Ricardo Bergamin disseca a deplorável situação econômica do Brasil

Prezados Senhores

Como todos (ratificando: todos) os indicadores macroeconômicos do governo Temer estão muito piores do que os do governo Dilma, nada mais racional do que os eleitores, intuitivamente, desejarem a volta do menos pior.

Cabe lembrar que legalmente essa senhora estaria impedida de exercer qualquer cargo público nos próximos oito anos, mas como a sociedade brasileira aceitou passivamente a decisão de abrir mão dessa exigência, os indignados que se suicidem.

Ou essa merda de país se torna adulta e debata a verdade com clareza técnica, ou somente nos restará à masturbação mental ideológica. Nesse caso, por total falta de direita no Brasil, a esquerda reinará de forma absoluta muito em breve. Escolham!

Na tragédia brasileira não existem inocentes. Somos todos cúmplices por omissão, covardia ou conivência (Ricardo Bergamini).

Estive certo quando tive todos contra mim (Roberto Campos).

Prezados Senhores

A tragédia econômica promovida pelo governo Temer (réu confesso, aguardando as algemas) foi responsável pelo rebaixamento das notas do Brasil no mercado financeiro internacional. Tendo sido o aumento de gastos concedidos aos servidores públicos até o ano de 2019 que inviabilizou o ajuste fiscal necessário para a recuperação da economia. Cabe lembrar ter sido o descontrole dos gastos com pessoal a fonte primária que provocou a maior crise fiscal da história econômica do Brasil. 

A tragédia econômica do governo TEMER

Base: Junho de 2018

Ricardo Bergamini

O governo atual tem como bandeira única e exclusiva a redução da inflação, e a óbvia redução nominal de juro, porém sem uma análise mais profunda não quer dizer coisa alguma, haja vista que no período dos governos Dilma/Temer (2011/2017) o ano de 2017 foi a de menor inflação (2,9473% ao ano), entretanto pagou o maior juro real (7,39% ao ano), tendo sido 32,20% acima da média do período (5,59% ao ano). Já o ano de 2015 com a maior inflação de (10,6735% ao ano) pagou o menor juro real (3,57% ao ano).

Em junho de 2016 a taxa SELIC era de 14,15% ao ano e a inflação anualizada, na mesma data, era de 8,84% (ganho real dos investidores de 5,31% ao ano). Em junho de 2018 a taxa SELIC estava em 6,50% ao ano e a inflação do IPCA anualizada, na mesma data, em 4,39% (ganho real dos investidores de 2,11% ao ano). Com redução do ganho real dos investidores de 60,26% no período. 

                                                                                                                         

Cabe lembrar que de 2011 até 2017 a média do ganho real dos investidores foi de 5,59% ao ano, e o ganho real apurado em junho de 2018 foi de 2,11% ao ano, ou seja: 62,25% menor. Com a inflação em ascendência e o estoque de dívida aumentando de forma desordenada somente restará ao Banco Central retornar o caminho de volta, aumentado a taxa de juros SELIC. Não creio que para um país que opera em “grau de especulação” seja a atual, uma taxa de retorno atrativa. Já estamos observando uma fuga de capitais desvalorizando o real em relação ao dólar. Cabe lembrar que o IPP (Índice de Preços ao Produtor) que nada mais é do que o IPCA futuro teve aumento de 10,45% em doze meses até maio de 2018.

No acumulado em doze meses até junho de 2016, registrou-se deficit primário (sem juros) de R$ 151,2 bilhões (2,51% do PIB). No acumulado em doze meses até maio de 2018, registrou-se deficit primário de R$ 95,9 bilhões (1,44% do PIB), Redução real de deficit primário (sem juros) de 42,63% em relação ao PIB, comparado com os últimos doze meses do governo Dilma. Nesse ritmo o Brasil vai levar mais 2,6 anos para atingir resultado fiscal primário “zero”.

Em junho de 2016 a dívida líquida da União (Interna e Externa Líquida) era de R$ 4.278,1 bilhões (68,26% do PIB). Em maio de 2018 era de R$ 5.470,1 bilhões (82,05% do PIB). Crescimento real em relação ao PIB de 20,20%.

Em junho de 2016 a dívida interna da União carregada pelo Banco Central do Brasil em carteira era de R$ 1.319,5 bilhões (21,05% do PIB). Em maio de 2018 era de R$ 1.753,4 bilhões (26,30% do PIB). Crescimento real em relação ao PIB de 24,94%.

A taxa de desemprego medida pela PNAD contínua era de 11,3% no trimestre encerrado em junho de 2016 e foi de 12,7% no trimestre encerrado em maio de 2018. Crescimento de 12,39% no período.

O número de empregados com carteira de trabalho assinada (32,8 milhões) caiu 1,1% frente ao trimestre anterior (dezembro de 2017 a fevereiro de 2018). No confronto com o trimestre de março a maio de 2017, a queda foi de 1,5% (-483 mil pessoas).

No Brasil, em 2017, das 48,5 milhões de pessoas de 15 a 29 anos de idade, 23,0% (11,2 milhões) não estavam ocupadas nem estudando ou se qualificando. Em 2016, o percentual dos que não estudavam nem trabalhavam era de 21,8% (10,5 milhões). De um ano para o outro, houve um aumento de 5,9% nesse contingente, o que equivale a mais 619 mil pessoas nessa condição. Essa trajetória pode estar relacionada ao momento econômico vivido pelo país.

No primeiro trimestre de 2018, a taxa de subutilização da força de trabalho (que agrega os desocupados, os subocupados por insuficiência de horas e a força de trabalho potencial) subiu para 24,7%, o que representa 27,7 milhões de pessoas. Essa é a maior taxa de subutilização na série histórica da PNAD Contínua, iniciada em 2012. O contingente de subutilizados também é o maior da série histórica.

O balanço patrimonial da União apresentou um patrimônio líquido negativo de R$ 1,4 trilhão em 2015, de R$ 2,0 trilhões em 2016 e de 2,4 trilhões em 2017. Crescimento de 71,43% em relação ao ano de 2015 e de 20,00% em relação ao ano de 2016.

Para se livrar das algemas o presidente Temer (réu confesso, aguardando as algemas) cometeu mais um crime de responsabilidade fiscal ao descumprir o PLOA concedendo renúncia fiscal da ordem de R$ 354,7 bilhões (5,40% do PIB), tendo sido orçado apenas R$ 284,4 bilhões (4,53% do PIB) para o ano de 2017, ou seja: 19,20% acima do orçado em relação ao PIB.

Cabe lembrar que o seu mais grave crime de responsabilidade fiscal foi o de ter concedido em 2016 aumentos salariais aos servidores públicos federais programados até 2019 (o seu efeito cascata se propagou para os estados e municípios) inviabilizando qualquer programa de ajuste fiscal no Brasil, já que o gasto com pessoal é a fonte primária da tragédia fiscal brasileira, conforme abaixo:

Em 2002 os gastos com pessoal consolidado (união, estados e municípios) foi de 13,35% do PIB. Em 2017 foi de 15,90% do PIB. Crescimento real em relação ao PIB de 19,10% representando 49,20% da carga tributária de 2016 que foi de 32,38%. Para que se avalie a variação criminosa dos gastos reais com pessoal, cabe lembrar que nesse mesmo período houve um crescimento real do PIB Corrente de 36,10%, gerando um ganho real acima da inflação de 43,00% nesse período. Nenhuma nação do planeta conseguiria bancar tamanha orgia pública.

