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Tag Archives: Ukraine

At least today, things are looking up for the Democrats

Haley  Nikki Haley is staying in the race for the Republican nomination, at least for now.    Why?  If she only cares about becoming president, this year could be her best shot even with Trump way ahead of her in the polls.  Trump may be convicted or become incapacitated, and she could win the nomination as the last woman standing.  It is far from clear her political brand will be in better shape with Republican primary voters 4 years from...

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The Gift of Sanctions

Jamie Galbraith presented, at the EPS session at the ASSA Meetings in San Antonio, the paper published by INET. As he said there: "Despite the shock and the costs, the sanctions imposed on the Russian economy were in the nature of a gift." A type of invisible hand effect, by which the unintended effect of the policy that should supposedly benefit US allies (Ukraine) has the unintended effect of helping its alleged enemies (Russia).From the abstract:This essay analyzes a few prominent Western...

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Ukraine update

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder first came to my attention in a footnote of an article in The New York Review of Books. The footnote gave a link to a series of 23 online lectures on the history of Ukraine, which I binge-watched over a period of about five days. I also read his books “Bloodlands” and “Black Earth.” Snyder also has a subscription-only Substack blog to which I subscribe. Snyder travels frequently to Ukraine these days, and his latest...

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War and Punishment

I just finished “War and Punishment: The story of Russian oppression and Ukranian resistance” by Mikhail Zygar. I’ve read several books on Russian and Ukranian history written by historians. Zygar isn’t a historian, and the style of this book is more of a reporter, albeit one describing history.The writing here is vivid, if somewhat quirky. Zygar toggles frequently between present and past tense, which is sometimes distracting but can enliven the...

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Tom Palley on the Causes and Consequences of the War in Ukraine

 By Thomas Palley(1) The origins of the Ukraine conflict lie in the ambitions of US Neocons. Those ambitions threatened Russian national security by fuelling eastward expansion of NATO and anti-Russian regime change in the Republics of the former Soviet Union.(2) The Ukraine conflict is now a proxy war. The US is using Ukraine to attack and weaken Russia.(3) Russia will eventually prevail. We may already be approaching “game over” because Ukraine’s forces have been eviscerated. Ukraine is...

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The making of modern Ukraine

For most of my adult life, I’ve learned history almost exclusively by reading books. I took American and World history in high school and two quarters of American history in college, but after that, I became a history autodidact. I’ve written several book reviews (and published three of them), but this is the first course review I’ve written.In a footnote to an article on Ukraine in New York Review of books by British historian Timothy Garton Ash, he...

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Speech on “Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons”

My Lords, I am grateful, as we all are, to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for initiating this debate and for drawing attention to the real danger of nuclear escalation. I am in profound disagreement with the Government’s policy on Ukraine—I have said it before in this House and I shall say it again. This disagreement can be stated in one sentence: the Government’s policy is a war policy; I support a peace policy. I shall try to justify that. The then Foreign...

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The Hard Truth About Long Wars: Why the Conflict in Ukraine Won’t End Anytime Soon

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, few observers imagined that the war would still be raging today. Russian planners did not account for the stern resistance of Ukrainian forces, the enthusiastic support Ukraine would receive from Europe and North America, or the various shortcomings of their own military. Both sides are now dug in, and the fighting could carry on for months, if not years. Why is this war dragging on? Most conflicts are brief. Over the last two centuries, most wars...

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Too Poor for War

Nov 8, 2022 ROBERT SKIDELSKY and PHILIP PILKINGTON Decades of deindustrialization have hollowed out the UK economy and made it woefully ill-prepared for wartime disruptions. As the financial speculators who funded its current-account deficits turn against the pound, policymakers should consider Keynesian taxes and increasing public investment. LONDON – A wartime economy is inherently a shortage economy: because the government needs to direct resources toward manufacturing guns, less...

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Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances....

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