Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
Humankind has made so much progress in bending nature to our will that we sometimes forget our own place in it. The history of pandemics shows that the proverbial fourth horseman of the apocalypse – pestilence – can never be vanquished, only contained.
MILAN – In 1969, the US surgeon general, William H. Stewart, told Congress that it was time “to close the books on infectious diseases” and “declare the war against pestilence won.” Antibiotics, vaccines, and widespread advances in sanitation were making the world healthier than ever. Within a few years, the medical schools at Harvard and Yale actually closed their infectious-disease departments. By then, polio, typhoid, cholera, and even measles had essentially been eradicated, at least in the West.
But triumphalism was not only premature; it was dangerously foolhardy. The HIV/AIDS epidemic broke out in the United States just a decade later, and never has been vanquished. Then, following a short lull in the 1990s, came SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and avian and swine flu, to name just a few of the outbreaks so far this century. Though most of these new diseases have primarily afflicted the poorest parts of the world, they should have made clear that the war on microbes was far from over.
Nonetheless, a sense of invulnerability has prevailed in the West. It was assumed that even if epidemics had not been consigned to history, they posed a risk only to geographically and economically distant societies. The novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China in December has shattered this illusion, showing once again that novel pathogens are equal-opportunity killers.
After initially deceiving ourselves that COVID-19 would remain just another Asian health crisis, the entire world is now grappling with a runaway pandemic. Suddenly, public-health authorities everywhere are trying to flatten the contagion curve with quarantines, travel bans, and unprecedented society-wide lockdowns, while governments and central banks try desperately to flatten the recession curve with unprecedented stimulus packages.
DISEASE AND DENIAL
One lesson is already clear: Even in the richest, most advanced economies, humans are still humans, which means they are vulnerable to new microbial threats, particularly zoonotic infections (diseases that spread from non-human animals) resulting from natural evolution and facilitated by human activities. As two recent histories of pandemics show, it is always only a matter of time before a virus, bacterium, or parasitic organism makes the leap from some non-human species to our own.
Ebola, for example, came from chimpanzees, just as bubonic plague emerged from rats and COVID-19 (most likely) from bats. And, in addition to worrying about new microbes, we also must worry about older ones. Owing to antigenic mutations, malaria and tuberculosis, once almost defeated, have reemerged in drug-resistant forms.
In Epidemics and Society, the Yale University historian Frank M. Snowden shows why the West’s complacency was never justified. Far from being the exclusive preserve of “backward” societies, deadly disease outbreaks are, if anything, a negative byproduct of human progress. By altering ecosystems and erasing natural frontiers, humans have continuously exposed themselves to germs, viruses, and bacteria that evolve to exploit their vulnerabilities. The push of economic development has brought more opportunities for humans and animals to intermingle, and globe-spanning trade has established new routes for the propagation of disease.
In recorded history, the battle between humans and microbes has essentially been a fight between reason and superstition. For centuries, human societies felt powerless in the face of pandemics, so they resorted to religious rituals to placate some supposedly irate god. When science eventually triumphed over religion, one illusion was replaced by another. We convinced ourselves that we were the gods, capable of conquering nature and the microbial world.
By examining this long and painful learning process, we can better understand why the world was so unprepared for the current crisis. Snowden confidently takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey, tracing the history of the major pandemics that have afflicted the world – from bubonic plague, smallpox, and cholera to tuberculosis, malaria, polio, HIV, and Ebola. Snowden’s goal is to show how humanity learned to tame infectious diseases through the creation of public-health systems and the progress and dissemination of medical knowledge.
This has been a constant struggle, in part because each infectious disease has been unique. For some, the key trait was their contagiousness; for others, it was their deadliness. Some were bacterial, others viral or parasitic. Some were transmitted by air, others through contaminated water or vectors like fleas, mosquitoes, and lice.