Em 2016 os gastos com pessoal da União (civis e militares) foi de R$ 277,2 bilhões. Em 2017 migra para R$ 304,1 bilhões. Aumento nominal de 9,75% para uma inflação de 2,9473% gerando um aumento real de 6,81%. Cabe lembrar que o teto para o limite de gastos deveria ser a inflação do ano de 2016 de 6,2881%, assim sendo está claro que Temer cometeu crime de responsabilidade fiscal, além dos crimes comuns já conhecidos de todos. Espero que o pau que dá em Chico, também dê em Francisco, ou transformaram o Brasil num grande puteiro, porque assim se ganha mais dinheiro. Que Deus tenha piedade da abissal escuridão e ignorância reinante no Brasil.

Em 2018 está previsto gastos com pessoal da União de R$ 322,8 bilhões, o seja: 6,15% acima do ano de 2017, enquanto o limite constitucional aprovado pelo próprio governo seria de 2,94%, correspondente à inflação do ano de 2017. Com isso ratificando o seu crime de responsabilidade fiscal ao conceder em 2016 aumentos salariais até o ano de 2019, além dos crimes comuns já conhecidos de todos.

Em 2016 os gastos com pessoal consolidado (união, estados e municípios) foi de 47,16% da carga tributária. Em 2017 foi de 49,20% da carga tributária, ou seja: acréscimo de 4,32%.

Ricardo Bergamini

(48) 99636-7322

(48) 99976-6974

ricardobergamini@ricardobergamini.com.br

www.ricardobergamini.com.br

“Dilma está voltando, queridos!”

Carlos José Marques/Istoé

8.2K

Por mais inacreditável que possa parecer, Dilma Rousseff, a mandatária estabanada nas ações e palavras, deposta por mutretagem nas contas públicas, resolveu testar de novo a paciência dos brasileiros e está retornando à cena política. Na ativa. E o que é mais surpreendente: desponta como candidata ao Senado por Minas Gerais com reais chances de se eleger, na dianteira das pesquisas, celebrada de novo na condição de “mãe dos pobres”. Se brincar tenta até o governo do Estado. Não está fechada ainda a melhor posição. Os petistas a enxergam como um “ás” na manga. Trata-se de uma estranha patologia nacional, esta de não aprender com erros passados e, o que é pior, de insistir neles como a imaginar que no trêfego debruçar sobre experiências desastrosas o País vai acabar por encontrar a boa saída. Ledo engano. Nas últimas décadas, o Brasil exibiu qualidades invulgares como cenário de aprendizes de feiticeiro que deixaram de herança uma bagunça administrativa de alto custo a pagar. Foi assim nos idos de Collor, o primeiro a abrir a fila de “impichados” – depois reconduzido ao Congresso – e voltou a se repetir com Dilma, o célebre poste de Lula, inesquecível no plano das anedotas por suas lições de como estocar vento, de saudação à mandioca, de respeito ao ET de Vaginha e de imprecações linguísticas do tipo “mulheres sapiens”. Seu intuito de ir às urnas constitui, por um variado e amplo leque de motivos, uma aberração. O País que passou o que passou nas mãos dessa senhora – responsável por colocar a economia de joelhos praticando a mais devastadora recessão de todos os tempos, que esteve no comando quando os saqueadores dos cofres públicos fizeram a festa, quebraram a estatal de ouro Petrobras e roubaram a rodo – não poderia cogitar a hipótese de aceitá-la novamente saracoteando no poder. A não ser que tenha vocação para o sofrimento. Sob outro aspecto não menos danoso, do ponto de vista legal, a candidatura fere de forma gritante os preceitos da Constituição que atrela o impeachment à perda dos direitos políticos por oito anos. Está lá, letra por letra, disposto na Carta Magna o crime e respectiva descrição da pena decorrente da cassação. Ocorre que o ministro Ricardo Lewandovski, outro mestre do triunvirato da Segunda Turma do STF, ao lado de Toffoli e Gilmar Mendes, que de uns tempos para cá vem sacudindo o coreto legal com decisões arrepiantes, achou por bem costurar junto com o então presidente do Senado Renan Calheiros, mais uma gambiarra jurídica: a perda do cargo sem inabilitação. Fatiou as votações no parlamento em duas etapas e assim manteve a presidente deposta como apta a participar de futuros escrutínios. Diversos partidos se organizam para tentar impugnar essa possibilidade. Pareceres de magistrados são emitidos negando a condição de elegível para Dilma. Mas tribunais não se mostram muito receptivos a considerar a revisão – embora a dita cuja ex-presidente siga sob o peso de processos, inclusive da CVM, pela compra superfaturada de Pasadena, fio-condutor de toda operação Lava Jato.

Você pode estar se perguntando como é possível isso? Mas o ressurgimento de Dilma na atual circunstância simboliza, na prática, de maneira dramática, o enorme fosso de dificuldades e desânimo que tem tido o eleitor para garimpar e ungir ao comando seus líderes. Pode-se atribuir à índole cordata do povo a predisposição de, mesmo depois de ir às ruas gritar “Fora Dilma!”, assumir logo a seguir um estágio de resiliência absoluta na qual é capaz de perdoar falhas dos vilões de outrora. Ou aduzir outros motivos, tal qual a propensão nata do eleitorado a mover-se quase sempre, cegamente, pelo recall de imagem dos postulantes a cargos públicos e pela enganação marqueteira de informações fabricadas que os programas partidários tratam de veicular. De um jeito ou de outro, a excrescência de uma candidatura Dilma está posta. Cabe a cada um repudiá-la, dizendo não na urna.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor da Web: "It's time to rise against the machines"

“I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.

Katrina Brooker

Vanity Fair, July 1, 2018 5:00 pm

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets

“For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it,” Tim Berners-Lee told me one morning in downtown Washington, D.C., about a half-mile from the White House. Berners-Lee was speaking about the future of the Internet, as he does often and fervently and with great animation at a remarkable cadence. With an Oxonian wisp of hair framing his chiseled face, Berners-Lee appears the consummate academic—communicating rapidly, in a clipped London accent, occasionally skipping over words and eliding sentences as he stammers to convey a thought. His soliloquy was a mixture of excitement with traces of melancholy. Nearly three decades earlier, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. On this morning, he had come to Washington as part of his mission to save it.

At 63, Berners-Lee has thus far had a career more or less divided into two phases. In the first, he attended Oxford; worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN); and then, in 1989, came up with the idea that eventually became the Web. Initially, Berners-Lee’s innovation was intended to help scientists share data across a then obscure platform called the Internet, a version of which the U.S. government had been using since the 1960s. But owing to his decision to release the source code for free—to make the Web an open and democratic platform for all—his brainchild quickly took on a life of its own. Berners-Lee’s life changed irrevocably, too. He would be named one of the 20th century’s most important figures by Time, receive the Turing Award (named after the famed code breaker) for achievements in the computer sciences, and be honored at the Olympics. He has been knighted by the Queen. “He is the Martin Luther King of our new digital world,” says Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. (Berners-Lee sits on the foundation’s board of trustees.)

