West’s slow public reaction to the unfolding events in 2014 left space for Moscow to fill with disinformation, half-truths, and propaganda narratives. Many of them, even after having long been debunked, still circulate today.

The West’s widespread cognition problem between 2014 and 2022 was also a result of a fundamental gap between Western strategic culture and Moscow’s sophisticated hybrid and grey-zone tactics. Initially, foreign observers were often reluctant to acknowledge that the war in the Donbas was part of the same operation as Russia’s more straightforward occupation of Crimea. There remained a naïve belief that the Donbas war was a separate case—an unfortunate conflict between equally legitimate interests to be resolved through joint negotiation, deliberation, and mediation.

Pursuing tactics known as “reflexive control” or “escalation control” that were first developed by the Soviet Union, the Kremlin used aggression via proxies to impose its will on Ukraine and its Western partners. From 2014 to 2022, aggressive behavior alternated with feigned concessions and apparent de-escalation to deceive Western politicians and negotiators into thinking that a peaceful resolution remained possible even as Moscow tightened its grip and prepared for an eventual full-scale conquest.

Throughout the talks that eventually produced the Minsk accords, Moscow used purposeful escalation by its proxy and regular forces to exert maximum pressure on Western and Ukrainian negotiators—but stayed short of an open and massive Russian military attack that could trigger a Western response. Moscow’s zigzag between escalation, apparently conciliatory moves, and stalling tactics managed to deceive many Western observers, who continued to believe that the West was in control of escalation, mistaking Russia staying below the threshold of full-scale war for a sign of moderation. This mistake proved deadly for Ukrainians, allowing the conflict to fester and grew.

On Feb. 24, 2022, the West finally woke up to reality, imposed substantial sanctions on Russia, rushed defensive weapons to Ukraine, and later followed up by delivering heavy weapons. Had there not been so many Western misconceptions about Russia’s first invasion in 2014, those weapons might already have been delivered then. And today’s much larger, much more brutal war might have been avoided.

Julia Kazdobina is a senior fellow in the security studies program at Ukrainian Prism.

Jakob Hedenskog is an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs’ Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.

Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs’ Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies. Twitter: @UmlandAndreas

História e Diplomacia Monetária, de Mauricio Metri (Dialética)

 

História e Diplomacia Monetária

Autor: Mauricio Metri

Editora Dialética

Este livro procura analisar as disputas interestatais relacionadas aos processos históricos e contemporâneos de determinação de uma moeda como a de referência internacional. Interessam-nos tanto as lutas atuais de desdolarização, quanto as trajetórias de internacionalização das moedas que conseguiram se expandir para além de seus espaços político-territoriais de origem, cujos casos mais importantes foram: a libra esterlina inglesa e o dólar estadunidense. Não estaria errado afirmar que a presente pesquisa retoma a discussão iniciada no livro "Poder, Riqueza e Moeda na Europa Medieval", publicado em 2014. Se, naquele livro, o mergulho nas dinâmicas sociais próprias do Medievo permitiu entender tanto a centralidade da moeda na sociogênese dos estados territoriais europeus, quanto a natureza dos primeiros processos de alargamento de territórios monetários, retoma-se neste livro o tema do poder e da moeda, porém com foco nos processos mais bem-sucedidos de globalização de moedas nacionais, antes de chegar às disputas monetárias contemporâneas. O livro também se debruça sobre as recentes iniciativas brasileiras no campo da diplomacia monetária, sobretudo ao longo dos anos em que o Brasil foi governado pelo Partido dos Trabalhadores. Trata-se de uma agenda de pesquisa cujo escopo se situa na interface entre história, geopolítica, política externa e economia monetária, exigindo um olhar interdisciplinar não muito usual e, decerto, desafiador.

Impedir voto de venezuelanos no exterior é fraude eleitoral disfarçada Editorial O Globo

 Impedir voto de venezuelanos no exterior é fraude eleitoral disfarçada

O Globo, 18/07/2024

Depois de acenar com distensão, Maduro manobra para tentar vencer eleição e ficar no poder

Comunidades venezuelanas no exterior não têm conseguido se inscrever para votar nas eleições marcadas para 28 de julho. Dos 21 milhões de eleitores venezuelanos, calcula-se que entre 3,5 milhões e 5 milhões vivam no exterior. Desses, apenas 69 mil estão registrados para votar, segundo noticiou o New York Times.

Em países com grandes comunidades venezuelanas, há dificuldade nos consulados e embaixadas para registrar eleitores. Em Madri, a fila costuma se estender pelo quarteirão. Uma cidadã que deixou a Venezuela em 2018 tentou por dois dias, durante oito horas, apenas para ouvir dos funcionários que não podiam mais continuar com os registros. Cidadãos acompanhados de crianças pequenas, deficientes, idosos chegam às 4 horas da manhã, cinco horas antes da abertura do expediente, mesmo assim não conseguem ser atendidos. Os casos se repetem em cidades da Argentina, do Chile e da Colômbia.

