Monday, June 20, 2022

First And Foremost Peace



Putin lambasts the West and declares the end of 'the era of the unipolar world' Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared the end of "the era of the unipolar world" in a combative speech that lambasted Western countries at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday. ......... "When they won the Cold War, the US declared themselves God's own representatives on earth, people who have no responsibilities -- only interests. They have declared those interests sacred. Now it's one-way traffic, which makes the world unstable," Putin told the audience. ....... The much-hyped speech was delayed by more than 90 minutes because of a "massive" cyberattack. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists in an impromptu conference call that the speech was postponed due to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the conference's systems. ........... Ukrainian IT Army, a hacker collective, named the St. Petersburg Forum as a target earlier this week on its Telegram channel. ........... Putin's address at the annual conference, one of his more substantial speeches since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine almost four months ago, was seen as an opportunity for the world to get some insight into his thinking. ........... he wasted no time on pleasantries and went straight into attacks on the United States and its allies. .......... "They live in the past on their own under their own delusions ... They think that ... they have won and then everything else is a colony, a back yard. And the people living there are second-class citizens," he said, adding that Russia's "special operation" -- the phrase the Russian government uses to describe its war on Ukraine -- has become a "lifesaver for the West to blame all the problems on Russia." ......... Putin tried to pin the blame for rising food prices on the "US administration and the Euro bureaucracy." ......... Ukraine is a major food producer, but the Russian invasion has affected its entire production and supply chain. The United Nations has said the war has had a devastating impact on supplies and prices and warned it could push up to 49 million more people into famine or famine-like conditions. ........... European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said last week that food has become part of the Kremlin's "arsenal of terror." Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of stealing Ukrainian grain, accusations that appear to have been confirmed by satellite images showing Russian ships being loaded with Ukrainian grain. On top of that, Russia is blocking maritime access to the Black Sea ports held by Ukraine, meaning that even the grain that is still under Ukrainian control cannot be exported to the many countries that rely on it. ............ "Their intention is clear to crush the Russian economy by breaking down the chain the logistical chains, freezing national assets and attacking the living standards, but they were not successful," he added. "It has not worked out. Russian business people have rallied together working diligently, conscientiously, and step-by-step, we are normalizing the economic situation." ........... Speaking about his war on Ukraine on Friday, Putin went straight to his propaganda playbook, claiming Russia was "forced" into the conflict. He called the invasion "the decision of a sovereign country that has an unconditional right ... to defend its security." ........... The two areas -- the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) -- fell under the control of Russia-backed separatists in 2014. ......... The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian authorities of discriminating against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the regions, a charge Kyiv has denied. Starting 2019, Russian passports were offered to the residents of the two entities........... He said on Friday that Russian soldiers and the separatists were "fighting to defend their people" in the Donbas and the right to "reject any attempt to impose pseudo values of dehumanization and moral degradation from outside." ........ "The European Union has fully lost its sovereignty, and its elites are dancing to someone else's tune, harming their own population. Europeans' and European businesses' real interests are totally ignored and swept aside," he said. ......... "The EU is not a military-political bloc, unlike NATO, therefore we have always said and I have always said that our position here is consistent, understandable, we have nothing against it," Putin said during a panel discussion following his speech. ........... "It is the sovereign decision of any country to join or not to join economic associations, and it is up to this economic association to accept new states as its members or not. As far as it is expedient for the EU, let the EU countries themselves decide. Whether it will be for the benefit or to the detriment of Ukraine is also their business," he said.





