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Kosovo’s independence declaration in February and the August war between Russia and Georgia will be seen over the coming years as the markers as to how close we get to a fully-fledged new Cold War. This time, though, a measure of power could rest, not only in Washington and Moscow, but also with the rulers of these tiny states. Whether running South Ossettia, Kosovo, Narva, Transdniester or the dozens of other societies created from the ebb and flow of history, they can impress upon those who wish them to become client states that there is only one path that will deliver living standards and good governance. It is not nationalism, nor is it necessarly democracy and Nato, but trade. The success of these communities should be measured not on how they dig their fox holes, pack their sandbags and care for their refugees, but on how they are able to fling open their borders, build their factories , make investors feel safe and give their citizens a long term stake in and vision for their future.
5 Responses to “Kosovo and South Ossetia”
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August 10th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Dear Humphrey,
With all due respect, this is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw from what’s happening in South Ossetia.
What does trade possibly have to do with this situation? Please tell me the name of any Russian or Georgian politician who made any statement that even vaguely referenced trade issues. Georgia sees the Russians as bloody invaders, and Russia sees the Georgians as genocidal murderers of ethnic Russians. Where is there even room for “trade” in that equation?
Take a look at this Spiegel story on how “surprised” everyone is that this situation occurred. A Georgian politician is quoted as having said recently, “We want free trade with you.” The story goes on to says that “overnight, it appears, the country has fundamentally shifted course.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,570893,00.html
You and I have discussed this same issue with respect to China and Taiwan, and the argument is the same. The Chinese have been telling us for years that they would immediately go to war to prevent Taiwan independence. The Chinese have screamed at us that they would rather lose millions of Chinese people than risk losing one inch of territory in Taiwan (or Tibet or Xinjiang). Where is the role of trade?
I’m sure that there was heavy trade among Austria, Bosnia and Serbia prior to 1914. How did that prevent World War I from starting after Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated? Did anyone think, for even a moment, “Gee, we can’t declare war, because it’s bad for business.”
What about trade between the Tutsis and Hutus prior to 1994. There must have been a heck of a lot of it, but it didn’t prevent the Rwanda genocide.
In fact, business and trade is much more likely to propel war than to inhibit war. For example, did business and trade prevent the Darfur genocide? That civil war actually began in the 1970s and 1980s as a low-level conflict between “Arab” camel herders and “African” farmers, competing for limited land and water resources. Camel herding and farming are great businesses, and they generate a great deal of trade. But that trade didn’t prevent the genocide; in fact, it could reasonably be called the “root cause” of the current Darfur genocide.
I wish you were right — that war would end if countries could only “fling open their borders, build their factories , make investors feel safe and give their workforce a long term stake in its future.” That works OK when business is good, and everyone has a lot of money. But when business is bad, then people start to assign blame, they become increasingly nationalistic, and they have wars. As the worldwide economy deteriorates in the current deflationary spiral, we should expect to see more nationalistic wars, not fewer.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
August 10th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Dear John,
Post World War Two peave between France and Germany was cemented by setting up the European Coal and Steel Community (a trade organisation) that evolved into the European Union. The beacon of the European Union has acted a huge peacemaker for the Balkan states. You might be right about the present situation between Georgia and Russia, but I think you are wrong to deny people a dream for security and prosperity and I can see no other way to achieve than by trade.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Dear Humphrey,
OK, but does the European Union example support your point? I would claim just the opposite.
After the failure in 2005 of the French referendum on the EU Constitution, I posted on my web site my own analysis of the exit polls, comparing them to the results of France’s 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty. The results were strikingly clear that it was World War II survivors who were primarily in favor, and people in the generations born after WW II who were opposed.
I quoted a voter speaking to a BBC reporter: “My grandfather fought in World War I. My father fought in World Wars I and II. I fought in World War II. And now, for 60 years, my children and grandchildren have lived in peace. That’s a good enough reason to me to vote ‘yes’ on the Constitution.”
Now you might say, “Aha! That proves my point. That’s why the post-war Europeans set up the trade organization and the European Union — to prevent another such war.”
But that isn’t how it’s turning out. The WW II survivors want the Constitution because they care about security. But the WW II survivors are almost all gone. The younger generations worry about Polish plumbers taking their jobs, or being forced to allow increased agricultural imports.
In other words, trade isn’t the glue that’s holding the EU together. Instead, trade is the centripetal force that’s tearing the EU apart.
There are lots of similar examples. The American Civil War is a good one. That war wasn’t fought to end slavery as most people believe — President Lincoln had no intention of ending slavery, and anyway it’s the South that started the war. And there was certainly plenty of trade going on: Northern factories were shipping products to Europe, and Southern plantations were shipping cotton to Lancashire. What angered the Southerners, and a major reason they gave for firing on Fort Sumter, was because of high federal taxes, unfairly (in their view) imposed on the South.
As I said the last time, I wish it were true that trade could prevent wars. But in the end, populations grow and compete for food, water, land, and other resources, and that leads inevitably to war.
