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The EU aspires to be the New Rome
The EU is Roman The European Union is a self-avowed political project. The forerunner of the EU, the European Economic Community (EEC), was founded by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, in order to “ lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe ” and “ preserve and strengthen peace and liberty ”. In 1957 Europe was still reeling from the destruction and upheavals of the Second World War, which had swept over its founding members: Belgium, The Federal Republic of Germany (“West Germany”: Germany was two countries at the time, and the Warsaw Pact German Democratic Republic was not a party), France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The “European Union” itself was only formerly created by the Maastricht treaty in 1992, with the objective of continuing the process of “ ever closer union ” - albeit the UK had an opt out for that political aim. People of my generation who were in the UK at the time will remember it was the great political subject of the day (as well as the butt of many Spitting Image jokes), and the origins of the UK Conservative Party’s great schism over Europe, which ultimately led to Brexit. The EEC’s overriding aim was to prevent another destructive European war, albeit predominantly through a series of economic measures: but even these had a political aim for the Members to reduce “ the differences existing between the various regions and the backwardness of the less favoured regions ” amongst other things. With this grand project of European integration in mind, it was not a coincidence that Rome was chosen as the location and name for the EEC’s founding treaty. The EEC wanted to conjure the image - the fantasy perhaps - of the last time Europe was politically and culturally coherent; under the Emperors. Ukraine in, Turkey Out Although the EU had its origin in the romance of Rome - or perhaps for the extract same reason - it mattered which “Emperor” one followed. The European project was always just that, European. The inheritors of the erstwhile Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, ruled from Constantinople by “Roman” emperors for a thousand years after the fall of Rome itself and the Empire in the West was (and is) not invited to the party. Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (in fact is was a process of decline, culminating in the fall of Constantinople). The Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans, large parts of what is now Ukraine and much of the Middle East until it collapsed after the First World War, and Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk” created the modern, secular state of Turkey in 1923. Turkey applied for EEC membership in 1959, and it still waiting to be admitted. Turkey has customs and cooperation agreements with the EU, which smooths some trade, and in recent times it was paid by the EU to absorb refugees from Syria and Iraq. Turkey is the 6th largest economy in Europe and its airbases were used by Coalition forces in the “war on terror”. However after many attempts at joining the European club Turkey has not been admitted, nor has it yet been flatly refused. The EU was implicitly designed as a Christian club, or at least - explicitly - with Western European Christian culture at its core. Last week Ursula von der Leyen, the German politician who is current President of the European Commission (the EU’s permanent administrative infrastructure and civil service), advocated that Ukraine be admitted to the EU as a Member, saying “ Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the country’s aspiration and the country’s determination to live up to European values and standards ” and that “ Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us the European dream .” So it appears Ukraine, which has an unenviable record as far as perceived corruption goes (see the “The Forge of Institutions” paragraph in my last Scriber https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/the-jubilee-and-the-end-of-the-elizabethan-age ) has done enough in its defiance of Russia to be European. However, it seems that Turkey has not. The EU may ultimately go the way of the Eurovision Song Contest, in which geography has become irrelevant and far away Australia has been admitted; one must assume because it lives up to “ European values and standards” . “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I have founded empires….” (Napoleon Bonaparte) The 207th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo was on Sunday. The main battle took place in Belgium on 18 June 1815, and British, Dutch and Prussian troops defeated the army of the Emperor Napoleon, another man who was trying to create a unified Europe and liked to invoke the glories of the ancient world. His quote above ignores the empires of Atilla, Genghis, the Ottomans, and the Mughals: he cared about Europe and a European political vision. At the time the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland made a single country of all the British Isles. The UK exerted economic and military force to prevent the domination of Europe by one power; in fact preventing a single power dominating Europe has been one of the UK’s main foreign policy aims for centuries. Now the aftermath of Brexit seems to have imperiled the Union of the British Kingdoms further, with another Scottish independence referendum being suggested, political stalemate in Northern Ireland as the UK government considers introducing legislation to reverse elements of the “Protocol” it agreed with the EU and Republic of Ireland at the time of its exit. Part of the problem with the British political class since 1975 is that it convinced itself that the EU was about economics, not politics. Their political predecessors knew all too well that Europe is always about politics. The Return of the Emperor The narrative of the EU has always recalled the distantly echoing glory of the Roman Empire. However, like Napoleon it is not the first European leader to invoke the power and glory of Rome to support their own legitimacy. In the Dark Ages, nostalgia for the relative peace and order of the pax romana of earlier centuries led French warlord Charlemagne to travel to the crumbling Rome, centuries after its fall, to be anointed “Emperor” by the Pope amidst the chaos of the 8th century and to use Christianity as a political weapon to create order; a political technique repeated by the German warlord Otto who was similarly anointed Emperor by the Pope in the 10th century. Voltaire wittily remarked that the Holy Roman Empire, was “ neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire ”. It will remain to be seen if the European Union actually ever becomes a union or stays European. Further Reading
Duncan Wales
Jun 21, 2022 · 6 min read
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The Jubilee and the end of the Elizabethan Age
The Era of Global Super-growth The UK and Commonwealth have just celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of “ Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith ”, to give the Sovereign her more formal titles. An amazing achievement never before reached by any monarch of the British Isles, though their kingship has lasted a thousand years. A 70 year reign that started 1952 while the UK and Europe was still recovering from the travails and destruction of the Second World War (elements of rationing remained in place in the UK until 1958, more than a dozen years after the War had ended) to the current time with the advent of Web3, crypto, global connectivity and an app for just about everything. A 70 year period that has seen changes to society, populations and the economy that have been as - if not more - radical than any other period of human history. In 1952 the human population of the world was 2.6 billion. Now it is nearly 8 billion. The overwhelming economic drivers of the last 70 years have been (i) this population explosion and (ii) the introduction of technology in to every aspect of our working and personal lives. And although there have been small wars, recessions the global financial crisis, on a global basis during this period the economy has boomed, life expectancy has risen, child mortality has dropped, diseases have been bested by antibiotics and vaccines, literacy and access to information has grown and violence has reduced. Global GDP rose from circa $10 trillion at the end of the 1950’s to more than $80 trillion (on a constant currency basis) in 2020. The Elizabethan era genuinely has been one where the sacrifices of earlier generations - the wars against despotism, the investment in science, the creation of national health and social services - have given a better standard of living and longer life to their descendants. Jubilees, Guards and Palace Coups Although the UK remains generally supportive of its Monarchy as an institution (in a recent YouGov survey 62% approved of the constitutional monarchy and only 22% preferred the idea of an elected Head of State), the longer running trend is slowly declining approval, particularly among young adults, where the percentages are closer to 50/50. This is perhaps not surprising: a combination of modern social and mainstream media coverage means that much more of the Royal Family’s actions are under constant scrutiny (and criticism), and for others the only apparent function of the institution of the Monarchy is opening new hospitals and encouraging tourism. Watching the Jubilee celebrations on TV, with squadrons of armored cavalry, swords flashing and tack jingling, it could indeed all seem rather anachronistic; however, those mounted “Guards” have their regimental origins in the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, created as a bodyguard to the newly restored Charles II, after the Civil War of the 1640’s that saw his father, Charles I publicly tried and executed. Following the deposition of Charles I the British engaging in a short experiment with republicanism in the 