The Spread of Authoritarianism and Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine
freedomhouse.org had a seminar this morning presenting their new Freedom in the World 2022 ratings, which I reported on with current focus in the previous blog post. I’m partly reporting on that seminar, on the usefulness of economic sanctions from economist Paul Krugman, and my comments.
First of all, I have to join with all Americans in giving our sympathy and what aid we can give to the people of Ukraine who have been unfairly victimized by the Mad Czar Putin and his megalomania heightened by his isolation with his gang of Oligarchs.
Looking at the group of Eastern European countries which are in NATO it is surprising how accomplished they are in practicing Democracy and in guaranteeing individual participation and freedoms.
The Freedomhouse pointed out that the growth of dictatorships is spurred because they have grown past a critical point where dictatorships can now back each other up economically instead of being subject to economic sanctions and boycotts from Democratic countries. The grossest display of this was at the opening of the Olympic Games where simultaneously Xi Jinping, Emperor of China, was greatly increasing its natural gas purchases from Russia to cover those that could be dropped by Europe.
Putin had early on adapted a practice of funding the Russian government and military buildup by capturing and selling natural resources. It is said that they funded 50% of the government. His initial capture of Donbas was for their mines, factories, and coal. Besides being a popular Russian seaside vacation area, Crimea, its harbor, and 200 mile drilling rights gave Russia access to oil on the southern coast of Ukraine worth a trillion dollars. Ukraine also held the pipeline from Russia natural gas to sourthern Europe. The Nordstream pipeline in the Baltic Sea gave natural gas to Germany. The new Nordstream 2 would double that. The new natural resource is that Ukraine provides 10% of world wheat and grain. The rural areas of Ukraine are those that speak Ukrainian. Clearly, nobody is growing anything in the freezing winter, but those crops will regenerate in the summer. Putin is also going to gain new harbors in Odessa, which leads to Moldova, and at Mariupol in the Donetsk Oblast, which was not held by dissidents.
Europe and Germany did little to lessen their dependence on Russian gas and oil. The natural gas not only provided heating of furnaces and warm water, but also supplied electricity and high industrial heat. Germany continued shutting its clean nuclear reactors for electricity, without providing adequate renewables or solving the power storage for fluctuations and nighttimes. They had not built LNG liquid natural gas terminals. The US exports LNG but will need two more years to boost its LNG to sufficiently replace lost Russian natural gas. We are trying to get more natural gas from Persian Gulf countries as LNG to Europe.
And who to our wondering eyes would magically appear, but dictator enriched Tucker Carlson, and the next day, his follower, defeated President and self-appointed King of Republicans, Donald Trump with his red MAGA hat driving his miniature eight horse power golf cart, praising the Mad Czar Putin. This line praising Putin has of course caught on with conspiracy followers on the internet to the tune of half a million. Of course, accompanying this is the old anti-Semitic trope that the Ukraine government is abusing children. It turns out that President Zelensky and the Parliament head are Jewish. Babies and children are in fact suffering from the bombardment by Putin, including hospitals, and from walking miles in freezing weather to become refugees. Trump has continuously admired dictators, starting with his unnecessarily quoting Mussolini during his campaign. While Trump unnecessarily distrupted world trade with China, he still liked Xi, and the Chinese never made the purchases that they had promised in their agreement.
Putin’s televised invasion launch showed him to indeed be a megalomaniac. Putin seems to have learned from Trump and Tucker the use of a long string of derogatory adjectives to convince their viewers that Biden and Democrats and the Ukrainian government are terrible people. This is standard Republican speech now. We hope that somewhere in the Russian military or Kremlin there is an analogy to General Milley, who will keep a megalomaniac from getting access to nuclear weapons. Several people including a newscaster on MSNBC are concluding that only a putsch taking out Putin can stop the Ukraine madness. Even when Putin takes Ukraine, he is going to have to stay their for his entire reign, as we had to in Afghanistan, and only to have it disappear in days in the end.
Putin also stole from Trump the line: you will see consequences the like of which you have never seen before.
The Wall Street Journal says that Ukraine exports 13% of the world’s corn and 12% of its wheat. The exports are 30% of China’s grain imports, and Ukraine also imports to the Middle East. They go through southern ports in Odessa and Mykolaiv. Those ports and the Sea of Azov are now closed by the war. The fields need pesticides and fertilizer in March.
By the way, exports from Ukraine are only $68 billion a year. The Ukraine GDP is $185 billion, or $600 billion in PPP. Of that, 12.2% is agriculture, 60% is services, and 28.6% is industry. By the way, the US GDP of $23,000 billion is 13.5 times that of Russia’s $1,710 billion GDP.
Paul Krugman showed a bar graph today that the wealth of Russia’s top 0.01%, that is the top 1/10,000, have about 13% of the countries’ wealth. If Russians knew that about Russian wealth, there would be a lot more demonstrators about that.. But of that 13%, only 5% is in Russia, and 8% is in offshore accounts. That is what we could sanction, except the rich from other countries do the same thing. Yes, I know you are asking: but what about the US. Only (really?) 8% of the US wealth is in the top 1/10,000. But only (again?) less than 1% of the US wealth which is held by those people is offshore, and the other 7% is in the US.
The $650 billion of the Russian National Wealth Fund is mainly in three banks. (Wikipedia says it is only $200 billion.). It supports the Russian pension system.
My opinion: The point is that with Perestroika, the industries held by the people’s Communist government were privatized. But they went to the gang of oligarchs, which is headed by Putin. With enough sanctions on that leading group, the world’s hope is that they turn on Putin. The demonstrators on the street are brave and heros, but don’t have the influence of the oligarchs. The couple of oligarchs who have had the nerve to challenge Putin were poisoned, even outside of Russia.
