Trump quer dobrar o Brasil e os brasileiros. Tabata Amaral explica como e porquê...

 Vejam este vídeo: 

Esperando Godot, por escrito? - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Esperando Godot, por escrito?

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

O vice-presidente e ministro da Indústria e Comércio Geraldo Alckmin escreveu uma carta, em maio, ao Secretário de Comércio dos EUA, quando ainda se discutia a imposição de 10% sobre aço e alumínio.

Não teve qualquer resposta, sequer a simples cortesia de uma confirmação de recebimento, silêncio total.

Reincidiu novamente, recentemente, no anúncio de 50% sobre tudo, em 1o de agosto, mais o início do processo de investigação ao abrigo da seção 301 da Lei Comercial de 1974, que não tem uma data precisa para produzir “resultados”, mas é infinitamente mais destrutiva, se desejarem fazer, e de forma totalmente unilateral.

Ou seja, Trump decidiu punir o Brasil, independentemente de nosso protecionismo comercial, que é real e extensivo. A punição é uma espécie de retaliação pessoal de Trump, sem qualquer relação com atos comerciais e tudo a ver com as declarações de Lula, não apenas no contexto do Brics, mas dirigidas pessoalmente a Trump.

Minha reflexão, como diplomata: não tem Samuel Becket que resolva a angústia diplomática dos meus colegas do Itamaraty, quando a diplomacia personalista do presidente ocupa todos os espaços.

Sorry Alckmin, Godot não aparecerá.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 23/07/2025

Nuclear Powers, Conventional Wars: The Dangerous Erosion of Deterrence - Carter Malkasian and Zachary Constantino Foreign Affairs

 Nuclear Powers, Conventional Wars: The Dangerous Erosion of Deterrence

Carter Malkasian and Zachary Constantino

Foreign Affairs, July 17, 2025

CARTER MALKASIAN is Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the National War College. He is the author of The Korean War: 1950-53. The views expressed here are his own.

ZACHARY CONSTANTINO is a South Asia analyst and has served as a Senior Adviser in the U.S. Departments of Defense and State.

 

The past two months have witnessed a remarkable spike in warfare involving nuclear powers. From May 7 to May 10, India and Pakistan exchanged artillery fire, bombs, cruise missiles, and drones in their most intense round of combat since 1999. Then, on June 1, Ukraine executed a sophisticated covert operation, deploying drones positioned deep within enemy territory to attack bombers that Russia might depend on if it were ever to launch a nuclear strike—an unprecedented direct assault on a country’s means of nuclear deterrence. And on June 13, 200 Israeli aircraft carried out a surprise attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and strategic targets. Iran retaliated by sending hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones toward Haifa, Tel Aviv, and military installations in the heart of Israel. Although only a few dozen breached Israeli and U.S. air defenses, Iran’s response amounted to the largest military attack ever launched on the homeland of a nuclear power.

These clashes are the latest examples of an overall rise in conflicts that carry risks of nuclear escalation. First, nonnuclear powers are attacking nuclear powers in unprecedented and aggressive ways. Even more concerning, nuclear powers are directly trading blows. These trends raise concerns that the eight-decade moratorium on large-scale war between nuclear powers has ended. Although it is too early to tell whether another great-power war is on the horizon, the dangers of nuclear escalation are unmistakable. Clashes involving nuclear powers now echo the Cold War’s most dangerous moments. A realistic possibility is that today’s clashes become a new normal, with an elevated risk of events spinning out of control.

The failure of nuclear weapons to deter Iran from launching missiles at Israel—or Ukraine from conducting operations inside Russia—suggests that even if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, it might not protect the country from further attacks. It also calls into question the ability of the United States to rely on its nuclear arsenal to prevent attacks from nuclear adversaries such as China, North Korea, or Russia.