Berners-Lee also envisioned that his invention could, in the wrong hands, become a destroyer of worlds.

Berners-Lee, who never directly profited off his invention, has also spent most of his life trying to guard it. While Silicon Valley started ride-share apps and social-media networks without profoundly considering the consequences, Berners-Lee has spent the past three decades thinking about little else. From the beginning, in fact, Berners-Lee understood how the epic power of the Web would radically transform governments, businesses, societies. He also envisioned that his invention could, in the wrong hands, become a destroyer of worlds, as Robert Oppenheimer once infamously observed of his own creation. His prophecy came to life, most recently, when revelations emerged that Russian hackers interfered with the 2016 presidential election, or when Facebook admitted it exposed data on more than 80 million users to a political research firm, Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump’s campaign. This episode was the latest in an increasingly chilling narrative. In 2012, Facebook conducted secret psychological experiments on nearly 700,000 users. Both Google and Amazon have filed patent applications for devices designed to listen for mood shifts and emotions in the human voice.

For the man who set all this in motion, the mushroom cloud was unfolding before his very eyes. “I was devastated,” Berners-Lee told me that morning in Washington, blocks from the White House. For a brief moment, as he recalled his reaction to the Web’s recent abuses, Berners-Lee quieted; he was virtually sorrowful. “Actually, physically—my mind and body were in a different state.” Then he went on to recount, at a staccato pace, and in elliptical passages, the pain in watching his creation so distorted.

This agony, however, has had a profound effect on Berners-Lee. He is now embarking on a third act—determined to fight back through both his celebrity status and, notably, his skill as a coder. In particular, Berners-Lee has, for some time, been working on a new software, Solid, to reclaim the Web from corporations and return it to its democratic roots. On this winter day, he had come to Washington to attend the annual meeting of the World Wide Web Foundation, which he started in 2009 to protect human rights across the digital landscape. For Berners-Lee, this mission is critical to a fast-approaching future. Sometime this November, he estimates, half the world’s population—close to 4 billion people—will be connected online, sharing everything from résumés to political views to DNA information. As billions more come online, they will feed trillions of additional bits of information into the Web, making it more powerful, more valuable, and potentially more dangerous than ever.

“We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places,” he told me. The increasing centralization of the Web, he says, has “ended up producing—with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform—a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.”

The original idea for the Web was born in the early 1960s, when Berners-Lee was growing up in London. His parents, both pioneers of the computer age, helped create the first commercial stored-program electronic computer. They raised their son on tales of bits and processors and the power of machines. One of his earliest memories is a conversation with his father about how computers would one day function like the human brain.

As a student at Oxford in the early 1970s, Berners-Lee built his own computer using an old television and a soldering iron. He graduated with a first-class degree in physics, without any particular plans for his future. He subsequently landed a series of jobs at different companies as a programmer, but none of them lasted long. It wasn’t until the early 1980s, when he got a consulting position at CERN, near Geneva, that his life began to change. He worked on a program to help nuclear scientists share data over another nascent system. At first, Berners-Lee quaintly called it “Enquire Within Upon Everything,” named after a Victorian-era domestic handbook that he had read as a child.

Berners-Lee at cern, outside Geneva, Switzerland, 1994.

Photograph © 1994–2018 Cern.

It would be nearly a decade before Berners-Lee refined the technology, renamed it, and released the Web’s source code. When it first appeared in an academic chat room, in August of 1991, the significance of the moment wasn’t immediately obvious. “No one paid much attention,” recalls Vinton Cerf, who is recognized as being a co-inventor of the Internet—atop which the Web sits—and is now chief Internet evangelist at Google. It was an information system that used an older software known as Hypertext to link to data and documents over the Internet. There were other information systems at the time. What made the Web powerful, and ultimately dominant, however, would also one day prove to be its greatest vulnerability: Berners-Lee gave it away for free; anyone with a computer and an Internet connection could not only access it but also build off it. Berners-Lee understood that the Web needed to be unfettered by patents, fees, royalties, or any other controls in order to thrive. This way, millions of innovators could design their own products to take advantage of it.

And, of course, millions did. Computer scientists and academics picked it up first, building applications that then drew others. Within a year of the Web’s release, nascent developers were already conceiving of ways to draw more and more users. From browsers to blogs to e-commerce sites, the Web’s eco-system exploded. In the beginning it was truly open, free, controlled by no one company or group. “We were in that first phase of what the Internet could do,” recalls Brewster Kahle, an early Internet pioneer who in 1996 built the original system for Alexa, later acquired by Amazon. “Tim and Vint made the system so that there could be many players that didn’t have an advantage over each other.” Berners-Lee, too, remembers the quixotism of the era. “The spirit there was very decentralized. The individual was incredibly empowered. It was all based on there being no central authority that you had to go to to ask permission,” he said. “That feeling of individual control, that empowerment, is something we’ve lost.”

The power of the Web wasn’t taken or stolen. We, collectively, by the billions, gave it away with every signed user agreement and intimate moment shared with technology. Facebook, Google, and Amazon now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways. Shortly after the 2016 election, Berners-Lee felt something had to change, and began methodically attempting to hack his creation. Last fall, the World Wide Web Foundation funded research to examine how Facebook’s algorithms control the news and information users receive. “Looking at the ways algorithms are feeding people news and looking at accountability for the algorithms—all of that is really important for the open Web,” he explained. By understanding these dangers, he hopes, we can collectively stop being deceived by the machine just as half the earth’s population is on board. “Crossing 50 percent is going to be a moment to pause and think,” says Berners-Lee, referring to the coming milestone. As billions more connect to the Web, he feels an increasing urgency to resolve its problems. For him this is about not just those already online but also the billions still unconnected. How much weaker and more marginalized will they become as the rest of the world leaves them behind?

We were now talking in a small, non-descript conference room, but Berners-Lee nevertheless felt called to action. Talking about this milestone, he grabbed a notebook and pen and started scribbling, slashing lines and dots and arrows across the page. He was mapping out a social graph of the computing power of the world. “This is maybe Elon Musk when he is using his most powerful computer,” said Berners-Lee, drawing a dark line at the top right of the page to illustrate the dominant position of the C.E.O. of SpaceX and Tesla. Lower on the page he scratched another mark: “These are the people in Ethiopia who have reasonable connectivity but they are totally being spied on.” The Web, which he had intended as a radical tool for democracy, was merely exacerbating the challenges of global inequality.

When about a fifth of the page was covered with lines and dots and scribbles, Berners-Lee stopped. Pointing to the space he’d left untouched, he said, “The goal is to fill in that square. To fill it up so all of humanity has total power on the Web.” His expression was intent, focused, as though he was calculating a problem for which he did not yet have the solution.

“I dumped a little code I had for doing things with email messages,” Berners-Lee typed one afternoon this spring, as he posted some code in a chat room on Gitter, an open platform frequented by coders to collaborate on ideas. It was a few days before Mark Zuckerberg was set to testify before Congress. And in this obscure part of the Web, Berners-Lee was busy working on a plan to make that testimony moot.

The forces that Berners-Lee unleashed nearly three decades ago are accelerating—moving in ways no one can fully predict.