A Powerful Dynasty Bankrupted Sri Lanka in Just 30 Months The Rajapaksa family is racing to secure IMF funds as protesters seek to remove it from power. ............. Ahead of the November 2019 election, Sri Lankan presidential challenger Gotabaya Rajapaksa proposed sweeping tax cuts so reckless the incumbent government thought it must be a campaign gimmick. The finance minister at the time, Mangala Samaraweera, called a briefing to assail the “dangerous” pledge to reduce the value-added tax to 8% from 15% and scrap other levies. To him, it was simple math: Sri Lanka collected relatively less revenue than nearly any other country, and its high debt load had forced it to seek cash from the International Monetary Fund. “If these proposals are implemented like this not only will the entire country go bankrupt,” the minister warned, “but the entire country will become another Venezuela or another Greece.” ........... After Rajapaksa won the 2019 election, reviving one of Asia’s most powerful dynasties, he passed the tax cut immediately in his first cabinet meeting. .......... It has stopped paying back foreign debt, defaulting for the first time since achieving independence from the British in 1948. The country’s stock exchange, which had soared after the tax cuts, is the world’s worst performer this year — below even Russia. ............ “The Rajapaksas are afraid that if they go, they’ll be very vulnerable both in and outside the country. They face human rights violations, accusations of war crimes, and corruption charges.” ........... For 12 of the last 20 years, members of the Rajapaksa family have controlled the highest reaches of Sri Lanka’s government. Under their watch, critics in the opposition and the media have called Sri Lanka a “soft dictatorship” and described the Rajapaksas as characters like those conjured up by Mario Puzo, who wrote the screenplay for “The Godfather.” .......... Gotabaya, 72, a former defense chief, led a deadly final push to end the war against Tamil separatists, which killed as many as 100,000 people before a cease-fire in 2009. His brother, Mahinda, 76, the family’s political brain, has served as president and twice as prime minister. Two other siblings, Chamal, 79, and Basil, 71, carved out niches managing ports, agriculture and money. Dozens of relatives hold top posts. ........... During the family’s first stint in office, the government took out big loans from China to invest in projects like a deep-sea port in its home district of Hambantota on the island’s southern coastline, part of an effort to turn the nation into a South Asian version of Singapore. But many projects stalled and foreign debt more than doubled between 2010 and 2020. .............. Credit rating companies downgraded Sri Lanka. To stay afloat, the government printed money, boosting supply by 42% between December 2019 and August 2021 — helping to stoke what would become Asia’s fastest inflation. ......... Last April, Sri Lanka suffered another shock: the government abruptly banned chemical fertilizer imports. In public, officials framed the move as delivering on a campaign promise to embrace organic farming and fight the “fertilizer mafia.” ......... The ban backfired. Sri Lanka’s entire agricultural chain — around a third of the labor force and 8% of gross domestic product — faced disruptions. The paddy harvest failed, forcing the government to import rice and start an expensive food aid program to support devastated farmers. Export earnings from tea, a key revenue source, also dried up. ........... The policy mistakes led to shortages of food, electricity and medicine for the poor, and soon prompted angry protesters to hit the streets yelling “Go home Gota!” and “Gota is a madman!” The Rajapaksas lost their two-thirds majority in parliament as coalition members defected, and they’re now trying to withstand the opposition’s efforts to remove them from power. ............. opinion surveys suggest the Rajapaksas would lose in a landslide. The first “Mood of the Nation” poll carried out in January by Verite Research showed that the government’s approval rating stood at just 10%.

