Mudar os professores ou mudar de professores
Artigo • Gustavo Ioschpe
Revista Veja, edição 2167 - 2 de junho de 2010
"A partir da década de 90, ocorreu um aumento substancial de salário nas regiões mais pobres do Brasil, mas não houve melhoria na qualidade do ensino"
Durante muito tempo, quando se falava dos problemas da educação no Brasil, havia uma resposta pronta e definitiva: é preciso aumentar o salário dos professores. Com salário baixo como seria o dos professores, não se poderiam exigir motivação e comprometimento. Nos anos recentes, essa teoria foi seriamente erodida por uma avalanche de fatos que mostram que o problema do professor brasileiro não é de motivação, mas de preparo, coisa que salário não muda.
Pesquisa da Unesco com amos-tra representativa dos nossos professores, publicada no livro O Perfil dos Professores Brasileiros, revela que apenas 12% se dizem insatisfeitos com a carreira. Quase a metade do total (48%), aliás, estava mais satisfeita no momento da pesquisa do que no início de sua carreira. Só 11% dos entrevistados gostariam de dedicar-se a outra profissão no futuro próximo. O segundo prego no caixão dos dinheiristas foi a própria experiência brasileira: a partir da década de 90, ocorreu um aumento substancial de salário nas regiões mais pobres do país através do Fundef, porém não houve melhoria na qualidade da educação. De fato, ela piorou: o Saeb, teste do MEC para aferir a qualidade do ensino básico, mostra que em 2007 estávamos pior do que em 1995. A experiência brasileira em nada difere daquilo que é observado no resto do mundo, aliás: há literalmente centenas de estudos medindo o impacto do salário dos professores sobre o aprendizado dos alunos, e a grande maioria não encontra relação significativa entre essas variáveis.
A inexistência da relação entre salário e aprendizagem, porém, não prejudicou os defensores da causa. Pelo contrário, agora eles vêm com hipótese ainda mais ambiciosa (e cara): os aumentos dados até hoje não surtiram efeito porque são mixurucas; para que deem o resultado esperado, precisam dobrar ou triplicar. Assim, a carreira de professor seria atraente e fisgaria estudantes que hoje pensam em ser médicos ou advogados. A lógica subjacente a essa visão é que os professores em exercício são tão despreparados e intelectualmente deficientes que não há muito que se possa esperar deles. Seria preciso fundar uma nova carreira, com novos candidatos, de outro gabarito. A bíblia dos proponentes dessa teoria é um estudo da consultoria McKinsey que mostra que nos sistemas educacionais de alta performance os professores recebem salário acima da média, tornando a carreira atraente para os melhores alunos.
Sou bastante cético em relação a essa lógica, por vários motivos. Em primeiro lugar, porque não há base empírica sólida. Consultoria não faz ciência; seus estudos não precisam passar pelo crivo da análise de árbitros-experts anônimos, como na publicação de artigos científicos. O estudo em questão sofre de um erro conceitual grave: não é possível determinar nenhuma relação de causa e efeito observando-se apenas aqueles que dão certo. É como se um antropólogo passasse dois anos estudando os hábitos dos 100 empresários mais exitosos do Brasil e concluísse que, para chegar lá, é preciso assistir a jogos de futebol aos domingos, pois a grande maioria dos empresários faz isso. O problema é que os peões das suas fábricas também o fazem, mas você só poderia descobrir que esse hábito é totalmente irrelevante se estudasse uma amostra aleatória de pessoas que representasse a totalidade da população. Quando isso é feito, nota-se que entre os países que mais gastam em educação, e que pagam os maiores salários aos professores, estão tanto países nórdicos de grande sucesso quan-to países da África Subsaariana que têm os piores índices de aprendizagem. Meu segundo problema com essa ideia é histórico: as grandes conquistas da humanidade, desde a existência da capacidade de linguagem até a criação da democracia, se deram através de processos evolutivos, e não revolucionários. São pouquíssimas as revoluções que deixaram saldo mais positivo. Em educação, não é diferente: os países que deram grandes saltos educacionais fizeram o feijão com arroz, de maneira tenaz, obstinada e contínua.
O terceiro obstáculo a essa ideia é conceitual: assim como não acredito que haja alunos que não podem aprender, não creio que haja professores que não podem ensinar. É claro que as pessoas têm habilidades diferentes e que a genética apresenta algumas barreiras intransponíveis, de modo que nem todo aluno ou professor pode ser um Einstein em sua área. Mas fazer o básico, transmitindo conhecimentos de forma eficiente e sistemática, desenvolvendo a capacidade de raciocínio e a curiosidade de seus alunos, está ao alcance de todo professor bem-intencionado. Basta que ele obtenha o preparo necessário.
Por fim, uma duplicação ou triplicação do salário dos professores brasileiros é simplesmente inexequível, dada a realidade fiscal brasileira. Hoje, segundo os dados mais recentes da OCDE, o Brasil gasta praticamente 70% de seu orçamento educacional apenas com a folha salarial. O artigo 212 da Constituição estipula que estados e municípios precisam gastar pelo menos 25% de sua receita com educação. Ora, 70% de 25% é 17,5%. Dobrar o salário de professores implicaria destinar 35% de toda a arrecadação de estados e municípios somente ao pagamento desses funcionários. Triplicar seus salários significaria consumir 52,5% de todo o orçamento. Não vejo como seria possível fazer isso sem quebrar as finanças do país ou solapar totalmente a oferta de outros serviços indispensáveis, como saúde, segurança, transporte.
Se essa fosse apenas uma questão acadêmica, seria só um desperdício de tempo. Mas não é: 3,5 milhões de alunos estão cursando a 1ª série atualmente; perder mais um ano em discussões estéreis significa forçar todo esse contingente a carregar para o resto da vida as marcas de uma educação deficiente.
Centenas de estudos, feitos ao longo de décadas, indicam que existem muitos caminhos baratos ou gratuitos para melhorar a aprendizagem das nossas crianças: a prescrição e correção de dever de casa, a utilização de testes constantes para medir a aprendizagem e corrigir erros, o uso de bons livros didáticos, o conhecimento aprofundado do professor sobre a matéria que ensina, a abolição de tarefas mecânicas, como a cópia de material do quadro-negro, propiciando utilização eficiente do tempo de sala de aula, e tantos outros. A existência dessas alternativas nos impõe a obrigação de tentá-las, antes de partir para soluções caras e incertas.
É uma discussão que me lembra uma passagem do escritor Amós Oz. Conta ele que sua avó sempre lhe dizia: "Não sei por que houve tantos séculos de brigas e perseguições entre judeus e cristãos. Nossa única diferença é que uns acreditam que o Messias já veio à Terra e os outros acreditam que ainda virá. Então basta apenas esperar que o Messias chegue para perguntar-lhe: você está vindo pela primeira vez ou pela segunda? Até lá, vivamos em paz". Poderíamos sugerir a mesma trégua para a discussão educacional: vamos começar com as soluções baratas e simples. Se elas não funcionarem, e somente se elas não funcionarem, é que passaremos a considerar as propostas mirabolantes e caras.
domingo, 30 de maio de 2010
Politica Nuclear do Iran (12): o que era acordo virou "porta de entrada"
Pronto, acho que é final de uma discussão semântica (aliás, besta, se me permitem os participantes do triálogo) em torno do suposto acordo em torno do programa nuclear iraniano.
Muitos, a começar por pessoas responsáveis, defenderam o "acordo" dizendo que ele representava a paz, a vitória da diplomacia, o bloqueio a novas sanções, até mesmo a "desnecessidade" da guerra, seja lá o que isso queira dizer.
Bem, agora parece que o famoso acordo virou apenas uma "porta de entrada" para um possível entendimento.
Bem, não precisaríamos estar assistindo a toda essa patética discussão com subs de subs se os países mantivessem um tratamento objetivo da questão.
Para os que não acompanham o noticiário, ver o despacho da correspondente do Estadão em Washington, Patrícia Campos Mello, "Desmentido dos EUA irrita Itamaraty" (30.05.2010) neste link.
Muitos, a começar por pessoas responsáveis, defenderam o "acordo" dizendo que ele representava a paz, a vitória da diplomacia, o bloqueio a novas sanções, até mesmo a "desnecessidade" da guerra, seja lá o que isso queira dizer.
Bem, agora parece que o famoso acordo virou apenas uma "porta de entrada" para um possível entendimento.
Bem, não precisaríamos estar assistindo a toda essa patética discussão com subs de subs se os países mantivessem um tratamento objetivo da questão.
Para os que não acompanham o noticiário, ver o despacho da correspondente do Estadão em Washington, Patrícia Campos Mello, "Desmentido dos EUA irrita Itamaraty" (30.05.2010) neste link.
Sorry, nao deu para mascar tudo; nao sei o que fizeram com o resto...
