Atlântico Norte: Novo Mapa a Emergir!

Há um Novo Mapa a emergir, no Atlântico Norte, e é urgente
estudá-lo, monitorizá-lo e influenciá-lo. Sem perda de tempo!

Alain Juillet: O fim da guerra clássica...?

O grande mestre Alain Juillet, um velho amigo do intelNomics, concede uma entrevista, com uma duração de quase 2 horas, em que não há um minuto sem grande interesse...

Nota: Escusado será dizer que Monsieur Juillet é francês e, portanto, vê o mundo a partir de Paris e defende os interesses nacionais franceses... E, normalmente, parece que sabe defendê-los muito bem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq_ok3RHU9Q

Ucrânia: Para bom entendedor…

“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump.”

Zelensky, in a Reuters interview, today (Friday, Feb. 7, 2025)

Acabou a ilusão globalista... A geopolítica volta a governar o mundo

Durou 3 décadas o tempo da “globalização feliz”, abriu-se em Berlim e fechou-se em Moscovo.

Começou com a queda de um muro e acabou com uma “operação militar especial”. Em ambos os momentos, a decisão foi tomada no Kremlin. A meio do período, a China foi introduzida na OMC (decisão de Washington, de Bill Clinton) e, assim, se explodiu o mercado global concebido e desenhado no 'day after' da vitória americana na II Guerra Mundial.…

Hoje, a imprensa mainstream já o reconhece. Aqui, no intelNomics, há 20 anos que acompanhamos o seu processo de desmoronamento, com a emergência de um novo sistema global, de um novo modelo, cujo emergir é governado pela geopolítica e pela lógica moderna (em detrimento da lógica pós-moderna, ainda reinante no espaço ocidental).

Há dias, o francês L’Express já se atrevia a escrever:

“Le cycle de mondialisation heureuse ouvert en 1989 à la chute du mur de Berlin s’est refermé en 2022.

Désormais, la géopolitique brutale des nations domine nos vies collectives.

La guerre en Ukraine, la montée en puissance du nationalisme chinois et la menace islamiste donnent un avantage aux pays dont la lucidité et les moyens leur permettent de répondre à ces différentes menaces.

Cette lucidité a longtemps manqué à l’Allemagne, dont les fondamentaux économiques reposaient sur un approvisionnement bon marché en hydrocarbures russes et des exportations de biens industriels vers la Chine.

L’amont de ce modèle est cassé par les sanctions et son aval fragilisé par les difficultés économiques opiniâtres de l’empire du Milieu.

Quant aux moyens financiers, ils manquent …..”

https://www.lexpress.fr/economie/politique-economique/pologne-la-lucidite-au-pouvoir-par-nicolas-bouzou-EYNHST3CZVDWJNQX4BFI7HZZ5A/

