Settlement in Ukraine Is Not Appeasement
Settlement in Ukraine Is Not Appeasement The deep and actionable lesson we take away from Ukraine must be to settle disputes before they become great power wars and humanitarian catastrophes. ....... This year, Russia is projected to earn $320 billion in oil revenues (one-third more than in 2021), and its current account surplus will rise to $240 billion. Even on the back foot, he can continue to fund his war machine. The question is not whether he can eventually be stopped, but what he would settle for in order to hasten an end to his genocidal campaign. To get straight to the point, the answer lies in a clear legal partition of territory (gains for Russia) countered with NATO membership for Ukraine. ...... Putin has frequently spoken about his desire to unite the ethnic Russian “near abroad” under one flag. ....... knowing what we do about Putin’s disturbed psyche, isolated behavior, and delusions of grandeur—and the reality of his political and biological longevity—what diplomatic accommodation could have been sufficient to avert this worst of all possible outcomes? ....... The answer lies in settling borders before tanks cross them. In the case of Ukraine, the 2014 capture of Crimea should have disabused the West of any notion that Putin would either return the peninsula or engage fairly in a peace process over Donbas, where he has relentlessly supported pro-Russian separatist militias. Rather than the past eight years of inevitably futile diplomacy followed by the current campaign of destruction, Crimea and Donbas could have been formally ceded to Russia at the time—and Ukraine promptly admitted into the EU and NATO in response. Give—and take. ...... A country is either sovereign or it is not. Calls for “neutrality” are not conflict resolution but a recipe for further subterfuge. ..... unlike Russia, China’s military capacity is growing by giant leaps. All the more reason then, to settle with China now rather than risk misperception and escalation later. Those islands that China has built up into its own de facto possessions should be recognized as belonging to China—but allied countries should take similar actions to reinforce and defend every rocky outcrop they still possess—with bluntly transparent Western support. China should be told in the sharpest terms that military assistance will mount across the South and East China Seas until it engages in reciprocal and binding recognition. Again: settlement with deterrence. .......... Clarity over borders enables their opening to flows of talent, a competition in which the West prevails hands-down over both Russia and China. Just look at the outflow of Russian and Chinese students and professionals over the past generation, including those fleeing Moscow and Hong Kong today. A generation of talent gained is worth more than a sliver of territory lost. ......... Recent decades have laid bare how great powers can be eager to enter wars but are rarely good at preventing them. That is a dangerous paradox given how many so-called “frozen conflicts” are flaring just below the surface and away from the headlines. From the Balkans to the Caucasus to the Himalayas, unsettled conflicts are perpetual powder kegs. ....... A world of settled borders is a more peaceful world even if it is still populated by authoritarian despots.
And to think Putin is on record wanting Russia to join NATO. That was the song he was singing in the early 2000s. And that might have happened had he been a democrat like Vaclav Havel, or like Zelensky. But NATO is not just a gun, tank and missiles alliance. It is an armor wrapped around democracy. Belarus as it stands today would not be accepted as a NATO member. Because it is not a democracy.
So if Putin's Russia can aspire to join NATO, why can't Zelensky's Ukraine? Or Georgia, for that matter. Is it not for a sovereign state to decide?
If I were Ukraine, I might have aspired for a Switzerland like neutrality. Because a big military is a big expense. But Ukraine got in a hurry to join NATO precisely because Putin misbehaved in Georgia. Like Finland and Sweden are in a hurry now. The Baltic states are apopleptic.
Staying neutral was not an option after Georgia. It is even less of an option now.
The best way to make NATO defunct would be for the Putin regime to fall, and Russia go on the path of true democracy. A vibrant, democratic, federal Russia would make NATO defunct by its mere presence.
Putin went into Ukraine for the reason Saddam went into Kuwait. A dictator can not maintain the constant tension that keeps him in power unless he can keep conjuring up external threats out of thin air. Many argue Saddam might still be in power today if he had just stayed put in Baghdad. Why did he go into Kuwait? Well, he had to. That is what dictators do.
Ukraine might not have the option to militarily take back Crimea, and now Donbas, but that does not mean it needs to stop claiming them both.
It is not like there are ethnic Ukrainians in western Ukraine, and it is all just Russians in Crimea and Donbas. There are easily 100 different nationalities inside Ukraine. There are more than 100 inside Russia. Putin sits atop an empire as it is.
He does not speak for the Russians in Moscow. How can he speak for the Russians in Donbas and Crimea?
