Unit 4: Nationalism & Imperialism
Autocratic Russia invaded democratic Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 to subjugate the EU and NATO-leaning nation and permanently pull it back into Putin’s orbit. The Russian leader believed that the 1990 Soviet break-up was the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century. He pledged to restore the empire and started by turning Ukraine into a vassal state.
Putin reintroduced the relics of ultra-nationalism, historical imperialism, and naked aggression to a shocked world. That included me who believed that global interdependence was making war a thing of the past.
Extreme nationalism and chauvinistic views of history explain Putin’s grave miscalculation; crush Ukraine with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czechs likely next in his sights. Putin gambled that Europe was so dependent on his energy, metals, and cereal grains, NATO would weaken and possibly divide.
He bet large and lost badly although the Russian Orthodox Church still backs Putin for his war on liberal western values, and restoration of traditional Russian beliefs. The former KGB operative bends those values to his political needs while streaming disinformation, populism, and white nationalism at home and abroad.
Putin dismantled Russia’s once-fledgling democratic republic, formerly independent court system, and free media and press. The richest Russian in history also distorted his own economy that was gaining serious traction, domestically and globally.
Putin appoints oligarchs to take over entire industries on the basis they do some of the government’s dirty business too. Their reward comes from exorbitant profit margins and audacious theft. The new kleptocracy bought mega-yachts and foreign mansions with secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Panama, and London. Global sanctions though have greatly altered their opulent lifestyles.
Putin mistakenly believed that Ukraine would collapse and be easily occupied. Little attention was given to logistics, supply lines, and number of troops needed to occupy a country of forty-four million and the size of Texas.
Putin scraped together 150,000 to 190,000 troops, most poorly trained; an estimated 880,000 were needed to invade and occupy a people who hate them. He declared the invasion a Special Military Operation and forced Russians to believe at risk of arrest.
A forty-mile-long railroad convoy started in autocratic, neighboring Belarus and headed towards Kiev as if they’d be greeted as liberators. Instead, Ukraine’s army, trained and armed by NATO nations, broke the convoy down with US Stinger, Javelin, and British NLAW missiles.
The turning point in this slog of a war was Putin’s failing to take major cities Kiev, Kharkov, and Lvov and retreating from the country’s northwest to concentrate his beleaguered forces in the Russian-controlled Donbas. Russia illegally annexed the Donbas, and tried to crush Ukraine’s spirit by attacking civilian population centers; apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, shopping centers, and basic infrastructure.
That wanton destruction produced growing documentation of his army’s murderous behavior. The ICC designated Putin a war criminal and threatens to seize him if he travels anywhere that they can arrest him. Presidents Biden and Zelensky have accused him of genocide too. Former Defense Minister Sergie Shoigu and Gen. Staff Leader Valery Gerasimov were also charged by the ICC on June 24, 2024.
Much of the world has embraced Ukraine’s fight for freedom and self-determination. Ukraine believed it could win; 89% still refuse to concede sovereign land. Russia used its superior size and firepower to stop a Ukrainian counter-offensive, grind Ukraine down with cheap drones and human wave assaults, and nears cementing control of the Donbas.
The US and EU nations are providing Ukraine with munitions and money to step up the fight. Donald Trump’s replacing Joe Biden, of course, changes the calculus; he is demanding the war end upon his taking office Jan. 20, 2025. Pres. Zelensky is willing to work with him while refusing to cede the Donbas and Crimea.
Russia has inflated its economy with military spending consuming one-third of the national budget. The government rewards recruits with hefty signing bonuses, then pays their survivors generous amounts after they are killed.
An estimated 150,000+ Russians have died and 600,000 more injured. Ukraine’s estimated losses range from 60,000 to 100,000 dead with twice that number injured.
Most of Russia’s best and brightest are living elsewhere. The population and economy are shrinking. Russia shows its weakness and desperation with its frequent talk of nuclear weapons use or strategy revision.
Unit 5: Collective Security – NATO’s Extraordinarily Successful Response to the Ukraine Invasion
Putin’s first great miscalculation was believing that Ukraine would fold militarily in a week or two. The second was thinking NATO would crack and let him get away with it.
NATO, led by outgoing President Joe Biden and Sec. of State Anthony Blinken, rallied members to give Ukrainians the aid and arms it needed to defend itself. Fortunately, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election for he might have pulled the US out of NATO and let Putin overrun Ukraine and threaten the rest of Europe.
Biden, in contrast, made NATO stronger than ever. Putin viewed NATO’s eastward expansion as a creeping threat. He feels encircled by unfriendly nations because they fear his subjugation.