The idea is simple: re-decentralize the Web. Working with a small team of developers, he spends most of his time now on Solid, a platform designed to give individuals, rather than corporations, control of their own data. “There are people working in the lab trying to imagine how the Web could be different. How society on the Web could look different. What could happen if we give people privacy and we give people control of their data,” Berners-Lee told me. “We are building a whole eco-system.”

For now, the Solid technology is still new and not ready for the masses. But the vision, if it works, could radically change the existing power dynamics of the Web. The system aims to give users a platform by which they can control access to the data and content they generate on the Web. This way, users can choose how that data gets used rather than, say, Facebook and Google doing with it as they please. Solid’s code and technology is open to all—anyone with access to the Internet can come into its chat room and start coding. “One person turns up every few days. Some of them have heard about the promise of Solid, and they are driven to turn the world upside down,” he says. Part of the draw is working with an icon. For a computer scientist, coding with Berners-Lee is like playing guitar with Keith Richards. But more than just working with the inventor of the Web, these coders come because they want to join the cause. These are digital idealists, subversives, revolutionaries, and anyone else who wants to fight the centralization of the Web. For his part, working on Solid brings Berners-Lee back to the Web’s early days: “It’s under the radar, but working on it in a way puts back some of the optimism and excitement that the ‘fake news’ takes out.”

Photographs by Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library/Alamy (2014); From Getty Images (2001); From Hulton Archive (1971, Computer), by Pedro Ladeira/AFP (2013), Maurix/Gamma-Rapho (2016, both), Michael A. Smith/The Life Images Collection (1981), all from Getty Images; By Frank Peters/Shutterstock (1996); By Fototeca Gilardi/Superstock (1971, Worm).

It’s still the early days for Solid, but Berners-Lee is moving fast. Those who work closely with him say he has thrown himself into the project with the same vigor and determination he employed upon the Web’s inception. Popular sentiment also appears to facilitate his time frame. In India, a group of activists successfully blocked Facebook from implementing a new service that would have effectively controlled access to the Web for huge swaths of the country’s population. In Germany, one young coder built a decentralized version of Twitter called Mastodon. In France, another group created Peertube as a decentralized alternative to YouTube. “I resent the control corporations have over people and their everyday lives. I hate the surveillance society we have accidently brought upon ourselves,” says Amy Guy, a coder from Scotland who helped build a platform called ActivityPub to connect decentralized Web sites. This summer, Web activists plan to convene at the second Decentralized Web Summit, in San Francisco.

Berners-Lee is not the leader of this revolution—by definition, the decentralized Web shouldn’t have one—but he is a powerful weapon in the fight. And he fully recognizes that re-decentralizing the Web is going to be a lot harder than inventing it was in the first place. “When the Web was created, there was nobody there, no vested parties who would resist,” says Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures, the renowned venture-capital firm, which has started investing in companies aiming to decentralize the Web. “There are entrenched and very wealthy interests who benefit from keeping the balance of control in their favor.” Billions of dollars are at stake here: Amazon, Google, and Facebook won’t give up their profits without a fight. In the first three months of 2018, even as its C.E.O. was apologizing for leaking user data, Facebook made $11.97 billion. Google made $31 billion.

For now, chastened by bad press and public outrage, tech behemoths and other corporations say they are willing to make changes to ensure privacy and protect their users. “I’m committed to getting this right,” Facebook’s Zuckerberg told Congress in April. Google recently rolled out new privacy features to Gmail which would allow users to control how their messages get forwarded, copied, downloaded, or printed. And as revelations of spying, manipulation, and other abuses emerge, more governments are pushing for change. Last year the European Union fined Google $2.7 billion for manipulating online shopping markets. This year new regulations will require it and other tech companies to ask for users’ consent for their data. In the U.S., Congress and regulators are mulling ways to check the powers of Facebook and others.

But laws written now don’t anticipate future technologies. Nor do lawmakers—many badgered by corporate lobbyists—always choose to protect individual rights. In December, lobbyists for telecom companies pushed the Federal Communications Commission to roll back net-neutrality rules, which protect equal access to the Internet. In January, the U.S. Senate voted to advance a bill that would allow the National Security Agency to continue its mass online-surveillance program. Google’s lobbyists are now working to modify rules on how companies can gather and store biometric data, such as fingerprints, iris scans, and facial-recognition images.

The forces that Berners-Lee unleashed nearly three decades ago are accelerating, moving in ways no one can fully predict. And now, as half the world joins the Web, we are at a societal inflection point: Are we headed toward an Orwellian future where a handful of corporations monitor and control our lives? Or are we on the verge of creating a better version of society online, one where the free flow of ideas and information helps cure disease, expose corruption, reverse injustices?

It’s hard to believe that anyone—even Zuckerberg—wants the 1984 version. He didn’t found Facebook to manipulate elections; Jack Dorsey and the other Twitter founders didn’t intend to give Donald Trump a digital bullhorn. And this is what makes Berners-Lee believe that this battle over our digital future can be won. As public outrage grows over the centralization of the Web, and as enlarging numbers of coders join the effort to decentralize it, he has visions of the rest of us rising up and joining him. This spring, he issued a call to arms, of sorts, to the digital public. In an open letter published on his foundation’s Web site, he wrote: “While the problems facing the web are complex and large, I think we should see them as bugs: problems with existing code and software systems that have been created by people—and can be fixed by people.”

When asked what ordinary people can do, Berners-Lee replied, “You don’t have to have any coding skills. You just have to have a heart to decide enough is enough. Get out your Magic Marker and your signboard and your broomstick. And go out on the streets.” In other words, it’s time to rise against the machines.

A infinita estupidez humana - Marcos Jank

Quem dizia que a estupidez humana era infinita foi Albert Einstein. Acho que se aplica aos casos abaixo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Bem-estar animal ou irracionalidade humana?

Jornal “Folha de São Paulo”, Caderno Mercado, 07/07/2018

Marcos Sawaya Jank (*)

Roberto Hugo Jank Junior (**)

Caça do agressivo javaporco e lei que proíbe exportação de gado em pé são matérias precisam ser discutidas com ciência e estratégia.

Bem-estar animal (BEA) é uma das agendas que mais crescem no mundo. Para muitos, o tema deveria ser considerado como o quarto grande pilar da sustentabilidade, ao lado de preservação ambiental, equidade social e eficiência econômica.

Não é para menos que muitas pessoas abraçam propostas legítimas de BEA, como a proibição da caça predatória e a adoção de melhores práticas na criação, transporte e abate de animais. O pecuarista é, aliás, o maior interessado em BEA, pois é ele quem determina a produtividade e a longevidade dos rebanhos, que é a essência da atividade.

Mas infelizmente projetos de lei equivocados e dogmáticos vêm ganhando força de lei no Brasil, sem terem sequer passado por debate científico adequado.

O primeiro exemplo é a inclusão do javaporco em lei que proíbe a caça de animais em São Paulo, sancionada pelo Governador Marcio França no dia 28. Essa decisão será catastrófica não só para a atividade agropecuária como para todo o meio ambiente do estado. 

O javaporco é fruto da ingenuidade e irresponsabilidade humanas. O erro nasceu com a introdução, pelos ingleses, do agressivo javali europeu no pampa argentino, visando a caça. Só que o bicho se cruzou com raças melhoradas do porco doméstico, seu parente, gerando um animal muito agressivo, voraz, extremamente grande e forte, não raro com mais de 300 kg.