This new normal requires politicians, generals, spy chiefs, and diplomats to adopt new strategies to de-escalate conflicts before they become crises. Military and civilian leaders alike need to redouble efforts to improve communication and confidence-building measures, such as notifying adversaries of military activities and hosting regular official dialogues. The United States and its allies should also retain a range of military capabilities that can counter enemy aggression without having to escalate. Leaders should conduct more of their “kinetic” actions—such as special operations raids or drone strikes in enemy territory—behind the scenes, where more off-ramps exist to manage tensions than in the public eye. These recalibrations will help offset the growing danger of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

THE END OF AN ERA

For eight decades, there has been no major war between nuclear powers. Nuclear powers have on occasion attacked nonnuclear ones, such as when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 or China went into Vietnam in 1979. Nonnuclear powers have even attacked the military forces of nuclear states, but these challenges have taken place on battlegrounds far from home. In 1950, North Korea assaulted U.S. Army regiments in South Korea, and in 1983, Argentina attacked British forces in the Falklands. Yet the Americans, the British, the Chinese, the French, and the Soviets generally avoided direct combat with one another, even over peripheral interests.

Consequently, many analysts, scholars, and presidents concluded that both nuclear and conventional war between nuclear powers was highly unlikely. In 1958, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower told his cabinet that “a nice, sweet, World War II type of war” seemed “very unrealistic.” As the political scientist Robert Jervis wrote in his 1984 book, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy: “Because nuclear war cannot be easily controlled or compartmentalized, the fear of nuclear war does deter the other side from much more than nuclear attack. Irrational as it may be, the chance of devastation has made our world unusually safe.” This dominant line of scholarly thinking, of course, has not stopped militaries from planning for a major war. One of the great ironies of the past 80 years is that nuclear powers have expended huge sums preparing for conventional wars that their nuclear arsenals had supposedly ruled out.

Nuclear weapons, however, have never completely deterred war between nuclear powers. The political scientist Robert Powell’s game theory model of conventional war and nuclear escalation, for example, has shown that the possibility of conventional war between nuclear powers depends on the level of risk and the balance of resolve. Indeed, nuclear powers engaged in periodic fighting during the Cold War.

The most intense combat between the Soviet Union and the United States occurred in the skies over China and North Korea during the Korean War. The Soviet Union lost 355 aircraft and 120 pilots, although it never officially acknowledged any involvement in the war. Other clashes between nuclear powers were tense but did not escalate into major conflicts. During the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet air defense units attacked U.S. aircraft and shot down a U-2 spy plane. Even riskier, a U.S. destroyer dropped depth charges on a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine. During the Vietnam War, Chinese antiaircraft gunners routinely shot at American planes over North Vietnam, and Chinese aircraft engaged U.S. jets that crossed into Chinese airspace. In total, American bombs killed or wounded roughly 5,000 Chinese troops. During the so-called War of Attrition that Israel and Arab states fought from 1967 and 1970, and again during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Soviet surface-to-air missiles around the Suez Canal intercepted Israeli aircraft, Israeli and Soviet fighters tangled in dogfights, and Soviet special forces conducted raids in the Sinai. Border skirmishes between China and the Soviet Union in the 1969 Sino-Soviet conflict resulted in hundreds of casualties.

India and Pakistan have continued to clash frequently along their disputed border, even after both countries developed nuclear weapons. The largest incident of ground combat between nuclear powers occurred in 1999 in the mountainous Kargil section of Kashmir. Pakistan dispatched around 4,500 soldiers posing as local rebels to seize the high ground, which Indian personnel had vacated for the winter to avoid the extreme weather conditions. The ensuing battle involved artillery shells, infantry battles, and airstrikes. The two countries suffered over 3,000 casualties before Washington’s intervention and Indian resolve forced Pakistan to back down.

NUCLEAR NONDETERRENCE

Events during the past ten years have increased the risks of direct conflict between major nuclear powers. Russia and the United States fought on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war after Russia first intervened in October 2015. The two powers battled each other in February 2018, when Russian paramilitary troops and Syrian tanks attacked U.S. special operations forces and marines. Between 200 and 300 Russians and Syrians were killed in the largest ground engagement to date between Americans and another nuclear power.

