Os partidos comunistas, historicamente, estiveram associados às piores ditaduras e regimes totalitários do mundo, desde Átila e seus bárbaros, desde Gengis Khan, superando inclusive Hitler e seu nefando holocausto em número de mortos.
De fato, os totalitarismos comunistas ao redor do mundo, com destaque para a finada União Soviética e a ainda existente República Popular da China foram (ainda são, historicamente) responsáveis por dezenas de milhões de mortos (atenção, eu disse DEZENAS DE MILHÕES), entre Gulag, mortes matadas, fomes endêmicas ou epidêmicas, criminosamente induzidas, guerras e devastações diversas.
O PCdoB separou-se, em 1961, do velho Partidão, porque queria seguir a linha chinesa, mais radical, anti-imperialista e revolucionária do que os velhos aparatchiks do Partido Comunista de afiliação soviética, mais acomodados no reformismo reacionário. O PCdoB tentou uma guerrilha maoista no Araguaia, foi massacrado pelos militares e se reciclou no oportunismo político.
Agora virou barrica de aluguel, ou partido oportunista, que empresta sua sigla a quem quiser, desde que traga votos (e de preferência cargos e dinheiro) para o partido.
Se acostumaram ao capitalismo e se contentam em roubar o Estado, ou seja, os cidadãos, todos nós.
Sua mensagem socialista é patética, e enganam alguns estudantes durante certo tempo.
Os honestos e conscientes pulam fora, quando descobrem a fraude e a mentira.
Os oportunistas ficam, em troca de uma boquinha.
Partido Criminoso do Brasil? Pode ser: abrigando bicheiros e criminosos da escória do Rio merece o título...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
SAMBA POLÍTICO
O cantor Neguinho da Beija-Flor, puxador de samba da escola, deverá se filiar ao PC do B. No passo seguinte, é provável que seja candidato a prefeito de Nova Iguaçu.
Se isso acontecer e ele for eleito, a família Sessin/Abraão dominará cerca de 1 milhão de habitantes da Baixada Fluminense. Ela já tem a prefeitura de Nilópolis, com Simão Sessin, mais uma cadeira na Câmara e outra na Assembleia. Tudo isso e mais a presidência de honra da Beija-Flor, com o patriarca Anisio Abraão. A escola acumula 12 títulos de campeã do Carnaval, e ele, duas passagens pela cadeia.
Elio Gaspari
Coluna na Folha de S.Paulo, 15/05/2011
domingo, 15 de maio de 2011
Governo obeso (bota obesidade nisso...)
O governo está precisando de um Programa Fome Zero, literalmente.
Ou seja, um regime radical de emagrecimento e reposicionamento (como diriam os consultores de organização e métodos, e até de marketing) que o levasse dos 40 e tantos ministérios, para menos da metade.
Sim, o governo poderia começar seu programa de eficiência demitindo metade da galera que pulula (também literalmente) na Esplanada dos Ministérios e adjacências. Sim, quando você pensa que todo mundo está instalado na Esplanada e seus dois ou três anexos atrás dos prédios titulares (eram 19, na origem, se não me engano), aí você descobre que tem dezenas de outros ministérios, autarquias e outros órgãos públicos espalhados por todas as áreas vivas (algumas mortas também) de Brasília, numa profusão inacreditável.
Certos órgãos estão em prédios de luxo, em setores comerciais, e não dá nem para imaginar o aluguel milionário que pagam, só para existir (melhor se não existissem, não é mesmo).
Eu já tive essa experiência: ao falar com um ou outro colega ou conhecido em determinado órgão, eu digo: "Bem como está essa experiência de ter de acordar mais cedo para poder estacionar nos parkings cada vez mais lotados da Esplanada?"
Qual o quê!? Fulaninho está num elegante prédio comercial, com garagem privativa e todo o conforto requerido (claro, tem o engarrafamento na saída e na entrada, mas no resto do tempo é ambiente climatizado).
Brasília é assim: pletora de órgãos da administração e uma eficiência digna de... (bem, vocês colocam aí o que quiserem...).
Sinceramente: se o governo quiser ser mais eficiente, precisaria primeiro passar por um enxugamento exemplar.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
O desafio de mudar a máquina
Editorial - O Estado de S.Paulo
15 de maio de 2011
A presidente Dilma Rousseff deu o primeiro passo para cumprir uma de suas promessas mais importantes - elevar a qualidade do gasto público e, como condição para isso, modernizar e tornar mais eficiente a administração federal. Enquanto o setor privado luta por um espaço nos mercados do século 21, o governo funciona segundo padrões incompatíveis com as demandas de um país moderno e democrático. A Câmara de Políticas de Gestão, Desempenho e Competitividade, instalada na quinta-feira, poderá ajudar a presidente a eliminar esse descompasso entre um Brasil em busca de inovação e uma administração pública amarrada a práticas e vícios do passado. Nada garante o êxito dessa tentativa. A experiência brasileira tem sido pouco animadora nesse campo, especialmente nas últimas três décadas. Mas a presidente Dilma Rousseff decidiu apostar e descreveu a criação desse grupo como um dos momentos fundamentais para a definição dos rumos de seu governo.
Para presidir a Câmara foi convidado o empresário Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter. Três outros empresários e quatro dos principais ministros também comporão o grupo. A função desse colegiado será propor iniciativas para racionalizar a gestão federal, cortar custos e elevar a qualidade dos serviços prestados.
Gerdau terá uma sala no Palácio do Planalto, perto do gabinete da Presidente, e anunciou a intenção de passar pelo menos um dia por semana em Brasília. Não há por que duvidar da boa disposição desse grupo. Mas seus poderes serão limitados e a aplicação de seus conselhos dependerá da ação política da presidente Dilma Rousseff. É preciso dar muito peso à palavra "política". Haverá resistência às tentativas mais audaciosas de mudar os padrões da administração. Parte da resistência virá da companheirada - sindicalistas e membros do PT e dos partidos aliados.
Na história da República houve poucas tentativas sérias de reforma e de modernização da máquina federal. Os primeiros passos foram dados nos anos 30 e no começo dos 40. Na década seguinte o Estado ganhou novos instrumentos de ação, como a Petrobrás e o Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social. Mas, para executar seu plano de desenvolvimento, o presidente Juscelino Kubitschek instalou uma administração paralela, formada pelos grupos executivos setoriais. Se tentasse uma reforma, gastaria todo o mandato.
A nova tentativa de reforma ocorreu no regime militar. Além da desburocratização orquestrada pelo ministro Hélio Beltrão, houve um esforço para adoção de padrões de trabalho mais modernos e um investimento importante na formação de quadros. Muitos funcionários foram estimulados a pós-graduar-se no Brasil e no exterior. O Banco do Brasil funcionou como fornecedor de pessoal técnico para vários setores do governo.
A maior parte dos anos 80 e 90 foi desastrosa para a administração. Desmontaram-se mecanismos, maus e bons, e quase nada se fez de construtivo. Ensaios de reforma foram inócuos. Nos governos do presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso só houve modernização por meio de privatizações, da adoção de novos critérios fiscais e do fortalecimento da política monetária. Foram grandes mudanças macroeconômicas, mas de alcance limitado pela manutenção de péssimos padrões administrativos.
Esses padrões pioraram consideravelmente nos oito anos de mandato do presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Os quadros do funcionalismo foram inchados. A folha de salários aumentou, sem a contrapartida de serviços mais eficientes e melhores. O aparelhamento político tornou-se regra e a companheirada espalhou-se pelos órgãos de quase toda a administração direta e indireta. Eficiência e produtividade tornaram-se blasfêmias, condenadas como sintomas inequívocos de neoliberalismo. Isso é parte importante da herança deixada pelo presidente Lula.
