a pacifist perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war

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Here is one perspective from “The North American Peace Movement” on the Ukraine war.

Initially, there was less clarity regarding the events in Ukraine of February 24, 2022. With research and reflection, most of the movement came to understand the conflict did not begin that day. The supposedly “unprovoked” Russian intervention in Ukraine was sparked by NATO moving closer and closer to the Russian border, the 2014 Maidan coup, the sabotage of the Minsk agreements, etc.

A consensus is maturing in the antiwar movement that Ukraine is a proxy war by the US and its NATO allies to weaken Russia. Even key corporate press and government officials now recognize the conflict as a “full proxy war” by the US designed to use the Ukrainian people to mortally disable Russia.

Dissident Voice

I can see a perspective that the Ukraine war really started with the Russian invasion of Crimea (aka Ukraine) in 2014 and the Russian-supported independence declarations of two other provinces in the east of the country. It was really a military conflict between sovereign countries at that point, and you can see the 2022 invasion as a new campaign within that war. The “Maidan coup” was the 2014 ouster of a pro-Russian government through a parliamentary process, and the election of an arguably anti-Russian government through an election with a lot of international observers that was generally deemed free and fair. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that the CIA interfered in that election at least through financial and propaganda support for its preferred side, and I wouldn’t doubt for a second that Russia and many other governments’ intelligence agencies did too. I can see the point of view that the Russian has felt threatened by the U.S. and NATO going all the way back to the Balkan war in the 1990s and feels they are making a stand. And I don’t doubt that U.S. and NATO leaders encouraged Ukraine not to accept its initial loss of territory after 2014 (“the Minsk agreement”) in return for promises of military support.

Russia never respected Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation state. This is the single greatest issue to me – Ukraine is a recognized sovereign nation with a seat at the UN, and all other UN nation states need to stand up for any nation state whose established territory is violated. This just has to be a bedrock principle that everyone (ESPECIALLY the U.S. following its adventure in Iraq) needs to recommit to.

Latinos for Trump?

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Alongside the narrative that the Republican Party is a white supremacist party, we hear a narrative that Latino voters are shifting toward Trump. This matters because they make up about 15% of U.S. voters. I’ll share a few thoughts:

  • First, the U.S. Census has revised how it asks people if they identify as Latino over the years, and is considering revising it again. This makes it a little hard to track over time. It occurs to me that it is just a very broad group with some very disparate people, ranging from Puerto Ricans to people with Cuban ancestry to South American ancestry to Spanish ancestry and newly arrived immigrants to families who have been in the U.S. for many generations. So I am just not sure how predictive this category is of how people are going to vote.
  • For people who have immigrated legally and recently, not all are going to be sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. It may seem unfair when you feel you have followed the rules to see that others have not. People also may see newly arrived immigrants as competing for jobs, whether this is really borne out by the facts or not. So Republican anti-immigrant messaging may appeal to some, although the ads we are seeing in Pennsylvania right now are just blatant racist lies, in my opinion.
  • People who view themselves as succeeding through hard work resent any sense that the government is taking their income and redistributing it to people who do not work hard. So the Republicans can trot out their decades-old anti-tax and “welfare queen” messages and they are going to resonate with some people, sometimes.
  • This may be a sensitive topic, but there is some anti-black racism among some Latinos, sometimes, and so even blatantly racist messaging from the Republicans is going to reach some people.
  • For approximately 50 years, the Democrats have made promises to the working class and middle class and failed to deliver them, time and time again. The Republicans don’t offer solutions, but they can just keep pointing out that the Democrats have failed to deliver, and offer us people to blame. This message reaches a lot of people of all races who are hurting in this country.

So those are the problems. Now our politicians can just put on their thinking caps and come up with practical solutions, right?

more fun with the CIA World Fact Book: Israel and Iran

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All numbers here are as reported in the CIA World Factbook, except the last row which is me calculating GDP times % of GDP spent by the military.

IsraelIranJordanSaudi ArabiaEgypt
Population9 MIllion88 Million11 Million36 Million109 Million
GDP Per Capita (PPP)$44,400$15,500$9,500$50,200$12,800
Ginni Index38.640.933.745.931.9
Unemployment Rate3.7%8.8%19%5.6%6.4%
Average Life Expectancy82.275.476.376.974.7
Total GDP (PPP)$424 Billion$1.4 Trillion$107 Billion$1.8 Trillion$1.4 Trillion
% of GDP spent on military4.5%2.5%4.8%6.0%1.2%
Estimated Military Spending$19 Billion$35 Billion$5.1 Billion$100 Billion$17 Billion
CIA World Factbook

The sources of these numbers are not always crystal clear, so we can take them with a grain of salt, but still they yield some insights. Israel is just a small country. It’s about a tenth the size of Iran or Egypt in terms of population (I’m not sure how settlers and people in occupied territories are counted, be we are talking orders of magnitude here), and about a quarter to a third the size of Iran, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia in terms of GDP. An average person lives a rich country lifestyle and enjoys a long life in Israel, but in terms of sheer amount spent on the military you can see why they need foreign (i.e. U.S.) assistance and conscription to be on a similar level with these other countries in the region. I threw in Jordan, but it is a relatively small, not very wealthy country by these numbers. You can see why they would prefer not to get in fights with their neighbors or the world’s superpowers.

a strike on Iran, oil and commodity prices

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Please note: I wrote this before the fast-moving current events of Friday, April 19, 2024.

