Russia is a collapsing, corrupt state with no meaningful elections. It is also the biggest exporter of food, fertilizer, gas, and oil. Nearly 2 years ago, it invaded Ukraine, another collapsing, corrupt, food-exporting state with suspended elections.
Both countries are in the midst of demographic collapse, with Ukraine worse off. Ukraine was invaded though, and thus has the better claim to our support. Then again Russia has atomic bombs. It’s also the largest exporter of wheat (or was), while Ukraine is only the 5th largest (or was before the war). The other three big exporters are the US, Canada, and France. We have benefitted financially, but don’t have enough output to make up for lost Russian and Ukrainian production. A likely result is famine unless the war can be brought to a quick end.
Food and energy prices have gone up too, and will probably continue to rise as the war stretches on. This adds to the risk of a global famine, particularly in the poorest areas of Africa, the Mid East, and India. Unfortunately, the war is still popular in Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and the US. It’s good business for our armaments industry, and for our recent mega-farmers (like Bill Gates). Also, for our political and spy class. They spend with little government oversight, and just recently misplaced $16 billion. Surely some of that lost money snuck back to the CIA and our politicians’ pockets. We’d have oversight, but “there’s a war on.”
As wars go, the death toll is low, a total of 354,000 dead and injured on both sides, as revealed by recently leaked documents. This is a small fraction of the countries population. Russia has lost 223,000 soldiers killed or wounded, 0.2% of the population, while the Ukrainians had lost 131,000, 0.3%, many of them civilians. While the war rages, the total death rate in the these two countries was 3.1 million people, 1.8% of the population; they’re dying mostly from heart disease, accidents, and alcoholism.
More destructive than disease, alcoholism and the war is the demographic collapse. The fertility rate in Russia is 1.5 child per woman. In Ukraine it’s even lower, 1.21 per woman. For a stable population, you need at least 2.1 children per woman. Russia and Ukraine have had these low rates for at least 30 years. The net result is that we can expect that Russia’s population will drop by a third or so over the next generation, to about 50 million. This is the equivalent of killing 1/2 of the population; for Ukraine, the prognosis is worse. With few children and decent food supply, we can expect few workers, and increasingly many elderly. This will produce a cultural shift that virtually guarantees the breakup of Ukraine and the Russian federation in 20-30 years. Europe has this problem too, but with no war and some net immigration. The result is a cultural shift of a different type (to Islam). Russia has no immigration, and recently resorted to kidnapping Ukrainian children.
Europe has stopped taking delivery of Russian food and energy, in solidarity with Ukraine. This benefits the US, but hurts others. Meanwhile Russia has been destroying Ukrainian fields and food infrastructure, blowing a dam last month, flooding Ukraine’s fields, and yesterday destroyed the grain terminals at the port of Odessa,. This was tit-for-tat since Ukraine destroyed a key bridge, and Crimea’s irrigation canal. What’s more, evidence suggests that Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipeline — a key source of finance for Russia and Germany. This sort of tit-for-tat escalated to WWI, fueled by a belief, on both sides, that they would win “decisively and quickly.”
The result of WWI is that Germany was the biggest loser, losing men and land, and suffering a killing famine in 1916. In response, it militarized to prevent war from happening again, and this prevention helped cause WWII. Germany is the biggest loser so far, I’d say, aside from Ukraine, and I fear/expect they will militarize again. Russia too claims a need to increased military production. Biden’s promise that Ukraine’s will join NATO is a threat to Russia, as is our delivery of F16s, missiles and cluster bombs. We are killing Russians, and Putin doesn’t like it. Add to this, that Ukraine’s claim for independence rests mostly on its Nazi collaboration. For the good of everyone, maybe we can dial back, and stop adding gasoline to this fire.
Ukraine deserves our support, but I think that support need not go beyond small-ish arms, energy deliveries, and tariffs on Russian goods. Let’ s not push WWIII. Instead, we should help Ukraine and Russia export food and energy to avoid a famine. And a military Germany does no one any good.
Robert Buxbaum, July 20, 2023. When I was a teen, it was a given that war was bad. Now, for some reason, kids are in for war — here, and jehad in the Mid-East — especially the liberal classes. I find this absolutely bizarre.
