Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: The Twilight of Neoliberalism Page 6 of 11

The Petrochemical Age In Context

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On April 19, 2022

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If you want to do super big picture macrohistory, humans have really had three eras:

1) Hunting/gathering

2) Agriculture

3) Industrial.

To over-summarize, hunter-gatherers, with some exceptions in nutritionally dense areas were generally egalitarian. They had high childhood mortality and a fair bit of violence, but they lived longer lives than any time period before the Industrial era, and were health. In some cases we still haven’t caught up (for example, the width of hips of their women was wider than ours, and that correlates to health and easier childbith.)

Agriculture started out OK-ish for about 2,000 years, but the nature of agriculture creates private surpluses and allows for large elites. It’s easy to appropriate food and service from farmers, because they can’t move away and they can’t hide their take well (crops are harvested at known times, and about how much land produces is also known.) For the vast majority of the population, living in an agricultural civilization sucked. Yes, there were more of us, but we were sicker, died younger and more likely to have a nasty overlord. Violence decreased (though these figures are controversial), but that’s because the lords and masters don’t want other people killing.

Humans in this period were essentially domesticated, and there’s some reason to believe the process weeded out most people who naturally rebel against control. This is little different from how wolves became dogs, and just as degrading.

We know the industrial era, because we live in it, but I want to invite you take the long view: imagine it’s a 1,000 years from now. Or 5,000.

What the industrial age looks like when you zoom out is “the petrochemical age”. We figured out how to harness coal, gas and oil, added in a few other sources of energy, and became clever at hooking machines up to our power sources.

The problem is that in a period of less than 300 years we’ve burned up so many petrochems that we’re overheating the planet thru the mechanism of climate changes gases, and our population is well over the planet’s carrying capacity, leading to a crush in ecosystem diversity and the absolute number of animals, plants and insects.

Since ecosystems + climate are what make the planet habitable for humans, from the long point of view, all the industrial/petrochem era looks like is a massive orgy: a predator species which has overshot the world’s carrying capacity.

If we can’t transition to a technological way of supporting ourselves which doesn’t destroy the world’s carrying capacity, then all this period will be looked back on as is a blip: a brief period of species-wide stupidity, where we exploited technologies and powers we were too foolish and stupid to control the consequences of.

Progress isn’t automatic, and it isn’t one way. When you look at charts of health characteristics in the western world from the stone age, on, one culture stands out: Greek City States. They live longer than anyone else, they are healthier on multiple metrics, and their civilization is destroyed by the Romans, who don’t have nearly as good lives.

The same thing can happen to us. We are not sustainably transitioning to a new way of living. Even when we do some right things like electrification, we don’t build items to endure. We’re dumping valuable minerals into phones and cars and consumer goods we’ll throw out in 5 years or so, and we don’t have the resources to waste. We’ve done nothing to stop climate change. We’re over-fishing. Over 90% of the insects in multiple areas (perhaps world wide) are gone, as anyone over 50 or so can tell you. The birds are gone, too. The big animals. The wild areas. The coral reefs are dying. The Amazon is dying and now a net-emitter of carbon, not a sink.

In theory we could probably still fix this. The technology either exists or is with in sprint to do so, but it’s about more than technology: we’d have to change how we live. Give up our consumption based society; get rid of planned obsolesence and use the same items for decades. Ditch exurbs and suburbs almost entirely, and re-wild or make it so that people who want land have to live by the rule that their presence must increase biodiversity.

The changes are radical, and there is no sign of anyone in power taking them seriously. Instead we build more and more crap, pollute more and more, spew more and more gases into the atmosphere, and salivate over drilling for gas and oil in the arctic, even as we run down or pollute our aquifers.

Our technology was a test: we were given (or gave ourselves) great power, and our task was to use it to benefit ourselves in a way which was beneficial, or at least not catastrophic, for the rest of life on Earth (our ecosystem) and to not destroy a climate which is the only one human civilization has ever known.

We failed in this task, and so the Petrochemical Age is likely to just look like a blip. Perhaps a new technological civilization will arise from our ashes: but if it is to survive and prosper it will  have to do what we didn’t and give at least as much back to nature as it takes out (and rather more, to fix the damage.)

