DMB - 1

Nations equipped with ballistic missiles in 1972.

Nations equipped with ballistic missiles as of 2004.

Thanks to the Missile Defense Agency for the data.

http://op-for.com/2006/06/the_need_for_ballistic_missile.html

Os russos propagandeiam que seu sistema de mísseis balísticos é capaz de alvejar os sítios da Otan instalados na Polônia ou República Tcheca. Uma nova Guerra Fria? Nem tanto. Algo mudou... Nos anos 80, quando Reagan impulsionou uma nova corrida armamentista, a estratégia tinha um claro objetivo político, com os EUA gastando apenas 6% de seu PIB no sistema de defesa e os soviéticos sendo obrigados a empenhar mais de 1/4 de seu orçamento para acompanhá-los. A corrida deflagrada por Reagan forçou a Rússia a uma espécie de rendição ao obrigá-la a assinar os acordos de desarmamento pondo fim assim à Guerra Fria. Mas, o fim do Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) também pôs fim à décadas de relações politicamente estáveis baseadas na "paz armada" das grandes potências nucleares.

Hoje, a realidade tecnológica é diferente e assim, a visão estratégica americana também não poderia permanecer a mesma. Um amplo e disseminado sistema de Defesa de Mísseis Balísticos (DMB) americano pelo mundo é o que pode fazer frente aos intentos militares ascendentes do Irã e da Coréia do Norte. E, nunca é demais lembrar, quando se pensa na reconstrução de alguma base destruída, os custos de um sistema de defesa são bem menores quando feitos preventivamente.

Por outro lado, há um legado da Guerra Fria: a estratégia americana também visa empurrar para longe de sua heartland, as ameaças diretas aos EUA. Não ser ameaçado implica em poder ameaçar os inimigos de perto e controlar seu avanço marítimo através de um novo "cordão sanitário" euroasiático. Mas, se no século XX, o poder naval americano foi decisivo nestas questões, a "democratização tecnológica" dos mísseis balísticos de hoje em dia não tem na Marinha, a mesma garantia defensiva de outrora. Dominar o sistema de DMB hoje não é apenas luxo para manter-se na dianteira de uma nova corrida armamentista: faz parte de uma inefável lógica de defesa. O sistema DMB está no cerne da estratégia de defesa americana atual, mais do que a simples posse de armamento nuclear, que já se mostra como uma realidade incontornável.

Para Washington, não se trata de fazer pouco caso ou provocar Moscou, mas sim uma corrida contra o tempo, antes que o sistema de mísseis balísticos mundial por outros países se desenvolva mais. Não se trata, tampouco, de negar a hegemonia americana no setor, mesmo sobre a Rússia, mas que este país não faz parte da área de influência e alianças a ser defendida pelos EUA. Trata-se de um possível competidor e, portanto, ainda um potencial inimigo. Aos planos americanos, não se trata apenas de ter a primazia tecnológica, mas de como aplicá-la. Neste sentido, o estabelecimento de uma rede de DMBs se faz fundamental. A partir destas, os sistemas propostos pelos EUA incluem três estágios quando utilizados: alvejar as plantas de mísseis ou suas áreas próximas; alvejar os mísseis em seu percurso; e contra-atacar com sistemas anti-mísseis.

As bases de DBM na Polônia e no Alaska formam uma rede que pretende anular a origem de seus principais inimigos no momento, Irã e Coréia do Norte. A primeira com uma base de radar na República Tcheca para detectar ataques provenientes do Irã e a segunda do leste asiático, com mísseis americanos voando sobre o Pólo Norte fora do espaço russo. No primeiro caso, os mísseis americanos teriam que viajar sobre a Europa Central, região que os EUA mantêm acordos para, novamente, evitar a Rússia. Por isto, a influência sobre sua periferia é fundamental para Washington. Diferentemente do período em que o MAD servia para evitar uma futura guerra, o sistema de DMB está sendo visto como a preparação para uma futura guerra.

Não são apenas Polônia e República Tcheca que pretendem lucrar com este esquema. Vários países têm respondido calorosamente (ou até "se convidado") a participar dos planos de Washington e permanecer sob seu guarda-chuva defensivo. Facilidades como crédito econômico pesam, obviamente, além do eterno temor dos russos pela Europa Central. Por sua vez, a Europa Ocidental na periferia mais distante da Rússia tem se sentido excluída, lêia-se desprotegida. O Reino Unido pleiteia sua inclusão no sistema e a Alemanha também sugere que o sistema DMB seja incorporado à OTAN.