11 Setembro: Nunca Esquecer! What the 9/11 Memorials Missed, and What They Reveale

By Wilfred M. McClay

The victims were targeted as Americans. Why hasn't that blunt and inescapable fact been placed at the center of our account twenty years later? Everyone who was alive at the time of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath remembers the formula: if we do this or that to alter our way of life, then “the terrorists will have won.” It started out as an utterly earnest phrase, making a serious point about preserving the things that most deserve defending in the American political system. The venerable civil-libertarian Times columnist Anthony Lewis expressed what has become the classic formulation in a summer 2004 edition of Mother Jones, “If we allow our liberties to be trampled,” he wrote, “the terrorists will have won.” But as the immanence of the terrorist threat waned, and a sense of complacency began to set it, the phrase became the butt of endless jokes. “If I can’t go out and eat a Big Mac today, the terrorists will have won”: that was the pattern. The smirking talk-show host David Letterman got in his two cents: “If I can’t text inappropriate photos then the terrorists have won.” Or there was the comedian Ellen DeGeneres, host of the Emmy Awards in November of 2001: “We’re told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?” Never very funny to begin with, these lines have taken on a whole new aspect in the past few weeks. For by any reasonable measure the terrorists are now winning. The very forces that protected al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and permitted them to plan attacks on the United States are now back in power, savoring what they see as a second great victory for militant Islam, following its previous triumph over the Russians, a success so complete that the Soviet Union itself soon thereafter would cease to exist, collapsing as rapidly as the Twin Towers would collapse a dozen years later. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying and encouraging confirmation of a divinely ordained world-historical destiny. The forces now in charge in Afghanistan have every reason to think that there is a holy wind at their back, and they are likely in the fullness of time—which might come in mere months—to make their country into even more of a haven for international terrorist groups than it was twenty years ago. In addition, they have won this war in a way that has brought unprecedented shame and disgrace upon the United States in the process. What were our leaders thinking? Was it that they were weary of a seemingly endless commitment to a seemingly impossible task, anxious “to go on living our lives as usual,” and eager to generate a grand photo-op finish to the Afghan adventure that (it was thought) would provide a symbolic bookend to the whole matter, and redound to the benefit of a struggling Biden presidency? In any event, our leaders deliberately timed the chaotic withdrawal of American troops and personnel to correspond with the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the very events that put the Afghan tragedy into motion. In departing, we left behind for the use of our enemies some $85-$90 billion of advanced military equipment, an amount more than the annual military budget of all but two countries, the United States and China, and we abandoned an unknown but not insignificant number of our own people and vulnerable Afghan allies who had trusted American leaders to stand with them and for them. What can one say? The harsh consequences of acts of such colossal, comprehensive, almost inexplicable stupidity may not be long in coming, and we have good reason to fear for our ability to cope with them when they do, given our current addled and divided state. Our enemies in that part of the world have never before shown us any quarter, and it is ludicrous to think that they will start doing so now, under these circumstances. Perhaps the most astonishing part of it all is that this defeat is, to a large degree, a setback that we have inflicted upon ourselves. In fact, there is a good case to be made that what we have just witnessed is, to borrow a phrase from the military historian Mark Moyar, a triumph forsaken. The immediate goals of the post-9/11 Afghanistan invasion had been quickly met, and there had been no comparable attack on the American homeland since 2001—an achievement that very few observers in 2001 thought possible. Over a dozen American servicemen have since been killed in the course of America’s August 2021 withdrawal, but for eighteen months before it, the United States had not suffered any military fatalities. A small residual garrison of a few thousand, geared toward counter-terrorism operations rather than grandiose cultural transformation and nation-building, could have been maintained there for years to come and protected our national interest in limited but vitally important ways. Such an outcome would also have fully honored the sacrifice of those thousands who gave life or limb to the cause. It could have made clear what many had forgotten: that our task in Afghanistan was the management of a chronic problem, not the imposition of an impossible “solution” to it. But we did not do that. Our approach became all-or-nothing, either complete cultural transformation or bust, with the latter being the result, an example of how genuine idealism can, over time, curdle into abject cynicism. And what our shocking actions have shown to the world, more than anything else, is the face of a country that is confused, irresolute, bitterly divided, demoralized, poorly led, easily distracted, prone to fits of pathological self-loathing, and simply not up to the task of world leadership—and perhaps not even the task of self-government. We are clearly a weaker, unreliable horse in the world’s eyes now, and our allies and enemies alike are already busy rethinking their plans accordingly, and recalibrating their future relations with us. Whether we choose to remain the weak horse is going to be up to us. Chances are that we will be faced with unforgiving hardships either way. We’ll have plenty of reason to regret the actions that our leaders have so clumsily undertaken over the past month, the ground they have so fecklessly thrown away. And we won’t be the only ones regretting it.   With this backgroundin place we can ask some simple but important questions, ones that involve the anniversary that we have just commemorated—or tried to. But it was not easy, was it? The act of commemoration, especially if it involves the honoring of the dead, represents one of the fundamental features of civilized life, a way that we pay attention to the connection of past, present, and future, honoring the past while drawing on it for sustenance and direction in facing the trials to come. What then, going forward, does 9/11 itself mean to us as a nation? How do we incorporate that meaning into our national story? How are we to make sense of it, in light of its having been the catalyst for a twenty-year contest that ended so ignominiously? If indeed it has ended at all? When I wrote about this same general subject in the pages of National Affairs on its tenth anniversary, I already noted that there was comparatively little attention then being paid to what September 11 means, and should mean, for Americans. There was, and is, a reason for that. “We lack a general consensus,” I said at the time, “about the event’s larger importance to our nation,” a fact that greatly complicates the task of national remembrance. I reflected upon an old metal sign that I keep by my desk, dating back to the 1940s, bearing the words “Remember Pearl Harbor.” No American, at least not until the poorly educated Americans of recent years, would have had any doubt as to what those words meant. But there is reason to wonder whether any comparable clarity or universality of meaning can be found in the words “Remember 9/11.” Many Americans in fact are likely to ask instead: what ought we even to remember? Wouldn’t we be better off simply to forget? I would have thought that no one who was of age in the days after 9/11 could possibly forget the surreal horror of the attacks, and the enormity of the damage they caused. For a great many of us, those dreadful sights that beggar description remain burned into our memory. Neither would I have supposed that one could easily forget the country’s response, in the form of the sudden proliferation on American streets of a vast profusion of American flags, or the sudden enthusiasm for the playing of patriotic songs in public places. Those memories offer us a fleeting glimpse of a robust and unabashed patriotic unity of which we Americans were once fully capable, not so very long ago. But many of us have indeed forgotten, and our moments of remembrance have proved fleeting. As powerful as September 11th proved in galvanizing national unity and providing a floundering young president with a chance to prove his mettle, its immediate influence rapidly dissipated, giving way to the kind of endless internal political conflicts that have been our hardwired condition at least since the contested election of 2000, if not longer. Concerns about the nation’s alleged lapse into rampant “Islamophobia” soon began to overshadow patriotic sentiment, or anxiety about the possibility of another attack. More and more Americans became willing to consider the possibility that the United States was somehow to blame for the attacks against its helpless civilians—“why do they hate us?”—and fully deserving of them. Or alternatively, it came to seem that the danger of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups had been grossly exaggerated for political purposes, and had led to a massive abrogation of civil liberties, as well as the use of harsh techniques of detention and interrogation that placed us outside the pale of civilized humanity. These sources of internal division did not disappear. Instead, they seem to have hardened into a default setting, even as those more patriotic memories seem almost impossible to credit in today’s bitter and censorious environment. At many times during these past two decades, it has seemed as if the world’s conflicts are of interest to Americans only insofar as they can be incorporated into the eternal struggle for political power in America, the only struggle that really matters. Never in modern times has our nation seemed more insular, more myopic, more self-absorbed—even and especially when we think about the world outside of our borders; never has it appeared more unable to imagine world events in any way other than as refracted through the ceaseless battle for political advantage in Washington. The interpretation of September 11 has been a victim of this cultural condition. What happened on that date was an attack on the American nation by organized and committed jihadists enjoying the shadowy support of other nations, some of them duplicitous “allies” of the United States. It was a deed committed with the intention of wounding and destabilizing the American nation, a deed whose origins are to be found running at least back to the 1970s, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That episode ended in a colossal victory for the terrorists, and now, after twenty years’ effort in pushing back the challenge of American might—preceded, lest we forget, by at least