{"id":61671,"date":"2023-01-19T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T08:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-75\/"},"modified":"2023-02-07T13:41:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T11:41:50","slug":"diari-de-les-idees-75","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-75\/","title":{"rendered":"Diari de les idees 75"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This new issue of Diari de les Idees<\/em>, the first of this year, highlights the prospective exercises carried out for 2023 by various experts and magazines specialised in international relations. The possible electoral scenarios in Spain within a new context defined by the elimination of the crime of sedition in the Spanish Penal Code; the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo that threaten to destabilise the Balkans once again; the threats to democracy from Israel and Brazil; the complex legacy as Pope and theologian of Benedict XVI; the new paths of globalisation and the crisis of the World Trade Organisation; and, finally, the emergence of ChatGPT which represents a new milestone in the development of language processing technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of international politics, beyond the war in Ukraine, Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood analyse from the Foreign Policy pages the main declared or latent conflicts that stood out on the international stage in 2023. Firstly, Armenia and Azerbaijan, because, if the war has had an impact on crises throughout the world, its impact has been particularly significant in the Southern Caucasus. Two years after its last war for Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan seem to be heading for another confrontation, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has stopped some peace talks, historically led by Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With regard to Iran, massive protests against the regime, the repression unleashed and the supply of weapons to Russia have helped to increase the isolation of the Islamic Republic just as a new crisis is emerging because of its nuclear programme. In this context, the challenge for young demonstrators is to win over the largest Iranians in the middle class, who many sympathise with them, but fear repression or radical change in the regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major conflict, which of Yemen, does not seem to exist. The truce agreed in April between the rebel Hutus and the government, supported mainly by Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates, came to an end in October, and although the major fighting has not resumed, both sides are preparing to return to war. Another source of tension is in Sahel, where countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria can barely resist the imposition of Islamist insurgency. The case of Burkina Faso is particularly worrying in that it is estimated that Jihadist groups control 40% of their territory. Mali, for its part, has suffered two coups in 2020 and 2021 and the state virtually no longer exists in the Northern provinces, where militants linked to the Islamic State and Qaeda fight each other and against non-jihadist, predominantly Tuareg rebels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing from continent, since the assassination of President Jovenel Mo\u00efse in July 2021, Haiti has been paralysed by violence. Public services have collapsed, and according to a report by the World Health Organisation, cholera spreads unstoppably among the population. Hundreds of armed gangs control more than half of the country and suffocate the capital, Port-au-Prince, blocking roads and imposing a reign of terror. The result of this has been a humanitarian disaster in which half the population, 4.7 million people, are facing acute hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Pakistan enters an election year with a deeply divided political class while former Prime Minister Imran Khan leads a populist movement against the government and army. In this context, the attempted assassination of Khan in early November 2022 casts a lot of shadows and doubts over the elections to be held before October 2023. All this when the country is still suffering the devastating consequences of last year’s floods which submerged one third of the land, affecting one in seven Pakistanis, with 20 million people still in need of humanitarian aid, and economic losses valued at USD 31.2 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research team of CIDOB<\/a> presents a collective reflection on the prospects of the year 2023, a year that will test the individual and collective boundaries of society: inflation, food security, energy crisis, increased pressures on supply chains and global geopolitical competition, the breakdown of security systems and international governance, and the collective capacity to respond. The impacts of this permanent crisis have a direct impact on the worsening living conditions in households, and this results in an increase in social unrest and in citizens’ protests, which will increase. At the same time, geopolitical, social and access to basic goods fractures will be deepened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war in Ukraine has revealed that the greater the risks of geostrategic confrontation, the more obsolete the collective security frameworks built to deal with it seem. Then there will be a worsening imbalance between means, challenges and deterrent instruments. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the unexpected scene of 2022, which eventually determined the acceleration of the erosion process of the post-1945 order, it is now that the world will begin to feel the true extent and depth of the global impact of the war. CIDOB believes that face not only a crisis of enormous dimensions, but also a new process of structural change whose end remains unknowable. As in an American pool table, the war in Ukraine is the white ball that has impacted on the various transformations and crises in progress that, projected by the centrifugal force of the new war scenario, move on the board, touching each other, thus increasing the sense of global disorder and acceleration, geopolitical uncertainty and social upheaval. When will the balls triggered by the war in Ukraine stop? What level of disorder will prevail when they do? Of all the many crises, which could be the black ball that drops into the pocket too soon and produces a new existential threat? Above all, as continuous vulnerability and uncertainty become the new normal, what collective responses are being built? Finally, if 2023 is the year that will put the individual and collective boundaries of societies to the test, the black ball of the pooling table is all, event or unexpected effect, which, as recent years have shown, is capable of making forecasts, times and strategies of international policy go up in the smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Michael E. O’Hanlon, director of security, strategy and technology research at the Brookings Institution<\/a>, states in La Vanguardia<\/em><\/a> that the Pentagon and major U.S. defence agencies tend to exaggerate the Chinese threat. Their analysis is based on specific data. Thus, although official reports stress that China’s military budget is steadily growing, they make it clear that it is less than 2% of GDP that NATO indicates is at least acceptable to its members. They are also concerned that Beijing will have the largest naval force in the world, but do not point it to the extent that the American force far exceeds it. What is more, Xi is criticised for wanting to restrict the sea passage by its exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles to the South China Sea, but it is the same as India does without that being any hazard. O’Hanlon states that there is no political reason to justify the exaggeration of this threat and considers that it does not favour Biden. It is true that the Republicans and Trump in particular have become tougher with China over the last five or six years, but the democrats were also increasingly annoyed with the Beijing regime. Biden was the vice president of Obama and in those years, Chinas\u2019 criticism was growing. He also expresses concern that if the relationship between the two countries with excessive need is started to be poisoned, cooperation may be prevented and an excessive reaction to small crises might increase the risk of war, or push China towards Russia. He considers it paradoxical that in a current context where Putin is once again in the grip of war, China is presented as the main challenge for the US. He considers that the reason why the US is focusing on China is because it has ten times as many inhabitants as Russia, its economic growth rate is at least five times higher than Moscow\u2019s and its technological capacity is growing and improving until it rivals the American. Ultimately, China is the challenge of this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Slate<\/em><\/a> <\/em>magazine, Fred Kaplan discusses whether popular proposals in China, the feminist revolt in Iran, and anti-war activism in Russia, the world’s leading authoritarian states, could generate a revolution or radical reform of these regimes, and notes that it would not be the first time. All three experienced revolutions in the 20th century: Iran in 1906 and 1979; China in 1911 and 1949 and Russia in 1905, 1917 and 1991. As all these processes were surprises, he does not consider that it can be ruled out that, although they seem unlikely at present, there will be another revolution in these countries. Kaplan points out that sociologists and political scientists have analysed the necessary preconditions for radical changes, and the conclusion is that, in order to succeed, revolutionary movements must have three elements: organization, a strategy and a charismatic leader. Right now, in Iran, China and Russia, protests do not meet any of these conditions. Nonetheless, he considers that revolutions sometimes take off anyway as they can start without a leader, organization or a strategy, although they are rarely successful in the long term, unless at least some of these features emerge during the process of change. Leaders of authoritarian governments such as in Iran, Russia or China who came to power through fear, are well aware of this fact and have become more efficient in identifying, dividing, stopping or eliminating potential leaders of the protests. However, social, political, economic and ecologic pressures tend to accumulate, even if a regime tries to avoid them. What happens next, if the regime becomes stronger or starts to loosen, depends on how it responds to these pressures. On the one hand, if a regime does not reform at all and increase oppression, it becomes sclerotic; the pressures intensify. Furthermore, appeasing the demonstrators is a bet of uncertain results. Will a reform gesture deflate the rising revolt, or will it simply encourage the most radical rebels to demand even more changes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, a coalition of the most extreme right wing and religious parties in the history of the state. The author Boaz Atzili in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> considers this government to be in many respects a major threat to Israeli democracy. Firstly, the new government is openly hostile to freedom of speech and dissent. If Netanyahu has been working for years to consolidate his control over the Israeli media, the new government is now considering accelerating the privatization of media in the hands of friendly interests. Secondly, it is envisaged a decrease in equal rights, as the government seems willing to allow discrimination against the LGBTQ community and women, thus undermining equality before the law, a basic democratic