EUA

[marcelo l.]

Aqui o vídeo no youtube do assassino do Arizona

[marcelo l.]

Mais curioso é que o site take back the 20 que falava dela e era pago pela Paulin saiu do ar, mas tem no cache apenas a primeira página, claro que o discurso virulento quando voltar já era...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... the20.com/

[marcelo l.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/09 ... ss&emc=rss

WASHINGTON — Adm. Mike Mullen, who will almost certainly be the final chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served in the Vietnam War, still carries the scars of how that polarizing era damaged the military and its relationship with the American people.

As he enters his last year as the nation’s top-ranking officer and as the military enters its 10th year of war since the Sept. 11 attacks, Admiral Mullen is openly voicing concerns that professionalism and ethical standards across the armed forces are being severely challenged by the longest period of sustained combat in the nation’s history.

He is responsible for convening a National Defense University conference here on Monday that will open an intensive assessment by the military of its professional behavior.

“We’ve learned a lot about ourselves in the last decade; some of it’s been pretty unpleasant stuff,” Admiral Mullen said in an interview. “I want us to understand what we’ve seen, to a depth that we can ensure that our moral compass stays true, our ethical compass stays true.”

The conference is the first such introspective session into “military ethos” organized specifically at the request of a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It will examine a subtle set of political and social challenges to military integrity, like a potential slide toward partisanship among the officer corps, especially retired generals and admirals acting as television commentators, and whether the behavior of up-and-coming leaders fits with the image the military as an institution wants to exhibit to the nation.

A particularly relevant topic on the agenda is how the next generation’s generals and admirals should express their best, unvarnished military advice to the nation’s civilian leadership, and what to do when they disagree with the eventual policy. Admiral Mullen has said there are just two choices: an officer obeys the policy and follows it with enthusiasm or resigns.

Hovering over that discussion will be memories of the bruising, closed-door debate about shaping a strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that many at the Pentagon and the White House said soured civilian-military relations.

But other issues are expected to include an assessment of the retired generals who openly called for Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, to resign, as well as of retired admirals and generals who endorse political candidates or appear at party conventions.

The discussion is also expected to touch on whether service members have the right to a different persona online, like on Facebook or in a blog, than they do in uniform.

Admiral Mullen, who is scheduled to retire on Oct. 1, acknowledged that his motivations for the conference dated to his service in a war that ended more than three decades ago. “These are Vietnam scars for me,” he said.

And just as the Vietnam War shaped his professional outlook, Admiral Mullen said, the intense combat experiences during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will shape the military for decades to come. “How they lead, how they retain, how they recruit, what they talk about — I want to examine as much of that as we can, in stride, to prepare for the future,” he said.

A conscious decision was made not to focus at this session on the most egregious acts of military misconduct that seized global attention and prompted worldwide outrage, like detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, because such actions are clearly prohibited by long-standing laws of armed conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Admiral Mullen noted that the Army, in particular, was moving ahead with its own effort to evaluate military professionalism, and he cited the work done by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who leads the Army Training and Doctrine Command.

General Dempsey said his efforts had been inspired by two trends since the Sept. 11 attacks: how counterinsurgency warfare and efforts to create more deployable brigade combat teams had placed increasing responsibilities in the hands of junior leaders, and how the Army’s system for generating forces created a deliberate cycle in which combat units were built, trained, deployed — and then brought home to be rebuilt with fresh troops.

“This is very different from an Army that had been relatively stable, relatively hierarchical, relatively centralized,” General Dempsey said in a telephone interview.

General Dempsey, who is Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s candidate to be the next Army chief of staff, said the Army had not paused for an institutional, top-to-bottom review of its professional conduct in two decades.

“This is another one of those times in our history when we want to encourage ourselves to look at ourselves as professionals and ask whether we are living up to our standards — and where our policies for training, education and promotion enhance these standards or rub against them,” General Dempsey said.

To manage the conference, National Defense University turned to Albert C. Pierce, director of the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership, which examines and teaches professional behavior in the national security arena.

“Our distinctive concept of operations,” Mr. Pierce said, “comes from the chairman, introspection and reflection by the members of the profession on what its basic principles and touchstones are, and how to apply them to specific issues such as providing professional military advice and handling disagreements over policy.”

He added, “More broadly, we hope our deliberations that day will help define or describe where and how to draw the lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior by military professionals, active-duty and retired.”

Admiral Mullen will give the keynote address, and all of the panelists are active-duty or retired military personnel, with one exception; John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary who is president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan policy institute here, will offer perspectives on how senior civilian policy makers view the behavior of military professionals.

[Penguin]

The Next Decade: Where We've Been... And Where We're Going

By George Friedman

AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book is about the relation between empire, republic, and the exercise of power in the next ten years. It is a more personal book than The Next 100 Years because I am addressing my greatest concern, which is that the power of the United States in the world will undermine the republic. I am not someone who shuns power. I understand that without power there can be no republic. But the question I raise is how the United States should behave in the world while exercising its power, and preserve the republic at the same time.

I invite readers to consider two themes. The first is the concept of the unintended empire. I argue that the United States has become an empire not because it intended to, but because history has worked out that way. The issue of whether the United States should be an empire is meaningless. It is an empire.

The second theme, therefore, is about managing the empire, and for me the most important question behind that is whether the republic can survive. The United States was founded against British imperialism. It is ironic, and in many ways appalling, that what the founders gave us now faces this dilemma. There might have been exits from this fate, but these exits were not likely. Nations become what they are through the constraints of history, and history has very little sentimentality when it comes to ideology or preferences. We are what we are.

It is not clear to me whether the republic can withstand the pressure of the empire, or whether America can survive a mismanaged empire. Put differently, can the management of an empire be made compatible with the requirements of a republic? This is genuinely unclear to me. I know the United States will be a powerful force in the world during this next decade—and for this next century, for that matter—but I don’t know what sort of regime it will have.

I passionately favor a republic. Justice may not be what history cares about, but it is what I care about. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the relationship between empire and republic, and the only conclusion I have reached is that if the republic is to survive, the single institution that can save it is the presidency. That is an odd thing to say, given that the presidency is in many ways the most imperial of our institutions (it is the single institution embodied by a single person). Yet at the same time it is the most democratic, as the presidency is the only office for which the people, as a whole, select a single, powerful leader.

In order to understand this office I look at three presidents who defined American greatness. The first is Abraham Lincoln, who saved the republic. The second is Franklin Roosevelt, who gave the United States the world’s oceans. The third is Ronald Reagan, who undermined the Soviet Union and set the stage for empire. Each of them was a profoundly moral man ... who was prepared to lie, violate the law, and betray principle in order to achieve those ends. They embodied the paradox of what I call the Machiavellian presidency, an institution that, at its best, reconciles duplicity and righteousness in order to redeem the promise of America. I do not think being just is a simple thing, nor that power is simply the embodiment of good intention. The theme of this book, applied to the regions of the world, is that justice comes from power, and power is only possible from a degree of ruthlessness most of us can’t abide. The tragedy of political life is the conflict between the limit of good intentions and the necessity of power. At times this produces goodness. It did in the case of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, but there is no assurance of this in the future. It requires greatness.

Geopolitics describes what happens to nations, but it says little about the kinds of regimes nations will have. I am convinced that unless we understand the nature of power, and master the art of ruling, we may not be able to choose the direction of our regime. Therefore, there is nothing contradictory in saying that the United States will dominate the next century yet may still lose the soul of its republic. I hope not, as I have children and now grandchildren—and I am not convinced that empire is worth the price of the republic. I am also certain that history does not care what I, or others, think.