The war in Ukraine has further revealed the limits of nuclear deterrence. A Russian aircraft downed a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea in March 2023, and U.S.-provided missiles and intelligence have enabled Ukrainian battlefield strikes against Russian forces. Ukraine has repeatedly hit Moscow and petroleum storage facilities in Russia. When a Ukrainian drone struck a Russian radar installation linked to Moscow’s early warning system for incoming nuclear missiles in 2024, some analysts feared Russia would interpret the attack as a proxy action by the United States to degrade Moscow’s strategic deterrents. And on June 1, a Ukrainian drone operation damaged or destroyed as many as 30 bombers and airborne command-and-control aircraft deep within Russian territory, including planes that can carry cruise missiles. Even after Moscow lowered the threshold in its official doctrine regulating the use of nuclear arms—and despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s saber rattling—Russian nuclear weapons have not stopped Ukraine from targeting the home territory of a nuclear power or attacking its early warning systems or strategic bombers.

Nuclear weapons have never completely deterred war between nuclear powers.

Israel’s nuclear weapons have failed to stop escalating warfare in the Middle East. In the two years before the war between Iran and Israel flared up again in June, Hezbollah (Iran’s Lebanon-based ally) and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen sent drones and rockets into Israel in response to the war in Gaza. In April and October 2024, Iran and Hezbollah fired hundreds of missiles into central Israel. After Israel’s surprise attack against Iran in June killed leading military officials and scientists and damaged or destroyed nuclear facilities, military headquarters, and ballistic missile launchers, Iran targeted Tel Aviv and other areas in Israel with drones and ballistic missiles. The clash escalated as Israel bombed Iranian oil and gas infrastructure; Iran, in turn, launched hundreds more ballistic missiles at Israeli cities that resulted in at least 400 civilian casualties. Even if Iran pulled its punches because it feared nuclear escalation, its volleys into Israel marked the first time that cities of a nuclear power had been struck so heavily. Israeli threats to seek regime change in Tehran and direct U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites demonstrated that further escalation was possible. Only after the U.S. intervened militarily and did not respond to Iran’s telegraphed strike on the U.S. base in Qatar did Iran back down and agree to a cease-fire.

The dangers of escalating violence between India and Pakistan are also growing. Regular skirmishes between India and Pakistan flared up in 2019 when India bombed a suspected militant compound inside northwest Pakistan in response to a terrorist suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. This May, India launched airstrikes in Pakistan’s largest province in retaliation for another terrorist attack in Kashmir. Tit-for-tat strikes followed, including an Indian salvo on Pakistan’s Nur Khan Air Base only a few miles from one of Pakistan’s high-level command-and-control nodes. The four-day clash represented a new level of escalation: both sides attacked multiple locations within the homeland of the other for the first time since the India-Pakistan war of 1971, which took place before either country had a nuclear arsenal. In the initial wave of Indian strikes, Delhi employed cruise missiles, glide bombs, artillery, and drone-delivered munitions to strike militant infrastructure, including near major cities in Pakistan’s Punjab Province. India proved able to penetrate Pakistan’s air defense system, but Pakistan reportedly took down multiple Indian aircraft.

LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE

So far, conflicts between nuclear powers have been limited to skirmishes, low-level ground combat, air-to-air engagements, and airstrikes or missile exchanges—a far cry from the major wars of the twentieth century. But the increasing frequency of conflicts over the past ten years creates more chances for nuclear powers to find themselves ensnared in a larger war. Each time an attack strikes Israeli, Pakistani, or Russian territory, the potential for escalation jumps. Nuclear powers may feel that they have to send louder, more violent signals to be heard above the din of innumerable smaller clashes.

Policymakers need to recognize the high risk of escalation in a world of frequent conflicts involving nuclear powers. Even if neither party to a conflict wants war, each may find it difficult to avoid escalation, especially in a fast-moving crisis. Nationalistic domestic media environments, the greater use of autonomous aircraft, and the intermingling of nuclear and conventional infrastructure in many countries have further compounded the risk. And any conflict involving nuclear powers carries the inherent possibility of nuclear war.