ten previous years of terrorist acts, including in the failed attack on the World Trade Center in 1993—another such victory seems in the offing. Or so it seems to them. As we in the West wallow in guilt and identity politics, preoccupied with the pursuit of absolution for our imperfect pasts, bereft of a compelling story about who we are, our jihadist enemies suffer from no such inhibitions. In an August 18 statement, the al-Malahim Foundation, that is, the media arm of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), put it this way: “After two decades of jihad, steadfastness, and willpower in the conflict with the crusader West and the global forces of unbelief, [our brothers in the Taliban] were crowned with full power over the brave land of Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires and superpowers, and the defeat of America and the crusader West.” That supreme confidence in the long game, rather than their superior strategy or tactics or weaponry is the secret of their success. The challenge to us ought to be unmistakable. As Andrew McCarthy has so aptly put it, “Jihadists believe history is on their side, that they are winning, that their opponents are weak of will, and that they will ultimately prevail by patient, ruthless faith.” However delusionary such beliefs may seem to us—and as McCarthy and others have pointed out, they require a breathtakingly selective reading of Islamic history to be sustained—they must be taken seriously by us precisely because they are taken seriously by our adversaries. In the famous formulation of the sociologist W.I. Thomas, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” an adage that applies with especial force to the world of war and diplomacy and international relations, where perception and reality are hard to distinguish. Our catastrophically bumbling withdrawal from Afghanistan after twenty years has made our enemies’ “situational definition” even more entrenched, and its defeat incalculably more difficult. We are now faced with the task of lifting ourselves out of an enormous hole that we have dug for ourselves. Where to begin?   We could beginwith a fuller and more realistic assessment of the events of 9/11 itself, understanding it and observing it as an important event in the life of the American nation, and not merely of some individuals in that nation, and as a challenge that we will need to meet by resolute and proportionate means, steadily applied, rather than by presidential impulse. That would help us a great deal, and would use our commemoration as an occasion for a kind of civic education. But most of what we are getting from our political leaders is a reliance on the admittedly riveting human-interest stories coming out of this event. The chief story that is told is one of the heroism and suffering of those who bore the brunt of the attack: the victims, their families, the first responders, firemen, police, and medical personnel. And the many tragedies of lives cut short, lives maimed and mutilated by senseless loss. These are vitally important stories and should be told again and again, every year. They should not be forgotten. But that poignant retelling cannot take the place of relating, again and again, the larger cause for the sake of which the heroism and suffering took place. The victims were targeted as Americans. If that blunt and inescapable fact is not placed at the center of our account, we have missed the larger context for properly celebrating the heroes and mourning those who were lost, and finding our way forward from here. Let me illustrate what I mean with a historical example. Imagine if Lincoln had given the Gettysburg Address without making any mention of the Civil War’s purpose, but instead told stories about farm boys wrenched from the placid security of their homes and thrown into the charnel house of war. But he did no such thing. In fact, Lincoln chose not to dwell on details of the suffering and sacrifice of the men being laid to rest in that new national cemetery. Instead he began the address by invoking the achievement of the Founders (who created “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”) and going on to describe the war as a “testing” of that original achievement. That test, he tells the audience, is for us. It is, he concluded, for us, the living, to carry on the effort, and to see that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” President Biden gave no public speeches for this year’s 9/11. But he did broadcast a pre-recorded message, and visited the three sites damaged by the attacks. He offered a few impromptu words at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the memorial to the doomed Flight 93. “These memorials are really important,” the president said at a stop at the local fire department. “But they’re also incredibly difficult for the people affected by them, because it brings back the moment they got the phone call, it brings back the instant they got the news, no matter how years go by.” True enough, and an affecting observation. But we need much more than that from our leader. The leadership we need would help us make sense of where we are, and where we have to go from here, if those lives are not to have been lost in vain. We need serious and honest oratory in the service of a national vision which would help us ground our emotions in something larger than ourselves and our individual experiences. Biden’s words could have applied just as well to lives tragically lost in a massive auto accident or a flash flood. So did they die in vain? Is a leader’s silence on the subject a way of whispering that they did? What words we did get did not supply us with a viable and believable public meaning for 9/11 rising above the immense suffering of its victims, the undeniable heroism of first-responders, and the like. At the 9/11 memorial plaza in lower Manhattan, President and Mrs. Biden stood silently with their Democratic predecessors, the Obamas and the Clintons, and other dignitaries, including former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and they listened as relatives of the victims, many of them children, read aloud the names of the dead, in what has become an annual ritual that paused for moments of silence marking the times when the hijacked planes hit their targets and when the twin towers eventually fell. All of which is moving and appropriate and even beautiful in its way—but not enough. The haunting and frankly dispiriting 9/11 Memorial near where they stood—two massive pools set within the footprints of the vanished Twin Towers, with the largest manmade waterfalls in the United States cascading down their sides—bears the enigmatic title “Reflecting Absence.” That reticent, Zen-like name conveys a certain passivity and lack of conviction, even as its waterfalls have the effect of drawing one down, down into the earth. This is not enough either. These structures remind one that the attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and other structures in 2001 were primarily intended to demoralize us and terrorize us and set us against one another, to erode our sense of solidity and mutual trust, to symbolize vulnerability on our side and ruthlessness on their side. Can we be so certain, even now, that the effort failed? Look around. Is the state of our liberty and our comity back to what it was twenty years ago? How well would we respond today to another 9/11 attack? Do we have the capacity to draw together as we did, however fleetingly? Are we today the same people we were then? The larger public meaning would have to begin with facing up to the fact that we Americans have been engaged for many years now in a genuine and ongoing civilizational struggle—something that the “terrorists have won” jokes mocked but also implicitly acknowledged. Our leaders have never been clear about that, and they have largely fallen silent on the civic crisis characterizing this American moment. President Biden’s promise that he would “restore the soul” of the country now manifests as a campaign catchphrase deployed against President Trump; another sign that our political class is content to reduce the obligations of leadership to partisan sloganeering. Fortunately, the fundamental decency of the American people has not been entirely suppressed. There is fury abroad in the land, especially in the lower ranks of the armed forces, over our bug-out in Afghanistan; and there are valiant American citizens who have defied all odds, including obstructions placed in their path by their own government, to rescue the Americans and others who have been abandoned there. What has been done by our leaders in Washington has offended against that fundamental decency in the national character. It has offended against Lincoln’s principle: that we must highly resolve that our dead shall not have died in vain. It was an illusion to think that killing one leader, Osama bin Laden, or defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, would solve the problem. For one thing, it is not a problem that can be “solved.” And the fundamental conflict is not with one person or with jihadists in one country—although it is equally a mistake to claim, as did the former president George W. Bush in an otherwise admirable speech for this year’s September 11, that the “same foul spirit” is the source of all offenses against pluralism and the status quo the world over, foreign and domestic. Such vague and simplistic rhetoric only serves to blur the problem, and—once again!—assimilate 9/11 into the web of domestic politics. The fact is that we have never clearly characterized for our nation, and ourselves, the nature of the present civilizational conflict and the identity of our adversary. For various reasons, we haven’t had the will or the courage or the clarity to do so. There will be consequences for that failure. One of those consequences will be that the memory of 9/11 may become even more unpleasant and troubling to contemplate in the future than it is today, as reflected in Biden’s words at Shanksville, and in so much else of our public discourse. It will be to us the alarm to which we responded, not by rolling over and going back to sleep, but by committing an even worse form of default. The American people already sense this might turn out to be the case. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, over 60 percent of Americans stated that they believe American troops will have to return to Afghanistan. And they may be right about that. That in the same poll some 54 percent of Americans expressed agreement with President Biden’s abrupt removal of American troops is an indication of the confused state in which we find ourselves. We recognize the likely necessity of doing something we are unwilling to do. How much more, therefore, do we need leaders of integrity, intelligence, wisdom, and courage, the kind of leaders we have been mainly lacking for the past four decades, to help us navigate what lies ahead. If nothing else, we can use our commemoration of 9/11 in the years ahead to concentrate our minds upon that fact. For more at Mosaic on the commemoration of 9/11, see Richard Goldberg’s essay, “September 11 from 1981 to 1931” and the response it generated from Senator Ben Sasse. https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/politics-current-affairs/2021/09/what-the-9-11-memorials-missed-and-what-they-revealed/

