Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
Carter Center: possibidade ataque hacker impossível
El subjefe de la misión en Venezuela del Centro Carter, Patricio Ballados, dijo en la Entrevista DW que "un ataque vía internet es prácticamente imposible”, al referirse a las denuncias por parte del Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro. Ballados recalcó las “graves” irregularidades que se presentaron en el proceso electoral en Venezuela y subrayó que es “indispensable” que la autoridad electoral presente las actas de las mesas.
Meu Google Alert sobre a "diplomacia brasileira" me traz sempre muitas matérias interessantes para se ler, e eu leio quase todas elas.
Só os títulos já revelam o que há de contraditório na diplomacia brasileira, e o processo reverte a uma única oposição, que não é mais esquerda e direita, e sim ditadura ou democracia.
A diplomacia brasileira trabalha para manter Maduro no poder. Jornalistas simpáticos a Lula tentaram distanciar o presidente de seu partido, o PT, que ...
Leia tudo sobre o tema e siga: América do Sul · América Latina · Caracas · diplomacia brasileira · Eleições na Venezuela · Itamaraty · Lula · Nicolás ...
In Nicolás Maduro, the United States and its allies see a tyrant: an authoritarian socialist who has brought economic ruin to oil-rich Venezuela, persecuted and imprisoned political opponents, grown rich on narcoterrorism, and repeatedly and brazenly stolen elections.
Russia, China, Iran and Cuba see their type of guy.
In return for a strategic foothold in the Western Hemisphere, Maduro’s closest allies have sent him weapons and oil-refining technology, provided his government with billions of dollars in loans and backed him in each of his confrontations with the West — including now.
Washington and its European partners are questioning the strongman’s claim that he won reelection Sunday. Exit polling and, according to the opposition, the government’s records indicate challenger Edmundo González trounced him. Even his leftist allies in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are reserving judgment.
But Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Havana were all quick to congratulate Maduro.
The divided response to Maduro’s election claim has made Venezuela the latest battlefield in an emerging global ideological conflict that’s not between left and right so much as authoritarianism and democracy.
From Ukraine to Taiwan, Yemen to Syria, the authoritarian bloc is upending global norms, working to hinder the advance of democracy and transforming what in other times might have been isolated regional disputes into protracted proxy struggles between the liberal and illiberal worlds.
“It used to be that you could get together a few interested parties and manage a crisis,” said Eric Farnsworth, a senior analyst at the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society. “But Russia, Iran and Cuba complicate everything. Their interests are not to manage the crisis, but disrupt the system, to make the management more difficult.”
Their support of Maduro has undermined the international community’s effortsto force Maduro’s exit through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. The strongman, the handpicked successor of Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state, has ruled Venezuela for more than a decade, despite widespread belief that he stole the 2018 election.
“Maduro is largely immune from Western pressure,” said Oliver Stuenkel, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Brazil. “He doesn’t depend much on friendly relations with them.”
Some of the support is rhetorical.Iran, North Korea and Nicaraguahave offered solidarity, forming a de facto support circleamong what might otherwise be isolated pariah states. Venezuela and North Korea, Maduro’s Foreign Ministry says, will forge a “new world order.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, hosting Maduro in Tehran in 2022, said the countries were “friends in difficult times” who were “resisting cruel imperialism.” (Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in May.)
Others have offered more than words. Russia, for instance, pledged$5 billion to improveVenezuela’s oil refineries, $1 billion for its gold mining industry — and firepower. Moscow — long one of Venezuela’s biggest arms suppliers — has sold itarmored vehicles, tanks, air-defense systems and helicopters, a group of Colombian researchers reported last year in the International Social Science Journal.
At Maduro’s most critical moments, when his grip on power appeared most at risk, Moscow has sent additional military aid. In 2019, when the Trump administration declared him a usurper and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader, the Kremlin dispatched military planescarrying military equipment and roughly 100 “military technicians.” In the lead-up to the presidential election Sunday, Russia twice sent warships into Caribbean waters — once to dock at a Venezuelan port.
Other support has been less public. In 2019, the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary firm then closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, sent hundreds of contractorsinto Venezuela to beef up Maduro’s security forces, Reuters reported at the time.
This week, video spread on social mediasuggesting the group’s return to Venezuela. A man wearing what appears to be a Wagner arm patch is shown among Maduro’s security forces.
“One of the reasons Maduro is surviving is because of Russian support,” said Vladimir Rouvinski, a Russian political scientist at Colombia’s Icesi University. “Russia sees itself as a great constructor of a new world order, and they need Maduro.”
Cuba is also believed to have providedsignificant military support. Chávez, who brought socialism to Venezuelain 1999, enjoyed closed ties with Fidel and Raúl Castro; the communist island remains Venezuela’s closest ideological ally.
In 2019, exiled former Venezuelan general Antonio Rivero told Diálogo Américas, a publication of U.S. Southern Command, that the countries had signed several agreements to promote the “Cubanization” of Venezuela’s armed forces. Maduro’s personal security force is reportedly staffed largely by Cubans. In 2019, when Guaidó led an attempted uprising against Maduro, then-White House national security adviser John Bolton accused Cuba of having dispatched more than 20,000 security agents to Venezuela.
But most crucial to Maduro’s survival has been Chinese patronage.
Beijinghas long been Venezuela’s economic benefactor, its principal creditor and largest oil purchaser. Venezuela has been the largest recipient in Latin America of Chinese loans — an estimated $60 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
When U.S.-ledsanctions threatened to maim Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy, China evaded the restrictions by trading through third parties.
It’sdifficult to know China’s ambitions in Venezuela. It could be that they want to cultivate and bolster a friend who can help undermine Western interests in South America, a continent rich in natural resources sought by both China and the United States. Or they might just want to make sure they can collect on their loans.
