Only the Middle East Can Fix the Middle East

The Path to a Post-American Regional Order

Foreign Affairs

,

1 March 2024

In the early weeks of 2024, as the catastrophic war in the Gaza Strip began to inflame the broader region, the stability of the Middle East appeared to be once again at the center of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In the initial days after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, the Biden administration moved two aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear-powered submarine to the Middle East, while a steady stream of senior U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, began making high-profile trips to the region. Then, as the conflict became more difficult to contain, the United States went further. In early November, in response to attacks on U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed groups, the United States conducted strikes on weapons sites in Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; in early January, U.S. forces killed a senior commander of one of these groups in Baghdad. And in mid-January, after weeks of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by the Houthi movement, which is also supported by Iran, the United States, together with the United Kingdom, initiated a series of strikes on Houthi strongholds in Yemen.Despite this show of force, it would be unwise to bet on the United States’ committing major diplomatic and security resources to the Middle East over the longer term. Well before Hamas’s October 7 attacks, successive U.S. administrations had signaled their intent to shift away from the region to devote more attention to a rising China. The Biden administration has also been contending with Russia’s war in Ukraine, further limiting its bandwidth for coping with the Middle East. By 2023, U.S. officials had largely given up on a revived nuclear agreement with Iran, seeking instead to reach informal de-escalation arrangements with their Iranian counterparts. At the same time, the administration was bolstering the military capacity of regional partners such as Saudi Arabia in an effort to transfer some of the security burden from Washington. Despite Biden’s early reluctance to do business with Riyadh — whose leadership U.S. intelligence believes was responsible for the 2018 killing of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi — the president prioritized a deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In pursuing the deal, the United States was willing to offer significant incentives to both sides while mostly ignoring the Palestinian issue.

Quanto menos souber melhor

O problema é que a «potência» qualquer que ela seja, pessoal ou colectiva, nunca se patenteou ou demonstrou com parlapié seja ele no patois que fôr. Ou é isto ou a culpa é mesmo do Trump (a besta faz por isso). Não sendo uma e outra 'coisa' é a União Europeia ou a Europa que é uma monumental macacada.

Do apeirógono (II) - ¿Podemos confiar en los expertos?

«La pretensión de tener buen ojo para la pintura plantea dos grandes interrogantes. En primer lugar, ¿cómo se aprende esta habilidad? Y, en segundo lugar, ¿hasta qué punto son fiables las conclusiones? Aunque los mejores expertos emiten sus juicios en un instante, se basan en largos años de experiencia. Del mismo modo que los críticos literarios realizan una ‘lectura minuciosa’, los entendidos practican la ‘observación minuciosa’ de los cuadros durante horas, todos los días»

MI proyecto actual consiste en escribir una historia del oficio de los expertos, es decir, la práctica de juzgar obras de arte, especialmente pinturas, evaluar su calidad, atribuir estas obras (a menudo no firmadas) a un artista determinado y diferenciar un original de una copia (incluidas las falsificaciones). Estoy escribiendo esta historia desde el punto de vista de un historiador del conocimiento; será mi séptimo libro sobre el tema, cada uno examinando el conocimiento desde un ángulo diferente. Se centrará en Occidente desde el Renacimiento hasta la actualidad, sin dar por sentado que este arte de juzgar sea exclusivamente occidental (los expertos ya ejercían en China hace bastante más de mil años) o que surgiera de repente en torno a 1500. Al igual que muchas otras prácticas, es probable que esta existiera antes de que fuera documentada. En el siglo XVIII, la aparición de los grabados permitió a los expertos comparar obras dispersas por museos de distintas partes de Europa. En el siglo XIX, la fotografía hizo lo propio. En el siglo XX, la dendrocronología ayudó a datar las pinturas sobre tabla. Hoy en día, la inteligencia artificial ha empezado a utilizarse para la atribución, comparando las pinceladas de un cuadro determinado con las pinceladas típicas de un pintor concreto en el banco de datos de la máquina

Do Apeirógono (I) - The end of the social network

A new set-up for social media is solving some problems — and creating others

FACEBOOK MAY be turning 20 on February 4th, but it is just as much of a magnet for controversy and cash today as when it was a brash, break-everything teenager. On January 31st Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s founder, was harangued by American senators over the spread of harmful material.