Alterações na Geopolítica do Mediterrâneo

Dia memorável é, para a geopolítica do Mediterrâneo, este 30 de Julho.

No Magrebe atlântico, Rabat vê a sua soberania no Sahara Ocidental ser, finalmente, reconhecida por Paris, numa carta do Presidente da República francesa ao soberano marroquino Mohamed VI. Este reconhecimento provocou uma violenta reacção de Argel (verdadeiro padrinho do Polisário, muito interessado num acesso directo ao Atlântico...) e a retirada do embaixador argelino em França.

Na outra ponta do velho 'mare nostrum' dos romanos (mas só depois da derrota final de Cartago), foi um péssimo dia para os movimentos terroristas islamistas que se reclamam da Palestina. O Hezbollah teve os seus centros de comando, nos arredores de Beirute, pulverizados. E viu, nessa pulverização, desaparecer alguns dos seus dirigentes de topo. Mas o grande acontecimento do dia, nestas matérias de troca de amabilidades, é sem dúvida a execução em Teherão (em Teherão...!!!) do dirigente máximo do Hamas, pouco depois de ter sido recebido pelo novo presidente da república islamista...

Ismail Haniyeh, a sua última reunião (com o nóvel presidente do Irão), a 30 Julho 2024, em Teherão .

A geopolítica do Mediterrâneo e sua margem sul teve hoje alterações bem importantes. Alterações que vão marcar as evoluções nos próximos tempos. Vamos ver até onde. E com que novo presidente em Washington...

Portugal: Falta de Estratégia e de Decisão

Lúcio Vicente

Estamos a poucos dias de celebrar os 50 anos de Abril. Porém, Portugal é muito menos do que podia e devia ser. Os 123 mil milhões de euros, do OE de 2024, em impostos e contribuições, serão aplicados em nosso nome, a bem de todos mas com que objectivos? Que país seremos daqui a 10 anos?

Há dias (20 de Fevereiro) foi assinado em Antuérpia uma Declaração sobre o(s) novo(s) desafio(s) da Indústria na UE (antwerp-declaration.eu). O que disso pensa o futuro primeiro-ministro? Os nossos media nada disseram sobre essa Declaração. Estamos virados para dentro, para a pequena política, para o curtíssimo prazo. E a verdade é que não observamos nem estudamos quase nada do complexo quadro geopolítico. Os 45 mil milhões do PRR para que servem? Alguém discute, alguém debate?

Uma cegueira estratégica que nos custará caro. Até quando? Não esquecer que alguns foram lestos e rápidos a prescindir dos centros de decisão nacionais, pelo que o nosso futuro, como país, as nossas prioridades, no investimento e ordenamento do território, passam agora mais pela Vinci e pela Fosun do que pelo voto dos portugueses.