A presidente Dilma Rousseff participou dos dois mandatos. Deve conhecer os obstáculos políticos a qualquer tentativa séria de reforma da máquina. Por lei, funcionários e salários são quase sagrados. Além disso, qualquer plano de reforma provoca imediata mobilização em defesa de interesses corporativos e partidários. Contra isso a Câmara será impotente. Só a presidente poderá atacar a obra do antecessor.
Ou seja, um regime radical de emagrecimento e reposicionamento (como diriam os consultores de organização e métodos, e até de marketing) que o levasse dos 40 e tantos ministérios, para menos da metade.
Sim, o governo poderia começar seu programa de eficiência demitindo metade da galera que pulula (também literalmente) na Esplanada dos Ministérios e adjacências. Sim, quando você pensa que todo mundo está instalado na Esplanada e seus dois ou três anexos atrás dos prédios titulares (eram 19, na origem, se não me engano), aí você descobre que tem dezenas de outros ministérios, autarquias e outros órgãos públicos espalhados por todas as áreas vivas (algumas mortas também) de Brasília, numa profusão inacreditável.
Certos órgãos estão em prédios de luxo, em setores comerciais, e não dá nem para imaginar o aluguel milionário que pagam, só para existir (melhor se não existissem, não é mesmo).
Eu já tive essa experiência: ao falar com um ou outro colega ou conhecido em determinado órgão, eu digo: "Bem como está essa experiência de ter de acordar mais cedo para poder estacionar nos parkings cada vez mais lotados da Esplanada?"
Qual o quê!? Fulaninho está num elegante prédio comercial, com garagem privativa e todo o conforto requerido (claro, tem o engarrafamento na saída e na entrada, mas no resto do tempo é ambiente climatizado).
Brasília é assim: pletora de órgãos da administração e uma eficiência digna de... (bem, vocês colocam aí o que quiserem...).
Sinceramente: se o governo quiser ser mais eficiente, precisaria primeiro passar por um enxugamento exemplar.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
O desafio de mudar a máquina
Editorial - O Estado de S.Paulo
15 de maio de 2011
A presidente Dilma Rousseff deu o primeiro passo para cumprir uma de suas promessas mais importantes - elevar a qualidade do gasto público e, como condição para isso, modernizar e tornar mais eficiente a administração federal. Enquanto o setor privado luta por um espaço nos mercados do século 21, o governo funciona segundo padrões incompatíveis com as demandas de um país moderno e democrático. A Câmara de Políticas de Gestão, Desempenho e Competitividade, instalada na quinta-feira, poderá ajudar a presidente a eliminar esse descompasso entre um Brasil em busca de inovação e uma administração pública amarrada a práticas e vícios do passado. Nada garante o êxito dessa tentativa. A experiência brasileira tem sido pouco animadora nesse campo, especialmente nas últimas três décadas. Mas a presidente Dilma Rousseff decidiu apostar e descreveu a criação desse grupo como um dos momentos fundamentais para a definição dos rumos de seu governo.
Para presidir a Câmara foi convidado o empresário Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter. Três outros empresários e quatro dos principais ministros também comporão o grupo. A função desse colegiado será propor iniciativas para racionalizar a gestão federal, cortar custos e elevar a qualidade dos serviços prestados.
Gerdau terá uma sala no Palácio do Planalto, perto do gabinete da Presidente, e anunciou a intenção de passar pelo menos um dia por semana em Brasília. Não há por que duvidar da boa disposição desse grupo. Mas seus poderes serão limitados e a aplicação de seus conselhos dependerá da ação política da presidente Dilma Rousseff. É preciso dar muito peso à palavra "política". Haverá resistência às tentativas mais audaciosas de mudar os padrões da administração. Parte da resistência virá da companheirada - sindicalistas e membros do PT e dos partidos aliados.
Na história da República houve poucas tentativas sérias de reforma e de modernização da máquina federal. Os primeiros passos foram dados nos anos 30 e no começo dos 40. Na década seguinte o Estado ganhou novos instrumentos de ação, como a Petrobrás e o Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social. Mas, para executar seu plano de desenvolvimento, o presidente Juscelino Kubitschek instalou uma administração paralela, formada pelos grupos executivos setoriais. Se tentasse uma reforma, gastaria todo o mandato.
A nova tentativa de reforma ocorreu no regime militar. Além da desburocratização orquestrada pelo ministro Hélio Beltrão, houve um esforço para adoção de padrões de trabalho mais modernos e um investimento importante na formação de quadros. Muitos funcionários foram estimulados a pós-graduar-se no Brasil e no exterior. O Banco do Brasil funcionou como fornecedor de pessoal técnico para vários setores do governo.
A maior parte dos anos 80 e 90 foi desastrosa para a administração. Desmontaram-se mecanismos, maus e bons, e quase nada se fez de construtivo. Ensaios de reforma foram inócuos. Nos governos do presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso só houve modernização por meio de privatizações, da adoção de novos critérios fiscais e do fortalecimento da política monetária. Foram grandes mudanças macroeconômicas, mas de alcance limitado pela manutenção de péssimos padrões administrativos.
Esses padrões pioraram consideravelmente nos oito anos de mandato do presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Os quadros do funcionalismo foram inchados. A folha de salários aumentou, sem a contrapartida de serviços mais eficientes e melhores. O aparelhamento político tornou-se regra e a companheirada espalhou-se pelos órgãos de quase toda a administração direta e indireta. Eficiência e produtividade tornaram-se blasfêmias, condenadas como sintomas inequívocos de neoliberalismo. Isso é parte importante da herança deixada pelo presidente Lula.
A presidente Dilma Rousseff participou dos dois mandatos. Deve conhecer os obstáculos políticos a qualquer tentativa séria de reforma da máquina. Por lei, funcionários e salários são quase sagrados. Além disso, qualquer plano de reforma provoca imediata mobilização em defesa de interesses corporativos e partidários. Contra isso a Câmara será impotente. Só a presidente poderá atacar a obra do antecessor.
Think Again: Dictators - Graeme Robertson (Foreign Policy)
Eu gosto muito desse estilo de artigo, consolidado na série "Think Again" da Foreign Policy. Inspirado nesse exemplo, eu fiz uma série de propostas sobre o desenvolvimento brasileiro e sua política internacional, que posso referir aqui:
Paulo Roberto de Almeida:
"Contra a corrente em relações internacionais: treze idéias fora do lugar"
In: Thiago de Oliveira Domingues, Marcel Alexandre Negherbon e Mauri Luiz Heerdt (orgs.):
Relações Internacionais: temas contemporâneos
(Florianópolis: Feneri, 2003; ISBN: 85-89649-01-6, pp. 9-45).
Deve estar disponível, sob alguma outra forma, em meu site.
Nada como ser contrarianista, ou seja, ir contra a corrente das ideias consagradas...
Enfim, já tivemos um presidente que era muito amigo de ditadores: deve estar sentindo a falta de alguns dos seus "amigos"...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Think Again: Dictators
BY GRAEME ROBERTSON
Foreign Policy, MAY/JUNE 2011
Arab autocrats may be tottering, but the world's tyrants aren't all quaking in their steel-toed boots.
"Dictatorships are all about the dictator."
Rarely, if ever. In the first months after the Arab revolutions began, the world's televisions were filled with instantly iconic images of a crumbling old order: the Ben Ali clan's seaside villa on fire in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak's stilted pre-resignation speeches in Egypt, Muammar al-Qaddafi's rambling, defiant diatribes from a bombed-out house in Libya. They were a reminder that one of the most enduring political archetypes of the 20th century, the ruthless dictator, had persisted into the 21st.
How persistent are they? The U.S. NGO Freedom House this year listed 47 countries as "not free" -- and ruled over by a range of authoritarian dictators. Their numbers have certainly fallen from the last century, which brought us quite a list: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Khomeini, and a host of others now synonymous with murderous, repressive government. But invoking such tyrants, while a useful shorthand in international politics, unfortunately reinforces a troublesome myth: that dictatorships are really only about dictators.