What they all shared was the ability to inflict severe suffering on humans and cause far-reaching disruption of entire societies. Infectious diseases have a unique capacity to fuel anxiety, fear, mass hysteria, and outbursts of religiosity (especially in the past). They pose a direct challenge to social cohesion and solidarity, and thus to a society’s ability to manage collective crises.
PEAK PANDEMIC
Of all the landmark infectious outbreaks that Snowden analyzes, the bubonic plague remains the most emblematic for its epidemiology, persistence, and effects on society. Even more to the point, it permanently influenced how health authorities deal with infectious diseases.
Remembered for its virulence, lethality, and horrifying clinical manifestations, the plague killed 50% of those infected within days of the onset of symptoms. And, unlike polio, measles, mumps, and other diseases that tend to strike children and the elderly, the plague targeted adults in the prime of life, leaving behind many widows and orphans – and thus magnifying the economic, demographic, and social dislocations.
Moreover, the plague is the only highly infectious disease that has continuously ravaged the world throughout the last 1,500 years, accompanying humanity from the age of religious superstition into the age of scientific hubris. It usually emanated from Africa or Asia and then spread to Europe and America with the help of globetrotting merchants. Recurring epidemic waves lasted for decades or even centuries.
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The Black Death, for example, wiped out up to one-third of the European population between 1334 and 1372, and then returned intermittently until as recently as 1879. Meanwhile, the other infectious diseases that emerged during this period – from syphilis in the 1490s to cholera in 1830 – ran in parallel with it.
For centuries, Europeans believed that the plague was sent by an angry deity as punishment for disobedience and sin. To placate divine wrath, communities often sought to scapegoat and cast out the supposed sinners, be they prostitutes, Jews, religious dissenters, foreigners, lepers, beggars, or accused witches.
During the plague years of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, towns across Europe closed themselves off to outsiders and hunted down anyone within their walls who was deemed undesirable. Those who were apprehended were stoned, lynched, and burned at the stake.
A less cruel response focused on propitiating the angry god through penitence. A typical example was the outdoor procession to a holy shrine amid rogations and confessions, like those organized by the Flagellants who traveled across Europe before being persecuted by the Inquisition.
In other cases, afflicted communities resorted to the cult of saints who were supposed to intercede with God on behalf of suffering humankind. In recognition of Mary’s intervention to end the plague in 1631, for example, the city of Venice built the monumental church of Saint Mary of Health at the entrance to the Grand Canal.
Religious fanaticism clearly was not enough to defeat the plague, given its continuous recurrence. But other anti-plague measures, many of them draconian, represented some of the first institutionalized forms of public-health policy.
During the Black Death, Italian cities pioneered plague regulations that cloaked health authorities with emergency powers and facilitated coordination between the army and the bureaucratic apparatus. Within cities, the ill were isolated in pest-houses or locked in their homes with guards at the doorstep. The military was delegated to isolate the population with sanitary cordons to prevent the inflow of disease-carrying people and goods. Venice was the first city to quarantine ships and their crews.
In the event, these early anti-plague policies marked a key moment in the emergence of the modern state. Deadly outbreaks justified top-down measures to control the economy and the population through forcible detention, surveillance, and the suspension of liberties. The same containment and social-distancing measures would remain the first line of defense against almost any infectious disease, from cholera and yellow fever to HIV and Ebola. And though these policies were not always appropriate or effective, they conferred an image of decisive leadership on rulers.
SCIENTIFIC HUBRIS
Despite the prevailing superstitions, our ancestors understood that the plague was transmitted from person to person, and that isolation was necessary to contain the contagion. Still, they did not know what caused the disease. For centuries, doctors, influenced by the so-called miasma theory, believed that “bad air” emanating from rotting organic matter was the source of sickness.
Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did physicians begin to understand what was really happening beneath the surface. The invention of the microscope led to the germ theory of disease, which identified microorganisms – not miasma – as the source of infection. In the case of the plague, the culprit was the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which was carried by fleas living on the black rats that were a constant presence in the crowded cities and merchant ships of the time.
