Category: Leadership

Monday Wake Up Call – March 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Soaptree Yucca at sunset, White Sands, NP – March 2022 photo by SkyVista Photography by Steve Luther

Biden ended his four days in Europe with a speech. It was designed as a call to democratic countries to stay unified even as Putin’s forces trash Ukraine. But with nine ad-libbed words at the end of a 27-minute speech, Biden created a furor by calling for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to be pushed out of office. Biden said:

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,”

That last line was a logical conclusion to Biden’s argument in the speech about the struggle between democracy and autocracy. But it prompted many pundits to treat what Biden said as a gaffe, since it changed his long-standing insistence that the US is not engaging in regime change but is supporting Ukraine’s right to exist.

From Charlie Sykes:

“The moment was electrifying — a sort of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” moment — until the White House hastily walked it back, insisting that what the president really meant to say was that the butcher of Ukraine should not be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors.“

Sykes says: “Biden had it right the first time.” David Rothkopf hit the nail on the head with his reaction:

“There is within Biden’s comment a kernel of truth….Vladimir Putin can’t lay waste to a country, kill tens of thousands of civilians, commit serial war crimes, and expect to be welcomed back into the community of nations. If Russia wants to be part of the community of nations, then they are going to have to produce change.”

Support for Biden’s idea also came from former Russian Chess champion Gary Kasparov, who said what the world is thinking:

This is precisely correct. Many pundits are critical of Biden for saying something provocative. But there shouldn’t be a resumption of the status quo ante, even once there’s an agreement between Russia and Ukraine. By attacking Ukraine, Russia has become a pariah state. It will remain so as long as it threatens its neighbors and as long as Putin is in power.

There can be no lifting of sanctions or concessions of territory (unless Ukraine insists on conceding it), and no reward or face-saving after the fact for Putin’s War.

Biden’s goal isn’t to negotiate an end to the war. If Ukraine wants to make concessions to Putin which allow him to keep huge chunks of their country, pay no price for the damage he’s done, do nothing to rebuild Ukraine’s flattened cities, and wait a minute until the sanctions are lifted, they can make that call themselves. Neither Biden nor our allies should press that kind of decision on them.

But let Wrongo be the first to say that Russia must be made to pay reparations for the destruction of infrastructure in Ukraine. And keeping sanctions in place until Russia pays up is the right thing to do. You don’t just get grounded for a week when you invade another country.

Russia must leave Ukraine and pay reparations. Russia must work to rejoin the community of nations. That means reestablishment of normal diplomatic and economic relationships. That won’t be possible with Putin in charge.

Russia’s military leadership certainly understands this. And they’re the ones who will have to remove Putin from power and negotiate the peace. So Biden’s frank talk makes transparent what was sub-rosa: The West is using Putin’s War as a way to weaken him to the point where he is ousted from power.

So, when pundits and foreign policy experts get upset with Biden, saying that he gave Putin less reason to negotiate, you have to ask what is there to negotiate? And who, other than Zelensky, should be negotiating with him?

Putin will leave office one way or another, and what Biden said didn’t change that.

It’s time for the pundits and foreign policy wonks to wake up! While it’s true that words matter and can sometimes express risky things that cannot be taken back, what Biden said was worth saying. Biden wasn’t talking to Putin; he was speaking to Russians with the power to remove Putin. And that’s the right strategy.

To help them wake up, listen to Sting reprise his song “Russians” originally from his 1985 debut album titled “The Dream of the Blue Turtles”. The tune was based on the Cold War. Here is his March 2022 version for guitar and cello:

Sting says:

”I’ve only rarely sung this song in the many years since it was written, because I never thought it would be relevant again. But, in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity.”

Facebooklinkedinrss

Russian Sanctions: Who Blinks First?

The Daily Escape:

Secret Canyon, Moab, UT – February 2022 photo by Klaus Priebe Photographer

Collateral damage from the US and European sanctions is growing. One question is whether the West will blink before Russia.

First, a few words about Putin’s strategy. It doesn’t seem that Putin was intent on “recreating the Russian Empire” as many pundits said. Instead, he’s going to partition Ukraine, with Russia controlling Ukraine east of the Dnieper River. That includes much of Ukraine’s industrial base. The southern part of Ukraine contains 13 seaports. In 2021, they exported over 150 million tons of cargo, representing 60% of exports and 50% of imports for Ukraine. Russia has already ended Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

When hostilities end, Ukraine will be a land-locked country.

The Russian army will ensure that what is left of Ukraine west of the Dnieper is a broken, third-world country. The indiscriminate missile, artillery and bombing in Ukraine’s west shows that is their intent. Whatever remains of western Ukraine will be the buffer state that Putin wanted prior to the start of his war. In the end, NATO will be forced to agree to a buffer state that is smaller and much weaker than the one NATO originally refused to agree to.

The US strategy for Ukraine had several elements. First, to make the cost of Putin’s War so harsh that he wouldn’t proceed, or after proceeding, would cause him to look for an early way to end hostilities before both were badly damaged: Ukraine by Russian weapons, and Russia by Western sanctions.

