A trajetória econômica do Brasil na era militar: crescimento e crises - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Recebi, de uma editora comercial, uma demanda para pagamento urgente de um trabalho que eu havia apresentado em 2018 num congresso de história econômica, que já se encontrava disponível nos anais do congresso e eu mesmo havia tornado esse trabalho totalmente livre de acesso aos interessados como registro mais abaixo.
A comunicação, em caráter urgente teve esse teor: 

Bom dia,

Lembro que sexta-feira, dia 17/05, é o último dia para submissão e pagamento de seu trabalho intitulado "A TRAJETÓRIA ECONÔMICA DO BRASIL NA ERA MILITAR: CRESCIMENTO E CRISES", para inclusão no livro "A Economia numa Perspectiva Interdisciplinar", a ser publicado pela Atena Editora em Agosto de 2019.

Depois, como eu indagasse do que exatamente se tratava, recebi esta "informação": 

Segue em anexo tutorial com todas as informações necessárias para a inclusão do artigo no livro, peço que leia com atenção pois o prazo final para submissão e pagamento (R$ 386,00) do trabalho é 17/05.

O Pagamento é via PagSeguro, no cartão de crédito em até 12x ou via boleto bancário. 

O autor poderá realizar as modificações que julgar necessárias, desde que não altere significativamente o conteúdo do artigo convidado. Lembrando que essas alterações não são obrigatórias. 

Lembro também que o e-book é open acess, o mesmo visa somente divulgar o nome dos autores, o conhecimento científico, bem como a própria editora.

Como não preciso pagar para ser editado ou publicado, coloco novamente a informação relativa a esse trabalho, com os respectivos links de acesso: 

A trajetória econômica do Brasil na era militar: crescimento e crises 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 27 de fevereiro de 2018.

Professor de Economia Política no Centro Universitário de Brasília (Uniceub).

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

OLIVEIRA, Lélio Luiz de; MARCONDES, Renato Leite e MESSIAS, Talita Alves de (orgs). In: Anais do 7ª Conferência Internacional de História de Empresas e IX Encontro de Pós Graduação em História Econômica. Ribeirão Preto: USP/ABPHE, 2019. ISBN: 978-85-68378-02-1; link do evento: http://www.abphe.org.br/ix-encontro-de-pos-graduacao-em-historia-economica); link do artigo: http://www.abphe.org.br/uploads/Encontro_2018/ALMEIDA.%20A%20TRAJETÓRIA%20ECONÔMICA%20DO%20BRASIL%20NA%20ERA%20MILITAR_CRESCIMENTO%20E%20CRISES.pdf). Disponível em Academia.edu (link: http://www.academia.edu/38275891/3252TrajetoriaEconRegimeMilitar.pdf) e em Research Gate (link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330838771_A_trajetoria_economica_do_Brasil_na_era_militar_crescimento_e_crises?_sg=-N3QVl4HFaH_AE-g-e9Veq6sE7RH3lcvBLJlHJeUsPL_cER4w5jm2uCngZZ2x413ipsAv_uJJwC2taoHaID27VgLds3eCDemuvDn0DtO.aPEFaY6mhuSotIgsc-2N-9NG-tMn-PFP9xoqC2LP9HZ_onQBy27D3Wc90JjBWAPHlF62Q6-9tnBsKtrwE8LsVg). 

  

Resumo: Síntese de história econômica, com base em dados primários e na literatura secundária, em torno da trajetória do Brasil nos anos do regime militar (1964-1985), com identificação das principais tendências macroeconômicas e setoriais, apresentação das políticas econômicas e seus efeitos em termos de crescimento, inflação e dívida externa. Ficam bem destacadas a fase de estabilização e crescimento da economia, na primeira metade da era militar, e a fase de crise e declínio do desempenho econômico, na sua segunda metade, devido não apenas a choques externos (dois significativos aumentos do petróleo e crise da dívida externa, na elevação dos juros externos), mas também a erros de política econômica, redundando em aceleração da inflação e insolvência externa. Tem início uma fase de estagnação econômica e de desequilíbrios externos, parcialmente compensados por planos emergenciais feitos com o FMI.

Palavras-chave: crescimento econômico; crises financeiras; inflação; dívida externa; economia brasileira; regime militar.

1. A economia do Brasil no pós-guerra até o início dos anos 1960

 (...)

2. As reformas econômicas da primeira fase do regime militar: o PAEG

(...)

3. O grande crescimento na fase intermediária do regime militar

(...)

4. O primeiro choque do petróleo e as respostas políticas à crise econômica

(...)

5. O segundo choque do petróleo e a crise da dívida externa

(...)

6. O declínio econômico da fase final do regime militar

(...)

