I wish that I had spoke up that this sort of thing was coming, given the absolute failure of Russian unit leadership in the field prior to all of this. At the very least, combat leaders have to reign in the worst impulses of their worst soldier. The most likely culprit that initiated this massacre is a low or mid level officer. It's unlikely that Putin ordered this, unless there's a benefit I'm not seeing, and it's even less likely that a chain of evidence would point to him. Morally, he is culpable, but legally he's a ghost.
US infantry units in My Lai experienced the same failures in '68. Desperate and frustrated soldiers in wartime are dangerous in the best of circumstances, and a Russian conscript army is a far cry from disciplined. I want to see the men responsible for this captured, but with Russia's relationship with the truth, this will either be blamed on Zelensky or the White Helmets somehow.
“I share Cristina’s sense that no matter how difficult it is—no matter how excruciating, how nauseating, how much it fills us with questions to which there isn’t and couldn’t never be an answer that satisfies—we owe it to these people—my God, these ordinary, poor people—to look at the photographs.” (Claire Berlinski)
I couldn’t agree more, but as we view the horrific images that Putin’s barbarity has wrought, we shouldn’t view them with a myopic lens. Sadly, that’s precisely what Claire and her fellow travelers on both the left and the right have done.
Waxing eloquent about the absurdly unrealistic prospect of seeing Putin in the dock at The Hague is nothing more than narcissistic preening that does nothing to help Ukrainians. A far more worthwhile effort would be to ask the difficult question of whether NATO, and more specifically the United States, could have done anything differently to prevent the the tragic deaths those pictures document.
Could we have done anything that would have mitigated the current calamity? To anyone with an ounce of sense, the answer is obviously that we could have.
Before the war, we could have made clear that Ukraine would forever be precluded from joining NATO. We could have discouraged Zelensky from pursuing a maximalist agenda. We could have been realistic about the necessity for alterations in Ukrainian borders and the utter absurdity of relying on reference to “international law” to declare those borders inviolate.
Biden did none of that. Instead, he was more interested in the strategic advantage that would accrue to NATO from a Ukraine militarily and economically tethered to the West. If Niall Ferguson is correct, the imbeciles running the Biden Administration thought a war in Ukraine could topple Putin. See,
Like an opium addict craving his fix, globalists never seem to learn that pursuing regime change never works. It’s like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya never happened.
Let’s not forget Biden’s secret weapon; sanctions. We know they almost never work so what made the President think they would deter Putin from invading or inspire him to capitulate after he invaded? If anything sanctions have made Putin more popular in Russia and have demonstrated that he was right all along about Europe’s energy dependence. The ruble has regained its strength, Russia is bringing in a $billion a day from oil, gas and coal and if Europe ever does get its energy act together, Russia has a waiting customer with an insatiable energy appetite in China.
Have our globalist friends ever taken a look at a map of Russia? Outside of Moscow do they think that Russians care if Ikea stops selling futons to Russia, McDonalds stops selling french fries or Disney stops showcasing Moana? How many hundreds of thousands of square miles of Russian territory lie in Asia? Does Biden think anyone residing in those areas cares about sanctions?
Who are the sanctions hurting as much or more than Russians? Well, there’s third world farmers who can’t afford fertilizer and middle class Americans and Europeans who can barely afford to heat their homes. In the end, the sanctions regime may come to resemble a man who places a gun to his head and says, “if you don’t relent, I’ll shoot.”
Here’s the reality that Claire and her globalist colleagues can’t bring themselves to admit. Biden and NATO could have enticed Zelensky to negotiate a reasonable compromise before hostilities started. They didn’t. To this day they could encourage negotiations leading to compromise. Apparently they aren’t. They are more interested in their fantasy of regime change and humiliating Putin than they are about saving the lives of innocent Ukrainians. Putin is the murderer. But at the very least, NATO is an accessory after the fact.