Parece que os bolivianos não estão conseguindo mascar todas as folhas de coca que estão sendo produzidas com finalidades puramente domésticas, curativas, alimentares, religiosas, whatever, segundo o governo do vizinho país.
Parece que vão criar um programa para mascar mais rápido, ou introduzir a coca na merenda escolar.
Em todo caso, o governo não sabe o que estão fazendo com o excedente. Acho que a Polícia Federal do Brasil sabe. Curioso é que parece um ataque à dignidade e à soberania da Bolívia dizer que esse excedente está vindo para o Brasil...
PF avaliza visão de Serra sobre Bolívia
Itamaraty enviou relatório à Câmara que revela crescimento na produção de cocaína sob a gestão de Morales
JOSIAS DE SOUZA
DE BRASÍLIA
Folha de S.Paulo, 30.05.2010
Aumento é resultado de política que combate o tráfico, mas valoriza a produção da folha de coca, afirma ministério
Documentos oficiais produzidos pelo governo durante a gestão do presidente Lula reforçam a acusação de José Serra (PSDB) contra o governo da Bolívia.
O pré-candidato acusou o governo boliviano, na última quarta-feira, de ser "cúmplice" dos traficantes que enviam cocaína para o Brasil. Em reação, a rival petista Dilma Rousseff disse que Serra "demoniza" a Bolívia.
Dados colecionados pelo governo, porém, avalizam a versão do tucano.
Sob condição de anonimato, uma autoridade da Divisão de Controle de Produtos Químicos da Polícia Federal falou à Folha que, segundo relatórios oficiais da PF, 80% da cocaína distribuída no país vem da Bolívia -a maior parte na forma de "pasta". O refino é feito no Brasil.
Para a PF, a evolução do tráfico revela que há "leniência" do país vizinho. Serra usara uma expressão análoga: "corpo mole".
A PF atribui o fenômeno a aspectos culturais, pois o cultivo da folha de coca é legal na Bolívia. O produto é usado de rituais indígenas à produção de medicamentos. Seu excedente abastece o tráfico.
ITAMARATY
Num documento endereçado à Comissão de Relações Exteriores da Câmara, em 2007, o Itamaraty disse que, "entre 2005 e 2006, a área de produção de folha de coca na Bolívia cresceu de 24.400 para 27.500 hectares".
Também informa que, sob o governo de Evo Morales, adotou-se tanto uma política de combate ao narcotráfico quanto de "valorização" da folha de coca.
Segundo o Itamaraty, uma delegação de brasileiros e chilenos foi à Bolívia, em junho de 2007, para reunião com autoridades locais. "Sem resultado", diz o texto.
Sob Lula, realizou-se um esforço para reativar, sem sucesso, as comissões mistas antidrogas Brasil-Bolívia.
Em setembro de 2008, o Itamaraty enviou à Câmara uma atualização do relatório assinado pelo chanceler Celso Amorim. No tópico sobre drogas, ele afirma que a ONU "divulgou relatório que indica aumento na produção de coca na Bolívia pelo quinto ano consecutivo".
Em outubro de 2008, Morales expulsou da Bolívia cerca de 20 agentes do departamento antidrogas dos EUA que ajudavam no combate ao tráfico. O pretexto foi a acusação de que a DEA (agência americana antidrogas) realizava espionagem.
A Bolívia firmaria, dois meses depois, um acordo com o Brasil, segundo o qual a PF passaria a atuar na Bolívia no combate ao tráfico de cocaína e armas. Diz a PF que o acordo esbarra até hoje em entraves financeiros. La Paz deseja que Brasília arque com os custos.
=================
Para os que não acompanharam o início da polêmica, eis o que os governistas falaram do candidato José Serra em relação às suas declarações sobre a Bolívia:
Para Dilma, fala de Serra "demoniza" a Bolívia
Tucano reage, defende ação para frear contrabando e critica "trololó"
GRACILIANO ROCHA
ENVIADO ESPECIAL A GRAMADO (RS)
Folha de S.Paulo28 de maio de 2010
Petista diz que tucano foi "atabalhoado'; Serra afirma que preocupação com as drogas não pode ficar apenas no discurso
A pré-candidata do PT à Presidência, Dilma Rousseff, acusou o rival José Serra (PSDB) de "demonizar" a Bolívia e agir de "forma atabalhoada" ao acusar o governo do país de ser "cúmplice" do tráfico de cocaína para o Brasil.
Pouco depois, Serra voltou a defender que a diplomacia brasileira pressione o governo Evo Morales a coibir o narcotráfico e insinuou que a preocupação da petista com o crack é só discurso para "comover pessoas" na TV.
A troca de farpas ocorreu em Gramado (115 km de Porto Alegre), onde os dois discursaram no Congresso Brasileiro de Secretarias Municipais de Saúde. Quando Serra chegou, Dilma já havia deixado o evento uma hora antes.
"Não é possível, de forma atabalhoada, a gente sair dizendo que um governo é isso ou aquilo. Não se faz isso em relações internacionais. Não é papel de estadista ou de quem quer ser um estadista", disse Dilma em entrevista.
A petista disse que Evo representou um avanço político por trazer estabilidade política à Bolívia, defendeu a política externa brasileira e fez críticas veladas às declarações de Serra sobre o vizinho, feitas anteontem, mas sem citá-lo nominalmente.
"Não podemos desprezar nossos vizinhos e olhar com soberba para países diferentes de nós. Essa é a política imperialista que leva à guerra, leva ao conflito, leva ao desprezo", afirmou Dilma.
TROLOLÓ
Questionado, Serra declarou não ter pedido "nenhuma intervenção" na Bolívia, e sim ação do país para reprimir o tráfico. "Essa preocupação [com as drogas] não pode ser só de discurso, de programa de televisão para comover as pessoas", disse.
"A maior parte da cocaína que entra no Brasil vem da Bolívia. Vocês já ouviram falar de algum controle do governo boliviano sobre esse contrabando?", questionou.
A referência foi ao comercial de TV do PT, estrelado por Dilma prometendo combater o crack. "É importante ter ação diplomática forte e pública para frear esse contrabando [de cocaína]. Do contrário, é trololó", disse.
Parece que vão criar um programa para mascar mais rápido, ou introduzir a coca na merenda escolar.
Em todo caso, o governo não sabe o que estão fazendo com o excedente. Acho que a Polícia Federal do Brasil sabe. Curioso é que parece um ataque à dignidade e à soberania da Bolívia dizer que esse excedente está vindo para o Brasil...
PF avaliza visão de Serra sobre Bolívia
Itamaraty enviou relatório à Câmara que revela crescimento na produção de cocaína sob a gestão de Morales
JOSIAS DE SOUZA
DE BRASÍLIA
Folha de S.Paulo, 30.05.2010
Aumento é resultado de política que combate o tráfico, mas valoriza a produção da folha de coca, afirma ministério
Documentos oficiais produzidos pelo governo durante a gestão do presidente Lula reforçam a acusação de José Serra (PSDB) contra o governo da Bolívia.
O pré-candidato acusou o governo boliviano, na última quarta-feira, de ser "cúmplice" dos traficantes que enviam cocaína para o Brasil. Em reação, a rival petista Dilma Rousseff disse que Serra "demoniza" a Bolívia.
Dados colecionados pelo governo, porém, avalizam a versão do tucano.
Sob condição de anonimato, uma autoridade da Divisão de Controle de Produtos Químicos da Polícia Federal falou à Folha que, segundo relatórios oficiais da PF, 80% da cocaína distribuída no país vem da Bolívia -a maior parte na forma de "pasta". O refino é feito no Brasil.
Para a PF, a evolução do tráfico revela que há "leniência" do país vizinho. Serra usara uma expressão análoga: "corpo mole".
A PF atribui o fenômeno a aspectos culturais, pois o cultivo da folha de coca é legal na Bolívia. O produto é usado de rituais indígenas à produção de medicamentos. Seu excedente abastece o tráfico.
ITAMARATY
Num documento endereçado à Comissão de Relações Exteriores da Câmara, em 2007, o Itamaraty disse que, "entre 2005 e 2006, a área de produção de folha de coca na Bolívia cresceu de 24.400 para 27.500 hectares".
Também informa que, sob o governo de Evo Morales, adotou-se tanto uma política de combate ao narcotráfico quanto de "valorização" da folha de coca.
Segundo o Itamaraty, uma delegação de brasileiros e chilenos foi à Bolívia, em junho de 2007, para reunião com autoridades locais. "Sem resultado", diz o texto.
Sob Lula, realizou-se um esforço para reativar, sem sucesso, as comissões mistas antidrogas Brasil-Bolívia.
Em setembro de 2008, o Itamaraty enviou à Câmara uma atualização do relatório assinado pelo chanceler Celso Amorim. No tópico sobre drogas, ele afirma que a ONU "divulgou relatório que indica aumento na produção de coca na Bolívia pelo quinto ano consecutivo".
