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What’s at Stake in Ukraine? What’s an Acceptable Outcome and for Whom?
What is at stake in Ukraine?
For the Ukrainian State? For the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea?
For the US? For European countries? For Russia? For the rest of us?
I think the answer for each of these would be a bit different — and that would inform what an acceptable outcome to the conflict would be.
So, the surface issues:
Territorial integrity and the agreement that countries cannot invade each other just to change their borders. Post-WWII stability has sort of hung on this principle, though there are some instances of this happening, de facto if not de jure. But still — undermine this principle and you open a Pandora’s Box.
Self-determination. People should live in a state whose government is representative. This is harder to argue. There are a lot of non-representative governments around and they aren’t denied diplomatic legitimacy on that basis. It’s also more problematic — what if self-determination for a minority is at odds with the territorial integrity of a state? It’s a relevant question from Donbas to Kashmir (and it’s relevant to the Maidan revolution itself).
Sovereignty. States have the right to join, or not join, any alliance or organisation that they want if it wants them to. Again, sound in principle but less upheld in practice. Ukraine has the legal right to apply to join NATO and the EU. Germany has the legal right to buy oil and gas from Russia. But can they really?
Of course, all of these are mediated, in the real world, by power. The principle is one thing. The practice, the possibility, another. As the conflict has progressed, some murkier issues have come to the fore — and predictably they aren’t about principle but about power:
Which country’s interests will dominate NATO and the EU? Which country’s interests will be sacrificed? Based on? And what does that mean for the future of NATO and the EU? What will the political/geostrategic outcome from the use of force (overt and covert, imho likely to be internal to countries) to maintain these hierarchies of interests be?
US prosperity depends, in part (how significant?), on the dollar serving as the international reserve currency, in turn, a function of the petrodollar. Russia is bucking the petrodollar by demanding payment for energy exports in Rubles. If this sets a trend and undermines the petrodollar, is that actually a bigger deal for the US than Ukraine and NATO? What about the impact of the US basically confiscating the contents of Russia’s US bank accounts? How will that impact the US dollar’s status as a global reserve, and what impact will that have on US prosperity? Where will capital accumulate in the future?
A big takeaway from this for the Global South is that depending on imported food makes you vulnerable — not least because some of the first exports from Ukraine went to Britain for animal feed rather than Africa to feed people. How will that affect poor countries’ interactions with the World Bank and the IMF, whose development model hinges on industrial development at the expense of agricultural development? How about the allocation of capital in the Global North?
All of these seem to be expressions of whatever you call the version of empire we live in today. And while it is bizarre that Putin, invading Ukraine to annex part of it and to dominate the rest, has something to say about it, it’s still thought-provoking. From his (rather long) speech on Friday:
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the West decided that the world and all of us would permanently accede to its dictates. In 1991, the West thought that Russia would never rise after such shocks and would fall to pieces on its own. This almost happened. We remember the horrible 1990s, hungry, cold and hopeless. But Russia remained standing, came alive, grew stronger and occupied its rightful place in the world…
The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignisation is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centres they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.
Basically: is the war in Ukraine about preserving the West’s, and especially the US’, global domination?
(If it is, I’m really not looking forward to the conflict with China.)
Which question appears pertinent (or crazy) depends on who and where we are. But the most relevant question to you will also be the one whose answer will lead to what you think is an acceptable outcome in Ukraine (and why).
Ricochet, what are your thoughts on this?
Published in General
What about if the world switched away from the petrodollar? How much of the demand for the dollar is due to that?
Also keep in mind – once states like Saudi are paid in dollars – they have all these dollars. What to do with them? Currently they use a lot of them to buy US Treasury Bonds – which I understand help finance the deficit while still keeping the currency relatively strong. (Someone can correct me here if I’m wrong, in fact I’d welcome a clear explanation of the mechanism and how it works.) What happens when Saudi is no longer paid in dollars and starts buying bonds from another country?
Is that a strong enough motive for the US to ensure that Russia is completely defeated – not necessarily in Ukraine but in terms of asking to be paid for their energy in Rubles?
How do you see the nationalist/corporatist divide in the Ukraine conflict?
The Russians are motivated by some sort of national interest. Are you saying the West and NATO is motivated by corporate interests rather than US or German national interest?
If he didn’t he should have. I am all about the fake news so long as it is amusing.
Saving it for when the rest of the world runs out?
Kaching!
You can’t count on a government stating all its objectives out loud. Some of them are base (old meaning), some are bright and shining lies.
I was hoping the Ricochet comm. would share what they thought America’s core interests in this conflict are, what’s really at stake for the US, what is worth this level of support (and if we check the Euro and Pound this morning, economic disruption)?
Got to be something, right? It isn’t a completely random or automatic ‘let’s make money from war’ thing?
I’m pre-disposed to pollyanna myself, but would this outcome provide the US with what it wants? If they did the US would have supported Minsk II.
Since it undermined Minsk II I’m going with this outcome was unacceptable. Perhaps we could discuss why?
To whom? Why?
To the people in Donbas? (Lviv would have a similar veto, I assume.)
To the Kiev Govt?
To Russia?
To the EU?
To NATO/the EU?
What do you mean by “petrodollar?”
If people expect that the US dollar in the future will have a radically reduced purchasing power compared to today, then the purchase price of long term US Treasury Bonds goes down (interest rates go up).
So, expectations of future inflation with respect to the US dollar have a huge impact on the willingness of the Saudis and the Chinese and investors around the world to purchase US bonds and/or hold US currency.
