There's no leader of the free world anymore

Nobody who supports either free markets or the non-initiation of force principles can now think that the Trump Administration is an acolyte of either principle, even in a somewhat flawed way (as all governments that may advance in that direction are).  It's an incoherent mash of the feelings of two men who are more upset about their egos being offended, than either projecting an economic policy of demonstrable success or managing international relations based on strength against a weak (albeit dangerous) aggressor that embodies almost everything the United States has been against for decades.

The stupid trade war isn't about leverage to get other economies to open up, it is old fashioned autarky or even Kim Il Sung's fatuous "Juche Idea" (self reliance). It's the economics of hardened Marxists, and the economics of moronic economic nationalists like the bloviator Pat Buchanan. The tariffs wont replace income tax ( a line that some have trotted out) and will push up inflation in the US, and harm consumers and producers there, and the global economy.  However, Republicans are now embodying the economics of destroyers like Juan Peron, who helped take Argentina from being a rich country to being a poor one, through this sort of nonsense.  It will only be made worse by the EU and other developed countries responding in kind.

However, it is the moral depravity of the line on Ukraine which deserves the most approbrium.

There is no morality in surrendering to an aggressor all that it has won, so you have "peace" while it rebuilds its armed forces, rearms, and at the same time your erstwhile ally has blackmailed you into signing a predatory deal to hand over resources for the sake of vague promises of security.  Ukraine doesn't want to do that, but the new appeasers do.

The claim Trump makes about wanting to be even-handed between Russia and Ukraine is a complete moral inversion.  Whilst he has been excoriating about Zelensky, he has said nothing negative at all about Putin or the behaviour of Russia.  He has said little about what Russia should do, and little about what the US will do if Russia doesn't stop fighting. He has only demanded that Ukraine stop.

He talks of Ukraine gambling with World War Three which is absurd, given Ukraine alone, with ample military supplies has taken the war to a stalemate -  stalemate with Russia, because Russia's fighting capabilities are woeful. Without nuclear weapons, Russia would be easily overwhelmed with Western power, and pushed back.  Indeed given the US also has nuclear weapons, it could have simply declared it was controlling Ukrainian airspace given:

• Russian military attack on a civilian airliner
• Ukrainian Government invitation to protect it.

Would Russia really have launched a nuclear attack at that point, with the US drawing a clear line that it was defending the territorial integrity of the remainder of Ukraine from air power?

Who was gambling with World War Three the non-nuclear armed Ukraine trying to defend itself from a nuclear power??

Of course Ukraine should feel aggrieved. It has the world's third largest nuclear weapons cache when it became independent and it signed it all away based on promises from the US, Russia and the UK to protect its territorial integrity.  It was Barack Obama who neglected to follow up on that agreement when Russia started its attack on Crimea.  It was Joe Biden who continued to fail once the full blown invasion was launched.

The claims about NATO expansion being provocative are only claims that are echoed by hardcore communists, who pretend that NATO was a project to attack their beloved eastern bloc, not one to defend liberal democracies from it, or from fascist nationalists, who can't believe that countries that spent half a century under the jackboot of the Soviet Union (which they once professed to loathe) would want to be free of Russian imperialism forever more.

Of course Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia etc. do not want their independence threatened by an aggressive Russia - again - and if you dont think that is legitimate, then you're either a communist, or someone, like Hitler, who thinks you can make accommodations with a communist for your own political objectives.  Hating the European Union or "globalists" is all one thing, but if anyone who claims to believe in sovereign borders, the right of states to control their territory and be independent, thinks surrendering Ukraine is consistent with that, then it shows it up for all it is - desperate tribalist support for a US Administration that doesn't care about your beliefs when it suits it.

If territorial integrity of sovereign states doesn't matter to Ukraine, then maybe it doesn't matter anywhere that the Trump Administration doesn't care about, and that includes any country in Europe, or Australia, or New Zealand etc etc.

Of course everyone wants the war to end. It could end tomorrow if Putin just decided to end it, and withdraw, but he's a psychopathic kleptocrat who feeds young Russian men (from poor backgrounds) and North Korean men to their deaths.

Ukraine has been successful in knocking out much of Russia's military strength including knocking out  much of the Black Sea Fleet. Had it been armed more effectively it could have pushed back more inflicting more pain on Russia.

Trump doesn't like that though, because he wants economic relations with Russia.

Had Trump wanted to, he could have demonstrated strength against Russia and demanded concessions or significantly enhanced support for Ukraine, but instead he has demonstrated strength against Ukraine and made it into a supplicant, and emboldened Russia. 

If the war ends soon, on the basis of Russia giving up little, and there being no substantial security guarantees for Ukraine (including US direct military support), then it will prolong the inevitable. Russia can spend a few years rearming, and use its renewed economic potential after sanctions are lifted by the US, to steal military capability and be ready for another attack. It knows the US wont do much, and it doesn't fear European power. At that point, the cost not just to the Europe, but the world of letting it be known that the US is isolationist and wont act to protect any nation states from attack by Russia, is going to be much higher than the tens of billions taken to bolster Ukraine.

Even Marine Le Pen is critical of Trump on Ukraine, because by and large, European countries want to sure of defence against the predatory criminal gangster state to the east, which treats its neighbours with impunity.

Perhaps a deal will be struck, perhaps not and Europe will do all it can to support Ukraine, regardless, it is now a time for small countries everywhere to acknowledge that it's all on now - the US doesn't care if you are attacked, you have to fend for yourselves with any other allies.

There is no "leader of the free world" anymore.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

It's been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, seeking to take Kyev and reconquer it.