As for us, it seems unlikely most of our civilization will make it. Doubtless hi-tech enclaves will continue to exist, but ecosystem collapse, water shortages and climate change make it unlikely our civilization as a whole will survive another century. It may not even make it 50 years.

And looked at from afar, it’ll be a 4 century mistake, in which some people lived very well, but the near permanent ability of Earth to support life was damaged, making every future human poorer in a very real sense.

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March of De-Dollarization: Russia Selling In Rubles

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On March 24, 2022

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So, as many readers will have heard, Russia has said it will only accept rubles in exchange for its exports to “hostile nations” — which is to say, those nations who have sanctioned it over Ukraine.

The main thing to understand is that the West froze hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian reserves on account in the West. They sold us stuff for Euros and dollars and we will now not let them use those dollars or Euros. Sanctions mean that even the dollars and euros they have cannot buy many, perhaps most things, in most Western countries and Japan.

So selling us anything in dollars and euros doesn’t make much sense: they can’t use them without exchanging them for other currencies, and our sanctions make that difficult, since they’re closed out from our banking system.

Thus, rubles. An additional advantage of this is that it increases the value of the ruble, which had collapsed under sanctions.

In order to buy Russian oil and gas, Europeans will have to get rubles. Russians are unlikely to want a lot of euros or dollars because they’re almost impossible to spend, so Europe will probably have to buy Yuan and Rupees, then trade those currencies for Rubles. Paying with gold isn’t really practical, because it would have to be physically shipped to Russia or on account with a country they trust (China, India, a few others). Obviously gold in Western banks is not safe.

Russia’s main exports are oil, gas, wheat and minerals. There are usually other sources, but without Russia there aren’t enough to satisfy world demand. Sanctions on Russia, because they are such a big wheat exporter, may wind up killing a few million people in the global South, more than will be killed in the war.

From the point of view of the West, this is a continuation of de-dollarization. If Saudi Arabia also sells oil to China in Yuan, it will be a big deal. Prices are still set in dollars, but I expect that may end fairly soon.

Payment systems are being set up, and the world will split into two different trade areas. China wants another five to ten years before the big (inevitable) split with the West, they may or may not get it, but if they have any sense they won’t allow Russia to be choked out. They certainly aren’t going to cooperate with US sanctions, and that means they need to cleanly separate their financial system from ours, so that funds can’t be seized in transit, executives can’t be locked up and so on.

The Russians didn’t expect this, they were taken by surprise. Probably because, in fact, it’s a weapon that can only be used against a country like Russia (as opposed to Venezuela or Iran or Afghanistan), once. No one outside the West can now trust the West’s system, and everyone with sense will want their reserves kept elsewhere.

This is mostly a good thing, the West has terribly abused its currency primary to hurt other nations, even before the abuse of sanctions which largely accelerated under Clinton. Control of dollars was part of the arsenal used to keep the South poor and the US in control. China was able to get around this because of American greed and stupidity, and now that it has, it has a veto. Since Russia being taken out will lead it to be surrounded by enemies, it is going to use that veto. Again, Russia cannot be choked out by financial and economic sanctions if China does not permit.

I have been writing about this for almost 20 years now, it was clear it would happen eventually but exactly when and how were unclear. For a few years I’ve been saying we were moving to a Cold War world, and we are.

The difference is that unlike in 1950 or 2000, the West is not clearly stronger than the coalition against it. The USSR was always weaker economically, and though for much of the 50s and 60s they had higher growth (something forgotten today), in retrospect and for some of the smarter people at the time, the outcome was never in doubt, it just needed to be managed so it didn’t turn into World War 3.

This time the outcome is in doubt, and I think the smart money would bet slightly against the West, maybe 3/2. The wild card is climate change, which will hit China very hard, but could also do great damage to Europe and America.

Putin was foolish to get into this situation, reserves should have been withdrawn, but this is a smart move. It’s also going to hurt Europe a lot and damage German industry, whose costs will skyrocket (I have little sympathy, given that Germany has used the Euro to basically de-industrialize most of the rest of the EU.)

The post-American hegemony world isn’t quite here, but it’s being born. Welcome to the Age of War and Revolution and the Twilight of the Neoliberalism.

