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INGLÊS
(discursiva) - apenas para Relações Internacionais
Prova realizada no dia 25/11//2003
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PEACE,
DEMOCRACY, AND FREE MARKETS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The events of September 11 qualify as the most spectacular, riveting,
grim, costly, and searing acts of terrorism in history.
The shock of the attacks into the twin towers of the World Trade Center,
in New York City, and the Pentagon, in Washington,
D.C. reverberated around the United States and throughout the world. In
their aftermath, September 11 was widely said to
have been a historical watershed, a moment when the assumptions that had
governed the way the world conducted its affairs
were abruptly swept away.
In fact, the attacks did not usher in a new world. Instead, they illuminated
the main features of the world that already existed,
a world that had emerged in its full form a decade earlier but has been
two centuries in the making. It is a world dominated
by three major ideas: peace as the preferred basis for relations among
countries; democracy as the optimal way to organize
political life within them; and the free market as the indispensable vehicle
for producing wealth.
Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value
most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for
tall buildings, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were certainly
monumental. The institution that they symbolized, and
to which it was dedicated, was the free market, the central activity of
which is trade. The planets dominant method for
organizing economic activity, the market, did in fact occupy an exalted
place in American society.
The market enjoyed a commanding position outside the United States as
well and the September 11 attack also symbolized
its global status. The destroyed buildings were named not simply for trade
but for world trade. People from more than eighty
different countries died in the fires and the collapse and most of them,
moreover, worked for firms concerned with one aspect
or another of finance.
The World Trade Center was thus symbolic of the network of commercial
and financial exchanges that by the year 2001 had
spread all over the planet. In choosing it as their target the terrorists
perversely dramatized the supremacy of the free market
and of the political system intimately associated with it in the United
States and elsewhere, democracy, as defining features
of the world of the twenty-first century.
The attacks on Washington and New York were acts of war, and the war they
inaugurated, the American war against terrorism,
became the first war of the new century. The events of September 11 triggered
a campaign against the attackers, with the
American government mobilized for military action. The government dispatched
forces to Afghanistan to root out the terrorists
based there and to overthrow and replace the government that harbored
them.
Yet the war against terrorism was unlike any of the other great wars of
modern history. The previous wars pitted mighty
sovereign states against one another, all of them seeking the control
of territory. They were waged by vast armies, which
clashed in great battles in which the fate of great nations and huge empires
hung in the balance.
By these standards the war against terrorism scarcely qualified as a war
at all. The United States conducted a campaign of
aerial bombardment and modest mopping-up operations on the ground in Afghanistan.
To wage this war, the aim of which
was to protect their citizens against terrorists attacks, the United States
and other countries relied less on their armed forces
than on their intelligence services, local law enforcement agencies, border
guards, and customs and immigrants officials, as
well as on their public health systems. The Pentagon was not the only
nerve center of the American campaign against terrorism.
The attacks thus illustrated another defining feature of the world of
the twenty-first century: the transformation, or at least the
dramatic devaluation of war the age-old practice that, for the
first two centuries of the modern age, did more to shape
international relations than any other.
Adapted from
The ideas that conquered the world
by Michael Mandelbaum, 2003
Questão 01
O autor propõe uma nova interpretação para os
ataques de 11 de setembro. Qual é esta proposta e quais os argumentos
que
ele usa para justificá-la?
R: O autor reconhece
que os eventos de 11 de setembro foram vistos por muitos como um divisor
de águas na história mundial e como a causa de mudanças
repentinas na condução de questões internacionais.
Contudo, ele discorda desta visão e propõe a seguinte interpretação:
os ataques às torres do World Trade Center e ao Pentágono
serviram apenas para enfatizar uma situação que se formou
ao longo de dois séculos e emergiu plenamente na última
década, num mundo dominado por três idéias principais:
a paz como base para as relações internacionais; a democracia
como organização da política interna de cada país
e o mercado livre como meio indispensável para a produção
de riqueza.
Questões: 01
| 02 | 03 | demais
provas
Questão
02
Segundo o texto, quais as razões que levaram os
terroristas a escolher o World Trade Center como alvo do ataque de 11
de
setembro?
R: As monumentais torres gêmeas
do World Trade Center eram o símbolo maior de transações
financeiras e do mercado livre, identificado sobremaneira com a sociedade
americana. Além disso, como o próprio nome world
indicava, aqueles edifícios se destinavam ao comércio mundial,
abrigando firmas ligadas ao mundo financeiro internacional e funcionários
oriundos de mais de oitenta países, o que conferia status
global ao ataque de 11 de setembro. Ao escolherem como alvo as torres
sediadas em Nova York, os terroristas marcaram de modo perverso os traços
determinantes do mundo no século vinte e um: a supremacia do mercado
livre, como método dominante da organização econômica
mundial, e a democracia como sistema político intimamente associado
a ele.
Questões: 01
| 02 | 03 | demais
provas
Questão 03
Quais as diferenças apontadas pelo autor entre as guerras da história
moderna e a guerra americana contra o terrorismo?
R: Os ataques a Washington
e a Nova York foram atos que inauguraram a guerra americana contra o terrorismo.
Diferente de qualquer outra guerra convencional da história moderna,
que previa o embate de exércitos pertencentes a estados soberanos
e poderosos em luta pelo controle de territórios, a guerra contra
o terrorismo mal pode ser definida como tal. Para promover esta nova modalidade
de guerra, cujo objetivo era proteger seus cidadãos contra ataques
terroristas, os Estados Unidos, assim como outros países, preferiram
utilizar-se menos de seus exércitos e mais de serviços de
inteligência, de saúde pública, de polícias
locais, de fronteira, de imigração e de alfândega.
Em suma, o Pentágono não foi o centro nervoso da campanha
americana contra o terrorismo.
Os ataques às torres mostraram, portanto, mais um traço
característico do mundo no século XXI: a transformação,
ou, quem sabe, a desvalorização da guerra tradicional, que
moldou de modo preponderante as relações internacionais
nos primeiros séculos da idade moderna.
Questões: 01 | 02
| 03 | demais
provas
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