The emergence and widespread acceptance of germ theory represented a turning point in the fight against infectious disease, ushering in a medical revolution and the creation of entire new fields such as microbiology, immunology, parasitology, and tropical medicine. By the mid-twentieth century, the most prevalent and aggressive infections were in retreat, thanks to the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics, higher living standards, and improved hygiene.
Vaccination alone reduced the incidence of smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, rubella, measles, mumps, and polio to such a radical degree that these diseases have been largely forgotten. The chemical DDT was poised to eradicate malaria and other insect-borne pathogens until it was found to be carcinogenic. And cholera was more or less knocked out by sand filtration and the chlorination of water.
In The Pandemic Century, a vivid account of the scientific community’s fight against viruses over the last century, the science journalist Mark Honigsbaum shows how these achievements produced a sense of mastery over the microbial world. After centuries of suffering at the hands of capricious gods, humanity suddenly began to develop seemingly divine powers of its own.
But with that realization came hubris. In 1948, US Secretary of State George Marshall confidently declared that humanity was about to eradicate infectious diseases from the Earth. To his generation, microbes were seen as static or slowly evolving, geographically constrained, and thus eminently manageable. Old diseases were being wiped out, and few stopped to consider that new ones might arise.
As is obvious to us now, this idea of microbial fixity – that there can be only so many diseases – was misplaced. Since 1940, scientists have identified 335 new infectious diseases, two-thirds of which originate in wildlife, particularly bats. Familiar examples include Lassa fever, Marburg virus, Lyme disease, Rift Valley fever, West Nile virus, SARS, MERS, Nipah virus, and Ebola, but there are many, many more.
Whenever dangerous pathogens are defeated, it is only a matter of time before others take their place. New diseases are the inevitable condition of living in a dynamic world. Human beings are part of an immensely complex ecological system. Bacterial and viral infections can lie dormant in tissue and cells – or under now-melting permafrost – for decades before being reactivated by a sudden shock to the system, or through co-infection with another microbe.
In 2013, for example, Simon Anthony of Columbia University and his team discovered that the number of novel viruses in all mammalian species could be around 320,000, with bats being the most common carriers because they live in large communities, travel long distances, and are widespread throughout the world. The line that divides infectious from chronic diseases is also increasingly blurred. Papillomavirus, for instance, is the primary cause of a number of cancers affecting both men and women.
Moreover, according to a 2016 report by the US National Academy of Medicine, “the underlying rate of emergence of infectious diseases appears to be increasing.” Many more diseases are emerging from animal reservoirs and ecological niches that used to be far removed from human populations. Demographic growth, climate change, crowded cities, persistent poverty, and global trading routes continue to disrupt fragile ecological equilibriums and expose humanity to the threat of new killer pathogens.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
In Epidemics and Society, Snowden points to a 1998 report from the US Department of Defense warning that, “Historians in the next millennium may find that the twentieth century’s greatest fallacy was the belief that infectious diseases were nearing elimination. The resultant complacency has actually increased the threat.” Just two decades later, that prediction has been borne out, with rich and poor countries alike brought to their knees by a coronavirus pandemic.
That said, it is not the scientific community that bears all of the blame for our miscalculations. After the exuberance of the 1960s and 1970s proved untenable, virologists, epidemiologists, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations have understood that pandemics are still an acute threat. In 2015, the philanthropist Bill Gatessounded the alarm about the world’s lack of preparedness for a flu pandemic. But policymakers and business leaders were too busy reaping the fruits of unfettered globalization to heed the warnings.
To be sure, no other recent epidemic has threatened global health and the economy on the scale that COVID-19 has. The World Health Organization did warn in 2009 that the swine flu (H1N1) met the criteria for a pandemic virus. But the risk of global disruption did not materialize. Similarly, in 2003, SARS was expected to become a new influenza pandemic, but that turned out to be a false alarm. While a single sneeze can set a pandemic in motion, the intra-species contingencies are complex, making large-scale pandemics low-probability events.