I was, late last year, rather pleased Trump beat Harris in the US elections. It demonstrated that voters wouldn't be treated as if what they think and feel don't matter.  With record numbers of black and Latino voters picking Trump over Harris, the identitarianism of the hard left was given short shrift.  Domestically, there was some promise that Trump could overhaul the US Federal Government in spending and regulatory terms, and the nihilistic critical constructivist culture that sought to right past wrongs through discrimination over merit. The hard left attempt to replace the identitarianism of the past with an identitarianism of the future, based on a hierarchy of oppressor vs. oppressed (within which Jews and poor white trailer park men are oppressors, and wealthy African American entrepreneurs are oppressed) might be broken down by the Trump Administration.

The biggest negative until this week was the economic illiteracy around tariffs.  It's so outrageously stupid the thinking around trade protectionism that it barely deserves a response.  If it were about leverage to open up markets and break the back of the protectionist rackets of the EU and India, it might be one thing, but it's a brainless attempt to "bring back jobs" regardless of the cost, and somehow raise revenue.  Of course some argue that the US Federal Government was once funded by tariffs with no income tax, but there is zero prospect of income tax being abolished, so it remains a measure to tax imports, hike up inflation, punish consumers and ensure the US is less and less competitive internationally.

However that's small fry compared to the moral turpitude around Ukraine.

Ukraine gained independent with the dissolution of the USSR, a point in history anyone with a belief in liberal democracy, individual rights and freedoms and belief in human self-determination would celebrate. Vladimir Putin didn't of course.

Ukraine inherited borders from the USSR, as did all of the former Soviet Republics. It made sense because there is no shortage of potential disputes around people split between sovereign states. Besides the Governments of Russia, the USA and UK agreed to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) in exchange for the three former Soviet republics surrendering the Soviet nuclear arsenal based on their territory.  After all, there was genuine fear of nuclear proliferation.

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed in 1994 was an agreement that the parties would:

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).

Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

Not to use nuclear weapons against any non–nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.

Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments

Russia broke this agreement in February 2014 by invading Ukraine, first to annex Crimea and again in early 2022. The United States broke this agreement by not guaranteeing Ukraine's borders.

Now Trump has decided to shred what remains of this.

Obama was the start, he ridiculed Mitt Romney warning of Russia being a looming threat. 

Then Obama did little to respond to Putin's invasion of Crimea. Biden's response to the invasion of the rest of Ukraine was more significant, but ultimately was weak. It wasn't to provide air cover, it wasn't to provide the weapons he could, it was to do enough to constrain what Putin could do, and now its over.

There is a line of US self-styled conservative thinking that ranging from loving to being sympathetic to Putin. Why? Because he's a strong man who "defends his country" against "Islam" and in favour of "Christian values". Values that seem to include rampant kleptocracy and Soviet style oppression of dissent.

Some are actual far-right fascists, who yearn for a strongman to jackboot his way through their country, poison and arrest opponents, shut down protests and enforce a traditional view of the role of women, an avowedly anti-homosexual position and embrace an expansionist shameless view of the power of their beloved nation state.  Others are contrarians, who see Putin pushing back against "globalism" (whatever that means), and regard the European Union to be more authoritarian and malign than a virtual one-party state run by a permanent President who runs his country as a mafia state. Of course there is plenty of room to criticise the European Union, but the intellectual vacuum that sees criticism of policy in Western Europe as justifying a war of aggression against Ukraine is eye-watering.

Likewise is seeing the flaws of Ukrainian liberal democracy as being morally equivalent to Russia's kleptocratic totalitarianism. An argument can readily be made to critique the approach of the Biden Administration, but to turn reality into an inversion as the Trump Administration is doing harks of the perversions of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

The idea Ukraine started the war is deranged. Ukraine was not run by a Nazi, and Russians in Ukraine faced no existential threat from the Government. Indeed Russians in Russia face MORE threat from the jackbooted tyranny of the FSB than they do in Ukraine. We shouldn't forget of course that one of Russia's proxies before invading Ukraine proper did shoot down a civilian airliner murdering all of its passengers and crew.

The moral relativists in Washington DC have blanked out flight MH17, just a lot of Dutch people, Asians and Australians after all. 

The deluded concern about NATO expansion, as if NATO has ever threatened Russia and as if ANY country actually has an interest in invading it.  This is Russian nationalist hysteria.  See how Sweden and Finland have joined NATO and Russia barely blinked an eye.  Ultra-nationalists are prone to delusions about conspiracies to destroy their beloved people, and this is one.  The truth of NATO is that it remains because the Soviet Union's former empire doesn't want to go back to being a part of it, and Russia has not successfully deradicalised itself from its past eras of totalitarian irredentism.  Lithuania, Romania, Poland and even Ukraine purged themselves of their past under one of the world's most murderous and morally bankrupt regimes, but Russia is led by a man who misses that.

What Trump has done is invert the moral order.  At the very core of modern international law is the belief that the sovereign state is inviolate and it is a fundamental breach of the international order for one national army to invade the territory of another.  This has only happened because the USA and Europe refused to deter Russia invading its near neighbours, and the consequence are where we are.  However, it is entirely Russia's fault for being an aggressive imperialist invading force.

If the 21st century international order is that naked aggression by a nuclear power, on a much smaller, benign peaceful country, is to be shrugged about and rewarded by another nuclear power, with that other one seeking to do a deal to literally plunder the victim's property indefinitely, it isn't "order". It is a neo-feudalism of bullies, and the only defence against that is offence.  It is the acquisition of the greatest of weapons, nuclear, to deter anyone.  It makes the world a more dangerous place. 

Trump's position is also contradictory.  As Janet Daley said in the Daily Telegraph:

Trump and Vance claim that Putin is not a threat to the West, that his military operations in Ukraine are simply a defence against attacks by Zelensky’s illegitimate regime. This is wickedly fallacious as a factual account of events, and the conclusion that apparently follows is blatantly self-contradictory.

