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I think this is what disaster capitalism looks like, isn’t it? Presumably there won’t be much left of Ukraine after the war, but what there is will be owned by US corporations & their local neoliberal allies. Which is why they’ve funded the war in the first place.

Create a disaster, then exploit it to asset strip a country. It’s hardly a new strategy. As the Iraqis could point out if anyone asked them. (Weird how we never hear about them now, isn’t it?)

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This is a war that was provoked. It’s a war that never should have been started. Gamesmanship on all sides. Biden was not pushing for negotiations or a peace settlement, he was (I believe) absurdly seeking regime change in Russia. So stupid! And Zelensky will be playing Roosevelt in the Hollywood movie soon to be released. Once again, the people suffering under the yoke of these big ego “leaders” are the ordinary people--now homeless refugees. It’s obscene. And we sure appreciate all their sacrifices. The media has been pumping this war up so much! It’s deeply disturbing. Fighting for democracy again. Really?

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When democracy is under attack we need to tread carefully on political economy.

Really? Calling Ukraine democracy is beyond ridiculous, it insults the intelligence of any reader who has looked at the nature of post-Maidan regime. Leaving aside banning of all opposition parties and confiscations of their property, effectively banning labor unions, suppressing Russian language (which is native even for many remaining in the rump Ukraine), control of neo-Nazi far right elements of Army and security services etc., the true nature of the whole project is best summed up by the ex-president Poroshenko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk

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Well said, Mr. Tooze. Market reforms during wartime not only puts the cart before the horse, but such an action also might mean the death of the animal.

PG

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The main reason liberals care so much about this Ukraine project is because it would represent their ideal state. Everything is completely outsourced to the NGO-complex funded by liberal oligarchs. This is already happening in both the US and Europe, where parliaments are less and less relevant while governments are effectively tied by supranational organizations like NATO and the EU, with NGOs acting as filter from public opinion.

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"the question on the battlefield is whether Russia resorts to nuclear escalation”. No! The question on the battlefield is why Russia defeated NATO's biggest, best equipped, best trained army in 48 hours. The answer is, because Russia has controlled the skies and delivered 10x more strikes than Ukraine, causing a kill ratio between 10:1 and 12:1.

"Ukraine celebrates its military triumphs"? Ukraine retook 2% of the land it lost in the Donbas – at a cost of 10% of its remaining frontline troops.

Ukraine is not, has never been, and will never be a viable state. It's always been a frontier region, which is why it's called 'the Ukraine.' George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, KG, GCSI, GCIE, PC, FRS, FBA, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, had some well chosen words of advice about such places:

"When, at the end of December, 1905, the then Vice-Chancellor asked me to be the Romanes Lecturer in the following year, I chose the subject of Frontiers. It happened that a large part of my younger days had been spent in travel upon the boundaries of the British Empire in Asia, which had always exercised upon me a peculiar fascination. A little later, at the India Office and at the Foreign Office, I had had official cognizance of a period of great anxiety, when the main sources of diplomatic preoccupation, and sometimes of international danger, had been the determination of the Frontiers of the Empire in Central Asia, in every part of Africa, and in South America. Further, I had just returned from a continent where I had been responsible for the security and defence of a Land Frontier 5,700 miles in length, certainly the most diversified, the most important, and the most delicately poised in the world; and I had there, as Viceroy, been called upon to organize, and to conduct the proceedings of, as many as five Boundary Commissions.

"I was the more tempted to undertake this task because I had never been able to discover, much less to study, its literature. It is a remarkable fact that, although Frontiers are the chief anxiety of nearly every Foreign Office in the civilized world, and are the subject of four out of every five political treaties or conventions that are now concluded, though as a branch of the science of government Frontier policy is of the first practical importance, and has a more profound effect upon the peace or warfare of nations than any other factor, political or economic, there is yet no work or treatise in any language which, so far as I know, affects to treat of the subject as a whole. Modern works on geography realize with increasing seriousness the significance of political geography; and here in this University, so responsive to the spirit of the age, where I rejoice to think that a School of Geography has recently been founded, it is not likely to escape attention. A few pages are sometimes devoted to Frontiers in compilations on International Law, and here and there a Frontier officer relates his experience before learned societies or in the pages of a magazine. But with these exceptions there is a practical void. You may ransack the catalogues of libraries, you may search the indexes of celebrated historical works, you may study the writings of scholars, and you will find the subject almost wholly ignored. Its formulae are hidden in the arcana of diplomatic chancelleries; its documents are embedded in vast and forbidding collections of treaties; its incidents and what I may describe as its incomparable drama are the possession of a few silent men, who may be found in the clubs of London, or Paris, or Berlin, when they are not engaged in tracing lines upon the unknown areas of the earth.

