Thursday, November 17, 2022

17: Ukraine

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Peace Moves Are Political Warfare

Affirm The Dignity Of Your Adversary “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.”



Maoists like to say, the party controls the gun. The political has to control the military.

The military-industrial complex in the United States can not be allowed to have the upper hand like in Afghanistan. We are on the brink of possible nuclear disaster. The world can not count on Putin being rational. The world can not count on Putin's orders for nuclear strike being disobeyed. The world should not have to count on a coup inside Russia.

I was glad when the HIMARS landed inside Ukraine and the tide turned.

But a war where the military-industrial complex is steering the wheel is a mercenary war. Follow the money. This has to be a war for liberty. This has to be primarily a political fight.

Peace efforts have to be made. The political players have to be primary. A peacemaker necessarily has to be a neutral player. Right now only India qualifies. I see a Nobel Peace Prize here for the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar.

India is now president of the G20. By the end of the decade it will have become a larger economy than the United States. And it is the only big power that is equally close to both Russia and the United States.

I actually see Putin's point. When there are ethnic riots in Indonesia, or Malaysia, it is the ethnic Chinese that suffer. India blockaded Nepal for months several years ago when the ethnic Indians inside Nepal were short shifted in the country's new constitution that was drawn in smoky rooms instead of a constituent assembly. My guess is the ethnic Russians inside Ukraine are in some sort of a predicament. Jaishankar was the top bureaucrat in the Indian Foreign Ministry at the time and was specifically tasked to fly over to Kathmandu by Modi for some last minute messaging. He was rebuffed.

You can not make peace unless you really, really listen to both sides. A power that sides with the US in knee-jerk manners could not make peace. A power that might be the next Russia (read: Taiwan) can not make the peace moves. Only India can. And India should jump into the fray. You don't need permission. Whose permission?

A Russian missile did land in Poland. Lithuania is nervous. The world can not afford this game of Russian roulette.



What does Russia want? Russia wants the ethnic Russians inside Ukraine to have political equality. What does Ukraine want? Ukraine wants its 1991 borders. Russia promised to respect that. Is it possible Putin is not being straight? It is. But peace can only be made by the wise and the strong. Jaishankar is no bit player. This is the Indian diplomats' momement to shine. India wants veto power. It should earn it by forging this peace.

Russia has to be willing to withdraw its military completely. But that territory can not be handed over to Ukraine. UN peacekeeping forces should step in. Something like a year should be allowed. A referendum should be organized under global supervision. Ukraine will have the option to put forth power devolutions such that these regions where the ethnic Russians are in majority feel there is plenty of local autonomy. Ukraine can proactively offer that kind of federalism long before the votes are cast. I thik this much political work Ukraine has to be willing to do. The war can not be about land. The tussle has to be about people.

Politics inside Russia is a separate topic. That is not an agenda for the peace process. But a peace process that gets the Russian military to vacate all of Ukraine will also bring back all those Russians who have fled, including those who dodged the draft. There is high chance they might take to the streets in organized fashions. But that is domestic Russian politics. That is not something for the peace process.

As the peace process advances, other topics can also be tackled. Reconstruction and neutral war crime investigations can be carried out. Both leave room for some creativity. Maybe there are powers like Saudi Arabia that will be happy to chip in some. That can be allowed. Why not?

The political has to be above the military. A top US General just went on record to say he does not see how Ukraine can militarily push out Russia from all of Ukraine any time soon. So why not use the winter for peace efforts and political moves?

India does not need America's permission. Use the same oil and food logic you have been using to keep buying Russian oil. To that add nuclear radiation fears. You don't want nuclear radiation in New York and London. There is a very famous Indian in London these days. His name is Rishik Sunak.

I was very actively involved with Nepal's peace process in 2005 and 2006. The American ambassador at the time kept arguing there was only a military solution. The Maoists must be defeated at the point of a gun. It was so obvious to me that was not an available path. In trying lied thousands of dead bodies and mayhem. Only the political path was possible. The political path was taken. Nepal saw rapid peace. The Moist supremo and his deputy both became Prime Minister. Both are still active politically. The supremo is right now campaigning in a national election. He is peacefully asking for votes and is pretty good at it.

American shine can mask a lot of uncivility and crude thinking. The gun speaks is one such thinking. It is bad thinking. Look at the gun deaths in America. There are people who worry the US might see a civil war in the future. There are 50,000 gun deaths every year in America. In any other country you would call that a civil war. It is not a very civil situation. Nepal's civil war lasted 10 years and cost 17,000 lives.

India must jump in and help make the peace. Peace necessarily involves give and take. The final outcome can not be fully foreseen. There will be twists and turns along the way. But right now there is zero effort. Stop asking for permission. Whose permission? New York City announced nuclear attack drills months ago.

Before the tactical nuclear strike, there can be electrical outages. That is plenty of bad news. If there is a nuclear strike, however small, the US has made explicit its intention to completely destroy the Russian military in all of Ukraine and the Black Sea. At that point Russia backs down or it launches the strategic nukes which is Mutually Assured Destruction, the so-called MAD situation. That will not spare any country, not China, not India. No territory, no ideology, no value is worth that destruction. So step in and help the two powers step back. De-escalate. Help de-escalate.