But low-probability does not mean no probability. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our vulnerability and lack of preparedness, underscoring the need for a more cautious approach in the future. As with all infectious outbreaks, its suddenness has sown confusion and chaos. The psychological, economic, and social damage it has inflicted will lead to permanent changes in our economies, politics, and individual lives.
New pestilences will emerge without warning in the future. But one hopes we will prepare for them without adopting an apocalyptic mindset or indulging in the scapegoating of the Middle Ages. Living under perpetual pandemic alert would strain our livelihoods and limit our freedoms. And besides, there is a third way. Hubris should defer to humility. Our scientific aspiration should be to understand the microbial world, not to conquer it.
Governments, for their part, should heed the insights that science offers. By adopting more sustainable economic paradigms, strengthening public-health systems, restoring faith in experts, and developing resilience against negative shocks, we can minimize the likelihood of another pandemic-driven global catastrophe.
No matter how deep our understanding of the microbial world, Snowden and Honigsbaum remind us, nature will always furnish viruses, bacteria, and parasites with endowments we didn’t anticipate. After the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, theirs and other books on infectious diseases are likely to remain open for quite some time.
O documento total, mas ainda claramente incompleto e parcial, encontra-se neste link: https://www.academia.edu/42707131/Bibliografia_Diplomatica_Cronologica_1945-2020 Fiz um apelo, na plataforma Academia.edu, para que me enviassem novas entradas, dentro dos critérios estabelecidos: livros, cobrindo as áreas do título, menos teoria do que história e política da atuação do Brasil nas relações Internacionais, com algumas saídas para o resto do mundo, ou ROW, como dizem os americanos, para sinalizar tudo o que não é exclusivamente EUA. O trabalho continua, mas acho que já oferece um bom guia; eliminei todos os dados editoriais, para não sobrecarregar a listagem, que aumentaria tremendamente com esses dados. Ofereci, nos meus livros dedicados às obras dos diplomatas e acadêmicos próximos, resenhas de muitos desses livros. Espero estar ajudando nos estudos de muitos, mas também espero não desesperar aqueles muito perfeccionistas, que acham que precisam ler tudo. Não sejam malucos como eu... 3630. “Relações internacionais, relações exteriores, política externa, história diplomática e diplomacia do Brasil, 75 anos de livros e leituras: um guia bibliográfico cronológico, 1945-2020”, Brasília, 11 abril 2020, 22 p. Guia parcial e incompleto da bibliografia em formato de livros, brasileiros e estrangeiros, sobre as temáticas do título; divulgado em caráter preliminar na plataforma Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/42707131/Bibliografia_Diplomatica_Cronologica_1945-2020 e https://www.academia.edu/s/135002abe2).
Relações internacionais, relações exteriores, política externa, história diplomática e diplomacia do Brasil, 75 anos de livros e leituras: um guia bibliográfico cronológico, 1945-2020
Compilação efetuada por Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 11 de abril de 2020
1945:
Barão do Rio Branco: Obrasdo Barão do Rio Branco (em 9 vols., 1945-1948);
Álvaro Lins: Rio Branco;
Renato de Mendonça: História da Política Exterior do Brasil: 1500-1825
1946:
Valentim Bouças: História da Dívida Externa da União;
Claudionor Lemos: Dívida Externa: análise, legislação e documentos elucidativos;
M. Franchini Netto: A Evolução da Diplomacia: antiga e nova técnica;
1947:
Aluízio Napoleão: Rio Branco e as relações entre o Brasil e os Estados Unidos;
Getúlio Vargas: A Nova Política do Brasil (11 vols. publicados entre 1938 e 1947)
Luis Gurgel do Amaral: O meu velho Itamaraty;
1948:
Hélio Vianna: História das Fronteiras do Brasil;
Gilberto Freyre: Ingleses no Brasil: aspectos da influência britânica sobre a vida, a paisagem e a cultura do Brasil;
Gilberto Freyre: Joaquim Nabuco;
Rubens Ferreira de Mello: Gênese e evolução da diplomacia;
Rubens Ferreira de Mello: Tratado de direito diplomático (1a. ed.; 2 vols.);
1949:
José Honório Rodrigues: Teoria da História do Brasil;
Rubens Ferreira de Mello: Tratado de direito diplomático (2a. ed. Aumentada; 2 vols.);
(...)