A terceira travessia do Tejo e o novo Aeroporto passam mais pela decisão em Paris, do que pelo Terreiro do Paço. Aqui ao lado, o reforço no capital da Telefónica pela Saudi Telecom, teve resposta no dia seguinte, pelo Estado Espanhol, que reforçou a sua posição de maior accionista da operadora. E nós?

Bem, por cá, os partidos apostam em demandas ideológicas maximalistas e extremistas e na pequena trica política, adiando a discussão dos grandes desafios que se colocam ao país.

Os políticos de hoje revelam pouca cultura e muito escassa preparação para governar Portugal. Não arriscam uma ideia e não têm nenhuma visão de futuro. Assim, se este quadro não mudar, seremos ultrapassados por quem perceba o elementar: planear o futuro e assegurar o presente.

Bem sabemos que agora o país espera pelo dia 10 de Março. Mas será muito triste perceber que pouco ou nada mudará, se não se quebrarem as viseiras ideológicas extremistas que comprometem a estabilidade e o consenso necessários para enfrentar as ameaças e abrir o caminho às oportunidades deste Portugal Atlântico e arquipelágico, abençoado pelo mar.

É urgente combinar as capacidades dos vectores militares e económicos, com uso dual, que a mediocridade política desconhece e ignora.

O actual quadro geopolítico é um grande desafio, para todos nós mas sobretudo para quem tem a obrigação de proporcionar a criação de riqueza e o progresso para aumentar o rendimento dos portugueses e garantir o futuro dos jovens em Portugal, que muito deles precisa, em todos os sectores: na política, na economia, nas ciências e na cultura.

China | Li Qiang, um primeiro-ministro em maus lençóis

O presidente Xi Jinping está cada vez menos convencido da capacidade do seu Primeiro-Ministro, Li Qiang, para gerir a complexidade da estratégia económica chinesa. A ponto de considerar um distanciamento gradual do ex-secretário do partido em Xangai. A informação está a ser avançada pelo Intelligence Online.

Li Qiang no Forum de Davos 2024

Express: O director do jornal era um espião do KGB

25 anos depois da sua publicação, os famosos Arquivos Mitrokhine (agora "estacionados" em Cambridge) continuam a revelar-se autênticas cargas de profundidade. A sua mais recente "vítima" é um antigo director do L'Express, amigo chegado de primeiros-ministros e de presidentes da República e já considerado como o mais importante agente do KGB na França pós-II Guerra Mundial.

Honra seja feita ao jornal que tomou a iniciativa de investigar e revelar esta sua história. Uma coisa nunca vista noutros países em que Mitrokhine também revela e identifica directores de jornais (e jornalistas...) como agentes do KGB. Em Portugal, por exemplo, onde um importante "jornalista" até em Belém terá exercido os seus talentos, por conta da Lubyanka ...

https://www.lexpress.fr/societe/le-directeur-de-lexpress-etait-un-agent-du-kgb-nos-revelations-sur-philippe-grumbach-5A6YO56MZRBLTC67C4KC3RAMGI/

Estado-Civilização versus Estado-Nação, o grande afrontamento do séc.XXI

Estado-Civilização versus Estado-Nação, a forma política que pode tomar o grande afrontamento do séc.XXI, a 'terra' contra o 'mar', o fechamento e o totalitarismo contra a abertura e a democracia... Introdução à matéria pelos nossos amigos da "Conflits", revista francesa de geopolítica.

Le XXIe siècle, âge des États civilisations?

par Florian Louis | Conflits | 4 Nov. 2019

À en croire les voix de plus en plus nombreuses qui l’affirment, un nouveau type de réalité étatique, l’État civilisation, aurait vu le jour au cours des dernières décennies et se répandrait progressivement par le monde. Forme politique originale dont les incarnations paradigmatiques seraient la Chine et la Russie, l’État civilisation est présenté par ses promoteurs comme étant appelé à prendre inéluctablement le dessus sur le modèle occidental de l’État nation qui serait arrivé à péremption.

Popularisée en 2009 sous la plume du chercheur de la London School of Economics (LSE) Martin Jacques, reprise à son compte en 2012 par le spécialiste chinois de Relations internationales Zhang Weiwei, la notion d’État-civilisation est vite devenue à la mode au point d’être reprise à son compte par le président Poutine en personne lors d’une intervention devant le club Valdaï en 2013. 

Elle prétend rendre compte des mutations contemporaines de l’ordre géopolitique mondial et du tournant stratégique opéré par des pays comme la Chine, la Russie, l’Inde ou encore la Turquie. Par «État civilisation» (Civilization State)[1], ces auteurs et ceux qui leur ont emboîté le pas désignent un type d’État original qui diffèrerait fondamentalement du modèle occidental de l’État nation.

La civilisation contre la nation

Alors qu’une même civilisation, à l’image de l’Europe par exemple, peut compter en son sein plusieurs nations ayant chacune donné lieu à une incarnation étatique distincte (la France, l’Allemagne, l’Italie, etc.), un État civilisation ou État civilisationnel a la prétention, plus ou moins réalisée dans les faits, de présider seul aux destinées de l’ensemble d’une aire civilisationnelle: ce serait par excellence le cas de la Chine ou de la Russie, deux États qui ne seraient pas seulement les émanations de deux nations, mais de deux civilisations, cette dernière réalité étant perçue comme supérieure à la première du fait de sa plus grande profondeur historique.

La nation serait en effet une construction relativement récente et donc fragile qui tenterait d’amalgamer avec des bonheurs divers des populations porteuses de substrats civilisationnels potentiellement hétérogènes. La civilisation serait au contraire une réalité immémoriale transmise inlassablement d’une génération à l’autre depuis la nuit des temps. Chine et Russie auraient en commun d’avoir toutes deux, au XIXe siècle, tenté d’imiter l’Occident pour le rattraper. Pour ce faire, elles auraient importé à leurs dépens un modèle national qui s’est avéré inadapté à leurs spécificités civilisationnelles et ce faisant néfaste à leur épanouissement.