Em outubro de 2008, Morales expulsou da Bolívia cerca de 20 agentes do departamento antidrogas dos EUA que ajudavam no combate ao tráfico. O pretexto foi a acusação de que a DEA (agência americana antidrogas) realizava espionagem.
A Bolívia firmaria, dois meses depois, um acordo com o Brasil, segundo o qual a PF passaria a atuar na Bolívia no combate ao tráfico de cocaína e armas. Diz a PF que o acordo esbarra até hoje em entraves financeiros. La Paz deseja que Brasília arque com os custos.
=================
Para os que não acompanharam o início da polêmica, eis o que os governistas falaram do candidato José Serra em relação às suas declarações sobre a Bolívia:
Para Dilma, fala de Serra "demoniza" a Bolívia
Tucano reage, defende ação para frear contrabando e critica "trololó"
GRACILIANO ROCHA
ENVIADO ESPECIAL A GRAMADO (RS)
Folha de S.Paulo28 de maio de 2010
Petista diz que tucano foi "atabalhoado'; Serra afirma que preocupação com as drogas não pode ficar apenas no discurso
A pré-candidata do PT à Presidência, Dilma Rousseff, acusou o rival José Serra (PSDB) de "demonizar" a Bolívia e agir de "forma atabalhoada" ao acusar o governo do país de ser "cúmplice" do tráfico de cocaína para o Brasil.
Pouco depois, Serra voltou a defender que a diplomacia brasileira pressione o governo Evo Morales a coibir o narcotráfico e insinuou que a preocupação da petista com o crack é só discurso para "comover pessoas" na TV.
A troca de farpas ocorreu em Gramado (115 km de Porto Alegre), onde os dois discursaram no Congresso Brasileiro de Secretarias Municipais de Saúde. Quando Serra chegou, Dilma já havia deixado o evento uma hora antes.
"Não é possível, de forma atabalhoada, a gente sair dizendo que um governo é isso ou aquilo. Não se faz isso em relações internacionais. Não é papel de estadista ou de quem quer ser um estadista", disse Dilma em entrevista.
A petista disse que Evo representou um avanço político por trazer estabilidade política à Bolívia, defendeu a política externa brasileira e fez críticas veladas às declarações de Serra sobre o vizinho, feitas anteontem, mas sem citá-lo nominalmente.
"Não podemos desprezar nossos vizinhos e olhar com soberba para países diferentes de nós. Essa é a política imperialista que leva à guerra, leva ao conflito, leva ao desprezo", afirmou Dilma.
TROLOLÓ
Questionado, Serra declarou não ter pedido "nenhuma intervenção" na Bolívia, e sim ação do país para reprimir o tráfico. "Essa preocupação [com as drogas] não pode ser só de discurso, de programa de televisão para comover as pessoas", disse.
"A maior parte da cocaína que entra no Brasil vem da Bolívia. Vocês já ouviram falar de algum controle do governo boliviano sobre esse contrabando?", questionou.
A referência foi ao comercial de TV do PT, estrelado por Dilma prometendo combater o crack. "É importante ter ação diplomática forte e pública para frear esse contrabando [de cocaína]. Do contrário, é trololó", disse.
Banqueiros centrais e construcao europeia: coloquio
Sou assinante de uma lista de difusão em História Política do século XX e acabo de receber um convite para um colóquio a que gostaria de comparecer, mas que não terei condições de ir. Em todo caso,fica o registro, para os nomes e temas.
Por acaso estou lendo o livro de Liaquat Ahamed (que deveria ter sido convidado para falar sobre o período de entre-guerras), Lords of Finance, sobre os banqueiros centrais dos EUA (Benjamin Strong), da Grã-Bretanha (Montagu Norman), da Alemanha (Hjalmar Schacht) e da França (Émile Moreau) na fase mais crucial da expansão do capitalismo na era moderna, entre a belle époque e a débâcle de 1929 e a crise dos anos 1930. Recomendo o livro, que já deve ter sido traduzido e está sendo publicado no Brasil.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
COLLOQUE
Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne
Sanem (Gand Duché du Luxembourg)
4 juin 2010
La journée d’études « Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne » se propose d’étudier les banquiers centraux et les banques centrales telles qu’ils s’insèrent dans et exercent une influence sur les institutions européennes. Tout au long du XXe siècle, les Européens ont voulu retrouver la stabilité monétaire mythique du XIXe siècle. De cette recherche, les banquiers centraux ont tiré un statut et un rôle nouveaux, plus important, alors que l’Europe, finissant par s’organiser, a mis très progressivement en marche une union monétaire. Il est aujourd’hui utile de s’interroger sur ces banquiers centraux et sur leur rôle dans l’intégration européenne. Quelle est leur influence sur la mise en place de l’Euro ?
En abordant cette problématique, cette journée d’étude tâchera de répondre à certaines questions : comment les gouvernements choisissent-ils ou révoquent-ils un gouverneur ? La violence des débats sur la nomination du premier gouverneur de la Banque centrale européenne, qui a donné lieu à une solution hybride Wim Duisenberg, a dû promettre qu’il laisserait la place à Jean-Claude Trichet en cours de mandat montre l’enjeu que représente la désignation d’un gouverneur. Existe-t-il une « idéologie » des banquiers centraux ? Existe-t-il des valeurs communes aux banquiers centraux ou les divergences sont-elles plus importantes que les convergences ? Quelles sont les évolutions depuis 1919 ?
Il s’agit ainsi de savoir dans quelle mesure l’exercice du « métier » de banquier central forge une culture commune, malgré les différences nationales, dans le cadre d’un espace économique européen en construction permanente au cours du XXe siècle. Cet espace exerce une influence sur les banquiers centraux et les banques centrales. Cette influence est cependant croisée : les banquiers centraux agissent en retour sur l’émergence de cet espace et la manière dont est abordée la problématique monétaire.
Les banques centrales et les banquiers centraux seront analysés en tant que réseau en relation avec les grandes problématiques européennes. Existe-t-il une identité « monétaire » européenne ? L’Europe doit-elle être organisée ou libérale ? De nouvelles institutions doivent-elles être créées ou doit-on d’abord attendre une plus grande harmonisation des économies ? In fine, cette journée d’étude devra se pencher sur une dernière question : pourquoi l’euro ? Une monnaie unique n’était en aucun cas la seule possibilité. Depuis 1919, les Européens ont cherché la stabilité monétaire. Pour l’atteindre, ils auraient aussi pu choisir la coopération financière entre État ou le fonctionnement libre des mécanismes du marché des changes. Au début des années 1990, Barry Eichengreen pensait que l’euro était le résultat politique de la mise en place du marché unique prévu par l’Acte unique : une instabilité monétaire aurait pu susciter un mécontentement contre les institutions européennes. Les banquiers centraux étaient-ils en accord avec ce constat ?
Accueil (10h) - Marianne Backes (CVCE)
Introduction (10h15-10h45) - Olivier Feiertag (Université de Rouen) et Frédéric Clavert (CVCE)
Les banquiers centraux dans l’entre-deux-guerres / Central bankers in the interwar period (11h-12h30) -
Présidence et discussion : Piet Clement (BRI / BIS)
Frédéric Clavert (CVCE) – La fondation de la Banque des règlements internationaux / The creation of the Bank for international Settlements
Ileana Racianu (Université de Genève) – Le Gouverneur Burillianu et la prolongation de la mission de la Banque de France : l’indépendance de la Banque Nationale de Roumanie en question / The Governor Burillianu and the prolongation of the Banque de France’s mission: the independence of Roumania’s national bank in question
Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne depuis 1945 / Central bankers and the European integration since 1945 - Première partie
Présidence et discussion : Laurence Badel (Université de Strasbourg) (14h-15h45)
Elena Danescu (CVCE) – Le comité Werner : nouvelles archives / The Werner committe : new documents
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol (Institut Universitaire Européen) – Les banquiers centraux de l'échec du plan Werner à la création du SME (1974-1979) / Central bankers from the Werner Plan failure to the creation of the EMS (1974-1979)
Vincent Duchaussoy (Mission historique de la Banque de France) – La Banque de France et la contrainte européenne en France (1979-1983) / The Banque de France and the European constraint in France (1979-1983)
Seconde partie - Présidence et discussion : Olivier Feiertag (Université de Rouen) (16h00-17h30)
Hanspeter K. Scheller (Anciennement de la Banque centrale européenne) - Le Comité des Gouverneurs et l'unification monétaire européenne/The Committee of Governors and European monetary unification
Robert Raymond (Ancien directeur général de l’Institut monétaire européen)
Sanem (Gand Duché du Luxembourg) (Château de Sanem, L-4992)
Frédéric Clavert (email)
Château de Sanem
L-4992 Sanem
Por acaso estou lendo o livro de Liaquat Ahamed (que deveria ter sido convidado para falar sobre o período de entre-guerras), Lords of Finance, sobre os banqueiros centrais dos EUA (Benjamin Strong), da Grã-Bretanha (Montagu Norman), da Alemanha (Hjalmar Schacht) e da França (Émile Moreau) na fase mais crucial da expansão do capitalismo na era moderna, entre a belle époque e a débâcle de 1929 e a crise dos anos 1930. Recomendo o livro, que já deve ter sido traduzido e está sendo publicado no Brasil.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
COLLOQUE
Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne
Sanem (Gand Duché du Luxembourg)
4 juin 2010
La journée d’études « Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne » se propose d’étudier les banquiers centraux et les banques centrales telles qu’ils s’insèrent dans et exercent une influence sur les institutions européennes. Tout au long du XXe siècle, les Européens ont voulu retrouver la stabilité monétaire mythique du XIXe siècle. De cette recherche, les banquiers centraux ont tiré un statut et un rôle nouveaux, plus important, alors que l’Europe, finissant par s’organiser, a mis très progressivement en marche une union monétaire. Il est aujourd’hui utile de s’interroger sur ces banquiers centraux et sur leur rôle dans l’intégration européenne. Quelle est leur influence sur la mise en place de l’Euro ?