Há fortes indícios de que o regime venezuelano tem impedido os eleitores no exterior de exercer o direito ao voto por considerá-los majoritariamente de oposição. E essa é apenas a última manobra do ditador Nicolás Maduro para tentar se manter no poder. Com o controle da Justiça Eleitoral, ele inabilitou a candidatura da maior liderança oposicionista, María Corina Machado, favorita nas pesquisas, e de outros que tentaram substituí-la. No fim, foi registrada a do veterano político Edmundo González. Em entrevista ao GLOBO, María Corina pediu apenas que “os votos sejam contados” e, em caso de vitória da oposição, acenou a Maduro com a negociação de uma transição, “como está ocorrendo com muitos setores do chavismo que começam a se aproximar”.

María Corina considera importante que todos os presidentes latino-americanos atuem em prol de eleições livres, mas destaca o peso do brasileiro Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, que tem comunicação direta com Maduro. Lula o recebeu na posse em Brasília com honras de chefe de Estado. Ainda o aconselhou publicamente a criar uma “narrativa” que levasse o mundo a considerar a Venezuela uma democracia.

Depois de afagos de Lula em Maduro — entre eles a declaração absurda de que a democracia é um “conceito relativo” —, o governo brasileiro só esboçou mudança de posição quando a candidatura de María Corina foi inabilitada em março. Uma nota do Itamaraty manifestou preocupação com a forma como Caracas tentava impedir a apresentação de candidaturas oposicionistas que pudessem ameaçar o chavismo.

No início do ano, Maduro deu sinais de distensão, recebidos de modo positivo — os Estados Unidos chegaram a suspender temporariamente o boicote ao petróleo venezuelano. Mas não demorou a ficar claro que tudo não passava de jogo de cena. A tentativa de impedir os venezuelanos no exterior de votar é apenas uma fraude eleitoral disfarçada. O regime chavista completa 25 anos cheio de fissuras, e o aceno de María Corina deveria ser levado a sério por Maduro. Infelizmente é difícil acreditar que isso acontecerá.

 

A ingenuidade de Lula com respeito ao Brics, à China e à Rússia - Robert Plummer, BBC News

Is Brazil's Brics-building worth it?

By Robert Plummer, BBC News, 14/07/2024

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0venrydg8yo

It's been more than a year-and-a-half since Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the country's presidency, back from the political dead after his conviction on corruption charges was dramatically annulled.

In that time, President Lula's comeback has given renewed force to one of the world's most unlikely economic alliances - the Brics, a grouping that unites Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa.

In his previous time as president from 2003 to 2010, Lula was instrumental in efforts to weld the Brics into a geopolitical entity, and an emerging counterweight to the West.

Now the bloc has momentum on its side once again. It's come to be known as Brics Plus, after the original members agreed at a watershed summit in Johannesburg in August last year to admit a handful of new joiners, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Not bad for a grouping that was originally willed into being by sheer high-concept financial whimsy, the brainchild of economist Jim O'Neill, who saw it more as an investment opportunity than a new gang of nations.

"When the Brics were invented, it was pretty much an asset class," says Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

"But it caught on in Brazil, because it directly spoke to Lula's aspirations in foreign policy."

At the Johannesburg meeting, Lula was particularly bullish about the group's long-term economic prospects.

“We have already surpassed the G7 and account for 32% of global GDP in purchasing power parity," he said. 

"Projections indicate that emerging and developing markets will be those that will show the highest growth rate in the coming years," he went on. 

"This shows that the dynamism of the economy is in the global south and the Brics is its driving force.”

But that is disingenuous on Lula's part, to say the least. As has been pointed out by the originator of the Bric acronym, who now rejoices in the title of Baron O'Neill of Gatley, all the economic growth in the group has actually come from Xi Jinping's China and Narendra Modi's India.

"None of the other Brics has performed anywhere near as well as those two," he said in an article written in reaction to the bloc's expansion.

"Brazil and Russia account for around the same share of global GDP as they did in 2001, and South Africa is not even the largest economy in Africa [Nigeria has surpassed it]." 

As he also points out, China "dominates the Brics by being twice the size of all the others combined", in much the same way that the US dominates the G7.

So what does slow-growth Brazil gain from being dragged along in China's economic slipstream? 

Rodrigo Zeidan, a Brazilian economist based at China's New York University Shanghai, tells the BBC that Brazil and China alike see the Brics as a "hedge" in terms of global alliances, rather than as a top priority.

"The Brics right now, for Brazil, cost almost nothing," he says. "So if the benefits are not high, it's fine. They are neither a big benefit nor a hindrance."

