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I absolutely despise things like this. The war in Ukraine, amplified by the West's anemic and at best useless sanctions, have likely led to a famine which will

I absolutely despise things like this. The war in Ukraine, amplified by the West's anemic and at best useless sanctions, have likely led to a famine which will effect millions of people. Yeah, us sitting here in our offices in the richest country in the world, arguably the people who helped cause this, won't be effected. Maybe our food prices go up a tiny bit. The people in developing countries, like usual, will now become victims of starvation, which will lead to revolutions and civil war, and ultimately more suffering. I'm sorry to be so cynical about this, but it has been like watching a slow motion, unending train wreck see the last year of foreign policy nightmares coming out of The United States. It turns out that, no, we are not in the end of history, and yes, there are still a lot of bad people in the world. Our foreign policy laziness/ineptitude has led to a situation where the leader of a nuclear armed, hostile superpower (Russia) has two choices: win his war against the west, or die. In the process we have invalidated the idea of The Federal Reserve meaning anything (oh you have USD deposits? You made us mad? We'll just cancel them!), and are about to see countries selling oil denominated in something other than USD. To be clear: Putin is a monster who has now killed thousands, and destroyed a country. I wish he was rotting in a prison cell. But the reality is: he isn't, and these absolutely idiotic sanctions we are imposing on Russia will lead to none of our stated foreign policy goals, and only suffering for the poor. Somebody's twitter thread about how acksually this isn't a bad thing offers me no comfort in this regard.