Apêndices:

Principais indicadores econômicos do período militar, 1964-1985 (setor interno)

Principais indicadores econômicos do período militar, 1964-1985 (setor externo)

Referências bibliográficas:

Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva. “O processo econômico”, in: Angela de Castro Gomes (coord.). História do Brasil Nação, 1808-2010, vol. 4: Olhando para dentro, 1930-1964. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2013, p. 179-227.

_________ . A Ordem do Progresso: dois séculos de política econômica no Brasil. 2^a ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2014.

Almeida, Paulo Roberto de. “O Brasil e o FMI desde Bretton Woods: 70 anos de História”, Revista Direito GV, vol. 10, n. 2, 2014, p. 469-495.

__________ . “Planejamento Econômico no Brasil: uma visão de longo prazo, 1934-2006”. In: João Paulo Peixoto (org.): Governando o Governo: modernização da administração pública no Brasil. São Paulo: Atlas, 2008, p. 71-106.

__________ . “Finanças internacionais do Brasil: uma perspectiva de meio século (1954-2004)” in; José Flavio Sombra Saraiva e Amado Luiz Cervo (orgs.), O crescimento das relações internacionais no Brasil. Brasília: Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais, 2005, p. 231-270.

__________ . Problèmes Actuels du Commerce Extérieur Brésilien: une évaluation de la période 1968-1975. Antuérpia: Centre Universitaire de l’État; Collège des Pays en Développement, 1976, dissertação de mestrado).

Baer, Werner. A Industrialização e o Desenvolvimento Econômico do Brasil. 6ª ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1985.

_________ . A Economia Brasileira. São Paulo: Nobel, 1996.

Brasil. 25 anos de economia brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Gráfica Record, 1965.

Campos, Roberto. “A experiência brasileira de planejamento”, in Mario Henrique Simonsen e Roberto de Oliveira Campos. A Nova Economia Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1974, p. 47-78.

Carneiro, Dionísio Dias. “Crise e esperança, 1974-1980” in: Marcelo de Paiva Abreu (org.), A Ordem do Progresso: dois séculos de política econômica no Brasil. 2^a ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2014, p. 241-262.

_________ e Modiano, Eduardo Marco, “Ajuste externo e desequilíbrio interno, 1980-1984”, in: Marcelo de Paiva Abreu (org.), A Ordem do Progresso: dois séculos de política econômica no Brasil. 2^a ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2014, p. 263-280.

Fishlow, Albert. Desenvolvimento no Brasil e na América Latina: uma perspectiva histórica, São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2004.

Gordon, Lincoln. Brazil’s Second Chance: en route toward the First World. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

Ianni, Octavio. Estado e Planejamento Econômico no Brasil (1930-1970). 2ª ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1977.

Lacerda, Antonio Corrêa de et al. Economia Brasileira. São Paulo: Saraiva, 2000.

Lafer, Celso. JK e o programa de metas (1956-1961): processo de planejamento e sistema político no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2002.

_________ . “O Planejamento no Brasil: observações sobre o Plano de Metas (1956-1961)” in Mindlin Lafer, Betty (org.). Planejamento no Brasil, 3ª ed.; São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1975.

Lago, Luiz Aranha Correa do, “A retomada do crescimento e as distorções do ‘milagre, 1967-1974”, in: Marcelo de Paiva Abreu (org.), A Ordem do Progresso: dois séculos de política econômica no Brasil. 2^a ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2014, p. 213-239.

Lessa, Carlos. 15 Anos de Política Econômica. 3ª ed.; São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1982.

Loureiro, Maria Rita (org.). 50 Anos de Ciência Econômica no Brasil: pensamento, instituições, depoimentos. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997.

Macedo, Roberto B. M. “Plano Trienal de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (1963-1965)” in Betty Mindlin Lafer (org.). Planejamento no Brasil, op. cit., p. 51-68.

Martone, Celso L. “Análise do Plano de Ação Econômica do Governo, PAEG (1964-1966)” in Betty Mindlin Lafer (org.). Planejamento no Brasil. 3ª ed.; São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1975, p. 69-89.

Mindlin Lafer, Betty (org.). Planejamento no Brasil. 3ª ed.; São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1975.

Palazzo, José Truda. “O Planejamento do Desenvolvimento Econômico – o caso brasileiro”. Porto Alegre: Faculdade de Ciências Econômicas e Contábeis da UFRGS, 1977.

Resende, André Lara, “Estabilização e reforma, 1964-1967”, in: Marcelo de Paiva Abreu (org.), A Ordem do Progresso: dois séculos de política econômica no Brasil. 2^a ed.; Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2014, p. 197-211.

Venâncio Filho, Alberto. A Intervenção do Estado no Domínio Econômico: o direito público econômico no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1968.