principle. During the negotiations to reform the coalition, the ultra-Orthodox parties demanded new legislation allowing gender-based segregation in public spaces and events. In this regard, segregation in the fields of education, public transport and public events sometimes results in the exclusion of women and the weakening of their voices, and hence contradicts basic principles such as freedom and equality. Thirdly, the annexation of the West Bank and the establishment of an apartheid system are increasingly possible. In a late December tweet, Netanyahu announced that his government’s guidelines would include the principle that the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right in all areas of the Land of Israel, including the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967 and populated by a Palestinian majority. These guidelines could then justify annexing the occupied Palestinian territories. Fourthly, the separation of powers is also at risk. In the Israeli system, the executive and legislative powers are always controlled by the same coalition. The courts are the only institution that can counterbalance the power of the ruling parties and uphold the country’s Basic Laws, which provide rights in the absence of a formal constitution. But the new government wants to erase this separation of powers and explicitly aims at weakening the courts. In early January, the new Minister of Justice announced the government’s plan for a radical judicial reform, which would include the “override clause”. This clause will allow a simple majority in Knesset to re-enact any law invalidated by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. In short, any of these changes represent a serious erosion of the democratic system and together, they represent a clear danger to the existence of Israeli democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another destabilising factor in democracy was the attack on government institutions in Brazil by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro in early January. Rafael R. Ioris<\/a> argues that it is first necessary to explain who was behind the assault on the Brazilian Congress. Although Bolsonaro was not in the capital, he was still ultimately responsible for what happened, as he was in power, he encouraged distrust in political institutions, advocating the closure of the Congress and attacking the Supreme Court \u2013two of the institutions targeted by demonstrators. He also denounces the big funders, such as the large landowners and business groups who helped pay for the bus transport of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters to Brasilia. Then there is the role of the military. For a long time, leading figures in the army supported Bolsonaro’s extreme right agenda, even recently showing their support for several pro-coup demonstrations. Although street security is not the responsibility of the armed forces, the support of the military for the Bolsonaro agenda helped legitimise members of the state military police supporting such acts, and it cannot be forgotten that Bolsonaro has close ties with the Brazilian military by placing them in key government positions. Thus, some Navy and Air Force generals supported the protests and claimed that demonstrations requiring military intervention were legitimate. Thirdly, the central question is whether the unrest in Brasilia constitutes an attempted coup. As the events of 8 January unfurled, it seems rather like a protest that got violent and out of hand. Even so, it had been weeks in the making and well financed. Fourthly, events show that Brazil is in a crossroad. Bolsonaro’s presidency has meant a decline in democracy in the country as trust in institutions eroded under the attack of the president himself and because of many corruption scandals. And despite his record, close to half of the country voted for him. But it seems that Lula’s choice indicates that even more people want to rebuild democratic institutions after four years of Bolsonarismo and, in this regard, the unrest in Brasilia could be a turning point. Finally, it must be considered whether the comparisons made by many media with the assault on the Capitol on 6 January last year in the USA are valid, since Trumpism and Bolsonarismo share a narrative of stolen elections, with supporters from the far right advocating the right to carry weapons and traditional family structures. A major difference, however, is the role of the military, since the U.S. military figures condemned without hesitation the assault on the Capitol. Nor was the United States trying to force military intervention, as in the case of Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As regards the war in Ukraine, Jamie Dettmer states in Politico<\/em><\/a> magazine that both sides in the conflict are already thinking about the decisive campaigns for next spring. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukraine\u2019s Main Intelligence Directorate, announced a few days ago that Ukraine is planning a major spring offensive and hopes that the fighting will be more intense in March and hinted that Ukraine is considering increasingly deep disruptive attacks on Russian territory with drones and missiles. Ukrainians also believe that Russia is massing weapons and equipment for new offensives in southern and eastern Ukraine, and they claim that the Kremlin will soon announce another partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 men. For his part, former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea\u2019s annexation and Donbas, has predicted that another mobilization to coincide with the first anniversary of the war will be announced, and perhaps a third, since to win in Ukraine he considers that he will need another half a million more soldiers. However, military experts are doubtful that the total amount will be enough to defeat Ukrainian forces. Instead, the real challenge for Russia will be to adapt