1650’s. When the republic’s “president” the Lord High Protector Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 a period of political uncertainty followed and the British decided that Monarchy had its uses - even after a bloody Civil War that should have settled the issue - and brought the Monarchy back, albeit with more constraints, and have slowly adjusted down its powers ever since. The British in fact staged another coup against Charles II successor and younger brother, the catholic-inclined James II in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, quietly replacing him with the protestant William of Orange and William’s wife, Mary who was James’ child from an earlier (protestant) marriage. Much of the pomp and circumstance of the Jubilee has its origins in the political tumult of Britain and Ireland in the 17th Century; the regiments, crown jewels (most of the medieval versions were destroyed by Cromwell), royal symbols, flags, and protocols; and so to does the core of the political apparatus of the modern UK; and also several of its most challenging political issues; Brexit, Northern Ireland, Scottish independence and the continuation of the Union. Many institutions do not seem to have much relevance while the economy and life in general seem to be progressing well, or at least progressing, but can become much more relevant in times of crisis, war or insurrection. The Forge of Institutions The obvious recent example is Ukraine: before the Russian invasion the government of President Volodomir Zelensky was incredibly unpopular, with an approval rating of only 23%. Ukraine also had a reputation for being extremely corrupt: in the 2022 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index published in January (again before the invasion) Ukraine scored 32 out of a maximum 100 points, putting it in the same category as Gabon, Mexico, Niger and Papua New Guinea, and scoring worse than Sierra Leone, Bosnia and El Salvador. Near the top-end of the list the UK scores 78, and New Zealand, Denmark and Finland jointly-lead with scores of 88. However, the conflict in Ukraine has made a local and international hero of Zelensky, and politicians everywhere now fly the Ukraine flag on their buildings and wear it proudly on their lapels. For Ukraine the current crisis — assuming Ukraine survives it - will be a nation defining event, and will solidify the institutions that have been perceived to be doing well in the crisis; the Presidency, the law courts that have already tried their first Russian war criminals and the central bank, finance, defense and foreign ministries that have raised billions from foreign donors. The idea of heroism and effectiveness of these institutions could in fact make Ukraine less corrupt. The Queen’s War Her Majesty the Queen is perhaps the only current Head of State on the planet who lived through the Second World War - serving in uniform herself - and therefore understands some of what Zelensky is going through. Her first Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, developed a successful working relationship with the Queen’s late father, King George VI, during darkest moments of the War: Churchill had political primacy of course, and a tough, bombastic personal style, but could not ignore the “soft power” influence of the Monarch. The King and indeed the young Princess Elizabeth provided calm reassurance to many, in public radio broadcasts, messages and visits to see troops (my grandfather, a doctor and then a Lt Col in the Royal Army Medical Corps, looked after the King when he visited British and Allied troops in North Africa in 1943). The King and Princess provided another form of leadership, separate from the politicians, when it was needed. Churchill was promptly voted out of power at the end of the War in 1945, but the King was not, providing continuity for the new - and first ever - Labour administration (the new Prime Minister, Clement Atlee was famously surprised and impressed by the warm and positive reception he received from the King after his election win). Because of the great events they had seen out together, when King George VI died in 1952, Churchill said of him that “ His conduct on the Throne may well be a model and a guide to constitutional sovereigns throughout the world today and also in future generations”. It is that guiding experience that makes the Queen’s approach to public service what it is: she is stoic, practical and disciplined, and has put her duty first in her life. Her Majesty understands that the role of the Monarch has been forged in crisis and is therefore much more important and bigger than the flesh and blood individual that occupies it. The End of the Elizabethan Age Now, towards the end of her reign (the Queen is 96, and still working, although visibly slowing down), the era of post-Second World War super-growth appears to be at an end. Population growth rates are slowing everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East, and the increasing cost of money - and of things - is