Los temas importantes para el siglo XXI

Por: Marco Roncagliolo

La Pandemia

“Catástrofe Anunciada”

“As president George W. Bush said in November 2005: A pandemic…: if caught early, it might be extinguished with limited damage … In a pandemic, everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators, masks and protective equipment would be in short supply. …”

“Presidente Obama said in December 2014: There may and likely will come a time in which we have an airborne disease that is deadly. … we have to put in place an infraestructure… globally … that allow us … to respond to it quickly. …” (p.64)

“Bill Gates warned us… .

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested hundreds of millions dollars in vaccine research and systems that track disease. Gates himself called on world leaders to prepare for the inevitable. In November 2014, in response to an Ebola outbreak in West Africa…” (p. 65)

“Compartir Información“

“It’s easier to contain a virus and save a million lives if you identify the virus and take effective action before it infects millions of people. Share information with your citizens and the rest of the world.”

“If Chinese authorities had listened to doctors in Wuhan and invited the World Health Organization to listen to them, too, rather than trying to process and responde to information before sharing it, they would have spared themselves, their people, and the rest of the world enormous pain.” 

“In Iran, the government downplayed the health risks of COVID-19 both to keep turnout high for parliamentary elections in February 2020 and to avoid having to shut down an economy already reeling from the impact of international sanctions and low oil prices. Had they not, the country might not have become the first mayor COVID hot spot outside China.” (P.77)

“Compartir la responsabilidad”

“For governments, the most positive geopolitical consequence of COVID is that European leaders stepped up to show the American and Chinese leaders how to cooperate. 

…

In response to the first wave, most European countries locked down more effectively that’s the United States did, and without the lasting damage to personal privacy that we saw in China. 

…

With the support of all twenty-seven EU member states, European governments agreed in 2020 on recovery package worth more than e2,364.3 millions, including e750 billion for COVID recovery, e540 billion to reinforce safety nets for workers, businesses, and member states, and a e1,074.3 billion EU budget for 2021-2027. This was the most important example of international compromise, cooperation, and coordination the world has seen in a generation.

…

To accomplish this, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and French presidente Emmanuel Macron agressively pushed a pro-European integrationist agenda, the same project that infuriated taxpayers in wealthier countries, fed resentment in poorer ones, alienated former Communist members of the EU, and helped enabled Brexit. In the process, Merkel and Macron weakened Euro-skeptic arguments across the EU, and many members states got help they badly needed. It will be years before all the money is distributed, but the unanimous emergency response showed the value of shared sacrifice at a time when country-first populism had thrown the EUs future into question.” (pp.84-85)

“RNA”

“But the pandemic inspired scientist to test a new concept. …

Two COVID vaccines  use “Messenger RNA” (mRNA) technologies that teach the body how to produce its own virus fragments to target. This revolutionary new approach dramatically sped up the development and mas distribution of safe and effective vaccines. In the United States, these innovations were the product of government money, research from the National Institute of Health, the Defense Department, and federally funded academic laboratories, with expertise and innovation provided by private-sector companies.

…

But as with mRNA vaccination, it will create new opportunities for cooperation for those ready to seize them.” (p.83)

Pandemia Futura

“The COVID…it was predicted … by world leaders… And we know that there will be a next novel coronavirus, possibly one both more transmisible and more deadly than COVID-19. … To respond more effectively to future emergencies, we need to understand both.” (p.6)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

Medio Ambiente

Nuestro Clima

“…climate change threatens our collective future on a larger and longer scale-by creating turmoil with the home all humans share, by making unprecedented economic demands on governments, by stoking political turmoil, by increasing inequality within and among countries, and by pushing more desperate people across borders than any war ever did.” (pp.6-7)

Cambio climático 

“Beginning in 2007, a devastating two-year drought swept across the fertile farmland of northern Syria. … Hundreds of thousands of desperate people flooded in Syrias largest cities in search of jobs to feed their families, and they weren’t welcomed when they got there.” (p.87)

“Now … travel 7,500 miles west from Damascus to Central America. Beginning in 2014, an intense multi year drought scorched El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

“In 2018, hundreds of thousands of people fled the region in hopes of reaching the US to apply for asylum- at a time when President Trump had made plans for a “big, beautiful” border wall a central part of his political brand.” (p.88)

“Catastrophes in Syria and Central America are just the beginning. Populations will surge in Africa (+55 percent by 2040), South Asia (+18.4 percent), and Central America (+18.8 percent).” (p.88)

“We all now have a clear idea of where climate change comes from. Over the past fifty years, human ingenuity and cross border connection have empowered more people and unleashed more economic potential than any force in history. …”

“One-sixth of all the carbon emissions in human history occurred in the ten-year period between 2010 and 2020. It’s a staggering reality. And its meant more of the suns rays are trapped, capturing more heat.”

“More heat means more moisture in the air, with effects on temperature, humidity, air pressure, and atmospheric instability… . It means more intense storms more often, more floods, more wildfires, more droughts.” (p.92)

“As Tanya Steele, … said in 2018, “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.” (p.92)

“Limiting the use of fossil is the center of any climate strategy. However, those who profit most from them-the OPEC countries, Russia, and other nations, including the US, now the worlds number one oil producer-have strong financial incentives to slow the process.” (p.93)

La migración climática 

“As we seen in Syria and Central America, climate change has … forced millions of desperate people onto the road. Europes proximity to Africa and the Middle East. … 

The first country that climate change will completely destroy … will be Kiribati, a collection of thirty-three islands in the Pacific Ocean home to about one hundred thousand people.

…

One day soon, Bangladesh (population 161 million) will face a similar crisis. More than forty-five millions Bangladeshis live in coastal areas already prone to flooding. … Rising sea levels will force as many as eighteen million from their homes.

A 2019 report from the US National Academy of Sciences found that if global carbon emissions continue along their current trajectory, the world will warm by about 5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, melting enough of the Arctic and Antarctica ice submerged food-growing areas of the Nile Delta and much of Bangladesh.

“Climate change will drive surges of migrations … in four major regions. First, there is Central America, … spans El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Second is the Sahel, …desertification can create the kinds of economic disaster and poverty…fertile for recruiting for terrorist groups. This area includes Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Sudan. Third, there is South Asia-India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal-where rising temperatures and sea levels, more intense and frequent cyclones, and river flooding. Finally, there are the Pacific Islands states, like Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Fiji, which face… doom Kiribati.” 

Riverbank erosion now destroys the homes of about two hundred thousand Bangladeshis every year, and there are no accepted international rules to help these people find new homes and start new lives. … (pp.101-105)

“Brazil was responsible for…one third…desforestation in 2019. Presidente Jair Bolsonaro has agressively removed legal protection for the land for the benefit of investors in mining and large-scale farming.”

“…all the plans will cost a lot of money,… though cost-sharing Amon there worlds wealthiest countries…

National and local governments can spend to prepare their cities for rising sea level and their coastal communities for more frequent and violent storms. They can invest … from the impact of erratic weather… . But international funding … for joint research and development projects on carbon capture, new sources of energy, and multinational protections for forests, water, and other natural resources.” (pp.120-121)

“In 2013, a man name Ioane Teitiota applied for asylum for himself and his family in New Zealand. He claimed that climate change made it impossible for him to continue to live in Kiribati.”

