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.

Quem tiver alguma coisa a dizer, avance e fique em silêncio *

Elementar, mas não percepcionado. Por múltiplas razões das quais uma das principais  senão a principal seja a de nos depararmos (é a mais prolífica) com espécimes que corporizam em si tudo que de mais vil há na natureza humana e que de forma tão sublime o Kraus descreveu na conversa entre "o optimista e o eterno descontente" (cena 29 do 1ºacto de «Os Últimos dias da Humanidade»).

O optimista apresenta-se 

-" O senhor não pode negar que a guerra, abstraindo das consequências positivas para os que todos os dias têm de olhar a morte de frente, também deu azo a uma elevação espiritual." ("You can’t deny that the war, apart from positively transforming those who must daily look death in the eye, has also raised people to a higher spiritual level.")

É o que mais há, e não há mais abjecto.

Ideias producentes

Eis um projecto que, implementado, a largo prazo, tem tudo para colher bons frutos. Nada tem a ver com a tremeluzente sandice do «rendimento básico incondicional». Nesta, e desconheço uma série de importantes detalhes, mas, ainda assim, encontro-lhe virtudes dificilmente mensuráveis. É, por exemplo, mensurar o efeito demolidor para a noção de 'vítimas da sociedade'; é, outro exemplo, o efeito 'pedagógico' ao nível da literacia financeira ou da importância da poupança em gerações futuras.

O «Mesura» é teu,

a mesura é minha.

Faz hoje uma semana. Lá, do alto do rendilhado, naquela vertente que afunda na albufeira do Varosa, teve tanto de inesperado quanto de prazenteiro.

Quatro dedos de prosa, a minha predisposição para outro tanto, um cavalheiro sem ademanes nem salamaleques (é «amigo grande» de meu irmão).

Da via rápida (IP) não se dá por nada; é preciso conhecer ‘o caminho das pedras’. É bom subir à civilização.

A reverência é minha - agradecido Joaquim Ferreira. Parabéns pela ‘obra’ - fiquei mesmo convencido que possuis mais ‘uva que parra’. Entre nós, convenhamos, é caso de registo.

Tchim, tchim!

 

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

La Chine veut établir une domination globale

Le monde est-il d'accord?

The millennial plutocrats

Meet the next generation of Asia’s business elites

The idea that wealthy dynasties can go to pot in three generations pops up throughout history and around the world. John Dryden, an English poet who died in 1700, mused that “seldom three descents continue good.” In 19th-century America, successful families were said to go from “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves” in that span of time. A Chinese proverb, fu bu guo san dai (wealth does not pass three generations) captures an identical sentiment.

As a rising share of the world’s ultrarich comes from emerging markets, the three-generation hypothesis is being tested once again—nowhere more so than in developing Asia. Asians are helping to swell the number of individuals with fortunes of more than $500m, which rose from 2,700 to nearly 7,100 globally between 2011 and 2021, according to Credit Suisse, a bank. The continent’s tycoons did more than their African or Latin

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.

Exclamação I

Gilles Lipovetsky * esteve cá e um jornal pô-lo a discretear em redor dos corolários do seu último livro, A Sagração da Autenticidade, no qual nada há de inédito à excepção de alterações de 'consciências colectivas', ponderáveis e factuais, que a minha inteligência e as minhas percepções impedem vislumbrar. 

Quem antes detectou e explicou o individualismo contemporâneo em A era do Vazio e Tempos Hipermodernos, oco em A Era do Vazio, efémero em O Império do Efémero e Plaire et Toucher - essai sur la société de la séduction, principal componente da mundialização do ocidente ou ocidentalização do mundo em L’Occident mondialisé, fica ‘manietado’ – não vislumbro, mas .. posso estar equivocado ou saber pouco, mas à mole vazia, seduzida por uma felicidade, paradoxal, fascinada pelo efémero, etc… nada faz prova de uma alteração qualitativa. Nem uma mais aparente que real consciência ambiental, colectiva – para já e por enquanto parece-me serem poucos os que, com impacto expresso e significativo, abdicaram de parcela de comodismo, consumismo, … e por aí vai em favor do 'calhau gravitante' e benefício do futuro da humanidade, com excepção de um charivari politicamente orientado. Ora, disto à consciencialização vai uma regeneração - que, para Lipovetsky é já mensurável (ler excerto) mas, para mim, permanece um desiderato. Em que mundo viverá ele?! - que suscita um universo de dúvidas e muito poucas certezas. 

" (...) O autêntico passou a ser o new cool. (...) a autenticidade exibe todo o seu esplendor, afirmando-se como um objecto de desejo de massas. (...) Cada vez mais, a comunicação das empresas procura denunciar a insignificância espetacular, jurando não fazer greenwashing ou socialwashing. Sai a ganhar aquele que for mais honesto, mais autêntico: trata-se, em todos os quadrantes, de promover as «verdadeiras» necessidades e valores (...) Depois do «chique radical», hoje em dia, exige-se autenticidade em tudo: nos pratos, nos locais que se visitam, em nossa casa, em nós, na educação, no universo das marcas comerciais, na liderança das empresas, na vida política e religiosa. E, acima de tudo, mais do que nunca, na vida pessoal, familiar, sexual, profissional. (...) Ao contrário dos momentos anteriores, a nova fase de modernidade em que entrámos promove a consagração social da ética da autenticidade individual. (...)"

