Questões para Concursos

1 Since 1914 the structure of the world has changed. Compared to the present struggle between West and East, the rivalries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sink 4 into insignificance. Today we are faced, not with a clash of interests, but with a fight between the desire on the one hand to defend individual liberties and the resolve on the other 7 hand to impose a mass religion. In the process the old standards, conventions and methods of international negotiation have been discredited. Had it not been for the 10 invention of the atomic bomb, we should already have been subjected to a third world war. Members of the Communist bloc today are 13 convinced that sooner or later they will acquire world dominion and will succeed in imposing their faith and their authority over the whole earth. They strain towards this 16 objective with religious intensity and are prepared to devote to its achievement their lives, their comfort and their prospects of happiness. Anything that furthers their purpose 19 is “right”; anything that obstructs it is “wrong”; conventional morality, even the creation of confidence, has no part in this scheme of things. Truth itself has lost its 22 significance. Compared to the shining truth of their gospel, all minor forms of veracity are merely bourgeois inhibitions. The old diplomacy was based upon the creation of 25 confidence, the acquisition of credit. The modern diplomat must realize that he can no longer rely on the old system of trust; he must accept the fact that his antagonists will not 28 hesitate to falsify facts and that they feel no shame if their duplicity be exposed. The old currency has been withdrawn from circulation; we are dealing in a new coinage. 31 This transformation of values has been aided by a new or “democratic” conception of international relations. In the old days the conduct of foreign affairs was entrusted to a 34 small international élite who shared the same sort of background and who desired to preserve the same sort of world. Today the masses are expected to take an interest in 37 foreign affairs, to know the details of current controversies, to come to their own conclusions, and to render these conclusions effective through press and parliament. At the 40 same time, however, current issues have been rendered complex and interconnected; it is not possible to state issues, such as the Common Market, in short and simple terms. 43 Thus, whereas the man in the street is expected to have an opinion on international problems, the very complexity of these problems has rendered it difficult to provide him with 46 the information on which to base his judgment. Nicolson, H. (1963) (3rd edition) Diplomacy. Oxford: OUP, with adaptations.

1 On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence 4 within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and 7 come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an 10 individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky. 13 [...] There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who 16 takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by 19 locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three 22 trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its 25 poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but 28 the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to 31 escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each 34 embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the 37 Consolidated Edison Company. White, E.B. (1999) Here is New York. New York: The Little Book Room, with adaptations.