Putin’s imperial intentions so gravely worried neutral Finland and Sweden, who share a long border with Russia, that they joined NATO. Putin started this war to push NATO back from his borders and wound up adding two more on his door. The eventual border line with Ukraine lands a third NATO nation on his front step.
Russia warned both countries that membership would lead to placement of troops and even nuclear weapons in their region. This threat was met by NATO nations beefing up their forces, and the EU declaring support for Ukraine’s security by offering a bridge to eventual NATO membership.
The US and EU sanctions are strangling the Russian economy which is in default. The war caused artificially high energy prices that temporarily eased Russian citizens economic crunch. The sanctions though bit hard; parts and labor shortages emerged. The massive printing of rubles to finance the war, and a dramatic rise in interest rates to remedy inflation, are both slowing the economy and pushing it to the brink.
Ukraine helped the Baltic Republics come together in sharing a common destiny. Poland has valiantly housed millions of Ukrainian refugees and joined the leaders of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in generously supporting President Zelensky.
Even Germany has increased military spending by $105 billion, shut down the Nord stream pipeline, and weaned itself off Russian gas, oil, and coal. The British and the EU, after Brexit friction, jointly give Ukraine intelligence reports and weapons systems. They have also sanctioned oligarch bank accounts and seized their properties.
The scale and scope of the sanctions now include disrupting military supply chains and capping gas prices. Russia’s isolation and desperation has driven Putin to form an alliance of evil with North Korea and Iran, become an economic vassal state to China, and beg Vietnam to increase trade and economic support. North Korea has sent 10,000 troops to assist Russia’s effort to push Ukraine out of Kursk Oblast.
Unit 7: International Trade – The Global Economy’s Great Re-Configuration
Russia, in a span of fifty-five days, was largely removed from global banking and international trade. World markets, still settling from the Pandemic, were shaken but tenaciously scrambled to deal with warring Ukraine and Russia’s large production roles in basic commodities; energy, fertilizer, and grains. Price increases reached serious inflationary levels and may have been a strong factor in Kamala Harriss’s 2024 election loss to Trump.
The democratic US – EU alliance strategy was to isolate Russia, tame it, then slowly bring it back into the family of nations. A moral line in the sand was drawn and offending nations ignored it at their peril. Trump’s comeback alters that intention and rationale.
China and India, the two largest nations by population, are walking a tightrope with Russia, trying not to appear too close while quietly not cutting off all trade. China and India have been the two largest purchasers of discounted Russian oil and gas. Chinese cars have gone from a tiny fraction of the Russian market to more than half of all sales.
The US has benefitted from the new configuration too. The Pandemic revealed strains in the global supply chain as understaffed foreign factories led to shortages in critical components such as microchips. Products important to US military and consumer production should never be secured solely from overseas.
A pullback was started with governments and multinationals rethinking national security needs. Intel, for example, is constructing a $5 billion dollar plant in Ohio to make micro-processors and chips. TSMC is investing $12 billion more in Phoenix, AZ that has already generated 12,000 construction jobs.
An apparent Achilles heel in the global economy is that a rogue nation can leverage world dependence on a critical product while ruthlessly invading a peaceful neighbor like Ukraine. A global belief that international trade binds nations together and can render war outdated is rooted in President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Peace Points making up the 1919 WW I Treaty.
Russia, having violated global trust and norms built up over a century, saw the world forcefully respond with a massive movement of trade and economic activity away from it. Of course, Donald Trump is an x factor regarding western unity.
Unit 7: Russia, China, India, US, Germany & Japan – A 2024 Comparison
Russia: Thirty years of economic and market development down the drain.
Putin made Russia a 21st Century version of Nazi Germany 1935 to 1945. Thirty years of economic development and cultivation of markets was wiped out with over 1,000 western companies leaving Russia. McDonalds sold its 874 units to an oligarch; no more Golden Arches or Big Macs though Russian companies are attempting to fill the void.
An estimated million well educated Russia programmers, young professionals, and business people have fled to surrounding nations and anywhere else that will take them in. This brain drain of stupendous proportions will cost Russia dearly for a decade or two, especially in the fast-growing information and financial technology industries.
Russia, already fascistic, has become a totalitarian state that fully manages reality. Putin has turned his nation in to a gulag that will grow poorer.
Despite his economy being smaller than Texas, Putin spent an estimated trillion dollars on a military buildup that Ukraine easily decimated, and probably another trillion dollars trying not to lose the war. He has desperately resorted to using prisoners and mercenaries to fight.