Magazine FOREIGN AFFAIRS Opinion | Negotiating to End the Ukraine War Isn’t Appeasement It’s time for Biden to set the table for talks......... “to work to strengthen Ukraine and support its efforts to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict.” ......... A negotiated end to the conflict is the right goal — and one that needs to arrive sooner rather than later. Ukraine likely lacks the combat power to expel Russia from all of its territory, and the momentum on the battlefield is shifting in Russia’s favor. The longer this conflict continues, the greater the death and destruction, the more severe the disruptions to the global economy and the food supply, and the higher the risk of escalation to full-scale war between Russia and NATO. Transatlantic unity is starting to fray, with France, Germany, Italy and other allies uneasy about the prospect of a prolonged war — especially against the backdrop of rising inflation. ............ Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists, not surprisingly, that “victory will be ours” and urges Ukrainians to “defend every meter of our land.” And Biden, even as he makes mention of the need for diplomacy, has so far been unwilling to caution Kyiv against those aims, instead affirming “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions.” “We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate and when to negotiate,” Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, reiterated this week. “They’re going to set those terms for themselves.” ............. This war could define the strategic and economic contours of the 21st century, possibly opening an era of militarized rivalry between the world’s liberal democracies and an autocratic bloc anchored by Russia and China. ........... Instead of offering arms with no strings attached — effectively leaving strategy up to the Ukrainians — Washington needs to launch a forthright discussion about war termination with allies, with Kyiv, and ultimately, with Moscow. ........ Biden insists that the West must “make it clear that might does not make right.” Otherwise, “it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries. It will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order.” ........... Really? Russia has illegally held Crimea and occupied a chunk of Donbas since 2014. But the rules-based international order has not come to an end; indeed, it has performed admirably in punishing Russia for its new round of aggression against Ukraine. Washington should avoid painting itself into a corner by predicting catastrophe if Russia remains in control of a slice of Ukraine when the fighting stops. Such forecasts make compromise more difficult — and risk magnifying the geopolitical impact of whatever territorial gains Russia may salvage. ......... “the defeat, sidelining, or removal of Putin is the only outcome that offers any long-term stability in Ukraine and the rest of Europe.” ............ this is wishful thinking, not strategic sobriety. Putin is poised to remain in power for the foreseeable future. He will be a troublemaker no matter how this war ends; flexing his geopolitical muscle and burnishing his nationalist credentials are the primary sources of his domestic legitimacy. Furthermore, humiliating Putin is risky business; he could well be more reckless with his back up against the wall than if he can claim victory by taking another bite out of Ukraine. The West has learned to live with and contain Putin for the past two decades — and will likely continue to have to do so into the next. .......... It is in Ukraine’s own self-interest to avoid a conflict that festers for years and instead negotiate a ceasefire and follow-on process aimed at concluding a territorial settlement.

President Biden: What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine The invasion Vladimir Putin thought would last days is now in its fourth month. The Ukrainian people surprised Russia and inspired the world with their sacrifice, grit and battlefield success. The free world and many other nations, led by the United States, rallied to Ukraine’s side with unprecedented military, humanitarian and financial support. ............ Zelensky of Ukraine has said, ultimately this war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.” Every negotiation reflects the facts on the ground. We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table. ......... we will provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions ........ We will continue cooperating with our allies and partners on Russian sanctions, the toughest ever imposed on a major economy. We will continue providing Ukraine with advanced weaponry, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, powerful artillery and precision rocket systems, radars, unmanned aerial vehicles, Mi-17 helicopters and ammunition. We will also send billions more in financial assistance ......... We will work with our allies and partners to address the global food crisis that Russia’s aggression is worsening. And we will help our European allies and others reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels, and speed our transition to a clean energy future. ........... the United States will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow. ........ We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia. .......... My principle throughout this crisis has been “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” ......... Ukraine’s talks with Russia are not stalled because Ukraine has turned its back on diplomacy. They are stalled because Russia continues to wage a war to take control of as much of Ukraine as it can. The United States will continue to work to strengthen Ukraine and support its efforts to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict. .........

Unprovoked aggression, the bombing of maternity hospitals and centers of culture, and the forced displacement of millions of people make the war in Ukraine a profound moral issue.

........... If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries. It will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over. .......... We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible. Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences. ........

freedom is not free

.......... Vladimir Putin did not expect this degree of unity or the strength of our response. He was mistaken. If he expects that we will waver or fracture in the months to come, he is equally mistaken.