This book, therefore, will look at the issues, opportunities, and inherent challenges of the next ten years. Surprise alliances will be formed, unexpected tensions will develop, and economic tides will rise and fall. Not surprisingly, how the United States (particularly the American president) approaches these events will guide the health, or deterioration, of the republic. An interesting decade lies ahead.


INTRODUCTION

Rebalancing America

A century is about events. A decade is about people. I wrote The Next 100 Years to explore the impersonal forces that shape history in the long run, but human beings don’t live in the long run. We live in the much shorter span in which our lives are shaped not so much by vast historical trends but by the specific decisions of specific individuals.

This book is about the short run of the next ten years: the specific realities to be faced, and the specific decisions to be made, and the likely consequences of those decisions. Most people think that the longer the time frame, the more unpredictable the future. I take the opposite view. Individual actions are the hardest thing to predict. In the course of a century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century. But in the shorter time frame of a decade, individual decisions made by individual people, particularly those with political power, can matter enormously. What I wrote in The Next 100 Years is the frame for understanding this decade. But it is only the frame.

Forecasting a century is the art of recognizing the impossible, then eliminating from consideration all the events that, at least logically, aren’t going to happen. The reason is, as Sherlock Holmes put it, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

It is always possible that a leader will do something unexpectedly foolish or brilliant, which is why forecasting is best left to the long run, the span over which individual decisions don’t carry so much weight. But having forecast for the long run, you can reel back your scenario and try to see how it plays out in, say, a decade. What makes this time frame interesting is that it is sufficiently long for the larger, impersonal forces to be at play but short enough for the individual decisions of individual leaders to skew outcomes that otherwise might seem inevitable. A decade is the point at which history and statesmanship meet, and a span in which policies still matter.

I am not normally someone who gets involved in policy debates—I’m more interested in what will happen than in what I want to see happen. But within the span of a decade, events that may not matter in the long run may still affect us personally and deeply. They also can have real meaning in defining which path we take into the future. This book is therefore both a forecast and a discussion of the policies that ought to be followed.

We begin with the United States for the same reason that a study of 1910 would have to begin with Britain. Whatever the future might hold, the global system today pivots around the United States, just as Britain was the pivotal point in the years leading up to World War I. In The Next 100 Years, I wrote about the long-term power of the United States. In this book, I have to write about American weaknesses, which, I think, are not problems in the long run; time will take care of most of these. But because you and I don’t live in the long run, for us these problems are very real. Most are rooted in structural imbalances that require solutions. Some are problems of leadership, because, as I said at the outset, a decade is about people.

This discussion of problems and people is particularly urgent at this moment. In the first decade after the United States became the sole global power, the world was, compared to other eras, relatively tranquil. In terms of genuine security issues for the United States, Baghdad and the Balkans were nuisances, not threats. The United States had no need for strategy in a world that appeared to have accepted American leadership without complaint. Ten years later, September 11 brought that illusion crashing to the ground. The world was more dangerous than we imagined, but the options seemed fewer as well. The United States, did not craft a global strategy in response. Instead, it developed a narrowly focused politico-military strategy designed to defeat terrorism, almost to the exclusion of all else.

Now that decade is coming to an end as well, and the search is under way for an exit from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and indeed from the world that began when those hijacked airliners smashed into buildings in New York and Washington. The impulse of the United States is always to withdraw from the world, savoring the pleasures of a secure homeland protected by the buffer of wide oceans on either side. But the homeland is not secure, either from terrorists or from the ambitions of nation-states that see the United States as both dangerous and unpredictable.

Under both President Bush and President Obama, the United States has lost sight of the long-term strategy that served it well for most of the last century. Instead, recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goals because they have framed the issues incorrectly, as if they believed their own rhetoric. As a result, the United States has overextended its ability to project its power around the world, which has allowed even minor players to be the tail that wags the dog.

The overriding necessity for American policy in the decade to come is a return to the balanced, global strategy that the United States learned from the example of ancient Rome and from the Britain of a hundred years ago. These old-school imperialists didn’t rule by main force. Instead, they maintained their dominance by setting regional players against each other and keeping these players in opposition to others who might also instigate resistance. They maintained the balance of power, using these opposing forces to cancel each other out while securing the broader interests of the empire. They also kept their client states bound together by economic interest and diplomacy, which is not to say the routine courtesies between nations but the subtle manipulation that causes neighbors and fellow clients to distrust each other more than they distrust the imperial powers: direct intervention relying on the empire’s own troops was a distant, last resort.

Adhering to this strategy, the United States intervened in World War I only when the standoff among European powers was failing, and only when it appeared that the Germans, with Russia collapsing in the east, might actually overwhelm the English and French in the west. When the fighting stopped, the United States helped forge a peace treaty that prevented France from dominating postwar Europe.

During the early days of World War II, the United States stayed out of direct engagement as long as it could, supporting the British in their efforts to fend off the Germans in the west while encouraging the Soviets to bleed the Germans in the east. Afterward, the United States devised a balance-of-power strategy to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Western Europe, the Middle East, and ultimately China. Throughout the long span from the first appearance of the “Iron Curtain” to the end of the Cold War, this U.S. strategy of distraction and manipulation was rational, coherent, and effectively devious.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the United States shifted from a strategy focused on trying to contain major powers to an unfocused attempt to contain potential regional hegemons when their behavior offended American sensibilities. In the period from 1991 to 2001, the United States invaded or intervened in five countries— Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, which was an extraordinary tempo of military operations. At times, American strategy seemed to be driven by humanitarian concerns, although the goal was not always clear. In what sense, for example, was the 1994 invasion of Haiti in the national interest?

But the United States had an enormous reservoir of power in the 1990s, which gave it ample room for maneuver, as well as room for indulging its ideological whims. When you are overwhelmingly dominant, you don’t have to operate with a surgeon’s precision. Nor did the United States, when dealing with potential regional hegemons, have to win, in the sense of defeating an enemy army and occupying its homeland. From a military point of view, U.S. incursions during the 1990s were spoiling attacks, the immediate goal being to plunge an aspiring regional power into chaos, forcing it to deal with regional and internal threats at a time and place of American choosing rather than allowing it to develop and confront the United States on the smaller nation’s own schedule.

After September 11, 2001, a United States newly obsessed with terrorism became even more disoriented, losing sight of its long-term strategic principles altogether. As an alternative, it created a new but unattainable strategic goal, which was the elimination of the terrorist threat. The principal source of that threat, al Qaeda, had given itself an unlikely but not inconceivable objective, which was to re-create the Islamic caliphate, the theocracy that was established by Muhammad in the seventh century and that persisted in one form or another until the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Al Qaeda’s strategy was to overthrow Muslim governments that it regarded as insufficiently Islamic, which it sought to do by fomenting popular uprisings in those countries. From al Qaeda’s point of view, the reason that the Islamic masses remained downtrodden was fear of their governments, which was in turn based on a sense that the United States, their governments’ patron, could not be challenged. To free the masses from their intimidation, al Qaeda felt that it had to demonstrate that the United States was not as powerful as it appeared—that it was in fact vulnerable to even a small group of Muslims, provided that those Muslims were prepared to die.