and professionalize in order to overcome poor logistics and to fight effectively in a 21st century war, which requires support composed of infantry, armor, artillery and aviation in order to achieve mutually complementary effects. Therefore, for Russia to win on the battlefield, it will have to be corrected from the improvement of its combined arms war to the reorganisation of its rank of non-commissioned officers. For Ukraine to win, however, they need to continue receiving equipment to strengthen its offensive capabilities. So, while Russia largely holds its battlefield destiny in its own hands, Ukraine’s fate ultimately rests in those of its allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a>, Alexander J. Motyl expresses his surprise that after almost a year of war, politicians, analysts and journalists do not discuss the consequences of the possible Russian defeat and states that it is all about a lack of dangerous imagination, considering the potential breakdown and Russian disintegration. In fact, the combination of a failed war abroad and a brittle, strained system at home is increasing the likelihood of some sort of implosion. Regardless of whether this will be good or bad for the West, it is an outcome policymakers should prepare for. There are various scenarios for what might happen in Russia after defeat in Ukraine. It is likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin will have to give up power, thus unleashing a fight among extreme right-wing nationalists who want to continue the war effort and destroy the existing political hierarchy, authoritarian conservatives who have an interest in maintaining the system and a semi-democratic movement committed to ending the war and reforming Russia. Who will win is unknown, but it can be expected that the struggle for power would weaken the regime and distract Russia from what remains of its war effort. In turn, a weakened regime, along with a dysfunctional economy, would drive discontented Russians out onto the streets, perhaps even with weapons, and encourage some non-Russian political entities comprising the Federation to opt for greater self-rule, as in the case of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Sakha. If Russia survives this turmoil, it is likely to become a weak client state of China. The West should therefore avoid repeating past mistakes, such as trying to help the Soviet Union to survive, which is clearly dying, and prioritizing Russia’s needs over those of its neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Catalan and Spanish political field, after the removal of the crime of sedition in the Spanish Penal Code and on the occasion of the celebration of the Spanish-French Summit in Barcelona, Enric Juliana argues in La Vanguardia<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that Catalonia has been at various times in history an engine of change in Spain. Of change and convulsion. In Catalonia, together with the Basque Country, Asturias, Cantabria, M\u00e1laga, Alcoy and other scattered localities, the unequal Spanish industrial revolution began in the early 19th century. In Catalonia, in the last two hundred years, a series of political initiatives have originated, of a different kind, which have had a strong impact on Spanish society, causing changes and bitter reactions. A Catalan liberal military, General Prim attempted an unprecedented change in the second half of the 19th century. He wanted to modernize the changing monarchy of the dynasty. Subsequently, the First Republic, the first Catalan republican attempt in Spain (1873), was popularly known as the “Republic of the Catalans”. An outstanding Catalan nationalist politician, Francesc Camb\u00f3, tried to save the monarchy when Alfonso XIII barely had support, while a new Catalan republican movement (Republican Left of Catalonia) joined the pact of San Sebasti\u00e1n. Catalonia decisively helped to establish the Second Republic and the coup was halted in the 1936 in Catalonia. Franco appeared to have prevailed in Catalonia, until a strong movement of opposition to dictatorship awakened, which did seek violence. Barcelona was the liberal capital of Spain in the 1970s. In Catalonia, a strong autonomist movement re-emerged, which forced Adolfo Su\u00e1rez to adopt one of the boldest initiatives of the transition: agree to the re-establish the Generalitat and the return of the exiled president, Josep Tarradellas, before the Constitution was approved. In Catalonia, the Constitution received key support in the referendum of 6 December 1978 and without initially proposing it, Catalan autonomism acted as the locomotive of the so-called State of Autonomies, causing emulation movements in the rest of the country. Felipe Gonz\u00e1lez found broad electoral support in Catalonia and culminated his fourteen-year presidency with the support of Catalan nationalists. Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Aznar spoke Catalan in intimacy to obtain parliamentary support from CiU and made some significant decisions such as the suppression of civil governments and the withdrawal of the Civil Guard from Catalan roads. Pedro S\u00e1nchez came to the presidency of the Catalan Government in May 2018 through a motion of no confidence in which the vote of eight Catalan deputies was decisive, and now the re-election may gamble the measures taken to minimize the Catalan conflict. In Barcelona, a year ago, Alberto N\u00fa\u00f1ez Feij\u00f3o was heard talking about the “Catalan nationality”. In Barcelona, there are some of the main supporters of the Sumar project, headed by Yolanda D\u00edaz. In short, the Catalonia factor has largely dominated the Spanish policy of the last century and a half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the \u2018Qatargate\u2019 scandal that continues to shatter the European institutions, Lola Avril expresses in Politico<\/em><\/a> that the EU’s policy-makers have recurrently been confronted with the