The image of a single omnipotent leader ensconced in a mystery-shrouded Kremlin or a garishly ornate presidential palace took hold during the Cold War. But dictatorships don't just run themselves. Performing the basic tasks expected of even a despotic government -- establishing order, levying taxes, controlling borders, and overseeing the economy -- requires the cooperation of a whole range of players: businessmen, bureaucrats, leaders of labor unions and political parties, and, of course, specialists in coercion like the military and security forces. And keeping them all happy and working together isn't any easier for a dictator than it is for a democrat.
Different dictatorships have different tools for keeping things running. The communist regimes of the 20th century relied on mass-membership political parties to maintain discipline, as did some non-communist autocracies. The authoritarian system that ruled Mexico for 70 years -- what Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa once called "the perfect dictatorship" -- was orchestrated by the nationalist Institutional Revolutionary Party, a massive organization whose influence extended from the president's compound in Los Pinos to the local seats of government in every tiny village. Egypt's recently departed Hosni Mubarak was similarly buttressed for three decades by his National Democratic Party.
Then there's the junta option: a military-run dictatorship. These have advantages -- discipline and order, and the capacity to repress opponents, among them -- but also drawbacks, most notably a small natural constituency that doesn't extend far beyond the epaulet-wearing classes. The generals who ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 solved this problem by offering controlled access to a parliament in which economic elites and other powerful interests could voice their demands and participate in governance. However, this proved to be a difficult balancing act for a military that found it hard to manage elections and the pressures of a public increasingly dissatisfied with its record on the economy and human rights, and the generals ultimately headed back to their barracks.
At the extreme, some authoritarian governments do approximate the dictator-centric regimes of the popular imagination. Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) for more than 30 years, and the Duvalier dynasty in Haiti are classic examples. Here, order is maintained largely by distributing patronage through personal or other networks: clans, ethnic groups, and the like. But paradoxically, these are the most unstable dictatorships. Keeping a government operating smoothly is difficult in the absence of a broad organizational or institutional base, and the whole system rises and falls with the fate of one man.
"The power of the masses can topple autocrats."
Not by itself. In 1989, people power swept across Eastern Europe. Mass strikes in Poland brought the country's communist rulers to the table to negotiate their way out of power. After hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Prague's Wenceslas Square, one of Eastern Europe's most brutal communist regimes crumbled and handed over power in Czechoslovakia to a motley crew of playwrights, priests, academics, and friends of Frank Zappa. In East Germany, teeming crowds simply walked out of communism's westernmost showpiece to seek asylum in, and then reunification with, the West. And people power, as Ferdinand Marcos found to his dismay in the Philippines in 1986, was not limited to communism or Eastern Europe.
But there was far more to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and autocratic regimes elsewhere than the impressive moral authority of crowds. As the Chinese showed in Tiananmen Square in 1989, capitulating to pro-democracy activists in the streets is hardly the only option. There have been plenty of other places where people power has failed disastrously in the face of a well-organized military response. In Hungary, the popular uprising of 1956 was brutally crushed by Red Army tanks. Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution produced little more than life sentences for the country's dissident Buddhist monks; Iran's 2009 Green Revolution fell to the batons of the Basij two years later.
What distinguishes people power's successes from its failures? Size, of course, matters, but autocrats tend to fall to crowds only when they have first lost the support of key allies at home or abroad. The Egyptian military's decision to abandon Mubarak and protect the protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, for instance, was crucial to the president's downfall this February.
How can demonstrators persuade regime stalwarts to jump ship? In Eastern Europe, the geopolitical sea change engineered by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his allies obviously helped -- but you can't exactly bring down the Iron Curtain again. Regimes with professionalized militaries separate from civilian authorities might be more vulnerable to defections; regimes based on highly ideological political parties are less likely to see their members break ranks. The credible threat of ending up at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague or having your Swiss bank accounts frozen can work wonders as well. But unfortunately for protesters, predicting authoritarian reactions to uprisings is far from an exact science -- which is little consolation when your head is being cracked by a riot cop.
"The more brutal the dictator, the harder to oust."
Unfortunately, true. Reflecting on the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the "most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform." What was correct in the 18th century is, sadly, still true in the 21st. It is probably not a coincidence that the list of authoritarians removed by street protest in recent years is largely populated by rulers whose regimes allowed at least a modicum of political opposition. Tyrants like Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze, Kyrgyzstan's Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak may have been horrible in many ways, but their regimes were undoubtedly more permissive than those of many who have held onto power to this day.
If this is true, why do any dictators allow opposition in the first place? And why don't they simply go the full Tiananmen at the first sign of protest? Because running a truly ghastly dictatorship is tougher today than it used to be.
The interconnections of 21st-century civilization make it harder to control information and far more difficult and costly to isolate a country from the outside world than it was in the 20th. The death of communism, meanwhile, has robbed leftists and right-wing strongmen alike of a cover story for their anti-democratic practices. In the past decade, rulers of countries such as Uzbekistan and Yemen have used the West's newfound fear of militant Islam -- and the logistical necessities of the United States' post-9/11 wars -- to similar ends, but they number far fewer than the ideological tyrants who divvied up whole continents under Cold War pretexts a generation ago.
The result is that in more and more places, rulers are compelled to justify their practices by adding a touch of "democracy." Vladimir Putin chose to stand down -- though not far down -- in 2008 rather than break Russia's constitutional ban against a third consecutive presidential term, and even the Chinese Communist Party allows some competitive elections at the town and village levels. There are exceptions to this trend, of course: Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Burma spring to mind. But such regimes feel increasingly like remnants of the late, unlamented 20th century, rather than harbingers of things to come.
"Personality cults are crazy."
Crazy like a fox. Do North Koreans really believe that Kim Jong Il can change the weather based on his mood? Do Libyans think Qaddafi's Green Book is a brilliant work of political philosophy? Do Turkmen really think that the Ruhnama, the religious text authored by their late post-Soviet dictator -- and self-styled spiritual leader -- Saparmurat Niyazov, is a sacred scripture on par with the Quran and the Bible?
Probably not, but for the dictators' purposes, they don't have to. As political scientist Xavier Márquez has argued, personality cults are as strategic as they are narcissistic. Part of the problem that dictators' would-be opponents face is figuring out who else opposes the leader; compelling the populace to publicly embrace preposterous myths makes that harder still. Official mythmaking is also a means of enforcing discipline within the regime. Stalin -- the progenitor of the modern dictator personality cult -- understood well that his self-mythologizing would be too much for some of his old comrades to swallow; Lenin, after all, had specifically warned against it. But those who might have objected were swiftly dispatched. For the apparatchiks who remained, submitting to the cult was humiliating -- and humiliation is a powerful tool for controlling potential rivals.
But personality cults, like most authoritarian technologies, have their drawbacks. The bigger the cult, the bigger the challenge of succession. Heirs to the throne really have just two options: dismantle the cult or go one better. The former is perilous; in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev's famous 1956 secret speech -- the posthumous critique of Stalin that gave us the term "personality cult" -- was, after all, secret, deemed too explosive for the Soviet public. Today, North Korea's ruling Kim family illustrates the hazards of the alternative: Now that the official newspapers have already reported that the current Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, has mastered teleportation, what's his son and newly designated heir, Kim Jong Un, supposed to do for an encore?
"Sometimes it takes a dictator to get the job done."
Actually it doesn't. The past two years have not done much to advertise the abilities of the Western democratic model of government to take large and painful but necessary actions. Frustrated over everything from a failure to balance budgets to an apparent inability to face up to the challenges of climate change, more than a few Westerners have turned their gaze wistfully toward the heavy-handed rule of the Communist Party in China. "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks," the New York Times' Thomas Friedman wrote in a 2009 column. "But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages." This March, Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times about how "China has achieved greatness."