The next day, as we published this, he was poised to announce another set of glittering results for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, which is now valued at $1trn. Yet even as social media reliably draw vast amounts of attention from addicts and critics alike, they are undergoing a profound but little-noticed transformation. The weird magic of online social networks was to combine personal interactions with mass communication. Now this amalgam is splitting in two again. Status updates from friends have given way to videos from strangers that resembles a hyperactive tV. Public posting is increasingly migrating to closed groups, rather like email. What Mr Zuckerberg calls the digital “town square” is being rebuilt — and posing problems.This matters, because social media are how people experience the internet. Facebook itself counts more than 3bn users. Social apps take up nearly half of mobile screen time, which in turn consumes more than a quarter of waking hours. They gobble up 40% more time than they did in 2020, as the world has gone online. As well as being fun, social media are the crucible of online debate and a catapult for political campaigns. In a year when half the world heads to the polls, politicians from Donald Trump to Narendra Modi will be busy online.The striking feature of the new social media is that they are no longer very social. Inspired by TikTok, apps like Facebook increasingly serve a diet of clips selected by artificial intelligence according to a user’s viewing behaviour, not their social connections. Meanwhile, people are posting less. The share of Americans who say they enjoy documenting their life online has fallen from 40% to 28% since 2020. Debate is moving to closed platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram.The lights have gone out in the town square. Social media have always been opaque, since every feed is different. But TikTok, a Chinese-owned video phenomenon, is a black box to researchers. Twitter, rebranded as X, has published some of its code but tightened access to data about which tweets are seen. Private messaging groups are often fully encrypted.Some of the consequences of this are welcome. Political campaigners say they have to tone down their messages to win over private groups. A provocative post that attracts “likes” in the X bear pit may alienate the school parents’ WhatsApp group.

Port in a storm

FROM NOVEMBER 30th fully 70,000 people from around the world will descend on Dubai for the UN’s annual climate summit. The cop, as it is known, is a 12-day jamboree that draws diplomats, businessfolk and activists. Should they have time to escape the crush at Expo City and travel towards the glitzy skyscrapers dotting the coast, they will find a city, and a country, in the middle of an astonishing boom.One giveaway is the crowds of goldenvisa-toting Russian billionaires, Indian businessmen and Western financiers. Another is a property frenzy. In September buyers queued in the wee hours to snap up villas in Dubai’s latest ritzy land-reclamation scheme, Palm Jebel Ali, that start at $5m. The properties have yet to be built.

Last year’s energy-price spike brought the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s largest producers of oil, over $100bn in revenue. That is about $100,000 for every Emirati citizen. But oil is not the only reason the country is prospering. In a time of war and economic fragmentation, the UAE seems to be a port in a storm. Multinationals are setting up factories and offices at a rate not previously seen in the UAE’s five decades of independence. Oil and gas now account for just a third of GDP, and the oily bits of the economy are growing more slowly than the rest of it. The economy as a whole grew by 3.7% in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2022. Excluding oil and related industries, it grew by 5.9% (see chart 1 on next page).

De uma 'tropa' da qual digo

"mesmo que a sepente se contorça diante de mim, continuo a duvidar da sua seriedade" (1) 

Le symbole d’une vision du monde obtuse et sectaire

"Um grande momento já encontrou muitas vezes uma estirpe pequena, mas nunca uma estirpe tão pequena encontrou um tempo tão grandioso" (2)

Il y a comme une drôle d’atmosphère. Un abattement généralisé, une méfiance, une peur qui se faufile dans les regards, les corps crispés dans le métro, les conversations où on regarde dans son dos en murmurant. C’est le conflit Israël-Hamas qui ravive la rage identitaire entretenue par l’islamisme et aidé par le Wokistan, mais surtout la parole décomplexée, l’expression outrageuse de n’importe quelle opinion, la colère qui l’accompagne, l’identité qui gueule derrière chaque conviction, la confusion humaniste.