Bemoaning the unfolding tragedy accomplished nothing if there’s no attempt to make things better. Sadly, globalists have no strategy to accomplish that.
Perhaps the most myopic take on the Ukrainian imbroglio is the assertion that Putin has already lost. While his strategy of painlessly taking over the entire country has failed, he still has numerous arrows in his quiver. He’s a butcher; to Putin murdering tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way is no more than a cost of doing business. How many more months will it take before Ukrainian military resistance is degraded. How long will it be before Putin steps up attacks on the Ukrainian economic infrastructure (such as it is). How long will it be before Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure is severely damaged? Time is on Putin’s side not Zelensky’s. If Putin can’t win the military victory of his fondest ambitions, he will leave Ukraine a broken shell and he will do so knowing that NATO won’t do a damn thing about it.
A reasonable compromise is a better outcome. Sadly it seems that NATO (with a cheering peanut gallery of globalist fans) is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Ukrainians are unbelievably brave. The cowards reside in a deluded West.
"If Putin can’t win the military victory of his fondest ambitions, he will leave Ukraine a broken shell and he will do so knowing that NATO won’t do a damn thing about it."
How confident are you that NATO won't be there for Ukraine if Russia gets kicked out? That's a bold proclamation.
WigWag, I feel that these comments require a longer, more detailed response from me. I can't do it today, but would you allow me to reply to them at length in the newsletter later this week? I don't want to single you out, but I see arguments of this variety in many places and think they deserve a thoughtful reply.
As one more example of how sanctions could boomerang on the United States, Goldman Sachs is warning investors that the dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency may be drawing to a close. If sanctions on Russia drive the final nail into the dollar’s coffin or even if they merely instigate a slow but steady decline, who’s won the war and who’s lost?
Thank you for the link, which article I read and the Goldman research comment it quotes. Each is misguided albeit in different ways.
Ever since the financial debacle that was memorialized publicly as the Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 (but which began much earlier and continues today), Wall Street commentators fall all over each other decrying any trend they deign as having continued too long; they missed 2007/2008 big time so damn if they will miss another.
The declining US$ narrative has been around for a while; Goldman's analysis merely mimics other remarks that arose in the immediate wake of the sanctions so Goldman is a late arrival to this particular party. Meanwhile, the US$ *increases* in value in the currency markets vis a vis every other currency - before 24 Feb, since the imposition of sanctions against Russia, and through the intensification of those sanctions, all the way to today.
(I see no way to post image files else I would share some $ charts of the near- and long-term trajectories. Sorry.)
However. And there had to be a however.
The USA has followed a policy of broadly cheapening the value of the US$ for the past ~110 years. This long term trend of devaluing the US$ crosses political lines so the recent political polarization has nothing to do with it.
~55 years ago, Charles De Gaulle famously grumbled France would accept only gold from Ft Knox to settle debts denominated in US$; John Connolly, Nixon's Sec of Treasury equally famously retorted that "The US$ is our currency but their problem." In other words, any woe the USA suffered, such as inflation in the 1970s, we exported rather than suffered - although that bout of inflation (1970s) received plenty of attention. Connolly's quip is an example of one benefit of being the host country of the world's reserve currency. (A second benefit is seignorage. There are other benefits.)
And here we are today, all these decades later, still grousing over the same topic, as though our (the USA's) sordid history of cheapening our currency's value has been forgotten or ignored. No one, especially not "major investors" ignore this policy risk.
It is likely that once past Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the woes it forces on everyone everywhere (such as global famine), the US$ will resume its slow leak downwards in value that has been, as I remarked above, its long term trend.
Fiat currencies are like a giant con game; as long as you believe the currency has value, we all are fine; stop believing and the world has problems. Which is why many people believe currencies, such as the US$ but especially the US$, should be pegged to something (gold, naugahyde, chalk, silicon, bitcoin, whatever) to provide a mechanism to control the currency's price oscillations; the thermometer and thermostat phenomenon.