To reduce the potential for rapid escalation, leaders should improve crisis communication, especially between India and Pakistan and China and the United States. Governments can build better guardrails by notifying their adversaries of military activities, promoting regular dialogue among officials, and improving their understanding of opponents’ redlines. For example, Gulf states have facilitated backchannel discussions between India and Pakistan that can buffer against the next crisis. These conversations are not intended to generate breakthroughs, but they can lower tensions and explore potential shared solutions to avoiding crises free of domestic political pressures.

The United States and its allies will also need to retain a set of military capabilities—including drones, special operations forces, missile defenses, and long-range strike systems—to respond to conventional action without resorting to higher levels of force. A robust menu of military options to retaliate against attacks allows the United States and its allies to fight at a level in which the risk of escalation is relatively manageable.

Finally, leaders should consider operating more covertly. The political scientists Austin Carson and Keren Yarhi-Milo have argued that backchannel signals sent through covert actions or quiet diplomacy can avoid public pressure that impedes concessions when actions are out in the open. The Cold War habit of keeping clashes quiet and not publicizing military actions may be worth reinstituting.

The end of the recent war between Iran and Israel highlights the importance of strategic de-escalation. The U.S. decision to forgo further retaliation and insist on a cease-fire after Iran’s perfunctory strike on the American base in Qatar prevented greater escalation. Diplomacy between the parties through both direct and indirect channels facilitated the cease-fire agreement. And Israel’s air defense systems and targeted strikes on Iran’s missile command-and-control network likely also narrowed Iran’s options for retaliation even before U.S. bombs damaged Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

In a world of weaker nuclear deterrence, governments must take deliberate steps to de-escalate tensions. Otherwise, each new border clash or drone strike could spark a disaster. The fact that the conflicts of the past two months did not spiral into protracted, large-scale wars is no guarantee that the next outbreak of violence will end similarly.

Quem quer ser um Império? - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 Quem quer ser um Império?