In response to al Qaeda’s assaults, the United States slammed into the Islamic world—particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal was to demonstrate U.S. capability and reach, but these efforts were once again spoiling attacks. Their purpose was not to defeat an army and occupy a territory but merely to disrupt al Qaeda and create chaos in the Muslim world. But creating chaos is a short-term tactic, not a long-term strategy. The United States demonstrated that it is possible to destroy terrorist organizations and mitigate terrorism, but it did not achieve the goal that it had articulated, which was to eliminate the threat altogether. Eliminating such a threat would require monitoring the private activities of more than a billion people spread across the globe. Even attempting such an effort would require overwhelming resources. And given that succeeding in such an effort is impossible, it is axiomatic that the United States would exhaust itself and run out of resources in the process, as has happened. Just because something like the elimination of terrorism is desirable doesn’t mean that it is practical, or that the price to be paid is rational.

Recovering from the depletions and distractions of this effort will consume the United States over the next ten years. The first step—returning to a policy of maintaining regional balances of power—must begin in the main area of current U.S. military engagement, a theater stretching from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. For most of the past half century there have been three native balances of power here: the Arab-Israeli, the Indo-Pakistani, and the Iranian-Iraqi. Owing largely to recent U.S. policy, those balances are unstable or no longer exist. The Israelis are no longer constrained by their neighbors and are now trying to create a new reality on the ground. The Pakistanis have been badly weakened by the war in Afghanistan, and they are no longer an effective counterbalance to India. And, most important, the Iraqi state has collapsed, leaving the Iranians as the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf area.

Restoring balance to that region, and then to U.S. policy more generally, will require steps during the next decade that will be seen as controversial, to say the least. As I argue in the chapters that follow, the United States must quietly distance itself from Israel. It must strengthen (or at least put an end to weakening) Pakistan. And in the spirit of Roosevelt’s entente with the USSR during World War II, as well as Nixon’s entente with China in the 1970s, the United States will be required to make a distasteful accommodation with Iran, regardless of whether it attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. These steps will demand a more subtle exercise of power than we have seen on the part of recent presidents. The nature of that subtlety is a second major theme of the decade to come, and one that I will address further along.

While the Middle East is the starting point for America’s return to balance, Eurasia as a whole will also require a rearrangement of relationships. For generations, keeping the technological sophistication of Europe separated from the natural resources and manpower of Russia has been one of the key aims of American foreign policy. In the early 1990s, when the United States stood supreme and Moscow lost control over not only the former Soviet Union but the Russian state as well, that goal was neglected. Almost immediately after September 11, 2001, the unbalanced commitment of U.S. forces to the Mediterranean-Himalayan theater created a window of opportunity for the Russian security apparatus to regain its influence. Under Putin, the Russians began to reassert themselves even prior to the war with Georgia, and they have accelerated the process of their reemergence since. Diverted and tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has been unable to hold back Moscow’s return to influence, or even to make credible threats that would inhibit Russian ambitions. As a result, the United States now faces a significant regional power with its own divergent agenda, which includes a play for influence in Europe.

The danger of Russia’s reemergence and westward focus will become more obvious as we examine the other player in this second region of concern, the European Union. Once imagined as a supernation on the order of the United States, the EU began to show its structural weaknesses during the financial crisis of 2008, which led to the follow-on crisis of southern European economies (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece). Once Germany, the EU’s greatest economic engine, faced the prospect of underwriting the mistakes and excesses of its EU partners, it began to reexamine its priorities. The emerging conclusion is that potentially Germany shared a greater community of interest with Russia than it did with its European neighbors. However much Germany might benefit from economic alliances in Europe, it remains dependent on Russia for a large amount of its natural gas. Russia in turn needs technology, which Germany has in abundance. Similarly, Germany needs an infusion of
manpower that isn’t going to create social stresses by immigrating to Germany, and one obvious solution is to establish German factories in Russia. Meanwhile, America’s request for increased German help in Afghanistan and elsewhere has created friction with the United States and aligned German interests most closely with Russia.

All of which helps to explain why the United States’ return to balance will require a significant effort over the next decade to block an accommodation between Germany and Russia. As we will see, the U.S. approach will include cultivating a new relationship with Poland, the geographic monkey wrench that can be thrown into the gears of a German-Russian entente.

China, of course, also demands attention. Even so, the current preoccupation with Chinese expansion will diminish as that country’s economic miracle comes of age. China’s economic performance will slow to that of a more mature economy—and, we might add, a more mature economy with over a billion people living in abject poverty. The focus of U.S. efforts will shift to the real power in northeast Asia: Japan, the third largest economy in the world and the nation with the most significant navy in the region.

As this brief overview already suggests, the next ten years will be enormously complex, with many moving parts and many unpredictable elements. The presidents in the decade to come will have to reconcile American traditions and moral principles with realities that most Americans find it more comfortable to avoid. This will require the execution of demanding maneuvers, including allying with enemies, while holding together a public that believes—and wants to believe—that foreign policy and values simply coincide. The president will have to pursue virtue as all of our great presidents have done: with suitable duplicity.

But all the cleverness in the world can’t compensate for profound weakness. The United States possesses what I call “deep power,” and deep power must be first and foremost balanced power. This means economic, military, and political power in appropriate and mutually supporting amounts. It is deep in a second sense, which is that it rests on a foundation of cultural and ethical norms that define how that power is to be used and that provides a framework for individual action. Europe, for example, has economic power, but it is militarily weak and rests on a very shallow foundation. There is little consensus in Europe politically, particularly about the framework of obligations imposed on its members.

Power that is both deeply rooted and well balanced is rare, and I will try to show that in the next decade, the United States is uniquely situated to consolidate and exercise both. More important, it will have little choice in the matter. There is an idea, both on the left and on the right, that the United States has the option of withdrawing from the complexities of managing global power. It’s the belief that if the United States ceased to meddle in the affairs of the world, the world would no longer hate and fear it, and Americans could enjoy their pleasures without fear of attack. This belief is nostalgia for a time when the United States pursued its own interests at home and left the world to follow its own course.

There was indeed a time when Thomas Jefferson could warn against entangling alliances, but this was not a time when the United States annually produced 25 percent of the wealth of the world. That output alone entangles it in the affairs of the world. What the United States consumes and produces shapes lives of people around the world. The economic policies pursued by the United States shape the economic realities of the world. The U.S. Navy’s control of the seas guarantees the United States economic access to the world and gives it the potential power to deny that access to other countries. Even if the United States wanted to shrink its economy to a less intrusive size, it is not clear how that would be done, let alone that Americans would pay the price when the bill was presented.

But this does not mean that the United States is at ease with its power. Things have moved too far too fast. That is why bringing U.S. policy back into balance will also require bringing the United States to terms with its actual place in the world. We have already noted that the fall of the Soviet Union left the United States without a rival for global dominance. What needs to be faced squarely now is that whether we like it or not, and whether it was intentional or not, the United States emerged from the Cold War not only as the global hegemon but as a global empire.

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don’t want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don’t want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have enormous influence but not the resentment of the world. Militarily, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of a long-term strategy.

Empires are rarely planned or premeditated, and those that have been, such as Napoleon’s and Hitler’s, tend not to last. Those that endure grow organically, and their imperial status often goes unnoticed until it has become overwhelming. This was the case both for Rome and for Britain, yet they succeeded because once they achieved imperial status, they not only owned up to it, they learned to manage it.