2019:
João Ernesto Christófolo: Princípios Constitucionais de Relações Internacionais: significado, alcance e aplicação;
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: Contra a corrente: Ensaios contrarianistas sobre as relações internacionais do Brasil (2014-2018);
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: Miséria da diplomacia: a destruição da inteligência no Itamaraty;
Gustavo Marques Bezerra: O Livro Negro do Comunismo no Brasil;
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: Marxismo e socialismo no Brasil e no mundo: trajetória de duas parábolas da era contemporânea;
Oliveira Lima: O movimento da independência (1821-1822) (edição fac-similar);
Marcos Romero: História da organização administrativa da Secretaria de Estado dos Negócios Estrangeiros e das Relações Exteriores (1808-1951)
Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen: História da Independência do Brasil (edição fac-similar);
Oliveira Lima: Dom João VI no Brasil(1808-1821) (edição fac-similar; 2 vols.);
João Dunshee de Abranches Moura: Rio Branco e a Política Exterior do Brasil (1902-1912) (edição fac-similar; 2 vols.);
Camilo Negri; Elisa de Sousa Ribeiro (coords.): Retratos Sul-Americanos: perspectivas brasileiras sobre história e política externa;
Elisa de Sousa Ribeiro (coord.): Direito do Mercosul (2ª ed.);
Jorge Ferreira; Lucilia de Almeida Neves Delgado (orgs.): O Brasil Republicano 4: o tempo do regime autoritário; ditadura militar e redemocratização; Quarta República (1964-1985);
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: Paralelos com o Meridiano 47: Ensaios Longitudinais e de Ampla Latitude;
Henrique Sartori de Almeida Prado: A cooperação descentralizada e a política para a fronteira no Brasil;
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: O panorama visto em Mundorama: ensaios irreverentes e não autorizados;
Paulo Roberto de Almeida: Pontes para o mundo no Brasil: minhas interações com a RBPI;
2020:
Fabio Rocha Frederico: Política externa e guerrilha no Cone Sul: o “Plano Satã” e o sequestro do diplomata brasileiro Aloysio Mares Dias Gomide;
Antonella Mori (ed.): Latin America and the New Global Order: dangers and opportunities in a multipolar world;
José Alexandre Altahyde Hage (org.): Política energética no Brasil: sua participação no desenvolvimento e no relacionamento internacional;
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 11 de abril de 2020
Guia parcial e incompleto; o organizador agradeceria receber sugestões, comentários e acréscimos, no que se refere a livros publicados sobre as temáticas do título.
Ao que dizem, estamos em guerra. Diversos dirigentes recorreram a esse conceito para referir-se ao mais ameaçador desafio já enfrentado pela Humanidade desde o encerramento da “segunda Guerra de Trinta Anos”, que devastou quase toda a Europa e metade da Ásia na primeira metade do século XX. Aparentemente, os principais estadistas atuais — alguns tardiamente — já definiram o inimigo a ser abatido, mediram suas dimensões e estão empregando uma variedade de meios e de ferramentas para combatê-lo de maneira mais ou menos eficiente.
No caso do Brasil, no dizer de um humorista, não temos apenas um inimigo, mas dois, o que nos leva para além do terreno técnico-logístico no qual o primeiro inimigo precisa e deve ser combatido, nos obrigando a adentrar num terreno político-institucional, muito mais complicado, uma vez que o segundo inimigo é o próprio núcleo de tomada de decisão.
