way back in December
Way back in December, I was sitting down for a meal with T, B, and David, and I volunteered that Putin was going to invade Ukraine. President Biden had just removed our strategic ambiguity by affirming US troops would not intervene, had instead listed the economic sanctions that would be imposed on Russia.
I thought -- Putin's going to pay this price. Biden had opened the door to Ukraine and backed away. It was practically an invitation to invade.
But first Putin made what he considered to be diplomatic offers -- if NATO would guarantee no future membership for Ukraine, if NATO would remove its bases from former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics -- but NATO absolutely refused to either retreat or limit its future advances.
The extent of this invasion, when it would start, whether Putin would really pull the trigger -- these were uncertain to me -- but I cannot say I'm surprised this morning that roughly half of Ukraine is now under attack by Russia
Today we'll see whether the US and its allies follow through on their promised sanctions bombs, even though Russia is a big enough player in the world economy that these sanctions will hurt us back proportionally. I expect US consumers will see record high energy prices this year, for example.
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President Biden's approach to China and Taiwan has been quite different, he's deliberately preserved strategic ambiguity over whether the US would fight to defend Taiwan. I think this was a deliberate attempt by his administration to pivot away from containing Russia toward containing China, as though the US could not afford to do both. And frankly, Taiwan is much more important to the US than Ukraine, and we've been promising to protect Taiwan for several decades already, since the 1950s. Taiwan's economy is 4x as big and produces much more strategic goods, such as leading-edge electronics; Ukraine produces corn, wheat, and iron -- it's 21st Century goods vs 19th Century goods. I don't think China is in a rush to take back Taiwan, but she might take advantage of the Ukraine chaos to occupy one or more smaller, perhaps uninhabited, disputed islands.
I thought -- Putin's going to pay this price. Biden had opened the door to Ukraine and backed away. It was practically an invitation to invade.
But first Putin made what he considered to be diplomatic offers -- if NATO would guarantee no future membership for Ukraine, if NATO would remove its bases from former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics -- but NATO absolutely refused to either retreat or limit its future advances.
The extent of this invasion, when it would start, whether Putin would really pull the trigger -- these were uncertain to me -- but I cannot say I'm surprised this morning that roughly half of Ukraine is now under attack by Russia
Today we'll see whether the US and its allies follow through on their promised sanctions bombs, even though Russia is a big enough player in the world economy that these sanctions will hurt us back proportionally. I expect US consumers will see record high energy prices this year, for example.
-----
President Biden's approach to China and Taiwan has been quite different, he's deliberately preserved strategic ambiguity over whether the US would fight to defend Taiwan. I think this was a deliberate attempt by his administration to pivot away from containing Russia toward containing China, as though the US could not afford to do both. And frankly, Taiwan is much more important to the US than Ukraine, and we've been promising to protect Taiwan for several decades already, since the 1950s. Taiwan's economy is 4x as big and produces much more strategic goods, such as leading-edge electronics; Ukraine produces corn, wheat, and iron -- it's 21st Century goods vs 19th Century goods. I don't think China is in a rush to take back Taiwan, but she might take advantage of the Ukraine chaos to occupy one or more smaller, perhaps uninhabited, disputed islands.