C’est en renonçant à ce modèle castrateur et en renouant avec leur héritage civilisationnel propre, donc en affirmant leurs différences avec l’Occident et ses valeurs sans chercher à s’en excuser ou à s’en justifier, qu’elles regagneraient aujourd’hui en vigueur au point de pouvoir désormais rivaliser avec lui.

Cette leçon aurait notamment été retenue au Moyen-Orient où la prétention à ériger par la force un «État islamique» témoignerait selon le politiste britannique de la LSE Christopher Coker d’une tentative d’avènement d’un État civilisation arabo-musulman dans une région du monde historiquement fragmentée et affaiblie par les rivalités entre des projets nationaux concurrents qui brideraient sa force civilisationnelle intrinsèque.

Une conception identitaire de l’État

Penser l’État au prisme de la civilisation plutôt qu’à travers celui de la nation a d’abord des conséquences au niveau intra-étatique. Cela suppose en effet que les citoyens dudit État qui n’en partagent pas le substrat civilisationnel se trouvent relégués dans une position subalterne dans leur propre pays, ce dont le modèle national réputé plus intégrateur était censé les prémunir. Ainsi, tandis que le parti du Congrès de Gandhi et Nehru, tenant d’une conception nationale de l’Inde, insistait sur l’égale citoyenneté des Indiens de toutes confessions, le BJP de Modi, adepte d’une conception plus strictement civilisationnelle de l’indianité, cherche à réduire les manifestations de tout ce qui est perçu par lui comme étranger à celle-ci, à commencer par l’islam.

La fin de l’universalisme libéral

Sur le plan global, l’affirmation d’États civilisations a pour principale conséquence de discréditer toute prétention à imposer des normes ou des valeurs universelles, chaque État civilisation pouvant se targuer d’avoir ses propres normes et valeurs conformes à son héritage civilisationnel. En conséquence, les tentatives occidentales d’imposer des standards à valeur universelle sont perçues et dénoncées comme des formes inacceptables d’impérialisme civilisationnel.

L’État civilisation aboutit donc à une attitude relativiste qui modifie en profondeur les rapports interétatiques. Ainsi que le résume le politologue allemand Adrian Pabst, «il est en passe de transmuer la géopolitique de l’après-guerre froide d’un universalisme libéral en un exceptionnalisme culturel»[2].

L’État civilisation est-il soluble dans l’Occident?

Originellement pensé et incarné par des pays non-Occidentaux désireux de contester l’hégémonie politique et culturelle de l’Occident, l’État civilisation serait à présent en train de s’imposer au cœur même de l’Occident par le biais des théoriciens de la nouvelle droite américaine comme Steve Bannon.

C’est en tout cas la thèse défendue par le chroniqueur du Financial Times Gideon Rachman pour qui l’éphémère conseiller stratégique de Donald Trump aurait converti son mentor à une conception civilisationnelle de l’État en tournant le dos au traditionnel universalisme états-unien. Au lieu de se poser comme ses prédécesseurs en héraut de la civilisation, l’actuel locataire de la Maison-Blanche se voudrait plus modestement le défenseur d’une civilisation occidentale menacée jusque dans son berceau par des flux migratoires mettant en péril son intégrité identitaire.

Cette conversion de l’Occident au modèle de l’État civilisation, que ses promoteurs présentent comme sa planche de salut, est au contraire analysée par Gideon Rachman comme un symptôme de sa faiblesse et de son déclin.

Alors que jadis, les pays non-occidentaux imitaient l’Occident en adoptant son modèle de l’État nation, ce serait aujourd’hui l’Occident qui irait chercher chez les autres le modèle politique de l’État civilisation pour tenter de sauver ce qui peut l’être de sa grandeur passée. C’est pourquoi Rachman affirme que «l’adhésion de Trump à une vision «civilisationnelle» du monde est un symptôme du déclin de l’Occident» car celui-ci ne se penserait plus suffisamment fort pour défendre l’universalité de son modèle[3].

La revanche de Huntington

Même si elles ne s’y réfèrent pas toujours explicitement, les théories de l’État civilisation doivent beaucoup au paradigme huntingtonien du «choc des civilisations».

Rappelons que pour Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), l’ordre mondial de l’après Guerre froide allait demeurer conflictuel, mais les facteurs de conflictualité étaient appelés à évoluer.

Ce ne serait plus pour la défense d’idéologies (le communisme ou le capitalisme par exemple) qu’on s’affronterait, mais au nom d’appartenances civilisationnelles antagoniques: «la rivalité entre superpuissances est remplacée par le choc des civilisations» écrivait-il.

Pour décrire ce choc potentiel, Huntington proposait un découpage de l’espace mondial en six à neuf civilisations appelées, si un dialogue constructif et respectueux des particularités de chacune, n’était pas instauré entre elles, à s’entrechoquer violemment.

Christopher Coker, tout en rendant hommage à Huntington et en dénonçant les (non-)lectures caricaturales qui en furent par trop souvent faites, pointe néanmoins le fait qu’il aurait «échoué à anticiper l’émergence d’une unité politique inédite: l’État civilisation et le défi qu’il pose à l’ordre international actuel».

Coker reconnaît donc à Huntington le mérite d’avoir saisi avant tout le monde l’importance croissante qu’était appelé à prendre le fait civilisationnel dans les relations internationales, mais d’avoir échoué à anticiper la capacité des États à se l’approprier, tant et si bien qu’en lieu et place d’un choc des civilisations, c’est un choc des États civilisations qu’il faudrait aujourd’hui redouter.

