The Big Picture Archives - Page 14 of 34

July 22, 2015

War is politics by other means…Putin’s goals are political

From Brian Whitmore at RFERL:

….War is politics by other means and the Kremlin’s goals in Donbas are ultimately political.

Vladimir Putin may have once dreamed of seizing all of what his propagandists call Novorossia — the strip of land from Kharkiv to Odesa — and establishing a land bridge to Crimea.

But that’s off the table now and he is clearly not interested in annexing the war-ravaged and economically devastated enclaves his separatists currently hold.

“The Kremlin, for its part, is losing interest in the armed conflict it helped create: It wants to move on from military interference in Ukraine to quieter political destabilization,” political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.

….If you want to see Ukraine’s future under this scenario, just look at Bosnia.

July 21, 2015

“We should be ashamed”…Isis could have been ‘nipped in the bud’ four years ago

The rise of extremist terror group Islamic State (Isis) could have been avoided if the UK began attacks on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013, according to two former defence chiefs.

“It’s a great shame, something that we should be ashamed of, that we could have nipped this problem in the bud four years ago, but failed to do so,” said Lord David Richards, a former general and the UK’s chief of defence staff from 2011 to 2013 under Prime Minister David Cameron.

“….if anything encouraged Isis at that point, it was that decision,” said Lord George Robertson, Nato secretary general from 1999 to 2004, and UK defence secretary from 1997 to 1999. “It was that fact of a failure of will on the part of the Western powers,” he added, that also encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Crimea in 2013.

….”We are our own worst enemy. We simply ignore problems,” said Robertson, who urged the UK’s politicians to do more to convince the public why the government needs to take military action. “Unless people are convinced there are things worth fighting for, then we’ll be in trouble….”

Reminds me of:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” ~ from the film adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Often misattributed to Edmund Burke who wrote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

June 15, 2015

The key to economic prosperity is good governance

Podcast: Francis Fukuyama on the importance of good governance [05:23].

It is time we started raising the bar for our own political system.

June 14, 2015

The Long War [podcast]

Excellent insight into the long-term implications of conflict between Russia and the West. Hosted by Brian Whitmore (RFE/Power Vertical) and co-host Mark Galeotti, New York University professor and expert on Russia's security services, with guest James Sherr, an associate fellow with Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program.

Podcast: The Long War

It's going to be a protracted conflict and Ukraine is just the first major battle.

It's going to be fought in different ways and on multiple fronts: on NATO's eastern frontier; over the countries of former Soviet Union, in the energy market, over the airwaves, and in cyberspace.

We should have no illusions. The West's conflict with Russia is not going away anytime soon, regardless of how the current standoff in Ukraine is resolved.

And what is at stake is nothing short of the future of the international order.

This ain't no Cold War. Russia isn't strong enough for that.

But according to The Russia Challenge, a widely read and highly influential report issued by Chatham House last week, it is shaping up to be a Long War. A protracted looking-glass conflict with a weakening, but still very dangerous, Russia.

On the latest Power Vertical Podcast, we discuss the new Chatham House report and its recommendations.

Enjoy…

The panel make some important points:

The post-Soviet transition to a modern democracy was poorly handled by the West and left Russians with a deep distrust of their motives.
The most important response to asymmetric warfare is good governance. The last 15 years shows a series of unmitigated blunders that would leave an independent observer with serious questions as to the competence of Western democracies. The West, Ukraine and Baltic States all need to get their house in order.
Conventional weapons are important, but the primary response should focus on improved intelligence and policing.

June 10, 2015

The Impunity Trap by Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, highlights one of the great challenges to modern society: public indifference to dishonest and unethical behavior.

The ability of those who wield great public and private power to flout the law and ethical norms for personal gain is one of the more glaring manifestations of inequality. The poor get life sentences for petty crimes, while bankers who fleece the public of billions get invitations to White House state dinners…..

In some societies and economic sectors, impunity is now so pervasive that it is viewed as inevitable. When unethical behavior by political and business leaders becomes widely viewed as “normal,” it then goes unpunished by public opinion, and is reinforced as normal – creating an “impunity trap.” For example, with politicians in the United States now so flagrantly and relentlessly on the take from wealthy donors, much of the public accepts new revelations of financial impropriety (such as the Clinton Foundation’s morally dubious financial dealings) with a cynical yawn.

The situation in the global banking sector is especially alarming. A recent careful study of ethical attitudes in the financial-services industry in the US and the United Kingdom showed that unethical and illegal behavior is indeed now viewed as pervasive…..