Mona Chollet, la gourou des femmes sans amour, la penseur de la déresponsabilisation féminine collective, pourvoyeuse d’une belle arnaque historique sur les sorcières réduites à n’être que des victimes, se pique aussi d’apporter sa pierre au conflit Israël-Hamas. Elle s’offusque d’un tweet où elle interpelle Libération dont la couverture du 9 octobre osait afficher le pogrom du 7 octobre :

« Vous êtes au courant qu’il y a aussi des centaines de tués côté palestinien, @Libé ? Des familles entières massacrées ? Pas la bonne couleur de peau, peut-être ? »

Des familles juives viennent d’être massacrées mais Mona Chollet ne peut pleurer que les morts de son camp, les damnés de la terre, les oppressés de la colonisation, comme le lui a appris le catéchisme islamiste. Quant à la couleur de peau, j’en souris presque d’absurdité. Mais comme ce n’est pas suffisant, elle se fend d’un long texte sur son blog pour défendre l’idée d’un Etat binational.

Il existe 57 pays musulmans dans le monde. Un seul Etat démocratique et juif. Un Etat juif où 20 % de la population est arabe israélienne, où le directeur de la banque d’Israël est un Arabe israélien, où des députés, des médecins, des ingénieurs, des infirmiers, des commerçants, des étudiants sont arabes israéliens, voilà qui pose problème aux antisionistes-antisémites. Je ne dis pas que tout est pacifié, il subsiste des problèmes graves nés de la question palestinienne tragiquement irrésolue, mais je précise que les Arabes israéliens sont plus épanouis et plus libres en Israël que n’importe quelle minorité dans n’importe lequel des 57 Etats à majorité musulmane.

Reflexão de um homem de compreensão lenta *

O mês passado (11.09) fez cinquenta anos que, um tanto inesperadamente, 'choveu' em Santiago. Até o toró desabar ninguém deu pela ameaçadora nebulosidade nem das fortes emanações morbíficas na atmosfera,; ninguém deu pelos ares carregados de avisos. Os avisos dados por palavras há muito que nos deixaram de comover. Mais cedo que tarde são necessários actos carregados de significado. De nada vale adiar. Como escreveu Henry Miller

 "Adiar é a melodia do demónio; e, com ela, é sempre injectada a droga da indolência."

A espaços −, saímos de um de sete decénios −, parece haver um mundo que nos abandona, mas não: volta a entrar pela porta das traseiras. O mundo não quer originalidades; quer, isso sim, conformismo e escravos. As sociedades são feitas de portas fechadas, tabus, leis, repressões e supressões. As sociedades são agregados de irremediáveis palermas, patifes e gente má. E só à beira do precipício é que dão conta de que o que lhes ensinaram é falso. Ainda assim, ou por isso, nada é pior do que uma sociedade deixar-se governar por doentes. Dostoievski descreveu-os como ninguém -designou-os Demónios. Castélio e Calvino foram/são disso, exemplo. Deste 'vai-e-vem', deste 'anda-desanda' são proféticas as palavras de Rimbaud a Ernest Delahaye ('admirador' da superioridade alemã)

    − "Idiotas! Voltarão para casa ao som dos seus tambores e trombetas para comer salsichas, crentes de que tudo acabou. Mas vê-los-ás militarizados dos pés à cabeça, comandados por chefes traiçoeiros que não lhes darão um momento de sossego, engolir por muito tempo a conversa fiada da glória... o regime de ferro e loucura aprisionará toda a sociedade alemã. E, tudo isso, para serem esmagados por uma coligação qualquer!"