Unlike the Roman or British Empire, the American structure of dominance is informal, but that makes it no less real. The United States controls the oceans, and its economy accounts for more than a quarter of everything produced in the world. If Americans adopt the iPod or a new food fad, factories and farms in China and Latin America reorganize to serve the new mandate. This is how the European powers governed China in the nineteenth century—never formally, but by shaping and exploiting it to the degree that the distinction between formal and informal hardly mattered.

A fact that the American people have trouble assimilating is that the size and power of the American empire is inherently disruptive and intrusive, which means that the United States can rarely take a step without threatening some nation or benefiting another. While such power confers enormous economic advantages, it naturally engenders hostility. The United States is a commercial republic, which means that it lives on trade. Its tremendous prosperity derives from its own assets and virtues, but it cannot maintain this prosperity and be isolated from the world. Therefore, if the United States intends to retain its size, wealth, and
power, the only option is to learn how to manage its disruptive influence maturely.

Until the empire is recognized for what it is, it is difficult to have a coherent public discussion of its usefulness, its painfulness, and, above all, its inevitability. Unrivaled power is dangerous enough, but unrivaled power that is oblivious is like a rampaging elephant.

I will argue, then, that the next decade must be one in which the United States moves from willful ignorance of reality to its acceptance, however reluctant. With that acceptance will come the beginning of a more sophisticated foreign policy. There will be no proclamation of empire, only more effective management based on the underlying truth of the situation.

[RobertoRS]

E o operario é o que senao o escravo pago atualmente, sempre o trabalho que gera a produçào seja escravidao ou imperialismo... e em sua maioria os escravos modernos sao mal pagos.

Sempre existiu inovaçao, desenvolvimento tecnologico e aumento da produtividade no imperioo romano, e as legioes sempre abriram novos mercados, com exceçao dos periodos em que ja nao suportavam mais o peso do exercito na sociedade... e a sociedade romanda cresceu por séculos e séculos... e tudo acabou pelos proprios fundamentos de hoje, nada mais!

Esperaremos alguém provar a Teoria do Valor Trabalho. Daí poderemos retomar a (bizarra) teoria da Mais Valia. Até lá, o operário é um trabalhador remunerado pela utilidade da sua mão de obra.

O que transformaou os USA e a Europa em economias modernas foi a escravidao dos séculos de colonizaçao e ascesao no caso Yankee, depois que a escravidao começou a ter um peso inferior na sociedade, e a mao de obra paga começou a superar a escrava, no caso Yankee vemos isso muito bem com os escravos indo combater na guerra civil, o que reduziu o papel do escravo na produçao. Todo este momento historico fez com que a economia se voltasse para inclusao de "Homens livres" na sociedade, a economia teve que se adequar, e alias essa transiçao ainda nao acabou, hoje o escravo ainda existe, e é o trabalhodor mal pago em uma fabriqueta da Vietnam, Laos, paquistao, Indonésia, etc...

Isso demonstra que mesmo que a escravidao tenha acabado o impacto do fim desta na sociedade de acumulaçao de riquezas ainda nao acabou, e os problemas desta tentativa de inclusao dos homens livres ainda gera problemas para o sistema, e principalmente para a produçao, prova disso é a delocaçao de centros produtivos para areas onde ainda existe mao de obra barata, ou escravidao moderna para alguns.

Na Roma do 3-4 século o numero de homens livres superou o de escravos, tudo isso devido ao sistema romano de inclusao que abria de fato vias legais para se obter a cidadania romana, e estes novos livres tornaram o mantenimento do sistema romano muito caro e dificil de manter... como hoje acontece no ocidente desenvolvido, onde nao conseguem manter o custo de seus paises... e olha que aqui os USA tem grande vantagem em realaçao à Europa, pois nao deve manter algum sistema social como universidades, hospitais e pensoes, pois isso tudo é privado em sua sociedade, o que nao faz desse um sistema mais dinamico humanamente falando, mas somente economicamente. na Europa os serviços publicos existem e para o povo europeu essa é a funçao do estado e nao aceitam qeu o estado nao garanta serivços publicos, pois no fim o estado recebe impostos para isso... ja nos USA o povo aceita que o estado receba impostos somente para fazer garantias(como comprar empresas falidas ou emprestimos publicos de emegencia-2008-2009), e invista em segurança(guerras) para manter a "estabilidade do sistema" economico como um todo...

No imperio Romano também existiam serviços publicos, mas eram diferente dos de hoje, com exceçao da pensoes qeu existiam mas somente para legionarios e funcionarios publicos, mas os outros serviços eram o poder judiciario, as Termas, o sistema hidrico, pois a diferença de hoje a agua era gratis, estradas sem pedagio(Que nasceu em periodo medieval), etc

Os USA simplesmente perderam os centros de produçao, assim como outros antes deles, e o jogo caminha para o fim, e este sera mais rapido que no imperio romano.

Toda essa propaganda que o mundo hoje é diferente nao passa de besteira, pois as unicas coisas que mudaram foram as tecnologias, o resto continua o mesmo, agricultura, manufatura, comercio, finança, recursos naturais e guerras... hoje é somente um pouco mais complicado, e como disse o colega, devida à alta especializaçao em cada ramo, mas o sistema continua o mesmo.

Valeu!!

Se esta teoria estiver certa, porque o Brasil não é uma economia moderna tendo sido um dos últimos países à extinguir o escravagismo?!

[Rodrigoiano]

NÃO SÓ O BRASIL SUPERARÁ RÚSSIA E JAPÃO, COMO A ÍNDIA SUPERARÁ OS EUA!!!!!

Estudo: Brasil terá o 4º PIB mundial em 2050
8 de janeiro de 2011 | 15h55 | Jamil Chade*

A economia brasileira vai superar pela primeira vez a da França neste ano e já em 2013 vai ultrapassar a do Reino Unido, atingindo a sétima posição no planeta e se preparando para, em 2050, tornar-se a quarta maior economia do mundo. Mas um brasileiro terá de esperar pelo menos mais 40 anos para ter a renda média de hoje de um alemão.

Os dados fazem parte de um estudo da PricewaterhouseCoopers. Segundo o estudo, antes de 2020 as sete grandes economias emergentes já terão superado os tradicionais países do G-7 em tamanho do PIB. A constatação do levantamento é que, em meados do século, o cenário econômico mundial será bem diferente do atual, com China e Índia nos dois primeiros lugares e o atual líder — os Estados Unidos — apenas na terceira posição.

No caso do Brasil, o País subirá várias posições no ranking das maiores economias, incentivado por seu mercado doméstico e pela exportação de recursos naturais num primeiro momento. Se a comparação do PIB do Brasil for calculada em paridade de poder de compra (PPP), o País passaria da atual nona posição entre as maiores economias para a quarta, elevando PIB de US$ 2 trilhões em 2009 para US$ 9,7 trilhões em 2050.

A projeção é de que já este ano o Brasil supere a França em PIB. Em 2010, já havia superado a Espanha. Em 2013, superaria o Reino Unido. Finalmente, em 2025, passaria a Alemanha — o motor da economia europeia. Em 2037, seria a vez de superar a Rússia e, em 2039, o Japão.

Em uma comparação que leve em conta a taxa de câmbio do mercado, conhecido como PIB nominal, o Brasil também chegaria em 2050 na quarta posição entre as maiores economias, com US$ 9,2 trilhões de PIB. Hoje o País ocupa a 8ª posição. Por esses cálculos, o Brasil superaria a Itália em 2017, passaria o Reino Unido em 2023 e ultrapassaria a França em 2027. Em 2032, seria a vez de superar a Alemanha e, em 2044, passaria o Japão.