Another strategy was to get Germany to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. That has begun. Last week Germany unveiled plans for a terminal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Germany currently has no LNG import terminals.

It shouldn’t be a surprise then to learn that the US is the prime producer and exporter of LNG, ahead of Qatar and Russia. But LNG delivered to Europe is 50% more expensive than the gas delivered by pipeline from Russia. It’s true that there’s plenty of European LNG capacity besides Germany’s new planned facility. From the National Law Review: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The current large-scale LNG receiving countries in Europe are Belgium (one terminal), France (four terminals), Greece (one terminal), Italy (three terminals), Lithuania (one terminal), Malta (one terminal), the Netherlands (one terminal), Poland (one terminal), Portugal (one terminal), Spain (six operational), Turkey (four terminals) and the UK (three terminals). Collectively, their overall LNG capacity is 237 billion cubic meters (of gas)…which is sufficient to cover approximately 40% of Europe’s gas demand.”

It’s possible to reduce German reliance on Russian gas imports, but they can’t easily achieve total independence. Substantially higher gas prices would definitely hurt the competitiveness of German industry, and slow global economic growth. It could become German economic suicide.

A third US strategy was that Putin’s rush into Ukraine would lead to a stalemate on the ground, and that sanctions would lead to a change of government in Russia. Then the new government might turn more towards the West.

The calculation was that Russia can’t win a major (non-nuclear) war without the economic support of the West through purchases of gas, and exports of technology. We’ve discussed natural gas. Protocol’s report on Russia’s dependence on foreign chips found that European and US companies sell them a lot of microprocessors, while their memory chip imports come mostly from South Korea and the US. All are now embargoed.

It’s possible that in executing these strategies, we’re burning up the world’s economy at the same time. These strategies have helped push oil prices above $130 a barrel. Natural gas prices have shot up to over $3,900 per 1,000 cubic meters for the first time in history. This will destabilize more than a few EU countries. As we wrote, the Ukraine war has slashed wheat exports, which will lead to high food prices and shortages in countries that rely on wheat from Russia and Ukraine.

We must be careful that we aren’t sanctioning ourselves. We already have a blowback effect on the sanctions inflicted on Russia. We may see double-digit inflation globally before the end of the year.

It’s possible that every dollar of Republican and Democratic campaign spending for the November mid-terms will be spent on stickers for gas pumps: The Republican sticker will feature Biden saying “I did this” while pointing at the price on the gas pump.

The Democrats’ sticker will feature Putin pointing at the gas prices and saying, “I did this”.

Then campaign workers will spend all of their time pasting one over the other’s sticker.

Pick your poison.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – March 5, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Herring Cove, Provincetown MA – February 2022 photo by Karen Riddett

Wrongo and Ms. Right went to the big box store yesterday. Most of the things on our list were out of stock. We also needed to fill the car’s gas tank. Local prices ranged from $3.65 to $3.92/gal. We filled up at the place with the lower number.

This is before any effects of Putin’s War on prices here at home. One product that will be impacted is wheat. Russia is the largest exporter of wheat in the world, and Ukraine is #2. Reuters says that the two countries account for about 29% of global wheat exports. They also say that US wheat futures rose to a 14-year high earlier this week.

The reason is that major wheat exporters aren’t holding as much wheat in storage as they do usually. Wheat stocks are set to fall to a nine-year low of 57 million tons by the end of the 2021/22 season. The news gets worse: If Russia and Ukraine are excluded from those holdings, other major global wheat exporters account for just 16% of the global stock.

That’s enough wheat to feed the world for less than three weeks.

The majority of wheat stock that isn’t in the hands of major exporters is held by China. China’s expected to account for 47% of global inventories at the end of the year. And last Thursday, China started approving imports of Russian wheat that had been blocked for years over Beijing’s concerns about fungus and other contaminants. The countries had announced that China would begin importing Russian wheat and barley shortly after Putin visited China ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Emptywheel reports that Russia imports a significant portion of the wheat seed it needs for each growing season:

“…where will Russia buy the wheat seed needed? (Depending on source, there’s a disparity in what percentage of wheat seed Russia imports, but it’s between 18-40% depending on spring, hard wheat, or other type.)”

Will Russia purchase seed from China and India? Will those two countries accept rubles? Or will they look to barter for something else in trade, like natural gas?

Ukraine is in an even worse position. Reuters says that Ukraine has confirmed stoppage of its grain exports until the end of the Russian invasion. There is a chance that supplies for the next season from both Ukraine and Russia could also be in jeopardy, pending the duration and outcome of the war.

They also report that Ukraine accounts for 16% of world corn exports. Ukraine and the US are the only world corn exporters until Argentina and Brazil gear up to export their crops. Apparently, Ukraine still has a good deal of its 2021 corn crop to ship, but given Russia’s closing of Ukraine’s access to the sea, that may be problematic.

As the Northern Hemisphere enters spring, grain planting is right around the corner for both Russia and Ukraine.  Corn is going in for Ukraine and spring wheat for Russia. It’s highly uncertain how Putin’s War will impact crop production this spring. Russia has yet to plant 30% of its 2022 wheat crop.