“ It’s very difficult to disentangle how much of this is a financial strategy versus geopolitical in nature,” said Stephen Kaplan, a political economist at George Washington University.
Other analysts see clear political motives. Several say Russia, China and others are pursuing a campaign of political reciprocity in Venezuela to retaliate against the United States for its support of their adversaries inUkraine, Taiwan and other countries.
“This needs to be seen through the prism of a superpower conflict between the U.S., Russia and China, and a complete eroding of the world order,” said Ulf Thoene, a political scientist at La Sabana University in Colombia. “What’s happening in Venezuela is a fight between a candidate clearly backed by Russia, China and Iran — and an opposition that is obviously supported by the United States and Europe.”
That dynamic, he said, has fueled violent quagmires around the world, complicating efforts to usher authoritarian leaders to the exits.
Syrian President “Basharal-Assad is still in power,” he said. “We were promised he would be gone in weeks, but he’s actually stronger now than he was years ago.”
The same, Thoene fears, could happen in Venezuela.
“With every passing day,” he said, “the likelihood grows that Maduro will remain in power.”
Terrence McCoy is The Washington Post's Rio de Janeiro Bureau Chief. He has twice won the George Polk Award and was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2023.
Aworthy sequel to Corrales’s earlier classic Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez (2011), Autocracy Rising rigorouslyexamines the paradox of the perseverance of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in the midst of economic collapse and severe international sanctions. Corrales offers three compelling explanations for Maduro’s survival: asymmetric party system fragmentation, wherein the strength of the ruling party (rooted in deep networks of clientelism and cronyism) eclipses a fragmented opposition; institutional destruction and colonization, with the state exercising tremendous control over the electoral authorities, the coercive apparatus, and the courts (what Corrales labels “autocratic legalism”); and, most originally, institutional innovation (“functional fusion”) in which institutions begin to multitask. The military acquires business functions, a constituent assembly becomes a legislature, local political councils become food distribution networks, and criminal syndicates acquire some of the functions of the state. In addition, Corrales provides valuable comparative case studies: Nicaragua offers a similar story of ascendant authoritarianism, but Colombia and Ecuador suggest that liberal democracy can fight back. Somewhat surprisingly, Corrales concludes that Maduro’s rule remains tenuous, well short of true autocratic consolidation.
Lula decidiu ser cúmplice de crime cometido por Maduro na Venezuela
José Roberto Guzzo
Estadão, 03 de agosto de 2024
Chefe de fato do Itamaraty, Celso Amorim vem agora com uma tese revolucionária: a oposição tem de 'provar que ganhou' É raro ver uma escolha indecente ir se tornando menos indecente com o passar do tempo. Decisões desse tipo não são biodegradáveis - na verdade, ficam cada vez mais perniciosas e conduzem a uma espiral crescente de emendas piores que os sonetos. É precisamente este o caso do governo Lula com a sua decisão de apoiar, para todos os efeitos práticos, o roubo das eleições na Venezuela que acaba de ser praticado pela ditadura de seu parceiro e amigo Nicolás Maduro.
O fato é que Lula decidiu ser cúmplice de um crime. Não há remédio para isso: ele está condenado, agora, a trair o comparsa ou trair o Brasil, e mesmo que decida fazer a primeira traição, para salvar o próprio couro mais adiante, a segunda já entrou no seu prontuário.
O presidente Lula defende 'normalidade' do processo eleitoral na Venezuela Foto: Wilton Junior/EstadãoLula, agora, está pendurado nas "atas de votação" que a "justiça eleitoral" de Maduro, um aglomerado de subalternos que até hoje nunca fez nada contra as ordens do ditador, ficou de publicar. A eleição estava obviamente roubada desde o primeiro dia de campanha; nunca foi preciso esperar "ata" nenhuma para saber que Maduro iria se declarar eleito.
A principal candidata da oposição foi proibida de concorrer pela mesmíssima "justiça eleitoral" da ditadura. A oposição indicou uma outra; também foi vetada por Maduro. Os cerca de 4 milhões de eleitores venezuelanos que vivem no exílio foram impedidos de votar. O governo prendeu, reprimiu e censurou oposicionistas. É fraude em modo extremo.
Lula, numa flagrante falsificação dos fatos, disse que não houve "nada de anormal" na eleição. O Itamaraty elogiou o clima "pacífico" da votação - e continua a ignorar a matança de pelo menos uma dúzia de oposicionistas e as 1.200 prisões que Maduro, em pessoa, anunciou que estava fazendo.
Mas mesmo com todo esse massacre, as coisas não saíram como a ditadura quis que saíssem. A fraude maciça, na cara de todo mundo, virou aberração: o ditador disse que tinha ganho antes de terminar a apuração, não mostrou nenhuma prova disso e, diante dos protestos de todas as democracias, prometeu divulgar as "atas".
Lula se jogou de cabeça nessa mentira - com a publicação dos dados, disse ele, ia ficar tudo esclarecido. De mais a mais, quem não concordasse com os números poderia reclamar à justiça do ditador. Qual o problema?
Não veio ata nenhuma no domingo da eleição. Não veio na segunda, na terça, na quarta, na quinta, na sexta - e se vier, vão dizer que Maduro ganhou. O chefe de fato do Itamaraty, Celso Amorim, vem agora com uma tese revolucionária: a oposição tem de "provar que ganhou". Aparentemente, o ditador está dispensado dessa mesma exigência. É o absurdo ficando cada vez mais absurdo.
Opinião por J.R. Guzzo
Jornalista escreve semanalmente sobre o cenário político e econômico do País