Renda

O avanço do Brasil pode impressionar. Mas, para o autor do levantamento, ser a quarta maior economia do mundo não significa que a pobreza será automaticamente erradicada. “Isso dependerá de uma política de Estado para garantir a distribuição da riqueza”, afirmou ao Estado o economista John Hawksworth, chefe do grupo que realizou a projeção.

Ele lembra que, hoje, um brasileiro tem em média uma renda equivalente a 22% da renda de um americano. Em 40 anos, ganhará ainda menos da metade do que será a renda de um trabalhador nos Estados Unidos. No Brasil, a renda passaria dos atuais US$ 10 mil por ano para quase US$ 40 mil em 2050. Na prática, a renda média de um brasileiro levará mais 40 anos para alcançar a de um alemão hoje.

Em termos de expansão do PIB, a consultoria destaca que o Brasil não estará entre os líderes e, mesmo na quarta posição mundial, o País terá em 40 anos um PIB que não difere do tamanho atual da economia chinesa. A projeção é de um crescimento de 4,4% ao ano. Mas abaixo do crescimento de México, Argentina, Indonésia, China e Índia. Ainda assim, duas vezes mais rápido que o dos Estados Unidos e quatro vezes superior ao do Japão.

Emergentes

Outra constatação do relatório é a nova posição dos emergentes no cenário internacional. Em 2050, os sete maiores emergentes (China, Índia, Brasil, Rússia, México, Indonésia e Turquia) terão um PIB duas vezes superior ao tradicional G-7, formado por países industrializados. Isso, se ocorrer, será uma transformação importante em comparação com 2007, quando os ricos ainda tinham uma economia três vezes maior que a dos emergentes.

Mas as projeções indicam que, antes de 2020, a China já superará os EUA em paridade de poder de compra. A crise atual já havia possibilitado à China superar o Japão e se tornar a segunda maior economia do planeta. Em PIB nominal, porém, terá de esperar até 2032. (* correspondente em Genebra)

Fonte: Jornal da Tarde/Estadão(?)

http://blogs.estadao.com.br/jt-seu-bols ... l-em-2050/

[Quiron]

DOD Announces Large Reinvestment From Efficiencies Savings


by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 10, 2011

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has announced a series of efficiencies decisions designed to save the Department of Defense more than $150 billion over the next five years primarily by reducing overhead costs, improving business practices and culling excess or troubled programs.
Most of the resulting savings will be used by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force to invest in high priority programs that strengthen warfighting capabilities.

In anticipation of an era of modest defense budget growth, Gates launched a comprehensive effort last May to reduce the Department's overhead expenditures. The goal was to sustain the military's size and strength over the long term by reinvesting those efficiency savings in force structure and other key combat capabilities.

Specifically, the military services were directed to find at least $100 billion in savings that they could keep and shift to higher priority programs. To achieve the savings targets, service leadership conducted a thorough and vigorous scrub of bureaucratic structures, facilities, programs, business practices, civilian and military personnel levels, and associated overhead costs.

The measures announced are the latest in a series of DoD reform initiatives, to include the President's last two annual defense budgets, which have rebalanced the Department's spending habits while increasing investments in proven capabilities most relevant both to current wars and to the most likely future threats.

"Meeting real-world requirements. Doing right by our people. Reducing excess. Being more efficient. Squeezing costs. Setting priorities and sticking to them. Making tough choices. These are all things that we should do as a Department and as a military regardless of the time and circumstance. But they are more important than ever at a time of extreme fiscal duress, when budget pressures and scrutiny fall on all areas of government, including defense," said Gates.

"While America is at war and confronts a range of future security threats, it is important to not repeat the mistakes of the past by making drastic and ill-conceived cuts to the overall defense budget. At the same time, it is imperative for this Department to eliminate wasteful, excessive, and unneeded spending. Indeed, to do everything we can to make every defense dollar count."

The service departments achieved savings in several areas, including the number and size of headquarters staffs, base operations, energy consumption, and facilities sustainment. At the same time, the service leaders undertook the normal process of setting priorities and assessing risks in preparing the fiscal 2012 budget request - a process that led to the recommended termination or restructuring of a number of troubled or unneeded weapons programs.

The services will keep the savings they were motivated to find and reinvest in the needed capabilities each service needs to support the warfighter. The bulk of the savings will be used by the service departments to make key investments in areas such as ship building, long-range strike, missile defense, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR), wounded warrior care and facilities, and much more.

Specifically, the Department of the Navy is proposing to use efficiencies savings to:

+ Accelerate development of a new generation of electronic jammers to improve the Navy's ability to fight and survive in an anti-access environment;

+ Increase the repair and refurbishment of Marine equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan;

+ Develop a new generation of sea-borne unmanned strike and surveillance aircraft;

+ Buy more of the latest model F-18s and extend the service life of 150 of these aircraft as a hedge against more delays in the deployment of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF); and

+ Purchase additional ships - including a destroyer, a littoral combat ship, an ocean surveillance vessel and fleet oilers.

The Department of the Navy proposed efficiencies savings of more than $35 billion over five years to include:

+ Reducing manpower ashore and reassigning 6,000 personnel to operational missions at sea;

+ Using multi-year procurement to save more than $1.3 billion on the purchase of new airborne surveillance, jamming, and fighter aircraft;

+ Disestablishing several staffs (but not the associated platforms) to include submarine-, patrol aircraft-, and destroyer-squadrons plus one carrier strike group staff; and

+ Disestablishing the headquarters of Second Fleet at Norfolk, Va., and transferring responsibility for its mission to the Navy's Fleet Forces Command.

For the Department of the Air Force, this efficiencies process made it possible to:

+ Buy more of the most advanced Reaper UAVs and move essential ISR programs from the temporary war budget to the permanent base budget.

+ Going forward, advanced unmanned strike and reconnaissance capabilities must become an integrated part of the service's regular institutional force structure;

+ Increase procurement of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle to assure access to space for both military and other government agencies while sustaining our industrial base;

+ Modernize the radars of F-15s to keep this key fighter viable well into the future;

+ Buy more simulators for JSF air crew training; and

+ Develop a new long range, nuclear-capable penetrating bomber, which will be designed using proven technologies, an approach that should make it possible to deliver this capability on schedule and in quantity.

The Air Force proposed efficiencies measures that will total some $34 billion over five years and include:

+ Consolidating two air operations centers in the United States and two in Europe;

+ Consolidating three numbered Air Force staffs;

+ Saving $500 million by reducing fuel and energy consumption within the Air Mobility Command;

+ Improving depot and supply chain business processes to sustain weapons systems, thus improving readiness at lower cost; and

+ Reducing the cost of communications infrastructure by 25 percent.

The Department of the Army would use its savings to:

+ Provide improved suicide prevention and substance abuse counseling for soldiers;

+ Modernize its battle fleet of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and Stryker wheeled vehicles;

+ Accelerate fielding to the soldier level of the Army's new tactical communications network.

+ Accelerate procurement of the service's most advanced Grey Eagle UAVs; and

+ Buy more MC-12 reconnaissance aircraft to support ground forces, and begin development of a new vertical unmanned air system to support the Army in the future.

The Army proposed $29 billion in savings over five years to include:

+ Terminating the SLAMRAAM surface to air missile, and the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, the next-generation missile launcher originally conceived as part of the Future Combat System;

+ Reducing manning by more than 1,000 positions by eliminating unneeded task forces and consolidating six installation management commands into four;

+ Saving $1.4 billion in military construction costs by sustaining existing facilities; and

+ Consolidating the service's email infrastructure and data centers, which should save $500 million over five years.

