America Latina: a que menos cresce no mundo - Andrés Oppenheimer

Grato a Pedro Luiz Rodrigues pela seleção de matérias sempre tão interessantes para ler.

América Latina, la que menos crece

Andrés Oppenheimer

La Nación, Buenos Aires – 8.8.2019

El nuevo pronóstico económico del Fondo Monetario Internacional dado a conocer pocos días atrás trae malas noticias para América Latina: la región tendrá el crecimiento económico más bajo del mundo este año. O sea, será el campeón mundial del estancamiento económico.

Según las previsiones del FMI, las economías de América Latina crecerán un promedio de 0,6 por ciento en 2019. Eso debería activar las alarmas en la región porque sucede en el marco de una economía mundial en crecimiento.

El FMI pronostica que la economía mundial crecerá un 3,2 por ciento este año, incluida una tasa de crecimiento del 6,2 por ciento en Asia y del 3,4 por ciento en el África subsahariana.

La mayoría de los países más grandes de América Latina crecerán menos de lo que se había anticipado, dijo el FMI.

La tasa de crecimiento de México se ha revisado a la baja a 0,9 por ciento este año. La economía de Brasil crecerá solamente 0,8 por ciento, y la de Argentina se reducirá 1,3 por ciento en 2019, y crecerá 1,1 por ciento en 2020. La economía de Venezuela caerá un 35 por ciento este año.

Solamente Chile, Colombia y Perú crecerán a tasas saludables de 3,2, 3,4 y 3,7 por ciento, respectivamente, este año, dice el FMI.

¿Por qué está estancada América Latina? Hay muchos motivos, pero estos son algunos de los más importantes:

Falta de continuidad en las políticas económicas, lo que ahuyenta a los inversionistas. En muchos países, cada nuevo presidente quiere reinventar la rueda y deshace todo lo que hizo el anterior.

En México, por ejemplo, el presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador ha prometido llevar a cabo una "cuarta transformación" en la historia del país. López Obrador, entre otras cosas, suspendió contratos para la enorme renovación del aeropuerto de la Ciudad de México y está dando marcha atrás a reformas para mejorar la calidad de la educación pública.

Eso ha creado "una fuerte incertidumbre en torno a las políticas económicas de México", según el FMI. Uno puede estar de acuerdo o no con eso, pero el hecho es que la "cuarta transformación" de López Obrador está ahuyentando las inversiones. El presidente no parece entender que sin inversión no habrá crecimiento, y sin crecimiento no habrá reducción de la pobreza.

Excesivo gasto público, baja productividad y una pésima distribución de la riqueza. Muchos de los países más grandes de la región, como la Argentina, simplemente gastan mucho más de lo que producen.

Nuevas cifras que circulan en las instituciones financieras internacionales muestran que la Argentina tiene solo nueve millones de trabajadores en el sector privado y autónomo, que en conjunto mantienen a 15,3 millones de personas a cargo del Estado, entre ellas los jubilados, gente que recibe subsidios estatales y empleados públicos.

Entre 2003 y 2015, durante los gobiernos populistas de Néstor Kirchner y Cristina Fernández, el gasto público de la Argentina se duplicó.

Y sin embargo la fórmula presidencial que incluye a la expresidenta Cristina Fernández como candidata a la vicepresidencia está liderando varias encuestas y podría ganar las próximas elecciones. Muchos argentinos aún no han aprendido la lección de que un país no puede gastar más de lo que produce sin ir de crisis en crisis.

Bajos estándares de educación, ciencia, tecnología e innovación. Los países latinoamericanos ocupan los últimos lugares en la prueba internacional PISA de estudiantes de 15 años y registran muy pocas patentes internacionales de nuevos inventos.

Mientras que Corea del Sur registró 17.000 patentes ante la Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual el año pasado, todos los países de América Latina y el Caribe juntos registraron solamente 537 patentes. En una economía global basada en el conocimiento, esa es una receta para el atraso.