denting the high valuations of tech stocks that have been leading the growth in investor portfolios for the last two decades. Technology businesses will still grow and be valuable, but we are entering a period when physical security, energy security, supply chain resilience and good old-fashioned cash generation are more important than they were. Central banks are raising interest rates to curb inflation - making borrowing more costly for companies and governments - inflation is on the rise, and the very low rates of unemployment we see in the G7 economies seem destined to rise again as those forces exert themselves on businesses everywhere resulting in job losses. Globalization has ended, and new economic drivers will replace the old. At the same time the geopolitical world order is changing, as I have written before: https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/ukraine-democracy-and-the-most-dangerous-moment-in-human-history . The Elizabethan era is near its end, and the Carolingian will follow it (let’s hope rather more successfully than the prior Kings Charles). We should all appreciate the golden era we have just lived through, for all its faults. As an optimist I still believe the future will be better, even if we have to traverse difficult times to get there. Whatever the future holds I will always be proud and think myself fortunate to have been an Elizabethan. Further reading
Duncan Wales
Jun 6, 2022 · 9 min read
The Global Food War
Let them eat avocados The last 25 years has seen a transformation in the way the world produces and consumes food. Population growth has driven some of the revolution but so has a benign economic backdrop - the shocks of the Dot.com bubble and Global Financial Crisis notwithstanding: even in those moments of economic uncertainty bread and milk prices did not soar and the range of food expanded further. Globalization and JIT (just-in-time) supply chains meant that groceries and supermarkets made exotic products and out of season flowers, vegetables and fruits available at any time of year - and with the advent of food delivery apps like Instacart, Amazon Prime Now, Grab, Uber Eats, and Gorillas, at any time of day. As the range of food available expanded as it became cheaper, so more people, and greater percentage of the population were able to eat formerly exotic delicacies such as avocado, sushi, or mozzarella. Between 2013 and 2021 fresh avocado imports in to the US rose from 1.2bn pounds weight to 2.6bn pounds (1.2 million metric tons) - in addition to domestically grown fruit. In the same period the annual consumption of avocados per capita in the US rose from 5 pounds to nearly 9 pounds (4kgs of avocado per man, woman and child). That is a lot of avocados: in the 1970’s they were the preserve of high end restaurants and Upper East Side dinner parties, now they are available at 2am to anyone in a city with a smartphone. Climate, Bread Riots and The Arab Spring The Western world may have addicted itself to ultimate choice and free availability, but in the developing economies it is grains that provide the staple food to many. In 2010 a series of extreme weather events hit many of the largest grain and food exporting countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Argentina and Australia and led to a 30%+ increase in global food prices. A “Rossby” heat wave ignited wildfires that swept through South Western Russia, destroying crops, thousands of homes and claiming dozens of lives (the same heatwave caused destructive flash flooding and landslides killing hundreds in Pakistan), Argentina and Australia had severe droughts and crops in Canada were destroyed by exceptionally heavy rains. The Middle East absorbs one third of all grain imports: particularly in economies like Egypt, bread is the staple food of the poor, and consequently accounts for a proportionately larger component of people’s disposable income. The series of riots and public demonstrations seen across much of the Arab World in the early summer of 2011 - the “Arab Spring” as it became known - was driven by a number of factors, but frustration over bread prices and food inflation was one of them. Riots and political upheavals rocked Tunisia, Morocco and Bahrain, caused the collapse of the Mubarak government in Egypt and led to the chaotic civil wars in Libya and Syria. The disruption cause by the global pandemic, exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, has led to record food commodity prices: in relative and absolute terms exceeding the dark days of the early 1970’s where an energy shock was followed by rampant food inflation. In current events one can discern the climate-food-politics-geopolitics cycle, and how interrelated global issues now are: how a Rossby wave can put the G7 and G20 on a collision path and contribute to Russia invading Ukraine. See my previous essay on the related geopolitics at: https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/ukraine-democracy-and-the-most-dangerous-moment-in-human-history Growing Food