Finalizo chamando a atenção dos interessados para o fato de que vários artigos apresentados nesse Congresso acima vão estar proximamente e livremente disponíveis neste livro:
 "A Economia numa Perspectiva Interdisciplinar", a ser publicado pela Atena Editora em Agosto de 2019.
Lembro, por fim, que este ensaio se trata de versão resumida do trabalho n. 3174, para apresentação na 7ª Conferência Internacional de História Econômica da ABPHE (Ribeirão Preto, em 10-11 de julho de 2018), na área de “Brasil e América nos séculos XX e XXI”.
De nada...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

A diplomacia dos EUA e o fim do século americano - Biografia de Richard Holbrooke - George Packer

The Fog of Ambition

Thomas Powers

The New York Review of Books, June 6, 2019 Issue

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

by George Packer

Knopf, 592 pp., $30.00

Richard Holbrooke and Kofi Annan at the United Nations, New York City, October 2000

“Almost great” is George Packer’s measured judgment on the life and character of the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who was trying to broker an end to the war in Afghanistan when he died suddenly in 2010. Holbrooke left the war pretty much as he found it, and peace is no closer now, nearly a decade later, but that isn’t what explains the cruel precision of Packer’s judgment. It’s the man. Holbrooke had the serious intent, the energy, the friends, the wit, and even the luck needed to accomplish great things, but he fell short. Packer circles the question of why in his new biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, but the force of the man survives the interrogation. Holbrooke spills out in all directions in the manner of Walt Whitman, who waved aside the contradictions that others saw, saying, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Holbrooke was not only physically big but had an emphatic personality, could dominate a room, made friends and kept most of them, read widely and greedily, and was a bit overwhelming when he turned his attention on you. It is evident that Packer got the full treatment. They met when Holbrooke had been hovering at the edge of great for decades. As a young Foreign Service officer in Vietnam he knew the war was lost before General William Westmoreland took command of US forces there in 1964. He told early bosses he would be an assistant secretary of state by the age of thirty-five and was (for East Asian and Pacific affairs), and later under President Bill Clinton he served as the American ambassador to Germany and to the United Nations.

The accomplishment cited in the first paragraph of all his obituaries came in the mid-1990s, between his two ambassadorships, when he was an assistant secretary of state for the second time (for European and Canadian affairs). His writ included the warring states of the former Yugoslavia, which were led by intransigent men waging a genocidal war. In the fall of 1995 Holbrooke reasoned and coaxed and threatened these men into signing a peace agreement named for the Ohio city where he achieved what many considered a miracle—the Dayton Accords. That peace has been kept for twenty-three years, and Holbrooke was trying to do the same in Afghanistan in 2009 when Packer published a profile in The New Yorker of the man he already considered a friend.

“What I’m thinking about,” Packer wrote fifteen months later, on the day Holbrooke died,

is not Holbrooke’s role on the world stage, but Richard on the phone for six minutes, or seated across the table, eyebrows lifted and mouth slightly open with barely suppressed mirth. He was the most excellent company. My wife and I were supposed to have dinner with Richard and Kati [Marton, his wife] this Friday. I’ll always wish that evening had come sooner.

It was the warmth, energy, and big presence of Holbrooke that put Packer under his spell, the way a man might fall in love with the city of Rome, all at once and forever. In the first lines of his prologue, Packer puts aside the usual stern mien of a biographer. “Holbrooke?” the writer begins. “Yes, I knew him. I can’t get his voice out of my head.”

But who is this writer? It’s Packer’s book, so it must be him—but the voice is not quite 100 percent Packer’s. This prologue is a risky start. Its writer doesn’t cite anything that Packer in his diligence has not learned for himself, but he knows it the way a guy at the next desk, or an early boss, or a sometime rival for a big job might know it. We may think of this writer—this narrator—as the kind of person, perhaps even a composite of all the people, who told Packer what he knows. Packer is a late arrival; the narrator has been there from the beginning. “Do you mind if we hurry through the early years?” he asks the reader early on. Later he remarks, “I haven’t told you about Holbrooke and women.” It’s the narrator who places Holbrooke in time and explains why Holbrooke is our man—the perfect example of “our feeling that we could do anything…our confidence and energy…our excess and blindness…. That’s the reason to tell you this story. That’s why I can’t get his voice out of my head.”

Holbrooke was not without blemish. He could be abrupt, dismissive, vain, and self-absorbed. Packer is frank about all that but remains in thrall. His Holbrooke is a man who wins, who holds and returns regard. The inevitable question, then, is whether Packer can write a six-hundred-page book about Holbrooke that sees him whole, blinks at nothing, and reaches a judgment we can trust.

Efforts to portray the life of Richard Holbrooke hinge on its major disappointment—his failure to become secretary of state. How we explain that—not the ambition but the failure—can tell us the sort of man he was. Holbrooke himself traced the first murmur of his ambition to the diplomat Dean Rusk, the father of his best friend while he was growing up in Scarsdale, New York. He spent a lot of time in the Rusk household after the death of his own father in 1957. A year later, at a breakfast gathering of the senior class at Scarsdale High School, the elder Rusk made a suggestion. “When you’re thinking of careers,” he said, “think of the Foreign Service.” Holbrooke remembered that in his junior year at Brown University when President Kennedy chose Rusk to be his secretary of state.