In the very same pronouncements in which they proclaim Vladimir Putin’s benign intentions, the Trump-Vance team excoriate European leaders for failing to increase their defence spending and properly arm themselves against threats to Nato. But if Russia is an innocent victim and Putin is not an aggressor, where does the danger to Europe come from?

Either Putin is a peace-loving, reasonable interlocutor with whom we (which is to say, Trump) can do business – in which case Europe need not worry about increasing its defences – or he is determined to reclaim as much of Eastern Europe as he can seize – in which case the complicity of the Trump government is shameful.

Which is it? Is Putin a blameless, misunderstood victim and we can all go back to blithely spending our peace dividend on lavish welfare systems, or is he a malign actor who is an active threat to Nato countries, which must rearm as quickly as possible at their own expense?

And how can this instruction to Nato members to rearm at any cost be consistent with Trump’s support for the Russian claim that it is Nato expansion that is the cause of the recent conflict? Surely a rapid rearming of Nato members would justify Putin’s paranoia.

It also makes the United States a fickle ally. This deranged set of contradictions has no coherence.  The likely outcome is that European countries will increase their military capability, which will upset Russia, and they could provide more military support to Ukraine as well.  The unwillingness to call out any of Russia's actions seems difficult to comprehend, unless it has underlying it, either a sympathy for Putin or an interest in simply surrendering and withdrawing out of fear - the fear that doing anything else will cost the US money or lives.

It is a new isolationism for the US, although this is not new for the country.

Furthermore is the bizarre demand that Ukraine pay the US for the cost of the support the US provided for it to defend itself.  It is an inversion of the demands of Germany after WW1, which was forced to pay reparations to the Allies for starting the war.  This of course turned Germans to be ultra-nationalists, to resist the economic and national shame.  The Nazis came from that.  

Should Israel or Egypt be worried? Both have received billions in military aid over decades from the US, but will Trump demand half of Israel's GDP be handed over to pay the US back for its support? If not, why not by this measure? Why should Ukraine be punished for taking what a previous Administration had granted it? Besides, given the US shows little interest in actually protecting Ukraine from a future Russian invasion, it is difficult to trust that the Trump Administration would actually do anything if Russia tried again.

It's simple now The US cannot be trusted to defend its allies, it cannot be trusted to even advocate for the basic rules of the international system.  It is no longer a bullwark for liberal democracies, when it judges Ukraine and ignores Russia.

What should happen is Trump should threaten Russia with tougher sanctions, with NATO membership for Ukraine, a no-fly zone and greater help unless Russia withdraws. It should be simple, because it is.  It could show the backbone of Ronald Reagan, of JFK, of Harry Truman. It could because Putin is a bluffing minnow.   

What looks like happening is that Ukraine will be dismembered, all because of a deranged fetishisation of a short thieving psychopath, and a moronic disregard for an international order that for, better and for worse, kept the peace by and large.

The only real hope is that this is a lot of bluster and rhetoric.  If it really is, it's quite some technique in diplomatic bombast and disruption.

Sadly I think it is a New New World Order, and it has no real coherent order at all.  What it means for those wanting peace and security, is that they will have to pay a lot more for it.

Yes New Zealand it means 2% of GDP on defence within five years, but it also means Japan, South Korea, European NATO, and many others are going to be spending a lot more. 

The peace dividend of the end of the Cold War is well and truly over.

Is New Zealand abandoning independent foreign policy by backing Ukraine, or is Bryce Edwards missing the point?

Bryce Edwards in the NZ Herald declares that the NZ Government’s “independent foreign policy” is “virtually dead” because the Government has chosen to support Ukraine. It’s quite a take, particularly if I give Edwards the benefit of the doubt that he isn’t part of the “tankie” left that thinks Russia isn’t entirely at fault, or that Ukraine isn’t worth supporting because some of Russia’s claims about “Nazis” are true (I will take it for granted he isn’t part of the “tankie” right that sees Russia as a bastion of conservative Christian values against a decadent corrupt West).

NZ “falling into line” with Five Eyes and NATO assumes that it resisted supporting Ukraine, and in supporting Ukraine it is doing so somehow subservient to Western powers. This is an extraordinary position to take, reminiscent of the self-styled “anti-imperialist” peace activists whose stance against imperialism never extends to powers, such as Russia and China, that are antagonists towards Western liberal democracies.

Edwards believes it needs more debate and analysis, and he is not wrong, but to infer that a country cannot have an “independent foreign policy” if it provides military assistance to a UN Member State that has been attacked in a conventional war by another, is a curious interpretation. It infers that NZ has no interest in supporting a UN Member State that is a victim of such an attack or that there is no moral interest in doing so either.

You see international relations is primarily a matter of national governments asserting policy that is in their national interest. Although most proclaim that their foreign policy has an ethical foundation, ethics are largely secondary to national interest, and national interest is indisputably linked to the government of the day remaining in power.

An independent foreign policy for NZ puts NZ’s interests first, and within the boundaries of that, it can seek to promote an ethical vision of foreign policy. Although the Ardern Government proclaims loudly about its ethics, but it know it cannot take that too far, otherwise NZ would trade with much fewer countries and for what end?

Neutrality and foreign policy independence are quite different concepts. NZ is not obliged to support NATO, it did not provide support when NATO struck Serbia to deter potential genocide in Kosovo (having done little when Serbia supported “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia and Croatia (let’s not mention Croatia’s “ethnic cleansing” of parts of its territory of course)).  That is foreign policy independence, but it is not neutrality. Switzerland and Sweden are neutral.

Edwards cites MP Golriz Ghahraman and former National Party communications advisor Matthew Hooton who essentially claim the decision to support Ukraine is not based on substance of either national interests or ethics.