Ukraine has to be willing to forge a most cutting edge federalism for all of Ukraine. That is no price to pay to keep all of its territory.







Indonesia’s Widodo calls on G20 to work to ‘end the war’ Indonesian president appears to reference Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as he opens key global summit in Bali. .

Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin The Long-Term Costs of the Ukraine War Will Be Staggering ........ After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian economy seemed destined for a nosedive. International sanctions threatened to strangle the economy, leading to a plunge in the value of the ruble and Russian financial markets. Everyday Russians appeared poised for privation. ......... More than eight months into the war, this scenario has not come to pass. Indeed, some data suggest that the opposite is true, and the Russian economy is doing fine. The ruble has strengthened against the dollar, and although Russian GDP has shrunk, the contraction may well be limited to less than three percent in 2022.......... Look behind the moderate GDP contraction and inflation figures, however, and it becomes evident that the damage is in fact severe: the Russian economy is destined for a long period of stagnation. The state was already interfering in the private sector before the war. That tendency has become only more pronounced, and it threatens to further stifle innovation and market efficiency. The only way to preserve the viability of the Russian economy is through either major reforms—which are not in the offing—or an institutional disruption similar to the one that occurred with the fall of the Soviet Union. .......... unrealistic expectations of what economic measures can do ......... Economic sanctions did, of course, have other immediate effects. Curbing Russia’s access to microelectronics, chips, and semiconductors made production of cars and aircraft almost impossible. From March to August, Russian car manufacturing fell by an astonishing 90 percent, and the drop in aircraft production was similar. The same holds true for the production of weapons, which is understandably a top priority for the government. Expectations that new trade routes through China, Turkey, and other countries that are not part of the sanctions regime would compensate for the loss of Western imports have been proved wrong. The abnormally strong ruble is a signal that backdoor import channels are not working. If imports were flowing into Russia through hidden channels, importers would have been buying dollars, sending the ruble down. Without these critical imports, the long-term health of Russia’s high-tech industry is dire. ............ Even more consequential than Western technology sanctions is the fact that Russia is unmistakably entering a period in which political cronies are solidifying their hold on the private sector. This has been a long time in the making. After the 2008 global financial crisis hit Russia harder than any other G-20 country, Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially nationalized large enterprises. In some cases, he placed them under direct government control; in other cases, he placed them under the purview of state banks. To stay in the government’s good graces, these companies have been expected to maintain a surplus of workers on their payrolls. Even enterprises that remained private have in essence been prohibited from firing employees. This has provided the Russian people with economic security—at least for the time being—and that stability is a critical part of Putin’s compact with his constituents. .......... But an economy in which enterprises cannot modernize, restructure, and fire employees to boost profits will stagnate. Not surprisingly,

Russia’s GDP growth from 2009 to 2021 averaged 0.8 percent per year, lower than the period in the 1970s and 1980s that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union.

........ government officials, military generals, and high-ranking bureaucrats—many of them Putin’s friends—became multimillionaires. The living standards of ordinary Russians, in contrast, have not improved in the past decade. ......... Since the beginning of the war, the government has tightened its grip on the private sector even further. Starting in March, the Kremlin rolled out laws and regulations that give the government the right to shut down businesses, dictate production decisions, and set prices for manufactured goods. The mass mobilization of military recruits that started in September is providing Putin with another cudgel to wield over Russian businesses because to preserve their workforces, company leaders will need to bargain with government officials to ensure that their employees are exempt from conscription. ......... To be sure, the Russian economy has long operated under a government stranglehold. But Putin’s most recent moves are taking this control to a new level. As the economists Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny have argued, the one thing worse than corruption is decentralized corruption. It’s bad enough when a corrupt central government demands bribes; it is even worse when several different government offices are competing for handouts. ....... That could create a dynamic reminiscent of the 1990s, when Russian business owners relied on private security, mafia ties, and corrupt officials to maintain control of newly privatized enterprises. Criminal gangs employing veterans of the Russian war in Afghanistan offered “protection” to the highest bidder or simply plundered profitable businesses. The mercenary groups that Putin created to fight in Ukraine will play the same role in the future. .......... Russia could lose the war, an outcome that would make it more likely that Putin would lose power. A new reformist government could take over and withdraw troops, consider reparations, and negotiate a lifting of trade sanctions. ......... Russia will emerge from the war with its government exercising authority over the private sector to an extent that is unprecedented anywhere in the world aside from Cuba and North Korea. ........ Particularly at first, they will target the most profitable enterprises, both at the national and local level. ......... The collapse of the Soviet state made institutions of that era irrelevant. A long and painful process of building new institutions, increasing state capacity, and reducing corruption followed—until Putin came to power and eventually dismantled market institutions and built his own system of patronage. The lesson is grim: even if Putin loses power and a successor ushers in significant reforms, it will take at least a decade for Russia to return to the levels of private-sector production and quality of life the country experienced just a year ago. Such are the consequences of a disastrous, misguided war. .

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