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Disarming Ukraine – Day 7
The crisis, and especially the reaction of the 'west' to it, is much worse than I had feared.
The U.S. government and 'western' media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe 'the world' solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The view differs when you zoom out.
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The much bigger 'rest of the world' has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore.
This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and 'partners' like Turkey (Nato's second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished.
Since 2014 the war in east Ukraine against the people of the Donbas regions has cost more than 14,000 lives. Some 10,000 of those were civilians on the Donbas side. The dying there continues as the Ukrainian army and its nazi battalions continue to shell the cities of Donetzk and Luhansk:
At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
"The real toll is likely to be much higher," Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), told a briefing, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Over the last days I also read several commentators claiming that that the Russian 'regime change' incursion into Ukraine would not have the support of the Russian people and would set them up against their president. Here is news for them:
Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov – 19:14 UTC · Mar 1, 2022
Meanwhile #Putin's approval rating has raised from 60% to 71% (survey by FOM)
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The sanctions put up against Russia will hurt its people. But due to global price increases they will be probably felt stronger in Europe and the United States and they may even cause mass starvation and revolutions in poorer countries of the 'third world'.
Mark Sleboda has served as nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. He has studied at the London School of Economics. He has married a woman from Crimea and now lives in Moscow as a Russian citizen. He is a frequent commentator in Russian media. Sleboda has previously criticized president Putin for being too soft with the 'west'.
His analyses and predictions are more dire than mine but he is probably right (thread edited for readability):
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 – 8:53 UTC · Mar 2, 2022
This is #theGreatDecoupling between the West and Russia. Economic linkages will be cut down to only energy and a few other commodities & chemicals that Europe is dependent on Russia for. The West controls and has weaponized their entire economy in their war to break Russia.
Political, social and cultural linkages will also be severed to a high degree. Weaning Russia off this dependence will be hard and immiserating. But with Chinese and some other Eurasian support, Russia may just weather it. The entire global economy will suffer as well.
But once the dust has settled and new domestic and import substitution formed – Russia will at least be economically & financially independent from the West. They will never again be able to weaponize their economic hegemony to coerce, blackmail, or wage war on Russia.
The same weaponized economic war too will also soon be turned on China and the Rest of the world's holdouts from US-led Western Hegemony. The Unipolar world will truly be over, but the Multipolar world will be stillborn by US attempts to hang on to their hegemony. Instead US/Western pressure will directly result in the formation of an anti-Western bloc led by China and Russia for survival and independence. Neutrality will be difficult to maintain. A new Bipolar world is coming into being, just decades after the last ended.
The Golden Age of the Global Internet is also now over resulting not from Russia closing itself off, but by censorship and exclusion by Western and the social media platforms and the internet fixtures they control – because they don't trust their own people to hear alternative perspectives and narratives and judge on their own. The world's internet will now break down into regional spheres with limited connectivity. It will be a new, much smaller, less connected, more localized and divisive world.
We are of course already seeing the physical connections around the world break down – with closures of entire swathes of the globe's surface to each others' airlines and global shipping connections being severed one by one as we speak. Global distribution networks will be disrupted & chaos result for months. Because Russia & Ukraine are primary sources of so many of the world's commodities – energy & food costs around the world will skyrocket. In the First world prices will go up, in the Third – starvation.
Ultimately the cause was the US-led West trying to maintain and extend their Hegemony, while they can and Russia resisting it. NATO expansion east in waves, US meddling and hybrid warfare to bring into power pro-Western/anti-Russian governments in formerly neutral, unaligned, national identity-divided post Soviet states was the endgame of this NATO expansion to geopolitically consolidate all of Europe under US-led Western Hegemony up to Russia's borders.
Russia resisted this geopolitical flipping by color revolution in Georgia, Belarus & Ukraine. And now the ultimate target of this economic war on Russia is forcing regime change in Russia itself for having the temerity to resist the Hegemon's geopolitical expansion right on her very borders.
The great Realist IR scholar Mearsheimer foresaw all of this. As did Kissinger, George Kennan, US Ambassador John Matlock and many others. They tried to warn what the consequences of the US trying to geopolitically flip Ukraine would be, but to no avail.
For Russia the only path forward, the goal to survive is, must be – separation, autarky (self-sufficiency), and independence from US-led Western Hegemony.
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Posted by: c1ue | Mar 2 2022 4:12 utc | 413
Thanks for the GDP stats. I think we would all agree that votes may be bartered and vote buying and selling may not always reflect state interests, or the interests of the affected citizen.
If we focus on key tangibles we may gain a better sense of where global power lies. Energy is the lifeblood of any modern industrial state. Services and electrons mean little if you are unable to fulfil basic energy needs at reasonable cost.
The following rank ordered lists are based on C1ue’s data found in the post referenced above. C1ue tabulated the PRO SANCTION nations and the NO SANCTION nations. Using C1ue’s data I then tabulated the oil imports in bbls per year for the PRO SANCTION nations and the oil exports in bbls per year for the NO SANCTION nations.
If you live in a country unable to fulfil national energy needs then you are dependent on the tangible products produced by those nations with a surplus of energy.
The focus is on crude. While NG is becoming increasingly important crude remains as a primary need for most forms of transportation. In the US the transport sector represents approximately 40% of FF use. Any increase in the cost of a barrel quickly translates into upward pressure on the cost of all transported goods. This is of particular relevance with respect to food distribution.
As such, Goldman reiterates its view – discussed here yesterday – that only demand destruction – through even higher prices – is now likely the only sufficient rebalancing mechanism, with supply elasticity no longer relevant in the face of such a potential large and immediate supply shock.
