Shaun is canceled :(
Shaun is canceled :(
https://nitter.cz/Hbomberguy/status/1705973610320404798#m
WhO is InVaDinG wHo???
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How do rate hikes signal that Putin is being undermined by the central bank? Don't most countries attempt to raise capital in the short term during wars?
I'm not as versed in the economic nuances as the person I quoted above, but from what I do understand, I think your confusion comes from conflating finance capitalism with industrial capitalism. Finance capitalism in Russia has more interests tied to western interests. All the sanctions hurt them, though the sanctions did not hurt the industrial capitalists nearly as much because Russia still has great productive capacity (unlike the US whose foreign policy is almost completely ruled by finance capital now). It is the productive capacity that is being consolidated in Russia under the Russian government, which has been nationalizing a lot of industry - something we commies tend to see as a good thing. I'm sure others with a better understanding of the economics could give you a more precise/accurate answer. Reading some more Michael Hudson would do us both some good. Still, it does not undermine the fact that a victory for Russia would be beneficial for everyone who is not a NATO country, or an aspiring one, it would be beneficial to the global working class.
But I want to ask you the other side of a question you raised: what happens to left wing movements in Eastern Europe if Russia completely annexes Ukraine? It creates a migration crisis and a new "threat" on the eastern border.
It doesn't create a new threat. The threat has been existing for a while which is why the SMO became necessary. This will be a problem going forward, but it already was, and would have been worse had Russia done nothing as NATO continued to train Nazi paramilitary groups for that express purpose, continue to spread deeply racist Russophobic propaganda among the populace, crush any whiff of dissent and/or leftist, and put military bases and Nukes within a distance that Moscow couldn't take them down before they reached the capital city.
At least this way, the Russians living in Eastern and Southern Ukraine won't be ethnically cleansed, but instead protected and become part of the Russian Federation, as they overwhelmingly want to do. This problem you're describing about terrorism happening won't only be directed towards Russia, either. When the war is inevitably lost by Ukraine, there will be a lot of Nazis who are going to justifiably blame the west and we will be looking at some hideous terror actions against western Europeans.
As for leftist movements in Eastern Europe, it can't be much worse than it is now, where they are all completely repressed, made illegal, and in Ukraine, shot as traitors. I highly doubt Russia is going to "completely annex Ukraine" because anything they might gain from annexing it in its entirety is easily outweighed by the many difficulties of doing so. I think as far as territory under Russian control, Russia will be happy with Crimea, the current contested Oblasts and perhaps a bit more where there is actual support for Russia by the Ukrainians living there. However, that doesn't mean Russia wouldn't demand regime change in Ukraine, making sure that a government is installed that is not frothingly hostile to them, will not pursue NATO membership under any circumstances, and will not be pro-west in general. In such a scenario, I don't see any reason why leftist parties that are now illegal will not be able to begin to operate again, especially seeing as leftist parties tend not to be pro-western for very obvious reasons. The government Russia is trying to (and succeeding at) taking down is extremely fascist and there is literally no hope for anything even the tiniest bit leftwing to gain any sort of foothold there. It's impossible to predict how things like that will percolate out of this war, but to think that the status quo, or the pre-war situation in Ukraine was better for leftists is just not knowing anything about the recent history of the region.
Russia being ultimately victorious would indeed be good for leftist projects in that region. But it is nothing compared to how much better it would be for leftist projects in the rest of the world. It is in the rest of the Global South where hope can truly flourish and I'm totally fucking here for it. That's a whole other effort post, but also hopefully it's even more obvious why that's the case.
I'm incredibly unconvinced. In Ukraine in particular all the communist parties had their bases in Luhansk and Donetsk before they were banned. There won't be any leftism left in a partitioned Ukraine. And as you said, none of this goes well for the rest of Europe either.
As for the global south, what's the outcome? De-dollarization? Already happening. American hegemony viewed as less of a threat due to losing a proxy war? As I said in another comment, America has been losing wars, proxy and otherwise, for over half a century. And this war in particular has been a very weak commitment by historical precedent.
I just don't see how Russia (or Ukraine) gaining any territory or concessions from this war helps anybody beyond what's already happened. It's a waste of lives and money that could be more directly helping people. I'm not cheering for anybody here.
The de-dollarization is happening because of the war. America signaled to the globe that holding usd reserves is unsafe as they can seize those funds on a whim, as they did with Afghanistan and now Russia. Furthermore, Russia's resilience to economic sanctions is an important signal to the rest of the world that it can be done, and you have a network of countries unwilling to join the western sanctions regime. That network is growing. Were trending to a multipolar world, and not one led by russia, but chiefly by china
The global south benefits from multipolarity. Not just as a counterweight to us military hegemony, but economic sanctions regimes as well. It's undeniable that the global south benefited when the ussr was still around, that would certainly be the case in a world where a Chinese led bloc is the other pole
I think, generously, the war accelerated this, but it would have happened anyway sooner rather than later. Confidence in the dollar was already dropping due to factionalism in the US government and the growing economic power of China. And I don't think that acceleration has been worth the cost in human life.
Could you make an argument for why the war merely accelerated de-dollarization? What evidence is there that countries were turning away from holding USD reserves or moving towards international trade not denominated in dollars? Factionalism in the US government, led mostly by a trump administration, might have lowered confidence in US generally, but how has that impacted US economic hegemony?
Quoting this pro-western piece in TabletMag:
This is a more devastating moment of clarity than it might seem at first glance. The promise of economic sanctions was never that they would punish people and corporations in authoritarian countries in order to provide vicarious emotional satisfaction for Western voters; the hope was that sanctions could simultaneously strengthen diplomacy while more or less replacing military force as an instrument of coercion. Western domination of key technologies, banking, trade routes, and international institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the Paris Club—so the thinking went—would allow us to impose our desired outcomes not only on irritant regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and Myanmar, but also on peer-competitors like Iran, China, and Russia. And we could do it all without having to fire a shot.
The success of the Russian economy at resisting the sanctions regime is directly related to the emerging multipolar world. Those peer-competitors like China, but also "irritant regimes" like Cuba are all watching things develop with great interest.
As an aside, I don't think anyone here is doing math with human lives and saying that the blood spilled is "worth it". That's un-charitable, at best. It's more of a material analysis - history, international relations, expanding russian economic influence on the EU, and politics has wrought war. Many on this site, myself included, wish for the war to end in a way that doesn't result in the complete collapse or subjugation of the russian state because it would be net negative for anti-imperialism and the global south. But importantly they still want the war to end.
America's bond rating got downgraded under Obama, for one thing. We're barreling towards the, what, 4th or 5th government shutdown in like 6 or 7 years? International confidence in the US to maintain the stability of the dollar is shaken both by the intermittent shutdowns and by its increasingly mercurial foreign policy. Trump's demands about NATO funding, overtures towards North Korea, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, immediately replaced by Biden's huge injection into Ukraine, to be followed by...?
At the same time China has been growing in leaps and bounds and has an enormous economy and an incredibly stable government. It seems inevitable that their GDP will overtake the US's sooner rather than later.
These taken together paint a picture to me that we didn't need a war to convince the global south that America's era of monopolar hegemony was coming to a close.