“In January 2020, the UN committee ruled against Teitiota. It argued that Kiribati, with help from the international community, could still relocate displaced people in an orderly way. …

This ruling … recognized that climate change will impose a dangerous hardships on many more pp le, and that countries will have responsibilities under international law to protect climate refugees.”

El Apartheid Climático 

“UN experts have warned that poorer countries will bear at least 75 percent of the cost of restoring infraestructure damaged by climate change, and of managing infraestructure damaged by climate change, and of managing refugees and feeding increased numbers”

“The result will be “climate apartheid”, a term coined by Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, as richer countries- and richer people within poorer countries- build new sorts of barriers to protect their wealth. ” (pp.108-109)

Los riesgos catastróficos

“Experts estimate ”

“In coming years, … there will be tougher competition for increasingly scarce arable land, fish stocks, fresh water, and clean air, generating conflicts both within and among poorer countries. 

…

In February 2019, India and Pakistan… . About one in six of the worlds people live in India, yet Indians have access to just 4 percent of the worlds water. Scarcity is also an ever-present threat in Pakistan. Hundreds of millions of people on both sided of the border between the two countries depend on water from the Indus River and its tributaries for farming, hydropower, and drinking. In all, 235 million people in India, Pakistan, and Nepal are a ser by the Indus River.

About 2,500 miles to the west, a long simmering dispute among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over the waters of the Nile has provoked similar fears and threats. All three countries depend on the Nile for agriculture and electricity generation. 

In 2011, a time when Egypt was distracted by the Arab Spring unrest, engineers and workers in Ethiopia began construction of the now-finished Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africas largest hydroelectric power plant.This project has already diverted enormous volumes of water from the Blue Nile, the source of 85 percent of the Niles water… .” (pp99-101)

“Más calentamiento”

“More het means more moisture in the air, with effects on temperature, humidity, air pressure, and atmospheric instability that dramatically alter weather patters. It means more intense storms more often, more floods, more wildfire, more droughts.

As Tanya Steele, head of the World Wildfire Fund said,…”We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last that can do anything about it”. (p.92)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

La harmonía entre las personas y los árboles

“People and trees live in harmony: we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while trees suck in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

…by clear-cutting trees for agriculture or loggin in the Amazon in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Indonesia, and elsewhere. Fewer trees take in less carbon dioxide, and tress that are cut down and burned release the carbon they’ve been storing in the air.”

“Las personas y los árboles viven en armonía: nosotros inhalamos oxígeno y exhalamos dióxido de carbono, mientras que los árboles aspiran dióxido de carbono y producen oxígeno.

… talando árboles para la agricultura o talando árboles en el Amazonas en la República Democrática del Congo, en Indonesia y en otros lugares. Menos árboles absorben menos dióxido de carbono y los árboles que se talan y queman liberan el carbono que han estado almacenando en el aire”.

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

El peligro de la geoingenieria 

“A process known as “geo-ingeneering” o “climate engineering” is designed to address the problem of carbon in the atmosphere though climate manipulation. The process of “cloud whitening” … involves spraying pressurized seawater droplets and dissolved salts high in the air above both land and sea to create salt crystals and new water droplets.

Other projects are designed to release sulfur into the atmosphere to produce an effect similar to cloud whitening but much father from the earths surface. …

…

Or … to churn CO2 but develop tools to “capture” much of it before it reaches the atmosphere.

No one knows the long-term effects of these technologies or how using them in one country will affect neighbors. We dont understand the adaptability of the earths atmosphere well enough to let individual government test theories that might have global … effects.” (pp. 109-110)

El establecimiento de las nuevas reglas

“New rules … from government- … toward policies that limit climate change has come from outside government, as heat, waves, droughts, wildfire, and other local emergencies boost public support for bolder action.

…

Banks and investment houses, … have begun to direct money away from fossil fuels toward so-called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investment targets… .

…

Then came the pandemic and a extraordinary global economic shock, which dealt the brick and mortar economy a historic blow.

… To manage COVIDs economic fallout, governments shoveled massive amounts of money toward relief and recovery, speeding the transition toward a renewable economy.” (pp.114-115) 

Juntar la Investigación y el Desarrollo

“The world needs coordinated research and development work on climate technologies. … Competition among groups racing to be first with game changing innovations in carbon capture, a green energy breakthrough, new food production technologies, and other inventions… Investment in these projects can be internationally funded to ensure that costs are shared as well as benefits. …” 

La dependencia gubernamental del Carbón

“Coal has been a cheap and abundant source of energy for decades, and many countries have invested heavily in coal-fired power plants.

Fossil fuel dependent government aren’t the only one that will resist the new world order. Companies and workers whose livelihood depend on energy extraction, refining, and transport Wong support plans to reach the net-zero target.

A 2019 study conducted by Germanys IG Metal union and the Fraunhofer Institute  for Industrial Engineering found that though electrification will create twenty-five thousand new jobs in Germany by 2030, it will kill three times that many in engines and transmission production over the same period.

Another obstacle … is the reality that domestic politics around climate change and decarbonization will be ugly around the world. 

…

Leaders also know that they get more credit for addressing local problemas than global ones. 

…

One of the best way to speed the transition away from fossil fuel is to raise the cost of using them.”

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

La Organización Mundial del Carbón

“…well need a World Carbon Organization, … an agency that regulates and oversees international trade in carbon credits and provides an accurate accounting of carbon emissions and carbon removals when these technologies become viable on a much larger scale.”  (p.116)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

El logro del desarrollo sostenible

“The world output in 2018, measured at international prices, will be approximately $134 trillion, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund.”

“In September 2015, the world agreed to put sustainable development at the center of global economic cooperation, adopting Agenda 2030 with the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” (p.207)

“As of early 2018, according to Forbes magazine, a mere 2,208 individual-the worlds billionaires-had $9.1 trillion in wealth.”

“According to calculations by the Institute of Economics and Peace, publisher of the Global Peace Index (2017), the global costs of violence in 2016 totaled around $14 trillion (measured at international dollars), or roughly 13 percent of global output. These costs include military and security outlays, the costs of armed conflicts, and the costs of interpersonal violence.” (p.208)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

La prioridad del trabajo de cada gobierno

“…carefully the realistic path to achieving the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement,… that should become the priority work of every government in the world.

First is to ensure quality of health and education for all. … The SDGs include …health coverage (SDG 3) and universal quality education at least through the secondary level (SDG 4).

Second is sustainable land-use management. …world is facing a crisis of unsustainable land management, including loss of biodiversity, soils, freshwater, forest cover, and ecosystem functioning…are unprecedented and perilous.”

Third is decent jobs and infraestructure for all. SDG 1 calls for an end to extreme poverty; SDG 8 aims for decent world for all; and SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12.

Fourth is to decarbonized the energy system. …By 2050 we have to achieve zero carbon emissions in order to keep the global warming within the safety limits set by the Paris Climate Agreement…

Fifth is good governance, including honesty, rule of law, fairness, competence, and transparency…includes gender equality (SDG 5), reduced inequalities within and among nations (SDG 10), peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG 16), and global cooperation (SDG 17).” (pp.209-210)

“According to the 2017 SDG Index, the U.S. ranked no better than forty-second out of 157 countries, and thirtieth out of the thirty-five high-income OECD countries.

