Recap

Since the covid vaccines and covid itself...

I've had major irritation and inflammation of multiple nerve growths that has resulted in two surgeries now, with a third on the way.

A previously stable pancreatic growth has suddenly started growing.

(For the record, there are other people dealing with growths after covid and I've been talking to Infectious Disease about it. I'm not off base. At the very least, the inflammation is fueling things that were already brewing. If there's an actual growth factor beyond that, no one knows yet. But this isn't all coincidental, it's covid.)

I have the joints of a seventy+-year-old and I'm not seventy.

I suddenly have sleep apnea that waxes when I have covid and appears to wane when I don't.

I struggle to walk. I struggle to sleep. I pant like a dog and feel like I'm going to pass out if I'm too active. The asthma is worse.

I doubt science will be able to do much to counter this chaos in my lifetime.

But I just wanted to recap where we are.

Now...on to geopolitics...because at least I'm still very curious and interested in all the things.

I've got a few YouTube videos for you from college professors and topic experts. 

1. Professor Sachs is up first. Note his position mirrors Russia's, but I like his game theory and there's a lot in here to think about.

However, he's an economist not a geopolitical expert, and apparently he also doesn't believe in a nation's right to self determination or sovereignty. In this talk, he participates in the dehumanization of E. Europe--treating the countries and their people as pawns that can be sacrificed at will. This is a very Russian point of view, one that has resulted in genocide in Ukraine multiple times at this point. Perhaps, since Sachs has advised various Russian leaders, he's adopted their world view. It certainly sounds like it.

But, as I'm someone linked to E. Europe in a variety of ways that don't include keeping the leaders of Russia happy, consider this question...

If Russia is so awesome, why did the vast majority of E. Europe align with the EU and NATO?

Russia will tell you that it's because the West was meddling and connived to make it so, but in reality, it's because the USSR treated E. Europe as an ATM during the Cold War. They plundered and bullied and impoverished E. Europe, and as a result, are generally not perceived as good or trustworthy in the region. There is a history of abuse behind why Poland has armed itself to the teeth and joined NATO. And they are not alone in that.

Sure, you can find Russian apologists, but ask around and you'll find there's a large contingent that really dislike Russia and want nothing to do with them. They want to be like the EU. They don't want a mafia state. 

Keep in mind, for the last 25-30 years, Europeans have been working in the West and making money hand over fist, money Russia certainly never deigned to spare, and they like it. There are cities in the US that are the second largest population centers for some E. European countries. There are countries were 20% of their population is overseas. 

Compared to the two main exports from Russia during the Cold War--what's-yours-is-mine imperialism masquerading as communism and the heavy hand of the Russian Mafia--and the fact that's what Russia is offering now, there's no competition. Russia doesn't want to add value, they want to take it.

E. Europeans know what they're choosing. Their eyes are open.

So that's why E. Europe isn't going to war to kick out the EU and NATO, but does work to kick Russia's ass. It's not because the West bamboozled them into NATO. They want to be part of NATO. They will literally supply tanks and planes and bullets and aid to ensure they don't have to go back to Russia. The logic of Russia's premise on this doesn't hold. (A ten-year-old could figure out the truth on this. Russia lies to us like we're dumb, and well, sadly, some of us are...)

So when experts and pundits go on and on about how this war is the West's fault, what they are really saying is that Poland, Slovakia, Latvia etc... don't have the right to sovereignty and that we should sacrifice the countries and people of E. Europe to appease Russia.

Put another way: Russia demands that in order for the West to have security, freedom, and peace, we must deny E. Europe their security, freedom, and peace. 

How is that okay? None of us would stay in relationships with someone like Putin. It's toxic.

Sachs is also concerned about wealth inequality, which is very real, but note he doesn't talk about Latvia or Lithuania or Botswana or El Salvador. No, he talks about Russia and China. In this case, wealth inequality is code for 'we want to control everything.' I'm all for putting Costa Rica or Mauritius in charge...they're actually functioning democracies but economically disadvantaged compared to the West, Russia, and China. Like, let's go. Let's have actual democracies lead. But equality of any kind isn't really the agenda here so...

Professor Sachs also says that we know the problems of geopolitics, but no one has any solutions, which is inaccurate. We know that democracy, while imperfect, interjects enough churn into the power structure to keep agendas from getting a stranglehold on a nation. We know keeping dark money out of governments and fighting corruption matters. We know free speech and education and strong labor movements make a difference. We know that every nation needs to be vigilant about their geopolitical strategy, not only building bridges, but having expectations that productive things will cross those bridges too.

If we'd done half the above, we wouldn't have a war right now.