Mi conclusión es que los países de la región no pueden seguir culpando a factores externos por su estancamiento económico, porque la economía mundial está creciendo y otros países emergentes de todo el mundo están creciendo mucho más. Es hora de reconocer que tenemos un problema interno y comenzar a abordarlo creando un clima que atraiga las inversiones y promueva la innovación.

RBPI: special issue on International Development Cooperation: call for papers

08-Aug-2019

Dear Dr. Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The International Development Cooperation field is in a state of disarray. Since its emergence, after World War II, it acquired a dual structure encompassing two positions: developed and developing countries, donors and recipients, north, and south. Two clubs reflected these positions: DAC/OECD and G-77, respectively. Two sets of practices also identified the field: Official Development Assistance (ODA), and Technical or Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC and ECDC), later known as South-South Cooperation (SSC). Both practices, ODA and SSC, distinguished development cooperation from other economic flows such as trade or foreign investment.

Despite many changes about the very understanding of what development meant, development agents have adapted to relevant systemic changes. The field emerged within a bi-polar system and remained relatively unchanged for almost six decades. It survived the systemic transformation that took place after the end of the Cold War and kept relatively steady during the unipolar moment of the 1990s. While its agents played an essential role in establishing superpowers’ zones of influence, they also gave a significant contribution to the market-oriented reforms that happened later.

Nevertheless, after the 2000s emerging powers and the financial crisis had a significant impact upon the field’s foundations. Indeed, the current systemic change towards multipolarity is producing germane effects upon the ground. The growing engagement of BRICS, MIST and Arabic countries in development cooperation evidences the systemic change, generating a mirror effect on traditional donors’ stances, clubbing, and practices. The transformation of the field includes:

(i) changes in the concepts and practices of both ODA and SSC;

(ii) oscillations on the positions agents play in the field (donor, recipient, provider, partner or donor/recipient);

(iii) variations in grouping, coalitions, and initiatives (DAC/OECD, UNDCF, GPEDC, G77+China, G20, plus BRICS or IBSA);

(iv) shifts towards other economic flows, such as trade and investment, described as blended finance;

(v) a growing centrality of triangular cooperation;

All these trends point towards a structural transformation of the International Development Cooperation field. It is against this backdrop that the Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional - RBPI (http://www.scielo.br/rbpi) calls academic researchers and practitioners to submit contributions to this special issue. The issue aims at analyzing and assessing the current transformations in International Development Cooperation practices, governance and goals. We welcome contributions addressing how systemic changes are impacting on international development cooperation as well as those addressing the topics described above.

Paulo Esteves (Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute of International Relations / PUC-Rio) and Geovana Zoccal (Humboldt Research Fellow at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) will edit the volume. All submissions should be original and unpublished, must be written in English, including an abstract which does not exceed 60 words (and 4-6 keywords in English), and follow the Chicago System. They must be in the range of 8.000 words (including title, abstract, bibliographic references, and keywords). RBPI general authors guidelines can be found at http://www.scielo.br/revistas/rbpi/iinstruc.htm. Submissions must be done at https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/rbpi-scielo.

Articles can be submitted September 1st, 2019 and January 31th, 2020.

RBPI is published exclusively online at Scielo (http://www.scielo.br/rbpi), following the continuous publication model. This model gives faster publication for authors and also faster access for readers because the articles are published online at the very moment their editorial production is finished. The first segment will be likely released in January 2020.

An American diplomat resigns from the State Department - Chuck Park (WP)

I can no longer justify being a part of Trump’s ‘Complacent State.’ So I’m resigning.

Chuck Park

The Washington Post, August 8, 2019

Chuck Park’s resignation from the Foreign Service is effective Thursday. 

I was 26, newly married and more than a little idealistic when I set off for my first diplomatic assignment almost a decade ago as a member of the 157th class of commissioned U.S. Foreign Service officers.

According to a certain type of right-leaning conspiracy theorist, that would make me part of “The Deep State” — a shadowy government within the government that puts its own interests above the expressed wishes of the electorate. Adherents to this theory believe that thousands of federal workers like me are plotting furiously to subvert the Trump administration at every turn. Many on the left, too, hope that such a resistance is secretly working to save the nation from the worst impulses of President Trump.