En abordant cette problématique, cette journée d’étude tâchera de répondre à certaines questions : comment les gouvernements choisissent-ils ou révoquent-ils un gouverneur ? La violence des débats sur la nomination du premier gouverneur de la Banque centrale européenne, qui a donné lieu à une solution hybride Wim Duisenberg, a dû promettre qu’il laisserait la place à Jean-Claude Trichet en cours de mandat montre l’enjeu que représente la désignation d’un gouverneur. Existe-t-il une « idéologie » des banquiers centraux ? Existe-t-il des valeurs communes aux banquiers centraux ou les divergences sont-elles plus importantes que les convergences ? Quelles sont les évolutions depuis 1919 ?
Il s’agit ainsi de savoir dans quelle mesure l’exercice du « métier » de banquier central forge une culture commune, malgré les différences nationales, dans le cadre d’un espace économique européen en construction permanente au cours du XXe siècle. Cet espace exerce une influence sur les banquiers centraux et les banques centrales. Cette influence est cependant croisée : les banquiers centraux agissent en retour sur l’émergence de cet espace et la manière dont est abordée la problématique monétaire.
Les banques centrales et les banquiers centraux seront analysés en tant que réseau en relation avec les grandes problématiques européennes. Existe-t-il une identité « monétaire » européenne ? L’Europe doit-elle être organisée ou libérale ? De nouvelles institutions doivent-elles être créées ou doit-on d’abord attendre une plus grande harmonisation des économies ? In fine, cette journée d’étude devra se pencher sur une dernière question : pourquoi l’euro ? Une monnaie unique n’était en aucun cas la seule possibilité. Depuis 1919, les Européens ont cherché la stabilité monétaire. Pour l’atteindre, ils auraient aussi pu choisir la coopération financière entre État ou le fonctionnement libre des mécanismes du marché des changes. Au début des années 1990, Barry Eichengreen pensait que l’euro était le résultat politique de la mise en place du marché unique prévu par l’Acte unique : une instabilité monétaire aurait pu susciter un mécontentement contre les institutions européennes. Les banquiers centraux étaient-ils en accord avec ce constat ?
Accueil (10h) - Marianne Backes (CVCE)
Introduction (10h15-10h45) - Olivier Feiertag (Université de Rouen) et Frédéric Clavert (CVCE)
Les banquiers centraux dans l’entre-deux-guerres / Central bankers in the interwar period (11h-12h30) -
Présidence et discussion : Piet Clement (BRI / BIS)
Frédéric Clavert (CVCE) – La fondation de la Banque des règlements internationaux / The creation of the Bank for international Settlements
Ileana Racianu (Université de Genève) – Le Gouverneur Burillianu et la prolongation de la mission de la Banque de France : l’indépendance de la Banque Nationale de Roumanie en question / The Governor Burillianu and the prolongation of the Banque de France’s mission: the independence of Roumania’s national bank in question
Les banquiers centraux dans la construction européenne depuis 1945 / Central bankers and the European integration since 1945 - Première partie
Présidence et discussion : Laurence Badel (Université de Strasbourg) (14h-15h45)
Elena Danescu (CVCE) – Le comité Werner : nouvelles archives / The Werner committe : new documents
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol (Institut Universitaire Européen) – Les banquiers centraux de l'échec du plan Werner à la création du SME (1974-1979) / Central bankers from the Werner Plan failure to the creation of the EMS (1974-1979)
Vincent Duchaussoy (Mission historique de la Banque de France) – La Banque de France et la contrainte européenne en France (1979-1983) / The Banque de France and the European constraint in France (1979-1983)
Seconde partie - Présidence et discussion : Olivier Feiertag (Université de Rouen) (16h00-17h30)
Hanspeter K. Scheller (Anciennement de la Banque centrale européenne) - Le Comité des Gouverneurs et l'unification monétaire européenne/The Committee of Governors and European monetary unification
Robert Raymond (Ancien directeur général de l’Institut monétaire européen)
Sanem (Gand Duché du Luxembourg) (Château de Sanem, L-4992)
Frédéric Clavert (email)
Château de Sanem
L-4992 Sanem
Arquivos do final da era sovietica podem mudar a historia
Existem concepções muito otimistas sobre o final da era soviética, em grande parte entretidas pelos próprios ocidentais, que constroem uma história basicamente leniente em relação a Mikhail Gorbatchev e seus assessores, em fases cruciais da Perestrojka e da fase agônica da finada União Soviética. As revelações de arquivos copiados sem autorização podem mudar a interprestação que se tem sobre o papel "democrático" de Gorbatchev, bem como sobre o modo de funcionamento do Partido Comunista.
Um reparo em relação ao que diz Claire Berlinski, neste seu artigo do City Journal: os diários de Anatoly Chernyaev, um dos mais importantes assessores de Gorbatchev, já foram traduzidos e estão sendoi publicados no quadro do projeto Cold War History, do Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Eu mesmo já publiquei um artigo referindo-me a estas fontes, que são importantes. Os dados desse artigo vão referidos ao final, para não atrapalhar a leitura deste importante artigo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
A Hidden History of Evil
Claire Berlinski
City Journal, vol. 20. n. 2, Spring 2010
Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives?
Though Mikhail Gorbachev is lionized in the West, the untranslated archives suggest a much darker figure.
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.
Then there’s Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who once spent 12 years in the USSR’s prisons, labor camps, and psikhushkas—political psychiatric hospitals—after being convicted of copying anti-Soviet literature. He, too, possesses a massive collection of stolen and smuggled papers from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which, as he writes, “contain the beginnings and the ends of all the tragedies of our bloodstained century.” These documents are available online at bukovsky-archives.net, but most are not translated. They are unorganized; there are no summaries; there is no search or index function. “I offer them free of charge to the most influential newspapers and journals in the world, but nobody wants to print them,” Bukovsky writes. “Editors shrug indifferently: So what? Who cares?”
The originals of most of Stroilov’s documents remain in the Kremlin archives, where, like most of the Soviet Union’s top-secret documents from the post-Stalin era, they remain classified. They include, Stroilov says, transcripts of nearly every conversation between Gorbachev and his foreign counterparts—hundreds of them, a near-complete diplomatic record of the era, available nowhere else. There are notes from the Politburo taken by Georgy Shakhnazarov, an aide of Gorbachev’s, and by Politburo member Vadim Medvedev. There is the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev—Gorbachev’s principal aide and deputy chief of the body formerly known as the Comintern—which dates from 1972 to the collapse of the regime. There are reports, dating from the 1960s, by Vadim Zagladin, deputy chief of the Central Committee’s International Department until 1987 and then Gorbachev’s advisor until 1991. Zagladin was both envoy and spy, charged with gathering secrets, spreading disinformation, and advancing Soviet influence.
When Gorbachev and his aides were ousted from the Kremlin, they took unauthorized copies of these documents with them. The documents were scanned and stored in the archives of the Gorbachev Foundation, one of the first independent think tanks in modern Russia, where a handful of friendly and vetted researchers were given limited access to them. Then, in 1999, the foundation opened a small part of the archive to independent researchers, including Stroilov. The key parts of the collection remained restricted; documents could be copied only with the written permission of the author, and Gorbachev refused to authorize any copies whatsoever. But there was a flaw in the foundation’s security, Stroilov explained to me. When things went wrong with the computers, as often they did, he was able to watch the network administrator typing the password that gave access to the foundation’s network. Slowly and secretly, Stroilov copied the archive and sent it to secure locations around the world.