        Impérios ainda são coisas do presente, mas cheiram a mofo, pois vêm de um passado muito distante.
        Impérios são coisas doentias, fadadas ao fracasso, ainda que possam ter sucesso durante algum tempo, por vezes durante séculos.
        Mas, eles tendem a ser dominados por personalidades autoritárias, algumas nitidamente desequilibradas.
        Alguns já ouviram certamente falar da sabedoria de um outro dos imperadores romanos, como Marco Aurélio, por exemplo.
Mas suponho que todos também ouviram falar da loucura de vários outros, entre eles Calígula e Nero. Sabemos o que ocorreu depois; Roma se afundou na confusão e os bárbaros chegaram, e se instalaram. Acabou o império de Roma; sobrou, durante mais mil anos o do Oriente, em Bizâncio, ou Constantinopla, que foi saqueada pelas cruzadas e depois conquistada pelos otomanos.
        O Império do Meio foi o mais exitoso durante séculos, mas em algum momento resolveu se fechar aos contatos com os estrangeiros, os europeus, que vinham para copiar coisas daquela civilização muito mais avançada do que os seus reinos barulhentos, briguentos, ensopados no sangue de suas batalhas contínuas, uns com os outros. Um imperador mal assessorado por mandarins introvertidos decidiu fechar a China; foi assim que o país economicamente e cientificamente mais avançado do mundo perdeu as revoluções científicas e industriais do Ocidente e acabou sendo humilhada por eles, que voltaram com canhoneiras. A China perdeu a primeira e a segunda revoluções industriais, pelo seu insulamento. Na terceira, já vivia sob o maoísmo demencial, que afundou ainda mais a China, com seu Grande Salto para a Frente (andou para trás, e eliminou mais ou menos 40 milhões de chineses) e depois com a Revolução Cultural, que destruiu as universidades e todo o sistema de ensino, substituído pela banalidade do Livrinho Vermelho do Presidente Mao. Se recuperou depois, com a tecnologia do Ocidente, e graças à energia e à educação do seu povo já superou o Ocidente, na quarta ou na quinta revolução industrial. Agora tem um novo imperador, o primeiro depois de Mao, e não sabemos como evoluirá daqui para a frente.
        O Império britânico foi o mais extenso do mundo – superado em longevidade pelos impérios centrais e pelo império otomano – mas dominou a indústria, as finanças, a cultura do mundo durante praticamente dois séculos. Quando visitei a Inglaterra pré-Thatcher já parecia um país do Terceiro Mundo, inviabilizada pelas políticas erráticas do Labour e mesmo dos Tories. Deu trabalho para colocá-la um pouco nos eixos, mas voltou a ter primeiros-ministros medíocres, e não sei se tem algum futuro.
        O império francês torrou o dinheiro continental e aventuras coloniais, que só beneficiaram seus plutocratas, o que talvez tenha motivado Jean-Baptiste Duroselle a escrever "Tout Empire Perira". É isso.
        O império americano, só tem cem anos mas já parece ter se esgotado antes mesmo de Trump, como relatam Paul Kennedy, Robert Gordon e outros. Trump veio para afundar ainda mais uma democracia disfuncional e um sistema econômico meio errático.
        E o império russo?: czarista, soviético, agora neoczarista, sob Putin? Teve algum sucesso, a roubar terras dos vizinhos, como a Finlândia, os bálticos, os povos do Cáucaso e da Ásia central (a China imperial inclusive. Vladivostock, por exemplo).
Creio que chegou ao seu limite expansionista e vai declinar, demograficamente, economicamente, militarmente (mas vai demorar nesse último aspecto, que foi o que precipitou a sua implosão, no regime soviético).
        A Europa continental, a da UE, é apenas um meio império, e vai demorar para se converter em um império verdadeiro, talvez nunca. É um conjunto agradável para passeios românticos e boa gastronomia, mas estão cansados de guerras, e talvez não queiram assumir as responsabilidades de um verdadeiro império, como os americanos (envergonhados), os russos (doentiamente vocacionados à supremacia) e os chineses (querem ser hegemons bem comportados, inundar os outros com seus produtos e nunca mais sofrer humilhações pelos estrangeiros).
        Impérios são resilientes, mas em algum momento um líder desequilibrado perturba a sua marcha. Alguns podem ter verdadeiros debiloides ignorantes no comando de um país vibrante e acolhedor, como os EUA, mas também com muita gente ignorante ao ponto de ser seduzida por demagogos como o atual presidente.
        O Brasil já foi um "império", de araque, um gigante de pés de barro, teve alguns estadistas no seu comando, mas a maior parte dos dirigentes também foi singularmente medíocre. AInda não conseguimos produzir novos estadistas, e parece que vai demorar. Calculo mais uma ou duas gerações, mas nunca seremos um império, a não ser no divertimento e na corrupção.
        Mil desculpas pela conclusão decepcionante.
        Vamos nos arrastando em direção ao futuro, pois como disse Mário de Andrade um século atrás:
        "Progredir, progredimos um pouquinho
        Que o progresso também é uma fatalidade..."

        Que seja...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 23 de julho de 2025