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Three Lessons from the Melian Dialogue Which Apply Today

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On March 14, 2022

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In the Melian dialogue, the Athenians have sent a military force to the city of Melos. The Athenians urge the Melians to submit. If they don’t, the men will be killed, the children and women taken for slaves. The Athenians say, “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”

In other words, “Take the deal, or you’ll get even worse.”

This is, in essence, what Putin said to Ukraine, and Ukraine, like the Melians, refused. It is at the heart of most of US interactions with “enemy” nations since WWII, and especially since the end of the Cold War. Even if they didn’t promise destruction, enemies were told, “Resist, and we’ll destroy your economy with sanctions, and millions will suffer or die.”

There are two corollaries to this, however. The first is pointed out by the Melians:

But do you not recognise another danger? For, once more, since you drive us from the plea of justice and press upon us your doctrine of expediency, we must show you what is for our interest, and, if it be for yours also, may hope to convince you: Will you not be making enemies of all who are now neutrals? When they see how you are treating us they will expect you some day to turn against them; and if so, are you not strengthening the enemies whom you already have, and bringing upon you others who, if they could help, would never dream of being your enemies at all?

This is what the US did to many countries — these countries may not have declared their enmity, but they do not consider the US a friend. They view the US as a threat, and when the day comes that they can get their revenge, they will do so.

It is at the heart of what is happening in Europe: Rearmament. By using his military, Putin has convinced other nations, especially Germany, to rearm.

But there is a third side, mentioned by neither the Melians nor the Athenians.

“If the powerful can do this, if I do not do it, I am not powerful.”

A great deal of why Russia is doing what it is, and why it created all the little semi-states around itself, was in reaction to the US. “If the US can violate international law, create Kosovo, and go to war with other nations who are weaker than it, if we don’t, we admit we are not powerful.”

Powerful nations can violate international law. If Russia does not violate international law in the same ways as the US and its favored vassal states does, then Russia is admitting it is weak.

The massive sanctions response is a test. Is the West still strong enough to largely limit massive violations of international law to itself and its vassals, or is Russia capable of withstanding those sanctions, and therefore one of the strong?

This question has yet to be answered. It will take time. In large part, as I have pointed out repeatedly, it depends on China. Probably Russia isn’t strong enough; but China + Russia are.

And notice the key allies who are sitting this out: Israel, three of the four Gulf states, the Saudis, and to a large extent, Turkey.

“There is no difference to us between Ukraine and Iraq or various other violations of international law. We aren’t your allies because we are your friends.”

Meanwhile, the US is asking China, their declared enemy for the past twelve years or so, to undercut Russia, because the real question isn’t about Russia, it is about China.

“The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must.” Who are the strong in our world?

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What Is Our Plan C if Sanctions and the Guerilla Trap Don’t Take Out Russia?

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On March 11, 2022

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First: To my knowledge, sanctions have never lead to regime change. They didn’t in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, or anywhere else — not even North Korea and Cuba, which are still under some seriously savage sanctions.

Second: The targeted country’s leadership can still have pretty much whatever they want, it’s the population which suffers.

Third: While, in most ways, Russia is weaker than the USSR, it has a food surplus, while the Soviets always struggled. You can’t starve them out. It also has a fairly decent medical industry and access to Chinese and Indian medicines. Also, if sanctions continue, they will break our IP.

Fourth: The USSR didn’t have the largest industrial nation in the world as its ally (that would be China, not the US).

Fifth: China and Russia are synergistic. What China needs (food (desperately), oil, and minerals), Russia has. What Russia needs (consumer goods, medium to high-ish tech), China has. Plus, for China, having Russia as an ally mitigates the whole “US Navy cutting off supplies at the Straits of Hormuz” situation that every Chinese leader since Deng has stayed up nights worrying about.

Sixth: The logical response for Russia and China is to link their payments systems and to create an alternate monetary system. Because the West has repeatedly stolen billions of dollars from countries foolish enough to keep them on reserve in the West and then get on the West’s bad side, a lot of nations will move over to that system. Honestly, I’d trust China more than I would trust US not to steal my reserves, at this point.

Nobody seems to be thinking this forward. If sanctions don’t take out Russia and force it to collapse and/or have a government we like, what are we going to do next?

