Month: February 2022

The asymmetries of Putin vs the West (or, why The Economist keeps looking stupid)

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It has been some time since this blog has taken its title at face value and looked at some of the large scale asymmetries at work in the world around us. The Ukraine conflict, however, presents just such a chance. Plenty has been written on the subject now by armchair experts in Eastern European strategy, many of whom no doubt only recently become epidemiology experts too. I offer a few simple thoughts about the asymmetric nature of the game Putin is playing, and in every case I start with the panacean truisms one finds in the media.

“Russian GDP is not even as big as South Korea, it is overreaching itself!”

The globalist response to almost any conflict has been to look to economic indicators – at least, the ones we are familiar with – as a measure of how powerful a country is or can be. I will give such commentators the benefit of the doubt that in most cases, they are aware there is some nuance and that localised imbalances can affect outcomes; but still, by and large, they will believe that historical determinism tells us that a country’s GDP will indicate the way the winds are blowing.

What Putin is exposing, however, is that for Russia (and China, amongst others), expenditure in materiel capital has to be matched with the commitment to expend human capital. On a GDP basis, many others will be more powerful than Russia; but judged on the basis of its hard resources multiplied by the factor with which it is willing to use them, Russia’s position on the world stage is not one of punching “above its weight”; it is very much a significant player (which, let’s be honest, is exactly how it is treated within the world of realpolitik). This is a case of asymmetric capital deployment.

The Western response in offering the Ukraine arms and supplies is a case in point: it costs the West nothing to do this. Indeed, given the realities of the military-industrial complex, offering military equipment which is in turn paid for through loose monetary policy actually helps the West. The problem is, it does not do much to help the Ukraine. Putin knows that no Western government at this stage is willing to lose the life of a single soldier in defence of Kiev; China knows likewise about Taiwan. And they are able to gamble that even with the best of wills in armament support, if the West has no boots on the ground, its commitment will be as fickle as the next budget discussion in Cabinet. Only blood counts.

So whilst it is absolutely true that Russia is not rich enough to match much of the West, it really does not matter because that is not the game being played. I suspect not a single Ukrainian soldier coming under a rocket attack is thinking to himself, “well the joke is on you, you’re overreaching your GDP base”. Unless the West changes its tune on how to respond, the Russian bear is not going to be paying too much attention. Instead, as one of my friends pointed out, “there is no significant military force standing between Russia and Paris today, a situation we have not faced for generations”. Another added, “but there is a lot of GDP standing in the way”.

“Russia is on the decline anyway, in ten years time this will be seen as a massive mistake!”

Again, this is very possibly true. After all, the big difference between the Russian threat and the Chinese threat is that it seems difficult to imagine Russia being more important in ten years time than today. Again however, I suspect this is cold comfort to the dying Ukrainian civilian, who is most probably not shouting to the incoming tanks “well you’re on the wrong side of history!”. As Keynes says, in the long run, we’re all dead.

The fact is that in this kind of game, a grenade in the hand is worth two on the production line. Most incidents like the Ukraine are not played out over the kinds of timeframe that the Cold War was; once an aggressor gets its way, it can be almost impossible to dig them out again other than at enormous costs which, as described above, people are unwilling to pay. Yet the fact is that Russia is doing this today, not years down the line when history has come to bite it. This is a case of asymmetric timing.

All powers are likely to rise and fall cyclically. Russia doubtless is on a down cycle already – but so what? History is not decided by trajectories (much as historical determinists and progressivists would love to believe), and still less are real objectives today affected by those long term trends. A power willing to punch today can easily and consistently outcompete the larger power waiting for things to fall into the natural order of things. Obama’s pushing of this wording is perhaps his most pernicious legacy as a clarion call to inaction.

“The whole world is watching this and will be judging Russia!”

Whilst the first two popular claims may well hold true, even if they are irrelevant, this last one is questionable due to one last great asymmetry, which constitutes the eternal dilemma of the policeman. The West is of course judging Putin – for now. Sanctions will come in. There is discussion of banning Russia from the SWIFT payment system for instance, as well as the removal of this season’s Champions’ League final from St Petersburg (Russia’s involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest however, has been subject to confusion).

The problem though, is precisely that the whole world is watching this – through the 24 hour news cycle, through social media, through memes. Yet the policeman’s dilemma is, why do I prioritise this over anything else? And with the fragmentation of Western attention, through so many channels, the cohesion of Western attention is less than in generations past, even as the volume of that attention is more. This is asymmetric focus.

The Russians know that Western observers struggle with creating a hierarchy of what is supposed to be important. Modern media has dampened our sense of proportionality, meaning that there is a perception of crying wolf. How much better or worse is Biden’s performance over the Ukraine, compared to the retreat from Kabul for instance? Or Obama’s red lines in Syria? Or his response to the last time Russia invaded the Ukraine? In the heat of the moment, everyone is entitled (as many are) to believe this is the most important issue in the world today; yet that same raw sensation will also see it be less to tomorrow. Maybe another invasion, maybe another form of Covid, maybe just forest fires will do the trick. Our lack of media curation has brought us to this.

I would additionally add that, in all of human history, sanctions have only ever to my knowledge worked in one example: South Africa. In this case, it worked because the target society of the sanctions (white South Africans) looked up to and respected those sanctioning them – they cared. Not the case with Russia, or with China. Probably not even the case with India. The corollary is that asymmetric focus is only solved when the matter is close to home – culturally, ethnically. Sweden, for instance, is not a member of NATO, but will still be able to count on American and European physical support in the event of a Russian invasion in a way the Baltic states might struggle with. Let’s be honest, because they’re white. This is the only thing which cuts through the ADHD of modern life. Are the Ukrainians really white enough and middle class enough for people to sustain their care? We will find out.