Não há no meu texto, ou no ínsito, apologia de 'coisa' alguma ou alguém. A não ser abrir portas por forma a que se possa contrapôr as malfeitorias dos Chicago boys  às 'benfeitorias' presentes e preconizadas pelos Santiago boys. 

Colégio de génios

Dos organigramas político-administrativos dos países consta um «conselho de ministros»; no português há o equivalente - um «clube de génios».

Há casas para alugar, mas a preços caros; há casas para comprar, mas a preços caros. Ou seja, há casas para venda e para aluguer, mas os candidatos a proprietários e/ou inquilinos não têm dinheiro bastante. Se isto acontece, há responsáveis. ― Maldito mercado! ― Havendo, proceda-se.

Desde 2009, o regime fiscal em vigor ― “tendo em vista atrair profissionais não-residentes qualificados em actividades de elevado valor acrescentado ou da propriedade intelectual, industrial ou know-how, bem como beneficiários de pensões obtidas no estrangeiro ― permite uma redução do IRS, ao longo de uma década, a pensionistas ou trabalhadores estrangeiros de determinadas profissões.

O «caça- fantasmas» topou-os, e conclui que a medida é geradora de injustiça social ― contribui "de forma enviesada" para a especulação imobiliária. Vai daí, «Estatuto de Residente Não-Habitual» è finito. Há razões para qualificar a decisão como «de génio» aliás, em consonância com a vulgata. Da genialidade nos dão conta, hoje, dois dos principais jornais económicos espanhóis

Europe’s Real Test Is Yet to Come

Will the Continent Ever Get Serious About Its Own Security?

It is not yet clear if Ukraine will win the war, but Russia is definitely losing. On every metric of national power, Moscow’s position has worsened since the invasion began, and that change has already shifted the position of other global powers. The United States and NATO have grown more credible. China has gained a Russian vassal and is now the clear leader of the autocratic world. The European Union has done much better than many anticipated, but it may yet be the biggest loser, thanks less to an overaggressive Russia than to an overconfident China. The EU can likely weather the fallout from this war, but it could be critically challenged in the next one.

Most Americans think of the EU as a free trade area with frills. Nothing could be further from the truth. Forged in the aftermath of World War II, the institutions that would become the EU were designed to bind the continent together so tightly that another war among Europeans would become unthinkable. In this, the bloc has succeeded brilliantly, helping deliver Europe’s longest period of peace in centuries. But Europeans made a mistake in assuming that others shared their worldview. Neither Russia, nor Middle Eastern powers, nor China ever believed that war was impossible, a position that most European leaders
found hard to accept. Eastern Europeans who warned their friends in western Europe about Russian President Vladimir Putin were haughtily dismissed. Since February 2022, the reality of the Russian threat has become clear, as has the weakness of the European defense. Although Europe has made significant military and humanitarian contributions to Ukraine, from German tanks to Polish and Slovak fighter jets, the United States has been the main organizer and coordinator of the response to Russia’s invasion, providing intelligence and managing the operation in support of Kyiv.

Um sensato 'discurso'

"Tinha de me pronunciar sobre o pêndulo e sobre o sino: escolhi sobretudo o som"

Victor Segalen

sobre um encantamento e das criaturas que, através de um mecanismo curioso (Marcel Couche, Orientation philosophique, 1990), "graças à ausência de resposta, para tudo têm resposta" e também, a talho de foice, do risco de — tão grande e desconcertante é a facilidade com se busca e pretende impôr um 'ideal' — desembocar no contrário.

How to prevent a third world war

America and China must learn to live together. They have less than ten years.

IN BEIJING THEY have concluded that America will do anything to keep China down. In Washington they are adamant that China is scheming to supplant the United States as the world’s leading power. For a sobering analysis of this growing antagonism — and a plan to prevent it causing a superpower war — visit the 33rd floor of an Art Deco building in midtown Manhattan, the office of Henry Kissinger.
On May 27th Mr Kissinger will turn 100. Nobody alive has more experience of international affairs, first as a scholar of 19thcentury diplomacy, later as America’s national security adviser and secretary of state, and for the past 46 years as a consultant and emissary to monarchs, presidents and prime ministers. Mr Kissinger is worried.