But hey, if you've been on the payroll of corrupt autocrats, probably you've gotten used to not saying that democracy is good and corruption is bad. 

Despite my criticism, Sachs' talk is a good listen for testing the merits of different ideas and provides a good example of how insidious Russian propaganda is. I will note, much like more pro Ukrainian analysis, he is very concerned about a nuclear weapon being used. That, I think, is more concerning. When all sides see the same danger, you have to imagine there's some clarity there. 

Next up is Julia Ioffe, a reporter and analyst who knows Russia well. Her take here is more psychological, but it's interesting nonetheless. Very good overview of Putin's machinations and some of the missteps and wins of the West in dealing with him. She also sees nukes as a possibility.

And here's Marie Yovanovitch the former ambassador to Ukraine sharing the history she witnessed and also highlighting how the West screwed this up. And boy, did the West screw this up. 

(Note: If you're interested, PBS has a whole series of interviews with different players involved in the geopolitics of Russia and Ukraine.)

Then we have Professor Kotkin, a historian with the Hoover Institute at Stanford. The Hoover Institute is a center right think tank, so pre-MAGA Republican. This is a largely factual interview and it gets more into the impact of Russia's war on China and Asian geopolitics. It's a very interesting interview that reveals some of the scope of Russia's actions outside of Europe. The long tail on all of this is insane. What happens in Ukraine isn't going to stay there.

I will say, no one that I've found so far is talking about the BRICS colluding to pull off this war (at least when I wrote this). Since the BRICS are all largely headed by autocratic leaders no one can say no to (imagine a room full of Trumps trying to negotiate with each other--to one extreme or another, that's the dynamic), sustaining a high level of cooperation is or will be difficult, but I do think there's some effort to pull together going on despite competing agendas, vainglorious narcissism, and international pressure to not do so. 

The payoff is too big for them not to work the spots where their interests align. If they can find a way to cooperate, they'll do it. 

If Russia pulls off a win, China probably gets Taiwan, Iran probably gets nukes, India gets to hang in the winner's circle perhaps taking Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa probably get to be the very rich autocratic Kings of their continents (whether their coalition will give them nukes, I'm undecided, but it's a possibility) and the dollar and the pound and the euro go pfffft and there's a massive, painful (for the West) polar shift in how the currents of global, economic, and military power flow. 

And then someone, somewhere will get nuked. Because the BRICS will eventually turn on each other. Again, global leadership is devolving to have more in common with ISIS than not. Quality isn't improving, it's eroding. We have leaders with nukes who kill people who tell them the truth so no one says boo. We already see how that led to major miscalculations in the assault of Ukraine. 

And you can bet the West will be in the mix trying to subvert and topple various leaders which will compound risk. We're not going to cede power quietly and we could very well make things worse in the process. A lot of people will die.

Not to mention Russia, China, and India all have long standing territory disputes amongst themselves. The second resources are scarce or the economy is bad, take your pick of which friction point manages to throw a spark first. 

So. Our biggest mistake was not dealing with Putin decades ago. A mistake we made worse by failing to mount a strong deterrence against aggression once we knew were in for it. There's still a chance to create effective deterrence in Taiwan...I hope the West takes it. 

And we should be destabilizing the absolute shit out of the rest of the BRICS. No more dollar diplomacy without an overt, tangible ROI. It doesn't work. Americans will abandon their principles for money, but the cultural ethos in other places isn't that shallow. (Yes, I just called us shallow. We are. At least on a nation state level. Individual results may vary.) We need to stop trying to buy outcomes from frenemies and take our dollars to our allies and build them up instead. 

Let the strongmen of the BRICS make do with Rubles and Yuan with a 1000 to 1 (or worse) exchange rate. Let them struggle to afford genocide or conflict that could go nuclear. 

Again, the West just sort of abdicated all responsibility for ourselves and the world except for the War on Terror, taking bribes from Russia, sometimes even China, and then being manipulated via social media until we're more divided than we've ever been. (Y'all there were literal Nazis protesting in my area this past week. Nazis. NAZIS. Like...what. the. fuck.)

Ultimately, even if he gets the root cause wrong, Putin is right to blame the West. This was our war to prevent. (This doesn't excuse Putin. He certainly could have been the better man here, but he decided to double down on autocratic dysfunction and start a genocide. No points for him either.) But now the West has been blind to reality for so long, we may not be able to pull everything back from the brink.

This is an absolute cluster. We'd better hope Ukraine can spank Russia hard enough that they give up and go home without escalating to nukes.

As to why I care...win or lose, this is going to change the world same as covid, same as AI. I pay attention trying to extrapolate--if I can--where the hits will land. I'm not so old that it doesn't matter yet and I've got a kid to launch, which means career choices need to be tight.