After he wangled a dream job with The New York Times that summer, he told college friends that he knew what he wanted to be: managing editor of the Times or secretary of state. When the Times declined to offer him a job after his graduation in 1962, he took the Foreign Service exam, passed it, and was sworn in a month later. In June 1963, following basic language and area training, he departed for Vietnam just as the long-simmering war was about to spin out of control.

From the moment Holbrooke’s plane touched down in Saigon, his career was swept along by events. The career lasted almost fifty years, but the three Saigon years were the ones that fixed his view of America in the world. Holbrooke arrived when the Kennedy administration was making up its mind that the Saigon government of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his family had to go. The last straw was Diem’s sister-in-law making barbecue jokes about Buddhist monks who had burned themselves alive to protest the war. Holbrooke was too far down the ladder to know anything of Washington’s plotting to get rid of Diem, but something was clearly brewing. “In that strange Saigon atmosphere of ritual suicide and tennis,” Packer writes, “the tension gathered like the saturating air before the afternoon rain.”

Holbrooke’s education began on his second day in-country, when a former military officer, George Melvin, took him north on “Bloody Route 13”—so named for the frequency of attacks on American vehicles. They were heading into the countryside where the official program was to challenge the Hanoi-controlled Vietcong for the allegiance (later invariably referred to as “the hearts and minds”) of rural South Vietnamese. Land reform and rural development were only part of the plan. The unofficial program, Melvin told Holbrooke, also included “certain things that he should never tell anyone,” and “other things that he wouldn’t understand and shouldn’t know or ask about, things on the dark side of the fight that it was wise to keep from higher-ups.” Melvin believed the challenge in Vietnam was political, not a matter of maneuver and firepower. “We have to take the revolution away from the VC,” he said repeatedly.

The rest of Holbrooke’s education, which continued until his departure in the spring of 1966, brought a steadily deepening sense of just how improbable was the plan to take the revolution away from the Vietcong by Ivy Leaguers fresh out of college like Holbrooke, Boston Brahmins who worked too little and drank too much like Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Hollywood-handsome generals like Westmoreland who thought the Vietcong would be crushed by American firepower. Holbrooke soon grasped the hopeless nature of the task. In a letter to his wife, Litty, from the Mekong Delta, he mocked officials who imagined that “one division of Americans would clean this place up.” He had already learned that “a division of Marines would be bled to death in the swamps and paddies…and never make a dent.” Take that observation, cube it, and you have a good idea of what Holbrooke learned about the limits of American power.

Packer’s hundred pages on the American failure in Vietnam tell the story as forcefully as any hundred pages ever written about the war. The CIA-backed overthrow and murder of Diem and his brother left the Saigon government in tatters, and it never recovered. The war grew steadily bigger but never moved closer to victory. Packer charts Holbrooke’s progress through the four stages of disillusion about the war—learning to be skeptical of official assessments, doubting the tactics, questioning the strategy, and finally admitting that “the United States could never win.” What’s shocking is not how quickly Holbrooke grasped the futility of American efforts, but how readily he concluded there was nothing he could do about it. “The fight sometimes doesn’t even seem worth it,” he wrote in a letter home before his first year was up. “But there is no choice, really, is there?”

Here the reader rebels. Of course there was a choice, but Holbrooke couldn’t square it with a career in the Foreign Service. This is the line he never crossed. As late as the spring of 1969, he wrote to his friend Anthony Lake, who had just joined President Nixon’s National Security Council, “We have to get out of Vietnam. The war has already spread a poison through our nation.” Holbrooke was willing to tell Lake something they both knew, but he was not willing to wreck his career with futile efforts to tell everybody else. Give his honest opinion on the best way forward, yes; go public with disagreement or even resign, no. That realism, in Packer’s view, was the poison spread by the war. “Vietnam fixed [Democratic doves] with the dreaded label ‘soft,’” he writes; “in government that label could destroy you.” Staying on the safe side of the line was the price Holbrooke paid to keep his professional hopes alive.

Holbrooke’s ambition to be secretary of state was never casual and sank its teeth in deeper as he read history and made powerful friends. He admired secretaries of state like George Marshall (1947–1949) and Dean Acheson (1949–1953) for deserving the job, getting the job, and doing something world-changing with the job—the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe recover from World War II, followed by Acheson’s success in building a grand alliance to defend the West in the early years of the cold war.

In the late 1980s Holbrooke spent four years writing an “as-told-to” memoir for Clark Clifford, who had held a string of high-level jobs close to great events over a twenty-year period—exactly the sort of career Holbrooke wanted for himself. Holbrooke was an able writer, and Counsel to the President is arguably his most revealing work. It builds to the moment in Clifford’s career that gave him a firm place in history—what he did as President Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of defense in 1968.