Uma das espécies mais invasoras do mundo, o prolífico javaporco é destruidor contumaz de nascentes, áreas de preservação ambiental e plantações diversas, além de atacar o homem. Isso sem contar que esses ungulados podem transmitir a febre aftosa e o seu livre trânsito coloca em alto risco o rebanho bovino estadual, num momento em que estamos lutando para retirar a vacinação.

Exótico, sem predadores naturais, sem controle, com enorme capacidade de procriação e dispondo de alimento farto o ano todo, como é possível imaginar que essa história terá um final feliz? Foi por isso que em 2013 o Ibama classificou o javaporco como o único animal regulamentado com previsão de abate na natureza. A lei estadual que revê a diretiva do Ibama foi sancionada sem consulta à comunidade científica, inclusive desprezando estudos realizados no programa Biota da Fapesp.

O segundo exemplo é o projeto de lei (PL 31-2018) que proíbe o embarque de gado em pé para a exportação no estado de São Paulo. Se aprovado, o projeto impactará exportações de US$ 280 milhões por ano num mercado que chega a US$ 8 bilhões no mundo, no qual concorremos com Europa, Canadá, Austrália e México.

Por razões econômicas, sanitárias ou de bem-estar animal, seria mais lógico exportar carnes prontas para consumo, em vez de animais vivos. Contudo, a irracionalidade humana faz com que dezenas de países prefiram importar animais para engorda e abate local, complementando a oferta e adicionando valor no próprio país. Comparados ao Brasil, esses países produzem carne em piores condições de produtividade, qualidade e sanidade.

É fato que uma minoria vegana defende que o ser humano não deveria ser carnívoro e que essa cadeia produtiva deveria ser literalmente extinta. Mas a grande maioria da população do planeta quer consumir volumes crescentes de proteína animal, e de carne bovina em particular. A pergunta é: essa carne não deveria ser produzida nos locais que têm melhores condições de chuvas, pastagens, animais selecionados e processamento? Adianta proibir a exportação de gado do país que tem o maior rebanho comercial do mundo e com isso estimular a produção em países com condições ultraprecárias de produção e bem-estar animal? Essa matéria deve se limitar apenas ao país?

BEA é um assunto sistêmico global, que precisa ser discutido com dados corretos, ciência, estratégia e inteligência.

(*) Marcos Sawaya Jank é especialista em questões globais do agronegócio. Escreve aos sábados, a cada duas semanas.

(**) Roberto Hugo Jank Junior é pecuarista e vicepresidente da Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Leite (Abraleite). Email: robertojr@agrindus.com.br

O ocaso do lulopetismo diplomatico? - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Fim de reino na política externa: o ocaso do lulopetismo diplomático

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

(www.pralmeida.org; http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

 [Objetivo: compilação de textos; finalidade: divulgação]

Não é desconhecida de colegas, profissionais ou acadêmicos, assim como de leitores, ocasionais ou regulares, de meus textos, no blog Diplomatizzando– que eu sempre chamei de “quilombo de resistência intelectual” – ou em outros veículos, a minha aversão ao que (não só eu) designei de “lulopetismo diplomático”, o que, por si só, ao aceitar o conceito, parece conceder muita honra a esse animal bizarro em nossa paisagem política do início do presente século. Muitos dos que me leem regularmente, ou entre os que conhecem meus escritos pelos meios mais diversos, pensam que eu me posiciono tão acerbamente contra esse avatar medíocre de nossa política externa porque eu seria “de direita”, ou que eu sou contra o lulopetismo diplomático apenas porque este seria de esquerda, ou progressista, ou seja lá o que for nessa linha.

Nada mais equivocado. Nem o lulopetismo diplomático, nem a sua versão mais completa, nos terrenos político ou econômico, merecem o meu repúdio porque eles são, ou seriam, “de esquerda”, ou porque eu supostamente seria “de direita”. Errado! Eu sou visceralmente contra essas deformações políticas e diplomáticas implementadas no Brasil nos últimos três lustros (e um pouco mais, desde a formação desse bizarro animal partidário) basicamente porque ele apresenta duas características insanáveis no plano da doutrina política, no domínio das políticas públicas, assim como no terreno moral, ou ético, de ambas as dimensões: o lulopetismo é fundamentalmente inepto, como ator ou promotor de políticas públicas, mas principalmente ele é profundamente corrupto, em todos os aspectos que se possa conceber. Apenas por isto que eu sou contra todas as manifestações dessa gigantesca fraude que dominou o Brasil – e de certa forma ainda domina – nas últimas décadas, sendo ainda um fenômeno mais do que residual, um fator poderoso a influenciar corações e mentes de alguns milhares de abnegados militantes e de alguns milhões de brasileiros ingênuos, capturados pelo gênio do mal e seus fieis sequazes no empreendimento fraudulento e mistificador.

Eu teria, obviamente, como professor de economia política nos últimos 14 anos nos programas de mestrado e doutorado em direito de uma instituição universitária de Brasília, muito a dizer sobre os imensos equívocos cometidos pelo lulopetismo nos terrenos econômico e político, inclusive porque segui, passo a passo, cada uma das políticas macroeconômicas e setoriais implementadas pelos seguidores do culto e sacerdotes da doutrina, um bando de beócios conduzidos por um medíocre “flautista de Hamelin”, levando atrás de si uma tropa de seguidores descerebrados (pois que eles renunciaram a pensar com suas próprias cabeças, obedecendo disciplinadamente ao chefe da tropa sem sequer emitir um pio de contestação). Mas, por razões de ofício, dediquei-me também, ao lado da análise de alguns crimes econômicos cometidos pelo bando de aloprados (que se parecem, em vários casos, com crimes comuns), a um seguimento muito atento da política externa implementada pelos lulopetistas (os profissionais e os “sócios” na carreira), mesmo estando totalmente afastado de qualquer contato com a diplomacia prática, durante toda a duração do reino lulopetista no Brasil.

Minha atenção era um misto de olhar acadêmico e de visão profissional, tendo eu juntado essas duas vertentes numa observação tópica e geral de cada uma das ações e iniciativas tomadas por eles na frente externa. Como sempre fiz durante toda a minha vida adulta, sempre consignei tais observações em registros pontuais que eu guardava para mim, ou que eram apresentados sob a forma de artigos e comentários publicados ou divulgados de diversas formas, inclusive no formato de livros que foram sendo acumulados ao longo das últimas três décadas. Uma síntese desses meus escritos aparece no livro Nunca Antes na Diplomacia...: a política externa brasileira em tempos não convencionais (Curitiba: Appris, 2014), mas diversos outros textos – ensaios, notas, resenhas, comentários rápidos em postagens dispersas – foram sendo agregados à série de análises que eu fiz sobre esse nosso “acidente de percurso”, numa trajetória política também errática, como foi a do Brasil nas três décadas desde a redemocratização.