Ghahraman claims that it is about “appeasing allies”, which is cynical sneering about contributing to a collective effort to defend a nationstate that is a victim of aggression. NZ’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions are arguably almost entirely symbolic and demonstrative as well, in terms of impact in reducing climate change, but that isn’t seen as “appeasing allies or trade partners”. Hooton appears motivated to sneer at Labour’s claim of an independent foreign policy, which isn’t particularly interesting. He has an axe to grind, as does Ghahraman, who is one of the most left-wing and anti-Western MPs in Parliament, is hardly supportive of either NATO or any military action from Western countries (given her biggest foreign policy focus appears to be criticism of Israel and silence against the authoritarianism and terror expounded by Hamas and Fatah).  She even retweeted a call by tankie UK MP Jeremy Corbyn (who bemoaned the fall of the Berlin Wall) demanding the State of Palestine be recognised days after Ukraine was invaded.

Ghahraman focusing on her highest foreign policy priority

Matt Robson is unsurprisingly in the Ghahraman camp (shocking that a former hard-left MP would be antagonistic towards Western powers) and makes the dubious claim that the Ardern Government “has drawn us into the largest nuclear-armed military alliance in the world, Nato, and has signed up to the encirclement strategy of Russia and China”.

This is deranged stuff. NZ is no member of NATO. NZ has no treaty obligation to defend any NATO member states (through NATO) or vice versa. Furthermore, the idea that there is an “encirclement strategy” is straight out of the Moscow and Beijing playbook of foreign policy conspiracies. There’s no evidence of such a strategy, but Moscow has touted for 20 years the paranoid claim that the West is keen to invade it, and China constantly claims that the West wants to contain and stop its growth.

Then there is Peter Dunne’s claim that moving away from UN-mandated sanctions is significant. This infers that the UN is somehow neutral, yet it is obvious that UN-mandated sanctions in response to Ukraine would not exist, because Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can veto any UN sanctions. The UN is absolutely impotent, so the choice is simple in foreign policy:

· Do nothing, because the UN is impotent. Effectively showing zero interest in punishing Russia for invading a neighbour.

· Join traditional Western allies and others in sanctioning Russia.

Edwards does say NZ should seek UN reform, but that is absolutely not going to happen without the consent of the Permanent Five, and that isn’t going to happen whilst two of the five are aggressive revanchists (which one has proven and the other has indicated it wishes to).

Dunne claims “New Zealand will now find it more difficult to resist United States' and British pressure to become involved in similar situations in the future”. Really? Why? Besides, why would it NOT want to be involved in similar situations? Does independent foreign policy mean turning a blind eye to Russia or China invading a neighbour? If so, why? Is it for trade, or is it a desire to not be allied to peaceful liberal democracies against aggressive tyrannies?

Edwards continues “there's a sense in which the New Zealand Government has been slowly but surely edging further into the Ukraine war, discarding any neutrality”. Hang on, neutrality? Since when has NZ had a policy of neutrality in international conflicts? Wasn’t the last significant step in NZ foreign policy to simply remove itself from the US nuclear umbrella and prohibit nuclear weapons but stay in ANZUS, or do some really think NZ is trying to distance itself from other liberal democracies so it can… wait for it… be NEUTRAL when another liberal democracy is invaded?

The claim that this is the biggest change in NZ foreign policy in 35 years is highly questionable. If NZ did become neutral, that would be news, but it has NEVER been, despite some on the hard-left in the Greens and Labour wishing it were so.

Edwards infers that it isn’t a conscious and willing decision to back Ukraine, but a “concession” from “demands”, which implies that the Government didn’t want to help Ukraine. That is worthy of debate, although it is not clear that is the case.

He bemoans that “alternatives to war and aggression are hardly being discussed at the moment”. Whose aggression? Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is not. Russia chose war, Ukraine did not. What is the alternative? Surrender? This is the morally bankrupt talk of the tankie Stop the War Coalition in the UK, which pleads for “peace”, but by taking a “pox on both their houses approach” is effectively siding with Russia. Is defence of the weak against aggression by the strong to be questioned when the cost of supporting the weak is so low?

He's right that NZ has done little on refugees, but that is beside the point.

His final point is both naïve and frankly ridiculous:

Abandoning UN processes for imposing economic sanctions and going to war, as New Zealand has done with Ukraine… just returns the world to a place where the international bullies are free to threaten and dominate smaller and poorer nations. That isn't the type of world we claim to want, but one which our current actions are leading to.

Why?

1. UN processes cannot impose economic sanctions on Russia.

2. International law allows nation states to go to war to assist allies in the event they are attacked, without the need for UN Security Council resolution.

3. NZ providing military assistance to Ukraine has NOT made the world a place for bullies to dominate smaller states. That’s so preposterous to be silly. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, Georgia before that. NZ is virtually irrelevant to Russia.

4. NZ assisting Ukraine is demonstrating a more unified resolve against Russia and is a sign to its ally, China, that a similar approach may apply if it seeks to say, invade Taiwan. That could very likely make the world a safer place.

The alternative to all of this, is for NZ to be neutral. That would put NZ in the position some would like, like India, of straddling the liberal democracies and the authoritarian aggressors. Some naïve peace activists may think this is advantageous, and some may see it so from a trade point of view, but Edwards hasn’t mentioned trade, at all. If NZ were neutral, Moscow and Beijing would cheer. If NZ imposed no sanctions or few sanctions, it would be seen as a place for the rich and powerful from both countries, and their allies, to place themselves and their money. It would be seen as a weakening of the liberal democracies, and as Beijing has already done, they would point out how Wellington is more “even-handed” than Canberra, London and even Warsaw, Tokyo and Helsinki.

I don’t know if Edwards thinks the counterfactual of neutrality on Ukraine is in NZ’s interests or is even morally defensible. It’s difficult to see how it would be, unless your vision of NZ is one that thinks there is no essential difference between Ukraine and Russia, or between the United States and China, and that is a bleak, dark and disturbing vision indeed.