You might appreciate the article linked below that serves as something of a primer, although it too tends to glide by the issues a reader most wants it to dig into deeper and that your excellent comments beg for, especially as the article nears its end.
David, I’m far from sanguine about the prospects for the dollar for many reasons not the least of which is the fact that American sanctions expose U.S., European and Japanese banks to loses of around $150 billion. It’s hard to see the dollar maintaining its desirability when government decisions put this much money at risk. I’ve read that American firms have about $15 billion of exposure to Russia and the Europeans are even more exposed. There’s a good chance that almost all of this will have to be written off.
Russia and India have expressed a willingness to trade outside of dollar denominated assets and reportedly, India will be paying for its substantial defense imports from Russia in ruble. It has also been reported that India and China are contemplating settling trade with each other in their own currencies.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to be compensated for its enormous oil exports to China in RMB, the first time it has agreed to do so. What are the consequences for the dollar if the Saudis decide to keep the large surpluses generated from its oil sales in RMB or other currency?
Surely the Saudis see the that the sanctions imposed on Russia are crippling. Would you be surprised if they wondered whether the Saudi-hating Biden Administration might put them next on the hit list? Might the UAE or other Arab oil states be wondering the same thing?
The only thing that makes America’s enormous fiscal and trade deficits possible is the world’s insatiable thirst for dollars. If that comes crashing down, the United States and Europe are toast.
Biden is literally putting western prosperity at risk, potentially for decades because of the obsessive desire he has to bring Putin down. Instead of facilitating deescalation, he’s escalating his rhetoric, his incitement of Zelensky and his passion to see the war go on for as long as possible.
Like the good globalist that he is, our President has never met a war he can’t be enthused about. Biden clings to his desire for regime change in Russia with all the passion of an old woman clinging to a relic in the hopes of warding off the scrofula.
But like most globalists, Biden is too blinded by his ideology to realize that the whole thing is likely to boomerang as it almost always does.
If the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency collapses, the rules based international order that globalists pine for will surely collapse right along with it.
I am, I suppose, a globalist by disposition although not necessarily prescriptively. Clearly, globalism is on its way out in world affairs; the multi-polar world that seems likely to arrive in its wake offers I believe a different set of more parlous risks than the loss of some money (irrespective of the size of the pile). I admit I am quite concerned - even, dare I say it, frightened - by the future that rushes toward us.
The West, rightly or wrongly, prefers to fight this battle with a revanchist Russia with plenty of red ink for Russia but no loss of blood for the West, which arguably is a big mistake; of course, to engage in this battle with military force also could prove a big mistake. I agree the sanctions against Russia create the unintentional risk of boomeranging against the West -- but with no risk, there can be no gain. Time will tell.
I agree with your point that the US$ is in peril of losing its status as the preeminent reserve currency - although that peril has been mooted repeatedly since 1945. Meanwhile, the US$ remains the world's preeminent reserve currency. Moreover, I doubt anyone really cares on an isolated basis how any single country settles its counter-party transactions; one reason why there is by design more than one reserve currency. The problem for China, India, and Russia, should they form a tri-partite trading bloc, is when they want access to the international markets so that their economies can grow more enduringly and more quickly. If they want access to the European market or, wonder of wonders, the US market, then they must accept trade negotiated in English and likely settled in US$. The US$ is a medium of exchange (all currencies are just that): The more universally accepted a currency is, the more desirable the currency; the more desirable the currency, the more universally accepted. Would you accept payment in renminbi, rubles, or rupee for your work if the buyer requested it?
That all said, things change; inconstancy is the one constant you can bank on in markets so it is best never to say never.
To your other points. I no longer engage in online political discourse, sorry. Life is too brief.