March 1968, when Clifford took office, was the great either-or moment in modern American history after World War II. General Westmoreland had just requested 200,000 more troops following the countrywide attacks by the Vietcong known as the Tet Offensive. That would have brought the total number of American troops in Vietnam to more than 700,000. The choice was bleak: telling Westmoreland no in an admission of failure or digging in deeper with no end in sight. Johnson was ready to give Westmoreland what he wanted, and at the outset Clifford was ready to go along. But he didn’t. He asked questions, got others involved, forced Johnson to face facts, and pushed him, decisively in Holbrooke’s view, to choose peace talks over endless war. Clifford rose to the moment in 1968, and Holbrooke believed, given a comparable challenge, that he could do the same. Packer tells us that Holbrooke wrote “every damn sentence” of the Clifford memoir, and he infused it with the passion and focus he hoped someone would bring to a similar account of his own life someday.

Vladimir Lehovich

Richard Holbrooke in South Vietnam, 1960s

Packer strains to isolate the exact thing that set Holbrooke apart and gave him a chance at the greatness Clifford achieved. Holbrooke certainly had ability, and he was given at least two moments of opportunity. The first came in the summer of 1995, when he and three aides headed for Sarajevo to try to end a war. Packer tells us a good deal about these aides, who shared all the dangers of work in a war zone, put in as many hours as Holbrooke, knew as much, and were just as smart. He describes all three as “the kind of career officials who commuted to their offices from the Virginia suburbs in suits and ties…worked long hours and might receive a department award now and then but were unknown outside their circle of colleagues.”

There was no ceiling, but they rose no higher. “If they didn’t make it to the treetops,” Packer observes, “it wasn’t for lack of ability or dedication but want of that demon ambition.” That’s where he comes down: it’s the sheer wanting that brings the most important jobs within reach. This wanting is something colleagues notice early. Packer remarks that in 1972, when Holbrooke’s first marriage broke up, “he had accomplished nothing of importance, yet people began to talk about him as someone destined for great things.”

“But ambition is not a pretty thing up close,” Packer also notes:

It’s wild and crass…. It brings a noticeable smell into the room. It’s a man cajoling a bereaved widow to include him among her late husband’s eulogists, then rearranging name cards so that he can chat up the right dinner guest after the service.

In Packer’s view the “wild and crass” element is what gives ambition its force. To go far, a man or woman has first got to be noticed, then kept in mind and taken into account. “If you cut out the destructive element,” Packer says of Holbrooke, “you would kill the thing that made him almost great.”

In 1995 Holbrooke’s ambition brought him to Bosnia. There to help him were the three able officials Packer has described as unknown outside their own circle of colleagues. They were all middle-aged with wives and two kids each, and they were all in the group with Holbrooke on August 19, 1995, that was forced by fate and politics to take the more dangerous of two routes down into the city of Sarajevo for a round of peace talks. Two military vehicles set out on the steep, winding road over Mount Igman—a Humvee in front with Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark, followed by an armored personnel carrier (APC) with Holbrooke’s three aides.

The disaster that ensued can be recounted in a sentence or two, but Packer devotes twenty pages to his narrative of what happened that day, beginning with his careful introduction and naming of the aides: Robert Frasure, Joseph Kruzel, and Nelson Drew. “It was the most dramatic story of Holbrooke’s life,” he says. He offers two versions of the story: a brief, semiofficial account centering on Holbrooke and Clark; and a second, much longer version in “absurd detail,” which he believes “comes as close to the fleeting truth as we are likely to get.”

In Packer’s first version of the story, the Humvee with Holbrooke and Clark is halted in mid-trip by some French trucks pulled up at the side of the road. A soldier is shouting. Holbrooke and Clark are told that a vehicle has gone off the side of the mountain back up the road. “Then it hit us. They were talking about our armoured personnel carrier!” The rest of that version relates what Holbrooke and Clark did next.

In Packer’s second version of the story, the Humvee sets off down the mountain and the APC follows a moment later. Both are soon going too fast but the Humvee is lucky: it speeds along. The heavier APC is unlucky. It is trying to catch up. As the road winds down the mountain with a cliff wall on one side and a steep drop on the other, the turns are too tight, the road too narrow, patches of gravel make slippery going, and the heavier APC in the rear, trying to keep up with the Humvee, hits a bump, skids to the right, and goes over the edge of the road onto a steep wooded slope, rolling over and over down the mountain as many as thirty or forty times, crashing finally into a big tree a thousand feet down. Some of the occupants are thrown out, some crushed inside. Finding out what happened, seeking and bringing help, and reporting the accident all took time. By day’s end it was known that Frasure, Kruzel, and Drew had all been killed.

Responsibility for the disaster was never established in any official way, but Packer in his second version of the story offers the reader his own take on “the fleeting truth.” The Humvee taking Holbrooke down into Sarajevo started off too fast; the heavier APC, trying to keep up, went off the road. “Holbrooke was the mission leader,” Packer writes, “and he loved speed.”