And as sanctions have never taken out a government, what’s our plan? Right now, it seems like the only alternative is to have a long guerilla war in Ukraine and bleed Russia dry. This strategy might work, though the human cost will be monstrous. (But then, why would the West care? We’re fighting to the last Ukrainian, after all.)

But if sanctions don’t work, and the guerilla trap doesn’t, what’s our Plan C? It’s particularly important because these sanctions are going to do a lot of damage to ourselves including, very likely, destroying the IP system that makes our rich so rich. (I, personally, look forward to Russia, and later China, breaking our IP system, but I don’t imagine high tech firms and/or Disney are as thrilled.)

Again, what’s our Plan C?

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What the West and Russia Want in Ukraine & the “Good” Result for Ukraine

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On February 28, 2022

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There’s a lot of nonsense going around, including talk of Russia losing the war because, less than five days into the war, they haven’t conquered Ukraine.

The German blitz of Poland took five weeks. The conquest of France took six weeks — and people were astonished. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe except for Russia itself.

The sources I respect say that Russia is taking losses, but the war is not in question, and they are advancing about as fast as the US did into Iraq. Russia will win the war, though they may take more damage than they expected (but as we have no idea what they expected, who knows?). Ukraine is a modern equipped army; it isn’t Iraq with obsolete equipment, or Libya, or Afghanistan.

The question is not whether Russia wins the war, it is who wins the peace.

What the US and Europe want is to turn Ukraine into a guerilla quagmire, like Afghanistan in the 80s, or like Iraq and Afghanistan were for the US.

What Russia wants is to turn Ukraine into a guaranteed neutral state and withdraw its troops out of the country, minus Donbas and Luhansk.

The good result for the Ukraine, which most Westerners don’t seem to get, is what the Russians want. Austria was neutral in the Cold War, and that was not horrid. A multi-year guerilla campaign will devastate Ukraine in ways that will take generations from which to recover, because if the Russians have to fight an insurgency, they will be utterly brutal, as they were in Chechnya (successfully).

Moralist yapping about “the right to choose” is off the board. The only good result for Ukraine and Ukrainians is a negotiated settlement. The West egged them on and left them to swing, as the smart people said they would.

This video, predicting this situation in 2015, is pretty much required watching.

As for the economic consequences for Russia due to sanctions, it depends on what they are. If they are stopped from selling oil, natural gas, and wheat to the West, that will hurt. Sanctions less severe than that will be painful, but not crippling.

The problem here is China. For the last six years or so, the US has declared that China is an enemy. They used sanctions to cripple the most important tech company in China, Huawei, and have slapped sanctions and tariffs on China.

Chinese leadership sees a confrontation with the US as inevitable. They had hoped to keep good relations with Europe, but European countries have bowed to US pressure to shut out Huawei based on jingoistic claims that “they’ll spy on you,” which is hilarious. “Instead of us being able to see all your info, the Chinese will!”

China needs Russia’s resources: oil, wheat, and minerals. They know that they can be cut off from most other sources, but because of geography, and because Russia needs China, Russia is a safe supplier. In turn, China can let Russia into their SWIFT equivalent, finance them, and sell that almost every manufactured good they need, with a few exceptions (primarily semiconductor based, but China’s working on that).

Further, to let Russia fall would mean that China would be encircled. The CCP isn’t that stupid.

Basically, the West wants to use sanctions to “choke out” Russia, but China believes the West will then want to use sanctions to choke them out. If they let Russia go down, they’re next (they’re next either way, really, but they can have a major ally or not).

What the US has succeeded in doing is making Europe choose to turn their back not just on Russia, but, inevitably, on China as well.

This is a strong cold war coalition (Cold War is our future, as I have been saying for about four years now), but notice that it is not as strong as the previous cold war, because China is now the primary manufacturing power and the most populous nation, not the US.

Most of Africa, the Middle East, and South America is staying out of this. Even India refused to vote against Russia in the Security Council. Three of the four gulf states refused to vote against Russia, and, in the UN general assembly, the West is struggling to get 50 percent to vote against Russia.