(Continua...)

Traduzido e adaptado de: Ballistic Missile Defense: New Scenarios

Economia da Europa Oriental

Eastern Europe's economies
Worrying about a crash
Jul 5th 2007 RIGA
From The Economist print edition

East European economies are still powering along—but the region is ill-prepared if the weather turns nasty

Peter Schrank

IMAGINE some souped-up old bangers driven confidently but not expertly on a smooth road in fine weather. That is the economic picture of the ten east European countries that are now in the European Union. If the road gets wet or slippery, bad brakes and bald tyres make a crash, even a pile-up, horribly likely.

The country that most troubles outsiders is Latvia. It has a whopping current-account deficit: some 21% of GDP in 2006, and bigger still so far this year. That reflects soaring consumption and household debt, financed mainly by foreign-owned banks. Wages are rocketing—up by a third year-on-year. Inflation is over 8%.

This points to a need for tough restraining measures. But the currency, the lats, is pegged to the euro, so the central bank's ability to raise interest rates is constrained. Although the IMF issued a sharp warning in May about the need for a fiscal squeeze, the government is keener on harvesting the dividends of double-digit GDP growth than on acting to avert the risk of a crash.

Aware of the dangers, the banks, mainly Swedish-owned, are reining in lending. Their share prices wobbled during a brief financial crisis in February. Prudent behaviour by the banks may amount to a monetary tightening on its own. Other modest measures include making tax declarations a mandatory part of loan applications, deterring those with undeclared wealth. A speculative attack on the lats may tempt some, but it is tricky to organise in Latvia's puny financial markets.

Latvia is a financial pipsqueak, with only 0.2% of the euro area's GDP. If it does run off the road—for example, if it is forced to unpeg its currency—the main victims will be local borrowers and foreigners who have lent to them (in theory, but probably not in practice, Western banks could refuse to bail out local subsidiaries, even if their loan books shrivelled). Any crash in the Baltics is unlikely to affect outsiders' views of other regional economies. The likeliest route for contagion would be to next-door Estonia. It is also overheating, but its somewhat more responsible government has a modest budget surplus.

The other early candidate for a crash has long been Hungary, which admitted last year that it had been running a budget deficit of 10% of GDP. But a combination of tax rises and modest spending cuts has trimmed the deficit. Exports and industrial production have risen. The central bank has begun to cut interest rates. Hungary has been “disgustingly lucky”, says Juliet Sampson of HSBC, a bank.

Even if a pile-up is avoided, overheating is still undesirable. As euro members like Portugal have found, a boom stoked by low interest rates and a fixed exchange rate can lead to a long period of uncompetitiveness and slow growth. Except for Slovenia, which is now in, none of the east European countries is likely to join the euro for some time—but they have mostly been able to borrow as cheaply as if they were already members.

So how to cool things down? For countries that can do it, keeping their interest rates above the euro's and letting their currencies appreciate helps. So does bringing in foreign workers from places such as Ukraine in order to reduce upward wage pressures. Slovakia is a prime example of how to pull off both tricks.

The only long-term answer is not to add coolant or to drive more slowly, but to fix up the car. Unfortunately the process of structural reform in the region has largely stopped. Fast growth in tax revenues plus weak political leadership makes for less pressure to get a grip on public finances. Poland and Romania, in particular, have proved alarmingly ready to make expensive spending pledges for political reasons.

A new World Bank study of public spending (see chart below) highlights the bad bargain that the region's taxpayers are getting. Almost everywhere, public spending is higher than it should be for middle-income developing economies. In Albania, the study finds that overstaffing, poor debt collection and wasteful management at the state-run water industry alone costs 1% of GDP. Despite the spread of flat taxes, the “tax wedge”, which includes social-security and other charges, can be as much as 40% of wages.

Changing this is a political matter, not an economic one. But the evidence is that voters do not much like reform. Reforming governments have usually lost the next elections. A report from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development shows that, in most of the region, only minorities of voters, and sometimes not even a plurality, support both a democracy and a market economy (many choose the “don't care” option instead).