Of the $100 billion identified by the service departments, approximately $28 billion will also be used over the next five years by the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to deal with higher than expected operating expenses such as fuel, maintenance, health care and training costs.

In addition to directing the four services to find savings, Gates announced last August a set of initiatives aimed at reducing overhead costs and improving efficiency across the DoD as a whole - with special attention to the headquarters and support bureaucracies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the combatant commands, and other defense agencies and field activities.

Gates announced that this effort - combined with a government-wide freeze on civilian salaries - has yielded approximately $54 billion in savings over the next five years.

These savings include further reducing the contractor staff cadre, consolidating IT support, culling redundant intelligence organizations, eliminating unnecessary reports and studies, freezing civilian staff levels and pay, downgrading overseas commands, decreasing the number of generals, admirals and civilian executives, and modest increases in TRICARE premiums on military retirees.

In addition to terminating the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, Gates also stated that he is placing the Marine Corps' short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the JSF on the equivalent of a two-year probation because of significant testing problems. As a result, the development of the Marine variant will be moved to the back of the overall JSF production sequence. To fill the gap created from the slip in the JSF production schedule, the Department of the Navy will buy more Navy F/A-18s.

The formal announcement of the President's fiscal 2012 budget submission next month is also expected to call for a $78 billion reduction to the FYDP, to include no real growth in defense spending in fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2016.

But because of the rigorous reform efforts undertaken over the past year, it is possible for the DoD to absorb this reduction in the projected top-line without significant impact to warfighting capability, although it will necessitate a reduction in the size of the Army and Marine Corps starting in fiscal 2015.

The total savings generated by DoD-wide overhead efficiencies, the civilian staffing and pay freeze, and the future decrease in ground forces, when added together, are roughly equivalent to the sum of the top-line reductions projected in the FYDP.

With the efficiencies savings, Gates said he is confident the Department can effectively meet the threats it is likely to face over the next few years. But he also stressed the FYDP represents the minimum level of defense spending necessary given the complex and unpredictable array of security challenges the United States faces around the globe.

Beyond this five year time frame, the savings from overhead efficiencies and force reductions will have mostly run their course.

Gates concluded by talking about the importance of following through on all DoD reform measures while maintaining adequate levels of funding.

"This Department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path - where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits, and lax attitudes towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow, and the nation's grim financial outlook," Gates declared at the conclusion of the announcement.

"These times demand that all of our nation's leaders rise above the politics and parochialism that have too often plagued considerations of our nation's defense - whether from inside the Pentagon, from industry and interest groups, and from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. I look forward to working through the next phase of the President's defense reform effort with the Congress in the weeks and months ahead - to do what's right for our Armed Forces and what's right for our country."

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/DOD_Ann ... s_999.html

[Penguin]

O estudo que deu origem ao artigo acima (by PricewaterhouseCoopers):

TheWorld in 2050
The accelerating shift of global
economic power: challenges and
opportunities
January 2011

http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/world-2050/index.jhtml
http://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/world-2050/ ... n-2011.pdf

6.Conclusions and implications for business
The first important point to note from our analysis is that there is no single right way to measure the relative
size of emerging economies such as China and India as compared to the G7 economies. Depending on the
purpose of the exercise, GDP at either market exchange rates (MERs) or purchasing power parities (PPPs) may
be the most appropriate measure. In general, GDP at PPPs is a better indicator of average living standards or
volumes of outputs or inputs, while GDP at MERs is a better measure of the current value of markets from a
shorter term business perspective. In the long run, however, it is important that business planners take into
account the likely rise in real market exchange rates in emerging economies towards their PPP rates, although
our modelling suggests that, for countries such as China and India, this exchange rate adjustment may still not
be fully complete even by 2050.

Secondly, in our base case projections, the E7 economies will by 2050 be around 64% larger than the current G7
when measured in dollar terms at projected MERs, or around twice as large in PPP terms. In contrast, total E7
GDP is currently only around 36% of the size of total G7 GDP at market exchange rates and around 72% of its
size in PPP terms.

Thirdly, there are likely to be notable shifts in relative growth rates within the E7, driven by demographic
trends. In particular, both China and Russia are expected to experience significant declines in their working age
populations over the next 40 years. In contrast, countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and Mexico
(being relatively younger) should on average show higher positive growth over the next 40 years. However, they
too will have begun to see the effects of ageing by the middle of the century.

Fourth, India has the potential to be the fastest growing large economy in the world over the period to 2050,
with a projected GDP at the end of this period close to 83% of that of the US at MER, or 14% larger than the US
in PPP terms. China, despite its projected marked growth slowdown, is projected to be around 35% larger than
the US at MERs by 2050, or around 57% larger in PPP terms. China could overtake the US as the world’s largest
economy as early as 2018 based on GDP at PPPs, or around 2032 based on GDP at MERs.

Fifth, while the G7 economies will almost inevitably see their relative GDP shares decline (although their
average per capita incomes will remain well above those in emerging markets), the rise of the E7 economies
should boost average G7 income levels in absolute terms through creating major new market opportunities.
This larger global market should allow businesses in G7 economies to specialise more closely in their areas of
comparative advantage, both at home and overseas, while G7 consumers continue to benefit from low cost
imports from the E7 and other emerging economies.

Sixth, trade between the E7 and the G7 should therefore be seen as a mutually beneficial process for economies
and businesses: a win-win proposition, not a zero sum competitive game. This is certainly true for UK
businesses, which should see this as an opportunity to rely less on trading with the US and the EU and more
with the emerging economies. At the same time, there will clearly be new competitive challenges from rising
multinationals based in the E7 economies, so those UK or European companies that continue to rely only on
their domestic markets could see their market share progressively eroded by emerging economy rivals.
Finally, there will also be challenges arising from the rapid rise of China, India and other emerging economies
in terms of pressure on natural resources such as energy and water, as well as implications for climate change.
Commodity prices will tend to remain high, so boosting exporters of these products (e.g. Brazil, Russia,
Indonesia, the Middle East) and increasing input costs for natural resource importers.

[Penguin]

Os caras economizam e cortam em certas coisas para investir em outras, mais prioritárias. Se adaptam aos novos tempos. Não dá para aumentar o orçamento indefinidamente.

DOD Announces Large Reinvestment From Efficiencies Savings


by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 10, 2011

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has announced a series of efficiencies decisions designed to save the Department of Defense more than $150 billion over the next five years primarily by reducing overhead costs, improving business practices and culling excess or troubled programs.
Most of the resulting savings will be used by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force to invest in high priority programs that strengthen warfighting capabilities.

In anticipation of an era of modest defense budget growth, Gates launched a comprehensive effort last May to reduce the Department's overhead expenditures. The goal was to sustain the military's size and strength over the long term by reinvesting those efficiency savings in force structure and other key combat capabilities.

Specifically, the military services were directed to find at least $100 billion in savings that they could keep and shift to higher priority programs. To achieve the savings targets, service leadership conducted a thorough and vigorous scrub of bureaucratic structures, facilities, programs, business practices, civilian and military personnel levels, and associated overhead costs.

The measures announced are the latest in a series of DoD reform initiatives, to include the President's last two annual defense budgets, which have rebalanced the Department's spending habits while increasing investments in proven capabilities most relevant both to current wars and to the most likely future threats.