Protectionism Added to the already volatile inflationary mix is the invasion of Ukraine (the world’s 5th largest wheat exporter) by Russia (the world’s largest wheat exporter). Notably, most of Ukraine and Russia’s wheat is destined for emerging markets and much of that to the Middle East. With growing concerns about food affordability and availability China and India have already imposed protectionist measures, reducing exports to improve their own food security. Last week China publicly rejected the G7’s criticism of India’s recent wheat export ban via its state controlled English language news site Global Times; making the point that it is not helpful for the West to blame developing economies for the situation. The Chinese have a point, in as much as the USA and Canada are amongst the planet’s largest grain exporters, while China, Brazil and India (three of the big-boys of the G20 not in the G7) are net importers. There is political power in food. The Food Security Index The Economist Impact Food Security Index, which ranks countries on the basis of food affordability, availability, quality, safety, natural resources and resilience, places Russia at 23rd, China 34th, Brazil 63rd, and India at 71st. The USA is 9th, Canada is 7th and the UK sits near the top in 3rd (the Republic of Ireland is top, with relatively low population density, lots of agricultural land, and as those who have been there will know, plenty of rain). Amongst the most vulnerable countries are those in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East (the “contested areas” of the Tri-Polar world, that sit between the great power blocks of the USA, Europe and China: see https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/the-tri-polar-world-and-why-the-west-rules-for-now ). As the price of food soars on rising energy price rises and the risk of recession it is hard not to think that it will drive the climate-food-politics-geopolitics cycle once again. Even for well-off urbanites Avocados will become more expensive and less available. Countries with weak food supply chains and low per capita incomes are vulnerable to genuine human and political catastrophe: for the hard core investors and policy-makers out there wanting to understand more see my erudite friend and colleague Hasnain Malik’s recent research on Tellimer.com . This will be an uncomfortable ride for everyone, but for those based in economies with good Food Security Index rankings - much as the cost of living is going up rapidly and will undoubtedly cause hardship for many - we should all count ourselves lucky. Further Reading:
Duncan Wales
May 24, 2022 · 6 min read
Victory Day: history repeats itself
The Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany May 9th is Victory Day in the modern Russian Federation, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany and its Axis allies by the Soviet Union in 1945. It has far greater resonance and political importance in Russia than the often-overlooked “VE” (Victory in Europe) celebrations in Western Europe of the day before. Despite the horrors of destruction, occupation and death suffered in Western Europe, for the Soviet Union the Second World War had been its greatest existential threat: an estimated 27 million Russians, mainly civilians, died in the bitter struggle against the Axis invasion. I have previously written on the paranoia of the Soviet state and its willingness to sacrifice its own people to achieve its political ends; see https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/russia-is-a-bolshevik-state-once-again , but I have sympathy with the view that the stoic and resilient peoples of the Soviet Union - which included both Russia and Ukraine - saved Europe and maybe further afield from Nazism. May 9 is usually Victory Day in Ukraine as well: this year it takes on a new resonance. The war between the Axis and USSR defies statistics, even if one can encapsulate the magnitude of human suffering in mere numbers. On its own that war was the greatest and most bloody conflict humanity has ever engaged in, with millions of combatants engaged simultaneously, over thousands of kilometers of territory, and killing more people than any other war before or since. This was a “total war” of the ultimately destructive type envisioned by aristocratic Prussian general and military thinker Carl Von Clausewitz more than a century before. Such was the ideological (and ethnic) hatred between the sides that to become a prisoner of either was a near-guaranteed death sentence. For the Soviet Union, and now particularly Russia, the defeat of Germany and the Axis was a nation-defining event, creating a myth around which political and national identify have gravitated ever since. Molotov Cocktails and the Secret Pact Germany and the Soviet Union had not started the War as enemies. They had entered a mutual non-aggression pact in August 1939, not much more than a week before the Nazi invasion of Poland and the declaration of war against Germany by the UK and France. The pact