Monday, April 04, 2022
Sunday, April 03, 2022
EMAIL FROM AMERICA (4): Skewing the voting system, by Paddington
Saturday, April 02, 2022
WEEKENDER: The Winds of Change, by Wiggia
Friday, April 01, 2022
FRIDAY MUSIC: Max Richter, by JD
Thursday, March 31, 2022
The new MULTIPOLAR world order, by Sackerson
Monday, March 28, 2022
Ukraine: the big picture, by Sackerson
He has rightly earned our condemnation but securing a legal
judgment against him is a different matter. Following the International
Criminal Court’s ruling that the annexation of Crimea counted as an armed
conflict with Ukraine, Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38005282
; but then, the US itself rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction in May 2002, ahead of
Congress’ October vote giving President Bush the discretion to attack Iraq. Peace
is of no account when sovereign nations adopt an à la carte approach to the
rules-based international order.
What could Putin’s motives for the invasion have been?
An appeal to Russian nationalism? One of the reasons for
Putin’s continuing domestic support is that he cultivates the mythos of
protector of his people, and according to Article 69 (3) of his revised
Constitution of 2020, that includes ‘compatriots living abroad… exercising
their rights, ensuring protection of their interests and preserving all-Russian
cultural identity.’ https://rm.coe.int/constitution-of-the-russian-federation-en/1680a1a237 In Article
79, the statement ‘Decisions of international bodies, taken on the
basis of provisions of international treaties of the Russian Federation in
their interpretation that contradicts the Constitution of the Russian
Federation shall not be executed in the Russian Federation’ means, says Russian
political analyst Elena Galkina https://bylinetimes.com/2020/03/11/the-true-goals-of-putins-new-constitutional-amendments/
, that ’The Kremlin wants to show that regardless of the decisions of any
international authorities and courts, it will consider the [Crimean] peninsula
a part of Russia.’
Defence? Putin has been referencing the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis since 2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-idUSKCN1QA1A3
, when Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF)
Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty#US_withdrawal_and_termination
. The US nuclear missiles at Izmir, Turkey (removed in 1963) were 1,500 miles
from Moscow; Kyiv is a thousand miles closer. President Zelenskyy is now, at
last, talking about accepting Ukrainian neutrality and non-nuclear status https://www.ft.com/content/c5aa8066-715d-43dd-8a3c-b6907d839a36
; this could potentially save us all from the horrors of nuclear war; yet
surely no major nation would be so lunatic as to provoke Russia into using its
weapons of last resort?
Resource wars? Ukraine, whose citizens are the poorest in
Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
, is rich in agriculture and minerals. That said, Ukraine is a vast country and
much harder to hold than to invade, as the Russians are discovering; and Russia
is already the world’s biggest exporter of wheat and boasts huge mineral
reserves of its own. That is not to say that the West is not tempted, and
finance plays its part: Professor Prabhat Patnaik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhat_Patnaik
argues that the IMF, once simply an international rescue-bank, is now used to
enforce ‘investor-friendly’ economic restructuring on the borrower https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/0306_pd/imf-connection-ukraine-crisis ; in Ukraine’s case this entailed reforms such as
cutting spending on education and health and slashing the gas price subsidy to
its consumers. Patnaik claims that the IMF deliberately loaned more than
Ukraine could ever repay, so paving the way for taking land and mineral
resources in lieu; it will end, he says, by turning Ukraine into Greece and the
economy will be smashed as masses emigrate for better pay abroad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDkkGvKtlVg .
There is, perhaps, an even bigger picture, in which geography
is key.
Locally, assuming negotiated peace is possible, Lt Gen Riley
has sketched out a possible end position here https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/if-ukraine-rejects-a-deal-there-could-be-much-worse-to-come/
: Russia to control the Donbas (including the western coast of the Azov Sea),
Crimea (plus its water supply from the Dnieper) and a land corridor linking the
two. It would be a partition akin, say, to the creation of South Sudan in 2011.