Packer’s tone in delivering this judgment is restrained; he is not looking for someone to blame but trying to establish what happened. The horror of the accident helps to explain what followed: Holbrooke’s forceful demands to the warring generals in Sarajevo that led a couple of months later to the Dayton Accords. That impressive success put him on President Clinton’s shortlist of plausible candidates to replace Warren Christopher as secretary of state at the beginning of Clinton’s second term. While the president was pondering his choice, Vice President Al Gore urged Holbrooke to fly home from a trip to Bhutan to make his case. Holbrooke imagined, hoped, and may even have allowed himself to believe that his dream was within reach. But Hillary Clinton had something different in mind; she wanted Bill to be the first president to nominate a woman as secretary of state. Other factors played a part, but that was the big one; the job went to Madeleine Albright instead. Holbrooke told his State Department friend Strobe Talbott, “For the first time in my life I feel old.”

Other moments of hope followed. In 2004 Holbrooke was one of John Kerry’s principal foreign policy advisers in his campaign against President George W. Bush, but Packer thinks Kerry had a different candidate in mind for secretary of state. “Joe Biden,” he writes, “had the inside track.”

In 2008 Holbrooke fought hard for Hillary Clinton, but she lost to Barack Obama, and Holbrooke wasn’t on any list of Obama’s, short or long. There was never any warmth between the two men. When Hillary became secretary of state, she engineered a position for Holbrooke as the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The last two years of Holbrooke’s life were spent trying to square that circle. By the end, Obama was exasperated and close to firing Holbrooke, but the real source of the distance between them had come much earlier, in the aftermath of September 11, when President Bush made up his mind to invade Iraq. Obama was disgusted by the way pushover Democrats had joined the parade. “By the time” Obama was elected, Packer writes, “Iraq was the letter ‘I’ stamped on the foreheads of Democrats like Holbrooke.”

George Packer joined The Atlantic as a staff writer last fall after fifteen years with The New Yorker. His book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America won a National Book Award in 2013. The prologue’s writer says he is content to be “a member of the class of lesser beings who aspire to a good life but not a great one,” but that is not Packer speaking. No book could achieve the intensity, completeness, and narrative depth of Our Man without the author’s belief that he had been put on this earth to do it. The strength of the book is its focus on Holbrooke’s character, which Packer pursues much as James Boswell pursued the human truth of Samuel Johnson. The point is not to analyze things—why Yugoslavia flew to pieces, or what Johnson did for the English language with his dictionary. The point is to winkle out and bring to light the whole truth of the man: what he was like in all his contradictions.

Iraq is the issue that explains how Holbrooke fell short, and it provides an illuminating moment when the lives of Holbrooke and Packer unexpectedly veer close. They were both agnostic on the question of Saddam Hussein’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, and they both thought he was a cruel, warlike, and unpredictable head of state, but neither seriously argued, and it is probable that neither believed, that the United States had a genuine cause for war or a legal right to invade. That being the case, why did they both support the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003?

Packer’s belief in the war lasted just long enough for him to defend it in his book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, published two years after the invasion. “The Iraq War was always winnable,” he wrote; “it still is.” But eight months later, in December 2005, he told an interviewer for a San Francisco website that he had changed his mind since he had written that line. “Now,” he said, “I’m quite grim.”

“You were ‘just barely’ pro-war when it started,” the interviewer said.

“It was just hope winning out, by a whisker, over fear,” Packer responded.

That was slicing it pretty thin. Over the next decade Packer reached a far stronger and clearer judgment on the war. “The war was a disaster for Iraq and the US alike,” he wrote in The New Yorker in 2013. “It was conceived in deceit and born in hubris, a historic folly that took the American eye off Al Qaeda and the Taliban, while shattering Iraq into a million bloody pieces.” Packer had to learn that; Holbrooke already knew it when he stood up to be counted for the war in 2003.

Packer does not skirt this moment in Our Man, but his account is brisk and soon concluded; it receives nothing like the intense twenty pages devoted to the APCcrash on Mount Igman, much less the hundred-page account of what Holbrooke learned in Vietnam about the limits of military power. In the fall of 2002 Kerry told Holbrooke over dinner that he was thinking of running for president in 2004. It was a tricky moment. President Bush was pressing Congress for authority to attack Iraq, and Kerry, like every other Democrat, was on the spot. “Holbrooke told him point-blank that he had to vote for the resolution if he didn’t want to be seen as weak on national security,” Packer writes. “Holbrooke didn’t add that the same was true for himself in his quest to become Kerry’s secretary of state.”

“It might have been better,” Packer suggests, “to be stupidly, disastrously wrong in a sincerely held belief like some of us.” By this I don’t take Packer to mean practically better—more likely to win plaudits—but better for the soul.