Muitos desses escritos foram compilados em “livros de autor” oferecidos e disponibilizados livremente nas redes de comunicação social, ou nas plataformas acadêmicas às quais me filio e das quais me sirvo para divulgar minha produção de natureza intelectual (e quase toda ela o é). Um exemplo é o “livro” Miséria da diplomacia: apogeu e declínio do lulopetismo diplomático (Brasília, 18 fevereiro 2018, 188 p.), tornado disponível, como vários outros, em plataformas acadêmicas (ver lista abaixo). Suponho que eles sejam acessados ocasionalmente ou regularmente pelos interessados na “literatura” sobre o lulopetismo em geral e sobre o lulopetismo diplomático em especial, o que na verdade conforma uma comunidade bastante reduzida de acadêmicos e alguns outros curiosos no assunto. Raramente recebi, dos leitores ocasionais, comentários a respeito de minhas opiniões, análises e críticas feitas contra (sim, contra) o lulopetismo diplomático, embora eu imagine que esses trabalhos sejam lidos por aderentes ou adversários desse animal bizarro que contaminou durante algum tempo nossa diplomacia e nossa política externa. 

Sem pretender agora retomar o núcleo central de minhas críticas a esse avatar tremendamente prejudicial às tradições de nossa política externa, e sem pretender me arvorar em porta-voz de um “purismo” diplomático que pareceria arrogante, tenciono apenas neste momento apresentar uma pequena lista de meus escritos sobre esse fenômeno, que agora entendo estar em seu ocaso, como forma de, mais uma vez, esclarecer minhas posturas sobre um período que eu reputo negativa em nossa trajetória diplomática, o que pode não parecer evidente aos olhos de toda uma geração que nasceu e se formou sob o lulopetismo (uma vez que 15 anos é o tempo normal de formação de uma geração no plano educacional). Como sempre, meu ânimo é puramente o de manter um diálogo de alto nível, ou seja, no plano das ideias, sobre temas, conceitos e práticas que apresentam extrema relevância para a inserção global do Brasil, tanto no plano estritamente econômico, quanto no plano propriamente político. 

O que segue, portanto, é uma seleção de escritos diversos, com seus respectivos links de localização, começando pelas duas compilações que já reproduzem a íntegra desses trabalhos selecionados. Bom proveito.

1) Quinze anos de política externa: ensaios sobre a diplomacia brasileira, 2002-2017 (Brasília: Edição do Autor, 2017, 366 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2017/05/quinze-anos-de-politica-externa-ensaios.html).

2) Miséria da diplomacia: apogeu e declínio do lulopetismo diplomático (Brasília, 18 fevereiro 2018, 188 p.) Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/s/e421c22bd9/miseria-da-diplomacia-apogeu-e-declinio-do-lulopetismo-diplomatico), Research Gate (link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323252005_Miseria_da_Diplomacia_apogeu_e_declinio_do_lulopetismo_diplomatico_2018), blog Diplomatizzando(https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2018/02/miseria-da-diplomacia-apogeu-e-declinio.html).

3) “Política externa brasileira recente: algumas questões tópicas” (Brasília, 10 fevereiro 2018, 12 p.) Diplomatizzando(link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2018/02/politica-externa-brasileira-recente.html).

4) “Depois da diplomacia companheira: o que vem pela frente?” (Brasília, 26 novembro 2017, 3 p.) Gazeta do Povo (28/11/2017, link: http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/opiniao/artigos/depois-da-diplomacia-companheira-o-que-vem-pela-frente-di5ffopc0ywu56cc29s8s5hsr), blog Diplomatizzando(28/11/2017; link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2017/11/depois-da-diplomacia-companheira-o-que.html).

5) “Crimes econômicos do lulopetismo na frente externa” (Brasília, 12 maio 2017, 7 p.; resenha do livro de Fabio Zanini, Euforia e fracasso do Brasil grande: política externa e multinacionais brasileiras na era Lula. São Paulo: Contexto, 2017, 224 p.; ISBN: 978-85-7244-988-5). Blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2017/05/crimes-economicos-do-lulopetismo-na.html).

6) “A política externa e a diplomacia brasileira no século XXI” (Brasília, 24 março 2017, 12 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2017/04/a-politica-externa-e-diplomacia.html).

7) “O Itamaraty e a nova política externa brasileira” (Brasília, 19 novembro 2016, 18 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(15/08/2017; link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/o-itamaraty-e-nova-politica-externa.html).

8) “O lulopetismo diplomático: um experimento exótico no Itamaraty” (Porto Alegre, 4 setembro 2016, 5 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/09/o-lulopetismo-diplomatico-um.html).

9) “Auge e declínio do lulopetismo diplomático: um depoimento pessoal” (Brasília, 26/06/2016: 19 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(1/07/2016; link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/07/ufa-um-depoimento-meu-sobre-o.html).

10) “Política externa e política econômica no Brasil pós-PT” (Brasília, 29 maio 2016, 6 p.) Blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/06/politica-externa-e-politica-economica.html).

11) “O renascimento da política externa” (Brasília, 25 maio 2016, 14 p.) RevistaInteresse Nacional(ano 9, n. 34, julho-setembro de 2016) blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/08/o-renascimento-da-politica-externa.html).

12) “Do lulopetismo diplomático a uma política externa profissional” (Brasília, 22 maio 2016, 7 p.) Diplomatizzando(http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/05/do-lulopetismo-diplomatico-uma-politica.html).

13) “O Itamaraty e a diplomacia profissional brasileira em tempos não convencionais” (Brasília, 15 maio 2016, 10 p.) Entrevista concedida ao Jornal Arcadas;Diplomatizzando(http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/05/um-anarco-diplomata-fala-sobre.html).

14) “Epitáfio do lulopetismo diplomático” (Brasília, 2 maio 2016, 3 p.) O Estado de S. Paulo(17/05/2016); blog Diplomatizzando(link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com.br/2016/05/epitafio-do-lulopetismo-diplomatico.html).

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 7 de julho de 2018

Russia-EUA; as relacoes ambiguas ou indefinidas - Carnegie Endowment

Os EUA de Trump configuram o primeiro caso de um império quase universal que renuncia deliberadamente à liderança em seus próprios termos – que no caso da América tradicional deveriam ser os de uma ordem liberal democrática fundada sobre a liberdade de mercados – e adere a uma visão do mundo introvertida, introspectiva, de abandono de suas obrigações com os satélites.
Curioso caso de suicídio imperial...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 
Brasília, 7 de julho de 2018

Can the Trump-Putin Summit Restore Guardrails to the U.S.-Russian Relationship?

Carnegie Endowment, July 6, 2018

President Donald Trump’s habit of challenging the Washington establishment and upending decades of U.S. foreign policy conventions is by now well documented. Equally well documented is his desire to change the course of U.S.-Russian relations. Therefore, his meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16 should not come as a surprise to anyone. Trump’s many pronouncements on Russia and Putin over the years leave no doubt that he is eager to turn the page on any number of hot-button issues, including Putin’s annexation of Crimea, the wars in eastern Ukraine and Syria, the multiple rounds of sanctions, and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Moreover, Trump’s desire “to get along” with Russia is hardly unprecedented. Since the end of the Cold War, every U.S. and Russian president has similarly attempted to develop a cooperative bilateral and personal relationship. Each attempt has ended in bitter disappointment, leaving U.S.-Russian relations in even worse shape. The relationship has been through a series of booms invariably followed by busts, highlighting very real differences between them that no amount of presidential bonhomie can overcome.

What is needed today is not another symbolic handshake or commitment to move past the old differences, but rather a sober look at the root causes of successive crises in U.S.-Russian relations as well as a clearer understanding of why major disagreements have lingered despite both sides’ attempts at reconciliation.