Yet not all societies or sectors are caught in an impunity trap. Some societies, most notably in Scandinavia, maintain the expectation that their public officials and business leaders should and will act ethically and honestly. In these countries, ministers are forced to resign for petty infractions that would seem trivial in other countries.

What is needed is a two-pronged approach. Firstly, a “broken window pane” strategy, where strict enforcement against minor infringements will reduce the occurrence of major violations. Second, ensure that penalties imposed on major transgressors in the banking industry, politics, sports administration (FIFA), and other public areas are sufficient to act as a visible deterrent to others.

Imposing a billion dollar fine on a bank for illegal behavior penalizes shareholders not the perpetrators who generally get away scot-free. A two-year jail sentence for senior executives involved would be a far more effective deterrent.

March 15, 2015

The Catch-22 of energy storage | On Line Opinion

John Morgan questions whether wind and solar are viable energy sources when one considers energy returned on energy invested (EROEI).

There is a minimum EROEI, greater than 1, that is required for an energy source to be able to run society. An energy system must produce a surplus large enough to sustain things like food production, hospitals, and universities to train the engineers to build the plant, transport, construction, and all the elements of the civilization in which it is embedded. For countries like the US and Germany, Weißbach et al. estimate this minimum viable EROEI to be about 7……

The fossil fuel power sources we’re most accustomed to have a high EROEI of about 30, well above the minimum requirement. Wind power at 16, and concentrating solar power (CSP, or solar thermal power) at 19, are lower, but the energy surplus is still sufficient, in principle, to sustain a developed industrial society. Biomass, and solar photovoltaic (at least in Germany), however, cannot. With an EROEI of only 3.9 and 3.5 respectively, these power sources cannot support with their energy alone both their own fabrication and the societal services we use energy for in a first world country.

Energy Returned on Invested, from Weißbach et al.,1 with and without energy storage (buffering). CCGT is closed-cycle gas turbine. PWR is a Pressurized Water (conventional nuclear) Reactor. Energy sources must exceed the “economic threshold”, of about 7, to yield the surplus energy required to support an OECD level society.

These EROEI values are for energy directly delivered (the “unbuffered” values in the figure). But things change if we need to store energy. If we were to store energy in, say, batteries, we must invest energy in mining the materials and manufacturing those batteries. So a larger energy investment is required, and the EROEI consequently drops…[to the buffered level].

March 15, 2015

Why our prep-school diplomats fail against Putin and ISIS | New York Post

Kerry and Putin

“Why do our “best and brightest” fail when faced with a man like Putin?” Ralph Peters asks. “Or with charismatic fanatics? Or Iranian negotiators? Why do they misread our enemies so consistently, from Hitler and Stalin to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph?”

The answer is straightforward:

Social insularity: Our leaders know fellow insiders around the world; our enemies know everyone else.

The mandarin’s distaste for physicality: We are led through blood-smeared times by those who’ve never suffered a bloody nose.

And last but not least, bad educations in our very best schools: Our leadership has been educated in chaste political theory, while our enemies know, firsthand, the stuff of life.

Above all, there is arrogance based upon privilege. For revolving-door leaders in the U.S. and Europe, if you didn’t go to the right prep school and elite university, you couldn’t possibly be capable of comprehending, let alone changing, the world…….

That educational insularity is corrosive and potentially catastrophic: Our “best” universities prepare students to sustain the current system, instilling vague hopes of managing petty reforms.

But dramatic, revolutionary change in geopolitics never comes from insiders. It’s the outsiders who change the world.

An Athenian general once wrote:

The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its laws made by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.

~ Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 400 BC)

February 10, 2015

Putin Will Never Back Down | Institutional Investor’s Alpha

Excellent analysis of the situation in Eastern Europe by Bill Browder, founder of London-based Hermitage Capital Management:

I’m afraid that, based on the reasons behind Putin’s motivations for invading Ukraine in the first place, there is no chance that he will back down. To understand this, all it takes is a simple analysis of how this crisis unfolded.

First, Putin didn’t start this war because of NATO enlargement or historical ties to Crimea, as many analysts have stated. Putin started this war out of fear of being overthrown like Ukrainian president Yanukovych in February 2014. Yanukovych had been stealing billions from the state over many years, and the Ukrainian people finally snapped and overthrew him. Compared with Putin, Yanukovych was a junior varsity player in the field of kleptocracy. For every dollar Yanukovych stole, Putin and his cronies probably stole 50. Putin understands that if he loses power in Russia, he and his underlings will lose all the money they stole; he will lose his freedom and possibly even his life.

I believe that Bill is right. Putin was not reacting to EU or NATO encroachment (they were never a threat), but to Maidan. Especially when we read Michael McFaul’s (former ambassador to Russia) summation of Putin: “He is obsessed with the CIA…..With respect Ukraine he believes the US led the coup in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians had nothing to do with it. It was all the CIA.”

….. Putin has never dealt with economic chaos before. Though some may argue that this will bring him to the table to negotiate with the West, in my opinion any negotiation would be seen as a sign of weakness and is therefore the last thing Putin would want to do.

Putin’s only likely response is to escalate in Ukraine and possibly open up new fronts in other countries where there are “Russians to protect.” But doing so will only harden the sanctions, leading to further economic pain in Russia — and further military adventures to distract Russia’s people from that pain.

I cannot imagine a scenario in which there is any compromise, because for Putin compromise means being overthrown. Judging from all of his actions to date, he is ready to destroy his country for his own self-preservation.

We should start preparing ourselves for a war in Europe that may spread well beyond the borders of Ukraine. The only Western response to this has to be containment. This all may sound alarmist, but I’ve spent the past eight years in my own war with Putin, and I have a few insights about him that are worth knowing.

In Putin’s mind, he is fighting for survival. The US/EU/Nato and Ukraine are just a convenient scapegoat. His real enemy is the Russian people. This 1945 image of Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and three others hanging outside a petrol station in Milan must haunt his dreams.

When they realize they have been duped, the anger of the Russian people will be palpable.

Read the full article at Unhedged Commentary: Putin Will Never Back Down | Institutional Investor's Alpha.

January 22, 2015

Russia terror alert | Kyiv Post

Kyiv Post quotes Markian Lubkivskyi, an adviser to SBU head Valentyn Nailyvaichenko on the rise of terrorism outside of Eastern Ukraine:

“(Terrorists) are aiming to undermine Ukraine from within,” Lubkivskyi told the Kyiv Post, adding that terrorism is one of Russia’s tools in the war against Ukraine. “This is definitely a planned set of linked actions carried out to demoralize people, scare them, spread chaos and create protest moods.”

One of the latest incidents occurred on Jan. 20, when a bridge near the village of Kuznetsivka in Zaporizhzhia Oblast collapsed under a cargo train that was carrying iron ore to Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast. As a result, 10 cars derailed.

This was the fourth railway explosion over the last two months.

In January, three fuel tanks on a freight train were set on fire at the Shebelynka station in Kharkiv Oblast, and a bomb blew up a freight tank with petrochemicals at the Odesa-Peresyp railway station. On Dec. 24, explosives hidden under the railways hit a train at the Zastava 1 railway station, also based in Odesa.

Odesa has become the main target of attacks in the last two months.

The word terrorism is widely misused. What we are dealing with is state-sponsored terrorism or war by proxy. Without state sponsorship — in the form of training, weapons, logistics and financial support — most terrorist organizations would shrivel up and die. The level of proxy warfare increased hugely since World War II, when direct confrontation between major powers became dangerous because of the advent of nuclear weapons. Instead of direct confrontation these powers resorted to deniable aggression, by proxy, in order to weaken their enemies. The former Soviet Union was a major sponsor of proxy wars, from Korea and Vietnam to support for guerrilla wars elsewhere in Asia, Africa and South America. It appears that Vladimir Putin has adopted a similar strategy and is expanding its use into Eastern Europe.

It is difficult to win a guerrilla war where there are few conventional battles. The lesson from Vietnam is that you can win every battle, but still lose the war. Far better to identify and attack the sponsor through unconventional (asymmetric) means such as sanctions. Make sure that the cost outweighs the benefits of proxy warfare.

When we read the word “terrorism” in popular media, our first question should be: who is the sponsor and how can we make them desist?

Robert Wright: Progress is not a zero-sum game [video]

Thought-provoking presentation by Robert Wright, best-selling author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal and The Evolution of God. Progress is not a zero-sum game — the network of linked fortunes and cooperation that has guided our evolution to this point can help us save humanity today.

Some thoughts:

Terrorism is a negative-sum game. The perpetrators commit atrocities to protest their sub-human treatment. The atrocities convince by-standers that these people are sub-human and deserve to be treated as such.

Non-violent protest is a testament to the moral/intellectual leadership of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. Stoic acceptance of violence without retaliation convinces observers that the protestors are not sub-human and do not deserve such treatment.