Nor is there any obvious punishment for a failure to reform. Romania and Bulgaria have been backsliding ever since they joined the EU in January, and yet there have been only mild complaints from Brussels, which has lost the leverage that it had before the two countries' entry. Capital markets are accommodating too. The lesson that other countries take from Hungary's financial shenanigans is that it is possible to spend like crazy to win an election and then sober up afterwards.

That will change when global conditions make growth a hard scrabble, rather than a bonanza, and borrowing money means dealing with flinty-eyed sceptics, not rosy-eyed thrill-seekers. The politicians may then have to concentrate on the real sources of competitiveness: brains, hard work and clean government.

Migrações no mundo ex-comunista

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Migration
Europe's huddled masses
Jan 18th 2007




From The Economist print edition
Millions of Europeans are on the move. Does it matter?

EPA

ROBERT, the Polish-born head of a group of British removal men, can read and write English easily, unlike his British colleagues who after packing their cardboard boxes label them as “clovs” and “shuse”. Two years ago, when he moved to Britain, Robert lugged heavy loads like them. He still lives worse than they do, in a shabby rented house crammed with compatriots. But the remittances he sends home are paying for his family, a car, a house and—eventually—his own business there.
That dream, of hard work abroad leading to success at home, has inspired millions of people to move across Europe since the collapse of communism—a peacetime migration exceeded only by the upheavals that followed the end of the second world war. But remarkably little is known about the nature of this movement of people one way, and money the other, not least because so much is undocumented or illegal. Now a new report* from the World Bank attempts to fill some gaps and explode some misconceptions.
The first is that the main migration is from the ex-communist world to what used to be called the West, when in fact Russia is the main destination for immigrants, surpassed only by America. That is due partly to ethnic Russians returning to the motherland after the break-up of the Soviet Union, but also to Tajiks, Georgians, Moldovans and other non-Slav citizens of ex-Soviet republics moving to Russia in search of work. In the process, Georgia, for example, lost a fifth of its population in the 14 years from 1989.
The money-flows from migration—around $19 billion annually, the authors estimate—are surprising too. In some countries they matter more than foreign investment. For example, remittances make up more than a quarter of Moldova's GDP—a figure exceeded worldwide only in Haiti and Tonga. For nine ex-communist countries, remittances provide 5% or more of national income. In the region as a whole, three-quarters of the money comes from migrants working in the European Union; about a tenth from those in the former Soviet Union.
The big question is the impact on the home country's development. Optimists think that remittances prop up current accounts and help development. “Whereas aid to governments is often wasted or siphoned off into Swiss bank accounts, migrants' remittances end up directly in poor people's pockets,” says Philippe Legrain (formerly of The Economist) in a book† arguing the case for migration.
But pessimists reckon that having the best and brightest working abroad, often in menial jobs, is a dreadful loss. Remittances may also keep currencies artificially high, harming growth. The World Bank's authors think only a third of remittances go on education, savings and business investment. The overall result, they surmise, has been a mild stimulus to growth in the recipient countries, but without a measurable effect on poverty: it is better-off, urban families that tend to send someone abroad, and then reap the benefits.
The final misconception is about what motivates migration. “Everyone thinks it is all about income differentials, but actually it is all about expectations. Even in poor countries we can expect low levels of migration if people think that conditions there will improve,” argues Brice Quillin, one of the report's authors.
From one viewpoint, the huge migration of recent years to western Europe seems unlikely to continue. Populations are declining in all countries (except Albania) in the western half of the post-communist region. That tightens their labour markets and may stimulate migration from farther east. By contrast, populations in the southern states of the former Soviet Union—countries such as Tajikistan—will keep growing until the middle of this century. “If the typical migrant of the 1990s was a Pole moving to Britain, his successor in the next decade may be a Tajik moving to Poland,” says Mr Quillin. Even Turkey, previously a big exporter of workers, now imports migrants.
What really helps putative migrants stay at home is not just higher wages but the prospect of fast, effective reform, bringing better public services and a dependable legal system. Employers in post-communist countries, particularly those outside big cities with a local monopoly in the job market, still treat their employees with remarkable casualness. A sawmill in a small town, for example, may fail to pay wages, and then declare bankruptcy, only to restart under a new name with the same owners, managers and workforce.
The catch is that reform throughout the region is flagging. No country between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas can boast a strong reformist government, and with a few exceptions the farther east you go, the worse it gets.

*Migration and Remittances: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (World Bank, 2007). †“Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them”. Little, Brown. £12.99

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