Since China is its biggest trading partner, Brazil is comfortable maintaining close relations with Beijing, even if the Brics grouping provides it with some "strange bedfellows", as Mr Zeidan puts it.

Lula has certainly maintained an ambiguous position on Russia's war in Ukraine, but that is more due to Brazil's traditional neutrality in foreign policy than to a wish to support a fellow Brics nation.

For Monica de Bolle at the Peterson Institute, herself a Brazilian economist, President Lula showed "a lot of naivety" in committing to the Brics because of his belief in furthering relations among the big so-called global south nations.

As a result, Brazil has now acquired "a China dependency" that could harm it in other foreign policy relations, she says.

"If you are in the US, you know that the US stance on China is not going to change [whoever wins the presidential election in November]," she adds.

"In either case, it's moving in the direction of greater anti-China sentiment. At some point, that's going to create additional reactions from China, which could put Brazil in a very difficult position, because it's perceived as being aligned with China." 

One tangible gain for Brazil from the alliance comes in the shape of the New Development Bank (NDB), a multilateral lender founded by the Brics and described by Lula as "a milestone in effective collaboration between emerging economies".

It is currently headed by Brazilian ex-President Dilma Rousseff. She was President Lula's political protegee, and succeeded him in 2011. But her time in office came to a chaotic end when she was impeached in 2016 for breaking budgetary laws.

The NDB has not only returned her to public life, but since the bank's headquarters are in Shanghai, it makes her key to maintaining links between Brazil and China.

"Dilma is definitely huge in terms of political image. Having Dilma here in Shanghai is very important for strengthening Brazil-China relations," says Mr Zeidan.

Brazil has also benefited directly from NDB money. In June, Ms Rousseff and Brazilian Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin signed a loan deal worth more than $1.1bn (£880m) to help pay for reconstruction after widespread floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Regarding the NDB and Russia, the bank put all transactions involving the country on hold in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the NDB has complied with international sanctions against Russia.

But Russia is due to take over the rotating presidency of the bank in mid-2025 and there is some uncertainty over what will happen then.

In the meantime, Ms Rousseff is not averse to attending financial gatherings in Russia, and shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has praised her work at the helm of the NDB.

President Lula is a passionate advocate of the Brics as a means of reforming global governance and giving a greater voice to the developing world. 

He has criticised the "paralysis" of global institutions, while praising the expansion of the Brics as strengthening the fight for more diverse perspectives.

But other observers retort that the Brics are themselves paralysed by their own internal contradictions, with Russia at war in Ukraine, while China and India have their own mutual squabbles.

Ultimately, says Ms de Bolle in Washington, the Brics are "a heterogeneous group of countries that have nothing in common, apart from the fact that they are big".

"The Brics have no clear agenda that has any real weight," agrees Mr Zeidan in Shanghai. 

"Right now, China doesn't ask much of Brazil. However, anything that China asks, Brazil does.

"It's fine to be part of the Brics when the stakes are low. But what if the stakes rise?"

In other words, the effect of the Brics, on Brazil and on the world, may be minor for now. But if China decides to become more assertive, that could change rapidly - and Brazil could be faced with some uncomfortable choices.

Uma dupla decepção e uma dupla recusa: Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Uma simples e dupla constatação

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida, diplomata, professor.

Nota sobre minha postura em face das deformações da direita e da esquerda.

 

Na extrema direita:

Uma das coisas, atuais e correntes, que mais me surpreendem: como pessoas educadas, bem-informadas e de bom nível de vida podem se render e se entregar a um psicopata perverso, grosseiro, vulgar, ladrão e profundamente autoritário? Me parece inaceitável e inacreditável!

Na esquerda, que já esteve e que retornou ao poder:

O Brasil é um país de muitas desigualdades e injustiças. As oligarquias, geralmente conservadoras, nunca resolveram os problemas básicos da sociedade, nem tinham interesse em resolvê-los. As esquerdas, supostamente engajadas na solução desses problemas, por equívocos, ignorância ou políticas deliberadas de monopólio do poder, acabaram se rendendo às mesmas políticas paliativas que preservaram a persistência dos problemas básicos e ainda se uniram às velhas oligarquias, ou criaram novas oligarquias que mantiveram a nação no não desenvolvimento, na não educação e na não inserção às correntes mais dinâmicas da economia global. 

Conclusão:

O Brasil continua sendo um país atrasado, mas com ilhas avançadas de bem-estar para os privilegiados, e uma democracia de baixíssima qualidade, na qual as velhas e novas oligarquias, de direita e de esquerda, preservam seus privilégios e comportamentos profundamente injustos para com a parte esquecida da sociedade: os descendentes de escravos e os pobres em geral.

Vai demorar para mudar essa realidade.

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 4705, 18 julho 2024, 1 p.