The War Won’t End Until Putin Loses Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression......... The first assumption is that Russia’s president wants to end the war, that he needs an off-ramp, and that he is actually searching for a way to save face and to avoid, in French President Emmanuel Macron’s words, further “humiliation.” .......... They suffered far greater casualties than anyone expected, lost impressive quantities of equipment, and demonstrated more logistical incompetence than most experts thought possible. But they have now regrouped in eastern and southern Ukraine, where their goals remain audacious: They seek to wear down Ukrainian troops, wear out Ukraine’s international partners, and exhaust the Ukrainian economy, which may already have contracted by as much as half. ............ Buoyed by oil and gas revenues, the Russian economy is experiencing a much less severe recession than Ukraine. Unconcerned by public opinion, the Russian army seems not to care how many of its soldiers die. For all of those reasons, Putin may well believe that a long-term war of attrition is his to win, not just in southern and eastern Ukraine but eventually in Kyiv and beyond. Certainly that’s what Kremlin propagandists are still telling the Russian people. On state television, the Russian army is triumphant, Russian soldiers are protecting civilians, and only Ukrainians commit atrocities. With a few minor exceptions, no one has prepared the Russian public to expect anything except total victory. ............ The second assumption made by those advocating off-ramps is that Russia, even if it were to begin negotiating, would stick to the agreements it signed. ......... But brazen dishonesty is now a normal part of Russian foreign policy as well as domestic propaganda. In the run-up to the war, senior Russian officials repeatedly denied that they intended to invade Ukraine, Russian state television mocked the Western warnings of invasion as “hysterical,” and Putin personally promised the French president that no war was coming. None of that was true. No future promises made by the Russian state, so long as it is controlled by Putin, can be believed either. ........... Nor does Russia seem to be interested in adhering to multiple treaties it is theoretically obligated to follow, among them the Geneva Convention and the United Nations’ Genocide Convention. Russian troops’ behavior in this war demonstrates that there is no international agreement that Putin can be counted on to respect. ......... Ukrainian cities would be incorporated into Russia against the will of the public ......... Putin has made clear that destroying Ukraine is, for him, an essential, even existential, goal. Where is the evidence that he has abandoned it?............. Russian cruelty also means that any territory that is temporarily ceded will, sooner or later, become the source of an insurgency, because no Ukrainian population can promise to endure that kind of torture indefinitely. Already, guerrillas in the city of Melitopol, occupied since the first days of the war, claim to have killed several Russian officers and carried out acts of sabotage. An underground is emerging in occupied Kherson and will appear in other places too. To concede territory for a deal now will simply set up another conflict later on. The end of one kind of violence will lead to other kinds of violence. ............

The West should not aim to offer Putin an off-ramp; our goal, our endgame, should be defeat.

......... the Russian president not only has to stop fighting the war; he has to conclude that the war was a terrible mistake, one that can never be repeated. More to the point, the people around him—leaders of the army, the security services, the business community—have to conclude exactly the same thing. The Russian public must eventually come to agree too. ........... Defeat could be economic, taking the form of a temporary gas-and-oil embargo that finally cuts Russia off from the source of its income, lasting at least until the war ends. .......... Defeat could also include broader sanctions, not just on a few select billionaires but on the entire Russian political class. The Anti-Corruption Foundation led by the jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has drawn up a list of 6,000 “bribe-takers and warmongers”—that is, politicians and bureaucrats who have enabled the war and the regime. .......... Any cease-fire that allows Putin to experience any kind of victory will be inherently unstable, because it will encourage him to try again. Victory in Crimea did not satisfy the Kremlin. Victory in Kherson will not satisfy the Kremlin either. ........ those who fear that, confronted with an impending loss, Putin will seek to use chemical or nuclear weapons .......... the retreats from Kyiv and Kharkiv indicate that Putin is not irrational after all. He understands perfectly well that NATO is a defensive alliance, because he has accepted the Swedish and Finnish applications without quibbling. His generals make calculations and weigh costs. They were perfectly capable of understanding that the price of Russia’s early advances was too high. The price of using tactical nuclear weapons would be far higher: They would achieve no military impact but would destroy all of Russia’s remaining relationships with India, China, and the rest of the world. ........... Only failure can persuade the Russians themselves to question the sense and purpose of a colonial ideology that has repeatedly impoverished and ruined their own economy and society, as well as those of their neighbors, for decades. Yet another frozen conflict, yet another temporary holding pattern, yet another face-saving compromise will not end the pattern of Russian aggression or bring permanent peace.

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