randomdata 5y ago
If we use price as a proxy for wheat availability, let's not forget that wheat was trading for under $5 in 2019. It was up to $8 before the war began. Now, close to $10. Which means that the war has made wheat 25% harder to come by, so to speak, when compared to before the war, but the pandemic and all that's related to that had already made it 60% harder to come by. The war effects would have been less noticeable if we weren't already pushing the limits.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Gee and here I thought it was Putin who was dropping bombs. It's inconceivable he could just stop doing that? And go back to doing business peaceably? It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. Anything but. It's one man's ego, and even Russians recognize that. To assume only the US has any agency and only US actions make a difference, inevitably results in "The US is at fault for everything"
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  > It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. Perhaps it's not "win or die" for Russia, but it is for Putin. If you asked the average Russian on the street, they would probably agree that those are separate entities. If you asked Putin, I suspect you'd get a different answer.
- ElectricalUnion 5y ago
  > It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. It took the US more that 8 years to retreat from Iraq, and you're asking a poor country to do such thing immediatly? The genie is out of the bottle, I don't think the west will suddenly drop all sanctions, pretend nothing happened, and resume business even if such never-seen-in-history retreat happens.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The sooner they leave the less it costs.
    - ElectricalUnion 5y ago
      That only reduces the cost from the point of view of Ukraine or the West, not from the point of view of the one being sanctioned.
stevesimmons 5y ago
What would your solution be? This is a serious question. Yes, sanctions hurt ordinary people. Yes, there are second order effects that will hurt many people in the developing world. But equally, giving in to Putin will create a bigger problem for Ukraine now, and for eastern Europe and Taiwan in future. There are no easy solutions here. Otherwise they would have been taken already.
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  The original ask from Russia was: Donbas becomes part of Russia, crimea becomes officially part of Russia, Ukraine promises not to join nato, and “denazification” of the Ukrainian government. Ukraine is now offering that to Russia. My ask is that the adults who were screaming at the top of their lungs to take that deal a month ago, were listened to. Further that the people screaming at the top of their lungs that turning a nuclear superpower into an isolationist state, and actively working to collapse their economy, is a suicidally stupid thing, also be listens to.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    > Ukraine is now offering that to Russia I've not been watching this as closely for the past week or two as I was previously, but I've not seen this. Particularly the "denazification" point seems unlikely to be agreed to by Ukraine. Do you have a source for this claim?
    - thepasswordis 5y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-sets-ceasefire-goal-new-russia-talks-breakthrough-looks-distant-2022-03-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-sets-ceasefire-... Of course the “denazification” thing is dropped. It was nonsense propaganda to begin with. I’m curious where you are following this? This was absolutely huge news at the beginning of this week. It’s really weird to me that wherever you are closely following this didn’t cover it.
      - 5y ago
Ancapistani 5y ago
> The war in Ukraine, amplified by the West's anemic and at best useless sanctions, have likely led to a famine which will effect millions of people. I'm the _last_ person to defend the actions of states, but I don't see an obvious way the "West" - meaning the US/NATO/Europe - could have responded in a way that avoided this once it began. > I'm sorry to be so cynical about this, but it has been like watching a slow motion, unending train wreck see the last year of foreign policy nightmares coming out of The United States. Sigh. After regretfully defending the actions of states, I now find myself in the same position with regard to Trump. Trump's foreign policy - as odious as many people found it at the time - seems to have been quite effective at promoting international stability. I'll point out that it was in place for less than four years, so it's a fair criticism to say that this may have been at most a short-term condition, but... we didn't face the real possibility of global thermonuclear war during that time. > Our foreign policy laziness/ineptitude has led to a situation where the leader of a nuclear armed, hostile superpower (Russia) has two choices: win his war against the west, or die. I'll take issue here. Russia's actions - specifically, Putin's actions - have lead to this choice. Putin committed Russia to a war that was obviously going to be uniformly denounced by the international community. The invasion of Ukraine was poorly planned, poorly supplied, and had no reasonable victory condition. It was predicated upon the rapid collapse of the Ukrainian state. There was no fallback plan for how to handle things if it didn't crumble in a matter of hours or days. I can consider the argument that our foreign policy set up the preconditions to allow Putin to be so completely reliant upon his own biased perspective, but I really don't think that holds water. If his perception of the Ukrainian state and people were so far removed from reality, who is to say that his perceptions of our foreign policy wouldn't be similarly warped? > these absolutely idiotic sanctions we are imposing on Russia will lead to none of our stated foreign policy goals, and only suffering for the poor. I disagree here. The sanctions will lead to moving toward our FP goals and suffering of the poor. We don't like to be so blunt about it, but the fact is that the very intent of sanctions are to cause people who are otherwise uninvolved to suffer. The idea is that those uninvolved people will then be incentivized to _become_ involved, disrupting the political and economic support of the target. In other words... the purpose of these sanctions is to cause suffering among the Russian people, which in turn will make it more difficult for the Russian state to pursue military action. Given time, sanctions can even ignite revolution. Finally: you're 100% correct to say that Putin has no good options at this point. "Win or die". Sanctions, long term, will ratchet that pressure up further and further until he is forced to make a choice. Forcing Putin to decide between losing and taking everything else down with him may not be in the best interests of the world...
saiya-jin 5y ago
> Putin is a monster who has now killed (directly and indirectly) millions, and destroyed countries Corrected that for ya. I don't offer quick safe easy solutions to above issues. I don't think they exist. Don't vote for Trump-like populists effectively trying to sell rest of western world to Russia just because they are republicans just as you? Don't leave weak states at mercy of all-grabbing merciless powerful industries? That's an empty phrase and wish too, there are reasons why Trump got voted in and almost won second time, he just said things too many people wanted to hear. I would say reasons of very polarized US society, you are either with us or against. As we can see ie in UK its not unique to vote populists in place even in countries with strong democracy. I don't see what can be done more effectively in this multi-polar world to a bad state owning tons of nukes. Even if only 1% would be functional its still too many. Or you want to ignore whats happening just to keep business going and prices steady? I don't think anybody in US government really cares about Ukraine or its people, but they are logically helping damage their adversary and Russia is working hard to give them moral/PR upper hand. But make no mistake, this war is about future of Europe, not just Ukraine. If Europe is split into pre-1989 order, US and its power projection will be severely weakened. Have a hit squad taking down just Putin? Good luck there, I think as KGB agent he should have this covered. I think 1 billion USD and US citizenship & evac with family to anybody in his inner circle who would take him down would have higher chance. But maybe 10 years down the road it would be viewed as a very bad decision. You want to reform Russian society? I'd call that an impossible task for an external entity. So, what's the solution to this situation?
- baybal2 5y ago
  > So, what's the solution to this situation? I wrote this many times, the lowest blood price for subduing Russia is a NATO-wide airborne operation to behead Russian government, and a mother of all airlifts. You fight a mafia state the way you fight a mafia, by simultaneously dismembering, and beheading it. To completely subdue Russia, NATO has an option to do first strike nuclear attack with half of its combined arsenal along the lines I wrote above. Russia is a hypercentralised state beyond imagination. Russia will cease its existence as a state if Moscow region is taken out, and the most limited counterforce attrition is ensured.
lkbm 5y ago
> Yeah, us sitting here in our offices in the richest country in the world, arguably the people who helped cause this, won't be effected. Maybe our food prices go up a tiny bit. > The people in developing countries, like usual, will now become victims of starvation, which will lead to revolutions and civil war, and ultimately more suffering. > Somebody's twitter thread about how acksually this isn't a bad thing offers me The Twitter thread very explicitly states that this is an extremely bad bad thing that will cause famine in specific developing countries and that the actual resulting issue we need to address to prevent it is logistics. From the thread: > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. > What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage. > Not a lack of enough wheat in the world. > Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you. > To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS! > We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage. > ... > And that's how a 0.9% shortfall in global wheat production, that farmers already fixed 4 months ago, turned into a global commodity panic that solved nothing > while a very real shipping problem continues to threaten people's lives.