"Meeting real-world requirements. Doing right by our people. Reducing excess. Being more efficient. Squeezing costs. Setting priorities and sticking to them. Making tough choices. These are all things that we should do as a Department and as a military regardless of the time and circumstance. But they are more important than ever at a time of extreme fiscal duress, when budget pressures and scrutiny fall on all areas of government, including defense," said Gates.

"While America is at war and confronts a range of future security threats, it is important to not repeat the mistakes of the past by making drastic and ill-conceived cuts to the overall defense budget. At the same time, it is imperative for this Department to eliminate wasteful, excessive, and unneeded spending. Indeed, to do everything we can to make every defense dollar count."

The service departments achieved savings in several areas, including the number and size of headquarters staffs, base operations, energy consumption, and facilities sustainment. At the same time, the service leaders undertook the normal process of setting priorities and assessing risks in preparing the fiscal 2012 budget request - a process that led to the recommended termination or restructuring of a number of troubled or unneeded weapons programs.

The services will keep the savings they were motivated to find and reinvest in the needed capabilities each service needs to support the warfighter. The bulk of the savings will be used by the service departments to make key investments in areas such as ship building, long-range strike, missile defense, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR), wounded warrior care and facilities, and much more.

Specifically, the Department of the Navy is proposing to use efficiencies savings to:

+ Accelerate development of a new generation of electronic jammers to improve the Navy's ability to fight and survive in an anti-access environment;

+ Increase the repair and refurbishment of Marine equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan;

+ Develop a new generation of sea-borne unmanned strike and surveillance aircraft;

+ Buy more of the latest model F-18s and extend the service life of 150 of these aircraft as a hedge against more delays in the deployment of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF); and

+ Purchase additional ships - including a destroyer, a littoral combat ship, an ocean surveillance vessel and fleet oilers.

The Department of the Navy proposed efficiencies savings of more than $35 billion over five years to include:

+ Reducing manpower ashore and reassigning 6,000 personnel to operational missions at sea;

+ Using multi-year procurement to save more than $1.3 billion on the purchase of new airborne surveillance, jamming, and fighter aircraft;

+ Disestablishing several staffs (but not the associated platforms) to include submarine-, patrol aircraft-, and destroyer-squadrons plus one carrier strike group staff; and

+ Disestablishing the headquarters of Second Fleet at Norfolk, Va., and transferring responsibility for its mission to the Navy's Fleet Forces Command.

For the Department of the Air Force, this efficiencies process made it possible to:

+ Buy more of the most advanced Reaper UAVs and move essential ISR programs from the temporary war budget to the permanent base budget.

+ Going forward, advanced unmanned strike and reconnaissance capabilities must become an integrated part of the service's regular institutional force structure;

+ Increase procurement of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle to assure access to space for both military and other government agencies while sustaining our industrial base;

+ Modernize the radars of F-15s to keep this key fighter viable well into the future;

+ Buy more simulators for JSF air crew training; and

+ Develop a new long range, nuclear-capable penetrating bomber, which will be designed using proven technologies, an approach that should make it possible to deliver this capability on schedule and in quantity.

The Air Force proposed efficiencies measures that will total some $34 billion over five years and include:

+ Consolidating two air operations centers in the United States and two in Europe;

+ Consolidating three numbered Air Force staffs;

+ Saving $500 million by reducing fuel and energy consumption within the Air Mobility Command;

+ Improving depot and supply chain business processes to sustain weapons systems, thus improving readiness at lower cost; and

+ Reducing the cost of communications infrastructure by 25 percent.

The Department of the Army would use its savings to:

+ Provide improved suicide prevention and substance abuse counseling for soldiers;

+ Modernize its battle fleet of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and Stryker wheeled vehicles;

+ Accelerate fielding to the soldier level of the Army's new tactical communications network.

+ Accelerate procurement of the service's most advanced Grey Eagle UAVs; and

+ Buy more MC-12 reconnaissance aircraft to support ground forces, and begin development of a new vertical unmanned air system to support the Army in the future.

The Army proposed $29 billion in savings over five years to include:

+ Terminating the SLAMRAAM surface to air missile, and the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, the next-generation missile launcher originally conceived as part of the Future Combat System;

+ Reducing manning by more than 1,000 positions by eliminating unneeded task forces and consolidating six installation management commands into four;

+ Saving $1.4 billion in military construction costs by sustaining existing facilities; and

+ Consolidating the service's email infrastructure and data centers, which should save $500 million over five years.

Of the $100 billion identified by the service departments, approximately $28 billion will also be used over the next five years by the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to deal with higher than expected operating expenses such as fuel, maintenance, health care and training costs.

In addition to directing the four services to find savings, Gates announced last August a set of initiatives aimed at reducing overhead costs and improving efficiency across the DoD as a whole - with special attention to the headquarters and support bureaucracies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the combatant commands, and other defense agencies and field activities.

Gates announced that this effort - combined with a government-wide freeze on civilian salaries - has yielded approximately $54 billion in savings over the next five years.

These savings include further reducing the contractor staff cadre, consolidating IT support, culling redundant intelligence organizations, eliminating unnecessary reports and studies, freezing civilian staff levels and pay, downgrading overseas commands, decreasing the number of generals, admirals and civilian executives, and modest increases in TRICARE premiums on military retirees.

In addition to terminating the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, Gates also stated that he is placing the Marine Corps' short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the JSF on the equivalent of a two-year probation because of significant testing problems. As a result, the development of the Marine variant will be moved to the back of the overall JSF production sequence. To fill the gap created from the slip in the JSF production schedule, the Department of the Navy will buy more Navy F/A-18s.

The formal announcement of the President's fiscal 2012 budget submission next month is also expected to call for a $78 billion reduction to the FYDP, to include no real growth in defense spending in fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2016.

But because of the rigorous reform efforts undertaken over the past year, it is possible for the DoD to absorb this reduction in the projected top-line without significant impact to warfighting capability, although it will necessitate a reduction in the size of the Army and Marine Corps starting in fiscal 2015.

The total savings generated by DoD-wide overhead efficiencies, the civilian staffing and pay freeze, and the future decrease in ground forces, when added together, are roughly equivalent to the sum of the top-line reductions projected in the FYDP.

With the efficiencies savings, Gates said he is confident the Department can effectively meet the threats it is likely to face over the next few years. But he also stressed the FYDP represents the minimum level of defense spending necessary given the complex and unpredictable array of security challenges the United States faces around the globe.

Beyond this five year time frame, the savings from overhead efficiencies and force reductions will have mostly run their course.

Gates concluded by talking about the importance of following through on all DoD reform measures while maintaining adequate levels of funding.

"This Department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path - where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits, and lax attitudes towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow, and the nation's grim financial outlook," Gates declared at the conclusion of the announcement.

"These times demand that all of our nation's leaders rise above the politics and parochialism that have too often plagued considerations of our nation's defense - whether from inside the Pentagon, from industry and interest groups, and from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. I look forward to working through the next phase of the President's defense reform effort with the Congress in the weeks and months ahead - to do what's right for our Armed Forces and what's right for our country."

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/DOD_Ann ... s_999.html

[RobertoRS]

Ninguém sabe o que vai acontecer no dia seguinte, e tem gente prevendo quarenta anos na frente?

Isso não é economia, é charlatanismo...

[EDSON]

É verdade ninguém é senhor do futuro.