États nodaux et État civilisation

La critique me semble peu pertinente dans la mesure où elle fait fi de l’importance qu’accorde Huntington aux «États nodaux»[4], ainsi qu’il qualifie les entités politiques dominant chacune des différentes civilisations et qui ne sont pas sans préfigurer ce que l’on désigne aujourd’hui par l’expression «États civilisations».

Ainsi, Huntington prédisait-il qu’au XXIe siècle, «l’idée de communauté globale» était appelée à devenir «un rêve lointain» et qu’à la place de l’ordre bipolaire de la guerre froide, allait s’imposer «un monde dans lequel les États nodaux jouent un rôle directeur» et qui ne pourrait être qu’un «monde fait de sphères d’influence».

L’essor de ces États nodaux ou civilisationnels était perçu positivement par Huntington, non seulement parce qu’en se partageant le monde en sphères d’influences réciproques, il pouvait conduire à un apaisement des relations internationales, mais aussi parce que leur absence est généralement source de troubles intracivilisationnels.

La forte instabilité politique du monde musulman était ainsi interprétée par Huntington comme la conséquence de l’absence d’un État nodal fort apte d’une part à le stabiliser et d’autre part à pacifier ses relations avec les autres aires civilisationnelles en dialoguant d’égal à égal avec les États nodaux incarnant chacune d’entre elles.

Une désoccidentalisation du monde en trompe-l’œil

Si la diffusion du modèle de l’État civilisation jusque dans le monde occidental lui-même est présentée par Rachman comme un symptôme du déclin de ce dernier, c’est on l’a vu parce qu’il s’opposerait au modèle de l’État nation qui serait son invention. 

Si ce dernier point est incontestable, le fait que l’État civilisation soit moins occidental que l’État nation est en revanche sujet à caution .....

Continua aqui: https://www.revueconflits.com/etat-europe-mondialisation/

A equipa Intelnomics pouco aqui publicou nestas últimas agitadas semanas que preferiu dedicar a viagens de estudo, encontros, conferências e outros trabalhos. 

Agora, neste momento de regresso à publicação, uma coisa resulta bem clara: o mundo que encontramos hoje é muito diferente daquele que tínhamos em meados de Setembro passado quando iniciámos estas semanas sabáticas. Tanto no país que somos como no seu contexto global. Este novo "mundo" é a nossa prioridade nesta estranha 'rentrée'. 

Samuel Huntington, afinal, parece ser este o nome do profeta do nosso tempo

"In 1993, Huntington ( Harvard professor and director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs) provoked great debate among international relations theorists with the interrogatively titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", an influential, oft-cited article published in Foreign Affairs magazine. In the article, he argued that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Islam would become the biggest obstacle to Western domination of the world. The West's next big war therefore, he said, would inevitably be with Islam. Its description of post-Cold War geopolitics and the "inevitability of instability" contrasted with the influential "End of History" thesis advocated by Francis Fukuyama. 

Huntington expanded "The Clash of Civilizations?" to book length and published it as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in 1996. The article and the book posit that post-Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences. That, whilst in the Cold War, conflict occurred between the Capitalist West and the Communist Bloc East, it now was most likely to occur between the world's major civilizations—identifying seven, and a possible eighth: (i) Western, (ii) Latin American, (iii) Islamic, (iv) Sinic (Chinese), (v) Hindu, (vi) Orthodox, (vii) Japanese, and (viii) African. This cultural organization contrasts the contemporary world with the classical notion of sovereign states. To understand current and future conflict, cultural rifts must be understood, and culture—rather than the State—must be accepted as the reason for war. Thus, Western nations will lose predominance if they fail to recognize the irreconcilable nature of cultural tensions. Huntington argued that this post-Cold War shift in geopolitical organization and structure requires the West to strengthen itself culturally, by abandoning the imposition of its ideal of democratic universalism and its incessant military interventionism. Underscoring this point, Huntington wrote in the 1996 expansion, "In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous."

Huntington's last book, "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity", was published in May 2004. Its subject is the meaning of American national identity and what he describes as a cultural threat from large-scale immigration by Latinos, which Huntington says could "divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages". In this book, he called for America to force immigrants to "adopt English" and the US to turn to "Protestant religions" to "save itself against the threats" of Latino and Islamic immigrants. 

Huntington is credited with inventing the phrase Davos Man, referring to global elites who "have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations". The phrase refers to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where leaders of the global economy meet.

Huntington e o "Clash" na Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington#Notable_arguments

China: Um Verão Muito Quente

José Mateus

O "caso Qin Gang" rebentou nos finais de Julho quando o ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros de Pequim desapareceu. Agora, ainda antes do fim do Verão, tocou a vez ao ministro da Defesa, General Li Shangfu (na cadeira desde Março). E assim se confirmou o que em Julho tinha escrito:

"O 'caso Qin Gang' de que aqui demos conta, na semana passada, há portanto meia-dúzia de dias, é a notícia desta tarde do dia 25 Julho, terça-feira, nos media mainstream, aqueles que apenas podem dar as notícias de ontem pois não têm nem alcançam 'a inteligência do amanhã'... Vénia aos nossos amigos do intelNomics e do Intelligence on Line.

"Xi, 'o príncipe vermelho', reconhece assim o insucesso da sua política externa. Para que tal aconteça, o fracasso tem mesmo de ser muito grave..."