Putting those disagreements aside is not the same as resolving them. The underlying causes of past crises have been ignored. If the relationship between Moscow and Washington is to move beyond the boom-bust cycle, the key question is whether these differences and their causes can be addressed. Observers are skeptical that the meeting in Helsinki can accomplish that but hope that the two presidents can launch a much-needed yet long-delayed dialogue about the true state of the U.S.-Russian relationship. That alone could be a major accomplishment of the first full-fledged Trump-Putin summit.

A Clash of Visions

At the heart of the long-standing conflict between Russia and the United States is a disagreement about their respective approaches to the conduct of foreign affairs. Until Trump arrived on the scene, the United States traditionally championed (even though admittedly it has not always adhered to it) the international liberal order—including political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberalism in international relations—and actively promoted liberal values beyond its borders. Russia has adhered to a very different—realist—philosophy and stressed the importance of national interests rather than liberal values in the conduct of its foreign policy. As much as the United States has sought to promote the international liberal order, Russia has resisted its expansion, especially in areas that could touch on Russian interests.

This fundamental disagreement has hardly been addressed, let alone resolved in the course of the entire post–Cold War history of the bilateral relationship. (While there are abundant signs that Trump sees the international liberal order as fundamentally harmful to the political and economic vitality of the United States, he is learning that its continued existence is hard to wish away or dismantle overnight.)

The U.S. national security establishment—buoyed by a perceived victory in the Cold War and the failure of the Soviet Union and its discredited ideology—took largely a laissez-faire approach to this problem, firmly believing that Washington was on the right side of history. The establishment believed that any opponents would sooner or later realize the errors of their ways and embrace its worldview. And if they did not, they would eventually pay the price for resisting the forces of history.

Their Russian counterparts rejected the proposition that they had lost the Cold War and refused to accept the consequences of the West’s victory. Moscow’s vision has been deeply affected by its experience at the end of the Cold War and guided by a firm resolve to prevent it from being repeated. Since the mid-1990s, resistance to the U.S.-led liberal order has been the centerpiece of Russia’s foreign policy. With neither side willing or able to compromise and each convinced that it has chosen the only viable path, their fundamental disagreement has put a powerful brake on successive attempts to repair the relationship and set it on a sustained, mutually beneficial track.

Cycles of Frustration

And such attempts by U.S. presidential administrations have been made repeatedly. Bill Clinton’s administration’s partnership for reform with Russia was intended to help Russia transform itself into a market economy and democratic society, which was expected, in turn, to make it a willing member of the international liberal order. The offer of partnership with NATO was intended to assuage Russian concerns about NATO as a threatening military alliance, as it expanded into Central Europe. These pursuits were premised on the expectation that Russia would change and follow the U.S. lead.

George W. Bush’s administration had hoped to transform the relationship in the wake of 9/11 and redefine the strategic nuclear relationship with Russia by moving away from the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and the legacy of what it believed were obsolete, binding arms control agreements inherited from the Cold War. As a practical matter, the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which the Russians regarded as a cornerstone of strategic stability. The underlying logic of this approach was that if the two countries were no longer in an adversarial relationship and no longer threatened each other, they could dispense with that legacy. Beyond the nuclear realm, the Bush administration engaged in democracy promotion as a means of spreading stability and prosperity. Russia rejected both the idea of moving past MAD and the historical inevitability of democratic change as profoundly threatening to its interests.

Barack Obama’s administration’s attempt to “reset” the relationship with Russia in the aftermath of the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also paid little heed to the underlying causes of the conflict between Russia and the United States. With “modernization” as its principal theme, this policy, just as its predecessors, was premised on the idea of encouraging domestic change in Russia that would ultimately lead to changes in its foreign policy and acceptance of the U.S.-led international liberal order. None of this happened.

U.S. policymakers were not the only ones frustrated. Their Russian counterparts too had many frustrations and complaints about U.S. handling of the bilateral relationship, which they have voiced repeatedly over the past three decades. The Russian narrative includes broken U.S. promises not to expand NATO, interference in Russian domestic politics and use of double standards when criticizing it for its democracy deficit, refusal to treat Russia as a peer, reliance on economic sanctions to achieve desired political and diplomatic outcomes, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, unilateral use of military force, and regime change and destabilization under the guise of democracy promotion in countries within Russia’s self-proclaimed sphere of interests or that are simply friendly to it.

Different Approaches, Same Result

Aside from unrealistic expectations, the successive attempts to improve U.S.-Russian relations often had a significant structural flaw, reflecting important differences between U.S. and Russian policymaking. The U.S. approach to the relationship typically favors small steps and modest initiatives that bubble up from within the national security establishment and seek to promote understandings on a relatively narrow set of issues. If progress is achieved, it can serve as a springboard for expanding the conversation and hopefully achieving further progress on a broader agenda. Eventually, the series of incremental successes will build up to a broad, U.S.-driven strategic agenda and rise to the level of a presidential deliverable.

The Russian approach to the relationship is exactly the opposite. It begins with a broad understanding about the quality of the relationship at the highest level, which provides strategic guidance for lower-level policymakers to reach agreements on individual components of the jointly designed overall agenda. It is an approach that favors grand bargains among equals and unvarnished realpolitik rather than small steps.

Regardless of whose approach is more likely to result in an improved relationship, it is dubious that the Kremlin or the White House is actually in a position to test it at the moment. Instead, both appear poised to sustain the tensions, each blaming the other side for the current state of affairs. The political atmosphere in both capitals is such that any proposal for a compromise with the other side is certain to trigger charges of surrender and betrayal of national interest. A corrosive lack of trust is omnipresent.

In Russia, the United States is widely portrayed as a country governed by a “deep state,” an entrenched elite guided by profound antipathy toward Russia and intent on marginalizing Russia on the world stage, destabilizing its domestic politics, and undermining its economy. This entrenched elite is so powerful, according to this narrative, that it can thwart presidential initiatives aimed at improving relations with Russia. Under these circumstances and congressional moves to tie Trump’s hands, the Kremlin appears to have written off the United States as a potential partner for the foreseeable future. Consequently, there is very little chance for another reset, and the current state of affairs between Moscow and Washington is here to stay.

In the United States, Russia has emerged as both the “geopolitical enemy number one” and, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s, not just a source of external threats to U.S. national security and interests abroad but also a threat to its domestic political order. The list of U.S. concerns includes, but is not limited to, Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the use of social media by Russian state-sponsored actors to sow internal U.S. political divisions, Russian cyber intrusions aimed at disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure and networks, the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, support for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, suppression of civil liberties in Russia, and, more broadly, Russian efforts to undermine the U.S.-championed international liberal order. Taken together, these concerns amount to a powerful indictment and, quite understandably, help cement doubts in many quarters about the wisdom of seeking better relations with Russia.

Emphasis on Managing

Nevertheless, further tensions between Russia and the United States are fraught with dangers that neither side would welcome. As demonstrated by the choreography involved in U.S. and Russian activities in Syria, neither side is seeking an outright military confrontation. Should such a confrontation occur, it would be as a consequence of a miscalculation or an accident. Both sides’ interests would be better served by mutual efforts focused on managing an inherently competitive, and oftentimes adversarial, relationship rather than engaging in brinkmanship.