ethics question and the various cases of corruption and conflicts of interest have already led to repeated warnings from the European ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, and expose that the EU is ill-equipped to face the challenge. The deficit in public integrity in the EU and its diffuse costs for democracy have been underestimated. This is not primarily about damage to the reputation of the institutions (the Commission or the European Parliament) or individuals (MEPs and senior officials). Rather, the authors consider that they damage our collective capacity to address the issues we have to face: war and peace, ecological destruction, soaring inequalities and so on. What could, then, be the pillars of a new strategy in defence of democratic institutions and decision-making? We must first have full knowledge of the situation for an understanding of the scale of the problem. The parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Qatar case should have a broad mandate to assess systemic threats and interest networks weighing on EU public decisions. This should go hand in with creation of a Permanent Observatory for Public Ethics, endowed with the means to accumulate the knowledge needed to accurately map potential threats to institutions and policy domains. Secondly, the defence of the integrity of EU democracy requires leaving behind the preference for secrecy, soft-law and self-regulation. Many have proposed a new body of inter-institutional ethics with powers of investigation and execution. Its mission would be to audit the sincerity and thoroughness of statements by officials or lobbyists and to dictate the admissibility of the passage through revolving doors. This would put all actors involved in EU decision-making under the same public scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another source of concern in Europe is the Balkans where, as Ian Bancroft points out in Social Europe<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia faces its sternest test since 2011, when the barricades throughout north Kosovo reflected a situation that threatened to get out of control. Despite hopes for an agreement that more or less makes it possible to normalise relations between both parties, to complement this path towards a sustainable peace, the EU must consider how it can better engage those constructive voices of civil society so far, largely neglected. Recent events have once again highlighted one element missing from the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue\u2014the substantive engagement of civil society in Kosovo and Serbia. So far, the elite have led the process, with negotiations largely conducted in secret. There is little transparency. The final content of the agreements remains disputed and open to interpretation. Even 20 years after the end of the war, citizens’ concerns rarely come first. Meanwhile, Kosovo and Serbia face a common challenge\u2014the demographic crisis caused by the emigration of the youngest and most dynamic sectors. On the other hand, critical voices have been intentionally marginalised even though influential civil society figures are vital to help prepare communities for an agreement. The destabilisation resulting from a possible breakdown of the dialogue would have a profound impact on various communities in Serbia and Kosovo. It is therefore essential to invest resources in civil society leaders capable of managing conflicts in their localities and building structures resistant to negative influences. Building a genuine and lasting peace in such a challenging and often unfavourable context requires Belgrade-Pristina dialogue to be opened to constructive voices from civil society. It is they who can genuinely represent their communities and articulate a vision for the future, without tying themselves to the diplomatic needs of Brussels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the occasion of Pope Emeritus’s passing, Mathew Schmalz argues in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> that Benedict XVI leaves a complex legacy as pope and theologian. For many observers, Benedict was known for criticizing what he considered the rejection of the modern world towards God and the timeless truths of Christianity. But as a scholar of the diversity of global Catholicism, the author considers it is best to avoid simple representations of Benedict’s theology, which will probably influence the Catholic Church for generations. Although the brilliance of this intellectual legacy will undoubtedly endure, it will also have to face the shadows of the numerous controversies that marked Benedict’s time as pope and, later, as pope emeritus. After his election, Pope Benedict XVI faced the growing scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. As a cardinal, he had publicly minimized the extent and seriousness of the crisis. Under his leadership, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided not to remove Lawrence C. Murphy from the priesthood, despite Murphy having been accused of molesting more than 200 boys in a Catholic school in Wisconsin. However, as pope, Benedict took some strong measures that his predecessor, John Paul II, had not taken. The most significant was the punishment of Marcial Maciel, an incestuous bigamist, pederast and founder of the Legionaries of Christ, an important Catholic religious order, and he withdrew his permission to preach or to say Mass publicly. He also criticized the Irish bishops for mismanagement of the sexual abuse crisis. Beyond this crisis, Benedict’s pontificate had other polemics, such as when during a conference in Regensburg in 2006, he criticized the Islamic view of God and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad, provoking protests in the Middle East and South Asia. As pope, Benedict continued his theological writings and produced three important encyclicals. The first, Deus Caritas Est, defends charity as a freely given love. Charity