Brazil imports wheat because it can’t grow enough for its own consumption. After Trump closed soybean exports to China, Brazil moved land into soybean production for the Chinese market. Brazil could try to increase acreage dedicated to wheat, but new Brazilian acreage comes at the expense of further destroying their forests, a terrible tradeoff.

We are looking at the emergence of a global economic war of attrition brought about by the sanctions regime. The target is Russia, but economic costs will spill over to the rest of the world.

On that note, it’s time to unplug from the terrible news that for the moment, is mostly caused by a terrible country.

It’s time for our Saturday Soother. We can’t escape the cold blustery weather in Connecticut, so it’s another indoors weekend here at the Mansion of Wrong. Let’s start by brewing up a mug of Monarch Estate Gesha ($42/4oz.) from Honolulu’s own Monarch Coffee. The roaster says it has subtle, sweet flavors of berries, mango, honeydew, apple, and pear. Note the price. Coffee prices have spiked along with many other items.

Now grab a seat by a big window and listen to Hauser performing the cello solo in “Adagio” by Albinoni, accompanied by the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra in Zagreb, Croatia in 2017. This weekend, given the tragedy in Ukraine, it’s nice to listen to music that transports us to a place where there’s peace:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Biden’s State of the Union Speech

The Daily Escape:

Garden of the Gods Park, Colorado Springs, CO – February 2022 photo by Daniel Forster

Biden will give his first State of the Union (SOTU) address to the nation tonight. If you read Wrongo’s column yesterday, it’s no surprise that he will address a country that remains sharply polarized about America’s priorities:

“According to a Pew Research Center survey, 71% of US adults rated strengthening the economy as a top policy priority, followed by reducing health care costs (61%), addressing the coronavirus (60%), improving education (58%) and securing Social Security (57%).”

Americans are concerned about the state of the economy (71%), with 82% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats agreeing it is a top political priority.

Anyone outside of the Right-wing bubble knows that Biden is already committed to tackling inflation, but Americans remain anxious about the economy, despite record job growth in 2021 and solid wage gains.

So Biden is vulnerable on inflation, particularly since Republicans will stress high gas prices. They will also make the point that excessive spending on Covid relief added to inflation while increasing the budget deficit. In the Pew study, 63% of Republicans said that the budget deficit should also be a top priority.

Biden’s administration hasn’t touted its successes very well. The NYT’s Jamelle Bouie said that Democrats did little to publicize their few successes:

“…rather than go on the offensive, infrastructure spending in hand, they sat quiet. There would be no publicity blitz, no attempt to capture the nation’s attention with a campaign to sell the accomplishments…no attempt to elevate members who might shine in the spotlight and certainly no serious attempt to push back on the right-wing cultural politics that helped Republicans notch a win in Virginia.”

This is an opportunity for Biden to recount his accomplishments. The pandemic is (again) trending in the right direction; the economy is roaring (even though inflation must be addressed); respect of our foreign partners continues to be restored around the world (just when US leadership was urgently needed).

He’s probably had to rewrite the speech a few times since Putin invaded Ukraine, so it’s anybody’s guess what will be emphasized about that.

Biden faces strong political opposition from Republicans, who will fault him for a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the surge in migrants at the US-Mexico border. Some Republicans see Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, as a wedge issue to keep Whites from voting for Democrats in November.

But as John Harris says at Politico, Democrats shouldn’t beat themselves up. They should remember:

“…that the modern presidency offers its occupants nearly inexhaustible capacity for political revival. While Biden faces a growing roster of doubts and doubters — including within his own party — his two immediate Democratic predecessors offer vivid examples showing that the tools for him to reverse perceptions and regain control of his presidency are within his grasp.”

Harris says that the Biden administration has failed to tell a compelling story to Americans:

“By outward evidence, Biden and his aides have either not settled on a narrative or have not effectively promoted it. It is on this score that the Obama and Clinton examples are especially notable. Since both Obama and Clinton recovered from midterm blowouts for Democrats to win second terms, why can’t Biden employ their strategies for recasting their presidencies before being blown out?”

The goal of the SOTU should be to give those voters who have open minds a chance to see Biden in new light. We’re always interested in success stories that show the main character growing from start to finish, discovering new ideas and new energy while amplifying his/her original values.

Biden ran and won on “Build Back Better”. It was a practical approach for dealing with the pandemic and the economic catastrophe that came with it. It encompassed straightforward solutions, many of which have been enacted into law.

He ought to use the SOTU as the start of the 2022 mid-term campaign. He’s not an agile politician like Obama, Clinton, or Trump. But he is easily their equal and possibly their superior in terms of understanding the day-to-day practical burdens and aspirations of the voters he needs to sell on staying with Democrats in 2022.

He needs to show America that he’s managing an office with unmatched power in a successful manner. He should work every day to tell the story about who he is and what he’s trying to achieve for the country.