O Brasil, sem poder de barganha Celso Ming O Estado de S. Paulo

O Brasil, sem poder de barganha

Celso Ming
O Estado de S. Paulo, sexta-feira, 18 de julho de 2025

Aos poucos, a indignação infantil e inconsequente vai sendo substituída por uma visão mais realista das nossas precariedades.
A primeira reação do presidente Lula ao anúncio do presidente Trump sobre o tarifaço de 50%, a vigorar a partir de 1º de agosto, foi apelar para a soberania nacional e para revides em nome do princípio da reciprocidade. Lula chegou a avisar que recorreria à Organização Mundial do Comércio, providência que teria a mesma força de um pedido de apoio ao arcebispo de Nova York. Nesta quinta-feira, declarou que “gringo não vai dar ordens” e, em pronunciamento em cadeia nacional de rádio e televisão, disse que “No Brasil, ninguém está acima da lei”.
Mas, na avaliação de parte dos empresários brasileiros, cutucar a onça com vara curta poderia levar ao pior. O País está na defensiva, tentando se apegar a alguma ajuda dos empresários norte-americanos prejudicados com a alta dos preços dos produtos exportados pelo Brasil. Nem a primeira carta enviada a Donald Trump, logo após o anúncio do tarifaço geral em abril, conseguiu resposta.
O presidente Trump parece ter eliminado a principal justificativa apresentada em sua carta do dia 11, quando alegou que o ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro estava sendo vítima de uma caça às bruxas. “Bolsonaro nem chega a ser amigo”, disse Trump. “É apenas conhecido.”
A verdade é que o Brasil começa a se dar conta de que não tem poder de barganha diante de Trump, e qualquer alegação pode servir de pretexto para algum ato econômico de força. Até mesmo o Pix é acusado como política desleal aos Estados Unidos – apenas porque as bandeiras de cartões de débito começam a perder função e se tornar inúteis.
A economia brasileira carrega mazelas, enquanto o governo segue se enganando com a ideia de que somos “um país tropical, abençoado por Deus!”
Outra seria a condição do Brasil para enfrentar trancos como esse se não houvesse o rombo fiscal e, em consequência dele, os juros não tivessem de ir para a lua, derrubando a competitividade do produto nacional. Ou se a indústria e boa parte do setor produtivo não carregassem os problemas que têm hoje com seu sistema imunológico debilitado porque vivem dopados pelo protecionismo, pelos subsídios, pelas isenções tributárias, pela criação de reservas de mercado, pela imposição de conteúdos locais e pela artificialidade da competitividade zero, como a da Zona Franca de Manaus.
Bem outra seria a situação do Brasil se seus governos tivessem tomado a iniciativa de fechar acordos comerciais com o resto do mundo, em vez de insistirem tanto no Mercosul, que, até agora, não conseguiu passar ao estágio inicial de integração: o de área de livre comércio.
Esta é uma situação grave que, pelo menos, pode ser aproveitada pelo governo como oportunidade para abandonar a distribuição de presentes de Papai Noel, levar a sério a saúde das contas públicas e realizar as reformas sempre anunciadas e nunca enfrentadas.

Russia is our Rorschach - Emmanuel Todd (Substack)

Emmanuel Todd ataca outra vez, acusando britânicos e franceses de Russofobia. Talvez ele sofra de Russomania, ou pior, Russofilia. PRA

Russia is our Rorschach

                 Emmanuel Todd

                Substack, July 20, 2025

Last April, I was interviewed by a Russian television channel about Western Russophobia and I had an epiphany. I more or less replied: "It's going to be unpleasant for you to hear this, but our Russophobia has nothing to do with you. It's a fantasy, a pathology of Western societies, an endogenous need of ours to imagine a Russian monster.”

As I was then in Moscow for the first time since 1993, I had experienced a shock of normality. My usual indicators - infant mortality, suicide and homicide - had shown me, without moving from Paris, that Russia had survived its crisis on the road out of communism. But such a normal Moscow was beyond anything I had imagined. And I had the intuition, on the spot, that Russophobia was a disease.

This intuition solves all sorts of questions. I had persisted, for example, in looking to history for the roots of British Russophobia, the most obstinate of all. The confrontation between the British and Russian empires in the nineteenth century seemed to justify such an approach. But then, in both world wars, Britain and Russia were allies, and they owed each other their survival in the second. So why so much hatred? The geopsychiatric hypothesis provides a solution. British society is the most russophobic, quite simply, because it is the sickest in Europe. As a major player and the first victim of ultraliberalism, the United Kingdom keeps producing dramatic symptoms: the collapse of its universities and hospitals, the malnutrition of its elderly, not to mention Liz Truss, the shortest and craziest of British prime ministers, a dazzling hallucination in the land of Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill. Who would have dared a collapse of tax revenues without the protection, not just of a national currency, but of an imperial one, the world's reserve currency? Trump is also messing about with his budget, but he is not threatening the dollar. For the time being.

In the space of a few days, Truss had dethroned Macron on the hit-parade of Western absurdities. I confess to expecting a lot from Friedrich Merz, whose anti-Russian warmongering potential threatens Germany with much more than a monetary collapse. The destruction of the Rhine bridges by oreshnik missiles perhaps? Despite French nuclear protection? In Europe, it's carnival every day.