According to the (paywalled) Financial Times, an Israeli and/or US military strike on Iran could involve half a dozen important oil producing countries as well as snarling shipping traffic. This would seem like particularly bad news for Biden as Americans fuel up their planet-burning behemoths for the “summer driving season” followed by the fall voting season.

trade “fragmentation” vs. AI?

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One interesting thing in the IMF report I mentioned recently forecasting a significant productivity slowdown: the positive effects of AI on productivity and the negative effects of inefficient trade policy were shown offsetting each other. Meanwhile, Eric Posner is concerned that humans will have psychological difficulties leading lives of leisure after the AI-driven productivity revolution, and after our political system correctly decides to redistribute the resulting wealth to everyone. I know, this could be a medium-term pain, long-term gain sort of thing. But how do we know the long term will come? And this kind of thinking clearly ignores the existential threats like climate change and biological weapons, unless you assume the AI productivity revolution will dispatch those threats without creating new ones.

is the world in a depression?

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According to the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, maybe. And not just since Covid, but the world has been slowing since the 2008 financial crisis. They say it’s due to demographics (aging population, shrinking work force), “misallocation of resources” (low capital investment?), “fragmentation” (moving away from free trade?) and slowing innovation as measured by total factor productivity. Well crap. So we should have been investing in education, infrastructure, research and development all this time? Instead we let big business capture the political system, stifle competition and innovation, and starve the public realm apparently. Which is not even in their best interests in the long run. Our society is gradually slipping, and each time there is a crisis we are not able to bounce back all the way to our previous trend. Now we are looking at a looming food crisis and the loss of our coastal urban centers all over the world. And we are stupid enough to get ourselves into wars on top of all this.

America’s “ambiguous” Taiwan policy

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This article explains the U.S. policy of being intentionally vague about defending Taiwan. It is all about maximizing deterrence. Historically, the idea was both the deter China from any attack, but also to deter Taiwan from a declaration of independence that would be likely to provoke an attack. Going forward, this article suggests arming Taiwan to the teeth and encircling China by stationing U.S. forces in Japan, the Philippines and Australia.

I don’t know – not being a foreign policy expert but not wanting war or especially nuclear war, I might focus on convincing China that the U.S. is not a threat to them as long as they do not threaten Taiwan. And keep reducing our nuclear stockpile so they don’t feel like they have to keep growing theirs, and consider a no first strike policy.

Formalizing the U.S. alliance with other countries in the region sounds a bit NATO-like, and look how well that has been working for Europe.

March 2024 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ralph Nader says the civilian carnage in Gaza is an order of magnitude worse than even the Gaza authorities say it is. Which is almost unthinkably horrible if true, and makes the Israeli public statements about collateral damage seem even less credible. However even handed you try to be in considering this war could be a proportionate response to the original gruesome attack, it is getting harder.

Most hopeful story: Yes, there are some fun native (North American) wildflowers you can grow from bulbs. Let’s give the environmental and geopolitical doom and gloom a rest for a moment and cultivate our gardens.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I looked into Belarus, and now I am just a little bit less ignorant, which is nice.

April election poll check-in, or “it’s just the fading price shocks in gas and groceries, stupid”

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Here’s where we stand as I write this on April 3, 2024. Sure, there are all sorts of reasons the polls might be wrong and it is a long time until election day…but I would rather be ahead in the polls and saying that than behind, wouldn’t you? Or even behind and getting less behind.

STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent Real Clear Politics Poll Average (as of 4/3/24)
ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +5.2% (March 1: Trump +5.5)
GeorgiaBiden +0.3%Trump +4.5% (March 1: Trump +6.5)
WisconsinBiden +0.6%Trump +0.6% (March 1: Trump +1.0%)
North CarolinaTrump +1.3%Trump +4.6% (March 1: Trump +5.7%)
PennsylvaniaBiden +1.2%Trump +0.6% (March 1: Biden +0.8%)
MichiganBiden +2.8%Trump +3.4% (March 1: Trump +3.6%)
NevadaBiden +2.4%Trump +3.2% (March 1: Trump +7.7%)

The electoral college vote, as it stands at the moment, would be 312 for Trump to 226 for Biden. (March 1: 293 for Trump to 245 for Biden)

So the verdict is…Biden behind but getting less behind in every swing state (6 out of 7) except Pennsylvania. The Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina moves are all more than 1% towards Biden. Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan are less than 1% towards Biden. The Pennsylvania move is less than 1% towards Trump, but because this flips the state from slight Biden to slight Trump, Trump now leads all swing states and the electoral college looks even worse for Biden than a month ago.

Have we gone from “it’s the economy, stupid” to “it’s the rate of change in the rate of change in the price of groceries, compared to the rate of change of the rate of change in the price of groceries two years ago, stupid”? Maybe it’s that simple. Sure, there is plenty going on in the world in terms of war and peace and the collapsing biosphere that supports all life. But we are Americans, and we don’t base our votes on these things. At least not enough of us, enough of the time to make a difference compared to the damn price of groceries. All things being equal, I would wager on this trend continuing over the next seven months. Of course, all things will probably not be equal – a significant recession that throws a significant number of voters out of work would be the worst possible thing for Biden. Because it doesn’t matter so much how much the damn groceries cost if you have no money at all. On the other hand, most other crises might tend to give Biden a chance to show some leadership, which at least some voters might like. And of course, Biden and/or Trump could drop dead at any time. I am not predicting any of these things, just defining a range of things that could happen.