They have it all wrong. Your federal bureaucracy under this president? Call it “The Complacent State” instead.

Like many in my cohort, I came into the government inspired by a president who convinced me there was still some truth to the gospel of American exceptionalism. A child of immigrants from South Korea, I also felt a duty to the society that welcomed my parents and allowed me and my siblings to thrive.

Over three tours abroad, I worked to spread what I believed were American values: freedom, fairness and tolerance. But more and more I found myself in a defensive stance, struggling to explain to foreign peoples the blatant contradictions at home.

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, I spoke of American openness and friendship at consulate events as my country carried out mass deportations and failed thousands of “dreamers.” I attended celebrations of Black History Month at our embassy in Lisbon as black communities in the United States demanded justice for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and the victims of the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. And in Vancouver, I touted the strength of the United States’ democracy at the consulate’s 2016 election-night party as a man who campaigned on racism, misogyny and wild conspiracy theories became president-elect.

Since then, I have seen Trump assert the moral equivalence of violent white nationalists and those who oppose them, denigrate immigrants from “shithole countries” and separate children from their parents at the border, only to place them in squalid detention centers.

But almost three years since his election, what I have not seen is organized resistance from within. To the contrary, two senior Foreign Service officers admonished me for risking my career when I signed an internal dissent cable against the ban on travelers from several majority-Muslim countries in January 2017. Among my colleagues at the State Department, I have met neither the unsung hero nor the cunning villain of Deep State lore. If the resistance does exist, it should be clear by this point that it has failed.

[From the archive: State Department dissent memo: ‘We are better than this ban’]

Instead, I am part of the Complacent State.

The Complacent State sighs when the president blocks travel by Muslim immigrants; shakes its head when he defends Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; averts its gaze from images of children in detention camps. Then it complies with orders.

Every day, we refuse visas based on administration priorities. We recite administration talking points on border security, immigration and trade. We plan travel itineraries, book meetings and literally hold doors open for the appointees who push Trump’s toxic agenda around the world.

So when I read a recent New York Times op-ed calling for the public shaming of the “midlevel functionaries who make the system run,” I squirmed in my seat. We rank-and-file, like the Justice Department lawyer who recently endured public scrutiny for defending the administration’s terrible treatment of detained children, don’t like to be called out. And when we are, we shrink behind a standard argument — that we are career officials serving nonpartisan institutions.

We should be named and shamed. But how should we respond? One thing I agree with the conspiracy theorists about: The Deep State, if it did exist, would be wrong. Ask to read the commission of any Foreign Service officer, and you’ll see that we are hired to serve “during the pleasure of the President of the United States.” That means we must serve this very partisan president.

Or else we should quit.

I’m ashamed of how long it took me to make this decision. My excuse might be disappointing, if familiar to many of my colleagues: I let career perks silence my conscience. I let free housing, the countdown to a pension and the prestige of representing a powerful nation overseas distract me from ideals that once seemed so clear to me. I can’t do that anymore.

My son, born in El Paso on the American side of that same Rio Grande where the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter were discovered, in the same city where 22 people were just killed by a gunman whose purported “manifesto” echoed the inflammatory language of our president, turned 7 this month. I can no longer justify to him, or to myself, my complicity in the actions of this administration. That’s why I choose to resign.

Read more:

From the archive: Ruth Marcus: If you work for Trump, quit now

John D. Feeley: Why I could no longer serve this president

Edward Price: I didn’t think I’d ever leave the CIA. But because of Trump, I quit.

Marc Thiessen: To the anonymous New York Times op-ed writer: If you can’t serve honorably, don’t serve at all

Nikki Haley: When I challenge the president, I do it directly. My anonymous colleague should have, too.

A letter from 149 African Americans who served in the Obama administration: We are African Americans, we are patriots, and we refuse to sit idly by

[From the archive: I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.]