France is going from bad to worse, with its blocked political system, its economic and social system on credit, its rising infant mortality rate. We're sinking. And there we have it: an extra russophobic upsurge. Macron, the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces and the head of the DGSE (some secret service of ours) have just started singing the ultimate russophobic song: France now is Russia's number 1 enemy. This is crazy: thanks to our military and industrial insignificance, France is the least of Russia's worries, as it is busy enough with its global confrontation with the United States.

This latest Macronian absurdity makes recourse to geopsychiatry indispensable. A diagnosis of erotomania is inevitable. Erotomania is that condition, usually but not exclusively feminine, which leads the subject to believe that they are universally desired, sexually, and threatened with penetration by, say, all the surrounding males. Russian penetration, then, threatens...

I must confess to being weary of Macron bashing (others are taking care of this, despite general journalistic servility). Fortunately for me, we had been prepared for the President's 14 July speech with brand new official madness: idiotic speeches by two of the regime's little soldiers, Thierry Burkhard (Chief of the Armed Forces Staff) and Nicolas Lerner (head of the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence services). I'm not a constitutionalist, and I can’t tell whether it augurs well for democracy that two of the managers of the State's monopoly on legitimate violence are spilling out over the airwaves, in a press conference (Burkhard) or in anguished ramblings on LCI TV channel (Lerner), to define France's foreign policy in advance.

The fact remains that the public and free expression of their Russophobia is a treasure trove for the geopsychiatrist. I get two essential elements about the state of mind of the French ruling class (these interventions were taken as normal by the majority of the political and journalistic world and therefore tell us about the whole group).

Let's listen to Burkhard first. I'm using the Figaro transcript with its obvious imperfections. I'm not touching anything. How does our Chief of Staff define Russia and Russians? "It's also because of its people's ability to endure, even if the situation is complicated. Here too, historically and culturally, this is a people that is capable of enduring things that seem completely unimaginable to us. This is an important aspect of resistance and the ability to support the State". Let me translate: Russian patriotism is unimaginable for our military. He's not talking about Russia, he's talking about himself and his kind. He doesn't know, they don't know, what patriotism is. Thanks to the Russian fantasy, we are discovering why France has lost its independence, why, integrated into NATO, it has become a proxy for the United States. Our leaders no longer love their country. For them, rearmament is not about France's security, it's about serving an empire in decomposition which, after throwing the Ukrainians and then the Israelis into the fray against the world of sovereign nations, is preparing to mobilise the Europeans to continue sowing havoc in Eurasia. France is far from the front line. If Germany is a Hezbollah, our mission as proxies will be to be the Empire's Houthis.

Let's move on to Nicolas Lerner on LCI. This man seems to be in great intellectual distress. Describing Russia as an existential threat to France... With its shrinking population, already too small for its 17 million square kilometres? Only a nervous wreck could believe that Putin wants to penetrate France. Russia from Vladivostok to Brest? The fact remains that, in his distress, Lerner is useful for understanding the mentality of the people who are leading us to the abyss. He sees Russia imperial where it is national, viscerally attached to its sovereignty. “New Russia”, between Odessa and the Donbass, is quite simply the Alsace-Lorraine of the Russians. Would we have described the France of 1914, ready to resist the German Empire and take back its lost provinces, as imperial? Burkhard does not understand patriotism, Lerner does not understand the nation.

An existential threat to France? Yes of course, they sense it, they are right, but they are mistaken in looking for it in Russia. It is within themselves that they should be looking. The existential threat is twofold. Threat no. 1: our elites no longer love their country. Threat no. 2: they put it at the service of a foreign power, the United States of America, without ever taking our national interests into account.

When they talk about Russia, French, British, German or Swedish leaders tell us who they are. Russophobia is a pathology, no doubt. But above and beyond, Russia has become a formidable projective test. Its image is similar to the plates of the Rorschach test. The subject describes to the psychiatrist what he sees in shapes that are both random and symmetrical. In so doing, he projects some deep, hidden elements of his or her personality. Russia is our Rorschach.