This leaves risk to our one-month $115/bbl Brent price forecast still skewed to the upside, with today’s $105/bbl spot prices only at the level we believed was required to balance the oil market prior to any escalation in Ukraine.
A decision by RF to halt energy exports to adversary nations would have severe economic impact and greatly curtail the ability of importing nations to wage war. The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo drove crude prices up by 300%. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
OIL EXPORTERS NO SANCTIONS
1 Saudi Arabia, 2,430,404,330
2 Russia, 1,698,527,500
3 Iraq, 1,251,358,335
4 United Arab Emirates 882,711,620
5 Kazakhstan, 514,984,705
6 Brazil, 474,956,250
7 Mexico, 437,456,515
8 Azerbaijan, 204,126,250
9 Colombia, 197,450,035
10 Qatar, 183,522,365
11 Venezuela, 177,679,080
12 Iran, 147,638,485
TOTAL NO SANCTIONS bbls exported oil per Year = 8,600,815,470
TOTAL PRO SANCTIONS bbls imported oil per year = 7,808,992,500
OIL IMPORTERS PRO SANCTIONS
1 United States – G7 2,908,685,000
2 Japan – G7 1,170,920,000
3 Germany – G7 670,140,000
4 Italy – G7 489,465,000
5 Spain 483,625,000
6 France – G7 418,655,000
7 Netherlands 399,310,000
8 United Kingdom – G7 331,091,500
9 Canada – G7 294,445,500
10 Singapore 285,904,500
11 Poland 179,981,500
12 Greece 176,769,500
As Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 2 2022 13:03 utc | 507
The economic and financial balance of power is totally in favour of the European Union, which is discovering its economic power. (…)
The United States and Europe together are the most powerful economic and financial continent on the planet and have considerable power to act,” the minister warned.
Given the EU dependency on a declared adversary the above minister is delusional.
Posted by: Sushi | Mar 2 2022 16:56 utc | 63
Why couldn’t Putin wait long enough to see and take advantage (like he is/was used to be known for!) of the downfall of Macron in the upcoming April,
Macron was, and is, going to win the election. Both Zemmour and Le Pen are unable to gain the necessary signatures by politicians to be admitted to run, neutralizing each other, and the establishment candidates other than Macron have no chance against him. Even if Zemmour or Le Pen or both manage to get the necessary signatures, polls still show Macron in the lead against either of them.
Even disregarding French election machinations, Russia cannot stake its security on the off chance that someone like Zemmour gets the presidency. He would be completely isolated within French power circles. He does not have any mass movement behind him either. Le Pen, for her part, is a disaster. She has sold out to the establishment with her acceptance of the Euro and EU membership.
the humiliation of Democrats in America this fall in the mid-term elections,
Republicans will always be happy to go to war with humiliated Democrats at their back.
the natural acceleration of Biden-led Democrats,
Huh?
the empowerment of right-wing populism in Europe…
… is not happening. Right-wind populist parties have been shut out of power or neutered everywhere. Once the invasion had begun, they fell in line, too, issuing anti-Russian declarations like it was done the AfD in Germany.
and the steady completion of the B&R by China to be ready by the time the shit would hit the fan?
How precisely does the B&R affect the security issues posed by NATO and a nazified Ukraine at Russia’s doorstep?
The nuke-talk flirtations by Zelensky was surely nothing but hot air
No Western politician objected when Zelensky made these remarks repeatedly at the Munich security conference. A dirty bomb mentioned by Zelensky could be built by Ukraine very quickly. Ukraine is not so backward as to not being able to build a proper nuclear bomb relatively quickly either.
Putin fell right into the trap of NATO/EU/US
He chose to fight when he couldn’t avoid it anymore. The present point of time is advantageous because Russia has gained temporary superiority in several fields of military technology, in particular hypersonic missiles and EW, while having propped up and modernized its traditional, Soviet-style warfighting capabilities. The West is in deep economic and financial crisis post-Covid, Europe has no alternatives to Russian energy and large re-armament programmes are not yet in full swing. Ukraine is being re-armed but not to a high degree yet. The point of time is just right.
by uniting them against the hatred of Putin, Russia and everything in-between. Georgy Arbatov once said a rather chilling thing to an American audience in the 1980s to the effect of “we are going to do something horrible to you by depriving you of an existential adversary!”. Now the west which had been struggling in its own dirt like a junky and a degenerate has suddenly found a raison d’etre and is reconstituting itself and going back to its feet once again, all because of this terrible move by Putin. Instead of remaining smart and using the soft-power of Russia in empowering right-wing populist energies, undermining the spirit of the liberals, Putin just flipped the desk and ruined everything.
This soft approach has not worked. Right-wing populist energies are over-hyped, constantly neutered and also absorbed by ongoing mass immigration.
Look at China and look at how she is ‘competing’ with the West and sometimes even setting victories (e.g. the control of the Covid-19 pandemic, rapid economic recovery, everyday tech innovation, growing diplomatic expansion by using its hard-work and shrewdness instead of brute power and 19th century mindset
China is in a much more secure strategic position than Russia, mostly because of Russia. Without Russia at its back, China wouldn’t be much less able to throw its weight around like it does. Just imagine a NATO-ized Russia sitting across Chinas northern border. It would absorb so much of Chinas energies that there would be little left for anything else. Russia’s security is as crucial for China as it is for Russia itself.
And by the way who the hell does he think he is to threaten the entire world with nukes? Only a weak-minded and cornered person would do such primitive actions.
Russia has never used nuclear weapons (unlike the US, which needlessly nuked two Japanese cities at the end of WWII) and a no-first use policy. If Russia feels compelled to remind the West that nuclear weapons exist, then that’s entirely due to the constant barrage of Western escalatory rhetoric.
Posted by: Calamity Jake | Mar 2 2022 17:21 utc | 81
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