Azar o nosso, pois ademais dos componentes propriamente econômicos e materiais com os quais se deve levar a guerra, e cada uma de suas batalhas em várias frentes, avulta nesses desafios de grande escopo a qualidade da liderança e a capacidade de manobrar dos responsáveis pela condução geral da contenda: generais e administradores da intendência, certamente, mas também os executivos da inteligência e, acima de tudo e de todos, o chefe das FFAA, que vem a ser o próprio chefe de governo ou de Estado.
Desse ponto de vista, estamos muito mal aparelhados, não só no plano da estratégia geral a ser empregada na condução da formidável guerra, mas igualmente para o planejamento do pós-guerra e o esforço de reconstrução. A essa altura, todos já perceberam que a palavra-R já está encomendada, e o que se especula é quão grande e extensa será a palavra-D: que uma recessão severa já esteja no horizonte, ninguém mais contesta; se especula apenas sobre como minimizar a profundidade da depressão.
Não vamos achar que só nós, parcos de meios e de liderança, falharemos nas duas frentes, a da guerra, propriamente, e a da reconstrução, que deve vir depois, ou talvez, concomitantemente aos esforços que se devem empreender desde para superar ou contornar a depressão. Em outras ocasiões, mesmo grandes estadistas de poderosas e ricas potências falharam miseravelmente na reconstrução para a paz e a estabilidade do pós-guerra. Versalhes e a abordagem punitiva da Grande Guerra praticamente encomendaram a segunda parte da “segunda Guerra de Trinta Anos”, com uma ferocidade vinte vezes maior. Mesmo se admitirmos que a saída por San Francisco foi superior que aquela negociada em Paris, cabe também concluir que o pós-Segunda Guerra não nos trouxe a paz e a estabilidades prometidas pelos conciliábulos de Teerã, Dumbarton Oaks, Ialta ou Potsdam. A Guerra Fria emergiu menos de dois anos depois de encerrado o último grande conflito global de nossos tempos, e trouxe consigo momentos de tensão e algumas caminhadas to the brink, à beira do precipício (talvez menos Berlim, e mais Cuba).
Em Paris, os principais estadistas “vencedores” que conduziram a Grande Guerra estavam na mesa de negociações, mas os resultados não foram muito brilhantes, ao contrário: criaram as sementes da retomada. Ao final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, uma vez derrotados os agressores nazifascistas, os grandes estadistas, ou tinham desaparecido (Roosevelt), ou tinham sido alijados do poder (Churchill e, mais adiante, De Gaulle); sobrou apenas Stalin, para construir seu poderoso “novo espaço vital” em toda a Europa central e oriental; mais adiante Mao substituiria Chiang Kaichek no comando do grande aliado na frente oriental contra o militarismo japonês, e a China passou para o outro lado.
Obviamente, a panóplia nuclear fez com que a guerra entre novos inimigos permanecesse “fria”, com poucas exceções regionais que continuaram nas “proxy wars” durante muito tempo: Vietnã, Oriente Médio, várias partes da África e da Ásia. Instalou-se aquilo que Raymond Aron tão acertadamente constatou ainda antes que a União Soviética lograsse a paridade nuclear: “paz impossível, guerra improvável”. Infelizmente, o mundo perdeu uma oportunidade de construir a paz e a instabilidade tão almejadas por duas gerações de combatentes e povos inteiros desde 1914: centenas de bilhões de dólares foram gastos nos equipamentos e forças militares – e na inteligência, na subversão e sabotagem – em lugar de serem devotados para eliminar miséria e pobreza ao redor do mundo.