La société française à la veille de la Révolution, vue par Hippolyte Taine - Gérard Grunberg (Telos)

 Estaria o Brasil no limiar de uma revolução, como a grande Revolução Francesa de 1789, por exemplo? Este autor recupera um trecho do historiador francês do século XIX, Hippolyte Taine, que toca em alguns pontos válidos para a França atual e talvez para o Brasil de nossos dias.

La société française à la veille de la Révolution, vue par Hippolyte Taine

Gérard Grunberg

La bibliothèque de Telos

July 19, 2025

    "Au moment où la situation du pays exigerait que les Français fassent corps derrière leurs gouvernants pour sortir de la grave crise financière qui menace le pays en acceptant leur plan de réforme, ils ne semblent pouvoir s’unir que pour le rejeter, et, avec eux, ceux qui l’ont élaboré. Cette incapacité des Français à faire peuple n’est pas nouvelle. À la fin du XIXe siècle Hippolyte Taine l’analysait dans ce monument de l’histoire politique française que sont Les Origines de la France contemporaine, tâchant de comprendre les raisons qui ont mené le pays à la situation de 1789. Selon ce républicain conservateur cette incapacité venait de loin. Son analyse mérite d’être rappelée aujourd’hui."

"« Depuis longtemps, et par un travail insensible, l’administration de Richelieu et de Louis XIV a détruit les groupes naturels qui, après un effondrement soudain, se reforment d’eux-mêmes. Sauf en Vendée, je ne vois aucun endroit ni aucune classe où beaucoup d’hommes, puissent, à l’heure du danger, rallier autour d’eux pour faire corps. Il n’y a plus de patriotisme provincial ou municipal. Le bas clergé est hostile aux prélats, les gentilhommes de province à la noblesse de cour, le vassal au seigneur, le paysan au citadin, la population urbaine à l’oligarchie municipale, la corporation à la corporation, la paroisse à la paroisse, le voisin au voisin. Tous sont séparés par leurs privilèges, par leurs jalousies, par la conscience qu’ils ont d’être frustrés au profit d’autrui. […] “La nation, disait tristement Turgot, est une société composée de différents ordres mal unis et d’un peuple dont les membres n’ont entre eux que très peu de liens, et où, par conséquent, personne n’est occupé que de son intérêt particulier. Nulle part il n’y a d’intérêt commun visible.” […] Depuis cent-cinquante ans le pouvoir central a divisé pour régner. Il a tenu les hommes séparés, il les a empêchés de se concerter, il a si bien fait, qu’ils ne se connaissent plus, que chaque classe ignore l’autre classe, que chacune se fait de l’autre un portrait chimérique, chacune teignant l’autre des couleurs de son imagination, l’une composant une idylle, l’autre se forgeant un mélodrame, l’une imaginant les paysans comme des bergers sensibles, l’autre persuadé que les nobles sont d’affreux tyrans. Par cette méconnaissance mutuelle et par cet isolement séculaire, les Français ont perdu l’habitude, l’art et la faculté d’agir ensemble. Ils ne sont plus capables d’entente spontanée et d’action collective. Au moment du danger personne n’ose compter sur ses voisins ou sur ses pareils. Personne ne sait où tourner les yeux pour trouver un guide. “On n'aperçoit pas un homme qui puisse répondre pour le plus petit district ; et, bien plus, on n’en voit pas un qui puisse répondre d’un autre homme” (Tocqueville — paroles de Burke). La débandade est complète et sans remède. L’utopie des théoriciens s’est accomplie, l’état sauvage a recommencé. Il n’y a plus que des individus juxtaposés ; chaque homme retombe dans sa faiblesse originelle, et ses biens, sa vie sont à la merci de la première bande qui saura se former. Il ne reste en lui que l’habitude moutonnière d’être conduit, d’attendre l’impulsion, de regarder du côté du centre ordinaire, vers Paris, d’où sont toujours venus les ordres. […] C’est à cela qu’aboutit la centralisation monarchique. Elle a ôté aux groupes leur consistance et à l’individu son ressort. Reste une poussière humaine qui tourbillonne et qui, avec une force irrésistible, roulera tout entière en une seule masse, sous l’effort aveugle du vent ».