The US and NATO, while managing to stay on the sidelines, degraded the Russian army’s war-making capacity and temporarily reduced it as a military threat to surrounding countries and the world. Russia has become a pariah state and increasingly viewed as a Nazi country with a lot of willing executioners for Putin, a 21st Century Adolph Hitler.
When the war is over, there will be two Russias. Ukraine, the new Russia, will be part of Europe and the world will embrace it economically, politically, and culturally. Moscow, old Russia, in comparison, is degenerating into a stagnant backwater of hate and cruelty.
Putin manipulates schools, curriculum, media, and culture to push illiberalism, homophobia, and ethnocentrism. Women, starting at 17 – 18, are urged to have seven or eight babies for the Motherland.
The West’s hopes to engineer a Russian defeat, replace Putin’s government, install a liberal democratic regime, and strongly support it until stability is achieved is now in question with Trump’s regaining power.
China: Because Xi is aping Mao, no steps forward for China; instead, several big steps backward are taken.
China was expected to follow the development patterns of East Asian neighbors Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan; quick development by means of authoritarian capitalism designed to keep wages low and profits high. Eventually, creeping market distortions and crony capitalist practices cause an economic collapse and are subsequently reformed into a fairer and more equitable society.
But not China who needs to get rich before it gets old to fund Social Security for 600+ million elderly people. China is resisting evolving into a market economy or multi-party democracy. Instead, it has reverted to hyper-mercantilism tied to a controlling Hub and Spoke program designed to expand global influence abroad.
Most dynamic Chinese entrepreneurs have been de-emphasized in economic and social importance and their enterprises increasingly forced to compete with well-funded state-run enterprises – some have taken their talents to Japan or Korea. Economic growth has slowed, real estate markets are under serious pressure, and thousands of young people are opting out of the grinding system by lying flat on their parents’ couches.
China, with use of voice and face recognition software, has expanded domestic controls to full totalitarian level. The late psychologist BF Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity envisioned a society like Xi’s China – faceless minions managed by a giant security force.
Xi views China’s giant but fast-shrinking population as a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power since 1949. Total control keeps a lid on exposing the crimes of Mao, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and massive party corruption.
Hong Kong, formerly a free-wheeling center of global investment, was politically beaten down by Beijing, a mistake that invites economic and social stagnation. Many people have already left for Singapore, Tokyo, London, and New York.
The Uyghurs, a large Turkic Muslim ethnic group in the northwest, have been singled out for a special forced assimilation into the 90% Han Chinese culture that appears fearful and intolerant of ethnic differences.
China moved closer to Russia to counter growing US influence in Asia. Putin’s Ukraine invasion quickly made that a nightmare for Beijing who does not like to be viewed as abandoning neighbors when they become problems. See North Korea who is militarily aiding Russia with 10,000 soldiers in Ukraine.
The US and EU have warned China about being on the wrong side of morality and history if they continue to help Putin avoid sanctions and obtain money and military supplies. China manufactures 28.7% of the world’s goods, ten percent more than the US, and trades globally.
China cannot afford to alienate the rich North American and European markets and depends to some degree on good will. Russia, in contrast, manufactures almost nothing the free world consumes permitting it to be belligerent and cruel. Trump threatens China and everybody else with tariffs, even the “nice Canadians”.
China is weighing invading Taiwan to reclaim it. Xi should reconsider after watching a smaller, faster reacting Ukrainian army chop up a heavily centralized, inexperienced Russian military similar in structure and command to Beijing’s. China’s last military engagement was against neighboring Vietnam in 1979, a month-long battle that led to a bloody nose for the inexperienced larger force, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of an estimated 2,400 of their own people.
The recent Shanghai Covid lockdown happened after much of the world learned to live with variants. The Chinese government, by ever tightening reins, has set itself up for a social and economic explosion by its powerless masses. See the American Revolution.
India: Modi, another man in the middle of messy Russian amorality.
India’s long history of dealing with direct British colonialism and perceived American hegemony makes it prickly in dealing with the West. The world’s largest democracy has generally been friendlier with Russia than America until recently.
Modi’s concerning promotion of Hindu nationalism ignored the fact that one in seven Indians were Muslim who increasingly felt diminished and isolated. The assassination of a rebel Sikh leader in British Columbia by supposed Modi operatives suggests alienation in the Punjab too.
India has seen rapid growth in manufacturing, services, and tourism and enjoys remittances from the nation’s huge global diaspora. Her economic well-being is dependent to some degree from good will extended to it by friendly nations such as the US, Canada, and UK.