When I first heard about Stroilov’s documents, I wondered if they were forgeries. But in 2006, having assessed the documents with the cooperation of prominent Soviet dissidents and Cold War spies, British judges concluded that Stroilov was credible and granted his asylum request. The Gorbachev Foundation itself has since acknowledged the documents’ authenticity.
Bukovsky’s story is similar. In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin’s government invited him to testify at the Constitutional Court of Russia in a case concerning the constitutionality of the Communist Party. The Russian State Archives granted Bukovsky access to its documents to prepare his testimony. Using a handheld scanner, he copied thousands of documents and smuggled them to the West.
The Russian state cannot sue Stroilov or Bukovsky for breach of copyright, since the material was created by the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, neither of which now exists. Had he remained in Russia, however, Stroilov believes that he could have been prosecuted for disclosure of state secrets or treason. The military historian Igor Sutyagin is now serving 15 years in a hard-labor camp for the crime of collecting newspaper clippings and other open-source materials and sending them to a British consulting firm. The danger that Stroilov and Bukovsky faced was real and grave; they both assumed, one imagines, that the world would take notice of what they had risked so much to acquire.
Stroilov claims that his documents “tell a completely new story about the end of the Cold War. The ‘commonly accepted’ version of history of that period consists of myths almost entirely. These documents are capable of ruining each of those myths.” Is this so? I couldn’t say. I don’t read Russian. Of Stroilov’s documents, I have seen only the few that have been translated into English. Certainly, they shouldn’t be taken at face value; they were, after all, written by Communists. But the possibility that Stroilov is right should surely compel keen curiosity.
For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:
Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.
Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?
And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.
Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:
H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .
M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .
H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.
M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!
H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.
One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.
There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
According to Zagladin’s reports, for example, Kenneth Coates, who from 1989 to 1998 was a British member of the European Parliament, approached Zagladin on January 9, 1990, to discuss what amounted to a gradual merger of the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Coates, says Zagladin, explained that “creating an infrastructure of cooperation between the two parliament[s] would help . . . to isolate the rightists in the European Parliament (and in Europe), those who are interested in the USSR’s collapse.” Coates served as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights from 1992 to 1994. How did it come to pass that Europe was taking advice about human rights from a man who had apparently wished to “isolate” those interested in the USSR’s collapse and sought to extend Soviet influence in Europe?
Or consider a report on Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, who led Spain’s integration into the European Community as its foreign minister. On March 3, 1989, according to these documents, he explained to Gorbachev that “the success of perestroika means only one thing—the success of the socialist revolution in contemporary conditions. And that is exactly what the reactionaries don’t accept.” Eighteen months later, Ordóñez told Gorbachev: “I feel intellectual disgust when I have to read, for example, passages in the documents of ‘G7’ where the problems of democracy, freedom of human personality and ideology of market economy are set on the same level. As a socialist, I cannot accept such an equation.” Perhaps most shockingly, the Eastern European press has reported that Stroilov’s documents suggest that François Mitterrand was maneuvering with Gorbachev to ensure that Germany would unite as a neutral, socialist entity under a Franco-Soviet condominium.
Zagladin’s records also note that the former leader of the British Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, approached Gorbachev—unauthorized, while Kinnock was leader of the opposition—through a secret envoy to discuss the possibility of halting the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear-missile program. The minutes of the meeting between Gorbachev and the envoy, MP Stuart Holland, read as follows:
In [Holland’s] opinion, Soviet Union should be very interested in liquidation of “Tridents” because, apart from other things, the West—meaning the US, Britain and France—would have a serious advantage over the Soviet Union after the completion of START treaty. That advantage will need to be eliminated. . . . At the same time Holland noted that, of course, we can seriously think about realisation of that idea only if the Labour comes to power. He said Thatcher . . . would never agree to any reduction of nuclear armaments.
Kinnock was vice president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, and his wife, Glenys, is now Britain’s minister for Europe. Gerard Batten, a member of the UK Independence Party, has noted the significance of the episode. “If the report given to Mr. Gorbachev is true, it means that Lord Kinnock approached one of Britain’s enemies in order to seek approval regarding his party’s defense policy and, had he been elected, Britain’s defense policy,” Batten said to the European Parliament in 2009. “If this report is true, then Lord Kinnock would be guilty of treason.”
Similarly, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who is now the European Union’s foreign minister, was treasurer of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1980 to 1982. The papers offer evidence that this organization received “unidentified income” from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Stroilov’s papers suggest as well that the government of the current Spanish EU commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Joaquín Almunia, enthusiastically supported the Soviet project of gradually unifying Germany and Europe into a socialist “common European home” and strongly opposed the independence of the Baltic states and then of Ukraine.
Perhaps it doesn’t surprise you to read that prominent European politicians held these views. But why doesn’t it? It is impossible to imagine that figures who had enjoyed such close ties to the Nazi Party—or, for that matter, to the Ku Klux Klan or to South Africa’s apartheid regime—would enjoy top positions in Europe today. The rules are different, apparently, for Communist fellow travelers. “We now have the EU unelected socialist party running Europe,” Stroilov said to me. “Bet the KGB can’t believe it.”
And what of Zagladin’s description of his dealings with our own current vice president in 1979?
Unofficially, [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for “human rights.” . . . In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.
Remarkably, the world has shown little interest in the unread Soviet archives. That paragraph about Biden is a good example. Stroilov and Bukovsky coauthored a piece about it for the online magazine FrontPage on October 10, 2008; it passed without remark. Americans considered the episode so uninteresting that even Biden’s political opponents didn’t try to turn it into political capital. Imagine, if you can, what it must feel like to have spent the prime of your life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, to know that Joe Biden is now vice president of the United States, and to know that no one gives a damn.
Bukovsky’s book about the story that these documents tell, Jugement à Moscou, has been published in French, Russian, and a few other Slavic languages, but not in English. Random House bought the manuscript and, in Bukovsky’s words, tried “to force me to rewrite the whole book from the liberal left political perspective.” Bukovsky replied that “due to certain peculiarities of my biography I am allergic to political censorship.” The contract was canceled, the book was never published in English, and no other publisher has shown interest in it. Neither has anyone wanted to publish EUSSR, a pamphlet by Stroilov and Bukovsky about the Soviet roots of European integration. In 2004, a very small British publisher did print an abbreviated version of the pamphlet; it, too, passed unnoticed.
Stroilov has a long list of complaints about journalists who have initially shown interest in the documents, only to tell him later that their editors have declared the story insignificant. In advance of Gorbachev’s visit to Germany for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stroilov says, he offered the German press the documents depicting Gorbachev unflatteringly. There were no takers. In France, news about the documents showing Mitterrand’s and Gorbachev’s plans to turn Germany into a dependent socialist state prompted a few murmurs of curiosity, nothing more. Bukovsky’s vast collection about Soviet sponsorship of terrorism, Palestinian and otherwise, remains largely unpublished.
Stroilov says that he and Bukovsky approached Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press, which is leading a publishing project on the history of the Cold War. He claims that initially Brent was enthusiastic and asked him to write a book, based on the documents, about the first Gulf War. Stroilov says that he wrote the first six chapters, sent them off, and never heard from Brent again, despite sending him e-mail after e-mail. “I can only speculate what so much frightened him in that book,” Stroilov wrote to me.
I’ve also asked Brent and received no reply. This doesn’t mean anything; people are busy. I am less inclined to believe in complex attempts to suppress the truth than I am in indifference and preoccupation with other things. Stroilov sees in these events “a kind of a taboo, the vague common understanding in the Establishment that it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, not to throw stones in a house of glass, and not to mention a rope in the house of a hanged man.” I suspect it is something even more disturbing: no one much cares.
“I know the time will come,” Stroilov says, “when the world has to look at those documents very carefully. We just cannot escape this. We have no way forward until we face the truth about what happened to us in the twentieth century. Even now, no matter how hard we try to ignore history, all these questions come back to us time and again.”
The questions come back time and again, it is true, but few remember that they have been asked before, and few remember what the answer looked like. No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)
Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.
Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
City Journal
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
===============
Artigo de Paulo Roberto de Almeida:
Outro mundo possível: alternativas históricas da Alemanha, antes e depois do muro de Berlim
Revista Espaço Acadêmico (ano 9, n. 102, Novembro 2009, ISSN: 1519-6196, p. 25-39);
Revista digital Espaço da Sophia (ano 3, n. 32, novembro 2009; ISSN: 1981-318X);
Publicado em quatro partes, sob o titulo genérico de “Muro de Berlim, 20 anos depois”, Via Política (1. “Berlim e Alemanha no centro da história contemporânea”, 3.11.09; 2. “Guerra Fria: Berlim de volta ao centro da história contemporânea”, 11.11.09; 3. “O que poderia ter ocorrido com Berlim e com a Alemanha, e que não ocorreu?”, 23.11.09; 4. “O que poderá ocorrer com a nova Alemanha, e que ainda não ocorreu?”, 30.11.2009).