Tonight, we’ll see in what direction he’s taking both the country and the Democratic Party.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – February 26, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sedona, AZ dusted in snow- February 2022 photo by Valentina Tree

Late on Friday, the US, Britain and EU said they will sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This is the third round of Biden’s sanctions, and blocks the Russian president from any economic activity within the American financial system. White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated the US would also implement a travel ban for Putin.

These sanctions effectively place Putin in the same category as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

As with other Russian sanctions, it isn’t clear how effective the Putin asset freeze will be. According to the Pandora Papers investigation, Putin appears to control assets in Europe, but the amounts are trivial compared to estimates of his wealth. The travel ban is significant. It says that the West considers Putin to be an international pariah. Earlier, Biden also announced a second round of sanctions against Russia.

The challenge facing Biden is how to avoid either starting or losing, a World War. He’s done a decent job rallying other nations towards a common viewpoint about Putin’s War. Putin believed he could at least neutralize certain allies within both NATO and Europe, along with some politicians and the public in a few EU countries.

But thus far, Biden’s had success at undercutting Russia’s efforts. He has been able to achieve broad unity by making it clear that Russia is an unprovoked aggressor. Yet Kyiv may soon fall to the Russian invaders. Addressing his nation, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russians are coming after him specifically:

“The enemy has marked me as enemy number one.”

He told EU leaders on a Thursday night zoom call that “this might be the last time you see me alive“.

We can’t ignore what’s happening, but the US won’t risk all-out war over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We hope to avoid these choices by imposing sanctions that might turn the Russian people against Putin, by depriving Russia of cash and other resources. The sanctions are impressively multilateral.

However, the new sanctions have some loopholes. Adam Tooze reports that the sanctions specifically exclude energy: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Energy is the really critical issue in the sanctions saga for both sides. It is what will hurt Russia most. It is also what is most critical for Europe. And, on energy… Biden…made this aside:

‘You know, in our sanctions package, we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.’”

Really Joe? The sanctions say that as long as your energy-related transactions are channeled through non-sanctioned, non-US financial institutions, for instance a European bank, buying gas from Russia is peachy. So, all of the payments for Russian gas will be paid free of problems for as long as sanctions are in place.

The political pressure for an energy carve-out comes from Germany. Bloomberg reported earlier:

“The German government has pushed for an exemption for the energy sector if there is a move to block Russian banks from clearing US dollar transactions….other major western European nations hold similar views.”

It gets worse. The carve-out isn’t limited to energy, it also applies to Russia’s agricultural commodity exports. So long as those transactions run through non-US, non-sanctioned banks, the US sanctions will not apply.

This shows how dependent our European partners are on Russia for gas and agriculture. It also shows how hollow the sanctions are, and how they will not be the “punishing” sanctions Biden promised.

It’s useful to remember that Germany’s use of Russian gas has been a completely tenable and a mutually beneficial relationship for 40+ years.

Finally, Biden didn’t announce excluding Russia from the SWIFT global financial payments system because Italy, Germany, and Cyprus weren’t willing to do it. Part of this has to do with buying Russian gas. It also has to do with how dependent their economies are on exports to Russia. Although, as Biden noted, full blocking of Russian financial institutions should achieve the same, or even greater, effect as a SWIFT ban.

Except for that gas and agriculture thingy, so not the same at all.

The question is whether the EU and NATO are truly willing to bear the costs of inflicting pain on Russia in order to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of today, it seems that they are not.

Time to take a break from geopolitics and whether Lindsay Graham will support Biden’s new Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we turn away from the news and focus on trying to calm the f down.

Today is a typical winter day in Connecticut. It’s chilly and there’s snow on the ground, but far less than predicted.

Since Putin is acting like the Honey Badger, let’s start by upping your honey badger game by brewing a mug of Honey Badger Espresso from Intelligentsia Coffee. They’re a Chicago-based chain with locations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, and NYC. Leave the intelligentsia and take the honey badger.

Now grab a seat by a window and listen to Handel’s “Ombra mai fu”, known as Handel’s Largo of Love, it’s the opening aria in the 1738 opera Xerxes. Here it is performed in 2017 by  Czechoslovakia’s Janacek Chamber Orchestra with soloist soprano Patricia Janečková:

Beautiful voice!

Facebooklinkedinrss

Putin’s War

The Daily Escape:

Rio Grande, near Taos, NM – February 2022 photo by Augustine Morgan

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography” ― Mark Twain

Yesterday we woke up to a new world order created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Details are still sketchy, but it seems that Russia attacked from the north, east and south. Cruise missiles hit targets even in western Ukraine. The NYT provided this early map of reported Russian attacks:

The shaded areas on the right are Donetsk and Luhansk, the Ukrainian provinces that Russia recognized a few days ago as independent republics. The smaller area inside is the area currently controlled by the Russian separatists.

This news and Putin’s kabuki play leading up to the invasion obscures the fact that we’re now seeing the revival of war as an instrument of statecraft. History shows that wars of conquest used to be common. In the 19th century, that’s what strong states did to their weak neighbors. Since the mid-20th century, wars of conquest are the exception not the rule. Russia has now brought wars of conquest back on the geopolitical stage.