The US has cultivated Modi, hoping that India will stop propping up the Russian economy and become a manufacturing alternative to China. The BRICS are cultivating Modi too hoping to dent alleged US hegemony of the global financial system.
India has again pulled away from China because of border tensions. Trump threatens the BRICS with 100% tariffs if they create a new currency to end dependence on the dollar.
Question for Mr. Modi: If the Russian invasion of Ukraine is unimportant to him and India, how would he expect the US and EU to react if some day India was aggressed by a powerful neighbor like China?
Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist approach experienced serious political pushback in the June 2024 elections and the result diminished him. The imperious Modi must now work with other parties to govern, and Muslims exist again in his universe.
United States: Trump, unlike Biden, does not grasp that the US remains the world’s most indispensable nation and NATO is critically important to our national security.
Autocracies are notoriously weak governments; democracies are stronger. The 20th Century is often called the American Century. I predict that at the end of the 21st Century, the title may remain unless Trump’s policies start a meteoric national decline.
Both President’s Xi and Putin boasted at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics that their autocratic systems were viable alternatives to liberal democracy in producing well-being for their peoples. Putin’s folly in Ukraine quickly made life hard for Xi whose economy is facing a long overdue reckoning.
Five years of virtually no immigration due to Trump’s xenophobic policies, and a Pandemic labor shortage dramatically drove up US wage rates. Employment is virtually full and anyone who wants a job should find one.
Biden used the power of government to begin reindustrializing the Middle West rust belt and repair the national infrastructure. Unfortunately, Americans blamed Biden for the continuing inflation instead of Putin who caused it.
They listened to Trump tell them how bad the economy was when things were overall very good. Information battled disinformation and the latter won. Americans now face four years of Trumpian chaos and uncertainty.
Germany: From near pacifism to doubling the military budget in one year; credit Putin.
Germany, 1933 – 1945, is always referred to as Nazi Germany. Modern Germany, in contrast, is a very democratic and peaceful country that elects bland, safe leaders and has twice kept them in power for almost two decades. See Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel.
The country is Europe’s most powerful economy, greatly influences continental monetary policy, and theoretically should be the military lynchpin of Europe. Not so; before Ukraine, Germany was on the verge of pacifism contributing 1.25% of its budget to defense and sending no military weaponry to allies in need.
Putin changed that literally overnight. New Prime Minister Olaf Scholz doubled military spending and began sending much more offensive equipment to Ukraine than the original helmets, canteens, and blankets.
Germany, after Hitler and WW II, did not trust itself with a strong army. They believed the best way not to repeat a bad military outcome is to avoid militarism. Germans now realize that’s a luxury they can’t afford anymore and are responsibly facing up to a new and surprising reality.
The country has a long history of Ostpolitik or looking eastward, from Willy Brandt to Angela Merkel who trusted Putin and Russia to become a reliable supplier of gas and oil. She hoped the revenue stream would bind Russia to Germany and Europe as peaceful, prosperous partners.
Just as they were ready to flip the switch on the Nord stream gas pipeline, Russia ruptured the relationship. Putin shattered his reputation as a dependable energy supplier, and his duplicity forced Germany to finally shed hesitancy and assume a bigger military role in Europe’s defense.
Ironically, Germany sees the rise of Nazi Russia as a depressing mirror of itself eighty years ago. The world allied to stop Hitler’s Germany in WW II. Germany is now a strong member of a committed alliance stopping Putin and Nazi Russia.
However, far right parties have made gains in recent elections and pressure Scholz to put Germany first. The economy has weakened over the past year due to loss of markets in China and Russia, and high wage rates that make German goods appear expensive.
Japan: What leadership role does the Germany of Asia need to play in defending East Asia from Chinese ambitions of regional dominance?
Japan, like Germany, experienced mixed feelings about past militarism. Japan was also close to pacifism and practiced only defensive military maneuvers. It too is faced with playing a larger role and is slowly taking necessary steps with South Korea and the US to beef up northeast Asian defenses.
From 1970 to 1990, Japan enjoyed astounding economic growth by making an array of high-quality products, especially cars. Japan, for the most part, has not grown economically since though its cars are still desirable and popular.
Like America, Japan’s industrial base was hollowed out by cheaper production costs in China and Southeast Asia. The country has yet to find additional new stimulating product lines or special projects needed to regenerate earlier growth levels and make the country more vibrant and relevant again.
The Japanese attempted to burnish their image by hosting the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Unfortunately, the country bungled its domestic vaccination program, the games had to be held in a bubble, and turned out to be a dud. The search for a spark continues and maybe rising tourism will finally generate a take-off of sorts.