The price of powering civilisation

The crisis in Ukraine and the growing embargo on buying oil and gas from Russia is, of course, creating the greatest crisis in energy since 1979. A crisis over half of the population has never experienced, and it is exposing in clear view the irrationality of energy policies in many countries from the past couple of decades.

Until recently the history of energy policy for humanity has been largely driven by a mix of scientific discovery and innovation, and market demand. As the late Julian Simon once wrote, humanity moved from using wood as a primary source of energy, towards coal in the 18th and 19th century (which saved many remaining forests in Europe from decimation), and then towards oil in the late 19th/early 20th century because of price and capacity.  This also paralleled the rise of electricity, largely generated by burning coal, oil and gas (but also some locations, like New Zealand and Norway, benefited from geography and geology enabling hydro). Nuclear emerged in the mid 20th century, but has been constrained to electricity generation (in jurisdictions not taken over by fear, resulting from hyper-catastrophising) and naval propulsion. 

As the world has become ever more electrified, the demand to generate electricity has been fed primarily by fossil fuel burning, albeit the efficiency of this has grown exponentially. The energy intensity of refined fossil fuels has meant their portability literally enabled aviation to become not just viable, but the dominant means of long distance passenger transport, consigning long distance intercontinental rail travel in the United States and Canada to leisure trips.

The economic impacts are palpable, and all of the rhetoric and hysteria from environmentalists about the evils of fossil fuels ignores what they have enabled in the standards of living for billions.  Goods, services, trade and travel are on the scales they are today because of this.

The push to slow down the effects of climate change has resulted in policies that are almost monomaniacally focused on cutting CO2 emissions at any cost. Sure, there are sound reasons to be encouraging a transition towards energy sources that create fewer emissions that contribute to climate change, but there is little point being concerned about climate change if thousands of people literally freeze to death in winter, or starve due to collapses in food production, or the inability of essential goods to be transported long distances. 

So when tyrannies control much of the energy that powers global economies, and the risks of actually going to war with them to stop their aggression are too high (due to the aggressor's possession of nuclear weapons), then cutting off access to that energy has a price, and you're paying it at the pump.

What the crisis in Ukraine has exposed is how utterly vapid and empty the likes of misanthropes like Extinction Rebellion and other environmental extremists are, because there is no easy path away from fossil fuels.  As wonderful as advances in solar and wind energy are, they still have some significant limitations.  Both require significant storage capacity to be sustainable and useful in their own rights, completely unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated electricity.  Moreover, for most transport, fossil fuels (or biofuel equivalents) have no cost effective or feasible rivals, yet, for aviation, shipping or heavy road freight transport, or indeed many industrial processes like steel production.

One question New Zealanders might ask is what position the country would be in regarding oil and gas supply if the Ardern Government hadn't stopped enabling new exploration of oil and gas in 2017.  Removing this ban today would have no effect, as it takes years to invest, explore and gain any results, but had it happened in 2017, then there might have been a contribution to global supply. The Ardern Government has deliberately decided to constrain supply of oil and gas, not on economic grounds, not even considering national security, but to virtue signal.

The Ardern Government advanced a radical approach to climate change policy, not just to make a contribution equivalent to NZ's largest trading partners, so NZ would be in-step with those it competes with, but to virtue signal.  To cut net emissions by 50% by 2030 is not going to make a measurable difference to climate change at all, but it is all about Ardern and Shaw looking good on the international stage.  

Yet the oil and gas exploration ban does absolutely nothing to contribute to that, at all.  

The wisdom of the US in enabling unconventional oil and gas exploration has disconnected it from being too concerned about oil and gas from Russia (and the Middle East).  

Germany too, with its Green Party Climate Change Minister advocating a natural gas national reserve and to keep coal fired power stations available for energy security, is learning the value of reliable supply. 

New Zealand, on the other hand...

New Zealand's foreign policy signals virtually no virtue

The war on Ukraine and more specifically the war on Ukrainian people is heart-breaking, revolting and has rightfully appalled most governments around the world. The response of many countries have been wide ranging sanctions. The Financial Times summarises many of them imposed by the US, UK, EU and other Western countries like Canada and Japan including:

• Travel bans and asset freezes for Russian and Belarus politicians and officials
• Bans and sanctions on banks, including prohibitions on trading and borrowing by financial institutions
• Bans on Russian companies raising finance and bans on trading with major Russian companies
  
• Restrictions on technology exports, including aerospace and telecommunications 

Australia has imposed its own series of autonomous sanctions, including banning exports of oil exploration technologies, prohibiting financial institutions from providing credit or loans to Russian financial institutions, military or petroleum companies. 

Even scrupulously neutral Switzerland has imposed asset freezes on certain Russian individuals. 

How about New Zealand? The Wall Street Journal has highlighted it for shame.

Well it has done the following: 

• a travel ban on Russian officials "involved with the invasion" (even though none could ever travel to New Zealand under current rules that prohibit entry to NZ for non-permanent residents/citizens without specific visas)
• Prohibit exports to Russian military and security forces
• Suspended bilateral foreign ministry consultations.

It's literally pathetic. Now the Government has since announced it will be looking to pass legislation to go further, but given NZ's foreign policy is awash with virtue signalling, this looks very much like very little virtue at all.  The constant declaring of what they might be thinking of doing is par for the course for this government led by someone who wants global acclaim.

Look at two of NZ's virtue signalling foreign policies:

• Anti-nuclear policy: This has achieved absolutely nothing to enhance the peace and security of NZ or anywhere else in the world. However, it is the height of virtue signalling against the US, UK and France.
• Climate change policy: NZ's contribution towards reducing climate change has infinitesimal impacts, but the Ardern Government wants to be "leading" global commitments to reduce climate change, regardless of the economic cost. It's a showcase designed to encourage others to go further, rather than to simply follow in concert with NZ's major trading partners, but in actual impacts it is almost "net zero".