Putin’s attack has the goal of regime change, plus the annexation of the breakaway provinces. While NATO and the US seem to have no real countermeasures, other than sanctions. That demonstrates another of Russia’s goals: exposing NATO’s impotence.

NATO’s late-stage impotence has many causes.

The collective defense provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter has held the alliance together. It provides that if a NATO ally is attacked, all members of the Alliance will consider it an armed attack against them and take action to assist the attacked ally.

For much of the Cold War, (including when Wrongo served in Europe) NATO had a standing army prepared to deter an attack by the Soviets and/or its Warsaw Pact allies. NATO also maintained significant air and naval forces to confront Soviet aggression. NATO’s forces were anchored by a massive US military presence in Europe, including hundreds of thousands of troops, tens of thousands of armored vehicles, thousands of combat aircraft, and hundreds of naval vessels.

All of this gave Article 5 teeth.

When the Cold War ended in 1990-91, this combat-ready military force was gradually dismantled. Now, if there were to be a conventional fight in Europe, the Russian military is much stronger. It would defeat any force NATO could assemble.

Today the ability to deter a potential adversary from considering military action against a NATO member is no longer a certainty. That means the notion of NATO providing European collective self-defense is questionable.

In the past, NATO planned on countering the Soviet Union’s weapons and manpower superiority with tactical nuclear weapons. But The Heritage Foundation says that we can’t do that because there’s an imbalance in our nuclear arsenals:

“While the US and Russia have a similar number of deployed strategic (i.e., high-yield) nuclear weapons as limited under New START, Russia has a 10:1 advantage over us in nonstrategic (i.e., low-yield) nuclear weapons—aka tactical or battlefield nukes.”

They report that Russia has about 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, while the US has about 200. Half of them are in the US and half are with NATO, so we have about 100 tactical nukes on the ground in Europe. You might say no one is ever going to use nukes in Europe, but on Wednesday Putin warned: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.”

Putin’s threat could mean anything from cyber-attacks to nuclear war. But Global Security Review reports that the current edition of Russian military doctrine says that Russia:

“…reserves the right to use nuclear weapons to respond to all weapons of mass destruction attacks…on Russia and its allies.”

That significantly lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. The idea is Russia might employ tactical nuclear weapons during a conventional conflict with NATO forces to prevent a defeat, to consolidate gains, or to freeze a conflict in place without further fighting. The last two could happen in Ukraine.

Given that the disparity between Russian and European tactical nuclear weapons is so large, Moscow probably thinks any potential NATO nuclear response to their threat of using nukes isn’t credible.

This means NATO today can no longer stave off a Russian threat in Europe without using strategic nuclear weapons, a major escalation. That would be a very unlikely scenario if Russia is taking small bites of Western territory, as in Ukraine:

(hat tip, Monty B.)

Since World War II, the US has reserved the right to the “first use” of nuclear weapons should the need arise. But in January, several Democrats urged Biden to promulgate a “no-first-use” policy for US nuclear weapons. Eleven Senators and 44 House members signed a letter urging Biden to accept the policy. Imagine the consequences if a policy of no-first-use was in place, given what’s happening in Ukraine. Or what might happen if the fight was with a NATO member.

We’re now in a place where the West either accepts Russia’s new European order, or we gear up to make them recalculate Putin’s strategy.

If we choose to oppose the new Russian order, the US and Europe will incur costs. It will hurt our economies, since while sanctions will hurt the Russians, we’re hoping they will not hurt us as much, or more. Russian cyber-attacks may seriously hurt our infrastructure. The West will be forced to provide large levels of military and humanitarian support to a damaged and smaller Ukraine, possibly for years.

We will see increased defense spending. Our military will once again be deployed to Europe where they will serve as a tripwire against Russian aggression like they did in the Cold War.

This will require a unified NATO to work together for many years. Is that a realistic plan, given that different US presidents, like Trump, may not support the goals of this new NATO?

We’re in a different world now. This war will almost certainly be transformative for Europe and the world. The full effects of Russia’s attack on Ukraine will play out not just for years, but for decades.

Let’s close with the Beatles “Back in the USSR”:

Lyrics:

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out,
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia’s always on my mind

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – February 21, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Head of the Meadow Beach, Truro, MA – February 2022 photo by Maia Gomory Germain

Today is Presidents Day. Originally we celebrated George Washington’s birthday on February 22, until it was moved to the third Monday in February in 1971. It later morphed into Presidents Day (with no apostrophe).

Each year, in honor of Washington, a US Senator reads Washington’s farewell address. The political Parties alternate in the reading. Last year, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio read the address. This year, Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont has the honor. He’ll do the reading on Feb. 28.

This part of Washington’s farewell address remains relevant today: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction…turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

Words to live by.

Here’s another view on the Ukraine crisis. Foreign Affairs has an article, “What if Russia Wins?” The assumption in the US media is that Putin has little to gain by invading. Wrongo has said as much. But the Foreign Affairs article says that if Putin succeeds, he stands to gain a lot by weakening NATO and also the US.