became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Germany who signed it, although Stalin attended in person. The Pact is made up of seven simple Articles addressing non-aggression between the parties for a 10 year period. However, below the main Articles is a secret addendum with an additional four articles that were not published at the time. The secret agreement divided Central and Eastern Europe in to “spheres of influence” between the two powers, giving control over Finland, Estonia and Latvia to the Soviet Union, some of Lithuania to Germany, an agreement to carve up Poland when it suited them and a confirmation by Germany that it had no political interest in “Southeastern Europe” and “Bessarabia”; what we would now think of as Moldova and Ukraine. Left unfettered by risk of interference from each other, Germany invaded Poland from the West, shortly thereafter the USSR invaded Poland from the East and not many months later the USSR invaded Finland. Molotov said that the invasion of Finland in November 1939 was a humanitarian mission to provide food to the Finns. In another echo of events repeated in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Finns resisted more fiercely than their attackers expected and gave the invading Soviet armor a robust petrol bombing. With characteristically dark Scandinavian humor the Finns described those home-made explosives as Molotov Cocktails: an appropriate drink to serve back to the invading Soviets in recognition of their “humanitarian” efforts. Warlords and Oil With the Soviet Union pursuing its own agenda with Finland and Germany and the Axis Powers creating a German Empire and “ lebensraum ” for the ethnically pure in Europe, it was a very dark moment of uncertainty. By the fall of France in June 1940, the UK “stood alone” armed only with the Channel and Royal Airforce as its defense and the Victorian-style political backbone of its new Prime Minister Winston S Churchill. In late 1940 Hitler and the Axis very much had the upper hand. German panzers had swept through Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Low Countries and France; Fascist Spain, exhausted after its dreadful civil war remained neutral, the Soviet Union was occupied with Finland and Poland and the US, although supplying the UK with finance and arms showed no immediate signs of joining the War. There aren’t many single decisions that can be said to have changed the course of world history, but Hitler’s decision to renege on the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal and invade the Soviet Union is certainly one of them. On 18 December 1940, Hitler issued Directive 21, ordering an assault on the USSR. The operation was named after a 12th Century Teutonic warlord Frederick “Barbarossa”. Anointed by the Pope - the last surviving official role of the long-since collapsed Western Roman Empire - in 1155 Barbarossa became the Holy Roman Emperor: a paragon of the warrior emperor that Hitler aspired to be and a symbol of the new German Empire cast in a romanticized (and entirely unrealistic) vision of the past. Op BARBAROSSA was launched in June 1941 on a front more than two thousand kilometers long, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Axis committed 3.5million troops to the offensive, hoping to destroy Soviet resistance quickly, and swiftly took territory across all its axes of attack. Within months Axis troops were within striking distance of Moscow and in the South advanced to Odessa, the Black Sea coast and Crimea, and besieged Kyiv. The lightening panzer tactics of the Germans allowed them to encircle 650,000 Soviet troops in Kyiv, all of whom were killed or captured. Despite early successes by the end of the year, with winter coming on, the Axis assault stalled along all parts of the front, and Soviet counter attacks pushed the Axis forces back. In 1942 the Axis redoubled its efforts mounting more operations, including Op BLAU (Blue), particularly aiming to capture the industrial heartlands and oil fields of the South. Again the armies clashed in increasingly concentrated pockets; the most notorious being Stalingrad (now Volgograd), East of the Donbas in Ukraine, controlling the routes along the Volga river, including to the oil-rich Caspian Sea and strategically influential to the River Don leading down to the Sea of Azov. At Stalingrad in 1943 after months of bitter fighting nearly half of the remaining 600,000 exhausted and starving Axis troops - many of them Romanians - were surrounded by the army of Soviet General Zhukov and eventually surrendered. The Axis commander, the German General Friedrich Paulus who was trapped with his men in the kessel (literally “cauldron”, the word the Germans used for an encircled defense) had urged Hitler to let him surrender to Zhukov some time before, which was rebuffed: instead Hitler made Paulus a Field Marshal, knowing that no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered (suicide would have been frustrating but acceptable). Paulus surrendered anyway, and his