Yet when a nuclear-powered sovereign state attacks another sovereign state, NZ is found wanting. Of course the Government rejected Gerry Brownlee's bill for multiple reasons.  Minter Ellison Rudd Watts gives various reasons for it being rejected.  

It concluded that "it is likely that the specific regime proposed would have achieved little more than political signalling (and some counter-productive signalling at that)". Yet that has been at the forefront of so much foreign policy to date.  The "counter-productive signalling" is being able to act outside multilateral organisations, but this is exactly what the problem is today. A Permanent Member of the UN Security Council is waging war, and multilateralism wont address this, as much as well-meaning NZ lawyers might think this is "counter-productive" they aren't likely to be victims of war waged by Russia, or indeed China. (Note the lawyers call Ukraine "the Ukraine", unfortunately). 

However the lawyers mainly opposed it because "if passed, the Bill would certainly have further complicated the regulatory compliance obligations of New Zealand exporters, importers and trade facilitators".  Do they seriously think Ministers would impose sanctions in some manner that doesn't take into account the impacts on those trading and investing in sanctioned countries? How is this remotely different to NZ having to impose sanctions mandated by UN Security Council Resolutions?

I'm not going to say Brownlee's Bill was perfect, but its timing deserved more attention. It certainly shouldn't have been rejected because moral equivocating Marxists like Teanau Tuiono think it might create "further risk of politicisation of sanctions rather than fairness and equity" (code for sanctions on regimes he quite likes). 

Now NZ sanctioning Russia would largely be symbolic, but it is also about plugging gaps in the global financial and trading system.  The New Zealand Dollar is apparently the tenth most traded currency in the world, so NZ does actually need to plug the risk that it will be used to subvert sanctions from other jurisdictions.  Fonterra has already announced it is suspending exports to Russia. 

Russia takes 0.49% of NZ's exports by value (27th place), slightly less than Egypt. Whereas about 0.97% of NZ's imports come from Russia (19th place), with NZ being a net importer from Russia. The main export is dairy products, the main import is oil products. 

There is no good reason to hesitate. If Switzerland... SWITZERLAND... which until recently refused to join the United Nations in order to remain neutral, can impose sanctions quickly, so can New Zealand.  

To say it can't do it quickly is of course a nonsense. The Ardern Government has demonstrated that when it sees urgency, it gets legislation drafted and passed under extraordinary urgency when it wants, and did so for Covid 19. It could get legislation drafted and passed in the coming week if it wanted to.

The difference is that the Ardern Government didn't plan to have to deal with actual war, war that shows the limits of the United Nations, war that was predicted for weeks in advance.  

It really does need to join the rest of the world, and quickly.

The purpose NATO exists for should be abundantly clear - the future beyond Ukraine is a new Cold War

During the Cold War, NATO was to the West what the Warsaw Pact was to the communist bloc. Both sides faced off at the Iron Curtain. So when the Cold War ended, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved (mostly because once the jackboot of the Red Army had been removed, most eastern European states were full of citizens that just wanted to be liberal democracies), the question was raised as to why should NATO still exist?

Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" was proclaimed, President Bush proclaimed a New World Order, after the UN Security Council endorsed collective action to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The new Russia was, in fact, a liberal democracy, had dismantled its centrally planned economy, and was now working with Western countries. Sure there was still tension and rivalry in the Middle East, with concerns over Iraq and Iran, the simmering Arab-Israeli dispute, and of course the Korean peninsula, but in Europe, the belief was that liberal democracy had won.

Except of course, it hadn't quite. 

The New World Order declared by Bush was no nefarious shadowy view of the international system, but one which would AT A BARE MINIMUM not tolerate one state taking the territory of another.

That is what the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait was about, and it is why Saddam Hussein's regime was not destroyed at the time. The New World Order was not about regime change, it was about protecting international borders from aggression.

Much happened after that. The war in the Balkans ultimately saw NATO action to deter Serbia from engaging in genocide in Kosovo, following the genocide in Bosnia and Croatia (not all from the Serbian side of course).  Hum.anitarian intervention became an addition to the New World Order as countries were confident that international cross-border war was a thing of the past

9/11 changed all that, although the attack and overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified as a response to the aggression of 9/11, the subsequent attack and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime was not. Overthrowing Saddam was a settling of old scores and an attempt to demonstrate Western military dominance against potential threats. What it did was show the West incapable of occupying and transforming a nation state without enormous loss of life, or in the case of Afghanistan, ultimately a lack of political will to pay the price in money and lives to institute government that was closer to the ideals of liberal democracies with Enlightenment values. This culminated in the weak withdrawal from Afghanistan last year

Yet Russia had already tested the limits of the New World Order a few years ago and found it wanting. Not only had Russia effectively annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia (which had started in the 1990s),  but the 2014 annexation of Crimea under the Obama Administration (after Obama famously ridiculed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election campaign for claiming Russia was a growing threat) showed the West was unwilling to enforce post Cold-War borders against direct aggression.

NATO expansion has been occurring, with all of the former Warsaw Pact nations now NATO members, and the three Baltic states, all of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR during WW2. The expansion of NATO to defend former Soviet republics was deferred, not least because of concern of provoking Russia.  Both Georgia and Ukraine have wanted NATO membership, and the results of denying it are now seen in the destruction of Ukrainian cities.