I wish that I had spoke up that this sort of thing was coming, given the absolute failure of Russian unit leadership in the field prior to all of this. At the very least, combat leaders have to reign in the worst impulses of their worst soldier. The most likely culprit that initiated this massacre is a low or mid level officer. It's unlikely that Putin ordered this, unless there's a benefit I'm not seeing, and it's even less likely that a chain of evidence would point to him. Morally, he is culpable, but legally he's a ghost.
US infantry units in My Lai experienced the same failures in '68. Desperate and frustrated soldiers in wartime are dangerous in the best of circumstances, and a Russian conscript army is a far cry from disciplined. I want to see the men responsible for this captured, but with Russia's relationship with the truth, this will either be blamed on Zelensky or the White Helmets somehow.
“I share Cristina’s sense that no matter how difficult it is—no matter how excruciating, how nauseating, how much it fills us with questions to which there isn’t and couldn’t never be an answer that satisfies—we owe it to these people—my God, these ordinary, poor people—to look at the photographs.” (Claire Berlinski)
I couldn’t agree more, but as we view the horrific images that Putin’s barbarity has wrought, we shouldn’t view them with a myopic lens. Sadly, that’s precisely what Claire and her fellow travelers on both the left and the right have done.
Waxing eloquent about the absurdly unrealistic prospect of seeing Putin in the dock at The Hague is nothing more than narcissistic preening that does nothing to help Ukrainians. A far more worthwhile effort would be to ask the difficult question of whether NATO, and more specifically the United States, could have done anything differently to prevent the the tragic deaths those pictures document.
Could we have done anything that would have mitigated the current calamity? To anyone with an ounce of sense, the answer is obviously that we could have.
Before the war, we could have made clear that Ukraine would forever be precluded from joining NATO. We could have discouraged Zelensky from pursuing a maximalist agenda. We could have been realistic about the necessity for alterations in Ukrainian borders and the utter absurdity of relying on reference to “international law” to declare those borders inviolate.
Biden did none of that. Instead, he was more interested in the strategic advantage that would accrue to NATO from a Ukraine militarily and economically tethered to the West. If Niall Ferguson is correct, the imbeciles running the Biden Administration thought a war in Ukraine could topple Putin. See,
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-22/niall-ferguson-putin-and-biden-misunderstand-history-in-ukraine-war
Like an opium addict craving his fix, globalists never seem to learn that pursuing regime change never works. It’s like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya never happened.
Let’s not forget Biden’s secret weapon; sanctions. We know they almost never work so what made the President think they would deter Putin from invading or inspire him to capitulate after he invaded? If anything sanctions have made Putin more popular in Russia and have demonstrated that he was right all along about Europe’s energy dependence. The ruble has regained its strength, Russia is bringing in a $billion a day from oil, gas and coal and if Europe ever does get its energy act together, Russia has a waiting customer with an insatiable energy appetite in China.
Have our globalist friends ever taken a look at a map of Russia? Outside of Moscow do they think that Russians care if Ikea stops selling futons to Russia, McDonalds stops selling french fries or Disney stops showcasing Moana? How many hundreds of thousands of square miles of Russian territory lie in Asia? Does Biden think anyone residing in those areas cares about sanctions?
Who are the sanctions hurting as much or more than Russians? Well, there’s third world farmers who can’t afford fertilizer and middle class Americans and Europeans who can barely afford to heat their homes. In the end, the sanctions regime may come to resemble a man who places a gun to his head and says, “if you don’t relent, I’ll shoot.”
Here’s the reality that Claire and her globalist colleagues can’t bring themselves to admit. Biden and NATO could have enticed Zelensky to negotiate a reasonable compromise before hostilities started. They didn’t. To this day they could encourage negotiations leading to compromise. Apparently they aren’t. They are more interested in their fantasy of regime change and humiliating Putin than they are about saving the lives of innocent Ukrainians. Putin is the murderer. But at the very least, NATO is an accessory after the fact.
Bemoaning the unfolding tragedy accomplished nothing if there’s no attempt to make things better. Sadly, globalists have no strategy to accomplish that.