In the West, we have a huge propaganda bubble going on — “Russia is the worst ever, blah, blah, blah.” What they have done is certainly a crime, but no one outside the bubble can take American and European whinging seriously; they remember Iraq, and Libya, and know that the US still occupies Syrian oil fields, while US ally Saudi Arabia bombs the hell out of Yemen, and Israel has annexed land from neighbouring states (supposedly Russia’s great crime).

Russia has done something bad, but this is not about morality. It is about power. Only the US and its allies are supposed to be able to do what Russia is doing, and people outside the Western bubble recognize this hypocrisy.

The Chinese Embassy in Russia tweeted this:

Indians I follow are noting that Russia has been a firm friend to India since independence, and that the US and Europe have not been.

So the question here is whether or not Russia gets drawn into a guerilla quagmire. If it doesn’t, the question then becomes: How hard will the sanctions hit? In the medium to long term, this leads down the road to two separate economic and political regions and a new cold war, as I have been stating for years.

Despite the hysteria, nothing here is surprising. Russia asked for Ukraine as neutral and security guarantees, and didn’t get them. So they invaded, exactly as I wrote (in advance) was likely. Measheimer predicted this in 2015 (video above), and George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War containment policy, noted that NATO expansion would lead to this back in the 90s.

Russia is not Iraq. It is not Iran. It is not Venezuela. It is not Libya. It cannot be treated as minor state who can be choked out by the West at the West’s whim, especially not when the US has been stupid enough to tell China it is also an enemy.

Even in realpolitik terms, telling both Russia and China they are your enemy, at the same time, is breathtakingly stupid.

If you want the best for Ukraine, hope they negotiate soon. The longer they wait, the weaker their negotiating position. The best case for Ukraine is now (as it was three months ago) an Austrian-style neutrality agreement. There will be overflights and inspections, but that’s just how it’s going to be.

The world, outside the West and some of its closest allies, is not in hysteria about this. They recognize it’s aggressive war, but they do not see that what Russia has done is worse than American and European behavior over the last 20 years. Indeed, at least so far, and unless the US gets its wish for a guerilla quagmire, this is not nearly as bad as Iraq.

So relax and take a deep breath. This is bad, and there is a tiny chance of a miscalculation that will kill us all in nuclear armageddon. But, mostly, this is just geopolitics playing out as anyone with sense knew it would. The US has split Europe from Russia — and soon China and Russia will be strong allies, and a new cold war will occur, though how soon this will be crystal clear to everyone is, well, unclear.

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Democracy Cannot Survive Hegemonic Capitalism

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On February 8, 2022

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The history of capitalism and democracy shows that we need to choose one or the other. The problem is that capitalism concentrates power in the hands of a few people who aren’t chosen through democratic means. Capitalism requires those people to pursue unlimited profit, because those who don’t lose their power to those who do.

When they have that power, they then buy government, because government is both the main threat to them, and the force which by which, through use of law and means like central banks bailing them out, they can keep themselves obscenely rich — even when markets would otherwise cause them to lose their money and thus their power.

The history from the Great Depression onwards is instructive. Capitalism caused a huge, nearly worldwide, depression. Government did not bail them out, and so they lost their power. FDR came to power, and more or less following Keynes’s prescriptions, he bailed them out. He and the people working with him put in place multiple protections to make sure that capitalism couldn’t cause such a crisis again.

Capitalists hated him for it. He had rescued them, but with the cost of 90 percent top marginal tax rates, huge estate taxes, regulation and aggressive anti-trust laws. Upon his death (little could be done while he was alive, as he was so popular), they immediately started attacking all the protections he had put in place. It took them decades, but they stuck to it, and after all, even in their reduced state, they were still powerful and could afford to pay people to spend their lives working against the New Deal.

The foremost intellectual servant of these men was Milton Friedman, but many, many labored in this cause. They built a political, economic, and intellectual infrastructure and waited for their opportunity. With the oil crises, inflation, and unemployment of the 70s, they had their chance. They made sure that an egalitarian model for dealing with the crisis wouldn’t work, and they got Thatcher and Reagan elected. Then, they dismantled the New Deal and all the protections against another economic catastrophe like the Great Depression.

This allowed them to vastly consolidate wealth, pushing power into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Antitrust law was gutted, unions cut to ribbons, and regulations which protected against them were destroyed, while new ones were put in place to ensure the concentration of wealth and power.

