Assorted Points Related to Ukraine

This blog is a view on a group of assorted events related to or triggered to by the ongoing Ukraine war. There is no unifying thread to these observations.

 

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The New York Times wrote that as Russia is dragged deeper than planned in Ukraine, their ability to keep the peace in some of the older parts of the Soviet Union has decreased – this includes both Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan etc), as well as the Caucasian side (Armenia, Azerbaijan  etc). With Moscow tied down in Ukraine, skirmishes and even war has broken out among various pairs of these countries. Yes, I know, those wars don’t make the news, while Ukraine hogs all the space –only wars that affect the West make the news…

 

In this setup, China has started to step into Central Asia as the peacemaker/ peacekeeper. After all, the Belt and Road projects extend into many of those countries. Whether China is doing a stop gap job until Russia is back, only time can tell.

 

In the Caucasian side, India just sold $249 million of military equipment to Armenia for their ongoing war with Azerbaijan. Since India doesn’t have strategic stake in that region, maybe this is just an arms-for-money deal.

 

Whatever the reasons, the fallout of Ukraine on India and China is the opposite of the fallout on the West. Opportunities for the two (cheap oil, arms deals in former Soviet republics) in contrast to the crisis in the West (risks to oil supply, and recession fears).

 

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Elon Musk is not shy of provoking controversies. He started a Twitter poll on how to end the Ukraine war! His proposal included (1) handing over Crimea to Russia for good, (2) UN supervised referendums in occupied parts on which country they wished to join. Ukrainian leaders were, not surprisingly, furious and lashed out at Musk. While Moscow welcomed the proposal on a “peaceful” resolution.

 

A few days later, Musk announced that the Starlink Internet service that his satellite company, SpaceX, provides in Ukraine since the start of the war, is becoming an unsustainable cost ($20 million a month). He asked the Pentagon to fund its continuing operations, else he’d shut it down. (Starlink is a satellite based Internet service provider. Since the infrastructure is in space, at a time of war, it can’t be disconnected by cutting out wires or destroying telecom towers). As Russia rained missiles in the last few days, Ukraine acknowledged the role of Starlink in keeping some of its infrastructure functional.

 

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A bunch of high-profile economists in the US wrote a public letter to the US President proposing “price caps” (i.e., price limits) on Russian oil. Tyler Cowen called it a “paramount example of what I call “foreign policy first.”. In other words, the proposal is less economics and more nationalism at work. Personally, I wasn’t sure if such a price limit policy can even be enforced – who exactly will/can enforce it on India or China anyway?

 

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Alan Jacobs made some incisive comments on the endless declarations that Ukraine is “winning” the war. He is appalled by the incompleteness in their “analysis”:

“(Such articles) never once considers the possibility that Russia will use nukes. I don’t see how this is anything other than the purest wishful thinking.”

In my opinion, such articles don’t even acknowledge that Russia hasn’t unleashed all its conventional means yet. They are deluded enough to believe that Russia has no weapons (other than nukes) left in its arsenal.

 

Jacobs adds:

“The more controversial the topic, the more likely that writers on it will simply ignore any perspective other than their own. They won’t consider it even to refute it; they’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist.”

 

Methinks it is Western wishful thinking at best, propaganda at worst.

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