The United States is strong on only one of the three pillars of sustainable development, the economy, but weak on social inclusion and environmental sustainability.

“American consumers have a role to play here. U.S. brand names need to be put on notice: If you cower to the Koch brothers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce, you will pay a price. … The Koch brothers spend hundreds of million of dollars to block action on global warming and pollution, and then have the remarkable audacity to ask Americans to buy consumer products such as Angelsoft and Dixie that they own… . It’s time to say a resounding no!” (p.212)

“We must also pressure Congress to act on climate change. Would Republican senators allow the corruption and the greed of the Senate to gut the Paris Climate Agreement? It’s possible, but these senators have children and grandchildren too, and most are not as stupid as their party’s official position on climate change” (p.212)

“It would not be hard for the United States, with its wealth skills, and technologies, to achieve the SDGs if it tried to do so. Sucesos would require a change of policies, from corporate tax breaks and environmental deregulation to social programs fro the poor and working class and investment in the green economy.” (p.212)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

La lucha de Europa contra el cambio climático 

“The fights against climate change will also demand a joint international effort to discourage carbon emissions by making them more expensive.

Airlines automakers, and other that rely on affordable fossil fuels are still recovering from the devastating blows dealt by COVID-19. These industries need financial help, not higher taxes.

Europe, … leading the way on carbon pricing-with an Emissions Trading Scheme and a EU border carbon tax plan… can be encourage European coordination with the Biden administration on a joint strategy to overcome Chineses opposition to these, and other useful ideas. South Korea, South Africa, Mexico, and the state of California have similar projects in place… .” 

“In 2021, a Dutch court ordered that by 2030, Shell must cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent from 2019 levels.”

“Companies can lobby governments for stronger climate legislation, as some US business groups have done through support for carbon pricing.

Just as many companies flipped production to focus on personal protective equipment or jumped into the vaccine distribution business, and tech companies created tools that help scientist test new drugs and trace infections around the world.

…

Companies have their own climate-based risks to manage. Those with real market power can help bring about positivo change on their own. Retail giant Walmart pledged in 2020 … to reduce its own carbon emissions to zero by 2040… .

Multinational consumer goods company Unilever is using sta lite imagery and geolocation data to “achieve a deforestation free supply chain by 2023”. 

Software giant Salesforce announced in early 2020 that it would “support and mobilize the conservation and restoration of 100 million trees over the next decade”.” (pp.116-119)

Europa,… liderando el camino en la fijación de precios del carbono, con un esquema de comercio de emisiones y un plan de impuestos al carbono en la frontera de la UE… puede alentar la coordinación europea con la administración Biden en una estrategia conjunta para superar la oposición china a estas y otras ideas útiles. Corea del Sur, Sudáfrica, México y el estado de California tienen proyectos similares en marcha…” (págs.116-119)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

El Nuevo Acuerdo Verde de los Estados Unidos

“In 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey proposed a plan known as the Green New Deal, an ambitious response to climate change that reduces greenhouses gas emissions, shifts US energy use from oil and gas towards renewable sources, creates large numbers of jobs in the growing clean energy industry, and even tackles problems of wealth inequality and racial injustice.”

“The big obstacle to achieving a Green Marshall Plan in creating a mechanism that gives countries “climate credit” for the investment they make under it. To create incentives for public and private investors to fund green development in other countries, they need credit that allows them higher emissions in return.”

“The 1997 Kyoto tried but failed to accomplish this because too few countries had faith in the score-keeping system. But as the sense of urgency on warning increases and the specifics of the plan refined, many governments are ready to revisit the idea… .”

“Many the biggest boost that COVID provided the fight against climate change comes from the end of Donald Trumps presidency. Trump didn’t care about the warming. … In many ways, Washington and Beijing have avoided responsibility for leadership in this crisis. 

But before, during, and after the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November 2021, the increasingly unavoidable and ugly reality of the climate crisis, together with increased pressure from climate activists, has moved other governments and large corporations to make more aggressive action.” (pp.123-126)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

Las seis acciones de EE.UU. para lograr las ODS

“There are six main actions we can take to get on track:

First, lets us insist that the major companies…align …with the SDGs.

Second, let us insist that individuals with high net worth should contribute philanthropically to the SDGs, while asset managers should invest their funds according to SDG guidelines.

Third, let us mobilize urgent SDG funding for the worlds poorest nations, so they can provide universal health coverage, universal quality education, and universal access to modern infrastructure.

Fourth, let us insist that war and peace issues be settled according to the UN Charter, especially by the UN Security Council.

Fifth, let us make polluters compasaste those who suffer from the pollution, including the fossil fuel industries pay for part of the damage caused by global warming.

Sixth, let us deploy breakthroughs in science and technology to achieve … progress toward the SDGs.” (pp. 213-214)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

La recomendación de Ian Bremmer sobre el calentamiento global

“Climate change isn’t an alien invasion. We did this ourselves. Only a global effort can limit its damage. But if world leaders can rise to the challenge before its too late, they will have created the foundation for cooperative work against biggest and most insidious threat of all-the life-altering impact of disruptive technologies.” (p.126)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

Las Tecnologías Disruptivas

Las tecnologías disruptivas

“…Technologies won, specifically the makers of disruptive new technologies and all those who benefit from them. … Republicans insisted that new media was … biased against them as traditional media, and they demanded action. Democrats warned that tech giants like, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, and Netflix had amassed too much market (and therefore policital) power, that citizens has lost control of how these companies use the data they generate, and that the companies should therefore be broken into smaller, less dangerous pieces.” (p.127)

“Companies survived the pandemic only by allowing wired workers to log in from home. Consumers avoided possible infection by shopping online. Specially made drones helped deliver lifesaving medicine in rich and poor countries alike.”

“AI played a crucial role in vaccine development by absorbing all available medical literature to identify links between genetic properties of the virus and the chemical composition and effect of existing drugs.”

“In China, apps helped fight COVID by providing detailed data on where to go for quarantine, by tracking where each person had been and assigning a color-coded status that defined the level of risk they posed for other people, and limiting their movement based on that status.” (p.128)

“Some disruptive new technologies, … create risks of dehumanization- by transforming  the nature of work at the expense of workers,  by creating new forms of inequality within and among nations, and by inventing new ways to break traditional links among families… .” (p129)

“…new technologies are simply tools that can boost our quality of life, destroy things, or … do both at the same time. Let’s star with the positive. The pandemic was only the latest show case for … new technologies. … For example, ”

Aadhaar, el sistema de identificación biométrica 

“…Aadhaar, a biometric identification system that has now established the identities of virtually everyone in India, one-sixth of the planets population. You gave the government your thumbprint and a iris scan to match the photo taken of you at the Aadhaar office. ”

“In Hindi, the word aadhaar means “foundation,” and this system creates a foundation upon which nearly 1.4 billion people can build their people”

“One example: an Indian government investigation found that, before the rollout of Aadhaar, schools in three different states had inflated attendance rolls with 440,000 nonexistent students in order to draw more money from state-funded school lunch programs.” (pp.130-131)

Los datos sesgados

“Biased data can produce unfair results that deprive citizens of all sorts of rights and opportunities, and it wont always be easy to appeal… .” 