randomdata 5y ago

If we use price as a proxy for wheat availability, let's not forget that wheat was trading for under $5 in 2019. It was up to $8 before the war began. Now, close to $10. Which means that the war has made wheat 25% harder to come by, so to speak, when compared to before the war, but the pandemic and all that's related to that had already made it 60% harder to come by. The war effects would have been less noticeable if we weren't already pushing the limits.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Gee and here I thought it was Putin who was dropping bombs. It's inconceivable he could just stop doing that? And go back to doing business peaceably? It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. Anything but. It's one man's ego, and even Russians recognize that. To assume only the US has any agency and only US actions make a difference, inevitably results in "The US is at fault for everything"

Ancapistani 5y ago
> It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. Perhaps it's not "win or die" for Russia, but it is for Putin. If you asked the average Russian on the street, they would probably agree that those are separate entities. If you asked Putin, I suspect you'd get a different answer.
ElectricalUnion 5y ago
> It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. It took the US more that 8 years to retreat from Iraq, and you're asking a poor country to do such thing immediatly? The genie is out of the bottle, I don't think the west will suddenly drop all sanctions, pretend nothing happened, and resume business even if such never-seen-in-history retreat happens.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The sooner they leave the less it costs.
  - ElectricalUnion 5y ago
    That only reduces the cost from the point of view of Ukraine or the West, not from the point of view of the one being sanctioned.

stevesimmons 5y ago

What would your solution be? This is a serious question. Yes, sanctions hurt ordinary people. Yes, there are second order effects that will hurt many people in the developing world. But equally, giving in to Putin will create a bigger problem for Ukraine now, and for eastern Europe and Taiwan in future. There are no easy solutions here. Otherwise they would have been taken already.

thepasswordis 5y ago
The original ask from Russia was: Donbas becomes part of Russia, crimea becomes officially part of Russia, Ukraine promises not to join nato, and “denazification” of the Ukrainian government. Ukraine is now offering that to Russia. My ask is that the adults who were screaming at the top of their lungs to take that deal a month ago, were listened to. Further that the people screaming at the top of their lungs that turning a nuclear superpower into an isolationist state, and actively working to collapse their economy, is a suicidally stupid thing, also be listens to.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  > Ukraine is now offering that to Russia I've not been watching this as closely for the past week or two as I was previously, but I've not seen this. Particularly the "denazification" point seems unlikely to be agreed to by Ukraine. Do you have a source for this claim?
  - thepasswordis 5y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-sets-ceasefire-goal-new-russia-talks-breakthrough-looks-distant-2022-03-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-sets-ceasefire-... Of course the “denazification” thing is dropped. It was nonsense propaganda to begin with. I’m curious where you are following this? This was absolutely huge news at the beginning of this week. It’s really weird to me that wherever you are closely following this didn’t cover it.
    - 5y ago

