For Appeasement in Ukraine, &
For Appeasement in Ukraine, &
BRIEFLY NOTED: FOR 2022-05-31 Tu
FIRST: For Appeasement in Ukraine:
Yes, I am an appeaser.
The stake should be put in the ground:
(a) full UN recognition of Muscovy’s borders including the Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea;
(b) in exchange for immediate EU accession of Ukraine, a Marshall Plan for Ukraine rebuilding funded by a tax on Muscovite oil and gas exports, and NATO “training” brigades permanently located outside of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Kyiv (and Kishinev, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki for good measure).
If the Muscovites don’t like the training brigades, or the tax, or the EU accession, then they can bargain for their removal in exchange for withdrawal from Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk.
Yes, it would be a betrayal.
Yes, we should again hold the meeting at which this betrayal deal is inked at Yalta.
But a bad peace is better than a good war.
However, for Henry Kissinger right now to call for (a) without the (b) is for him to… well, I cannot say “become”, can I?… once again be a stooge for murderous authoritarians:
Robert Farley: Russia-Ukraine War Update: ‘Part of the problem with Kissinger… is the sense that Moscow is owed a certain place in the sun and that thus we should refrain from “humiliating” Russia…. I certainly don’t hold to the idea that Russia’s delicate psyche needs to be protected… or that the West needs to create the conditions under which Putin can declare victory. Russians should fully and absolutely have every reason at the end of this war to conclude that Vladimir Putin took them into an unjust war in which they suffered disastrous defeats. That said… there needs to be some way back and at least parts of that way back cannot be contingent upon regime change in Moscow. Folks also aren’t wrong that turning Russia into North Korea is unlikely to generate the kind of political change that we want to see…
LINK: <https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/05/russia-ukraine-war-update>
And the learned and thoughtful Hilzoy reassures me that I am not completely crazy in thinking as I do:
One Video:
Kate Bush: Running Up That Hill <https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wp43OdtAAkM>:
One Image: The Palace of Nestor at Pylos:
Very Briefly Noted:
Erica Yokoyama: Japan’s Deep Ocean Turbine Trial Offers Hope of Phasing Out Fossil Fuels: ‘Tested in one of the world’s strongest ocean currents, a prototype generator could herald the start of a new stream of renewable energy… <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-30/japan-s-deep-ocean-turbine-trial-offers-hope-of-phasing-out-fossil-fuels?srnd=green>
Jackie Davalos & Drake Bennett: How Uber & Lyft Gamify the Gig Economy: ‘Who’s Really Winning?Ride-share drivers say that the pandemic has exacerbated the imbalance with their overlords… <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-27/how-uber-and-lyft-gamify-the-gig-economy?srnd=businessweek-v2>
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Rob Henderson: 31 Lessons from 31 Years <
Noah Smith: NFTs Will (Probably) Be Back: ‘NFTs at least give some people a sense of ownership…. It is a very unwise idea to invest your life’s savings into NFTs. The space is absolutely chock-full of scams, Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dumps, and products of dubious value being supported by hype and nonsense… <
Paragraphs:
This is the long fight between, in Paul Krugman's terms, the Book I Keynesians and the Chapter 12 Keynesians. Paul’s view, which I think is absolutely correct, is that Keynes himself was a Chapter 12 Keynesian and that the Book 1 aspects, while there, were definitely secondary to his vision. But the dominant strains in American macroeconomics have always found Book I to resonate much more with them than Chapter 12—when they have found value in Keynes at all. And Bill is right here to stress that the best parts of Zack Carter’s excellent book are about how Samuelson’s Book I-focused “neoclassical synthesis” was extremely vulnerable to the assault from the right for which understanding what was going on in the macroeconomy was secondary to undermining the intellectual underpinnings of the New Deal:
Bill Janeway: The Master and the Prodigy: ‘Carter’s most original and substantial contribution… [is] a detailed account of how the genuinely radical “Economics of Keynes” was transformed into the narrowly constrained and conventional “Keynesian economics,” which was more palatable for policymakers in post-war capitalist America, but also more vulnerable to attack by economic libertarians starting in the 1970s…. Samuelson’s solution was to construct a “neoclassical synthesis.”…. With the state operating as a visible hand to do the work of Say’s Law, microeconomics could revert to the pre-Keynesian model of perfect competition as the mode by which to allocate resources efficiently. But Samuelson turned his back on the behavioral micro-foundations of The General Theory…. By abandoning Keynes’s behavioral micro-foundations, Samuelson… left his neoclassical synthesis open to a radical assault from the right…