As much as the Western nations will crow about economic sanctions on Russia, and much global unity on condemning Russia, it has done nothing to stem the bombardment and the growing occupation of Ukraine. As much as it is significant that Germany has finally unhooked itself from equivocating on Russia, by stopping the Nordstream 2 pipeline, Russia knows its oil and gas supplies keep much of Europe from grinding to a halt. This is predominantly due to the virtue signalling policies of the EU in energy and the environment which have stopped Europe from pursuing domestic sources of fossil fuels as an alternative, in favour of trying to save the world. Unlike the US which wisely enabled fracking, and is no longer dependent on oil from the Middle East, Europe in transitioning from coal has become reliant more on Russian fossil fuels whilst it inches towards renewables. Even more disturbing, the inexplicable decision of Germany to abandon nuclear power as a bizarre reaction to the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany neither has earthquakes or a risk of tsunami) has further weakened European energy security. Russia, of course, funded and supported anti-fracking activists.  

In the coming weeks and months there is a likelihood Ukraine will fall to Russian tyranny, without a shot having been fired by Western liberal democracies in support of the principles they are meant to be defending.  For the first time since 1968, tyranny has advanced in Europe.

Disturbing as this is, what will be just as disturbing is what the Western response has to be. A return to the clarity that an attack on NATO means war with all of NATO, which includes the risk of nuclear war.  A rearming of European countries, which means a reprioritisation of public spending towards defence, at least matching the NATO target of 2% but realistically needing to go for 3% and above. Permitting expansion of NATO to any liberal democracy that meets the conditions for membership.

It goes beyond Europe though. In the Pacific, a reassertion of the defence of Japan and South Korea, but most importantly a clear assertion by the United States that it will not stand by if Taiwan is attacked by the PRC. It must become too risky and too dangerous for the world's two largest tyrannies, Russia and China, to go any further.  The single biggest risk now is that Russia and China perceive that there wouldn't be any pushback if they go further.

It's too late for Ukraine, we got here due to weak US Presidents, and by that I mean not only Biden, but also Trump and Obama. We can speculate endlessly about whether Putin would have risked attacking Ukraine under Trump or not, and the answer is far from clear.  About all that is clear is that Trump was unpredictable, and that unpredictability was probably a deterrent, but Trump was also a man whose positions on issues was not consistent.

All that can be done now is for a firm redline to be set, by Biden, by NATO and all of its allies, that the West is willing to go to war to defend the borders of liberal democracies.  It is frightening and plenty of people politically on the far-left and right will oppose it, but it also means that Western liberal democracies need to spend more on defence, and less on virtue signalling, "rebalancing/levelling up/building back better" and to strengthen their economies to be resilient against dependence on Russia and China. Allister Heath outlined it starkly in the Daily Telegraph here:

For the first time in more than 30 years, we face a truly existential threat. Our enemy is a hostile state armed with nuclear weapons, a large conventional army and led by an empire-building psychopath: the danger to the European powers is orders of magnitude greater than the very real risk posed after 9/11 by al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

This new conflict will almost certainly be long, complex and extremely expensive. It won’t be like fighting the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or lone wolf actors. It will require us to relearn strategies, tactics and virtues at odds with the hyper-emotional performative stupidity and instant gratification of the Twitter era. Our elites will need to reprogramme themselves psychologically, economically and militarily, read some history, become more serious and austere, and knuckle down for a lengthy fight.

The implications for Australia and New Zealand from that are going to be stark. The easy ride of China buying so much, and selling so much back is about to come to an end.

There is some hope, but as Heath wrote:

Yes, Russia is staggeringly weak, a decaying nation with a population much less than half that of the US, and a GDP far lower than that of New York state. But it has nuclear weapons and needs to be deterred and eventually defeated. We must also send a signal to China, a country that is immensely richer and more sophisticated than the Soviet Union ever was, that the West is serious once more. This is a new Cold War, and we must urgently contain the authoritarian powers at war with liberal democracy.

The international system is turning against freedom and liberal democracy

The last monumental change in the international system occurred in 1989-1991, with the end of the Cold War, driven by Mikhail Gorbachev's unwillingness to keep a jackboot on the throats of Soviet citizens and just as importantly, its satellite states, along with the US and the UK and their allies being willing to try to put international relations back on some sort of legal footing.  The Gulf War was a test of that, with the UN Security Council generating unprecedented international support for action to evict Iraq from its occupation of Kuwait.  It is difficult to underestimate the optimism of the time, with half of Europe freed from Marxist-Leninist dictatorships (including some of the most evil in history in Romania and Albania), the end of Cold War tensions between the former USSR and the USA, and even though China brutally suppressed dissent in Tiananmen Square, it seemed to accept a new world order based on rule of law.  Victory against Iraq at the time indicated a willingness to not tolerate territorial aggression.

So much has changed in 30 years. 

9/11 was critically important in refocusing Western attention on Islamist insurgency, but it paralleled change in Russia, as the relatively benign Boris Yeltsin was replaced with the altogether more sinister, ex. KGB official, Vladimir Putin. Russian liberal democracy has been wound back so much, it is little more than a fascist, organised crime syndicate running an authoritarian militarist dictatorship. China having become rich with capitalism under Marxist-Leninist rule, has seen the rise of Xi Jinping, who takes inspiration from Mao's era. Except now instead of being a gnat with a few nuclear weapons, China is the world's second largest economy, with businesses from Europe to North America and Japan all heavily invested in it. China is a major trading partner of many economies, and its requirement for local partners and investors has enabled it to steal intellectual property from some investors, and then copy what they do, at a lower price.

For much of the last 30 years Russia and China were content maintaining their regimes and growing richer. Russia on oil and gas (although this was severely dented for some years once fracking made the US in particular, capable of supplying its entire domestic demand), although little else. China on being a manufacturing hub. However, both have become bolder as Western liberal democracies have become weaker defenders of the international order.