Relação de Originais n. 2048.
Um reparo em relação ao que diz Claire Berlinski, neste seu artigo do City Journal: os diários de Anatoly Chernyaev, um dos mais importantes assessores de Gorbatchev, já foram traduzidos e estão sendoi publicados no quadro do projeto Cold War History, do Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Eu mesmo já publiquei um artigo referindo-me a estas fontes, que são importantes. Os dados desse artigo vão referidos ao final, para não atrapalhar a leitura deste importante artigo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
A Hidden History of Evil
Claire Berlinski
City Journal, vol. 20. n. 2, Spring 2010
Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives?
Though Mikhail Gorbachev is lionized in the West, the untranslated archives suggest a much darker figure.
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.
Then there’s Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who once spent 12 years in the USSR’s prisons, labor camps, and psikhushkas—political psychiatric hospitals—after being convicted of copying anti-Soviet literature. He, too, possesses a massive collection of stolen and smuggled papers from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which, as he writes, “contain the beginnings and the ends of all the tragedies of our bloodstained century.” These documents are available online at bukovsky-archives.net, but most are not translated. They are unorganized; there are no summaries; there is no search or index function. “I offer them free of charge to the most influential newspapers and journals in the world, but nobody wants to print them,” Bukovsky writes. “Editors shrug indifferently: So what? Who cares?”
The originals of most of Stroilov’s documents remain in the Kremlin archives, where, like most of the Soviet Union’s top-secret documents from the post-Stalin era, they remain classified. They include, Stroilov says, transcripts of nearly every conversation between Gorbachev and his foreign counterparts—hundreds of them, a near-complete diplomatic record of the era, available nowhere else. There are notes from the Politburo taken by Georgy Shakhnazarov, an aide of Gorbachev’s, and by Politburo member Vadim Medvedev. There is the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev—Gorbachev’s principal aide and deputy chief of the body formerly known as the Comintern—which dates from 1972 to the collapse of the regime. There are reports, dating from the 1960s, by Vadim Zagladin, deputy chief of the Central Committee’s International Department until 1987 and then Gorbachev’s advisor until 1991. Zagladin was both envoy and spy, charged with gathering secrets, spreading disinformation, and advancing Soviet influence.
When Gorbachev and his aides were ousted from the Kremlin, they took unauthorized copies of these documents with them. The documents were scanned and stored in the archives of the Gorbachev Foundation, one of the first independent think tanks in modern Russia, where a handful of friendly and vetted researchers were given limited access to them. Then, in 1999, the foundation opened a small part of the archive to independent researchers, including Stroilov. The key parts of the collection remained restricted; documents could be copied only with the written permission of the author, and Gorbachev refused to authorize any copies whatsoever. But there was a flaw in the foundation’s security, Stroilov explained to me. When things went wrong with the computers, as often they did, he was able to watch the network administrator typing the password that gave access to the foundation’s network. Slowly and secretly, Stroilov copied the archive and sent it to secure locations around the world.
When I first heard about Stroilov’s documents, I wondered if they were forgeries. But in 2006, having assessed the documents with the cooperation of prominent Soviet dissidents and Cold War spies, British judges concluded that Stroilov was credible and granted his asylum request. The Gorbachev Foundation itself has since acknowledged the documents’ authenticity.
Bukovsky’s story is similar. In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin’s government invited him to testify at the Constitutional Court of Russia in a case concerning the constitutionality of the Communist Party. The Russian State Archives granted Bukovsky access to its documents to prepare his testimony. Using a handheld scanner, he copied thousands of documents and smuggled them to the West.
The Russian state cannot sue Stroilov or Bukovsky for breach of copyright, since the material was created by the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, neither of which now exists. Had he remained in Russia, however, Stroilov believes that he could have been prosecuted for disclosure of state secrets or treason. The military historian Igor Sutyagin is now serving 15 years in a hard-labor camp for the crime of collecting newspaper clippings and other open-source materials and sending them to a British consulting firm. The danger that Stroilov and Bukovsky faced was real and grave; they both assumed, one imagines, that the world would take notice of what they had risked so much to acquire.
Stroilov claims that his documents “tell a completely new story about the end of the Cold War. The ‘commonly accepted’ version of history of that period consists of myths almost entirely. These documents are capable of ruining each of those myths.” Is this so? I couldn’t say. I don’t read Russian. Of Stroilov’s documents, I have seen only the few that have been translated into English. Certainly, they shouldn’t be taken at face value; they were, after all, written by Communists. But the possibility that Stroilov is right should surely compel keen curiosity.
For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:
Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.
Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?
And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.
Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:
H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .
M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .
H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.
M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!
H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.
One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.
There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
According to Zagladin’s reports, for example, Kenneth Coates, who from 1989 to 1998 was a British member of the European Parliament, approached Zagladin on January 9, 1990, to discuss what amounted to a gradual merger of the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Coates, says Zagladin, explained that “creating an infrastructure of cooperation between the two parliament[s] would help . . . to isolate the rightists in the European Parliament (and in Europe), those who are interested in the USSR’s collapse.” Coates served as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights from 1992 to 1994. How did it come to pass that Europe was taking advice about human rights from a man who had apparently wished to “isolate” those interested in the USSR’s collapse and sought to extend Soviet influence in Europe?
Or consider a report on Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, who led Spain’s integration into the European Community as its foreign minister. On March 3, 1989, according to these documents, he explained to Gorbachev that “the success of perestroika means only one thing—the success of the socialist revolution in contemporary conditions. And that is exactly what the reactionaries don’t accept.” Eighteen months later, Ordóñez told Gorbachev: “I feel intellectual disgust when I have to read, for example, passages in the documents of ‘G7’ where the problems of democracy, freedom of human personality and ideology of market economy are set on the same level. As a socialist, I cannot accept such an equation.” Perhaps most shockingly, the Eastern European press has reported that Stroilov’s documents suggest that François Mitterrand was maneuvering with Gorbachev to ensure that Germany would unite as a neutral, socialist entity under a Franco-Soviet condominium.
Zagladin’s records also note that the former leader of the British Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, approached Gorbachev—unauthorized, while Kinnock was leader of the opposition—through a secret envoy to discuss the possibility of halting the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear-missile program. The minutes of the meeting between Gorbachev and the envoy, MP Stuart Holland, read as follows:
In [Holland’s] opinion, Soviet Union should be very interested in liquidation of “Tridents” because, apart from other things, the West—meaning the US, Britain and France—would have a serious advantage over the Soviet Union after the completion of START treaty. That advantage will need to be eliminated. . . . At the same time Holland noted that, of course, we can seriously think about realisation of that idea only if the Labour comes to power. He said Thatcher . . . would never agree to any reduction of nuclear armaments.
Kinnock was vice president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, and his wife, Glenys, is now Britain’s minister for Europe. Gerard Batten, a member of the UK Independence Party, has noted the significance of the episode. “If the report given to Mr. Gorbachev is true, it means that Lord Kinnock approached one of Britain’s enemies in order to seek approval regarding his party’s defense policy and, had he been elected, Britain’s defense policy,” Batten said to the European Parliament in 2009. “If this report is true, then Lord Kinnock would be guilty of treason.”
Similarly, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who is now the European Union’s foreign minister, was treasurer of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1980 to 1982. The papers offer evidence that this organization received “unidentified income” from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Stroilov’s papers suggest as well that the government of the current Spanish EU commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Joaquín Almunia, enthusiastically supported the Soviet project of gradually unifying Germany and Europe into a socialist “common European home” and strongly opposed the independence of the Baltic states and then of Ukraine.
Perhaps it doesn’t surprise you to read that prominent European politicians held these views. But why doesn’t it? It is impossible to imagine that figures who had enjoyed such close ties to the Nazi Party—or, for that matter, to the Ku Klux Klan or to South Africa’s apartheid regime—would enjoy top positions in Europe today. The rules are different, apparently, for Communist fellow travelers. “We now have the EU unelected socialist party running Europe,” Stroilov said to me. “Bet the KGB can’t believe it.”
And what of Zagladin’s description of his dealings with our own current vice president in 1979?
Unofficially, [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for “human rights.” . . . In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.
Remarkably, the world has shown little interest in the unread Soviet archives. That paragraph about Biden is a good example. Stroilov and Bukovsky coauthored a piece about it for the online magazine FrontPage on October 10, 2008; it passed without remark. Americans considered the episode so uninteresting that even Biden’s political opponents didn’t try to turn it into political capital. Imagine, if you can, what it must feel like to have spent the prime of your life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, to know that Joe Biden is now vice president of the United States, and to know that no one gives a damn.