However – and this is not to defend Russia’s actions - foreign
minister Lavrov sees his country as embroiled in the implications of the
Wolfowitz Doctrine. He refers to ‘the United States’ desire – which has been
much more manifested by the Biden administration – to come back to a unipolar
world’ http://thesaker.is/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrovs-interview-with-rt-moscow-march-18-2022/
and says ‘the West has repeatedly attempted to stall the independent and
autonomous development of Russia.’ http://thesaker.is/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov-leaders-of-russia-management-competition-moscow-march-19-2022/
The development he mentions has a maritime dimension. Until
the Soviet Union collapsed, the Black Sea was very largely a Red lake, except
for the shores of north-eastern Greece and northern Turkey. Since then, EU/NATO
has gradually encroached and if we look at the map and visualise both Ukraine
and Georgia within the fold (still under consideration), Blue is certainly
crowding what is left of (what was once) Red.
Russia has long been working on strengthening its facilities
in the Black Sea. The Sochi Olympics served a dual purpose: in 2014 America’s
The Nation magazine https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-did-sochi-get-51-billion-highways-railroads-and-lot-white-elephants/
scoffed at Putin’s $51 billion dollar ‘white elephants’, missing the greater
potential of the new Sochi airport, and of the development of the ports there,
at Novorossiisk (in preparation for oil and gas shipping https://tass.com/economy/718145 )
and at Port Kavkaz - which faces Port Crimea across the Kerch Strait, the two
linked (road and rail) since 2019 by Russia’s Crimean Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge
, Europe’s longest. South Stream, the planned undersea gas pipeline to
Bulgaria, jinking through Turkey’s zone to avoid Ukraine, had to be scrapped
because of political fallout from the Crimea annexation, but it is clear that
the Black Sea is a hugely important trade nexus for Russia.
The Sea of Azov is also a keystone in Russia’s plans for
growth and it is likely no coincidence that Ukraine’s hardest-line regiment is
named after it. Until 2014 the Sea was jointly controlled by Russia and the
Russophile eastern Ukraine. The River Don empties into it, and is connected to
the Volga, which flows into the Caspian, by the Volga-Don Canal, which strains
to accommodate modern shipping needs. One proposal is/was for a vast Eurasia Canal linking the Caspian to the Azov
and so on to the Black Sea; in 2007 Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev enthused
that the canal ‘would make Kazakhstan a maritime power and benefit many other
Central Asian nations as well’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia_Canal#Recent_developments
; an alternative Russian plan is to widen the Volga-Don Canal. Either way, a
hostile Ukrainian force on the western shore of the Azov would again pose a
threat to Russian trade and prosperity in the area, and indirectly to long-term
plans for a Eurasian trading bloc such as Damir Ryskulov’s 2008 dream of a
Trans-Asian Corridor of Development https://en.paperblog.com/trans-asian-corridor-of-development-russia-s-super-canal-to-unite-eurasia-734226/
.
It could be argued that Russia has been provoked into a
hot-headed, deeply wrongful act, one that any empowered independent tribunal
would condemn, by an outdated geopolitical policy originally aimed at
containing the spread of Communism. The
mystery is why the US continued to foster China’s ascendancy after the Soviet
collapse; Professor John Mearsheimer https://www.mearsheimer.com/
, who in 2015 blamed America for the Ukraine crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
, sees this as a ‘colossal strategic blunder’ https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/U.S.-engagement-with-China-a-strategic-blunder-Mearsheimer
, saying we should settle with Putin and ‘pivot’ towards Asia.
Is it not time to stop the war, care for and compensate its
innocent victims and negotiate a fresh approach to international relations that
allows for peaceful global economic growth?
Sunday, March 27, 2022
EMAIL FROM AMERICA (3): misinterpreting the Founders and the Bible, by Paddington
Tracking the chaos...
This week brings the confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. The GOP members in the Senate have vowed to vote against her, even though she is more qualified than most of the more junior members on the Court. At stake is her refusal to embrace 'originalism', a philosophy that we should do EXACTLY as the Founders said, not necessarily what they intended. In support of this onerous and odious idea, the conservatives repeatedly make up quotes by people such as Madison, and simply lie about the rest.
Via Heather Cox Richardson, US historian: A 2019 speech by then–attorney general William Barr at the University of Notre Dame offers an explanation.
In that speech, Barr presented a profound rewriting of the meaning of American democracy. He argued that by 'self-government' the Framers did not mean the ability of people to vote for representatives of their choice. Rather, he said, they meant individual morality: the ability to govern oneself. And, since people are inherently wicked, that self-government requires the authority of a religion: Christianity.