“In October 2019, researchers published a paper in the journal Science that presented compelling evidence that an algorithm used in the U to help decide when sick people should be eligible for more intensive health care unwittingly created bias based on race. They found that … , the algorithm was less likely to refer black patients for extra care because it used the historical cost of care as a proxy for health-care needs.”

“In 2018, Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, presented evidence that facial recognition sold by IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ (a Chinese facial recognition company) were better at light skinned faces and worse at recognizing dark-skinned ones… .” (p.135)

Los riesgos de la deshumanización

“A 2018 study from McKinsey & Company found that intelligent machines could add as much as $5.8 trillion in annual value for the companies that deploy them.”

“In 2019, there were about 2.5 million robots in use worldwide, a threefold increase over the previous twenty years. … Reports from Oxford Economics and McKinsey published in 2019  estimated that machines will eventually eliminate ten of millions  of jobs world wide.” (p.137)

“New types of jobs, will be created” …, that the trend toward automation will create more jobs that it destroys. But these transitions … will be rockiest ever because its happening exponentially faster than any of this precedessors. Many workers will never be able to acquire the skill set to perform jobs that require experience in the use of advanced technology.”

“…the fourth industrial revolution”. In 2016, … “a new era that build and extends the impact of digitalization in new and unanticipated ways.” (p.138)

“In 2016, President Obamas Council of Economic Advisers forecast that 83 percent of workers of jobs that paid less than twenty dollars an hour were at risk of replacement by machines.” (p.138)

La nueva muralla de Berlin Digital

“…a growing digital divide among countries. The dominant trend of the past fifty years in international politics and economics has been what Fareed Zakaria in 2008 called the “rise of the rest”: the emergence of China, India, Brazil, and other fast-developing countries, and the creation of a global middle class as the free flow of ideas, information, people, money, goods, and services lifted billions out of poverty.” (p.142)

“In 2019, just 39.6 percent of Africans had internet access, compared with 62.7 percent of people in the rest of the world. … Before the pandemic nearly 90 percent of Kenyans could surf the Web. Just 5.3 percent in Burundi could say the same. COVID forced the beginnings of change… .”

“The digital divide takes so many forms that only a truly global investment  … and effective regulation of those companies unwilling to shift business models that profit by dividing opinion and people-can reverse the trend that will destabilize entire societies on a unprecedented scale.” (p.143) 

El autoritarismo digital

“…to the data revolution, which bolsters the power of government at the expense of the individual. In 2010, a young Egyptian named Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page to honor a man who’d been beaten to death by police.”

“The uprising that followed toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, who’d been in power for thirty years. At the time, it was easy to believe that internet, social media, and smartphone sales would prove the worst thing  that had ever happened to police states and the autocrats.” (p144)

“When Syrias Bashar al-Assad faced threats from opposition activist during his countrys civil war, he turned to a small army of Russian engineers to help his security forces find and imprison them.”

“Chinas social credit system, which … is a crucial piece of the countrys use of data. According to the People’s Bank of China, the social credit system covered more than a billion people at the end of 2019. The economic planning commission reported in July 2019 that, as a result of poor scores, 2.56 million people had been barred from air travel, and 90,000 had been denied high-speed rail service.

The data used to power Chinas social credit system comes mainly from financial, criminal, and government records, and the databases that store this information are managed by Chinas state economic planning commission, the rental bank, and the countrys judicial system.” (p.146)

Migración

Trumps Migración 

“Donald Trumps various efforts to bar entry to the United States from Muslim-majority countries is the latest salvo in Americas epic cultures war over race and American identity.”(p.195)

“Trumps real purpose isn’t antiterrorism at all. The real goal is to fan the perception among Trumps political base that Islam is an existential threat to Western civilization and that allowing Muslims to enter the United States would be to permit radical terrorist cells to grow inside the United States.”(p.196)

“Trumps moves are about identity, emotion, and politics, not logic, national security, and the law. For many Americans, 9/11 is a continuing trauma, fanned by repeated viewing of the horros in the media.” (p.196)

“U.S. foreign policy is disastrously imbalanced, as we’ve seen: Our total aid budget is equal to around two weeks of Pentagon spending. The reason is obvious. Washington politicians salivate over each new taxpayer-subsidized weapons sale, which brings in its wake new campaign contributions and jobs for recycled politicians. …” (p.204)

“In a 2010 Pew survey, for example, the unfavorable divided was 47-28 among college grads; 29-37 among those with some college but no degree; and 20-47 among those with a high school diploma.” (p.197)

“Trumps appeal to the white working class has combined fear of Middle East terrorism with a white working-class backlash against the rising Hispanic population.”

Propuesta migratoria de Sachs

“I propose a three-part approach. The first is to stop the conflicts that are currently causing millions of refugees to flee the homes. The second is to promote longe-term economic development in the countries migrants are fleeing. The third is to adjust global policies to enshrine the freedom to migrate while also enabling societies to limit migration to moderate and manageable rates.” (p.202)

“In short, migration is not about building high walls but … in which people can live securely and prosperously…, while enjoying the freedom to migrate for personal reasons rather that in desperation. By viewing the migration crisis in a more holistic way, we will find true and lasting solutions rather that the demagogic ones now widely on offer.” (p.206)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

La migración climática 

“As we seen in Syria and Central America, climate change has … forced millions of desperate people onto the road. Europes proximity to Africa and the Middle East. … 

The first country that climate change will completely destroy … will be Kiribati, a collection of thirty-three islands in the Pacific Ocean home to about one hundred thousand people.

…

One day soon, Bangladesh (population 161 million) will face a similar crisis. More than forty-five millions Bangladeshis live in coastal areas already prone to flooding. … Rising sea levels will force as many as eighteen million from their homes.

A 2019 report from the US National Academy of Sciences found that if global carbon emissions continue along their current trajectory, the world will warm by about 5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, melting enough of the Arctic and Antarctica ice submerged food-growing areas of the Nile Delta and much of Bangladesh.

“Climate change will drive surges of migrations … in four major regions. First, there is Central America, … spans El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Second is the Sahel, …desertification can create the kinds of economic disaster and poverty…fertile for recruiting for terrorist groups. This area includes Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Sudan. Third, there is South Asia-India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal-where rising temperatures and sea levels, more intense and frequent cyclones, and river flooding. Finally, there are the Pacific Islands states, like Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Fiji, which face… doom Kiribati.” 

Riverbank erosion now destroys the homes of about two hundred thousand Bangladeshis every year, and there are no accepted international rules to help these people find new homes and start new lives. … (pp.101-105)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

Asia

“Convergencia Global”

“The greatest sucess story was Asia. First, Japan quickly recovered from the World War II and began to build a industrial powerhouse. The came the “Asian tigers”: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. And then came China with the market reforms commencing in 1978, when Deng Xiaping ascended to power after Mao Zedongs death. Asias example inspired market reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from the mid- 1980s, made possible by the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev.”(p. 50) 

“El Siglo del Mundo”

“We are not heading into a China century, or the India century, or any other, but a world century. The rapid spread of technology and the near-universal sovereignty of nation states means that no single country or region will dominate the world in economy, technology, or population.” (P. 52)

“Eurasia”

“Eurasia will likely constitute the new dynamic center of gravity a of the world economy. Both Europe and Asia remain hopeful of continued open trade and investments with the United States, but the countries of Eurasia will not agree to an America First agents that breaks the rules of international economy for Americas purported advantage” (p. 64)

Las relaciones de EE.UU. y Rusia

“Mikhail Gorbachev vision of a unified, peaceful, and integrated European home that extended from the North Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in Russias Far East.” (p.65)

“To understand Gorbachevs vision, we must go back to the age of the Romanov tsars, part of Europes Age of Empires. While the Western European power expanded into Africa and Asia, European Russia expanded its empire into its near neighborhood in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia.” (p.66)

“Russian industrial growth picked up in the decade before World War I, … the Romanov empire was brought down by the war, with the Boshelviks seizing power in 1917, winning a brutal civil war and establishing the Soviet Union in 1923.”