Frontiers in History.

And yet I would invite you to pause and consider what Frontiers mean, and what part they play in the life of nations. I will not for the moment go further back than a century. It was the adoption of a mistaken Frontier policy that brought the colossal ambitions of the great Napoleon with a crash to the ground. The allied armies might never have entered Paris had the Emperor not held out for an impossible Frontier for France. The majority of the most important wars of the century have been Frontier wars. Wars of religion, of alliances, of rebellion, of aggrandisement, of dynastic intrigue or ambition—wars in which the personal element was often the predominant factor—tend to be replaced by Frontier wars, i.e. wars arising out of the expansion of states and kingdoms, carried to a point, as the habitable globe shrinks, at which the interests or ambitions of one state come into sharp and irreconcilable collision with those of another.

To take the experience of the past half-century alone. The Franco-German War was a war for a Frontier, and it was the inevitable sequel of the Austro-Prussian campaign of 1866, which, by destroying the belt of independent states between Prussia and her Rhenish provinces, had brought her up to the doors of France. The campaign of 1866 was itself the direct consequence of the war of 1864 for the recovery by Germany of the Frontier Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The Russo-Turkish War originated in a revolt of the Frontier States, and every Greek war is waged for the recovery of a national Frontier. We were ourselves at war with Afghanistan in 1839, and again in 1878, we were on the verge of war with Russia in 1878, and again in 1885, over Frontier incidents in Asia. The most arduous struggle in which we have been engaged in India in modern times was waged with Frontier tribes. Had the Tibetans respected our Frontiers, we should never have marched three years ago to Lhasa. Think, indeed, of what the Indian Frontier Problem, as it is commonly called, has meant and means; the controversies it has provoked, the passions it has aroused; the reputations that have flashed or faded within its sinister shadow. Japan came to blows with China over the Frontier-state of Korea; she found herself gripped in a life-and-death struggle with Russia because of the attempt of the latter to include Manchuria within the Frontiers of her political influence. Great Britain was on the brink of a collision with France over the Frontier incident of Fashoda; she advanced to Khartoum not to avenge Gordon, but to defend an imperilled and to recover a lost Frontier. Only the other day the Algeciras Conference was sitting to determine the degree to which the possession of a contiguous Frontier gave France the right to exercise a predominant influence in Morocco. But perhaps a more striking illustration still is that of Great Britain and America. The two occasions on which in recent times (and there are earlier examples[1]) the relations between these two allied and fraternal peoples—conflict between whom would be a hideous crime—have been most perilously affected, have both been concerned with Frontier disputes—the Venezuelan and the Alaskan Boundary.

The most urgent work of Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors, the foundation or the outcome of every entente cordiale, is now the conclusion of Frontier Conventions in which sources of discord are removed by the adjustment of rival interests or ambitions at points where the territorial borders adjoin. Frontiers are indeed the razor's edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, of life or death to nations. Nor is this surprising. Just as the protection of the home is the most vital care of the private citizen, so the integrity of her borders is the condition of existence of the State. But with the rapid growth of population and the economic need for fresh outlets, expansion has, in the case of the Great Powers, become an even more pressing necessity. As the vacant spaces of the earth are filled up, the competition for the residue is temporarily more keen. Fortunately, the process is drawing towards a natural termination. When all the voids are filled up, and every Frontier is defined, the problem will assume a different form. The older and more powerful nations will still dispute about their Frontiers with each other; they will still encroach upon and annex the territories of their weaker neighbours; Frontier wars will not, in the nature of things, disappear. But the scramble for new lands, or for the heritage of decaying States, will become less acute as there is less territory to be absorbed and less chance of doing it with impunity, or as the feebler units are either neutralized, or divided, or fall within the undisputed Protectorate of a stronger Power. We are at present passing through a transitional phase, of which less disturbed conditions should be the sequel, falling more and more within the ordered domain of International Law.