A small example of this was given to me by an accountant, who in the 70s used to do the taxes for Indian bands. When Reagan took over, the regulations were changed so that only large companies were allowed in the business and he was frozen out. This sort of thing happened everywhere, and, indeed, continues to this day.

But, alas, the capitalists weren’t stupid, and they knew that market concentration and removal of protections against bubbles meant that one day there might be another great crisis.

So they bought up economics lock, stock and barrel and paid economists like Bernanke to figure out how to make sure they’d never lose their wealth (and thus power) in a great market collapse again. Bernanke’s academic ouvre was described to me by Stirling Newberry, back around 2005, as “how to make sure another 1929 doesn’t lead to another FDR.”

They got him into the Federal Reserve, and people like him into other central banks, and when the Financial crisis of 2007/8 happened, the Fed bailed out the rich. Without the Federal Reserve, most of them would have lost everything, but the Fed alone effectively printed and gave them 20 trillion dollars, accepted their worthless securities at near face value for loans, and so on.

Meanwhile, largely under Obama, the crimes they had committed (and there was fraud all the way down, I doubt a single senior executive on Wall Street hadn’t engaged in red-letter fraud), were forgiven in exchange for fines that were less than the amount of money they had individual earned.

Power and money consolidated even further, and the “another-FDR moment” was avoided.

Since then, they have seized further and further control and increased their wealth and power even more. Citizen’s United, which allowed unlimited money into elections was probably the red line moment, but really, once the full-faith and money-printing ability of government was behind the rich, ensuring they could never lose power as a class, it was over.

The important thing to understand is that this structural. If capitalism is hegemonic (that is, dictates how most economic decisions are made and how power is parceled out), then this pattern repeats. FDR made the best effort in the history of capitalism to stop it form happening again, and he failed, buying only a few decades of relative egalitarianism and control of democratically-elected government over business rather than business over government.

There can be no peace between democracy and capitalism. They are in direct opposition to each other. Democracy requires egalitarianism to work, and capitalism requires money and power to be concentrated in a few hands.

We can have democracy, or we can have capitalism and we need to stop pretending that democracy can control capitalism sufficiently to stop it from doing vast damage. Indeed, the terrible timing of having capitalists take over democracy in the core industrial nations just as action on climate change and ecological collapse became necessary will cause billions of lives, and wipe out about half of all known species on Earth.

Because democracy also failed, democracy is now on the firing line. As things get worse (and they will get MUCH worse), every political arrangement and ideology which failed to deal with climate and ecology will be discredited.

Either democracy blames capitalism and kills capitalism, finding a new way to organize the economy, or democracy is likely to die with capitalism. And it will deserve to do so.

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The Ukraine Crisis Is Speeding Up Arrival of Cold War

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On February 4, 2022

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So, Biden has warned that other countries should not help Russia evade Ukraine-based sanctions.

Meanwhile, China’s Xi has backed Russia on its “no NATO expansion” demand and received support in return:

In the joint statement released by the Kremlin, Putin and Xi called on NATO to rule out expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia-Pacific region, and criticised the Aukus trilateral security pact between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.

I don’t expect Russia to invade, but what it can and will probably do is recognize the breakaway regions in the Ukraine, Donbass and Luhansk, and help them enforce their borders.

This will trigger sanctions, including personal sanctions against Putin. China will, indeed, help Russia “evade” the sanctions, and China, Russia, and other states will move forward with their own payments area.

Trade will become more difficult, so will travel, and another huge step towards the on-rushing Cold War will occur.

This isn’t rocket surgery, the US is moving hard towards “containment” of Russia & China, and those countries recognize that they have interests in common. Because neither of them can make a separate peace — the US won’t allow that. The US effectively won’t negotiate with Russia at all (saying no to everything the Russians have asked for isn’t negotiation), so they may as well continue preparing for what they know is coming.

As I discussed at length elsewhere, I don’t see this Cold War ending as favorably for the US as the last one did, for the simple reason that the US has already shipped the majority of its industrial core to China.

This is certainly the stupidest world. American elites, backed by European subject states (they all are), don’t seem to get that it isn’t 1947 or 1991. They no longer control the world’s most important economies, and their states are dysfunctional, incapable of even handling a pandemic, let alone rallying the necessary social support to win a two-generation economic war while in the midst of ecological collapse, climate change, and with a huge proportion of their populations suffering from health problems due to Long Covid, as well as a pandemic that goes on and on.