“In 1939, the Soviet Union disgracefully agreed with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland… ”

“The Cold War followed quickly after. In the predominant U.S. view, the Cold War occurred for one reason and one reason only: the persistent attempt by the Soviet Union to gain control over postwar Western Europe… .” (p.66)

“…George Kennan, the State Departments Russia expert in the 1940s and the original … did not see the Soviet Union as intent on war with the West. He believed that practical solutions could be found to ease Cold War tensions, and notably floated the idea of a neutral (non-NATO), demilitarized, and unified Germany… . Kennan believed that peaceful coexistence, and … was possible through diplomatic and essentially no military means.”(p.67)

“…Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 intent on enduring the Cold War while reinvigorating the socialist system promoting the political and economic reform package termed perestroika.”

“Yet for U.S. hard-liners , the United States kept up military pressure, the Soviet Union would fold its hand. The hard-liners felt further vindicated when Gorbachev decided in 1989 to allow, indeed encourage political multiparty democratization in Eastern Europe.”(p.68)

“Poland was the first country to install a non communist government, in 1989. I became economic adviser to the government that same year. My vision … Poland would quickly rejoin the European Community… as a “normal” mixed economy and democracy, … when Poland joined the European Union in 2004. … I saw Polands steps as the forerunner of Russias similar reforms.”

“In 1990 and 1991, I tried to help Gorbachev with a plan similar to Polands. … Such assistance would need to include a “standstill” on Soviet debt payments; an eventual write-off … Soviet debt to the West; and ample grants from the West, as in the Marshall Plan, to help the Soviet Union rebuild and modernize its economy on market principles.”

“In the spring of 1991, I worked with Gorbachevs economic adviser Grigory Yavlinsky and with colleagues at Harvard and MIT to prepare a “Grand Bargain”, in which … significant funding restructure its economy … . The plan was quickly shot down by the White House in the summer of 1991. Gorbachev made a fervent and detailed appeal to the West for economic partnership and support at the G7 Summit in London in July 1991.” (p.69)

“By September, Russia president Boris Yeltsin was reaching out to me and other to help mobilize urgent financial support from the West. Yet this too was not to be.  Every recommendation … I made to the White House and the IMF was immediately and decisively shot down.” (p.70)

“The simplest theory is that U.S. support for Eastern Europe was politically popular in the United States… while the support for Russia was not”

“Without access to the help… , Russias crisis turned into a rout. … Inflation soared. Russias reformers and their advisers…, took the blame. … Uncontrolled crisis go from bad to worse. Quack theories abound. Political discontent multiplies. Reform measures are discredited. Crooks take the places of reformers.”

“When the presidency passed from George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton. … Clinton was inexperienced, uninterested, and inward looking. After the first year of the Clinton presidency, at the end of 1993, I stepped down from advising the Russian government. My three years of pleading for Western help had come to naught.” (p.71)

“When  Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin in 2000, Putin still expressed the hope for improved relations with the United States and Europe. … The U.S. lack of assistance to Russia in the early 1990s had been the first snub. American complicity in the rise of oligarchs was the second grievance. The third cause of rupture was the U.S. military politics, notably the expansion of NATO to the East and increased U.S. meddling  in the Middle East.” (p.72)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

Los datos sobre producción total de China

“According from the IMF World Economic Outlook database, Chinas total output is now 2.4 percent larger than Americas, and Chinas output per person is around 29 percent of Americas.” (p.146)

“China… has achieved its remarkable economic growth since 1980 precisely by adopting global technologies and integrating the Chinese economy closely with the world economy.”

“Rather than let China catch up, the exceptionalists say, the United States should badger and harass China economically, engage the Chinese in a new arms race, and even undermine the One China policy… . ”

“In my view, such an approach toward China would be profoundly misguided and very dangerous. It is based on the false idea that global economies must  be about winners versus losers, the United States versus China, rather … than through trade and technological advance.”

“In short, China has not been an expansionist or aggressive power in recent decades, while the United States has sought the unrivaled dominance of global military power with a network of hundreds of military bases around the world.” (p.149)

“The United States would be wise … to cooperate with China, but also to emulate its recent increased investments in science and technology.” (p. 150)

El reloj del fin del mundo

“… The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are the keepers of the Doomsday Clock.

On January 26, 2017, just a week after Donald Trump was sworn into office as the new president of the United States, the scientists who orchestrated the clock announced that the world was “Two and a half minutes to midnight”, … significies the end of civilization. … A year later, January 2018, the group inched the clock forward another thirty seconds, just two minutes to midnight. …”

“The Doomsday Clock was created seventy years ago, in the early days of the Cold War and the nuclear weapons race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

… in 1947, they set the time to seven minutes before midnight, nuclear Armageddon. … 

When Presidente Kennedy came into office… . We never came closer to the end that’s in the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 1962, when mistakes by both the United States and the Soviet Union led to the world to the very brink of nuclear war. (p.104)

Then in 1963, brilliant diplomacy by Kennedy, supported by the moral leadership of Pope John XXIII and the bold statesmanship of Nikita Krushchev, led to the signing of the Partial nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (p.105)

With the Americas scalation of the Vietnam War under Lyndon Johnson, the minutes hand began to move once again toward midnight, while Richard Nixons detente with Soviet Union again reduced tensions and put the minute hand back to twelve minutes before midnight.

Then tension escalated with Ronald Reagans new arm buildup, until Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika, culminating in the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. (pp.105-106)

What went wrong between 1991 and now?… The first was the failure to capitalize on the end of the Cold War by establishing a trustworthy relationship between the United States and Russia. 

… the failure to act on climate change was a major reason for moving the Doomsday Clock forward in 2017, noting that Trumps “nominees to head the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection  Agency… . 

Trump … has turned his administrations environmental policies over to the oil and gas industry. The State Deparment is now in the hands of Exxon Mobil; the Environmental Protection Agency is his the hands of politicians like Scott Pruitt… . 

Inconsistency. Trump has casually suggested that Japan and Korea should become nuclear powers; that a new nuclear warms race is welcome; and that the use of nuclear weapons … is not “off the table”.” (pp.103-114)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

Militarización Política 

La Marcha a Roma

“La Marcia su Roma e stata considerata … un evento italiano… in una prospettiva quasi esclusivamente Nazionale. Ma nella realta fu un evento europeo, destinato a provocare guerre e ad avere  ripercussioni e conseguenze sociali sulla societa internazionale negli anni successivi.” (p.8)

Del Fiume a Roma

“Il primo … fu la Marcia su Fiume, organizzata da un poeta nel settembre 1919. I 2500 volontari… all appello di Gabriele dAnnunzio e formarono un corpo di spediazione per la conquista della citta era o prevalentemente italiani e rivendicavano terre dove esistevano comunita di lingua italiana.” 