The illustrations which I have given, and which might easily be multiplied, will be sufficient to indicate the overwhelming influence of Frontiers in the history of the modern world. Reference to the past will tell a not substantially different tale. In our own country how much has turned upon the border conflict between England and Scotland and between England and Wales? In Ireland the ceaseless struggle between those within and those outside the Pale has left an ineffaceable mark on the history and character of the people. Half the warfare of the European continent has raged round the great Frontier barriers of the Alps and Pyrenees, the Danube and the Rhine. The Roman Empire, nowhere so like to our own as in its Frontier policy and experience—a subject to which I shall have frequent occasion to revert,—finally broke up and perished because it could not maintain its Frontiers intact against the barbarians".

Curzon's essay is worth reading in full..

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"As the war in Ukraine rages on, the question on the battlefield is whether Russia resorts to nuclear escalation."

That is not a question on the battlefield at all. That is only a question in the mouths of politicians, "journalists" and the rubes.

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Oct 23, 2022·edited Oct 23, 2022

Despite the plethora of economic challenges, Ukraine’s achievements in prosecuting their national defence against such a large and brutal foe have been exceptionally competent and well beyond what one could have reasonably expected. The main failings have been external such as a severe lack of military hardware provided by NATO and other Western nations when compared with what Russia has retained from the Soviet era. The numbers of critical items like heavy artillery, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles both tracked and wheeled, armoured personnel carriers and logistics trucks may look large when compared to Germany’s feeble current stocks but fall way short of Russia’s holdings of these weapons.

Thankfully the lack of Russian trained manpower, poor training, poor leadership, poor tactics, poor battle space intelligence, low competence of the airforces, low morale and high levels of corruption of the Russian regime and military have tipped the balance in favour of Ukraine who are now on a trajectory to regaining all territories lost since 2014 including Sevastopol.

The insufficiency of foreign military hardware and training support for Ukraine will however prolong the war, delay final victory and lead to many more casualties and much more destruction by Russia of Ukrainian infrastructure.

As Ukraine is experiencing relatively high inflation the actual source and likely duration of each inflation source must be investigated and countered where possible and where appropriate. Some additional government deficit spending may even be justified where the money spent can help reduce an inflationary source. For example repairs or new gas or electricity generation or transmission infrastructure that may increase supply to a region and reduce energy costs. Wood or coal fired fired boilers may be needed to replace gas fired boilers for example? Transport infrastructure may be lacking given the blockade and wartime carnage?

The blunt tools of reducing aggregate demand and raising the cash rate are usually counter productive in times of existential threat during war and even during times of peace.

Ukraine is very cost competitive in terms of labour and raw material costs and is well placed geographically but probably needs better rail and road links to the Eastern and South Eastern neighbouring nations given the current shipping constraints. Ukraine should therefore aim to repair most existing industries, to become more economically self sufficient and to export what they are good at which includes heavy industries, agriculture, value for money weapons and munitions, advanced manufacturing including high volume mass production, light industries including electronics and software, aircraft production and servicing for international airlines and so on. The national government should actively facilitate such reconstruction and expansion in the same way most East Asian nations have successfully done in particular Japan and South Korea and foreign investment is also beneficial. Avoid the ‘pay back the debt economic puritans’ and learn from Keynes and the MMT economists so as to optimise the outcomes.

Russia will bounce back and Russian ultranationalism is unlikely to ever completely disappear and so Ukraine must be prepared to maintain full spectrum regional economic and military parity with Russia while also seeking mutually beneficial trade and cooperation with Russia when conditions allow. Ukraine can eventually remain on good terms with all neighbours and Russia’s leadership may eventually learn that cooperation is better than conflict but on terms that are acceptable to the Ukrainian people that have suffered so much because of that difficult neighbour.

Ukraine needs ample foreign recovery aid and very competent local leadership to recover much like Japan or Germany received and demonstrated after the Second World War.

Keynes would have known what to do as he was a balanced man of wisdom, compassion and not just a hard theoretical, narrowly focussed and inflexible economist.

The economy must serve the people as a whole, genuinely productive private and public enterprises and the national interest and not just enrich the well connected few as is too often the case in Russia and sections of the West.

Price controls and limits on profiteering appear to now be needed, a progressive tax scale to reduce the burden on the poor and to increase revenues as well as much more foreign military and economic aid are desperately needed, as Ukraine is fighting for all of Europe and NATO given Russia’s aggressive expansionist aims under Putin - and mostly from their own very limited resources.

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Can't Ukraine make a deal with the border states that the Ukrainian businesses move there (where they are safe), but still pay the taxes in Ukraine and employ mostly displaced Ukrainians?

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