[Túlio]

Viagem por viagem, achei essa muito mais legal:

Cenário “russo" para 2011


Prepara-se o Armageddon?


O cenário a seguir é um apanhado do publicado no Pravda. Ainda que ninguém possa prever com exatidão o futuro, me parece que, em linhas gerais, seja um cenário provável, pelo menos em parte. Devemos, no mínimo, nos prepararmos para essa eventualidade.

Em resumo, o periódico parte do princípio que os EUA e o Reino Unido não conseguirão evitar o colapso econômico e cortarão drasticamente aas importações. Isto causará forte depressão na China, que por sua vez deixará de importar matéria prima do Brasil, Austrália, Venezuela da própria Rússia e outros, que terão todos fortes desajustes econômicos, mas menores do que os países do mundo desenvolvido e dos que não tem auto-suficiência alimentar e energética. O comércio mundial será grandemente afetado. Todos países buscarão a auto-suficiência ou farão coligações autárquicas Haverá convulsões em todo o mundo, com migrações, genocídios e guerra no Oriente Médio e na Coréia. A geografia política será alterada. Muitas nações, especial mente na África, serão nações apenas no nome ou mesmo desaparecerão O império norte-americano declinará e, os próprios Estados unidos continentais, como todos países de grande extensão territorial sofrerão ameaças de secessão.

As Guerras prováveis e suas conseqüências - A primeira das guerras será entre a Coréia do Norte e a Coréia do Sul - É previsível a vitoria do Sul resultando na unificação. Os EUA serão forçados a intervir, apesar de seus problemas. Seul pode ser alvo atômico. A Rússia e a China não defenderão a Coréia do Norte, e se afastarão totalmente em caso de uso de artefato nuclear.

Uma guerra mais ampla terá inicio entre Israel e seus aliados (EUA e R. Unido) contra o Irã. Os bombardeios causarão imensos danos ao este último, mas marcará o declínio do Império Americano e forçará sua saída do Afganistão. Em auxílio ao Irã correrão o Hamas e a Turquia contra Israel com muita mortandade e pouco resultado. Aproveitando a oportunidade se formará uma coligação de países balcânicos de maioria ortodoxa e a Rússia para acertar as contas com a Turquia e aliados, contando com o apoio semi velado da OTAN e da China, resultando na queda dos governos islâmicos.

- Pode acontecer a retomada das Malvinas pela Argentina face o enfraquecimento do Reino Unido e ameaça de secessão nos EUA, além de revoluções e intervenções em muitas partes do mundo

Alguns países em particular

- Rússia -Teremos (eles que estão falando) um ano difícil com a redução das importações da China. Ocorrerão grandes distúrbios e tumultos internos, sendo os principais apoiados pelos governos islâmicos que estarão incentivando a separação das nossas (deles) minorias islâmicas. Isto tende a nos conduzir a guerra.

- EUA - Contra vontade será forçado a intervir para ajudas a Coréia do Sul. Seu colapso econômico, por si já não seria tranqüilo, mas aliado ao preço do petróleo após as hostilidades com o Irã causará forte descontentamento interno que, juntamente com o claro desmanche do México pode tender a secessão do Texas e mais outras regiões. O que é certo é que o colapso da sua economia é que desencadeará as grandes convulsões do ano no mundo e que o declínio de seu papel imperial é incontestável.

- México – Será um inferno. Lutarão entre si os comunistas do sul, o governo, as ganges de narcotraficantes, os islâmicos e os cidadãos americanos que lá investiram pesado. O México se desagregará. Não será surpresa se uma parte se unir a uma “República Texana” formando uma nova confederação

- Brasil – Terá, ao menos temporariamente, grandes problemas financeiros com o corte das importações da China, mas nada que se compare aos dos outros países.

- Israel – Não tem como evitar a guerra, agora que o Brasil e a Argentina reconhecem a Palestina como Estado independente, a não ser cedendo. Espera-se uma confrontação militar com o Irã e a Turquia. Será vitoriosa pela intervenção dos países balcânicos e Russia

- China – Enfrentará terríveis problemas internos com a interrupção das compras americanas e da perda do valor de suas reservas pela queda do dólar. Haverá desemprego, fome, distúrbios e revoltas, mas certamente conseguirá controlar a situação. Devido aos seus próprios problemas não dará apoio à Coréia do Norte.

- Cuba – Castro descubrirá que Deus existe e que ele tem sido um “bad boy”. Cuba se transformará em uma democracia nacionalista, mas não voltará a ser o bordel dos EUA
Há no jornal comentários sobre muitos outros países, mas que não tem, para nós, o mesmo interesse.

Meus comentários: Não creio que a China vá deixar milhões de sua gente morrer de fome sem espernear, naturalmente avançando, a qualquer custo, sobre as férteis terras do SE da Ásia. Naturalmente aproveitará do retraimento norte-americano para reincorporar Taiwan.

Também não creio que os EUA e Reino Unido, necessitando de matérias-primas que não conseguem mais comprar, se conformarão e deixarão de usar a força para tomar o que precisarem. Certamente a OTAN, será sua sócia no empreendimento. Os alvos? Claro, a África e a América Latina. No que nos afeta, as mineralizadas reservas indígenas e o pré-sal.

Preparemo-nos

Que Deus guarde a todos vocês

Gelio Fregapani

[EDSON]

Tudo isto em um ano? Isto esta parecendo o Armagedon.

[Túlio]

Sei lá, parece que é a partir deste ano até talvez o fim da década, vai saber...

De qualquer modo, pelo que tenho visto, a vida real muitas vezes supera a ficção...

[PRick]

Talvez seja essa a diferença entre historiadores e economistas, os primeiros analisam tendências, mas não gostam de fazer as previsões dos outros.

A decadência dos EUA é um processo histórico, de modo nenhum, algo para ocorrer em menos de 50 anos. Porém, a perda da hegemonia e da supremacia econômica, bélica não vai destruir a sociedade dos EUA, apenas irá reduzir o papel dos EUA no mundo. É claro que as mudanças internas serão significativas para eles.

A emergência não é apenas da China, mas de alguns países que a despeito da sua pontencialidade econômica, estavam alijados do mercado global ou em situação tal, que fatores extra-economia impediam o desenvolvimento de sua pontencialidade.

É o fim da Guerra-Fria a base para o novo mercado mundial, aquilo que se chamou de globalização, nada mais foi que a queda de várias barreiras ao comércio mundial.

Do mesmo modo que a situação anterior, eram especialmente prejudiciais a alguns países, e favoráveis a outros. A atual beneficia uns mais que outros.

Países com grandes grandes mercados internos e riquezas naturais são os maiores beneficiários da conjuntura atual. Não são os únicos, afinal, existem situações particulares.

Porém, o que está sendo notado é uma aceleração da velocidade dessas modificações, hoje, o mercado interno Chinês parece ter adquirido impulso próprio, quer dizer, a China já acumulou riqueza o suficiente para não depender mais tanto de suas exportações. Diga-se de passagem, isso também vem ocorrendo na Índia e no Brasil.

Tudo indica a existência de um novo arranjo global na ordem estamental. Desaparecendo os conceitos de centro/periferia ou desenvolvidos e subdesenvolvidos.

É claro que a manipulação dos números de crescimento do PIB dão melhores manchetes, porém, muito melhor que apenas fazer essas comparações é perceber o potencial de cada uma dos países nesta corrida, do tipo, relação entre tamanho da população, recursos naturais, entre outras coisas.

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