LINK: <https://www.billjaneway.com/the-master-and-the-prodigy>
Remember that reporters trying to cover Ferguson were faced not just with lies from the police and abuse from the right, but with contempt and scorn from their own colleagues and editors:
Duncan Black: Objectitudinal: ‘Lowery was very young and sent by the WaPo to cover Ferguson and got nothing but constant shit from his editor and coworkers for attempting to accurately cover the situation: Wesley Lowery: "Hopefully this settles the industry debate about whether reporters are being ‘activists and not journalists’ by pointing out that coverage is often too deferential to police and that the media’s role should be to provide rigorous, skeptical interrogation of police claims…
LINK: <https://www.eschatonblog.com/2022/05/objectitudinal.html>
But… but… but… If one is playing for the long game, soft power is what matters for any nation that thinks it has a special, holy mission. Alexander I’s army can march beneath the Arc de Triomphe in 1814, and he can dance in the Palais du Luxembourg. But the tools for Russia to deploy are much more Pushkin and Tolstoy than tanks and missiles:
Stephen Kotkin: Russia After The War: ‘Russia is a remarkable civilization: in the arts, music, literature, dance, film. In every sphere, it’s a profound, remarkable place—a whole civilization, more than just a country. At the same time, Russia feels that it has a “special place” in the world, a special mission. It’s Eastern Orthodox, not Western. And it wants to stand out as a great power. Its problem has always been not this sense of self or identity but the fact that its capabilities have never matched its aspirations. It’s always in a struggle to live up to these aspirations, but it can’t, because the West has always been more powerful…
LINK: <https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/05/29/russia-after-the-war/>
This seems to be very puzzling to me: a panic attack based on a 10% probability bad case macroeconomic scenario. But I suppose that one can be in the forecasting game or the attention-grabbing game:
The Information: Sequoia Warns Founders of ‘Crucible Moment,’ Advises How to ‘Avoid the Death Spiral’: ‘Its latest warning to its portfolio companies takes the form of a 52-slide presentation, a copy of which was viewed by The Information. Sequoia described the current combination of turbulent financial markets, inflation and geopolitical conflict as a “crucible moment” of uncertainty and change. Sequoia told founders not to expect a speedy economic bounceback akin to what followed the start of the pandemic because, it warned, the monetary and fiscal policy tools that propelled that recovery “have been exhausted.” The firm suggested founders move fast to extend runway and to fully examine the business for excess costs. “Don’t view [cuts] as a negative, but as a way to conserve cash and run faster,” they wrote…
With respect, your views on Ukraine are ... unsound, and not only because America is not actually a principal in the Russia-Ukraine war (you can tell from the name!)
The attack on Ukraine is an existential threat to America. The problem with guaranteeing Ukraine's security is that you (and Russia, and the UK) have already made that guarantee but have not made good on it. This undermines the general belief that America has the ability and the will to maintain the global order. We have already seen historic changes of sentiment in Finland, Sweden, and Germany, but that is just the beginning. Once Trump returns to office, how much credibility will NATO retain? Remember, his dream was to run it like a mafioso protection racket.
If America fails to preserve Ukraine, other countries are going to rationally conclude that the only sure security lies in the possession of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The bar for their development is far lower than it was 70 years ago; we have already seen Israel and North Korea succeed with relatively slender resources, and Iran is now almost a foregone conclusion. The NPT will start to unravel once arming looks like a safer option than non-proliferation; slowly at first, fast in the end. It is a positive feedback process, as each new member of the club increases the pressure on others to join, just as the arming of China provoked that of India and the arming of India provoked that of Pakistan.
This is your last, best chance to avoid nuclear catastrophe; don't fuck it up.
The main designers of the way the war will end will be the Ukrainians.