Bukovsky’s book about the story that these documents tell, Jugement à Moscou, has been published in French, Russian, and a few other Slavic languages, but not in English. Random House bought the manuscript and, in Bukovsky’s words, tried “to force me to rewrite the whole book from the liberal left political perspective.” Bukovsky replied that “due to certain peculiarities of my biography I am allergic to political censorship.” The contract was canceled, the book was never published in English, and no other publisher has shown interest in it. Neither has anyone wanted to publish EUSSR, a pamphlet by Stroilov and Bukovsky about the Soviet roots of European integration. In 2004, a very small British publisher did print an abbreviated version of the pamphlet; it, too, passed unnoticed.
Stroilov has a long list of complaints about journalists who have initially shown interest in the documents, only to tell him later that their editors have declared the story insignificant. In advance of Gorbachev’s visit to Germany for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stroilov says, he offered the German press the documents depicting Gorbachev unflatteringly. There were no takers. In France, news about the documents showing Mitterrand’s and Gorbachev’s plans to turn Germany into a dependent socialist state prompted a few murmurs of curiosity, nothing more. Bukovsky’s vast collection about Soviet sponsorship of terrorism, Palestinian and otherwise, remains largely unpublished.
Stroilov says that he and Bukovsky approached Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press, which is leading a publishing project on the history of the Cold War. He claims that initially Brent was enthusiastic and asked him to write a book, based on the documents, about the first Gulf War. Stroilov says that he wrote the first six chapters, sent them off, and never heard from Brent again, despite sending him e-mail after e-mail. “I can only speculate what so much frightened him in that book,” Stroilov wrote to me.
I’ve also asked Brent and received no reply. This doesn’t mean anything; people are busy. I am less inclined to believe in complex attempts to suppress the truth than I am in indifference and preoccupation with other things. Stroilov sees in these events “a kind of a taboo, the vague common understanding in the Establishment that it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, not to throw stones in a house of glass, and not to mention a rope in the house of a hanged man.” I suspect it is something even more disturbing: no one much cares.
“I know the time will come,” Stroilov says, “when the world has to look at those documents very carefully. We just cannot escape this. We have no way forward until we face the truth about what happened to us in the twentieth century. Even now, no matter how hard we try to ignore history, all these questions come back to us time and again.”
The questions come back time and again, it is true, but few remember that they have been asked before, and few remember what the answer looked like. No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)
Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.
Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
City Journal
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
===============
Artigo de Paulo Roberto de Almeida:
Outro mundo possível: alternativas históricas da Alemanha, antes e depois do muro de Berlim
Revista Espaço Acadêmico (ano 9, n. 102, Novembro 2009, ISSN: 1519-6196, p. 25-39);
Revista digital Espaço da Sophia (ano 3, n. 32, novembro 2009; ISSN: 1981-318X);
Publicado em quatro partes, sob o titulo genérico de “Muro de Berlim, 20 anos depois”, Via Política (1. “Berlim e Alemanha no centro da história contemporânea”, 3.11.09; 2. “Guerra Fria: Berlim de volta ao centro da história contemporânea”, 11.11.09; 3. “O que poderia ter ocorrido com Berlim e com a Alemanha, e que não ocorreu?”, 23.11.09; 4. “O que poderá ocorrer com a nova Alemanha, e que ainda não ocorreu?”, 30.11.2009).
Relação de Originais n. 2048.
The Trilemma of Civilization - Dani Rodrik
Greek Lessons for the World Economy
Dani Rodrik
Project Syndicate, May 11, 2010
CAMBRIDGE – The $140 billion support package that the Greek government has finally received from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund gives it the breathing space needed to undertake the difficult job of putting its finances in order. The package may or may not prevent Spain and Portugal from becoming undone in a similar fashion, or indeed even head off an eventual Greek default. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that the Greek debacle has given the EU a black eye.
Deep down, the crisis is yet another manifestation of what I call “the political trilemma of the world economy”: economic globalization, political democracy, and the nation-state are mutually irreconcilable. We can have at most two at one time. Democracy is compatible with national sovereignty only if we restrict globalization. If we push for globalization while retaining the nation-state, we must jettison democracy. And if we want democracy along with globalization, we must shove the nation-state aside and strive for greater international governance.
The history of the world economy shows the trilemma at work. The first era of globalization, which lasted until 1914, was a success as long as economic and monetary policies remained insulated from domestic political pressures. These policies could then be entirely subjugated to the demands of the gold standard and free capital mobility. But once the political franchise was enlarged, the working class got organized, and mass politics became the norm, domestic economic objectives began to compete with (and overwhelm) external rules and constraints.
The classic case is Britain’s short-lived return to gold in the interwar period. The attempt to reconstitute the pre-World War I model of globalization collapsed in 1931, when domestic politics forced the British government to choose domestic reflation over the gold standard.
The architects of the Bretton Woods regime kept this lesson in mind when they redesigned the world’s monetary system in 1944. They understood that democratic countries would need the space to conduct independent monetary and fiscal policies. So they contemplated only a “thin” globalization, with capital flows restricted largely to long-term lending and borrowing. John Maynard Keynes, who wrote the rules along with Harry Dexter White, viewed capital controls not as a temporary expedient but as a permanent feature of the global economy.
The Bretton Woods regime collapsed in the 1970’s as a result of the inability or unwillingness – it is not entirely clear which – of leading governments to manage the growing tide of capital flows.
The third path identified by the trilemma is to do away with national sovereignty altogether. In this case, economic integration can be married with democracy through political union among states. The loss in national sovereignty is then compensated by the “internationalization” of democratic politics. Think of this as a global version of federalism.
The United States, for example, created a unified national market once its federal government wrested sufficient political control from individual states. This was far from a smooth process, as the American Civil War amply demonstrates.
The EU’s difficulties stem from the fact that the global financial crisis caught Europe midway through a similar process. European leaders always understood that economic union needs to have a political leg to stand on. Even though some, such as the British, wished to give the Union as little power as possible, the force of the argument was with those who pressed for political integration alongside economic integration. Still, the European political project fell far short of the economic one.
Greece benefited from a common currency, unified capital markets, and free trade with other EU member states. But it does not have automatic access to a European lender of last resort. Its citizens do not receive unemployment checks from Brussels the way that, say, Californians do from Washington, DC, when California experiences a recession. Nor, given linguistic and cultural barriers, can unemployed Greeks move just as easily across the border to a more prosperous European state. And Greek banks and firms lose their creditworthiness alongside their government if markets perceive the latter to be insolvent.
The German and French governments, for their part, have had little say over Greece’s budget policies. They could not stop the Greek government from borrowing (indirectly) from the European Central Bank (ECB) as long as credit rating agencies deemed Greek debt creditworthy. If Greece chooses default, they cannot enforce their banks’ claims on Greek borrowers or seize Greek assets. Nor can they prevent Greece from leaving the eurozone.
What all this means is that the financial crisis has turned out to be a lot deeper and its resolution considerably messier than necessary. The French and German governments have grudgingly come up with a major loan package, but only after considerable delay and with the IMF standing at their side. The ECB has lowered the threshold of creditworthiness that Greek government securities must meet in order to allow continued Greek borrowing.
The success of the rescue is far from assured, in view of the magnitude of belt-tightening that it calls for and the hostility that it has aroused on the part of Greek workers. When push comes to shove, domestic politics trumps foreign creditors.
The crisis has revealed how demanding globalization’s political prerequisites are. It shows how much European institutions must still evolve to underpin a healthy single market. The choice that the EU faces is the same in other parts of the world: either integrate politically, or ease up on economic unification.
Before the crisis, Europe looked like the most likely candidate to make a successful transition to the first equilibrium – greater political unification. Now its economic project lies in tatters while the leadership needed to rekindle political integration is nowhere to be seen.
The best that can be said is that Europe will no longer be able to delay making the choice that the Greek affair has laid bare. If you are an optimist, you might even conclude that Europe will therefore ultimately emerge stronger.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link.
You might also like to read more from Dani Rodrik or return to our home page.
Dani Rodrik
Project Syndicate, May 11, 2010
CAMBRIDGE – The $140 billion support package that the Greek government has finally received from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund gives it the breathing space needed to undertake the difficult job of putting its finances in order. The package may or may not prevent Spain and Portugal from becoming undone in a similar fashion, or indeed even head off an eventual Greek default. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that the Greek debacle has given the EU a black eye.
Deep down, the crisis is yet another manifestation of what I call “the political trilemma of the world economy”: economic globalization, political democracy, and the nation-state are mutually irreconcilable. We can have at most two at one time. Democracy is compatible with national sovereignty only if we restrict globalization. If we push for globalization while retaining the nation-state, we must jettison democracy. And if we want democracy along with globalization, we must shove the nation-state aside and strive for greater international governance.
The history of the world economy shows the trilemma at work. The first era of globalization, which lasted until 1914, was a success as long as economic and monetary policies remained insulated from domestic political pressures. These policies could then be entirely subjugated to the demands of the gold standard and free capital mobility. But once the political franchise was enlarged, the working class got organized, and mass politics became the norm, domestic economic objectives began to compete with (and overwhelm) external rules and constraints.