China and Russia combined are stronger than the USSR was, and the US and Europe are weaker than they were during the Cold War.

This won’t end well.

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The Ukraine Crisis Is Just a Chance to Acknowledge Choices Already Made

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On January 28, 2022

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I read two fairly good articles this week. One, in Foreign Affairs, makes out the maximalist Russian case:

Putin also believes that Russia has an absolute right to a sphere of privileged interests in the post-Soviet space. This means its former Soviet neighbors should not join any alliances that are deemed hostile to Moscow, particularly NATO or the European Union. Putin has made this demand clear in the two treaties proposed by the Kremlin on December 17, which require that Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries — as well as Sweden and Finland — commit to permanent neutrality and eschew seeking NATO membership. NATO would also have to retreat to its 1997 military posture, before its first enlargement, by removing all troops and equipment in central and eastern Europe. (This would reduce NATO’s military presence to what it was when the Soviet Union disintegrated.) Russia would also have veto power over the foreign policy choices of its non-NATO neighbors. This would ensure that pro-Russian governments are in power in countries bordering Russia — including, foremost, Ukraine.

This is, of course, the maximalist Russian position, but it is very tiresome to have it presented as “take it or leave it.” What it is, is a negotiating position. In negotiations, one traditionally asks for more than one expects to get. But Washington has responded to this negotiating position by refusing everything. Every single thing.

The Time article, written by someone who remembers Russia in the 90s, and thus knows it could have been a Western ally, sketches out what a negotiated settlement would look like:

There are three possible elements to a compromise with Russia, two of which the West has in effect already conceded. The first is either a treaty of neutrality or a moratorium of ten or 20 years on Ukrainian membership of NATO. The West loses nothing by this, as it is clear that Ukraine cannot, in fact, join NATO with its conflicts with Russia unresolved. In any case, the U.S. and NATO have made it absolutely clear that they cannot and will not defend Ukraine by force.

The second element is a return to the (Adapted) Conventional Forces in Europe Agreement limiting NATO forces in eastern Europe and Russian forces in contiguous territories. And the third is internationally-guaranteed autonomy for a demilitarized Donbas within Ukraine, according to the Minsk II agreement of 2015 brokered by Germany and France but since, in effect, rejected by Ukraine.

Failing at least initial moves towards such a compromise, it does indeed look likely that there will be some form of new Russian attack on Ukraine, though by no means necessarily a large-scale invasion.

Putin isn’t insane, and he doesn’t expect to get everything he wants. But he is old, like me, and the three of us –me, Putin, and the Time writer — remember that George Bush Sr. promised NATO wouldn’t expand past a reunited Germany.

So much for Negotiation 101. Let’s move on to the world model. I think this is somewhat accurate (from the Foreign Affairs article).

The modern Kremlin’s interpretation of sovereignty has notable parallels to that of the Soviet Union’s. It holds, to paraphrase George Orwell, that some states are more sovereign than others. Putin has said that only a few great powers — Russia, China, India, and the United States — enjoy absolute sovereignty, free to choose which alliances they join or reject. Smaller countries, such as Ukraine or Georgia, are not fully sovereign and must respect Russia’s strictures, just as Central America and South America, according to Putin, must heed their large, northern neighbor

Now, here’s the thing: I’m Canadian.

So I KNOW that Canada is not a fully sovereign nation. When the US really gets serious about cracking the whip, we buckle, because we have a population one-tenth of that of the US, and a much smaller military and economy, and Americans are savage warmongers who have invaded or hurt the nations around them (and nowhere near them) hundreds of times in the past couple hundred years.

No South American or Central American nation is under any illusion they have full sovereignty. They don’t. The US is clear about it, too, from its actions and words. Hell, the US is currently holding on to 90 billion dollars it stole from Afghanistan as Afghans starve, nowhere near the US. The US is holding Venezuelan assets, and seizes other countries merchant ships on the high seas, then sells the contents if it feels like.