Perhaps the most myopic take on the Ukrainian imbroglio is the assertion that Putin has already lost. While his strategy of painlessly taking over the entire country has failed, he still has numerous arrows in his quiver. He’s a butcher; to Putin murdering tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way is no more than a cost of doing business. How many more months will it take before Ukrainian military resistance is degraded. How long will it be before Putin steps up attacks on the Ukrainian economic infrastructure (such as it is). How long will it be before Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure is severely damaged? Time is on Putin’s side not Zelensky’s. If Putin can’t win the military victory of his fondest ambitions, he will leave Ukraine a broken shell and he will do so knowing that NATO won’t do a damn thing about it.
A reasonable compromise is a better outcome. Sadly it seems that NATO (with a cheering peanut gallery of globalist fans) is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Ukrainians are unbelievably brave. The cowards reside in a deluded West.
"If Putin can’t win the military victory of his fondest ambitions, he will leave Ukraine a broken shell and he will do so knowing that NATO won’t do a damn thing about it."
How confident are you that NATO won't be there for Ukraine if Russia gets kicked out? That's a bold proclamation.
WigWag, I feel that these comments require a longer, more detailed response from me. I can't do it today, but would you allow me to reply to them at length in the newsletter later this week? I don't want to single you out, but I see arguments of this variety in many places and think they deserve a thoughtful reply.
I look forward to it.
As one more example of how sanctions could boomerang on the United States, Goldman Sachs is warning investors that the dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency may be drawing to a close. If sanctions on Russia drive the final nail into the dollar’s coffin or even if they merely instigate a slow but steady decline, who’s won the war and who’s lost?
See,
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/dollar-dominance-reserve-currency-risk-uk-pound-russia-sanctions-debt-2022-4
Thank you for the link, which article I read and the Goldman research comment it quotes. Each is misguided albeit in different ways.
Ever since the financial debacle that was memorialized publicly as the Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 (but which began much earlier and continues today), Wall Street commentators fall all over each other decrying any trend they deign as having continued too long; they missed 2007/2008 big time so damn if they will miss another.
The declining US$ narrative has been around for a while; Goldman's analysis merely mimics other remarks that arose in the immediate wake of the sanctions so Goldman is a late arrival to this particular party. Meanwhile, the US$ *increases* in value in the currency markets vis a vis every other currency - before 24 Feb, since the imposition of sanctions against Russia, and through the intensification of those sanctions, all the way to today.
(I see no way to post image files else I would share some $ charts of the near- and long-term trajectories. Sorry.)
However. And there had to be a however.
The USA has followed a policy of broadly cheapening the value of the US$ for the past ~110 years. This long term trend of devaluing the US$ crosses political lines so the recent political polarization has nothing to do with it.
~55 years ago, Charles De Gaulle famously grumbled France would accept only gold from Ft Knox to settle debts denominated in US$; John Connolly, Nixon's Sec of Treasury equally famously retorted that "The US$ is our currency but their problem." In other words, any woe the USA suffered, such as inflation in the 1970s, we exported rather than suffered - although that bout of inflation (1970s) received plenty of attention. Connolly's quip is an example of one benefit of being the host country of the world's reserve currency. (A second benefit is seignorage. There are other benefits.)
And here we are today, all these decades later, still grousing over the same topic, as though our (the USA's) sordid history of cheapening our currency's value has been forgotten or ignored. No one, especially not "major investors" ignore this policy risk.
It is likely that once past Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the woes it forces on everyone everywhere (such as global famine), the US$ will resume its slow leak downwards in value that has been, as I remarked above, its long term trend.
Fiat currencies are like a giant con game; as long as you believe the currency has value, we all are fine; stop believing and the world has problems. Which is why many people believe currencies, such as the US$ but especially the US$, should be pegged to something (gold, naugahyde, chalk, silicon, bitcoin, whatever) to provide a mechanism to control the currency's price oscillations; the thermometer and thermostat phenomenon.
You might appreciate the article linked below that serves as something of a primer, although it too tends to glide by the issues a reader most wants it to dig into deeper and that your excellent comments beg for, especially as the article nears its end.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/dollar-worlds-currency
David, I’m far from sanguine about the prospects for the dollar for many reasons not the least of which is the fact that American sanctions expose U.S., European and Japanese banks to loses of around $150 billion. It’s hard to see the dollar maintaining its desirability when government decisions put this much money at risk. I’ve read that American firms have about $15 billion of exposure to Russia and the Europeans are even more exposed. There’s a good chance that almost all of this will have to be written off.
Russia and India have expressed a willingness to trade outside of dollar denominated assets and reportedly, India will be paying for its substantial defense imports from Russia in ruble. It has also been reported that India and China are contemplating settling trade with each other in their own currencies.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to be compensated for its enormous oil exports to China in RMB, the first time it has agreed to do so. What are the consequences for the dollar if the Saudis decide to keep the large surpluses generated from its oil sales in RMB or other currency?
Surely the Saudis see the that the sanctions imposed on Russia are crippling. Would you be surprised if they wondered whether the Saudi-hating Biden Administration might put them next on the hit list? Might the UAE or other Arab oil states be wondering the same thing?
The only thing that makes America’s enormous fiscal and trade deficits possible is the world’s insatiable thirst for dollars. If that comes crashing down, the United States and Europe are toast.
Biden is literally putting western prosperity at risk, potentially for decades because of the obsessive desire he has to bring Putin down. Instead of facilitating deescalation, he’s escalating his rhetoric, his incitement of Zelensky and his passion to see the war go on for as long as possible.
Like the good globalist that he is, our President has never met a war he can’t be enthused about. Biden clings to his desire for regime change in Russia with all the passion of an old woman clinging to a relic in the hopes of warding off the scrofula.
But like most globalists, Biden is too blinded by his ideology to realize that the whole thing is likely to boomerang as it almost always does.
If the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency collapses, the rules based international order that globalists pine for will surely collapse right along with it.
Hi, WigWag,
I am, I suppose, a globalist by disposition although not necessarily prescriptively. Clearly, globalism is on its way out in world affairs; the multi-polar world that seems likely to arrive in its wake offers I believe a different set of more parlous risks than the loss of some money (irrespective of the size of the pile). I admit I am quite concerned - even, dare I say it, frightened - by the future that rushes toward us.
The West, rightly or wrongly, prefers to fight this battle with a revanchist Russia with plenty of red ink for Russia but no loss of blood for the West, which arguably is a big mistake; of course, to engage in this battle with military force also could prove a big mistake. I agree the sanctions against Russia create the unintentional risk of boomeranging against the West -- but with no risk, there can be no gain. Time will tell.
I agree with your point that the US$ is in peril of losing its status as the preeminent reserve currency - although that peril has been mooted repeatedly since 1945. Meanwhile, the US$ remains the world's preeminent reserve currency. Moreover, I doubt anyone really cares on an isolated basis how any single country settles its counter-party transactions; one reason why there is by design more than one reserve currency. The problem for China, India, and Russia, should they form a tri-partite trading bloc, is when they want access to the international markets so that their economies can grow more enduringly and more quickly. If they want access to the European market or, wonder of wonders, the US market, then they must accept trade negotiated in English and likely settled in US$. The US$ is a medium of exchange (all currencies are just that): The more universally accepted a currency is, the more desirable the currency; the more desirable the currency, the more universally accepted. Would you accept payment in renminbi, rubles, or rupee for your work if the buyer requested it?
That all said, things change; inconstancy is the one constant you can bank on in markets so it is best never to say never.
To your other points. I no longer engage in online political discourse, sorry. Life is too brief.
Thank you for your reply.
I looked because you said it is important -- and you are right.