The authors remind us that in 2015, after Russia joined the Syrian civil war, then-President Obama said that Syria would become a “quagmire”, that Syria would be Russia’s Vietnam or Putin’s Afghanistan, a mistake that would cost Russia dearly.

Syria wasn’t a quagmire for Putin. Russia changed the course of the civil war. It then translated its military force into diplomatic leverage. Russia kept its costs and casualties sustainable, and today, it can’t be ignored in the Middle East.

Obama failed to anticipate the possibility that Russia’s intervention would succeed.

Once again, most analysts are warning of dire consequences for Russia if they invade. All of our cost-benefit analyses say that the price of full-scale war in Ukraine would be very high, including significant bloodshed. The thinking is that war and the escalation of western sanctions would undermine Putin’s support among the Russian elite, endanger Russia’s economy and alienate the Russian public.

At the same time, it could leave Russia fighting a Ukrainian resistance for years. According to this view, Russia would be trapped in a disaster of its own making.

So why would Russia invade now? From Foreign Affairs:

“Putin’s cost-benefit analysis seems to favor upending the European status quo. The Russian leadership is taking on more risks…Putin is on a historic mission to solidify Russia’s leverage in Ukraine (as he has recently in Belarus and Kazakhstan). And as Moscow sees it, a victory in Ukraine might well be within reach.”

Russia could just continue the current crisis without invading, but if Putin’s calculus is right, as it was in Syria, then the US and Europe need to think through that eventuality. Putin may conclude that political dissension in America gives him a decided advantage, along with an opportunity to remake the map in Eastern Europe, where Ukraine is second only to Russia in size.

If Russia gains control of Ukraine, Western Europe and the US enter a new geopolitical era. They’d face the challenge of rethinking European security while trying to avoid being drawn into a war with Russia. Overhanging that is the possibility of nuclear-armed adversaries in direct confrontation.

The two goals of a robust defense of Europe, but one that also avoids military escalation with Russia, aren’t fully compatible. The US could wake up to find ourselves unprepared for the task of having to create a new European security order after Russia controls Ukraine.

Invading Ukraine would also put enormous pressure on American democracy and national cohesion. Biden would go into the midterms with two extraordinarily difficult-to-justify foreign policy disasters — the Afghanistan withdrawal and Putin’s win in Ukraine.

Biden’s defenders would argue that both had complex causes and weren’t really solely Biden’s doing. But what the average American would see, even before the eventual Republican chicken hawk posturing, will be that America’s diminished effectiveness and power occurred on Biden’s watch. Biden will be blamed, and Putin might then help get his old buddy, the easily manipulated, NATO-hating Trump, back in power.

If Putin succeeds, the potential consequences in the US are great, and they would be a boon to Russia.

Time to wake up America! If/when the sanctions don’t work, we’re probably bringing back the Cold War under a new Republican administration. To help you wake up, watch Playing For Change’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”, about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flooding in US history.

Here, original band member John Paul Jones is accompanied by Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and 20 other musicians from seven different countries:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – February 5, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Paradise Springs, South Kettle Moraine, Eagle, WI – January 2022 photo by Nick Schroeter. The spring water is warm enough that it doesn’t freeze in winter

This week two years ago, Covid began to enter America’s consciousness. It was February 3, 2020 when Trump declared a public health emergency because of the virus. Now, Republicans are again saying “let ‘er rip”. Mother Jones reported that Iowa is taking “done with Covid” to a whole new level. On Thursday, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announced a plan to end the state’s Covid disaster declaration and to shut down its case count and vaccination websites later this month.

From the Des Moines Register:

“We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely,” Reynolds said in a statement. “After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly.”

In a state with less than two-thirds of the population over 5 years old fully vaccinated, Wrongo asks what kind of governor and legislature shuts down a website aimed at making it easier for people to get their shots? If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that it is in the people’s best interest to make it as easy as possible to vaccinate as many people as possible.

The Register adds:

“Her move comes as Iowa’s spike in cases and hospitalizations from the omicron variant has begun to ease. Still, 794 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa as of Wednesday, while 109 patients required intensive care and 51 required ventilators.”

BTW, 70.6% of the patients in Iowa ICUs were not vaccinated. Having contemporaneous data allows us to see that Iowa recorded more than 150 additional COVID-19 deaths in its weekly update last Friday. In the same report, Iowa’s health department recorded just three additional flu deaths in its weekly flu report Jan. 28, bringing the total since last fall to just 13.

The data do not seem to make a case to treat Covid and the flu the same way.

The governor’s decision to end the emergency declaration may be more sensible. Many states have already discontinued theirs. And as Omicron case counts plummet, maybe there’s a chance to reallocate resources to other state priorities.

Today you can check Iowa’s status on its readable and useful Covid dashboard. That dashboard will now be going away.

Soon, the state health department’s website will not include regular reports on Covid hospitalizations or nursing home outbreaks. Kelly Garcia, interim director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said Iowa will no longer require hospitals and nursing homes to report the data to the state, since they already report it to the federal government. Iowans wanting updates on those numbers will be referred to federal websites.