This romanticizing of authoritarianism is not new; Augusto Pinochet's murderous regime in 1970s Chile was once cheered by many in Washington as an ugly but necessary instrument of economic reform. Yearning for a strong hand, however, is rooted in several fallacies. First, it conflates the failings of one form of democracy -- in Friedman's case, the gridlocked American version -- with an entire category of governance. Second, it assumes that dictators are more able than democrats to undertake unpopular but essential reforms. But unpopular decisions don't simply become popular because an autocrat is making them -- just remember the late North Korean finance chief Pak Nam Gi, who ended up in front of a firing squad following the public backlash against the confiscatory currency reform the Kim regime pushed through in 2009. In fact, authoritarians, lacking the legitimacy of popular election, may be even more fearful of upsetting the apple cart than democrats are. In Putin's Russia, for instance, leaders are unable to dial back the massive military expenditures that keep key constituencies quiet but that even their own ministers recognize to be unsustainable.
Besides, suggesting that dictators can force better policies upon their people assumes that a dictator is likely to know what those better policies are. The idea that there are technocratic solutions to most economic, social, and environmental problems might be comforting, but it is usually wrong. Such questions rarely have purely technical, apolitical answers -- and only in a democracy can they be aired and answered in a way that, if not entirely fair, is at least broadly acceptable.
"Digital revolutions are bad news for autocrats."
Not necessarily. New technologies -- from the fax machine to the Internet to Facebook -- have invariably been heralded as forces for upending dictatorial regimes. And of course, if cell phones and Twitter made no difference at all, then pro-democracy activists wouldn't use them. But the real test of technology is its ability to shift the balance of power between dictators and those trying to unseat them -- to make revolutions more frequent, faster, or more successful. And though it's too early to know for sure, the arc of revolutions in 2011 doesn't look that different so far from the lower-tech upheavals of 1989, or, for that matter, 1848.
What makes a difference is how quickly authoritarians can work out how to counter a new innovation, or use it themselves. Sometimes this happens quickly: The barricades invented in Paris that made the revolutions of 1848 possible were briefly useful, but militaries soon figured out how to use cannons against them. Similarly, today's authoritarians are already learning how to use cell phones and Facebook to identify and track their opponents. In Iran, for instance, Facebook posts, tweets, and emails were used as evidence against protesters in the wake of the failed Green Revolution.
As it happens, some of the most enduring innovations have been the least technological. Mass protests, petitions, and general strikes, though now ubiquitous tactics, were at first ideas as novel as Twitter, and they have continued to play a crucial role in spreading democracy and civil rights around the world. It's a useful reminder that not all the new tools that matter come in a box or over a Wi-Fi connection.
"Dictatorship is on the way out."
Not in our lifetime. The recent upheavals in the Middle East, though inspiring, have happened against a gloomy backdrop. Freedom House reported that in 2010, for the fifth year in a row, countries with improving political and civil rights were outnumbered by ones where they were getting worse -- the longest such run since the organization started collecting data in 1972. Two decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, democracy may be robust in formerly communist Central Europe, Latin America, and even the Balkans, but most former Soviet states remain quite authoritarian. And though a few Arab countries are newly freed of their tyrants, they are still very much in transition. Being poor or corrupt, as Egypt and Tunisia are, does not rule out being democratic -- think of India -- but it does make it harder to build a stable democratic system.
Nevertheless, the Arab revolutions have offered a spark of hope, one that has clearly worried dictators in places as far off as Moscow and Beijing. The question is what the world's liberal democracies should do, or not do, to push things along. Survey the United States' long history of democracy-promotion successes and failures, and the inescapable lesson, even setting aside recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that less is usually more. Providing aid -- as the United States did to the opposition in places like Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia -- or simply setting an example are better means of toppling a dictator than actually doing the toppling.
But in either case, it's important to remember that powerful Western friends aren't everything. After all, the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt is that dictators sometimes fall despite, not because of, American help.
Graeme Robertson is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida:
"Contra a corrente em relações internacionais: treze idéias fora do lugar"
In: Thiago de Oliveira Domingues, Marcel Alexandre Negherbon e Mauri Luiz Heerdt (orgs.):
Relações Internacionais: temas contemporâneos
(Florianópolis: Feneri, 2003; ISBN: 85-89649-01-6, pp. 9-45).
Deve estar disponível, sob alguma outra forma, em meu site.
Nada como ser contrarianista, ou seja, ir contra a corrente das ideias consagradas...
Enfim, já tivemos um presidente que era muito amigo de ditadores: deve estar sentindo a falta de alguns dos seus "amigos"...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Think Again: Dictators
BY GRAEME ROBERTSON
Foreign Policy, MAY/JUNE 2011
Arab autocrats may be tottering, but the world's tyrants aren't all quaking in their steel-toed boots.
"Dictatorships are all about the dictator."
Rarely, if ever. In the first months after the Arab revolutions began, the world's televisions were filled with instantly iconic images of a crumbling old order: the Ben Ali clan's seaside villa on fire in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak's stilted pre-resignation speeches in Egypt, Muammar al-Qaddafi's rambling, defiant diatribes from a bombed-out house in Libya. They were a reminder that one of the most enduring political archetypes of the 20th century, the ruthless dictator, had persisted into the 21st.
How persistent are they? The U.S. NGO Freedom House this year listed 47 countries as "not free" -- and ruled over by a range of authoritarian dictators. Their numbers have certainly fallen from the last century, which brought us quite a list: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Khomeini, and a host of others now synonymous with murderous, repressive government. But invoking such tyrants, while a useful shorthand in international politics, unfortunately reinforces a troublesome myth: that dictatorships are really only about dictators.
The image of a single omnipotent leader ensconced in a mystery-shrouded Kremlin or a garishly ornate presidential palace took hold during the Cold War. But dictatorships don't just run themselves. Performing the basic tasks expected of even a despotic government -- establishing order, levying taxes, controlling borders, and overseeing the economy -- requires the cooperation of a whole range of players: businessmen, bureaucrats, leaders of labor unions and political parties, and, of course, specialists in coercion like the military and security forces. And keeping them all happy and working together isn't any easier for a dictator than it is for a democrat.
Different dictatorships have different tools for keeping things running. The communist regimes of the 20th century relied on mass-membership political parties to maintain discipline, as did some non-communist autocracies. The authoritarian system that ruled Mexico for 70 years -- what Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa once called "the perfect dictatorship" -- was orchestrated by the nationalist Institutional Revolutionary Party, a massive organization whose influence extended from the president's compound in Los Pinos to the local seats of government in every tiny village. Egypt's recently departed Hosni Mubarak was similarly buttressed for three decades by his National Democratic Party.
Then there's the junta option: a military-run dictatorship. These have advantages -- discipline and order, and the capacity to repress opponents, among them -- but also drawbacks, most notably a small natural constituency that doesn't extend far beyond the epaulet-wearing classes. The generals who ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 solved this problem by offering controlled access to a parliament in which economic elites and other powerful interests could voice their demands and participate in governance. However, this proved to be a difficult balancing act for a military that found it hard to manage elections and the pressures of a public increasingly dissatisfied with its record on the economy and human rights, and the generals ultimately headed back to their barracks.
At the extreme, some authoritarian governments do approximate the dictator-centric regimes of the popular imagination. Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) for more than 30 years, and the Duvalier dynasty in Haiti are classic examples. Here, order is maintained largely by distributing patronage through personal or other networks: clans, ethnic groups, and the like. But paradoxically, these are the most unstable dictatorships. Keeping a government operating smoothly is difficult in the absence of a broad organizational or institutional base, and the whole system rises and falls with the fate of one man.
"The power of the masses can topple autocrats."