Friends at the time told Holbrooke he was making a mistake to support the war, but he chose the road of realism. To be against that war in that moment, he felt, would mark a man as soft forever. Maybe. But that was a moment when the United States needed bucking up to say no to a rush to war. It was the moment when Holbrooke fell short in Obama’s eyes. Packer cites a whole lifetime of serious work to balance against Holbrooke’s decision to hold his tongue, but it’s hard not to feel that this was the moment that put the almost in almost great.

A partilha da Palestina sob dominio britânico - livro no Kindle

La Partición del Mandato Británico en Palestina: La Historia y el Legado del Plan de Partición de las Naciones Unidas y la Creación del Estado de Israel (Spanish Edition) Kindle Edition

"Desde el final del estado judío de la antigüedad hasta el comienzo del mando británico, el área hoy designada con el nombre de Palestina no era un país, y no tenía fronteras, sólo límites administrativos." - Profesor Bernard Lewis, Revista Commentary, enero de 1975

El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos técnicamente tiene 69 años y continúa hasta la fecha, pero sus raíces se extienden por más de 2,000 años de historia. Con tanto tiempo e historia tras de sí, el proceso de paz en Medio Oriente se ha saturado de conceptos especializados, políticamente delicados, como derecho de retorno, fronteras contiguas, fronteras seguras, zonas desmilitarizadas y requisitos de seguridad, con diversos protagonistas como el Cuarteto, la Autoridad Palestina, Fatah, Hamas, la Liga Árabe, e Israel. Con el tiempo, se ha vuelto extremadamente difícil, incluso para políticos expertos sofisticados e interesados, entender todo esto.

Casi un siglo antes de que se fundara el estado de Israel en 1948, Palestina estaba bajo el control del Imperio Turco Otomano, formado principalmente por árabes. En la década de 1850, los judíos comenzaron a establecerse en pequeñas poblaciones a lo largo de las tierras que una vez formaron Judea y Samaria, mismas que los judíos consideraban como su antigua patria bíblica. Sus esfuerzos por adquirir tierras u propiedades estaban motivados por la intención de algunos judíos de ayudar a restablecer aquella tierra como la patria judía. Esos judíos se conocieron como sionistas, llamados así por (el monte) Sión, que a menudo se considera como una referencia a todo Israel, aunque en realidad se refiere a una parte de Jerusalén. Los sionistas intentaron establecer un Fondo Nacional Judío que ayudaría a los judíos a comprar tierras en Palestina para formar asentamientos judíos.

En 1947, los británicos delegaron el tema de la partición del Mandato británico a las Naciones Unidas, y la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas creó un Comité Especial para Palestina (UNSCOP, por sus siglas en inglés). La UNSCOP ideó lo que hoy se conoce como el Plan de Partición de la ONU de 1947. El Plan de Partición creó dividió dos estados poco probables, pero su intención era crear un estado de Israel en el que la población judía formara una mayoría de 55%, en tanto que Palestina tenía más de 90% de habitantes árabes palestinos. Mientras tanto, la ciudad de Jerusalén sería administrada internacionalmente, debido a las delicadas cuestiones religiosas que involucraban tant a musulmanes, como cristianos y judíos. Además de alojar varios lugares sagrados para los cristianos, la mezquita Al-Aqsa de Jerusalén es el tercer sitio más sagrado del Islam, y se halla situada justo al lado del Muro Occidental, el lugar más sagrado para los judíos.

El plan propuesto fue aceptado por la Agencia Judía, que representaba a los líderes de la comunidad judía en Palestina. Sin embargo, fue rechazado por los líderes palestinos dentro del Mandato, así como la recién formada Liga Árabe, una confederación de estados árabes del Medio Oriente liderada por Egipto, Líbano, Irak, Arabia Saudita, Siria y Yemen. Aunque el estado dividido de Israel hubiera tenido mayoría judía, el 67% de la población en el resto del Mandato británico después de la partición de Jordania era palestina, por lo que se consideró que el plan era injusto y daba ventaja a los judíos. 

El 14 de mayo de 1948, el mandato británico expiró de manera oficial. Ese mismo día, el Consejo Nacional Judío emitió la Declaración de Establecimiento del Estado de Israel. Diez minutos más tarde, el presidente Truman reconoció oficialmente al Estado de Israel, y la Unión Soviética rápidamente también reconoció a Israel. Sin embargo, los palestinos y la Liga Árabe no reconocieron el nuevo país, y al día siguiente, los ejércitos de Egipto, Siria, Líbano e Irak invadieron el antiguo Mandato británico para sofocar a Israel, y Arabia Saudita ayudó a los ejércitos árabes.