Ancapistani 5y ago

> The war in Ukraine, amplified by the West's anemic and at best useless sanctions, have likely led to a famine which will effect millions of people. I'm the _last_ person to defend the actions of states, but I don't see an obvious way the "West" - meaning the US/NATO/Europe - could have responded in a way that avoided this once it began. > I'm sorry to be so cynical about this, but it has been like watching a slow motion, unending train wreck see the last year of foreign policy nightmares coming out of The United States. Sigh. After regretfully defending the actions of states, I now find myself in the same position with regard to Trump. Trump's foreign policy - as odious as many people found it at the time - seems to have been quite effective at promoting international stability. I'll point out that it was in place for less than four years, so it's a fair criticism to say that this may have been at most a short-term condition, but... we didn't face the real possibility of global thermonuclear war during that time. > Our foreign policy laziness/ineptitude has led to a situation where the leader of a nuclear armed, hostile superpower (Russia) has two choices: win his war against the west, or die. I'll take issue here. Russia's actions - specifically, Putin's actions - have lead to this choice. Putin committed Russia to a war that was obviously going to be uniformly denounced by the international community. The invasion of Ukraine was poorly planned, poorly supplied, and had no reasonable victory condition. It was predicated upon the rapid collapse of the Ukrainian state. There was no fallback plan for how to handle things if it didn't crumble in a matter of hours or days. I can consider the argument that our foreign policy set up the preconditions to allow Putin to be so completely reliant upon his own biased perspective, but I really don't think that holds water. If his perception of the Ukrainian state and people were so far removed from reality, who is to say that his perceptions of our foreign policy wouldn't be similarly warped? > these absolutely idiotic sanctions we are imposing on Russia will lead to none of our stated foreign policy goals, and only suffering for the poor. I disagree here. The sanctions will lead to moving toward our FP goals and suffering of the poor. We don't like to be so blunt about it, but the fact is that the very intent of sanctions are to cause people who are otherwise uninvolved to suffer. The idea is that those uninvolved people will then be incentivized to _become_ involved, disrupting the political and economic support of the target. In other words... the purpose of these sanctions is to cause suffering among the Russian people, which in turn will make it more difficult for the Russian state to pursue military action. Given time, sanctions can even ignite revolution. Finally: you're 100% correct to say that Putin has no good options at this point. "Win or die". Sanctions, long term, will ratchet that pressure up further and further until he is forced to make a choice. Forcing Putin to decide between losing and taking everything else down with him may not be in the best interests of the world...

saiya-jin 5y ago

> Putin is a monster who has now killed (directly and indirectly) millions, and destroyed countries Corrected that for ya. I don't offer quick safe easy solutions to above issues. I don't think they exist. Don't vote for Trump-like populists effectively trying to sell rest of western world to Russia just because they are republicans just as you? Don't leave weak states at mercy of all-grabbing merciless powerful industries? That's an empty phrase and wish too, there are reasons why Trump got voted in and almost won second time, he just said things too many people wanted to hear. I would say reasons of very polarized US society, you are either with us or against. As we can see ie in UK its not unique to vote populists in place even in countries with strong democracy. I don't see what can be done more effectively in this multi-polar world to a bad state owning tons of nukes. Even if only 1% would be functional its still too many. Or you want to ignore whats happening just to keep business going and prices steady? I don't think anybody in US government really cares about Ukraine or its people, but they are logically helping damage their adversary and Russia is working hard to give them moral/PR upper hand. But make no mistake, this war is about future of Europe, not just Ukraine. If Europe is split into pre-1989 order, US and its power projection will be severely weakened. Have a hit squad taking down just Putin? Good luck there, I think as KGB agent he should have this covered. I think 1 billion USD and US citizenship & evac with family to anybody in his inner circle who would take him down would have higher chance. But maybe 10 years down the road it would be viewed as a very bad decision. You want to reform Russian society? I'd call that an impossible task for an external entity. So, what's the solution to this situation?

baybal2 5y ago
> So, what's the solution to this situation? I wrote this many times, the lowest blood price for subduing Russia is a NATO-wide airborne operation to behead Russian government, and a mother of all airlifts. You fight a mafia state the way you fight a mafia, by simultaneously dismembering, and beheading it. To completely subdue Russia, NATO has an option to do first strike nuclear attack with half of its combined arsenal along the lines I wrote above. Russia is a hypercentralised state beyond imagination. Russia will cease its existence as a state if Moscow region is taken out, and the most limited counterforce attrition is ensured.

lkbm 5y ago

> Yeah, us sitting here in our offices in the richest country in the world, arguably the people who helped cause this, won't be effected. Maybe our food prices go up a tiny bit. > The people in developing countries, like usual, will now become victims of starvation, which will lead to revolutions and civil war, and ultimately more suffering. > Somebody's twitter thread about how acksually this isn't a bad thing offers me The Twitter thread very explicitly states that this is an extremely bad bad thing that will cause famine in specific developing countries and that the actual resulting issue we need to address to prevent it is logistics. From the thread: > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. > What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage. > Not a lack of enough wheat in the world. > Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you. > To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS! > We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage. > ... > And that's how a 0.9% shortfall in global wheat production, that farmers already fixed 4 months ago, turned into a global commodity panic that solved nothing > while a very real shipping problem continues to threaten people's lives.