Homem de Fé! Não me importava de coabitar a bolha dele.

* pensador que sigo com muito interesse

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.

As entoações de um mote

Múltiplas são as razões - e do meu ponto de vista nenhuma razoável - para replicar a 'prédica' de Putin sem filtragem. Foi/é, neste contexto, para os russos e russófilos, a dosagem de Murti-Bing imaginada por Witkiewicz - quem as toma fica 'sereno, feliz e imune a problemas ontológicos'. As pílulas que os ucranianos recusam engolipar.

Czeslaw Milosz, que infelizmente sempre foi tão ignorado entre nós, apesar de editado, é uma boa alternativa ao nunca editado Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Insaciabilidade), escreveu em 1981 

"é enorme a vulnerabilidade da mente do séc. XX perante as doutrinas sociopolíticas e a predisposição para aceitar o terror do totalitarismo em nome de um futuro hipotético", "o poder de atracção do pensamento totalitário, seja ele de esquerda ou de direita, não é coisa do passado; pelo contrário, parece estar a aumentar".

Dos russófilos 'ocidentais', no actual contexto, há que dizer-lhes o mesmo que Milosz disse em tempos - "a diferença entre os intelectuais do Ocidente e do Leste reside no facto de os primeiros não terem levado, a sério, no cu".

                                                                    〰 ➰ 〰

Members of the Federation Assembly – senators, State Duma deputies

Citizens of Russia

This Presidential Address comes, as we all know, at a difficult, watershed period for our country. This is a time of radical, irreversible change in the entire world, of crucial historical events that will determine the future of our country and our people, a time when every one of us bears a colossal responsibility.
One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently we will deal with the tasks we have at hand.
Since 2014, Donbass has been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue. It fought and never gave up amid the blockade, constant shelling and the Kiev regime’s overt hatred. It hoped and waited that Russia would come to help.
In the meantime, as you know well, we were doing everything in our power to solve this problem by peaceful means, and patiently conducted talks on a peaceful solution to this devastating conflict.

Da improbidade

Fazia menção de remeter à reclusão até à apuração final da decisão do eleitorado, a apreciação às peripécias partidárias. É impossível — e, a impossibilidade, não é por achar que seja devedor de solidariedade ou que tenha ser recíproco para com os meus concidadãos. Não devo, não tenho.

—  •  —

Quem me segue, saberá o que chamei a Fernando Teixeira dos Santos quando ele era ministro das finanças de Sócrates, o que chamei a Vieira da Silva ao tempo de Sócrates e no anterior governo de António Costa, o que chamo a António Costa, que é semelhante ao que chamo a Siza Vieira e a outros tantos (ocupem eles o lugar que ocuparem) e que não se coíbam de “cagar-se” — da linguagem informal da 2ª figura deste Estado, Ferro Rodrigues — para a verdade, e assim vigarizar as pessoas. Não o fazem por incompetência ‒ fazem-no de perfeita consciência e convictamente.

Quem me segue, saberá que nunca fiz do povo o desgraçado da história porque, o povo anda há quarenta e nove repito, quarenta e nove anos, a desgraçar-se. E quem se desgraça por convicção merece o castigo. Dizem-me: — São enganados. Não é verdade! Tanto não é que os aldrabões vigarizam por saberem de antemão que, se não forem vigaristas, perdem. A constatação é uma constatação, e não serve de atenuante. Facto é que, entre nós, mais fácil é ser incensado um trafulha, relapso, do que alguém comprovadamente equivocado. Ora, no máximo, poder-se-á exclamar com um daqueles remoques que servem, simultaneamente, aos contrários — ‘estão bem uns para os outros’; ‘merecem-se’.

∞

Sem surpresa, entrou na campanha eleitoral o dissentimento entre as intenções da direita diabólica ‒ PSD, CDS, IL ‒ porque (denunciam os de ‘sensibilidade social à flor da pele’) o que pretendem é privatizar o ‘negócio’ e a ‘tropa progressista’ que vive angustiada com a vida e o destino do povo ‒ PS, PCP, BE, Livre, PAN, …‒ sobre a vida e o caminho, o presente e o futuro da Segurança Social *.

∞

O comportamento da generalidade dos órgãos da comunicação social, de tão confrangedora, chega a ser revoltante. Também essa tem sido/é a que desejamos.

∞

Os exemplos que deixo (de dezenas, disponíveis) foram colhidos de forma aleatória e sob um critério, único ‒ comprovar que, perante a verdade, se comportam e verbalizam como patifes, ipsis letteris.

É exactamente como escreveu Euclides da Cunha — Não, não é a ocasião que faz o ladrão; o ladrão existe independentemente das ocasiões. Também não é menos verdade que, quando se deixa de lutar pela posse da propriedade privada, resta lutar pela fruição da propriedade colectiva.

O merecimento dessa 'tropa' é ser defenestrada!

* no passado recente e presentemente, à direita e à esquerda, discreteia-se sobre a SS no pressuposto de uma 'sustentabilidade', há muito, inexistente. Até ao presente a 'sustentabilidade melhor, a liquidez é garantida por transferências anuais dos OE.

À conquista da felicidade

ou a reescrita do Advento.