The classic case is Britain’s short-lived return to gold in the interwar period. The attempt to reconstitute the pre-World War I model of globalization collapsed in 1931, when domestic politics forced the British government to choose domestic reflation over the gold standard.
The architects of the Bretton Woods regime kept this lesson in mind when they redesigned the world’s monetary system in 1944. They understood that democratic countries would need the space to conduct independent monetary and fiscal policies. So they contemplated only a “thin” globalization, with capital flows restricted largely to long-term lending and borrowing. John Maynard Keynes, who wrote the rules along with Harry Dexter White, viewed capital controls not as a temporary expedient but as a permanent feature of the global economy.
The Bretton Woods regime collapsed in the 1970’s as a result of the inability or unwillingness – it is not entirely clear which – of leading governments to manage the growing tide of capital flows.
The third path identified by the trilemma is to do away with national sovereignty altogether. In this case, economic integration can be married with democracy through political union among states. The loss in national sovereignty is then compensated by the “internationalization” of democratic politics. Think of this as a global version of federalism.
The United States, for example, created a unified national market once its federal government wrested sufficient political control from individual states. This was far from a smooth process, as the American Civil War amply demonstrates.
The EU’s difficulties stem from the fact that the global financial crisis caught Europe midway through a similar process. European leaders always understood that economic union needs to have a political leg to stand on. Even though some, such as the British, wished to give the Union as little power as possible, the force of the argument was with those who pressed for political integration alongside economic integration. Still, the European political project fell far short of the economic one.
Greece benefited from a common currency, unified capital markets, and free trade with other EU member states. But it does not have automatic access to a European lender of last resort. Its citizens do not receive unemployment checks from Brussels the way that, say, Californians do from Washington, DC, when California experiences a recession. Nor, given linguistic and cultural barriers, can unemployed Greeks move just as easily across the border to a more prosperous European state. And Greek banks and firms lose their creditworthiness alongside their government if markets perceive the latter to be insolvent.
The German and French governments, for their part, have had little say over Greece’s budget policies. They could not stop the Greek government from borrowing (indirectly) from the European Central Bank (ECB) as long as credit rating agencies deemed Greek debt creditworthy. If Greece chooses default, they cannot enforce their banks’ claims on Greek borrowers or seize Greek assets. Nor can they prevent Greece from leaving the eurozone.
What all this means is that the financial crisis has turned out to be a lot deeper and its resolution considerably messier than necessary. The French and German governments have grudgingly come up with a major loan package, but only after considerable delay and with the IMF standing at their side. The ECB has lowered the threshold of creditworthiness that Greek government securities must meet in order to allow continued Greek borrowing.
The success of the rescue is far from assured, in view of the magnitude of belt-tightening that it calls for and the hostility that it has aroused on the part of Greek workers. When push comes to shove, domestic politics trumps foreign creditors.
The crisis has revealed how demanding globalization’s political prerequisites are. It shows how much European institutions must still evolve to underpin a healthy single market. The choice that the EU faces is the same in other parts of the world: either integrate politically, or ease up on economic unification.
Before the crisis, Europe looked like the most likely candidate to make a successful transition to the first equilibrium – greater political unification. Now its economic project lies in tatters while the leadership needed to rekindle political integration is nowhere to be seen.
The best that can be said is that Europe will no longer be able to delay making the choice that the Greek affair has laid bare. If you are an optimist, you might even conclude that Europe will therefore ultimately emerge stronger.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link.
You might also like to read more from Dani Rodrik or return to our home page.
sábado, 29 de maio de 2010
Assessor da Presidencia nega problemas com a Argentina
Não se esperava outra coisa...
Brasil minimiza divergencias comerciales con Argentina y niega represalias
Leila Yatim
EFE – 28/05/2010
El asesor de la Presidencia brasileña para Asuntos Internacionales, Marco Aurelio García, minimizó hoy las divergencias comerciales con Argentina y negó que el Gobierno de Brasil pretenda tomar represalias si se restringe la importación de alimentos en ese país.
“No hay clima para represalias. La pelea entre Brasil y Argentina sólo tiene consistencia en el fútbol”, afirmó el asesor de Lula en declaraciones a periodistas en Río de Janeiro después de participar en la apertura del Foro Brasil-Unión Europea.
García agregó que Lula tuvo el pasado lunes una “calurosa reunión” en Buenos Aires con la presidenta argentina, Cristina Fernández, durante las celebraciones del Bicentenario de la independencia de es país.
“Si mañana tienen un nuevo encuentro, evidentemente abordarán ese asunto pero sin ningún ánimo de represalia”, agregó al referirse al viaje que hará Fernández el viernes a Río de Janeiro para participar, junto con Lula y otros mandatarios, en el III Foro de la Alianza de las Civilizaciones.
El funcionario también minimizó las declaraciones de la víspera del secretario de Comercio del Ministerio de Desarrollo, Industria y Comercio de Brasil, Welber Barral, quien advirtió que el Gobierno brasileño puede responder con acciones similares a las posibles medidas de Argentina para restringir la importación de alimentos.
“El principio del Gobierno brasileño en sus relaciones internacionales es la reciprocidad. Brasil también tiene un mecanismo electrónico de control de importaciones”, dijo Barral al ser consultado sobre las medidas que Argentina podría adoptar, que oficialmente no han sido anunciadas.
Según versiones de presa, el Gobierno de Argentina estudia restringir el ingreso en su país de alimentos que compitan con la producción local, incluyendo los procedentes de sus socios del Mercosur (Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay).
El asesor de Lula dijo que Argentina puede retrasar la concesión de algunas licencias de importación, pero eso “no configura una guerrilla y mucho menos una guerra de posiciones”.
“Países que tienen una relación como la que tenemos Argentina y Brasil difícilmente van a enfrentar una crisis por esa situación. Por eso no hay ninguna preocupación”, aseguró.
Acesso em: 28/05/2010.
Brasil minimiza divergencias comerciales con Argentina y niega represalias
Leila Yatim
EFE – 28/05/2010
El asesor de la Presidencia brasileña para Asuntos Internacionales, Marco Aurelio García, minimizó hoy las divergencias comerciales con Argentina y negó que el Gobierno de Brasil pretenda tomar represalias si se restringe la importación de alimentos en ese país.
“No hay clima para represalias. La pelea entre Brasil y Argentina sólo tiene consistencia en el fútbol”, afirmó el asesor de Lula en declaraciones a periodistas en Río de Janeiro después de participar en la apertura del Foro Brasil-Unión Europea.
García agregó que Lula tuvo el pasado lunes una “calurosa reunión” en Buenos Aires con la presidenta argentina, Cristina Fernández, durante las celebraciones del Bicentenario de la independencia de es país.
“Si mañana tienen un nuevo encuentro, evidentemente abordarán ese asunto pero sin ningún ánimo de represalia”, agregó al referirse al viaje que hará Fernández el viernes a Río de Janeiro para participar, junto con Lula y otros mandatarios, en el III Foro de la Alianza de las Civilizaciones.
El funcionario también minimizó las declaraciones de la víspera del secretario de Comercio del Ministerio de Desarrollo, Industria y Comercio de Brasil, Welber Barral, quien advirtió que el Gobierno brasileño puede responder con acciones similares a las posibles medidas de Argentina para restringir la importación de alimentos.
“El principio del Gobierno brasileño en sus relaciones internacionales es la reciprocidad. Brasil también tiene un mecanismo electrónico de control de importaciones”, dijo Barral al ser consultado sobre las medidas que Argentina podría adoptar, que oficialmente no han sido anunciadas.
Según versiones de presa, el Gobierno de Argentina estudia restringir el ingreso en su país de alimentos que compitan con la producción local, incluyendo los procedentes de sus socios del Mercosur (Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay).
El asesor de Lula dijo que Argentina puede retrasar la concesión de algunas licencias de importación, pero eso “no configura una guerrilla y mucho menos una guerra de posiciones”.
“Países que tienen una relación como la que tenemos Argentina y Brasil difícilmente van a enfrentar una crisis por esa situación. Por eso no hay ninguna preocupación”, aseguró.
Acesso em: 28/05/2010.
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Livro Marxismo e Socialismo finalmente disponível - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
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Mercado Comum da Guerra? O Mercosul deveria ser, em princípio, uma zona de livre comércio e também uma zona de paz, entre seus próprios memb...
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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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Israel Products in India: Check the Complete list of Israeli Brands! Several Israeli companies have established themselves in the Indian m...
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Pequeno manual prático da decadência (recomendável em caráter preventivo...) Paulo Roberto de Almeida Colaboração a número especial da rev...
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Desde el post de José Antonio Sanahuja Persles (Linkedin) Con Camilo López Burian, de la Universidad de la República, estudiamos el ascens...
