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The Market Ticker – Trade And Security: “The Check Is In The Mail”
One of the shibboleths of modern international affairs, and one that all western political parties seem to embrace on a full-throated basis, is that the intercourse of trade between nations is a priori a stabilizing force and deters aggression.
The Ukraine situation ought to shut those people up for quite some time when the dust on this mess settles — at least if we're in the slightest bit honest in our assessments.
The problem with the claim and belief is that it only applies if the interconnections are sufficiently bilateral and deep that neither side can afford to have them disrupted. If the trade equation is unbalanced such that one party bears a sufficiently-disproportionate burden in the event of a conflict then paradoxically trade may actually increase the willingness of nations to engage in aggression.
Take the current situation. There are major energy ties between Russia and not only Ukraine but also major sections of Europe. In addition there are many German manufacturers who sell quite a few finished goods into Russia. At first blush this would appear to serve as a strong deterrent to Putin's views of what he'd like the outcome in Ukraine to be.
Unfortunately when those energy ties were built they are put together in what looks a lot like a dependency situation; what was a voluntary exchange of goods (natural gas) for money has now turned into a state of necessity of supply. This has taken what one would normally think of as “trade” and turned it on its ear; instead we have a near-vassal state situation with regards to natural gas in Eastern Europe.
This state of affairs in fact actually emboldens Putin because neither Europe or Ukraine have any rational short-term means of replacing his energy supplies! At the same time Russians can replace the cars and similar goods currently sold to them by European concerns such as Volkswagen.
The globalists seem to inconveniently forget that any time you have a single-source situation the person with the supply has the hammer and you have the pointy, soft cranium with a dunce cap perched upon it for allowing such a situation to develop. These imbalances almost-always occur due to grossly short-sighted thinking by so-called “smart people” in the economic and government realm, allowing what looks like an inexpensive “solution” to a problem to come to the fore. Unfortunately without integration of the governments involved so that the transaction is purely internal you have set up what amounts to a vassal state in the nation that needs whatever is being supplied!
This in turn allows the “Lordship” to do almost-literally anything they'd like, including invading you, because you have few effective options available in response. If you object the valves (in this case) are simply closed, and while that hurts the Russian economy it utterly trashes Eastern Europe and the Ukraine itself.
In the 1960s we had a solution to this problem but we refused to use it becasue we were enamored with the idea of “dual use” nuclear power — with the “dual” meaning big bang-bangs. Despite it being quite clear early in the 1970s that energy shipments were a potent weapon that could be deployed in any sort of dispute, never mind the history of WWII where the Germans were hamstrung by their shortage of petroleum, we eschewed the ability to render such threats impotent while at the same time “embracing” the theory that by tying trade to oil and the dollar we could “capitalize” on our “superior geopolitical position.”
In the hindsight of history, given that we had LFTR technology available in the 1960s and not only refused to develop it then but still are today, along with this little dust-up (that, IMHO, is destined to end with Ukraine being a Russian State — and Putin may not stop there either) today, how intelligent does — and is — that decision appear to be?
PS: If you want the list of people responsible for it you need to start with Admiral Rickover and Jimmy Carter, but it hardly stops with those two jackasses. Indeed the most-recent additions to the list are arguably Gregory Jaczko and President Obama, but that list must rationally include every President since Carter, the entire NRC from the top down and more.
Source: http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=228982