O mundo já está tendo a sua “terceira guerra mundial”, atualmente, e mesmo que instituições e arranjos diplomáticos não sejam inteiramente refeitos quanto em 1919 e 1945, o impacto geopolítico da presente “guerra” será tremendo, abrindo novas perspectivas para praticamente todos os países, alguns mais fortalecidos, outros relativamente paralisados, senão em declínio. Já tracei em outro texto – “Consequências geopolíticas da pandemia Covid-19”; link; https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2020/03/consequencias-geopoliticas-da-pandemia.html – considerações sobre o final da guerra fria geopolítica e o ingresso numa guerra fria econômica que já parece ter pelo menos um vencedor, o mesmo que está sendo acusado – como o Império alemão na Grande Guerra – de ter sido o responsável pela atual guerra contra um inimigo invisível.
Não é o caso de retomar aqui o debate, que empreenderei no momento oportuno; prefiro me concentrar sobre o nosso país. O que me parece, observando as coisas num cenário ainda indefinido, é que o Brasil está singularmente desprovido de quaisquer condições – materiais, recursos, inteligência, liderança – para não apenas conduzir um combate bem sucedido contra o inimigo omnipresente, como totalmente despreparado, pela ausência de lideranças efetivas, para levar adiante o trabalho de reconstrução do pós-guerra. Planos nas áreas da economia, da segurança e justiça, e até das “infraestruturas” de saúde, educação e ciência e tecnologia podem estar irremediavelmente comprometidos pela “falência” da direção, pelo menos a que se apresenta pateticamente ate aqui. Nas áreas da educação e das relações exteriores essa falência é visível, crescente e preocupante, mas a descoordenação que se manifesta nos escalões mais altos tornam duvidosos, ou irrisórios, quaisquer esforços para empreender, não apenas nacionalmente, mas globalmente, o imenso esforço de reconstrução do pós guerra que terá de vir de novas e responsáveis lideranças.
Aparentemente, já começamos derrotados desde o início, nos campos de batalha da presente guerra aberta pela pandemia, mas também no planejamento do pós-guerra. Pretendo dedicar minhas próximas reflexões sobre a natureza do duplo exercício que a nação precisaria fazer, agora e mais adiante, como forma de oferecer alguns elementos de orientação a mim mesmo, antes de mais nada, assim como a eventuais interlocutores nos diversos meios com os quais venho interagindo desde algum tempo.
O Brasil escapou do dilúvio de Noé (nem entrou naquele filme de Hollywood), escapou das sete pragas do Egito, ficou à margem das invasões bárbaras, não se meteu na guerra dos Trinta Anos, nem nos massacres religiosos na Europa central (teve, à verdade, a Inquisição que atingiu muito cristão novo por aqui), os corsários ingleses não fizeram muitos estragos em nossas costas, as guerras napoleônicas até lhe foram favoráveis, depois da Guerra do Paraguai nunca mais se meteu na vida dos vizinhos (bem, tem sempre aqueles idiotas que palpitam em eleições da região), nem chegou a participar da Grande Guerra (o pessoal embarcado chegou tarde, e morreu mesmo de gripe americana, vulgo espanhola), teve lá seus golpes e revoluções, mas com poucos mortos e feridos, participou moderadamente da Segunda Guerra Mundial (os americanos deram tudo, do fardamento à marmita), escapamos de atender ao convite dos mesmos americanos para mandar nossos recrutas para a Coreia ou Vietnã (enfim, andamos pela República Dominicana), o FHC recusou o convite de Bill Clinton para se incorporar ao Plano Colômbia, não fomos lá derrubar a ditadura do Maduro (como queria o EA, e seus amigos Pompeo e Bolton), enfim, estivemos poupados dos maiores terremotos e maremotos do mundo, explosões de centrais nucleares (mas temos lá nossas devastações de florestas e de barragens, inundações, os arrastões), mas não escapamos de sermos atingidos em cheio PELA MAIOR CALAMIDADE DE NOSSA HISTÓRIA.
Não, não estou me referindo à pandemia do Codiv-19.