Meridiano 47: número especial sobre o Juca Paranhos de Luis Claudio Villafañe

 Roundtable Review do livro “Juca Paranhos: o Barão do Rio Branco”, de Luis Cláudio Villafañe Gomes Santos

Introdução

·       Antonio Carlos LessaUniversidade de Brasília, Instituto de Relações Internacionais

·        https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8593-8708

·       Rogério de Souza FariasUniversidade de Brasília, Instituto de Relações Internacionais

·        http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6678-0984

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20889/M47e20001

Palavras-chave: História da Política Exterior do Brasil, Barão do Rio Branco, Política Externa da Primeira República

Resumo

Introdução ao Roundtable Review do Introdução ao Roundtable Review do livro “Juca Paranhos: o Barão do Rio Branco”, de Luis Cláudio Villafañe Gomes Santos (Villafañe, L.C. Juca Paranhos: o Barão do Rio Branco. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2018, 560p.).

Almeida, Paulo Roberto de. A economia política de Rio Branco. Meridiano 47, 20: e20007, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20007; 

Burns, E. Bradford. The unwritten alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. 

Alsina Junior, João Paulo. Rio Branco, grande estratégia e poder naval. São Paulo: Editora da FGV, 2015. 

Farias, Rogério de Souza. A esfinge reexaminada: o Barão do Rio Branco e a política doméstica. Meridiano 47, 20: e20002, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20002

Ferreira, Gabriela Nunes. (Barão do) Rio Branco, entre a Monarquia e a República. Meridiano 47, 20: e20003, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20003; 

Franchini Neto, Helio. Realpolitik e o instrumento militar na vida e na obra do Barão do Rio Branco. Meridiano 47, 20: e20004, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20004; 

Pontes, Kassius Diniz da Silva . Fracasso Relativo? A política de Rio Branco para os Estados Unidos. Meridiano 47, 20: e20005, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20005; 

Santoro, Maurício. Rio Branco, jornalista. Meridiano 47, 20: e20006, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20006; 

Santos, Luís Cláudio Villafañe G. Juca Paranhos: o Barão do Rio Branco. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2018, 560p. 

Santos, Luís Cláudio Villafañe G. Juca Paranhos, o Barão do Rio Branco: os comentários do autor. Meridiano 47, 20: e20008, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47e20008

Rocha, Antônio Jorge Ramalho da e Lessa, Antônio Carlos. Meridiano 47: Relações Internacionais sob o prisma de Brasília. Meridiano 47, v. 1, n. 1, p. 1-2. 2000.

Hong Kong pode provocar mudança de regime na China Gordon Chang

The National Interest, Washington DC – 8.8.2019

In Hong Kong, It’s Now a Revolution

“In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.”

Gordon G. Chang

Defying stern warnings from both the local government and Beijing, people in seven districts in Hong Kong—most notably teachers, airport workers, and civil servants—participated in a general strike Monday, shutting down portions of the territory. For instance, more than a hundred flights were cancelled. 

The strike followed weeks of sometimes violent protests in the territory, a semi-autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China. Youthful demonstrators over the weekend surrounded and attacked police stations, and enraged residents drove riot police from their neighborhoods.

Roving protesters, dressed for urban combat, created a series of confrontations across the territory, even closing the main tunnel linking Hong Kong Island with the rest of the territory. A beleaguered police force, demoralized and fatigued, was unable to keep up with the mobile bands of radicalized youth.

Some of the protest messages were impossible to miss. In Wanchai’s Golden Bauhinia Square, a magnet for tourists from other parts of China, kids spray-painted a statue with provocative statements such as “The Heavens will destroy the Communist Party” and “Liberate Hong Kong.”

In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.

Almost nobody thinks any of these things can happen, but they forget that Chinese rebellions and revolutions often start at the periphery and then work their way to the center. The Qing dynasty of the Manchus, the last imperial reign, unraveled from the edges, as did others.

Hong Kong, perched on the edge of the Asian continent far from the center of communist power in Beijing, may be where the end of Chinese communism begins.

How could the mighty Communist Party of China fall?

Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, knows that very few in the rest of China, the “mainland” as it is called, sympathize with the Hong Kong protestors, especially because they challenge “China,” as the party likes to call itself. Yet the demonstrators in Hong Kong have succeeded at pushing their government around, almost at will, forcing Carrie Lam, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, to “suspend” consideration of the extradition legislation.

 And that is why Xi must be concerned. Mainland residents have grievances of their own, especially now that the economy is crumbling fast, and might become inspired to treat their own leaders roughly.

Hong Kong protestors, worryingly for Xi, seemed determined to spread their provocative message. Recently, they have been targeting mainland tourists to Hong Kong, seeking to inform them of their grievances. Demonstrators have, for instance, gathered in placeswhere Chinese visitors congregate, including a rail station, and have used the AirDrop app to spread protest posters to mainlanders.

 Perhaps in response, Beijing late last month stopped trying to prevent those “inside the Great Firewall” from knowing about the Hong Kong disturbances and instead attempted to tar the protestors by publicizing their violent acts.

Are mainlanders encouraged by the Hong Kong “riots,” as Beijing calls them? In the first week of July, up to ten thousand residents of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, took to the streets for days to protest a proposed waste-incineration plant.

The mass demonstration there did not spread, as other protests in China have in the past, but in the future cascading disturbances could overwhelm an already troubled political system. As Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania told the National Interest, “the disintegration of the People’s Republic of China is now under way.”

Xi might be able to end, or at least tamp down, the Hong Kong protests by forcing Lam to capitulate—formally “withdrawing” the extradition bill from consideration and resigning—but he is unlikely to do that. He does not want anyone, especially mainlanders, to think they are also able to overpower their leaders.

In an especially tone-deaf press conference Monday, Lam, standing next to eight grim-faced ministers, made no further concessions, either symbolic or substantive, as she struck all the wrong notes if she was trying to calm the situation in her embattled city. Her stern and sometimes ominous words—Lam warned the territory was on the “path of no return”—seemed aimed at an audience of one: Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.

Xi, it appears, will keep Lam in power. Her resignation, demanded by many, would undoubtedly trigger calls for universal suffrage for the election of a successor. Lam was “elected” in 2017 by the Election Committee, a body of only twelve hundred members in a city of more than seven million. Due to various mechanisms, the resulting “small-circle election” effectively gives Beijing a decisive voice in choosing the chief executive.

The demand for an all-inclusive electorate in fact started seventy-nine days of wide-scale protests in 2014, the “Occupy Central” demonstrations.

That protest, sometimes called the “Umbrella Revolution,” did not look like a revolution—sustained action to change the form of government—but today’s protests are starting to do so. Popular attitudes have visibly hardened this year as Hong Kong residents have taken the view that this is, as they say, the “last stand” for their society. There are traditional pro-Beijing elements in the city, such as the triads and triad-like organizations, but few in the Hong Kong mainstream now trust China. In the middle of June, one pro-democracy march drew an estimated two million people.

At the end of that month, Ho-Fung Hung of Johns Hopkins University noted that the authorities then thought they could outlast the protestors but he disagreed with their assessment, believing the demonstrations could last until September, the fifth anniversary of the Umbrella movement, or even to October 1, when Beijing plans to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.

Now, Hung looks prescient. There is no end to the demonstrations, now in their ninth-straight week, in sight.

Sustainability is the key for the protestors if they want to win freedom from China. “They keep saying ‘be like water,’” Michael Yon, the American war correspondent and author, told the National Interest over the weekend, noting young protestors are modeling themselves after martial arts legend Bruce Lee. “I keep telling them be like Poland. Never quit and you can actually be free. Maybe. But never quit.”

Yon, now reporting from the streets in Hong Kong, is on to something. Hong Kong people may be able to inspire just enough disgruntled mainlanders to shake their regime to the ground. If one thing is evident after months of protests, the youthful pro-democracy demonstrators are determined, as are millions of residents of the territory.

In a contest where neither side will concede, anything can happen. Chinese regimes, let us remember, fray at the edges and then sometimes fall apart. It could happen this time as well.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of ‘The Coming Collapse of China’.