“Il secondo esempio e la Marcia su Roma, organizzata nellottobre 1922 da Mussolini con uno stile e un linguaggio ancora piu militari.” (p13)

“La Milizia volontaria per sicurezza nazionale, come fu chiamata, venne cresta il 14 gennaio 1923 e fu súbito considerata lorgano armato del Partito nazionale fascista, fedele al capo del governo e del partito molto piu di quanto fosse fedele al capo dello Stato.” (p. 15)

Romano, S. (2019). Democrazia militarizzata. Laterza.

El Programa Fascita

“Il programma del Partito nazionale fascista incuriosì un numero considerevole di persone e suscitò anche un particolare interesse, in primo luogo, perché questo nuovo partito emerso dalla guerra si presentava agli elettori come la combinazione di due fattori - socialismo e nazionalismo - che erano allora sulla bocca di molti. ... Le democrazie con i loro litigiosi partiti non erano state capaci, secondo Mussolini, di affrontare questi problemi. In un regime autoritario, invece, il Partito fascista non avrebbe dovuto competere o negoziare con altri partiti la politica da adottare e le misure da prendere. Un articolo del programma del Partito nazionale

…fascista (una sorta di Bibbia del regime) diceva con un piglio militare e una forte dose di retorica:

<< Il Fascismo in atto è un organismo: politico, economico, di combattimento. Nel campo politico accoglie senza spirito settario quanti sinceramente sottoscrivono i suoi principi e ubbidiscono alla sua disciplina; stimola e valorizza gli ingegni particolari riunendosi secondo le attitudini in gruppi di competenza; partecipa intensamente e costantemente a ogni manifestazione della vita politica attuando in via contingente quanto può essere praticamente accolto dalla sua dottrina e riaffermando il contenuto integrale.

Nel campo economico promuove la costituzione delle corporazioni professionali, schiettamente fasciste o autonome, a seconda delle esigenze di tempo e di luogo, purché informate sostanzialmente al- la pregiudiziale nazionale per cui la Nazione è al di sopra delle classi.

Per le organizzazioni di combattimento, il Partito Nazionale Fascista forma un tutto unico con le sue squadre: milizia volontaria al servizio dello Stato nazionale, forza viva in cui l'Idea Fascista si incarna e con cui si difende ».

Il linguaggio non era sempre chiaro e il tasso di retorica era elevato, ma piacque a molte persone che erano state egualmente deluse dal liberismo e dal social-comunismo.” (pp.75-76)

-Romano, S. (2019). Democrazia militarizzata. Laterza.

El Fascista

El Fascista

“Quando il giornalista tedesco Ludwig gli chiese se il fascismo potesse essere esportato in Germania, Mussolini rispose: «In nessun paese, esso è un prodotto italiano. Ma alcune delle sue concezioni potrebbero andar bene per la Germania: l'organizzazione dei mestieri in gruppi di lavoro in rapporto con lo Stato. Il sistema corporativo è là, già preparato attraverso le grandi organizzazioni, e significherebbe soltanto un passo avanti per il controllo del capitale e del lavoro».

Fu una risposta prudente. Se avesse parlato del fascismo come del modello da imitare, avrebbe ferito Hitler. Ma sulla differenza tra fascismo e nazismo Mussolini ebbe per qualche anno, come sappiamo, opinioni che erano implicitamente critiche del nazismo e sospettose delle reali intenzioni del Führer. Alla fine di un suo libro lo storico francese Pierre Milza scrive che nell'ultima fase della Repub- blica sociale Mussolini, scrivendo a Filippo Anfuso (il suo principale collaboratore per gli Affari Esteri e futuro sottosegretario di Stato nel marzo del 1945), non nascose le proprie inquietudini <«< dinanzi alle iniziative prese nel Veneto e in Alto Adige dalle autorità civili e dai capi dell'esercito tedesco di occupazione». L'atteggiamento adottato dalle autorità, scriveva con una frase piuttosto involuta, << non mi permette di dubitare che perseguono un disegno destinato non soltanto a distruggere quanto il fascismo ha fatto per saldare quelle regioni al resto del Paese, ma anche per estirpare qualsiasi in- fluenza vi eserciti l'Italia. Il loro scopo è quello di una amministrazione di tipo asburgico nel momen- to in cui gli affari del Reich vanno male. Psicologi- camente la questione è molto più grande di quanto non appaia forse a un Paese che ha occupato tanti altri territori »>.

Nella parola " psicologicamente si nascondeva probabilmente il disappunto con cui Mussolini assiste alla politica del Reich in una regione che l'Italia aveva conquistato dopo la Grande guerra. Per risolvere il problema dei rapporti fra Italia e Germania le autorità italiane avevano infine deciso di permettere ai cittadini di lingua tedesca in alcune città dell'Italia settentrionale (Bolzano, Trento, Belluno e Udine) di fare con un referendum una scelta di nazionalità. I cittadini che andarono alle urne furono 167.265, ma furono 85.365 quelli che votarono per la Germania, e 81.900 quelli che scelsero l'Italia. Il referendum durò sino al 31 dicembre 1939 e la guerra ebbe l'effetto di ritardare il previsto movimento della popolazione da un Paese all'altro.” (p.82)

-Romano, S. (2019). Democrazia militarizzata. Laterza

Nuevos conflictos 

La Nueva Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad

“Every few years, the executive branch produces a National Security Strategy (NSS) to describe the administrations national security priorities and strategies to address them.”

“Chinas capacity for innovation is soaring, … in Chinese patents, R&D outlays, scientific publications, and shares of production and sales of commercial technologies.”

“One might argue that the United States will keep its military predominance by winning new allies (such as India) and by pushing existing allies to spend more on the military. … India, Pakistan, Russia, and other large economies have their own interests… . They may be tactical allies on particular occasions, but in the long term they will pursue their own interests.” (p.125)

La Guerra Civil Americana

“It’s difficult for citizen of other countries…to see the United States as a source of solutions to global problems when tens of millions of Americans consider tens of millions of other Americans consider tens of millions of other Americans to be violent radicals or irredeemable fascists.” (p.4)

Nueva Guerra Fría

“…the US and China will engage in a new conflict whose consequences could well be more dire than those of the first Cold War. … This rivalry by COVID hardened attitudes in both China and America. Washington and Beijing have legitimate disagreements and grievances. They will counting to fight over many issues. But America and China are far more interdependent than the U and USSR ever were, and the leaders of both countries have set on a new collision course…” (p. 5)

“Given the links between their economies and the scale and imminence of todays threats, a new Cold War would cost both countries- and the rest of the world-far too much. A new Cold War would itself be a form of mutually assured destruction.” (p.5)

-Bremmer, I. (2022). The power of crisis: How three threats – and our response – will change the world. Simon & Schuster.

El conflicto árabe-israelí

“When Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital in December 2017, over the strenuous objections of the other UN Security Council members and the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Authority denounced the United States, abandoned the quarter-century of negotiations under the Oslo Agreement, and asserted that the Palestinians would never allow the United States to play the role of pace mediator again.” (p.93)

“When the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and subsequently collapsed, the British Empire took control of Palestine in 1920 and began to implement the Balfour Declaration admitting Jewish settlers in large numbers into the British mandate.”