Embaixador Paulo Cordeiro, Vera Estrela

Embaixador Paulo Cordeiro (1953-2019)

Tarso Marketing, 8 de maio de 2019

O Embaixador do Brasil no Líbano, Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade Pinto e a esposa, a Embaixatriz Vera Lúcia Estrela de Andrade Pinto faleceram nesta quarta-feira, 8 de maio de 2019, em um acidente de carro na região de Basilicata, sul da Itália. Juntamente com o casal, houve também o óbito do motorista do táxi que levava o casal para dias de férias em Matera, localidade turística mundialmente famosa por ser Patrimônio Mundial da UNESCO. 

Paulo Cordeiro nasceu em Salvador, em 12 de outubro de 1953. Filho de Péricles Cordeiro Amador Pinto, prefeito do município baiano de Monte Santo (1955-1959) e da professora Maria Carmelita Andrade Pinto.

Graduou-se em História pelo Centro Universitário de Brasília em 1979. No mesmo ano concluiu o Curso de Preparação à Carreira de Diplomata, Instituto Rio Branco, tornando-se diplomata de carreira do Itamaraty.

Nos 40 anos de carreira foi primeiro-secretário em Genebra e nas Embaixadas em La Paz (Bolívia) e Ottawa (Canadá). Conselheiro na Missão junto à ONU, em Nova York. Ministro de Segunda Classe na Embaixada no México. Ministro-Conselheiro em Ottawa (2003-2005). 

Subsecretário-geral de Política III (África, Oriente Médio e CPLP) do Itamaraty e em seguida foi Cônsul-Geral em Milão (2015-2018).

Embaixador no Haiti (2005-2008), no Canadá (2008-2010) e no Líbano (2018-2019).

Atualização (20:54): o corpo do Embaixador Paulo Cordeiro será sepultado na cidade de Monte Santo, a 363 km de Salvador, em data a ser definida pela família. 

  

Na última visita que fez ao Instituto Geográfico e Histórico da Bahia (IGHB), em fevereiro de 2017, o Embaixador Paulo Cordeiro, então Cônsul-Geral do Brasil em Milão, foi recepcionado por Eduardo Morais de Castro, presidente do IGHB, Antonio Calmon Teixeira, Beatriz Lima e Fernando Souza.

(Foto Cleide Nunes/IGHB)

Embaixatriz Vera Lúcia Estrela de Andrade Pinto

Leia também:

https://tarsomarketing.blogspot.com/2019/05/paulo-cordeito-vera-estrela.html

Mini-reflexão sobre ineptos e corruptos, da esquerda e da direita - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Em lugar de resolver os problemas do Brasil, a Bolsofamíglia fica falando em "armas nucleares".
Sou um crítico aberto desse governicho, e minha posição não tem nada a ver com ideologia, com o fato de eles serem (ou se pretenderem) de direita, ou de extrema-direita (embora sejam apenas idiotas, pois não têm nenhuma noção doutrinal do que seja o conservadorismo, no caso deles, são mesmo reacionários sem qualquer noção do que seja isso).
Eu já era um crítico feroz do lulopetismo, e não porque fossem de esquerda, uma posição política tão legítima quanto ser de direita.
Eu criticava o lulopetismo por duas características básicas desse regime destruidor das instituições: eles eram absolutamente ineptos em matérias econômicas e administrativas e IMENSAMENTE CORRUPTOS, sendo que o chefão é um mafioso completo (sem a ética da Mafia), que merece 200 anos de cadeia, por tudo o que roubou e permitiu que roubassem.
Eu critico o bolsonarismo, por ele ser absolutamente INEPTO, ainda mais inepto do que o PT – não, ainda, em política econômica, pois não deu tempo para o "Posto Ipiranga" realizar as maravilhas prometidas em campanha, como privatizações em massa, coisas que o PT nunca faria –, não exatamente da mesma forma, mas pior em quase todas as áreas, sobretudo em educação, a maior tragédia nacional, e que continua sendo uma tragédia tragi-cômica, se me permitem. Não estou seguro ainda quanto à corrupção, embora o que já se conheça da Bolsofamiglia augura grandes escândalos pela frente, nada de muito diferente do que fazem os demais políticos no seu modo artesanal de produção da corrupção (diferente, portanto, do PT, que tinha um modo industrial de produção de corrupção), mas talvez tão grande quanto outros personagens notórios da corrupção política. 
Como já disse alguém, esse pessoal perdeu a noção. Mas desconfio que, nos meses pela frente, eles não vão adquirir nenhuma noção racional do que seja administrar um país. Vão ficar brigando contra inimigos e aliados pelas redes sociais e pelas declarações improvisadas nos microfones dos jornalistas (aliás, hostilizados por eles, como ignaros que são).
Estamos entregues a um bando de bárbaros, no núcleo central, embora cercado por blocos e grupos de racionalidade que são os militares, a equipe econômica e alguns outros personagens aqui e ali. Mas a tropa do bolsonarismo é muito rústica, inepta mesmo, o que se manifesta na Educação, nos DDHH, nas relações exteriores e mais aqui e ali.
Vamos em frente, tentando sair do pântano...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 16 de maio de 2019