Lina Tucker Reinders, executive director of the Iowa Public Health Association, said in an interview that the move was premature, and could give Iowans the false impression the pandemic is over.

Iowa’s own statistics show that isn’t the case.

It’s become an article of faith inside the Republican cult that Covid is No Big Deal, and that vaccinations are either unnecessary or some sort of plot. And that masks are also unnecessary, because Covid is just like the flu.

Across the country, these same Republicans are seeing the elderly in their families, neighborhoods and churches die of Covid while a free and effective vaccine is available. But they don’t care enough to make getting themselves vaccinated a priority.

If they don’t care about their elders, why would they care about nurses, or teachers? That would require disrupting their entire worldview.

No scientist says that the virus is finished mutating. So will treating it like the flu be good enough? If it isn’t, Gov. Reynolds certainly won’t give a shit.

Time to let go for a few minutes and relocate to a chair by a window for our Saturday Soother.

It will be another winter weekend of indoor sports in New England, with binge streaming of favorite shows on tap, along with chiseling ice on the walkways around the Mansion of Wrong.

Let’s start into the weekend by brewing up a large mug of Chutzpah Coffee ($13.99/ 12oz.) brought to us by Hebrew Coffee. Their tag line is “A strong coffee to get you off your tuches”. Now settle into your chair and watch “Pow Surf 101”, a long snowboard ride through deep powder, while listening to Claude Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”, written in 1890 when Debussy was 28. The snowboarding takes place in Steamboat Springs, CO. Consider this Wrongo’s nod to the Winter Olympics:

Facebooklinkedinrss

NYT Editorial Board Misunderstands Economic Concept

The Daily Escape

Santa Catalina Mountains, Saguaro NP, Tucson AZ – December 2021 photo by Paul J Van Helden

Last Saturday, the NYT had an editorial called “President Biden’s Economy Is Failing the Big Mac Test”. The Times said that when the average worker’s paycheck doesn’t buy as many hamburgers from McDonald’s as it did last year, Biden’s in trouble.

Unfortunately for the NYT, that isn’t what the “Big Mac test” is about. They properly credit the idea to The Economist magazine, which originated it in 1986. It was intended as a semi-humorous illustration of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). PPP basically tells economists what the comparative strengths and weaknesses are of each country’s currency by looking at the cost of the same “basket of goods” across geography.

The thesis is that in a free market, foreign exchange rates should adjust to equalize the price of goods and services across different nations.

According to The Economist, the Big Mac PPP denotes the exchange rate at which the Big Mac would cost the same in the US as it would in other countries. There are all sorts of comparison problems with the Big Mac index. Russia has one of the cheapest Big Macs, despite the fact that Moscow is among the most expensive cities in the world.

But the Times didn’t want to talk about exchange rates at all. It wanted to make a point about US prices in the time of Covid, and Biden’s so-called failure to control them. It says:

“The dollar figures on workers’ paychecks rose handsomely over the past 12 months. But for most workers, that wasn’t enough to keep pace with the highest inflation in several decades, which eroded the value of each of those dollars….The purchasing power of the average worker’s weekly pay declined by 2.3% from December 2020 to December 2021.”

True, and that sounds bad, but maybe we should add some context. First, Investopedia says that US sales of Big Macs have been falling since the 1980s. Second, the NYT itself says a few paragraphs later: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Lower-wage workers have seen particularly strong wage growth. For workers in the bottom third of the wage distribution, Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, estimates that average wage gains have exceeded inflation.”

Just guessing, but Wrongo thinks that lower-wage workers are likely to be the primary market for Big Macs. And if workers in the bottom third of wage distribution are experiencing the strongest wage gains, maybe that’s what the Times should refer to as a Biden BFD!

And apparently, the Times doesn’t read its own business section, which on Monday said that US fast-food menu prices rose by 8% in 2021. For you non-economists, that means McDonald’s prices rose at a rate faster than US inflation, but instead, the NYT editorial board says Biden blew it.

The NYT tries to take what is a useful way to teach something about comparative exchange rates and forces it to say something critical about Biden. The title of the editorial says that Biden is failing, but in the fourth paragraph, they say:

“Mr. Biden inherited an economic crisis precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, and his administration deserves credit for orchestrating a fiscal response on a scale commensurate with the nation’s need. The outstanding achievement of Mr. Biden’s first year in office was the passage of an economic aid package in March that shielded Americans from the economic effects of the pandemic and helped to deliver a faster recovery than in other developed nations.”

They seem confused. Later, they say:

“The challenge now is to bring inflation back under control without undermining the economic recovery. The work will mostly be done by the Federal Reserve, not by Mr. Biden or his administration. The role of presidents in shaping the nation’s economic fortunes is generally overstated.”

So presidents really don’t have a big role in improving the economy, except that Biden caused bad inflation, which he can’t fix, because that’s the job of the Federal Reserve.

Does any of this make the NYT sound smart to you?

As someone who was a working adult in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Wrongo remembers truly high inflation. He remembers having a 14% home mortgage. Today’s inflation doesn’t compare to that, something that the editorial board of the NYT must know.