Posiciones del conflicto arabe-israeli

“Since then, the United States has claimed to be acting as a broker and mediator between the two parties.”

“For the past one hundred years…clash of interests.

The first, … by Arab hard-liners today … for an end to the state of Israel, and the … dismantling and departure of the Jewish community.

The second, held by Jewish hard-liners today,… the return of the Jewish people to the state promised them by God.

…

The third … held by majorities of both Jewish and Israelis and Arabs…, that the region … should be divided into two states, Israel and Palestine, leaving peacefully with each other, with Jerusalem the capital of both countries (Arab-majority East Jerusalem in the case of Palestine). This … is the “two-state solution”. …

The fourth, considered a radical and idealistic vision…, is a one-state solution with Jews and Arabs living side by side, with national (ethnic) right for each community. Just as Belgium is divided between the Flemish and Wallons, the single binational state would be divided between the Jews and Arabs.” (pp.94-95)

El recorrido historico por la la actual Israel, Gaza y Cisjordania

“The lands that today are Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank were … the past 3.000 years parts of biblical Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greek (Selucid) empire, Hasmonean (Jewish) dynasty, Roman Empire, Byzantium, various Muslim caliphate, Crusader Kingdom, Egyptian Mamluks, and .. in 1517, the Ottoman Empire for four centuries.

…

“From the moment that World War I ended, the Arabs demanded the fulfillment of the promised reward for their fight against the Turks. Meanwhile, the Jews similarly demanded their homeland in Palestine. The famous Jewish quip that the new Jewish homeland was a “land without a people for a people without a land" was never remotely true. … The century- long contest between Jews and Arab Palestinians for political control and ownership over the land thus ensued.

During the Mandatory period (1923-1948), during which Britain had administrative control over Palestine and a responsibility of "tutelage" of the region, Britain faced unending difficulties in managing the bitterly conflicting claims of the Jews and Palestinians. 

- 97 -

Jews' very survival in Europe. Jews perished in unimaginable numbers because the immigration route to Palestine was blocked by the British in the face of Arab resistance.

At the end of the World War II, the sentiments of the United Kingdom and the United States were initially for a one-state solution. An Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 called for increased Jewish immigration of Holocaust survivors in the context of essentially a single state: "In order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine."

Two years later, in 1947, the newly constituted UN General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution recommending a two-state solution based on the partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. The Arab countries, and several others, heatedly rejected this recommendation and instead called for self-determination by the existing population of Palestine, which was predominantly Arab at the time. 

Britain unilaterally announced that it would end its mandate over Palestine in May 1948, signaling its imminent departure. In the lead-up to Britain's withdrawal from Palestine, President Truman called for a temporary UN trusteeship until the issues of sovereignty could be peacefully resolved.

When Britain's mandate ended, Israel immediately and unilaterally declared its independence and then was victorious in the ensuing war to defend its claim. In the course of the 1948 war, y Arab families fled their homelands and count- less others were violently pushed out of their homes through

Palestine, President Truman called trustee-ship until the issues of sovereignty could be peacefully resolved. When Britain's mandate ended, Israel immediately and unilaterally declared its independence and then was victorious in the ensuing war to defend its claim. In the course of the 1948 war, many Arab families fled their homelands and countless others were violently pushed out of their homes… .

…to achieve control over most of the territory of mandatory Palestine, part of which is Israel of the 1967 borders and the rest, the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war." (pp.96-98)

Las posiciones sobre la solución

"Practical politicians on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, and in the United States, have argued for several decades for a two-state solution, based largely on a return by Israel to the borders as they existed before the 1967 Six-Day War, with some agreed border adjustments in Jerusalem and other places. 

Yet that two-state prospect has failed so far, in no small part because the Israeli government actively encouraged Jewish settlement in the West Bank; Jewish West Bank settlers now number around 400,000 and constitute a very powerful if not decisive force in Israeli politics.

Some analysts have recently argued that the settler position is now so entrenched that a two-state solution has or the other predominates. There would have to be constitu- tional agreements on national security, foreign policy, inter- nal migration, and the endlessly knotty issue of the return of Palestinian refugees.

None of this would be easy, but it could be possible. Nothing in the Holy Land has been easy for at least the past 3,000 years. The Middle East is indeed in the middle of competing claims: by religion (Jewish, Christian, Muslim), ethnicity (Arab Turkish, Persian, Jewish, Druze, Kurd, other), and geopoli- tics (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, the United States, the European Union, and others). 

Compromise among competing interests is the sine qua non for any kind of peace arrangement. Hard-liners argue for a very different one-state solution, in which Palestinian political rights would be severely limited. This one-state vision is one of apartheid: Arabs living as second-class citizens under Jewish control.” (pp.96-98)

Reconocimiento unilateral de Jerusalén de capital de Israel

“Trumps unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017 brought about a similar international rebuke of bothe the United States and Israel. … Under the international law and countless decision by the UN, the final status of Jerusalem should be decided by negation, not unilateral action by the United States or Israel” (p.101)

La Nueva Política Exterior

El pilar central del excepcionalismo americano

“The National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy are based squarely on the central pillar of American exceptionalism: global military dominance. The National Defense Strategy puts it in a way: “For decided the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted. Today, every domain is contested-air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.” The stated goal is to “remain the preeminent military power in the world”… .” (p.121)

“Trumps America First policy is partly about economic statecraft. It is based on Trumps belief that the United States has been duped by its trading counterparts, such as China, Germany and Mexico.

…

Trumps economic policies are … impulsive and shortsighted. … Trumps fiscal policies will cause a soaring budget deficit that will eventually weaken Americas fiscal standing and undermine the governments ability to invest in the future … . Trumps trade policies will not bring home millions of manufacturing jobs and might instead cause a trade in which the United States itself will be among the losers.” (p.128)

“Chinas economic statescraft … is based on regional integration (One Belt, One Road) and large, long term investments in cutting-edge technologies, is very likely to boot Chinas global competitiveness as well as its environmental sustainability.” (p. 128)

La Nueva Politica Exterior

“To summarize the international approach set out…, I conclude with the ten priorities for a New American Foreign Policy aimed at achieving true national security and well-being for the American people.

First, live by the UN Charter. The UN remains the worlds best hope for peaceful solutions to global problems.

Second, recommit to the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. … the United States can start to reverse the plunge in social trust and public health. Together … to avoid devastating climate change, end extreme poverty, and set conditions for peace in todays fragile states.

Third, raise the UN budget. The $600 million that the United States currently spends each year on a regular UN budget…, but UN is the most effective global institution for addressing children’s health (UNICEF), epidemic diseases (World Health Organization), famine (World Food Program), refugee movements (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), and much more.

Fourth, ratify the pending UN treaties. … The number of unratified treaties continues to mount, including treaties on women, the disabled, children, the law of the sea, biodiversity, the International Criminal Court, and others. The United States is alone among the 193 UN member states…to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Americas isolation damages Americas reputation, weakens global problem solving, and undermines the case of multilateralism.

Fifth, regain momentum on nuclear disarmament. 