captured army of more than 280,000 was marched away to gulags from which hardly any emerged alive (estimates vary but it could have been as little as a few hundreds). By this stage the US had joined the War (late 1941), the Allies won victories in North Africa (1942; my grandfather commanded field hospitals in the desert from the invasion to the Allied victory) and were soon to launch an invasion of Italy. With Germany overcommitted and depleted of men and materiel, the momentum of the War shifted in the Allies favor. The invasion of the Soviet Union, and the inability to win quickly, ultimately proved to be the undoing of Hitler and the Nazis. Lessons for Ukraine Operation BARBAROSSA and the operations that followed it were a failure, for many of the same reasons Russia is failing in Ukraine. By failing to succeed Germany created a national myth and powerful sense of identify and moral self-worth in the Soviet Union, which Russia has inherited. Russia’s actions in Ukraine invoke the memory of that myth - President Putin has described the Russian invasion is a special military operation to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. This conflict, with great and dangerous irony, will create a similar national myth for Ukraine. Further Reading
Duncan Wales
May 10, 2022 · 9 min read
Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Nuclear Option
Know who your Friends are While the western powers were introspectively wrestling with Brexit, extending human rights and the political implications of Trump, others have been planning for a different geopolitical and strategic future. I have written before about the ejection of Russia from the G8 not being mirrored by the G20, and that China, Russia, India and others have all become better trading partners and defense collaborators with each other than the G7 had appreciated; https://the-perspective-pool.scriber.to/article/ukraine-democracy-and-the-most-dangerous-moment-in-human-history . In 2001 China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a permanent inter-governmental body to develop ties in the region. India and Pakistan joined in 2017. It also has four observer countries; Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, and since 2012, Afghanistan. The SCO’s stated goals are as follows (emphasis added): Amidst the idealistic rhetoric there is a clear implication that the SCO members feel that the current international political and economic order is neither fair nor rational . It also illustrates a more strategic and longer term vision of developing the world than the West - riven by divisive politics and short election cycles - now tends to engage in. What is interesting about Afghanistan achieving observer (akin to associate member) status with the SCO, which is fundamentally a group run by China and Russia, is that it was obtained while Afghanistan was being almost entirely bankrolled by the US. It is as if Afghanistan knew even then it would need friends in the region more than friends from thousands of miles away, like the US and its allies. Afghanistan, Karzai and Riding Two Horses Former President of Afghanistan, Hamed Karzai, was interviewed a couple of times last week by the BBC. Amidst some stuttering and coughing he managed to make his view clear, that Ukraine should be wary of the fate of Afghanistan, and make better friends in the region and world - implicitly with a different group than just the US and its allies. Karzai is a mercurial figure, and has had a complex and not entirely happy relationship with the West, but fairly cordial relations with President Putin. He originally became President of Afghanistan in 2002 with the explicit and enthusiastic backing of the US. By the start of his second (and constitutionally final) term in office in 2009, he had been accused of vote rigging and presiding over corruption in the Afghan government and the US and UK were finding him increasingly frustrating to deal with. Karzai is a Pashtun, from near Kandahar in the South of Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Taliban, and is a keen horseman (the Afghans look great on horseback, natural riders, even without a saddle and only a length of bailing twine as a halter). Karzai has always seemed to want to leave a door open for the Taliban, calling them “angry brothers” while the civil war against them was at its height; by November last year, after the Coalition’s humiliating withdrawal he was calling them just “brothers”. Bombings against non-Pashtun mosques and schools continue in Afghanistan, committed by Da’ish (IS) according to the Taliban, and by or at least with the complicity of the Taliban according to a young Hazara refugee I discussed this with recently. Just before leaving office in 2014 Karzai supported the Russian annexation of Crimea, with an official release saying “ The president said that Afghanistan respects the free will of the people of Crimea to decide about their own future ”. Despite Karzai’s patchy political history, he seemed to foresee that Afghanistan would