Western liberal democracies have been damaged by 

1. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein: This demonstrated how utterly incapable Western democracies are in nation-building, and their lack of capacity and willingness to occupy and transform a defeated enemy. The blood and treasure lost in Iraq, and even the aftermath of the limited intervention to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, have not been seen as worthwhile in most liberal democracies.  This has caused most to want to withdraw militarily.
   
2. Weak Western commitment to the international system: President Obama was committed to a future of US pulling back from conflict, and this was followed by European powers that by and large took the same view.  When Russia invaded Crimea, the Western reaction was one of resignation.  When Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk shot down a Malaysian airliner, only the Netherlands and Australia demanded explanations so vocally. Obama's "red-line" over Syria using poison gas against its own population was backed up by little.  Trump for his bluster, has largely been uncommittal on anything. Biden is yet to be tested, but looks and sounds weak.
   
3. Western ideological self-hatred: The weak commitment has been backed by both right and leftwing apologists for Russia and China.  Ones on the right regard China as a great business opportunity that shouldn't be disturbed. They also see Russia as a "traditional Christian" state, that has "understandable" interests in neighbouring states. They downplay Putin's authoritarianism. Ones on the left are back in the Cold War, thinking it is "time" the West stopped dominating, after all, it's Western capitalism that they blame for most of the world's ills.

The international system is led by actors that have proven unwilling to deter or confront Russia from irredentist behaviour.  Russia currently occupies not just Crimea, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, it also effectively backs a rogue breakaway entity called Trans-Dniestr in Moldova, and is Belarus's biggest friend.  

Russia's narrative that if Ukraine joined NATO it would provoke it was complete nonsense, as it is clear that HAD Ukraine become a NATO member some years ago, the chances of an attack would have been more remote.  

For what it's worth, the international reaction to the attack on Russia has largely been uniform and positive. Widespread condemnation, and the emergence of sanctions and increasing military and economic aid and assistance.  Yet it still looks pathetic for Ukraine to not be subject to military support from powers that completely support it politically and ideologically. Russia's vile defamatory narrative that it is "de-Nazifying" Ukraine (against its Jewish President!!??!) is laughably absurd.

Indeed, the Russian ethno-nationalist narrative Putin is expounding is absolutely fascist.  It is blood-and-soil, historical revanchism, that blanks out the USSR's alliance with Nazism that backfired, and glorifies the Soviet defeat of the USSR.  See this Twitter thread for an excellent summary of that, and how Putin now uses revival of WW2 myths to bolster Russian nationalism.

Let's be crystal clear, Putin is a nationalist neo-fascist.

Of course the West cannot directly intervene against Russia, not least because the price could well be risking nuclear war. What it CAN do, is make it crystal clear that it will use all necessary means to defend NATO member states, which means including nuclear weapons. Russia is only deterred by the risk of overwhelming force.

There have thankfully been very few voices seeking to downplay Putin. However, in NZ Chris Trotter, who has valiantly stood in favour of freedom of speech has revived his tankie instincts over the "tragedy" that the USSR collapsed. The Green Party's Golriz Gharaman has OPPOSED New Zealand sanctioning Russia unilaterally, implicitly accepting that Russia vetoing UN sanctions is preferable, but also essentially claiming sanctions just hurt ordinary people so shouldn't proceed.

Of course then she is happy to share a platform with Roger Waters, who supported Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea and Noam Chomsky who actively supports the Russian imperialist narrative.

Maybe she is more concerned about Palestine and attacking Israel, than actual imperialist warmongering, which simply reflects the weak-willed vacuousness of hard-left anti-Western so-called "peace" activism.

By contrast the Australian Greens, have got a backbone:

 

as do, it appears, a lot of governments that we perhaps otherwise didn't think had it in them. Finland and Sweden actively discussing joining NATO. Germany finally capitulating to cancel Nordstream 2.   Then there is this magnificent speech from Kenya.

We can only hope that the brave people of Ukraine, finally having some support (except direct military assistance) against Putin, can hold out and Putin can be rolled back into some capitulation.  Putin wants ALL of Ukraine for himself, but he will likely have to resort to accepting a ceasefire in the Donbass, unless he is willing to unleash a fury of weaponry that may cause more Russians to turn against him.

Let us hope that this puts paid to the PRC's ambitions to attack Taiwan.  A firm resolve is needed.  Ukraine is a test of the international system, a test of the resolve of the USA, under a President who has looked weak from day one (with the withdrawal of Afghanistan having been such a mess), the UK and France, the EU and the community of liberal democracies

Does Nigel Farage love Vladimir Putin?

No.

However, it looks that way, and in politics that's almost all that matters.

He's made a blunder, in his venal hatred of the EU he's made it the scapegoat and the driving force for the revolution in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, he is wrong and hopefully he wont make the mistake again, as I write on my UK blog.

Crimea matters, for all sorts of reasons

I don't know what has appalled me more - Putin's cynical opportunistic land-grab of Crimea, the almost complete abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees for Ukraine by the UK and US, or the extent of leftwing and rightwing moral relativism about the whole thing.

I started by writing an article about how Crimea is what happens when isolationists are in charge.  However, the reaction of much of the public is not just the isolationism that has been bred by the left (the "the West is evil as as bad as anyone else" brigade) and the right ("we're safe, they aren't coming for us, just our friends, who we can ignore"), but the moral relativism attached to what is going on.

In this age of competing media, it is easy to turn on Kremlin propaganda in English from Russia Today, and for critics of the status quo on left and right to cynically dismiss reports from the plurality of Western media sources as propaganda, but it's naive and delusional.  What is going on in Ukraine is old-fashioned power politics, because Vladimir Putin has sniffed weakness from the West and knows it will do little - as long as Barack Obama is in power, David Cameron remains beholden to the appeasement loving Liberal Democrats and the Germans remain paralysed by their own history.

So let's first knock out some of the lazy assertions, promoted by Putin's regime: