This is a follow-on to — A New World Order — posted yesterday. The first 13 minutes are worth listening to.
Michael Every, Global Strategist at Rabobank, says commodities and the US Dollar are key investments in the coming decade.
Michael Every | A new world order
Michael Every, Global Strategist at Rabobank, predicts the coming decade will be very different from those in living memory.
War in Europe
If the West thought that the conflict would remain safely contained in Ukraine, they had better think again. There has long been signs that Putin’s ambitions cover more than just Ukraine.
Sweden & Finland
Norway
Undersea fiber-optic cables to Svalbard Island were cut in two places.
The Black Sea & Moldova
Rostov, Russia
War is even spreading to within Russia itself, with Ukraine attacking a military airfield in Rostov Oblast (adjacent to the Donbas). Attacks on staging posts in Belarus are also likely.
NATO Article 5
Francois Heisbourg at the the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warns that Putin may test NATO directly.
Putin declares war on Europe
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an effective declaration of war against Europe.
This will no more stop at Kyiv than Hitler stopped at the Sudetenland.
Tragic sites of refugees fleeing Russian bombing and helicopter-borne invasion forces occupying Hostomel Airport military airfield, 15 minutes outside the capital.
All of this could have been avoided if the West had shown more resolve.
Kicking the can down the road
The West has been kicking the can down the road for the past 15 years hoping that the problem would go away. Ever since Vladimir Putin laid out his agenda at the Munich security conference in 2007, the West has tried to buy him off with reset buttons and lucrative gas contracts, looking the other way as he embarked on his expansionist plans, starting with invasion of Georgia the following year.
From Ambassador Daniel Fried and Kurt Volker in Politico, seven days ago:
What is more surprising is how the U.S. and Europe, despite Putin’s obvious warning in Munich and Russia’s many actions over 15 years, have nonetheless clung to the notion that we can somehow work together with Putin’s Russia on a strategic level. It is finally time for the West to face facts. Whether or not Putin launches a major new invasion of Ukraine, he has rejected the post-Cold War European security architecture and means it. He is on a deliberate and dedicated path to build a greater Russia, an empire where the Soviet Union once stood…..
Following the speech, Putin matched his words with actions, dismantling the structures designed to keep peace in post-Cold War Europe. Russia formally announced in July 2007 that it would no longer adhere to the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. It continued to reject the principle of host-nation consent for its troop presence in Georgia and Moldova, and began ignoring Vienna Convention limits on troop concentrations, exercises and transparency.
Judge a tree by the fruit it bears
Europe continued to build a trade relationship with Russia, in the hope that prosperity would mellow Putin. Instead the Kremlin used its oil and gas profits to rearm and modernize its military while cracking down on political opposition and a free press. Deaths of journalists and opposition politicians climbed. Eastern NATO leaders who repeatedly warned the West about the need to confront Russia were dismissed as “warmongers”.
By this stage, the Kremlin had even taken its war against opposition figures abroad, with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
In 1998, Litvinenko and several other FSB officers had publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko was arrested the following year but acquitted before being re-arrested. The charges were again dismissed and Litvinenko fled with his family to London where they were granted asylum in the UK. He later wrote two books accusing the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings in 1999 and other acts of terrorism in an effort to bring Putin to power. He also accused Putin of ordering the assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning that same year, in London.
A UK public inquiry concluded in 2016 that Litvinenko’s murder was carried out by the two suspects and that they were “probably” acting under the direction of the FSB and with the approval of president Vladimir Putin and then FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.
The Obama Reset
On his election in 2009, Barack Obama sought to reset the relationship with Russia, as if the West was to blame for:
- the attempted assassination of Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko during his 2004 election campaign — he was poisoned with a potent dioxin that disfigured him but later made a full recovery;
- widespread denial-of-service cyber attacks on Estonia in 2007; and
- invasion of Georgia in 2008.
The reset failed badly, with Russia annexing Crimea and invading the Donbas in 2014. Next was Syria in 2015. Responses by the West, including limited sanctions, proved ineffective.
The Salisbury poisonings
In 2018, Russia was the first state to employ chemical weapons against private citizens in a foreign country. In Salisbury, England, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, a Russian citizen, visiting him from Moscow, were poisoned with a Russian-developed Novichok nerve agent and admitted to hospital in a critical condition. UK Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of responsibility for the incident and announced the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation. A former Russian intelligence officer, Skripal had settled in the UK in 2010 after his conviction on espionage charges in Russia before being exchanged in a spy swap. Both Skripal and his daughter eventually recovered. Moscow refused to cooperate in the interrogation of the two prime suspects, identified by Bellingcat as Alexander Mishkin, a trained military doctor, working for the GRU, and decorated GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.
Conclusion
The signs have been evident for a long time but were largely ignored.
This was always going to end badly. The longer that the West delays, the worse the eventual toll in lives and human suffering.
Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt sums up the situation:
The Putin invasion of Ukraine that we now see unfolding is the worst outbreak of war that we have had since Hitler invaded Poland in September of 1939. The same motives, the same techniques, the same lies leading up to it. What will happen now remains to be seen. Sanctions will have to be imposed, although that particular deterrence has obviously failed, but it was good to try. We must help the fight in Ukraine. We must treat the Putin regime in the way that it deserves, in all respects. We are heading for bleak days when it comes to the security of Europe. Transatlantic security will be absolutely key.
What is information warfare?
The opening paragraph of Philosophy of Information Warfare (1998) by Russian military analyst Sergei P. Rastorguev:
“Once there was a fox that wanted to eat a turtle, but whenever he tried to, it withdrew into its shell. One day there appeared a television hanging in a tree, displaying images of flocks of happy, naked turtles—flying! The turtle was a bit skeptical and amazed at the same time. Meanwhile, fox continued to pay for more broadcasts advertising flying turtles. One morning, when the sky seemed bigger and brighter than usual, the turtle removed its shell.
The turtle didn’t know and never will, that information warfare — it is the purposeful training of an enemy to remove its own shell.”
Acknowledgements
Hat tip to Eto Buziashvili at Atlantic Council
The great enemy of truth is not the lie but the myth | JFK
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1962)
HT to Ross Elliot
Never waste a good crisis
The Russian Federation has amassed a large army on the border of Ukraine and threatens to invade unless the US and NATO make concessions including the withdrawal of forces from Eastern Europe, securing Moscow a broad sphere of influence. There has been much hand-wringing in Western media: will Putin invade or is this just a ruse designed to extract concessions?
If we look past the uncertainty, it is clear that an increasingly over-confident Putin has entered a trap of his own making.
The West is faced with an ultimatum: either concede or Russian forces will invade Ukraine.
But every problem presents an opportunity.
The more aggressive Russia becomes, the stronger NATO gets.
Russian actions have united Western alliances, with even long-term neutrals Finland and Sweden, moving closer to NATO. Both Finnish and Swedish presidents reiterated their right to join NATO in response to the Russian ultimatum.
Germany has long obstructed a stiffening of NATO defenses, increasing its vulnerability to Russian energy blackmail by shuttering nuclear power plants and supporting the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea. But opposition is growing. A recent poll shows that the percentage of Germans who trust Russia has fallen by 11% over the past two years:
Concessions are unlikely, simply because there is nothing to gain from them. Concessions by the US would weaken NATO and encourage the Kremlin to make even more outlandish demands in the future. Concessions by NATO without the US would produce a similar outcome.
Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a strategic mistake.
First, invasion would be a flagrant act of war, removing the cloak of deniability that has covered Russian operations in the Donbas region. A formal state of war would increase the flow of Western technology and weapons into Ukraine as Western leaders are required to openly acknowledge Russian aggression.
Land invasions are costly in terms of both blood and treasure. The Russian army may eventually overrun the Ukrainians through the weight of forces and technological advantages. But Ukrainian armed forces have been in a protracted war in the East and are well-trained and equipped with modern anti-tank weapons, artillery and unmanned drones. The costs would be high.
Turkey’s Bayraktar Unmanned Armed Combat Drone – Source: Ukrinform
Where the Ukrainians are at a disadvantage is in air defenses and vulnerability to long-range missile attacks. But that window is closing.
To stiffen Ukraine’s ability to resist, the United States and NATO have dispatched teams in recent weeks to survey air defenses, logistics, communications and other essentials. The United States likely has also bolstered Ukraine’s defenses against Russian cyberattacks and electronic warfare. (David Ignatius, Washington Post)
An air campaign would also achieve little without a follow-up land invasion.
Even if the Ukrainian forces are defeated, that is where the real problem starts. Occupation is a costly and morale-sapping exercise as the Soviets discovered in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the US discovered in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (they’re slow learners). An insurgency negates the occupiers’ advantages in air power and technology, leading to a drawn-out campaign with no outcome.
“You have the watches. We have the time.” ~ Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
A Russian occupation force would require 20 combatants for every 1,000 Ukrainians, according to a formula devised by Rand Corp. analyst James Quinlivan in 1995. That would translate into an a required Russian force of almost 900,000, illustrating the impracticality.
We could expect a Russian occupation to be exceedingly brutal, along the lines of Syria, creating a humanitarian crisis and flooding the West with refugees. But that is only likely to harden resolve, marginalizing appeasers in the West, and increase support for the insurgents.
The cost of an extended Russian campaign would deplete the Russian Treasury, even without increased sanctions. It would also escalate opposition within Russia, spurred by the high cost in lives and deteriorating living conditions. The result would threaten collapse of the Russian state in much the same way as the campaign in Afghanistan led to the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Conclusion
The threat of armed invasion of Ukraine is a mistake. It is likely to strengthen resolve in the West and, if the threat is carried out, result in a long, protracted war in Ukraine. The cost in both blood and treasure would threaten to topple the Russian state.
Russian overconfidence has led them into a trap. Thinly spread across a number of conflict zones, they are vulnerable to an escalation in insurgencies wherever they have “peace-keeping” occupation forces: Syria, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and now Kazakhstan. The cost to the West would be low but would exact a huge toll on the Kremlin, depleting their military and already-vulnerable financial resources.
“Moderation in the pursuit of liberty is no virtue.”
~ Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed History
Omicron may be our best hope of taming the pandemic
Almost a year before Omicron appeared, Paul Ewald, an evolutionary biologist, predicted that the COVID virus would evolve in the direction of a highly contagious but less deadly variant.
Omicron is certainly proving more contagious than earlier variants.
Source: Bloomberg
But the hospitalization rate — for those above 30 years of age at least — is far lower than the earlier Delta variant.
Source: Bloomberg
The higher rate of hospitalizations among children under 9 may not be as concerning as it first seems:
Professor Mignon McCulloch, who is the Chairperson of the SA Paediatric Association, has urged people not to panic during her appearance on CapeTalk. Around 20% of new admissions for COVID-19 in Tshwane have been in children aged nine or under, whereas similar spikes have not been seen in any other age groups.
However, it doesn’t mean that Omicron is more dangerous, or even more deadly for children. According to McCulloch, it’s very likely that the children admitted to hospital are actually there for reasons other than the virus – and it is ‘coincidental’ that they have also tested positive for COVID-19 when checked by hospital staff. (The South African)
Evolutionary path
Earlier, researchers at the University of Exeter found that the most virulent variants of a pathogen may transmit the fastest, but tend to lose out in evolutionary terms to less virulent strains:
Pathogens have a single evolutionary goal – to produce more of themselves. “Virulence will evolve towards a level that optimizes their ability to transmit,” Dr Bonneaud said.
If the pathogen meets resistance to transmission — in the form of a recovered and immune or vaccinated host, or social distancing — then highly virulent forms die out with their host, and natural selection favors less virulent forms.
If there is no such resistance, the pathogen can kill its existing host at no evolutionary cost and will remain highly virulent…..
Paul Ewald, at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, said humanity had drawn a short straw with Sars-CoV-2 because it was both highly virulent and highly transmissible when it emerged.
Over time it is likely to reduce its virulence – in fact, that may already be happening, as reflected in falling mortality rates.
“I would expect it to evolve to a virulence that is very much like [seasonal] influenza,” Prof Ewald said in November last year.
“And containment measures, properly implemented, should accelerate that process.” (The Guardian)
Host mobility
Paul Ewald’s research focuses on the dependence of disease organisms on the mobility of their host for transmission. A patient (host) who is bed-ridden or dies is less likely to transmit the infection — unless the disease has another means of spreading other than personal contact/close proximity. A host with mild symptoms is far more likely to move around in the community and spread the disease.
If a disease organism is very dependent on healthy hosts moving around [and] contacting susceptible hosts, then we expect natural selection to favor extreme mildness in those disease organisms. If, however, the disease organism is not dependent on host mobility — for example, if the disease organism is transmitted by mosquito, or contaminated water, or because it’s durable in the external environment — then we expect that natural selection will favor high levels of harmfulness in those disease organisms…..
When we look at the population of disease organisms in any given area, we see both mild and harmful strains….. all we need to do is tip the competitive balance in favor of those mild strains.
We can look at the experience in South America and Central America as a kind of a natural experiment that allows us to evaluate these ideas. In 1991, cholera came into Peru and then quickly, within a couple of years, spread all throughout South and Central America. Some countries had clean water supplies, and other countries had contaminated water supplies. What we find is that when the organism invaded countries with clean water supplies, the organism dropped in its harmfulness.
In contrast, the organisms that invaded countries with poor water supplies — countries like Ecuador — evolved increased harmfulness over time. They’ve actually become more toxigenic. (Paul Ewald: Infectious Disease and the Evolution of Virulence)
Conclusion
We can use evolution to encourage diseases to evolve into milder forms that are not as harmful and also create resistance to more virulent strains. Use of vaccines, handwashing, masks and social distancing help to restrict more virulent forms of the virus and encourage milder versions like Omicron to take over, developing herd immunity.
Opening up populations to a pandemic — in the misguided hope of creating herd immunity — are likely to have the opposite effect. Unhindered transmission would encourage evolution of more virulent strains, with far higher hospitalization and death rates.
Acknowledgement
Hat tip to Macrobusiness for the images
Facebook (FB) in trouble over hate speech
“It’s easier to inspire people to anger than other emotions…..Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money……It’s one of these unfortunate consequences, right? No one at Facebook is malevolent, but the incentives are misaligned, right? Like, Facebook makes more money when you consume more content. People enjoy engaging with things that elicit an emotional reaction. And the more anger that they get exposed to, the more they interact and the more they consume…” ~ Frances Haugen, Facebook whistleblower
Afghanistan: The worst kind of cowardice
I would have expected the former Swedish prime minister to have a better appreciation of the challenges political leaders face when confronted with a choice like Afghanistan:
The media focuses on the 12,000 casualties and more than $1 trillion spent over the past 20 years. A complete waste. Especially when you consider the end result. But the alternative is even worse: to continue spending good money after bad, wasting more lives unnecessarily in the process. Your first duty as a leader is to avoid another young soldier returning home with his/her legs blown off or with brain trauma from an IED.
Sacrifice is necessary when there is a clear and attainable end goal in mind. But the worst kind of sacrifice is the kind politicians make because they don’t want to take a hit in the ratings. That isn’t courage, it’s cowardice.
A long, long time ago I served in a counterinsurgency operation where one of my fellow 18-year olds had his legs blown off above the knee when his horse stepped on a landmine. He died several years later. I often think of him in times like this because the conflict has long since been forgotten, the outcome was inevitable and time has marched on.
No one has the right to ask young men and women to serve in those kind of circumstances. Not you, not me, nor Joe Biden.