need more friends than just the US Coalition that had been operating with unclear objectives in his country since 2001. By the time of the precipitous withdrawal of the US and its allies from Afghanistan in 2021, Karzai’s view seemed one of great prescience: he is a man open to the idea of riding two horses at once. The lesson is that in the Western liberal democracies priorities can shift quickly, on the turn of a single election. In particular, President Biden of the US believes in isolating and sanctioning his enemies, not fighting them. Ukraine and the Nuclear Option Russia’s objectives in Ukraine have now changed: from swiftly removing what it saw as an unpopular Ukrainian government and dominating the whole country, to seizing the Donbas, Crimea and the littoral of the Sea of Azov than connects them; and potentially denying all of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea by pushing on to take Odessa. One overarching aspect of Moscow’s aims have not changed, however; it still intends to very damage and neutralize Ukraine as much as it can. Russia has so far been able to launch an assault on Ukraine, an independent country and member of the United Nations, displace millions of civilians, have allegations of organized murders and retribution killings of civilians made against it, and implicitly threaten the use of nuclear weapons if it is interfered with by foreign threats. No other country has ridden to the rescue of Ukraine with their own forces: yes, many neighbors and global power players have contributed arms and advice, but none dare impose a no-fly zone or put their own troops in direct conflict with Russia’s. And that, very simply, is because Russia has nuclear weapons, and the West finds President Putin’s threats to use them credible. The conflict in Ukraine has two clear geopolitical implications for the rest of the world looking on: Escalation, Finland and Sweden The very moment Russian armor rolled over the border in to Ukraine, Finland and Sweden, mindful of the points above, considered joining NATO, who’s members are very clearly obliged to support each other actively against attacks. This is decades of neutrality (centuries in Sweden’s case), overturned by the new realpolitik . If, as expected, Sweden and Finland apply for membership some time this year, that in itself will be an escalation of tensions with Russia. As the conflict in Ukraine grinds on, not only will it destroy more of Ukraine, it will chew up more of Russia’s conventional military capability. Such are the causalities and destruction of materiel it is suffering, it may take years for the Russian military to rebuild itself, so it seems unlikely that an invasion of the Baltic is imminent. A general mobilization of Russia would provide more capacity, and be a significant escalation of risk, tantamount to a declaration of war. In the meantime, Russia has said repeatedly it will rely on nuclear threat - or escalation - if it feels threatened. And that sense of threat will be dictated by how far Western countries go in actively supporting Ukraine or aggressively expanding NATO. Both sides know what the other is trying to do, and are explicit about it: on Monday (25 April) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US wanted to see Russia “ weakened to the degree that it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine ”. On the same day Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov said that NATO was “ engaged in a war through a proxy ” against Russia by supplying arms to Ukraine. Inflation, Abandonment and Reconstruction The irony is that escalation is now in the hands of the West. It is probable that Russia will use all the destructive force of its military to flatten as much of Ukraine as it can: Russia’s military has no compunction about causing civilian casualties or destroying cities and farmland. Indeed destruction is very likely now one of its main aims. And it seems that the US and NATO’s main objective is now to destroy as much Russian military capability as possible through its indirect support to Ukraine. If we cast our minds forward to where this might end - and let’s hope the bloodshed ends sooner than later - Ukraine will be a shattered mess. Russia will not pay to reconstruct any parts of Ukraine it has not annexed. If Ukraine survives it will need to be reconstructed by the West: the IMF already foresees this; however, Ukraine is not a member of the EU, so its economic future would be debt-laden and very uncertain. Other political priorities, such as inflation and the cost of living pressures on voters will increasingly distract Western democracies. If military confrontation outside Ukraine is avoided a likely outcome is that - notwithstanding its indirect support - the West will stand by and watch the destruction of Ukraine. A bleak thought though it is, strategically that may be an acceptable outcome to NATO if enough of Russia’s military capability is also destroyed in the process. Further Reading
Duncan Wales
Apr 26, 2022 · 9 min read