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If this sounds cynical, that is because it is. Asymmetries unlock many of the answers where there is more heat than light and war has been so unknown for so long. As long as Putin is playing a different game, the constant refrains about meaningless measures will remain rhetoric whilst real people are suffering. Grasping these asymmetries can lead to small but very effective changes in policy, and consequently enormously different outcomes. Given that the US purported to know about the coming invasion so long ago, a single battalion of American soldiers, under the guise of ordinary joint training exercises, would have made Putin pause for thought.

One must always ask oneself, “what would Putin do?“.

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PS – where now those anti-nuclear deterrent voices?

The Five Blogs of Christmas V – How the Empire was built

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My muse has given me leeway until the end of January to complete “Christmas”, giving me just enough time to examine the bigger picture

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Between 1781, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown marking the end of the First Empire, to 1942 when Percival surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore and effectively marked the end of the Third Empire, Britain did pretty well. By and large there was not a single concession in between those two dates – with British phlegm being marked by a few remarkable victories interspersed with some even more glorious catastrophes, such as the Retreat from Kabul; the Charge of the Light Brigade; the Sieges of Cawnpore and Khartoum; Isandlwana; and the Somme. The noble, defiant ignorance of the lower classes characterised Empire and was the basis on which it was built.

Since that time, we have had sailors like Arthur Batchelor blubbing away “when the Iranians, who called him Mr Bean, took away his iPod.” We have had a second withdrawal from Kabul where pets were being prioritized over people. Foreign policy has been of a somewhat reduced nature, and with that comes the question: have the British changed? Are we now a weaker nation, no longer capable of seizing the moment and battling for a greater cause?

I say, no. And I think we can see exactly where Britain remains as strong as she ever was. Here I examine the keystones of the imperial character, and how they still manifest themselves.

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Defiance

At the Battle of Jellalabad in 1842, Sir Robert Sale organised the Somerset Light Infantry to hold off thousands of Afghan jezails (after the inglorious / glorious massacre of British forces to the last man at Jugdulluk) for five months. Not only did these men of Taunton refuse to concede, but went on to capture 300 sheep from their assailants for provisioning.

Today this obstinacy and refusal to lie down continues, as shown by these courageous characters, who dressed as traffic cones for a stag do, blocking a local road and finally having to be arrested by the police:

Competitivity

Such was his desire to serve his country, Captain Scott and his four companions famously died in 1912, frozen to death in their vain attempt to be first to reach the South Pole. Yet this was a theme which had centuries of tradition for Britain, particularly in its rivalry with France. The imperial race that took us to the Americas and later the colonisation of Africa before they could, created much of the land holdings which allowed for the idea that Britain had an empire “on which the sun never set”.

And who are the heirs to Captain Scott? Step forward these men:

Cunning

The Great Game raged between Britain and Russia over the Northwest Frontier region over much of the 19th century. A war that never quite was, Britain strove to counter and undermine the Russian ambitions in the East at every turn, leaving no stone unturned to do so including setting up trade routes and client states. Likewise, when Britain wanted a war with Spain or France, she relied on privateers and pirates to harass her rivals until a war was inevitable – perhaps none more so than the provocations that led to the Second Anglo-Dutch War, where the Royal Africa Company was established to seize Dutch ships and outposts along West African coast.

This guile remains in the blood of the British, as shown by Surrey farmer Robert Fidler, who for four years between 2001-2005 fought the tyranny of the Planning Permission board of Reigate, by hiding an enormous folie de grandeur behind haystacks. The local council was not aware of this military build-up until the it was revealed with a flourish:

(Note: Fidler ultimately lost the case and had to tear down the house in 2016, but it was the effort that counted)

Opportunism

Many wrongly see the height of the British Empire as that conveyed through the formal life of Late Victoriana: reviews at Spithead, Great Exhibitions, the Delhi Durbar. Yet as I have noted before, the real peak of Empire was a century or more earlier, with James Wolfe’s victory at Quebec in 1759, and Robert Clive’s victory over local warlords at Plassey two years earlier. Throughout this period, the British displayed unparalleled buccaneering spirit, just as they had in battling the French in the pirate wars. Britain stumbled into her Empire accidentally, on the whole, but she never missed a chance to assert herself at the expense of others.

This remains perhaps Britain’s greatest trait. When a container ship sank off Devon in 2007 – before the financial crisis when household balance sheets were still bloated by overvaluation and there was no desperation in the air – the reaction of the Great British Public was to scavenge as much as possible before anyone could catch them.

This was magnified a few years later, when rioters in London turned out to be just as keen to loot from JD Sports as they were for social justice.

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And what of the French?

Our cousins across the Channel had a slightly different imperial experience. For a start, due to losing key engagements such as the Battle of the Saintes, France was largely left with bin-ends of empire such as the bone-dry sub-sahara. In Indochine, their most enduring contribution to civilization was the forcing of Vietnamese to eat baguettes and pate.

But they too were famed, whilst the contest lasted, for a sort of cunning. In the Americas for instance, the French were willing constantly to get into bed with local tribes in order to align short term interests against competitors such as British or Dutch. This came to a head in the French & Indian War (the Seven Years’ War) where they used the Delawares and Shawnees against the British colonists. However, whereas in the British this was a noble astucity, a dignified shrewdness of mind, in the French this can only be seen as double-faced artifice, the constant scheming of a younger brother who can never quite get what he wants.

Nowadays, French ingenuity is demonstrated in such activities as getting a free ride in defence spending through NATO, hijacking the European Union for their own ends, and this:

So I suppose we are all back to where we started …