There is so much media laziness in America today. The NYT missed a chance to educate the public about why the prices of various products are increasing. Instead, they settled for an easy criticism of Biden.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – NATO edition, January 24, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Landscape Arch, Arches NP, UT – January 2022 photo by Peter Ferenz

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room in the standoff between Russia and Ukraine: NATO. Back in the early 1990s, Clinton wanted to have it both ways with his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin. He wanted to expand NATO while at the same time, partnering with Russia.

Yeltsin wasn’t having any of that. He accused Clinton at a summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, (CSCE) that the US was “trying to split [the] continent again” through NATO expansion. Putin believes that today.

NATO’s expansion, either in the form of full members (or in increased military activities), has now been the policy of five US presidents: Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, Trump, and now, Biden. So, a couple of questions:

  • Did NATO’s expansion to the east of a reunified Germany increase the security in Europe and reduce the risk of a major war in Europe?
  • Did NATO’s expansion in membership increase the safety and security of the American people?

The answer to both is a no. NATO expansion post 1990 hasn’t helped the original European allies and has done nothing to improve the security of the US. Arguably, we’re worse off today than in 1990.

Today there are true splits within NATO. Germany, its most important country, isn’t on the same page about Russia. From Der Spiegel:

“The US wants to impose harsh sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine. But the German government is putting on the brakes out of fears over the economic consequences and what punitive measures could mean for energy supplies for a country that gets much of its gas from Moscow.”

Germany’s conflicted about Ukraine. Der Spiegel reports that last week, the US CIA director William Burns held a meeting in Bonn with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Burns told him that if Russia attacks Ukraine, Berlin must take a clear stand.

Biden also wanted to meet with Scholz in Washington. It would have been an opportunity for them to closely coordinate steps in dealing with Russia, but Scholz refused to go and meet him. We have a problem when Russia is building up to the biggest European military threat since the end of the Cold War, and the German Chancellor is unable to clear his schedule to meet with the American president.

Having declined the Washington visit, Biden dispatched Secretary of State Blinken to Berlin, and like the CIA director, his message was – Germany must participate in tough financial and economic sanctions if Putin strikes.

Despite the European ambivalence, Russia’s move to surround Ukraine with troops may be a strategic error. Europe has wanted to become a kind of giant economic Switzerland, independent but neutral. Today, it’s trying to come to grips with the fact that Russia wants to push NATO as far back as it can by recovering former Soviet territory.

Russia making NATO into a target seems to have revivified NATO a bit. It was more or less in slumber before Putin’s move against Ukraine and his demands of NATO and the US. Europe, the US, and NATO are walking a tightrope now, since there’s a fine line between diplomacy and “appeasement”.

The US and NATO countries all have entrenched maximalist military hawks who will attack any politician that surrenders an inch to Russia in the current situation. That’s an understandable position. In the last decade, Russia broke up Georgia, it ended the revolution against Assad in Syria, while securing its naval base there. It annexed Crimea albeit with local popular support, sent troops to Libya and Africa, supported Armenia against Azerbaijan, and recently “preserved” the non-elected government of Kazakhstan.

Can/should this be allowed go on forever? Is this the right time to push back hard?

There is no military solution that will keep Russia out of Ukraine. When Wrongo was a member of the NATO forces, the accepted strategy was that US and European troops on the ground were a “tripwire”. It was clear that the Soviet Union had vastly superior military assets amassed on Europe’s border. And Europe’s border was at that time, East Germany. Berlin was just 300 miles from Bonn, a day’s trip.

The counter to the Soviet’s military superiority was NATO’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. We could stop their ground forces reasonably effectively before they could get to Germany’s capital. The basic NATO position was to fight long enough with conventional forces to make the possibility of nuclear escalation plausible.

Today the situation is similar. Russia has vastly superior military assets amassed on Europe’s border, but the distances are greater: From Smolensk on Russia’s western border to Warsaw in Poland is about 500 miles, and it’s 1,075 miles from Smolensk to Bonn, Germany.

That breathing room explains Clinton’s flawed reasoning for NATO expansion. But, since the West has said that it will no longer use tactical nuclear weapons, it has limited options if it faces a limited invasion of say, Ukraine, a non-NATO member.

This leaves the US with trying to find a diplomatic solution, one which doesn’t look like appeasement, one that the many NATO members will also find acceptable. Having to compromise will mean finally admitting that we are part of a multipolar world.

Is Washington ready to go there yet? Very doubtful. Our path is fraught with danger as we careen from crisis to crisis. Something has to change or we’ll misplay a hand and be back where we were in 1939.

It’s time for NATO, Europe, and the US to wake up! It’s hard to see a sensible compromise that doesn’t look like appeasement, but it’s their job to find it for the rest of us.

To help them wake up, listen to John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen perform “Wasted Days”, from Mellencamp’s “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack” album, released this week, it’s one of the three songs featuring Springsteen:

Sample lyric:

How much sorrow is there left to climb
How many promises are worth a dime
Who on earth is worth our time?

Think about that NATO!

Facebooklinkedinrss