To any sovereign state. Russia wanted rump states it controlled to have, in effect, veto over Ukrainian policies. Obviously, unacceptable to Ukraine. Russia has never honored an agreement with Ukraine- so why would Ukraine agree to a deal that allowed Russia to control its foreign policy?
we need not go back far to see Russia’s lies to Ukraine- nor even back to the Budapest memorandum- see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilovaisk
Russia broke truce agreement in order to slaughter Ukrainian soldiers in a completely treacherous manner:
“After days of encirclement, Ukrainian commander Yuriy Bereza came to an agreement with Russian commanders in Ilovaisk to allow Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the city.[34] However, this agreement was not honored by the Russian side who opened fire on the evacuating Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom died whilst trying to escape.[11][35]”
Oh the US National interests involve all those suitcases of cash Biden kept getting while VP. Remember the biggest donor to the Clinton Foundation was Ukraine.
And who else is on the board of Burisma, Coffer Black, one of Romneys kids, Pelosis relatives.
Ukraine is nothing more than a giant money laundry operation, and with the loss of Afghanistan, they need to keep the grift going of turning tax dollars into limos for liberals.
As to what I think we need to do. We need to negotiate an end to the war. This is needed to buy us time. We need to purge our armies of the corrupt idiots, rearm our factories and economies and prepare a long conflict. We need to recognize that Aircraft carriers are giant death traps, that can be sunk by Russian missiles that travel at ten times the speed of sound that we have no defense.
We need to get our heads out of our butts, and realize that were losing and that our opponents are winning.
Personally I think its to late. I think the USA sabotaging the two pipelines has closed all the doors and a lot of people are going to die who didnt need to. I think that those in Germany who used to be able to blame their government for the lack of gas, are now going to blame the USA for all their starved and frozen relatives. I think some few thousand of them will be radicalized to the point they do something. And some of them are going to buy cheap Stingers that the Ukrainians are selling to the international black market, and they are going to blow some US airliners out of the sky.
I think the person who ordered the destruction of the pipelines has just turned Germany into Palestine in Europe.
Tin foil in short supply?
What about the people in the Donbas and Crimea? Why should their opinions be steamrollered by a government in Kiev?
Thoughts on the fall of the Euro and the Pound?
Do you see serious unrest in Germany (and perhaps the UK as well)?
Russia military is now in Russia.
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/wealth-lifestyle/what-is-the-petrodollar/
RT could not have said it more succinctly.
Even in a nation that has a representative government, ones opinions are often “steamrollered” by people who have contrasting opinions.
Joe Johnson wants a 21 dollar per hour minimum wage law. But a bunch of other people want a 14 dollar per hour minimum wage law. Joe Johnson gets his opinion “steamrollered” by the government, which is a result of competitive elections conducted in an environment where people can debate public policy issues.
Abraham Lincoln made this point in 1861. Requiring unanimous consent to public policies just isn’t feasible.
So, if some people are outvoted (steamrollered), they just have to try harder to persuade others towards their position in the following election or change the minds of members of the parliament.
Does West Virginia get a veto over US foreign policy? No- they get input just like all other states. Crimea & Donbas get input via there representation in the Ukrainian government. Russia wants more than that- hence the desire for a “federal system”- of course Russia claims to be a federation but is really a dictatorship. Russia would never allow a legitimate vote in those areas anyway-anymore than the recent referendum was legitimate.
Many of the financial channels I am watching are talking about how in less than 2 years the Petrodollar will be gone.
None of our leaders seem to be even aware of this fact. Other than US Fed.
Pretty much. Whether you want to call them Davos men, or the Anywheres or Trans-Nationalists, that does seem to be what our national leaders are concerned with.
The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is currently the underdog in the upcoming UK election. This is in part because the Conservatives in the UK have been in power for about a decade, if I recall correctly.
I think the political coalition in Germany could suffer a defeat at the polls in the next election as well.
But currently polls of German voters indicate that about 74 percent of Germans are willing to support higher energy prices as a cost to supporting Ukraine in its drive to boot the Russians out of Ukraine.
Read Larry Johnsons blog. That really is what our leaders do. Their is no grand strategy.
That wasn’t really the case in the Donbas in 2014, and it’s arguably not the case in Ukraine today (a number of political parties banned, some kind of unified television broadcasting, state security purged of ‘traitors’).
Does the representative nature of a government (or lack thereof) have an impact on whether rebellion is justified or not?
The WEF, Davos planners, Bill Gates, George Soros, these among some others are the lynchpin of the corporatist movement who have no understanding of what nationalism means to the people. They are behind the climate change movement whose negative effects are only felt by the commoners. The EU is in the corporatists camp and the American elected and close associate Democrats and RINOs are catering to the corporatists while the individual western nations have nationalists movements internally conflicting with those supporting the corporatists.
Russia under Putin is nationalist.
What impact will the outcome of the war in Ukraine have on this?
Is there any chance that Russia will go back to demanding dollars for oil, or that the rest of the world will stick to only paying dollars for oil?
I guess my question is: has it gone past the point of no return, regardless of how Ukraine turns out? And if so, what arethe consequences for the West?
You seem to be saying that Ukraine is a dictatorship and that Putin invaded in order to restore representative government.
You seem to be saying that up is down and down is up.
I don’t favor support for Ukraine beyond what we have already given because supports the corporatist movement.
But what would corporate interests get out of a Russian defeat that they don’t already have?
Or is the process (arms sales) the objective?
Poor thing got no honeymoon at all. (Dodged a bullet, Rishi!)
I am curious how the Nord Stream sabotage will impact on that. Are there any polls from after the sabotage?
What is the alternative to paying for oil in US dollars? Euros? Japanese Yen? Turkish Lira?
If Russia and Europe/US/Japan/South Korea/Canada/UK/Australia aren’t trading with each other, then I suppose Russia can insist that India and China purchase Russian oil in rubles. Not sure that has much impact on everyone else.