On Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 9:36:06 PM UTC+8, ltlee1 wrote:
"This brings us back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On March 22, I proposed that the outcome of that war depended on the answers to seven questions. Let us now update the answers to those questions.
1. Do the Russians manage to take Kyiv and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a matter of two, three or four weeks or never?
The answer looks like “never.”
...
2. Do the sanctions precipitate such a severe economic contraction in Russia that Putin cannot achieve victory?
The Russian economy has certainly been hit hard by Western restrictions, but I remain of the view that it has not been hit hard enough to end the war. So long as the German government resists an embargo on Russian oil exports, Putin is still earning
sufficient hard currency to keep his war economy afloat. The best evidence for this is the remarkable recovery of the ruble’s exchange rate with the dollar. ...
3. Does the combination of military and economic crisis precipitate a palace coup against Putin?
As I argued two weeks ago, the Biden administration is betting on regime change in Moscow. That has become explicit since I wrote. Not only has the U.S. government branded Putin a war criminal and initiated proceedings to prosecute Russian perpetrators
of war crimes in Ukraine; at the end of his speech in Warsaw last Sunday, Joe Biden uttered nine words for the history books: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Some have claimed this was an off-the-cuff addition to his peroration. U.S. officials almost immediately sought to walk it back. But read the whole speech, which made repeated allusions to the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union, positing a
new battle in our time “between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. (and at least some of its European allies) are aiming to
get rid of Putin.
4. Does the risk of downfall lead Putin to desperate measures (e.g., carrying out his nuclear threat)?
This is now the crucial question. Biden and his advisers seem remarkably confident that the combination of attrition in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia will bring about a political crisis in Moscow comparable to the one that dissolved the Soviet Union
31 years ago. But Putin is not like the Middle Eastern despots who fell from power during the Iraq War and the Arab Spring. He already possesses weapons of mass destruction, including the largest arsenal of nuclear warheads in the world, as well as
chemical and no doubt biological weapons.
...
5. Do the Chinese keep Putin afloat but on condition that he agrees to a compromise peace that they offer to broker?
It is now fairly clear (particularly from its domestic messaging through state-controlled media) that the Chinese government will side with Russia, but not to the extent that would trigger U.S. secondary sanctions on Chinese institutions doing business
with Russian entities that contravenes our sanctions. I no longer expect China to play the part of peace-broker. Friday’s frosty virtual summit between European Union and Chinese leaders confirmed that.
6. Does our attention deficit disorder kick in before any of this?
It is tempting to say that it kicked in after the usual four-week news cycle the moment Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars last weekend. A more nuanced answer is that, in the coming months, the support of Western publics for the Ukrainian
cause will be tested by persistently rising food and fuel prices, combined with a misperception that Ukraine is winning the war, as opposed to just not losing it.
7. What is the collateral damage?
The world has a serious and worsening inflation problem, with central banks seriously behind the curve. The longer this war continues, the more serious the threat of outright stagflation (high inflation but with low, no or negative economic growth).
This problem will be more severe in countries that rely heavily on Ukraine and Russia not just for energy and grain, but also for fertilizer, prices of which have roughly doubled as a result of the war. Anyone who believes this won’t have adverse
social and political consequences is ignorant of history.
“So what happens next?” is the question I get asked repeatedly. To get to that bottom line, let’s turn back to political science, beginning with the case for optimism (which in my mind equates to “It’s the 1970s, not the 1940s”)."
A thoughtful piece from Niall Ferguson.
1. Russia has slowed or withdrawn somewhat but is refueling and re-strategizing their approaches in encircling Ukraine capital. Russia will not give up in capturing the capital of Ukraine, or else will look bad on Putin. Putin may have to find some
reliable administrators in his administration to control the capitol of Ukraine.
2. Russia's economy is already been weak from sanctions since many months ago. So not much of the difference now. At that time BBC reported from Russia said the Russian farmers were very happy to see sanctions on imports of foreign cheeses as they were
able to produce more and sold more to their people. Russians are adapting back to the taste of their own cheese. This means to say they have many more other things produced to meet their own needs and will not be dependent on imports. The revenues made
from sale of gas to EU over the past years have made a lot of profit for Russia to keep the internal economy sustained at the same momentum. Therefore, the additional sanctions will not impact much on current Russia's economy. Putin has had expected
sanctions on Russia anyway when he prepared for Ukraine.
3. more thoughts to come..
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