Unit 4: Nationalism & Imperialism
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 to subjugate the EU and NATO-leaning nation and permanently keep it in Putin’s orbit. The Russian leader, believing that the 1990 Soviet break-up was the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century, pledged to restore the old Russian Czarist Empire. He started with Ukraine to make it 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 and international trade had made 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 big though the Russian Orthodox Church still backs him for his war on liberal western values, and restoration of so-called traditional Russian beliefs. The church ignores the continuing plagues of vodka and drugs.
The former KGB operative bends values such as homophobia and xenophobia to his political needs while streaming disinformation, populism, and white nationalism at home and abroad. He has dismantled Russia’s once-fledgling democratic republic, intimidated and corrupted the formerly independent court system, and crushed a free media and press.
The Russian economy was gaining traction domestically and globally until Putin distorted his own economy by creating oligarchs to take over entire industries and do some of the government’s dirty business too. Their reward came 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 foolishly believed that Ukraine would collapse and be easily occupied, but Zelensky and country were determined to finally break free from Russia’s influence. Putin and the Kremlin gave little attention 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 most poorly trained troops; an estimated 880,000 were needed to invade and occupy a people who hate them for their cruelty. He declared the invasion a Special Military Operation and forced Russians to believe at risk of arrest. Was he drunk with hubris? Did he act on a hateful personal view of the West?
Putin recklessly invaded with a forty-mile-long railroad convoy that 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.
That was the first turning point in this horrible slog of a war – 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 and hold on. Russia illegally annexed the Donbas, and has tried to crush Ukraine’s unity and 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 if given enough weapons. 89% still refuse to concede sovereign land.
The second turning point of the war was Russia’s use of superior size and firepower to stop a Ukrainian counter-offensive, grind Ukraine down with cheap drones and human wave assaults, and cement full control of the Donbas which is close.
The US and EU nations provided Ukraine with munitions and money to fight the Russians to a standstill, but Donald Trump’s replacing Joe Biden changed the calculus. Trump and Vance act slavishly biased towards Russia and appear to be forcing Ukraine into ending the war on Putin’s terms who started it.
Trump dementedly demanded the war end upon his taking office Jan. 20, 2025. Pres. Zelensky was willing to work with him while refusing to cede the Donbas and Crimea. Trump and Vance’s ganging up on Zelensky in the White House shamed America. We’re not supposed to take the side of autocracy. That’s appeasement.
Russia has inflated its economy with military spending consuming perhaps one-half of the national budget. The government rewards recruits with hefty signing bonuses, then pays their survivors generous amounts after they are killed.
An estimated 190,000+ Russians have died and 700,000 more injured. Ukraine’s estimated losses range from 80,000 to 140,000 dead with twice that number injured.
Most of Russia’s best and brightest are living elsewhere. The population and economy have shrunk dramatically. Russia shows its weakness and desperation with its frequent talk of nuclear weapons use, strategy revisions, and threats against NATO neighbors.
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 past 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.
Unfortunately, Trump, no friend of the EU or NATO, was returned to office and resumed disengaging from all friendly nations and allies. Bullying threats to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama make America and Trump appear transactional, untrustworthy, and shameless.
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. The Balts and Scandinavians have become partners in mining the border with Russia and sharing soldiers and equipment to deter Russian aggression.
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 until Trump’s Ridiculous Tariffs
Russia, after the invasion, 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.
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 radical reactionary comeback altered that intention and rationale for there is no line in the sand with an amoral and corrupt demagogue, only access and the deal.
China and India, the two largest nations by population, have walked 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 critical products 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; indeed, at every turn he weakens or undermines it.
Unit 7: Russia, China, India, US, Germany & Japan – A 2025 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.
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, mercenaries, and North Koreans 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, until Trump’s election, had 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 jeopardy. Trump, Putin’s apparent puppet, regained power..
China: Because Xi is aping Mao, no steps forward for China; instead, several big steps backward have been taken. Electric cars, batteries, and rare earth’s dominance are saving graces staving off recession. Xi says; “Young people should learn to eat some bitterness.”
China is fruitlessly defying 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 and exporting, tied to a controlling Hub and Spoke program designed to expand global influence abroad.
Most dynamic Chinese entrepreneurs, a few years ago, were de-emphasized in economic and social importance and their enterprises increasingly forced to compete with well-funded state-run enterprises. Some took their talents to Japan or Korea; some are being welcomed back.
Why? Economic growth is slowing, 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 legions of technocrats and security forces.
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, has been 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, are 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, before Trump, 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. Transactional Trump, however, cares not for morality, only that China manufactures 28.7% of the world’s goods, ten percent more than the US, and runs a trade in-balance with the US.
Trump has the wrong plan to change that manufacturing equation – he should use investment tax credits instead of tariffs. China will manage the tariff struggle, and re-engage the rich North American and European markets.
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, after watching a smaller, faster reacting Ukrainian army chop up a heavily centralized, inexperienced Russian military similar in structure and command to Beijing’s, should reconsider. 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 an eventual social and economic explosion by its powerless masses. See the American Revolution.
India: Modi’s India has great opportunities. Will he recognize any?
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 shows a reeking alienation in the Punjab too.
India has enjoyed rapid growth in manufacturing, services, and tourism and receives enormous 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.
Which opportunity will Modi and India seize for their people who earn an average of $2,700 a year?
United States: Trump, America’s Great Aberration, ushers in a Dark Age – again.
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. Trump should know that but so admires autocrats power that he behaves like one.
The 20th Century is often called the American Century. Before Trump’s election, I predicted that at the end of the 21st Century, the title would remain unless Trump’s policies started a meteoric national decline. That is now very possible.
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, until Trump’s election, was virtually full and anyone who wanted a job could 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.
The American economy was the performance envy of the world. 77 million Americans listened to Trump tell them how bad the economy was and believed him.
Information battled disinformation and the latter won. Americans now face four years of Trumpian chaos and uncertainty. Trump has managed, with the first 100 days of his White House gonzo show, to wreck an unsinkable economy that he inherited from Biden.
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, in recession and transitioning away from high value goods to electronics and services, is Europe’s most powerful economy. Germany 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. Current Prime Minister Olaf Scholz doubled military spending and began sending much more offensive equipment to Ukraine than the original helmets, canteens, and blankets.
Trump’s unfriendly behavior towards the EU and NATO presents Germany with a challenging opportunity – become the armorer of a future European Army operating independently of the United States.
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 ninety 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 after World War II, experienced mixed feelings about past militarism. Japan was also close to pacifism and practiced only defensive military maneuvers. Japan now realizes that to contain a restive China, it must play a larger role in taking necessary steps along 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. https://arnoldheller.org/changes-in-teaching-u-s-japan-trade-relations-1990-2000-a-retrospective/.html.
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.