Such efforts could build on some modest accomplishments that have already proved effective in tense and potentially dangerous situations. For example, military-to-military contacts at the highest level—between Russia’s Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov and his U.S. counterpart, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford—have created an effective channel for communication and for lower-level efforts to deconflict the two militaries’ activities in Syria. (A deadly incident in Deir Ezzor on February 7, 2018, involving Russian private military contractors was a crucial exception to the rule.) A similar effort is urgently needed to manage U.S. and Russian military activities in the airspace and at sea in the Baltic and Black Sea regions. With neither side willing to cease its military activities in either region yet evidently not interested in an outright collision, both sides should, in theory, have incentives to avoid an accident there.

In the words of Dmitri Trenin,

The issue is not that Russian daredevils are performing acts of hooliganism in the air or that NATO pilots in international airspace are unaware that they are coming too close to Russian borders or assets. Each side seeks to make a point to the other, and neither is willing to step back, thus continuing the dangerous game. The only way out of this situation lies in a mutual understanding to stop testing each other’s nerves and aerobatic skills and instead to observe a protocol under which neither party provokes the other. This could be a first, relatively easy step toward military de-escalation.

Beyond the immediate danger of an unintended military confrontation on Europe’s southern and northern flanks, one other issue requiring immediate attention is arms control. Mutual accusations of violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the approaching expiration of the New START Treaty in 2021 underscore the precarious state of the entire bilateral arms control structure the United States and Russia have inherited from the Cold War era. Even though it is increasingly inadequate to constrain the reemerging arms race between the two nuclear superpowers, and leaves out other nuclear powers, including China, that structure could provide an indispensable foundation for future efforts to manage and contain their arms race, as well as possibly involve other nuclear powers in these efforts. The collapse of that structure would cause irreparable harm to future bilateral and multilateral arms control and U.S.-Russia strategic stability. It would not serve the interests of either side.

Although the political climate in both capitals is not propitious for seeking compromises, there is no plausible argument for not engaging in dialogue about the INF Treaty, each side’s charges of the other’s violations, the future of arms control, and strategic stability. It would be unrealistic to expect such a dialogue to produce a resolution of the dispute about the INF Treaty. However, if conducted in good faith, it could clarify each side’s position and concerns and, potentially, lead to the development of a conceptual framework for resolving the dispute. It is difficult to see the risk entailed in such a dialogue, while it could produce substantial benefits. U.S. and Russian official delegations met in September 2017 for strategic stability talks. Another meeting was scheduled for April 2018 but postponed without a new date. This dialogue should be resumed. The potential agenda should comprise new issues, including the risk that new cyber capabilities pose to strategic command and control and long-standing Russian concerns about U.S. missile defense deployments and conventional strategic systems.

Moreover, official dialogue should be supplemented by Track II or Track 1.5 engagement between U.S. and Russian experts. In the past, such contacts were useful for testing concepts and exploring new ideas in an unofficial setting, which subsequently fed into official exchanges. In the current atmosphere of tensions reminiscent of the Cold War, unofficial contacts could once again prove useful, assuming that they actually have buy-in from officials on both sides.

While useful and urgently needed, none of the measures sketched out in the preceding paragraphs is likely to repair the relationship or amount to more than minimal steps necessary for managing it and preventing it from deteriorating further and causing irreparable damage to its key components. Moreover, while necessary, they may not be sufficient to avert further setbacks in the relationship.

The real work to repair U.S.-Russian relations will have to be done at the political level. It will have to begin with lowering the heat of political rhetoric in both Washington and Moscow and conducting a high-level dialogue about the nature of major disagreements and mutual grievances and about their goals, expectations, and desired rules of the road for the relationship. Such a dialogue could can be advanced by more informal discussions between senior U.S. and Russian figures who are less constrained by official roles.

In preparation for political dialogue, each side could take some significant steps to signal the seriousness of its intent and lack of interest in further escalation of tensions. Such steps would not have to be symmetrical but could instead be aimed at addressing some of the other side’s more significant concerns. Conceivably, both sides could take proactive steps to signal their interest in deescalating tensions and halting the destructive cycle.

For example, the military stand-off between Russia and the West is becoming a permanent feature of increased tensions between the two sides. This is a direct result of Russia’s ongoing military modernization efforts and troop deployments and NATO’s efforts to reestablish the credibility of Article 5 commitments for frontline member countries in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. It is unlikely that either side will have an incentive to scale back or defer deployments or training activities along the NATO-Russia frontier any time soon. Still, it is possible that Trump will make a grand gesture akin to his spontaneous decision at the June 2018 summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to suspend major military exercises with South Korea.

It’s also conceivable that the Kremlin could begin to exercise greater restraint in deliberate harassment of U.S. ships and aircraft operating in international waters and airspace in the Baltic and Black Sea regions. Such a move by the Kremlin would be cost-free and entail no permanent changes to its operations in either region but would send an important signal to Washington about the Russian leadership’s desire for deescalation or at least not escalation. For its part, NATO could underscore that the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act’s “three no’s” commitment—which pledged that no nuclear or substantial combat forces would be deployed on the territory of new member states as long as NATO and Russia “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security”—is still in effect and that the alliance’s post-2014 forward deployments constitute a response to Russian actions.

Sanctions, which have become the central tool of U.S. policy toward Russia, represent an even more complicated challenge. For the Kremlin, the U.S. sanctions constitute both a challenge and an opportunity. They restrict Western investment and technology transfer, but they also have a rallying-around-the-flag effect that consolidates Russian elites. Furthermore, they prompt Moscow to look for partners beyond the West and redefine Russia’s position as a non-Western global player operating from its base in northern and central Eurasia.

On the one hand, the sanctions program has provided an effective tool for curtailing business as usual, punishing Russia for various actions, and, some would claim, probably deterring future disruptive behavior (at least, on the margins). On the other hand, Western sanctions are not, in and of themselves, a substitute for an effective policy unless they are paired with a coherent diplomatic strategy. For example, the Iran nuclear deal, now abandoned by the Trump administration but otherwise viewed widely as a diplomatic success, was achieved with the help of a dual-track approach that combined increasingly severe sanctions with sustained negotiations. The diplomatic track included a multilateral road map with sanctions relief and other incentives. Such concepts are conspicuously missing from current U.S. policy toward Russia. Policymakers must begin to articulate practical policy outcomes that inform the future use of sanctions.

Prospects

The current state of affairs between Russia and the United States is somewhat of a paradox. There is a deep reluctance in both capitals to admit that they are once again in a Cold War. Yet there is broad consensus that the differences between them are real and profound. Voices in both capitals point out the dangers associated with the current state of affairs, the lack of reliable political channels of communications, and the risk of unintended escalation. These sensible voices are realistic about the likelihood of the relationship being repaired overnight as a result of a brief meeting between the two presidents.

The experience of the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore suggests that such a brief encounter cannot resolve the differences that have accumulated in the course of decades. But the experience of the Singapore summit also suggests that such encounters can create a positive atmosphere for the real hard work of repairing relations to begin. The Trump-Putin summit potentially can accomplish the same, very important results. It can empower the reasonable voices to begin the conversation in earnest about the state of the relationship, about ways to repair it, and, at the very least, a mutually acceptable way for managing it. If that is the outcome of the Trump-Putin summit, it should rightly be called a success.