Not by itself. In 1989, people power swept across Eastern Europe. Mass strikes in Poland brought the country's communist rulers to the table to negotiate their way out of power. After hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Prague's Wenceslas Square, one of Eastern Europe's most brutal communist regimes crumbled and handed over power in Czechoslovakia to a motley crew of playwrights, priests, academics, and friends of Frank Zappa. In East Germany, teeming crowds simply walked out of communism's westernmost showpiece to seek asylum in, and then reunification with, the West. And people power, as Ferdinand Marcos found to his dismay in the Philippines in 1986, was not limited to communism or Eastern Europe.
But there was far more to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and autocratic regimes elsewhere than the impressive moral authority of crowds. As the Chinese showed in Tiananmen Square in 1989, capitulating to pro-democracy activists in the streets is hardly the only option. There have been plenty of other places where people power has failed disastrously in the face of a well-organized military response. In Hungary, the popular uprising of 1956 was brutally crushed by Red Army tanks. Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution produced little more than life sentences for the country's dissident Buddhist monks; Iran's 2009 Green Revolution fell to the batons of the Basij two years later.
What distinguishes people power's successes from its failures? Size, of course, matters, but autocrats tend to fall to crowds only when they have first lost the support of key allies at home or abroad. The Egyptian military's decision to abandon Mubarak and protect the protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, for instance, was crucial to the president's downfall this February.
How can demonstrators persuade regime stalwarts to jump ship? In Eastern Europe, the geopolitical sea change engineered by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his allies obviously helped -- but you can't exactly bring down the Iron Curtain again. Regimes with professionalized militaries separate from civilian authorities might be more vulnerable to defections; regimes based on highly ideological political parties are less likely to see their members break ranks. The credible threat of ending up at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague or having your Swiss bank accounts frozen can work wonders as well. But unfortunately for protesters, predicting authoritarian reactions to uprisings is far from an exact science -- which is little consolation when your head is being cracked by a riot cop.
"The more brutal the dictator, the harder to oust."
Unfortunately, true. Reflecting on the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the "most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform." What was correct in the 18th century is, sadly, still true in the 21st. It is probably not a coincidence that the list of authoritarians removed by street protest in recent years is largely populated by rulers whose regimes allowed at least a modicum of political opposition. Tyrants like Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze, Kyrgyzstan's Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak may have been horrible in many ways, but their regimes were undoubtedly more permissive than those of many who have held onto power to this day.
If this is true, why do any dictators allow opposition in the first place? And why don't they simply go the full Tiananmen at the first sign of protest? Because running a truly ghastly dictatorship is tougher today than it used to be.
The interconnections of 21st-century civilization make it harder to control information and far more difficult and costly to isolate a country from the outside world than it was in the 20th. The death of communism, meanwhile, has robbed leftists and right-wing strongmen alike of a cover story for their anti-democratic practices. In the past decade, rulers of countries such as Uzbekistan and Yemen have used the West's newfound fear of militant Islam -- and the logistical necessities of the United States' post-9/11 wars -- to similar ends, but they number far fewer than the ideological tyrants who divvied up whole continents under Cold War pretexts a generation ago.
The result is that in more and more places, rulers are compelled to justify their practices by adding a touch of "democracy." Vladimir Putin chose to stand down -- though not far down -- in 2008 rather than break Russia's constitutional ban against a third consecutive presidential term, and even the Chinese Communist Party allows some competitive elections at the town and village levels. There are exceptions to this trend, of course: Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Burma spring to mind. But such regimes feel increasingly like remnants of the late, unlamented 20th century, rather than harbingers of things to come.
"Personality cults are crazy."
Crazy like a fox. Do North Koreans really believe that Kim Jong Il can change the weather based on his mood? Do Libyans think Qaddafi's Green Book is a brilliant work of political philosophy? Do Turkmen really think that the Ruhnama, the religious text authored by their late post-Soviet dictator -- and self-styled spiritual leader -- Saparmurat Niyazov, is a sacred scripture on par with the Quran and the Bible?
Probably not, but for the dictators' purposes, they don't have to. As political scientist Xavier Márquez has argued, personality cults are as strategic as they are narcissistic. Part of the problem that dictators' would-be opponents face is figuring out who else opposes the leader; compelling the populace to publicly embrace preposterous myths makes that harder still. Official mythmaking is also a means of enforcing discipline within the regime. Stalin -- the progenitor of the modern dictator personality cult -- understood well that his self-mythologizing would be too much for some of his old comrades to swallow; Lenin, after all, had specifically warned against it. But those who might have objected were swiftly dispatched. For the apparatchiks who remained, submitting to the cult was humiliating -- and humiliation is a powerful tool for controlling potential rivals.
But personality cults, like most authoritarian technologies, have their drawbacks. The bigger the cult, the bigger the challenge of succession. Heirs to the throne really have just two options: dismantle the cult or go one better. The former is perilous; in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev's famous 1956 secret speech -- the posthumous critique of Stalin that gave us the term "personality cult" -- was, after all, secret, deemed too explosive for the Soviet public. Today, North Korea's ruling Kim family illustrates the hazards of the alternative: Now that the official newspapers have already reported that the current Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, has mastered teleportation, what's his son and newly designated heir, Kim Jong Un, supposed to do for an encore?
"Sometimes it takes a dictator to get the job done."
Actually it doesn't. The past two years have not done much to advertise the abilities of the Western democratic model of government to take large and painful but necessary actions. Frustrated over everything from a failure to balance budgets to an apparent inability to face up to the challenges of climate change, more than a few Westerners have turned their gaze wistfully toward the heavy-handed rule of the Communist Party in China. "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks," the New York Times' Thomas Friedman wrote in a 2009 column. "But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages." This March, Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times about how "China has achieved greatness."
This romanticizing of authoritarianism is not new; Augusto Pinochet's murderous regime in 1970s Chile was once cheered by many in Washington as an ugly but necessary instrument of economic reform. Yearning for a strong hand, however, is rooted in several fallacies. First, it conflates the failings of one form of democracy -- in Friedman's case, the gridlocked American version -- with an entire category of governance. Second, it assumes that dictators are more able than democrats to undertake unpopular but essential reforms. But unpopular decisions don't simply become popular because an autocrat is making them -- just remember the late North Korean finance chief Pak Nam Gi, who ended up in front of a firing squad following the public backlash against the confiscatory currency reform the Kim regime pushed through in 2009. In fact, authoritarians, lacking the legitimacy of popular election, may be even more fearful of upsetting the apple cart than democrats are. In Putin's Russia, for instance, leaders are unable to dial back the massive military expenditures that keep key constituencies quiet but that even their own ministers recognize to be unsustainable.
Besides, suggesting that dictators can force better policies upon their people assumes that a dictator is likely to know what those better policies are. The idea that there are technocratic solutions to most economic, social, and environmental problems might be comforting, but it is usually wrong. Such questions rarely have purely technical, apolitical answers -- and only in a democracy can they be aired and answered in a way that, if not entirely fair, is at least broadly acceptable.
"Digital revolutions are bad news for autocrats."
Not necessarily. New technologies -- from the fax machine to the Internet to Facebook -- have invariably been heralded as forces for upending dictatorial regimes. And of course, if cell phones and Twitter made no difference at all, then pro-democracy activists wouldn't use them. But the real test of technology is its ability to shift the balance of power between dictators and those trying to unseat them -- to make revolutions more frequent, faster, or more successful. And though it's too early to know for sure, the arc of revolutions in 2011 doesn't look that different so far from the lower-tech upheavals of 1989, or, for that matter, 1848.
What makes a difference is how quickly authoritarians can work out how to counter a new innovation, or use it themselves. Sometimes this happens quickly: The barricades invented in Paris that made the revolutions of 1848 possible were briefly useful, but militaries soon figured out how to use cannons against them. Similarly, today's authoritarians are already learning how to use cell phones and Facebook to identify and track their opponents. In Iran, for instance, Facebook posts, tweets, and emails were used as evidence against protesters in the wake of the failed Green Revolution.