Ao completar minha lista de publicados deste ano – muito poucas "obras" –, verifiquei que a maior parte é feita de entrevistas; tem também uma apresentação feita em dezembro de 2019, mas que só foi divulgada este ano. Parece que teremos um ano virtual... Paulo Roberto de Almeida
1337. “A trajetória do comunismo no Brasil”, Apresentação no IHG-DF, em 11/12/2019, sobre “O movimento comunista internacional e seu impacto no Brasil”, gravada em vídeo, em companhia de Hugo Studart (autor de livros sobre a guerrilha do Araguaia), de Gustavo Bezerra (autor: O Livro Negro do Comunismo no Brasil), e de meu livro: Marxismo e socialismo no Brasil e no mundo: trajetória de duas parábolas da era contemporânea (Brasília: Edição de autor, 2019, 304 p.), disponível no YouTube (16 de jan. de 2020;link: https://youtu.be/LueQRy9yzxI; duração: 2h50mns). Apresentação em PP, em 24 slides, disponível na plataforma Research Gate (link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337824903_O_Movimento_comunista_internacional_e_seu_impacto_no_Brasil;DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15046.63047) e na plataforma Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/41219238/O_Movimento_comunista_internacional_e_seu_impacto_no_Brasil_2019_). Relação de Originais n. 3545.
1341. “Governo persegue conselheiro do Livres”, Brasília, 6 abril 2020, entrevista gravada em vídeo com o jornalista Mano Ferreira do Livres, no You Tube, em companhia do deputado Marcelo Calero (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33XiJPIEmKs&feature=youtu.be).
Science History Images/AlamyThe Battle of the Hydaspes, in what is now Punjab, between the troops of Alexander the Great and the Indian king Porus, 326 BC; illustration from the Faits du Grand Alexandre, circa 1470
“They Came, They Saw, but India Conquered,” wrote the historian A.K. Narain in 1957, characterizing the effects of the Greek penetration into “India” (the ancient name included what is today Pakistan and sometimes easternmost Afghanistan). He referred not only to Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Indus Valley in 327 BC—the first large-scale encounter between Greek and Indic civilizations—but also to the era that followed, when Hellenic rump kingdoms ruled by strongmen rose and fell in northwest India and Bactria, its neighbor to the west. The presence in the region of these Hellenic states, and their occasional forays further east, created a zone of Greco-Indian contact, influence, and exchange, as well as occasional conflict, stretching from Central Asia to the Ganges.
Narain was one of the first Indian historians to write about the “Indo-Greeks,” the term he applied to the Hellenes who campaigned or settled in this part of the world. As revealed by his insistence that “India conquered” them, the inquiry into this age of contact has been complicated by issues of race, religion, nationalism, and, for Indian writers especially, the parallels (perceived or real) between Greek invaders and British imperialists. “The noun Indo-Greek…carries within it a restless tension,” the Hellenist Frank Holt recently commented in an address to a New Delhi academic conference. “That little hyphen stretches between Indo and Greek like the tightened rope in a tug-of-war between two great civilizations. It invites us to join a team at either end…to pull for a winning side.” Partisans in this struggle have sometimes taken wildly extreme positions or have reduced the discussion of Indo-Greek contact to polemical questions of which culture has first claim on a given advance or in which direction influences flowed.
Richard Stoneman, an independent scholar and editor who has made a career-long study of Alexander the Great and the legends about him, takes a sensibly moderate approach to such questions in The Greek Experience of India, when he even attempts to answer them. His book contains numerous “who influenced whom” case studies but casts a much wider net, wider even than its title indicates, for he is also interested in the Indian experience of the Greeks, which is much harder to recover. Drawing on a vast array of research, he has compiled a magisterial overview of “the Indo-Greek era,” beginning with Alexander’s crossing of the Hindu Kush mountain range in 327 BC and ending with the severing of contact about three centuries later. His goal is admirably broad-minded: to “peel back these curtains” of distortion that stood between India…
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DISEASE AND DENIAL
PEAK PANDEMIC
SCIENTIFIC HUBRIS
PROCEED WITH CAUTION