The US is a fully sovereign nation. No nation in Central or South America is. I would say that no one in Europe is, either, given that Europe is still an American protectorate (if barely). The EU could be a fully sovereign nation if it ever chooses to grow up and accept responsibility, but it isn’t now, though it’s more sovereign than anyone other than the US, China, and maybe Russia. (India might be fully sovereign, I suppose, but I don’t consider them a true Great Power yet.)

Is this “how it should be?” I’d say no. I’d prefer a world full of fully-sovereign nations. I don’t like being under the American boot, personally, and I’m not interested in trading that for some other taste of boot leather.

But this is the way the world is, and US foreign policy “professionals” refuse to admit it, while Putin is clear.

All that is being argued about here is whether almost everyone will be under the US boot, or whether or not there will be three boots: China, Russia, and the US — with perhaps the EU putting on some nice German black leather boots itself, if it ever decides to take responsibility for itself again, and the rest of the EU decides that they’re okay with even more German rule, eased a bit by the French.

The Foreign Affairs author understands this:

Weakening the transatlantic alliance could pave the way for Putin to realize his ultimate aim: Jettisoning the post–Cold War, liberal, rules-based international order promoted by Europe, Japan, and the United States in favor of one more amenable to Russia. For Moscow, this new system might resemble the nineteenth-century concert of powers. It could also turn into a new incarnation of the Yalta system, where Russia, the United States, and now China divide the world into tripolar spheres of influence. Moscow’s growing rapprochement with Beijing has, indeed, reinforced Russia’s call for a post-West order. Both Russia and China demand a new system in which they exercise more influence in a multipolar world.

The nineteenth- and twentieth-century systems both recognized certain rules of the game. After all, during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union mostly respected each other’s spheres of influence. The two most dangerous crises of that era — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1958 Berlin ultimatum and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis — were defused before military conflict broke out. But if the present is any indication, it looks as if Putin’s post-West “order” would be a disordered Hobbesian world with few rules of the game.

But every time I see “rules-based international order,” I reach for my gun, because I know what that means is the US seizing ships and invading countries and slamming everyone in sight with financial sanctions while fomenting fake revolutions and engaging in coups. Oh, other countries have been bad actors too, but really the “rules-based international order” means “there’s only one superpower.”

So yes, Putin, and for that matter Xi, want a multipolar great-power world. So does Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Libya, and most African countries. (Though I suppose Putin might acknowledge the US right to crush Venezuela given his own rights are respected.)

BUT, this is the maximal position. The US “rules-based international order” is doomed. That’s simply a fact; the US is no longer powerful enough to support it. You can’t have that after you’ve given up your position as the primary manufacturing state to another country. It’s impossible. Britain didn’t keep it, and neither will the US — the only question is how many hundreds of millions of people will die creating the international order.

If the US wanted a fair world order, truly, then it would have to actually acknowledge and genuinely respect the autonomy of other states. But Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezeula, Iran, and, yes, Russia, among many others indicate it doesn’t. If it did, the US would have vast numbers of allies.

But that order wouldn’t be the “rules-based international order” of today. You wouldn’t be able to unilaterally cut nations out of the payment systems and invade other countries with the acquiescence of only a few core European allies.

So what’s being argued over isn’t about a choice between a “good system” versus a “bad system,” despite the author’s mutterings about Hobbesianism, but a choice between two bad systems.

And in that case, it’s just a question of the power of those who want to keep the status quo and those who want the new state. And in that case, it’s not clear that the US can keep its precious privilege to hurt everyone else because it’s the only real great power. If you want to the only hegemonic state, you have to have the power and enough lackeys who are willing to fight with you.

If the US does, and is willing to fight, then maybe it can keep its order.

But I doubt it, again for the simple reason that US primacy was based on economic primacy, and the US doesn’t have that any more. (Their military primacy, since the Industrial Revolution, has been based on industrial primacy.)

Given that US elites decided to give China their industrial core in exchange for a few pieces of silver (so they could kick the shit out of the poor and the middle class internally), they’ve already made their choice. They got their money and their internal supremacy. The price is going to be their international primacy.

That was always the price. US international primacy was based on power and benefit-sharing at home. When US elites decided that they’d rather be oligarchs, they decided they’d also rather not rule the world.

Putin and Xi are just pointing out the consequences of decisions already made.

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