As it happens, some of the most enduring innovations have been the least technological. Mass protests, petitions, and general strikes, though now ubiquitous tactics, were at first ideas as novel as Twitter, and they have continued to play a crucial role in spreading democracy and civil rights around the world. It's a useful reminder that not all the new tools that matter come in a box or over a Wi-Fi connection.
"Dictatorship is on the way out."
Not in our lifetime. The recent upheavals in the Middle East, though inspiring, have happened against a gloomy backdrop. Freedom House reported that in 2010, for the fifth year in a row, countries with improving political and civil rights were outnumbered by ones where they were getting worse -- the longest such run since the organization started collecting data in 1972. Two decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, democracy may be robust in formerly communist Central Europe, Latin America, and even the Balkans, but most former Soviet states remain quite authoritarian. And though a few Arab countries are newly freed of their tyrants, they are still very much in transition. Being poor or corrupt, as Egypt and Tunisia are, does not rule out being democratic -- think of India -- but it does make it harder to build a stable democratic system.
Nevertheless, the Arab revolutions have offered a spark of hope, one that has clearly worried dictators in places as far off as Moscow and Beijing. The question is what the world's liberal democracies should do, or not do, to push things along. Survey the United States' long history of democracy-promotion successes and failures, and the inescapable lesson, even setting aside recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that less is usually more. Providing aid -- as the United States did to the opposition in places like Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia -- or simply setting an example are better means of toppling a dictator than actually doing the toppling.
But in either case, it's important to remember that powerful Western friends aren't everything. After all, the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt is that dictators sometimes fall despite, not because of, American help.
Graeme Robertson is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes.
Pausa para... hora da Justica: Bin-Laden preso no Brasil...
Não é difícil imaginar isso: de acordo com os filmes de Hollywood, nove entre dez criminosos fugitivos escolhem o Brasil como sua terra de acolhimento (o décimo deve ir para o México e nunca se ouve mais falar dele). Desses que vieram ao Brasil, metade fica famosa, casa, tem filhos e passa a desfrutar de uma vida tranquila. São até convidados para falar na televisão.
(Quem quiser fazer uma pesquisa sobre os filmes de Hollywood que "mandam" seus bandidos para o Brasil, estimulo a apresentar projeto: pode até ganhar uma bolsa do CNPq.)
Bem, e se Osama Bin-Laden bin Laden escolhesse o Brasil como sua terra de acolhimento e se por um desses azares da sorte (mas seria muito azar, porque aqui é quase impossível acontecer uma coisa dessas) ele tivesse sido preso no Brasil?
Veja abaixo os prováveis desdobramentos.
1. Os advogados dele teriam que estar presentes na hora da prisão para garantir seus direitos;
2. Todas as escutas seriam consideradas ilegais por não terem autorização de um juiz;
3. Os policiais e militares envolvidos seriam acusados de abuso de poder;
4. Em três dias, teria um habeas corpus decretado por irregularidade nas investigações;
5. Por ser réu primário, não possuir outra condenação, ter nível superior e endereço fixo, seria logo posto em liberdade;
6. Por possuir livre direito de ir e vir, seria liberado para visitas a Meca;
7. Pelo direito de ampla defesa, alocaria milhares de testemunhas a seu favor;
8. O processo levaria uma década, com ele em liberdade provisória;
9. Condenado à pena máxima de 35 anos por terrorismo, cumpriria 1/6 da pena;
10. No cumprimento da pena, poderia receber visitas das suas cinco esposas e seria liberado para sair nos feriados, inclusive no Natal (!);
11. Após alguns meses preso, um juiz decretaria que a prisão dele é ilegal porque o terrorismo não consta do Código Penal;
12. E para não manchar a imagem do Brasil no mundo como país politicamente repressor, ele seria obrigado a doar 10 cestas básicas para as obras assistenciais da Irmã Dulce.
Como mandam nossas leis, a Justiça teria sido feita!
(Quem quiser fazer uma pesquisa sobre os filmes de Hollywood que "mandam" seus bandidos para o Brasil, estimulo a apresentar projeto: pode até ganhar uma bolsa do CNPq.)
Bem, e se Osama Bin-Laden bin Laden escolhesse o Brasil como sua terra de acolhimento e se por um desses azares da sorte (mas seria muito azar, porque aqui é quase impossível acontecer uma coisa dessas) ele tivesse sido preso no Brasil?
Veja abaixo os prováveis desdobramentos.
1. Os advogados dele teriam que estar presentes na hora da prisão para garantir seus direitos;
2. Todas as escutas seriam consideradas ilegais por não terem autorização de um juiz;
3. Os policiais e militares envolvidos seriam acusados de abuso de poder;
4. Em três dias, teria um habeas corpus decretado por irregularidade nas investigações;
5. Por ser réu primário, não possuir outra condenação, ter nível superior e endereço fixo, seria logo posto em liberdade;
6. Por possuir livre direito de ir e vir, seria liberado para visitas a Meca;
7. Pelo direito de ampla defesa, alocaria milhares de testemunhas a seu favor;
8. O processo levaria uma década, com ele em liberdade provisória;
9. Condenado à pena máxima de 35 anos por terrorismo, cumpriria 1/6 da pena;
10. No cumprimento da pena, poderia receber visitas das suas cinco esposas e seria liberado para sair nos feriados, inclusive no Natal (!);
11. Após alguns meses preso, um juiz decretaria que a prisão dele é ilegal porque o terrorismo não consta do Código Penal;
12. E para não manchar a imagem do Brasil no mundo como país politicamente repressor, ele seria obrigado a doar 10 cestas básicas para as obras assistenciais da Irmã Dulce.
Como mandam nossas leis, a Justiça teria sido feita!
Os Dez Piores Livros de Relacoes Internacionais (sempre vistos dos EUA...)
Depois dos dez melhores, agora os dez piores, por um outro scholar. Até abril de 2009; depois disso, outros piores foram publicados, como provavelmente as memórias de George Bush e de seu inefável Secretário "da guerra" (ele merece o título Donald Rumsfeld).
Dá, portanto, para aumentar a lista, e muito, mas a escolha seria muito grande...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The ten worst books in international relations
Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Foreign Policy, Friday, April 10, 2009
It's "top ten" week here at Foreign Policy, and the powers that be have asked me to chip in with a list of my own.
The thing is, Steve Walt poached a lot of the books I would have named on my own list of top ten international relations books (if there's real demand for a "top 10" books in international political economy specifically, let me know in the comments and I'll put one up next week).
So, rather than replicate Steve, let's have some fun -- what are the ten worst books in international relations?
In one sense, this question is difficult to answer, in that truly bad books are never read. Smply putting down books by bad people -- Mein Kampf, etc. -- is kind of superfluous. The books matter less than the person.
So, let's be clear on the criteria: to earn a place on this list, we're talking about:
Books by prominent international policymakers that put you to sleep;
Books that were influential in some way but also spectacularly wrong, leading to malign consequences.
In chronological order:
1. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion
This book has been widely misinterpreted, so let's be clear about what Angell got right and got wrong. He argued that the benefits from international trade vastly exceeded the economic benefits of empire, and therefore the economic motive for empire no longer existed. He was mostly right about that. He then argued that an enlightened citizenry would glom onto this fact and render war obsolete. Writing this in 1908, he was historically, spectacularly wrong.
2. E.H. Carr, Nationalism and After
Carr's Twenty Years' Crisis is one of the best books about international relations ever written. This is not that book. Here, Carr argues that nationalism is a passing fad and that eventually the number of nation-states in the world will be reduced to less than twenty. Since this book was published, U.N. membership has at least tripled.
3. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
The first of many, many, many books in which Ehrlich argued that the world's population was growing at an unsustainable rate, outstripping global resources and leading to inevitable mass starvation. Ehrlich's book committed a triple sin. First, he was wrong on the specifics. Second, by garnering so much attention by being wrong, he contributed to the belief that alarmism was the best way to get people to pay attention to the environment. Third, by crying wolf so many times, Ehrlich numbed many into not buying actual, real environmental threats.
4. Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals
Written at the peak of Japan's property bubble, Shintaro argued that Japan was destined to become the next great superpower. Whoops.
5. Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. Plenty of management consultants have tried to write the Very Big Book. And plenty of authors have predicted the demise of the nation-state in their books. Ohmae encapsulates both of these trends. Still, there's something extra that puts him on this list -- over 90% of the footnotes in this book are to... other works by Kenichi Ohmae. It's the most blatant use of the footnote as a marketing strategy that I have ever seen.
6. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts
Kaplan argued that "ancient hatreds" guaranteed perpetual conflict in the Balkans. According to his aides, this book heavily influenced Bill Clinton's reluctance to intervene in the Balkans for the first two years of his presidency.
7. Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon
Back when I was a grad student, I needed to check out the memoirs of Reagan cabinet officials to see if there was anything that could e gleaned about a particular case. George Shultz's memoirs were chock-full of useful bits of information. This book, on the other hand, was a vast wasteland of barren prose.
8. Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era
Makes Weinberger's memoirs seem exciting by comparison. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
9. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
Ordinarily, this massive exercise in generating non-falsifiable arguments about an actorless empire would have slipped into obscurity a few months after publication. In this case, however, Emily Eakin claimed in the New York Times that it was the "next big thing" in international relations. Which meant this book was inflicted on a whole generation of poor, unsuspecting IR grad students.
10. Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case For Invading Iraq
In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pollack's book became the intellectual justification for Democrats to support the invasion. And we now know that result.
===========
O mesmo estudioso tratou, poucos meses depois, de um concurso sobre o melhor da década. Confesso que não fui ver o resultado:
What is the best international relations book of the decade?
Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Foreign Policy, Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The International Studies Association announces a book contest:
The International Studies Best Book of the Decade Award honors the best book published in international studies over the last decade. In order to be selected, the winning book must be a single book (edited volumes will not be considered) that has already had or shows the greatest promise of having a broad impact on the field of international studies over many years. Only books of this broad scope, originality, and interdisciplinary significance should be nominated.
Hmmm.... which books published between 2000 and 2009 should be on the short list? This merits some thought, but the again, this is a blog post, so the following choices are the first five books that came to mind:
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (2001).
Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (2003)
Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales, Savng Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003).
Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms (2007).
I don't agree with everything in these books -- but they linger the most in the cerebral cortex.
So, dear readers, which books do you think are worthy of consideration for this award?
Dá, portanto, para aumentar a lista, e muito, mas a escolha seria muito grande...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The ten worst books in international relations
Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Foreign Policy, Friday, April 10, 2009
It's "top ten" week here at Foreign Policy, and the powers that be have asked me to chip in with a list of my own.
The thing is, Steve Walt poached a lot of the books I would have named on my own list of top ten international relations books (if there's real demand for a "top 10" books in international political economy specifically, let me know in the comments and I'll put one up next week).
So, rather than replicate Steve, let's have some fun -- what are the ten worst books in international relations?
In one sense, this question is difficult to answer, in that truly bad books are never read. Smply putting down books by bad people -- Mein Kampf, etc. -- is kind of superfluous. The books matter less than the person.
So, let's be clear on the criteria: to earn a place on this list, we're talking about:
Books by prominent international policymakers that put you to sleep;
Books that were influential in some way but also spectacularly wrong, leading to malign consequences.
In chronological order:
1. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion
This book has been widely misinterpreted, so let's be clear about what Angell got right and got wrong. He argued that the benefits from international trade vastly exceeded the economic benefits of empire, and therefore the economic motive for empire no longer existed. He was mostly right about that. He then argued that an enlightened citizenry would glom onto this fact and render war obsolete. Writing this in 1908, he was historically, spectacularly wrong.
2. E.H. Carr, Nationalism and After
Carr's Twenty Years' Crisis is one of the best books about international relations ever written. This is not that book. Here, Carr argues that nationalism is a passing fad and that eventually the number of nation-states in the world will be reduced to less than twenty. Since this book was published, U.N. membership has at least tripled.
3. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
The first of many, many, many books in which Ehrlich argued that the world's population was growing at an unsustainable rate, outstripping global resources and leading to inevitable mass starvation. Ehrlich's book committed a triple sin. First, he was wrong on the specifics. Second, by garnering so much attention by being wrong, he contributed to the belief that alarmism was the best way to get people to pay attention to the environment. Third, by crying wolf so many times, Ehrlich numbed many into not buying actual, real environmental threats.
4. Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals
Written at the peak of Japan's property bubble, Shintaro argued that Japan was destined to become the next great superpower. Whoops.
5. Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. Plenty of management consultants have tried to write the Very Big Book. And plenty of authors have predicted the demise of the nation-state in their books. Ohmae encapsulates both of these trends. Still, there's something extra that puts him on this list -- over 90% of the footnotes in this book are to... other works by Kenichi Ohmae. It's the most blatant use of the footnote as a marketing strategy that I have ever seen.
6. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts
Kaplan argued that "ancient hatreds" guaranteed perpetual conflict in the Balkans. According to his aides, this book heavily influenced Bill Clinton's reluctance to intervene in the Balkans for the first two years of his presidency.
7. Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon
Back when I was a grad student, I needed to check out the memoirs of Reagan cabinet officials to see if there was anything that could e gleaned about a particular case. George Shultz's memoirs were chock-full of useful bits of information. This book, on the other hand, was a vast wasteland of barren prose.
8. Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era
Makes Weinberger's memoirs seem exciting by comparison. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
9. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
Ordinarily, this massive exercise in generating non-falsifiable arguments about an actorless empire would have slipped into obscurity a few months after publication. In this case, however, Emily Eakin claimed in the New York Times that it was the "next big thing" in international relations. Which meant this book was inflicted on a whole generation of poor, unsuspecting IR grad students.
10. Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case For Invading Iraq
In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pollack's book became the intellectual justification for Democrats to support the invasion. And we now know that result.
===========
O mesmo estudioso tratou, poucos meses depois, de um concurso sobre o melhor da década. Confesso que não fui ver o resultado:
What is the best international relations book of the decade?
Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Foreign Policy, Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The International Studies Association announces a book contest:
The International Studies Best Book of the Decade Award honors the best book published in international studies over the last decade. In order to be selected, the winning book must be a single book (edited volumes will not be considered) that has already had or shows the greatest promise of having a broad impact on the field of international studies over many years. Only books of this broad scope, originality, and interdisciplinary significance should be nominated.
Hmmm.... which books published between 2000 and 2009 should be on the short list? This merits some thought, but the again, this is a blog post, so the following choices are the first five books that came to mind:
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (2001).
Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (2003)
Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales, Savng Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003).
Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms (2007).
I don't agree with everything in these books -- but they linger the most in the cerebral cortex.
So, dear readers, which books do you think are worthy of consideration for this award?
Os Dez Melhores Livros de Relacoes Internacionais (vistos dos EUA, claro...)
Um professor de Harvard, a convite da revista Foreign Policy, fez a sua lista dos dez melhores. Tudo deve ser visto da perspectiva americana, claro. Se fossemos pedir a um acadêmico europeu (francês, alemão, ou inglês), a lista provavelmente seria outra, e recolheria apenas dois ou três desta lista.
Vale pelo que vale, trata-se de um começo...
Relembre-se que a lista é de dois anos atrás...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
My "top ten" books every student of International Relations should read
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy, Thursday, April 9, 2009
Last week Tom Ricks offered us his "Top Ten list" of books any student of military history should read. The FP staff asked me to follow suit with some of my favorites from the world of international politics and foreign policy. What follows aren't necessarily the books I'd put on a graduate syllabus; instead, here are ten books that either had a big influence on my thinking, were a pleasure to read, or are of enduring value for someone trying to make sense of contemporary world politics. But I've just scratched the surface here, so I invite readers to contribute their own suggestions.
1) Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War
An all-time classic, which I first read as a college sophomore. Not only did M, S & W provide an enduring typology of different theories of war (i.e., locating them either in the nature of man, the characteristics of states, or the anarchic international system), but Waltz offers incisive critiques of these three "images" (aka "levels of analysis.") Finding out that this book began life as Waltz's doctoral dissertation was a humbling moment in my own graduate career.
2) Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Combines biology and macro-history in a compelling fashion, explaining why small differences in climate, population, agronomy, and the like turned out to have far-reaching effects on the evolution of human societies and the long-term balance of power. An exhilarating read.
3) Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence
He's a Nobel Prize winner now, so one expects a lot of smart ideas. Some of Schelling's ideas do not seem to have worked well in practice (cf. Robert Pape's Bombing to Win and Wallace Thies's When Governments Collide) but more than anyone else, Schelling taught us all to think about military affairs in a genuinely strategic fashion. (The essays found in Schelling's Strategy of Conflict are more technical but equally insightful). And if only more scholars wrote as well.
4) James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
This isn't really a book about international relations, but it's a fascinating exploration of the origins of great human follies (like Prussian "scientific forestry" or Stalinist collectivized agriculture). Scott pins the blame for these grotesque man-made disasters on centralized political authority (i.e., the absence of dissent) and "totalistic" ideologies that sought to impose uniformity and order in the name of some dubious pseudo-scientific blueprint. And it's a book that aspiring "nation-builders" and liberal interventionists should read as an antidote to their own ambitions. Reading Scott's work (to include his Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance) provided the intellectual launching pad for my book Taming American Power).
5) David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
Stayed up all night reading this compelling account of a great national tragedy, and learned not to assume that the people in charge knew what they were doing. Still relevant today, no?
6) Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
I read this while tending bar at the Stanford Faculty Club in 1977 (the Stanford faculty weren't big drinkers so I had a lot of free time). Arguably still the best single guide to the ways that psychology can inform our understanding of world politics. Among other things, it convinced that I would never know as much history as Jervis does. I was right.
7) John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
Why do bad things happen to good peoples? Why do "good states" do lots of bad things? Mearsheimer tells you. Clearly written, controversial, and depressingly persuasive.
8) Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
The state is the dominant political form in the world today, and nationalism remains a powerful political force. This book will help you understand where it came from and why it endures.
9) Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval
Memoirs should always be read with a skeptical eye, and Kissinger's are no exception. But if you want some idea of what it is like to run a great power's foreign policy, this is a powerfully argued and often revealing account. And Kissinger's portraits of his colleagues and counterparts are often candid and full of insights. Just don't take it at face value.
10) Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Where did the modern world come from, and what are the political, economic, and social changes that it wrought? Polanyi doesn't answer every question, but he's a good place to start.
So that's ten, but I can't resist tossing in a few others in passing: Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War; Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History; Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population; Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars; T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars; R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War; Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies; Tony Smith, The Problem of Imperlalism; and Philip Knightley's The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-Maker. And as I said, this just scratches the surface.
So what did I miss? Keep the bar high.
(And for those of you who don't have time to read books, I'll start working on a "top ten" list of articles).
Vale pelo que vale, trata-se de um começo...
Relembre-se que a lista é de dois anos atrás...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
My "top ten" books every student of International Relations should read
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy, Thursday, April 9, 2009
Last week Tom Ricks offered us his "Top Ten list" of books any student of military history should read. The FP staff asked me to follow suit with some of my favorites from the world of international politics and foreign policy. What follows aren't necessarily the books I'd put on a graduate syllabus; instead, here are ten books that either had a big influence on my thinking, were a pleasure to read, or are of enduring value for someone trying to make sense of contemporary world politics. But I've just scratched the surface here, so I invite readers to contribute their own suggestions.
1) Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War
An all-time classic, which I first read as a college sophomore. Not only did M, S & W provide an enduring typology of different theories of war (i.e., locating them either in the nature of man, the characteristics of states, or the anarchic international system), but Waltz offers incisive critiques of these three "images" (aka "levels of analysis.") Finding out that this book began life as Waltz's doctoral dissertation was a humbling moment in my own graduate career.
2) Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Combines biology and macro-history in a compelling fashion, explaining why small differences in climate, population, agronomy, and the like turned out to have far-reaching effects on the evolution of human societies and the long-term balance of power. An exhilarating read.
3) Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence
He's a Nobel Prize winner now, so one expects a lot of smart ideas. Some of Schelling's ideas do not seem to have worked well in practice (cf. Robert Pape's Bombing to Win and Wallace Thies's When Governments Collide) but more than anyone else, Schelling taught us all to think about military affairs in a genuinely strategic fashion. (The essays found in Schelling's Strategy of Conflict are more technical but equally insightful). And if only more scholars wrote as well.
4) James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
This isn't really a book about international relations, but it's a fascinating exploration of the origins of great human follies (like Prussian "scientific forestry" or Stalinist collectivized agriculture). Scott pins the blame for these grotesque man-made disasters on centralized political authority (i.e., the absence of dissent) and "totalistic" ideologies that sought to impose uniformity and order in the name of some dubious pseudo-scientific blueprint. And it's a book that aspiring "nation-builders" and liberal interventionists should read as an antidote to their own ambitions. Reading Scott's work (to include his Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance) provided the intellectual launching pad for my book Taming American Power).
5) David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
Stayed up all night reading this compelling account of a great national tragedy, and learned not to assume that the people in charge knew what they were doing. Still relevant today, no?
6) Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
I read this while tending bar at the Stanford Faculty Club in 1977 (the Stanford faculty weren't big drinkers so I had a lot of free time). Arguably still the best single guide to the ways that psychology can inform our understanding of world politics. Among other things, it convinced that I would never know as much history as Jervis does. I was right.
7) John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
Why do bad things happen to good peoples? Why do "good states" do lots of bad things? Mearsheimer tells you. Clearly written, controversial, and depressingly persuasive.
8) Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
The state is the dominant political form in the world today, and nationalism remains a powerful political force. This book will help you understand where it came from and why it endures.
9) Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval
Memoirs should always be read with a skeptical eye, and Kissinger's are no exception. But if you want some idea of what it is like to run a great power's foreign policy, this is a powerfully argued and often revealing account. And Kissinger's portraits of his colleagues and counterparts are often candid and full of insights. Just don't take it at face value.
10) Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Where did the modern world come from, and what are the political, economic, and social changes that it wrought? Polanyi doesn't answer every question, but he's a good place to start.
So that's ten, but I can't resist tossing in a few others in passing: Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War; Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History; Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population; Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars; T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars; R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War; Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies; Tony Smith, The Problem of Imperlalism; and Philip Knightley's The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-Maker. And as I said, this just scratches the surface.
So what did I miss? Keep the bar high.
(And for those of you who don't have time to read books, I'll start working on a "top ten" list of articles).
I Have a Dream speech - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Washington, 28 August 1963
Um discurso histórico, digno de ser lido, ainda hoje, por aqueles que pretendem introduzir políticas de cunho racialista no cenário brasileiro. Luther King lutava por direitos civis, não por privilégios raciais.
"I Have a Dream"
Martin Luther King, Jr.
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
Audio mp3 of Address
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
"I Have a Dream"
Martin Luther King, Jr.
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
Audio mp3 of Address
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
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Itamaraty 'Memórias', do embaixador Marcos Azambuja, é uma aula de diplomacia Embaixador foi um grande contador de histórias, ...
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Quando a desgraça é bem-vinda… Leio, tardiamente, nas notícias do dia, que o segundo chanceler virtual do bolsolavismo diplomático (2019-202...