In fact, I’m very afraid for where Europe is going these days. The failures of the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaties were caused by parochial economic issues, often related to trade. In my opinion, those parochial issues are only going to grow, and business and trade are going to lead to new and more serious conflicts.
Sincerely,
John
August 12th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
You’re not wrong, John. But Europe now discusses these issues instead of fighting over them. If you can identify a stronger beacon than trade and the creation of wealth to coax people away from war, I would love to hear about it. Had Georgia actually been part of the EU, I doubt the conflict with Russia would have got even close to breaking out.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Dear Humphrey,
My response would have to be that trade and the creation of wealth is NOT a beacon to coax people away form war, and that there is no such beacon. My response would have to be that we’re headed for war with absolute certainty.
You say, “Had Georgia actually been part of the EU, I doubt the conflict with Russia would have got even close to breaking out.” That’s quite possible, but there’s another possibility: If Georgia had been part of the EU or Nato, then Russia might still have invaded, and the interlocking treaties would have led to a much larger war. That’s what led to WW I.
You and I have had this conversation off and on for a while, and I wondered for several days how best to respond to your comment.
Help came from an unexpected source. A web site reader called my attention to a column by Paul Krugman called “The Great Illusion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/opinion/15krugman.html?ex=1376539200&en=69b61a73b25faa1c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
The column title refers to a 1910 book, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage, by Norman Angell. Angell was what might be called today an “anti-war activist.” He claimed that war was no longer necessary, because it is a “great illusion” that any country could gain anything, militarily or economically, by winning a war with another country.
Along the way, Krugman quotes John Maynard Keynes, in his 1920 book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace,describing the world economy prior to World War I:
> “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his
> morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth … he
> could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his
> wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter
> of the world….
> [He] regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and
> permanent, except in the direction of further improvement … The
> projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial
> and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and
> exclusion … appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on
> the ordinary course of social and economic life, the
> internationalization of which was nearly complete in
> practice.”
> http://books.google.com/books?id=cuMtAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA9
Krugman’s point is that this is exactly the same international atmosphere that we’re experiencing today, and that it all came crashing down in 1914, when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serb high school student, triggering the massive war.
Angell’s book, The Great Illusion, can be read for free online, and I suggest that everyone do so. I would recommend particularly focusing on the pages following page 51, where Angell specifically discusses “the complex financial interdependence of the capitals of the world,” and how that would make a war impossible:
> “How have conditions so changed that terms which were applicable
> to the ancient world — in one sense at least to the mediaeval
> world, and. in another sense still to the world of that political
> renaissance which gave to Great Britain its Empire — are no longer
> applicable in any sense to the conditions of the world as we find
> them to-day? How has it become impossible for one nation to take
> by conquest the wealth of another for the benefit of the people of
> the conqueror? How is it that we are confronted by the absurdity (
> which the facts of our own Empire go to prove) of the conquering
> people being able to exact from conquered territory rather less
> than more advantage than it was able to do before the conquest
> took place ?
> The cause of this profound change, largely the work of the last
> thirty years, is due mainly to the complex financial
> interdependence of the capitals of the world, a condition in
> which disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
> disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
> financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put
> an end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a
> matter of commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern
> finance makes New York dependent on London, London upon Paris,
> Paris upon Berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the
> case in history. This interdependence is the result of the daily
> use of those contrivances of civilization which date from
> yesterday — the rapid post, the instantaneous dissemination of
> financial and commercial information by means” of telegraphy, and
> generally the incredible progress of rapidity in communication
> which has put the half-dozen chief capitals of Christendom in
> closer contact financially, and has rendered them more dependent
> the one upon the other than were the chief cities of Great
> Britain less than a hundred years ago.”
> http://books.google.com/books?id=HiKuvZ8NYDgC&pg=PA51
This 1910 argument by Angell, which he expands in great detail on the following pages, proves that trade and financial interdepence make future wars impossible. If it only hadn’t been for the two World Wars that followed, Angell would undoubtedly be considered a genius today.
Responding to your comment ended up motivating me to write a much lengthier article for my web site:
** The gathering storm in the Caucasus.
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?d=ww2010.i.caucasus080817
I quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, who sounds today very much like Norman Angell did in 1910.
There’s a philosophical issue about this stuff. Suppose that you know that a 50 mile high tsunami is coming. Do you tell people, so that a few will be able to run to higher ground? Of do you keep silent, allowing people to enjoy their last hours alive?
What we see in the today, in the financial world and the geopolitical world, is that politicians would rather not tell people what’s going on. I’m not enough of a philosopher to be able to judge whether this is the morally correct view, but I know that it’s not my view.
There is no doubt in my mind that we’re headed for a new world war, and the events of the last 10 days have brought that war a lot closer. And I also know that trade will make no difference at all; if the Russian people come to feel sufficiently offended and infuriated by the Georgians and Ukrainians, then the tanks will roll. And it will be interlocking treaties that will make it a much larger war, just as happened in 1914.
As I keep saying, Humphrey, I wish you were right, and if events ever began to prove me wrong, I would be the first to admit it. But that hasn’t happened so far, and I don’t expect them to.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com