Putin's military defeat in Ukraine will lead to a collapse of support all around him in his inner circles. The world will see a new wave of democracy very much like it saw in 1989. The biggest beneficiary of Ukraine's immense sacrifice and suffering has been the United States. When you are a two party democracy, and one of those two parties is hellbent on disenfranchising large swathes of the population, you are not much of a democracy any more.
Trump needed to be beat in the US. Putin needs to be beat in Russia. And Le Pen needs to be beat in France.
This War Goes To Moscow
Eastern Ukraine braces for onslaught U.S. military analysts are predicting Russian forces will conduct a major attack on eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, between the city of Izium and the strategic hub of Dnipro. ...... Russian airstrikes have already destroyed Dnipro's airport. Meanwhile, local leaders are urging civilians to evacuate. ...... In the aftermath of the Kramatorsk train station attack that killed more than 50 civilians, one shopkeeper told The New York Times, "The town is dead now." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded a tougher global response to the missile strike. ........ Ukraine is pursuing 5,600 war crimes cases ....... The latest EU sanctions include a ban on the import of coal, wood and chemicals from Russia and banning many Russian ships and trucks from accessing the bloc. ....... S&P Global downgraded Russia's currency rating to "selective default" over concerns the country won't fulfill its obligations on foreign debt. ...... Russia has revoked the registrations of 15 foreign organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, that have accused Russian troops of committing war crimes. ......... NATO countries have agreed to send more heavy weapons to Ukraine. ....... Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted in an interview that Russia has suffered “significant losses of troops” in Ukraine, a rare admission by Moscow that the war has not gone to plan. ...... More than 11 million people have been displaced by the war in Ukraine. That number includes 4 million who have fled abroad, half of whom are children. .......... Western sanctions are likely successfully disrupting Russia’s military-industrial base. .
Nepal’s shortsighted view-tower craze Corruption is the driving force behind wasteful spending on construction of view-towers on Himalayan peaks ....... Politicians at all three levels of government in Nepal appear to be racing against time to build a concrete view-tower on every mountain in the country, and a gate outside every town. ........ politicians know exactly what they are doing by putting up these non-essential monstrosities. It is kickbacks that are lubricating these contracts. ....... So, instead of expanding health posts and hospitals, retrofitting school buildings to make them seismic resistant, or ensuring safe drinking water supply, elected people’s representatives are squandering taxpayer money on useless structures. .......... It is not just view-towers, but high rises in the middle of nowhere, enormous statues of gods and saints, outsized cement replicas of fruits and products municipalities are famous for, and elaborate gates at the entrance of every town or village. ........ A 80m high statue of the saint Byas is being constructed in Tanahu district at a cost of Rs450 million in the hope of attracting pilgrims to a place where the holy man was supposed to have meditated. ........ In Morang, the Sundar Haraicha Municipality has started building the world’s biggest statue of a cow, lavishing nearly Rs1 billion in the project. ....... Former prime minister K P Oli set the stage by laying the foundation stone for a Rs2.5 billion view-tower project in Jhapa’s Damak last year. His rival Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Maoist Centre was not far behind and inaugurated a $6 billion view-tower on a mountain top in Rolpa commemorating guerrillas killed during the insurgency. ....... Bagmati Province has allocated Rs180 billion for over a dozen view-towers projects across central Nepal this year. Gandaki Province has budgeted Rs176 million to develop 44 tourist destinations, most of which will have view-towers on already lofty peaks
. ....... it appears like local governments have run out of places to dig new and poorly-engineered roads and have been attracted by erecting view-towers to impress voters ...... Kathmandu Metropolitan City is building a 29-floor high rise at a cost of Rs5 billion near Tundikhel that is already an eyesore and will be a white elephant. Not to be outdone, Biratnagar is putting up its own high rise at a cost of Rs4 billion. ....... Federalism was supposed to inject more accountability — at least at the local level. The opposite seems to have happened in the past five years. ........ It could be because view-towers are easy to build, posts can be padded and accord a lot of opportunity for hidden over-invoicing, and the political party gets to show voters it is committed to ‘development’. ........ Many environmentalists and even engineers have pointed out that Nepal’s high mountains are already so high that they serve as view-towers. Adding an extra few metres on them is illogical and adds nothing to the panorama. They say that if it is the vista that the planners want, viewing platforms would be more appropriate. ......... Inspired by the Great Wall of China, Helambu Rural Municipality is constructing a 60km stone trail, dubbed ‘the Helambu Great Trail’. ........ All these view-towers have one thing in common: they are of no help to the local people — they serve no purpose, economic or otherwise. There is no business plan or an analysis of return on investment. .
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