is not merely a good action, but an act that changes both the giver and the recipient. The second encyclical, Spe Salvi, reflects on God’s hope for human beings in a world that often seems hopeless. In the third, Caritas in Veritate, Benedict argues that charity is fundamentally related to justice. And when it comes to issues of human progress and fulfilment, we cannot place confidence in the nation state or market economies because “without God, man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is”. In short, Benedict’s writings will be relevant for a long time, but his pontificate will inevitably be associated with controversies. As for his personal legacy, it will probably be defined by the question that most concerned Benedict: how the Catholic Church can still make a difference in the modern world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fields of economy, Raghuram G. Rajan highlights in Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a> that according to many experts, the age of globalisation seems to have come to an end. The relationship between global exports of goods and services and global GDP peaked in 2008 and has since trended down. According to the World Bank, foreign direct investment peaked in 2007 with 5.3 percent of world GDP and decreased to 1.3 percent by 2020. The two main economies, China and the United States, have become increasingly hostile, trying to reduce their mutual dependence on goods and services. They are not the only ones. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, five times as many protectionist measures have been enacted around the world as opposed to liberalizing measures. And, of course, immigration remains an important issue in many countries, with nationalist parties committing themselves to closing borders to keep foreigners out. Deglobalization thus seems to be under way even though the world needs global agreements to address problems like climate change. But sometimes these agreements go too far. Globalization is above the wishes of many people when large corporations aim to achieve uniformity across the countries where they operate in. Big companies encourage governments to conclude intrusive global agreements that enforce homogeneity without the direct consent of those who will be governed by these arrangements. In the same way, within a country, the imperative of creating a national market leads to national policies that have no powers for regional and local governments. On the other hand, however, it cannot be forgotten that deglobalization has many costs, some of which are already evident. They include the increase in the cost of goods and services, since production no longer takes place in the most efficient locations, the loss of economies of scale as production breaks down, the increase in the power of domestic oligopolies as global competition is restrained, the decrease in learning since multinational corporations no longer spread best practices, and the increase in inflationary pressures as local supply-demand imbalances are no longer tempered by a global market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its editorial, the newspaper Le Monde<\/em><\/a> warns that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is facing an existential crisis. Since its creation in January 1995, the institution has contributed to an unprecedented expansion of international trade, making trade more fluid by lowering customs barriers and convergence of standards between countries. China’s accession to the organization in 2001 drastically accelerated this process of globalization, which promised greater economic prosperity and geopolitical stability for the whole world. But after a few years, the machine begins to give signs of fatigue. 2008s financial crisis, political mobilization against deindustrialization in developed countries, rise of sovereignty, defiance of the hegemony of American power by China and finally weakening of supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic\u00ad\u2014the reasons leading to questioning globalization have multiplied, threatening the WTO with obsolescence. Although the WTO’s death certificate has not yet been written, its centrality in the coordination of world trade is being widely questioned. Security and geopolitical issues now take precedence over economic interdependence. This is a dangerous slope, which risks leading to the state of the law of the strongest, at the worst. The slowdown in global growth, the widening of the inequalities between the South and the North and the agricultural and environmental challenges cannot be overcome if everyone looks only at their own interests. Beyond the fate of the WTO, global stability is at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As regards climate change and sustainability, Democracia Abierta<\/em><\/a> platform points out that Latin America has some of the most diverse countries in the world. However, its environmental wealth is undermined every year by aggressive extractive activities such as mining, deforestation, and extensive livestock farming, among other predatory activities. The authors therefore consider that in 2023 the main Latin American nations should decisively implement active policies to prevent the region from further degrading. According to a new World Bank (WB) report, climate action is urgent in the region to speed up an effective transition towards resilient and low-carbon economies. The report, entitled the Roadmap for Climate Action in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021-25<\/a>, states that climate-related disasters and phenomena such as droughts, landslides and floods, among others, will become increasingly frequent and intense, and that the region is therefore one of the most vulnerable to the destructive advancement of climate change. The WB estimates that the costs caused by these disasters in terms of infrastructure, energy and transport amount to 1% of regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and up to 2% in some Central American countries. The report, moreover, shows that by 2030, in Latin America alone, up to 5.8 million people could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the effects of climate change and that, by 2050, there would be 17 million climate-displaced. After the tepid results of COP27, it is clear that if the countries of Latin America do not create coordinated and structured climate action plans, they will not be able to alleviate a crisis that is already having irreversible effects on the destruction of the habitat of many species, including ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, The Economist<\/em><\/a> reports that sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific and South Asia are the regions most affected by the migrations caused by climate change and alerts that more and more people will be forced to leave their homes due to extreme weather events exacerbated by the rise in global temperatures, such as the devastating floods in Pakistan in August and September 2022, which displaced 33 million people. In poor countries, the accumulation of disasters eliminates resources and makes every disaster more damaging. Global warming is therefore a multiplier factor, aggravating other drivers of migration such as poverty or war conflicts. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, up to 143 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America will be internally displaced by climate factors. Contrary to statements made from the global north, the vast majority of these migrants, three out of every four, will stay within their own borders. Their home countries will therefore increasingly demand that migration is taken into account in the financing of losses and damages paid for by the rich countries most responsible for emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, regarding the new technologies, Thierry Poibeau analyses in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> the consequences of the announcement of the ChatGPT launch and states that this is a new milestone in the development of language processing technologies. It is, in any case, the first time that an AI system, a direct result of research, arouses this enthusiasm and the author analyses the reasons for this echo and why ChatGPT’s capabilities are a departure from previous text-generating technologies. He states that ChatGPT has allowed a qualitative leap: it is able to answer, often in a relevant way, almost any natural language query. GPT2, then GPT3 \u2014the previous language models developed by OpenAI\u2014 were already very good at generating text from a few words or phrases given as beginning (what is called “prompt”): we often speak of \u201cparrots\u201d (stochastic parrot), as proposed by Emily Bender, and many other critical researchers of these techniques. Indeed, it could be said that these systems produced text from bits of sentences extracted from the immense corpus within their reach. ChatGPT adopts these features, but the “chat” part adds a completely different and often impressive dimension. In parallel, OpenAI also benefits from the huge publicity that its tool brings, and from all user interactions. If a user reports that an answer is not good or asks the tool to reformulate its response by considering an additional item, the system stores this information and can reuse it to refine its response to the request or on a similar request. To return to the system itself, the chat part is therefore what makes ChatGPT’s strength and special (compared to GPT3 for example). It is no longer a ‘simple’ linguistic model capable of generating text ‘per kilometre’, but a genuine dialogue system. It has probably benefited from millions or billions of human-assessed examples, and the current phase, where hundreds of thousands of users ‘play’ with the system almost for free, allows for continuous improvement, as all interactions are recorded. However, one of the drawbacks is that ChatGPT can currently only be used online, and it is also necessary to consider what impact ChatGPT will have in the future, what applications will be derived from it, and what economic model OpenAI (and Microsoft, its main investor) is tending towards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illustration: Egor Kraft, “Content Aware Studies”.<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ada Ailin Brito, trainee student at the CETC, participated in the elaboration of this issue of Diari de les idees<\/em>.\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This new issue of Diari de les Idees, the first of this year, highlights the prospective exercises carried out for 2023 by various experts and magazines specialised in international relations. The possible electoral scenarios in Spain within a new context defined by the elimination of the crime of sedition in the Spanish Penal Code; the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo that threaten to destabilise the Balkans once again; the threats to democracy from Israel and Brazil; the complex legacy as Pope and theologian of Benedict XVI; the new paths of globalisation and the crisis of the World Trade Organisation; and,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":76607,"template":"","category_newspaper":[563],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-61671","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-563"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiari de les idees 75 – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-75\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diari de les idees 75 – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This new issue of Diari de les Idees, the first of this year, highlights the prospective exercises carried out for 2023 by various experts and magazines specialised in international relations. 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