“Both sides have convinced themselves that the other represents a strategic danger,” he says. “We are on the path to great-power confrontation.”

At the end of April The Economist spoke to Mr Kissinger for over eight hours about how to prevent the contest between China and America from descending into war. These days he is stooped and walks with difficulty, but his mind is needle-sharp. As he contemplates his next two books, on artificial intelligence (AI) and the nature of alliances, he remains more interested in looking forward than raking over the past.

Mr Kissinger is alarmed by China’s and America’s intensifying competition for technological and economic pre-eminence. Even as Russia tumbles into China’s orbit and war overshadows Europe’s eastern flank, he fears that AI is about to supercharge the Sino-American rivalry. Around the world, the balance of power and the technological basis of warfare are shifting so fast and in so many ways that countries lack any settled principle on which they can establish order. If they cannot find one, they may resort to force.

“We're in the classic pre-world war one situation,” he says, “where neither side has much margin of political concession and in which any disturbance of the equilibrium can lead to catastrophic consequences.”

A cartelização da política

A festa foi minha, e lá, pá!

O retumbante repercusso da nossa 'festa' na comunicação social impressa, desconsiderando que o Folha é o diário do PT (nos três principais jornais brasileiros ― O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S. Paulo, Jornal do Commercio) foi essa: teve um motivo maior ― o «Camões» ―  e uma 'estrela' ― Chico Buarque. E mais a ideia (fica feito o registo) de que ainda ouviremos falar muito da Janja - a Janja é a Pilar do Lula. Garantiu-se. Fina! Ou só houve/há Evitas nas pampas?!

- O bacalhau deles é bom, pá!

Pode-se transformar um aquário numa sopa de peixe

Quem nunca perdeu tempo com Leszlek Kolakowski, filósofo polaco, desconhecerá a «Lei da Cornucópia infinita» - assim foi 'baptizada' por ele. Ou saberá, porque lendo John Le Carré e crendo no background intelectual do autor, a dado passo, deparou-se com uma referência à dita. E o que tem isso a ver com o texto aqui editado? Tem porque 'defendeu' ele que 'há um número infinito de explicações para qualquer acontecimento, ilimitado, independentemente do tipo e/ou das circunstâncias.', ou seja, aconteça o que acontecer será explicado. E 'a cornucópia' até serve para explicar e justificar a normalidade anormal! 

À parte a verosimilhança 'da cornucópia' o certo é que há uma anedota russa que calça como luva no texto ínsito - «Sabemos que se pode transformar um aquário numa sopa de peixe. Mas a questão é: consegue-se transformar, de novo, a sopa de peixe num aquário?»

History loves unintended consequences.The latest example is particularly ironic: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to restore the Russian empire by recolonizing Ukraine has opened the door to a postimperial Europe. A Europe, that is, that no longer has any empires dominated by a single people or nation, either on land or across the seas—a situation the continent has never seen before.

Paradoxically, however, to secure this postimperial future and stand up to Russian aggression, the EU must itself take on some of the characteristics of an empire. It must have a sufficient degree of unity, central authority, and effective decision-making to defend the shared interests and values of Europeans. If every single member state has a veto over vital decisions, the union will falter, internally and externally.

Europeans are unaccustomed to looking at themselves through the lens of empire, but doing so can offer an illuminating and disturbing perspective. In fact, the EU itself has a colonial past. As the Swedish scholars Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson have documented, in the 1950s the original architects of what would eventually become the EU regarded member states’ African colonies as an integral part of the European project. Even as European countries prosecuted often brutal wars to defend their colonies, officials spoke glowingly of “Eurafrica,” treating the overseas possessions of countries such as France as belonging to the new European Economic Community. Portugal fought to retain control of Angola and Mozambique into the early 1970s.