O desaparecido ministro da Defesa, General Li Shangfu

Agora, meia-dúzia de semanas depois da queda do ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, o desaparecimento do ministro da Defesa confirma a gravidade do fracasso de Xi, na política externa, revelando ainda que o principal instrumento da política externa de Pequim e garantia do seu estatuto de potência - a área da Defesa - se integra também nesse fracasso. A periclitante economia chinesa está longe de ser o único problema sério de Xi. E até talvez nem seja o mais grave... 

O Verão de Pequim foi mesmo muito quente. Veremos como por lá termina o ano...

A alta hierarquia militar francesa prepara os espíritos para a possibilidade de guerra generalizada na Europa, diz o Figaro.

"Estes últimos anos têm trazido o trágico de volta às nossas vidas e questionado o destino de nossa nação. Face a uma história que se endurece e acelera, perante os desafios históricos de um mundo onde a competição e o confronto estratégico se fundem, é chegado o momento de uma mobilização mais integral para melhor nos armarmos, de aumentar a independência e a força da nossa Nação no novo contexto estratégico que vivemos."

Macron reconhece ''le retour du tragique dans nos vies''

Esta mensagem recente difundida por Macron, num tipo de discurso que, contudo, não é o seu, é um belo exemplo da preocupação da hierarquia militar francesa em preparar os espíritos para a possibilidade de guerra generalizada na Europa, como (aqui: https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/l-armee-prepare-les-esprits-a-la-possibilite-de-la-guerre-20221108) escreve o quotidiano parisiense Le Figaro. 

E como, por extenso, aqui se explica:

https://www.sgdsn.gouv.fr/files/files/Revue%20nationale%20stratégique%20-%20Français.pdf

China na Polícia de Timor-Leste

Sem comentários, nem circunlóquios, nem perífrases...

Uma Leitura Indispensável: Chinese Communist Espionage - An Intelligence Primer

Quando a China se posiciona para impor ao mundo uma outra ordem geopolítica, baseada no "modelo chinês", é tempo de perceber a estratégia de Pequim para alcançar a supremacia global. Este "Chinese Communist Espionage - An Intelligence Primer", de Peter Mattis e Matthew Brazil, é essencial para isso.

"This is the first book of its kind to employ hundreds of Chinese sources to explain the history and current state of Chinese Communist intelligence operations. It profiles the leaders, top spies, and important operations in the history of China's espionage organs, and links to an extensive online glossary of Chinese language intelligence and security terms. Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage both past and present, enabling a better understanding of how pervasive and important its influence is, both in China and abroad."

Online Glossary of

Chinese Espionage Terms

and photos on CCP intelligence history.

https://www.ccpintelterms.com/

O Relatório do FMI Não Traz Boas Notícias

Crescimento global em queda, subida das taxas de juro (para combater a inflação) mas abrandamento da descida da inflação (as previsões para 2024 foram, aliás, revistas em alta) e ainda mais algumas "divergências"... Não se pode dizer que o FMI esteja optimista! Há, porém, quem "leia" neste relatório do FMI o afastamento do risco global de um colapso económico ainda este ano e, assim, se sinta aliviado...

FMI: The global recovery is slowing amid widening divergences among economic sectors and regions

Global growth is projected to fall from an estimated 3.5 percent in 2022 to 3.0 percent in both 2023 and 2024. While the forecast for 2023 is modestly higher than predicted in the April 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO), it remains weak by historical standards. 

The rise in central bank policy rates to fight inflation continues to weigh on economic activity. Global headline inflation is expected to fall from 8.7 percent in 2022 to 6.8 percent in 2023 and 5.2 percent in 2024. Underlying (core) inflation is projected to decline more gradually, and forecasts for inflation in 2024 have been revised upward.

The recent resolution of the US debt ceiling standoff and, earlier this year, strong action by authorities to contain turbulence in US and Swiss banking reduced the immediate risks of financial sector turmoil. This moderated adverse risks to the outlook. However, the balance of risks to global growth remains tilted to the downside.

Inflation could remain high and even rise if further shocks occur, including those from an intensification of the war in Ukraine and extreme weather-related events, triggering more restrictive monetary policy. Financial sector turbulence could resume as markets adjust to further policy tightening by central banks. 

China’s recovery could slow, in part as a result of unresolved real estate problems, with negative cross-border spillovers. Sovereign debt distress could spread to a wider group of economies. On the upside, inflation could fall faster than expected, reducing the need for tight monetary policy, and domestic demand could again prove more resilient.

In most economies, the priority remains achieving sustained disinflation while ensuring financial stability. Therefore, central banks should remain focused on restoring price stability and strengthen financial supervision and risk monitoring.

Should market strains materialize, countries should provide liquidity promptly while mitigating the possibility of moral hazard. They should also build fiscal buffers, with the composition of fiscal adjustment ensuring targeted support for the most vulnerable. Improvements to the supply side of the economy would facilitate fiscal consolidation and a smoother decline of inflation toward target levels.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2023/07/10/world-economic-outlook-update-july-2023

China: O Caso do Ministro Desaparecido...

No Sinocism, hoje, destaque para o desaparecimento do ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros: 

"Andrew and Bill begin with the mystery surrounding foreign minister Qin Gang, who has not been seen in public since June 25th. As the foreign ministry stays silent, what might explain his retreat from public view, and how does this situation reflect on Xi Jinping and the party? Then: Henry Kissinger makes a surprise visit to Beijing, meets first with Defense Minister Li Shangfu, while John Kerry meets with Li Qiang and Wang Yi to talk common ground on climate issues. Will either of them get an audience with Xi? From there: U.S. chip firms lobby the executive branch, Chinese hackers access the emails of Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and the optics get trickier for Biden's China policy. At the end: Weak economic data for Q2 and a window into who's actually driving the changes to China's relationships with the West."