Sixth, cooperate on new technologies. One key to achieving the SDGs is to advance and implement new technologies in low-carbon energy, and transport, smart grids, artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, genomics, and other sciences. Global cooperation across governments, universities, and business … would build trust and facilitate difussion of the new technologies around the world.

Seventh, find regional solutions to Middle East violence. … The regional powers, notably Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. … It’s time for the UN Security Council to freeze the inflow of armaments and press the regional powers … for mutual security.

Eight, end the CIAs covert military operations. … The CIA routinely violates international law, destabilizes foreign governments, and turns manageable crisis into unmanageable disasters… . The CIA is necessary and valuable as an intelligence agency; its is a threat to world peace and U.S. security as a secret army.

Ninth, overhaul the U.S. budget. America has starved the portions of federal government…-higher education, job training, family support, environmental conservation, civilian R&D, and sustainable infrastructure-… .

Tenth, celebrate Americas true exceptionalism. Americas exceptionalism does not lie in its military strength, CIA operations, or rejection of UN treaties. Americas exceptionalism lies in its cultural and ethnic diversity. … Americas success will depend … that champions America as the welcoming home to the worlds nations.” (pp.216-218)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.

La evolución de la guerra

“Per molti secoli i protagonisti di una guerra furono combattenti spesso mercenari o reclutati con la for- nelle i loro comandanti e i loro sovra- campagne, ni. Ma dopo le guerre napoleoniche, l'origine e la formazione di un capo supremo, i grandi progressi nella fabbricazione delle armi, l'istituzione in molti Paesi dell'obbligo di leva e i moti rivoluzionari crea- rono un mondo in cui i protagonisti di una guerra furono le nazioni e i loro popoli”

“Nel XIX secolo il teatro dei conflitti in Europa fu spesso l'Italia con le sue guerre d'indipendenza. A Solferino, in Lombardia, il 24 giugno 1859, le forze piemontesi e quelle francesi, rapidamente riunite dal grande progresso dei mezzi di trasporto, fecero fronte all'esercito austriaco su un campo di battaglia in cui i morti, tra i franco-piemontesi, furono 1622 e 8530 i feriti; mentre 2292 erano i morti e 8638 i feriti nel campo degli austriaci.”

“Era un uomo d'affari, ma divenne un missionario della Fortemente colpito dall'orribile spettacolo di quello che fu definito un macello, tornò in patria e dedicò la sua vita alla creazione di un Comitato internazio- nale della Croce rossa e della Mezzaluna rossa.”

“Le vittime, fra il 1914 e il 1918, furono quasi trentasette milioni, più di sedici milioni i morti, e più di venti milioni i feriti e i mutilati, militari e civili. È una cifra che fa della << Grande guerra » uno dei più sanguinosi con- flitti della storia umano.” (p.17)

“Non è sorprendente che dopo la sua fine, si cominciasso ad auspicare l'avvento di un'epoca in cui gli Stati avrebbero smesso di farsi guerre che i combattenti dei due campi giustificavano definendole giuste, indispensabili e patriottiche».” (p.18)

“Dopo il Congresso di Vienna, nel 1815, le guerre scoppiarono fra un numero crescen- te di Stati: quelli che esistevano già da qualche seco- lo e quelli che erano nati per realizzare la loro unità nazionale, se necessario con le armi, contro gli imperi multinazionali.”

“Dopo una grande guerra (quella che durò cinque anni dal 1914 al 1918 in cui i morti furono sedici milioni e i feriti o mutilati più di venti milioni), sembrò che molte potenze fossero ormai decise ad accordarsi per evitare nuove guerre, o addirittura, secondo le parole di Henry Kissinger, «< istituziona- lizzare la loro repulsione per la guerra creando una nuova forma di ordine internazionale pacifico.”

“Fu creata una Società delle nazioni e alcuni patti di ar- bitrato cominciarono a sostituire le competizioni tra potenze con meccanismi legali per la soluzione delle dispute ». Ma ben presto, continua Kissinger,” << potenze con motivi di malcontento o con mire espansionistiche (la Germania, il Giappone impe- riale, l'Italia di Mussolini) compresero che la viola- zione delle clausole di adesione alla Società delle na- zioni o il loro semplice ritiro dall'istituzione non avrebbero avuto conseguenze serie ».”

“Con la rivoluzione bolscevica dell'ottobre 1917 nacque un grande Stato (l'Unione delle repubbliche socialiste sovietiche) che annunciava al mondo l'avvento al potere della classe operaia ed era considerato un potenziale av- versario delle democrazie borghesi.”

“Il nemico delle democrazie da quel momento fu la Russia, divenuta Unione Sovietica, e il suo maggio- re avversario fu il nuovo arrivato, gli Stati Uniti d'America, un Paese che era stato per marginale e che le guerre europee stavano promuo- vendo a un posto di prima fila.”

“Scoppiò così una lunga «Guerra fredda» (dal 1945 al 1991) fra Stati liberal-democratici e Stati più o meno entusiastica- mente bolscevichi. Fu fredda perché ciascuno dei due nemici aveva un'arma nucleare che non poteva- impiegare perché, se usata, avrebbe distrutto entrambi.”

-Romano, S. (2019). Democrazia militarizzata. Laterza.

La guerra economica con China

“…in the early 1980s that naively extrapolated Japans rapid growth and high saving rates forward for several decades… .” (p.46)

“Starting with the President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. foreign policy establishment wen. to work to counter Japan. It began accusing Japan of unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, unfair states aid to Japan businesses, and other exaggerated or flat-out claims … . The United States began to impose new trade barriers and forced Japan to agree to “voluntarily” export restraints. … Then, in the 1985, the United States”

La expansión de la OTAN

“When Gorbachev gave the green light to German reunification in 1990, he reached … agreement with NATO that would not expand into the territory of East Germany. The spirit of the agreement, according to Gorbachev…, but Gorbachev did not get that in writing. Indeed, Gorbachev later declared that the idea of NATOs eastward expansion did not come up in detail because it was not realistically under consideration… .”

“The expansion of NATO toward the Russian borders… . In 1999,  NATO welcomed the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. … In 2004, NATO added Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia as members. … Against … wishes of some NATO members, President George W. Bush decided in 2008 to offer NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine. This offer, I believe, crossed Putins red line.” (pp.72-73)

“Russia countered … NATO enlargement with war in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014); I don’t think these two Russian wars, … were coincidental; they were triggered by the prospect that these two countries, right on Russias borders deeply intertwined with Russias economic, and security interests.”

“U.S. policies in the Middle East after 2001 further inflamed the tensions. According to former NATO commander Wesley Clack. … U.S. actions spur Russian counteractions, which … further American responses such as sanctions against the Russian regime. … Trust has disappeared, hard-liners on both sides call for escalation, and recrimination fly on both directions. American claim that Putin is trying to recreated the Russian Empire; Putin claims that the United States is trying to establish military dominance over Russia. 

The real solution… is to retrace our steppes to Gorbachevs vision. There is no fundamental reason why economic cooperation, and demilitarization could not stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Russia and Central Asia.” (pp.74-75)

“We can learn the hard way by staying in the current course and falling further and further behind. Or we can embrace a new foreign policy with sustainable development at its heart.” (p.76)

-Sachs, J. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. Columbia Press University.