The lens of empire is even more revealing when one peers through it at the large part of Europe that, during the Cold War, was behind the Iron Curtain under Soviet or Yugoslav communist rule. The Soviet Union was a continuation of the Russian empire, even though many of its leaders were not ethnic Russians. During and after World War II, it incorporated countries and territories (including the Baltic states and western Ukraine) that had not been part of the Soviet Union before 1939. At the same time, it extended its effective empire to the very center of Europe, including much of what had historically been known as central Germany, restyled as East Germany.

There was, in other words, an inner and an outer Russian empire. The key to understanding both Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1980s was to recognize that this was indeed an empire—and an empire in decay. Decolonization of the outer empire followed in uniquely swift and peaceful fashion in 1989 and 1990, but then, even more remarkably, came the disintegration of the inner empire in 1991. This was prompted, as is often the case, by disorder in the imperial center. More unusually, the final blow was delivered by the core imperial nation: Russia. Today, however, Russia is straining to regain control over some of the lands it gave up, thrusting toward the new eastern borders of the West.

GHOSTS OF EMPIRES PAST

People Over Robots

The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation

by Lant Pritchett

We live in a technological age — or so we are told. Machines promise to transform every facet of human life: robots will staff factory floors, driverless cars will rule the road, and artificial intelligence will govern weapons systems. Politicians and analysts fret over the consequences of such advances, worrying about the damage that will be done to industries and individuals. Governments, they argue, must help manage the costs of progress. These conversations almost always treat technological change as something to be adapted to, as if it were a force of nature, barreling inexorably into the staid conventions and assumptions of modern life. The pace of change seems irrepressible; new technologies will remake societies. All people can do is figure out how best to cope.

Nowhere is this outlook more apparent than in the discussion of automation and its impact on jobs. My local grocery store in rural Utah has hung, with no apparent sense of irony, a sign proclaiming the company’s support for U.S. workers above a self-checkout machine, a device that uses technology to replace the labor of an employee with the labor of the customer. Much ink has been spilled in explaining how automation threatens some low-skilled workers and what governments should do to help: for instance, countries could support retraining initiatives, revamp education systems, or invest in redistributive schemes. At the same time, many governments hope that machines can save their economies from the consequences of demographic decline and aging. Techno-optimists argue that the United States and many other wealthy countries need automation to make up for dwindling working-age populations and looming gaps in workforces. Happily, they suggest, the advance of technology will sweep aside the troubles of demography.

But these debates and arguments miss a very simple point. As seismic as it may seem, technological change is not a natural force but the work of human beings. Of course, technology has radically improved human lives: no one wants to live without electricity, flush toilets, or (in Utah) central heating. In other cases, however, it is new policies, and not new technologies, that societies need most.

Automation is often a solution in search of a problem. It is a choice people have made, not an inevitability and certainly not a necessity. For instance, the United States faces a scarcity of truck drivers. The American Trucking Association has estimated that in 2021 there were 80,000 fewer drivers than the total needed and that, given the age of current drivers, over a million new ones will have to be recruited in the coming decade. To deal with this deficit, many tech moguls, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have invested in the research and development of self-driving vehicles, technology that would reduce the demand for drivers. For Bezos, such technology makes corporate financial sense; Amazon relies on low shipping costs to keep its prices down. But it does not make wider economic sense because millions of people would be happy to drive trucks in the United States — they just need to be allowed to work in the country.

There is no global scarcity of people who would like to be long-haul truck drivers in the United States, where the median wage for such work is $23 per hour. In the developing world, truck drivers make

Automation is not inevitable; it is a choice.

O mundo não é um «Erasmus» gigante

Innovation Power

            ➽  Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics 

When Russian forces marched on Kyiv in February 2022, few thought Ukraine could survive. Russia had more than twice as many soldiers as Ukraine. Its military budget was more than ten times as large. The U.S. intelligence community estimated that Kyiv would fall within one to two weeks at most.

Outgunned and outmanned, Ukraine turned to one area in which it held an advantage over the enemy: technology. Shortly after the invasion, the Ukrainian government uploaded all its critical data to the cloud, so that it could safeguard information and keep functioning even if Russian missiles turned its ministerial offices into rubble. The country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had established just two years earlier, repurposed its e-government mobile app, Diia, for open-source intelligence collection, so that citizens could upload photos and videos of enemy military units. With their communications infrastructure in jeopardy, the Ukrainians turned to Starlink satellites and ground stations provided by SpaceX to stay connected. When Russia sent Iranian-made drones across the border, Ukraine acquired its own drones specially designed to intercept their attacks — while its military learned how to use unfamiliar weapons supplied by Western allies. In the cat-and-mouse game of innovation, Ukraine simply proved nimbler. And so what Russia had imagined would be a quick and easy invasion has turned out to be anything but.

Ukraine’s success can be credited in part to the resolve of the Ukrainian people, the weakness of the Russian military, and the strength of Western support. But it also owes to the defining new force of international politics: innovation power. Innovation power is the ability to invent, adopt, and adapt new technologies. It contributes to both hard and soft power. High-tech weapons systems increase military might, new platforms and the standards that govern them provide economic leverage, and cutting-edge research and technologies enhance global appeal. There is a long tradition of states harnessing innovation to project power abroad, but what has changed is the self-perpetuating nature of scientific advances. Developments in artificial intelligence in particular not only unlock new areas of scientific discovery; they also speed up that very process. Artificial intelligence supercharges the ability of scientists and engineers to discover ever more powerful technologies, fostering advances in artificial intelligence itself as well as in other fields — and reshaping the world in the process.

The ability to innovate faster and better—the foundation on which military, economic, and cultural power now rest — will determine the outcome of the great-power competition between the United States and China. For now, the United States remains in the lead. But China is catching up in many areas and has already surged ahead in others. To emerge victorious from this century-defining contest, business as usual will not do. Instead, the U.S. government will have to overcome its stultified bureaucratic impulses, create favorable conditions for innovation, and invest in the tools and talent needed to kick-start the virtuous cycle of technological advancement. It needs to commit itself to promoting innovation in the service of the country and in the service of democracy. At stake is nothing less than the future of free societies, open markets, democratic government, and the broader world order.

A Free World, If You Can Keep It

Ukraine and American Interests

Robert Kagan in Foreign Affairs

Before February 24, 2022, most Americans agreed that the United States had no vital interests at stake in Ukraine. “If there is somebody in this town that would claim that we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic in 2016, “they should speak up.”
Few did.
Yet the consensus shifted when Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, Ukraine’s fate was important enough to justify spending billions of dollars in resources and enduring rising gas prices; enough to expand security commitments in Europe, including bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO; enough to make the United States a virtual co-belligerent in the war against Russia, with consequences yet to be seen. All these steps have so far enjoyed substantial support in both political parties and among the public. A poll in August last year found that four in ten Americans support sending U.S. troops to help defend Ukraine if necessary, although the Biden administration insists it has no intention of doing so.

The World According to Xi Jinping

What China’s Ideologue in Chief Really Believes

Foreign Affairs, 1 November 2022 - Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society/New York and previously served as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Australia

In the post–Cold War era, the Western world has suffered no shortage of grand theories of history and international relations. The settings and actors may change, but the global geopolitical drama goes on: variants of realism and liberalism compete to explain and predict state behavior, scholars debate whether the world is witnessing the end of history, a clash of civilizations, or something else entirely. And it is no surprise that the question that now attracts more analytical attention than any other is the rise of China under President Xi Jinping and the challenge it presents to American power. In the run-up to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp), as Xi has maneuvered to consolidate his power and secure an unprecedented third term, Western analysts have sought to decode the worldview that drives him and his ambitions for China.

Llosa

sobre um livro alheio e, de passagem, umas notas sobre um dos maiores pulhas do séc.XX