Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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Sickened to sea Nokia from Finland effectively using similar types of tracking tech to target Russian dissidents, almost akin to some of the worst tracking tech that the US provided to 3rd World Fascist Dictatorships from 1960-1980, where many political dissidents were tortured and murdered.

It's not historical. The surveillance system in China that enabled the mass internment of Uyghurs would not have been possible without microchips produced with technology from western-aligned countries, and AI software provided by US companies. To his credit, Trump enacted restrictions on such transfers, but not before a lot of damage was done.

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RUB surges to 85 on latest news.   It has almost erased the damage done to it due to SWIFT and Central Bank freezing of Russian reserves sanctions.  

Yes, and during the Soviet era, the Ruble was nominally as strong as the British Pound. Too bad that merely possessing foreign currency earned you a trip to the gulag.

In the real world, the Ruble is trading on the black market at about 120 to 150 to the dollar.

I believe in might makes right and right of conquest so I really do not care about this UN charter.

Uh huh, and what happens when the "mighty" side that seeks conquest is revealed to be a paper tiger that bankrupted itself for the next generation?

I do think if the deal involves Ukraine giving up the Donetsk area is a bad idea.  It is clearly bad for Ukraine but I believe it is also bad for Russia because it creates a revanchist Ukraine.  If Putin is determined to take over that area he is better off completely overrunning Eastern Ukraine and leaving a rump Catholic Western Ukraine that is too weak to be a future threat.  By taking over the Donetsk area but leaving Ukraine intact all that means is that decades in the future in a possible period of temporary Russian weakness Ukraine will join an anti-Russian alliance to get back Donetsk.

So the sunk cost fallacy. Putin can't afford to give up now, and he simply doesn't have the resources to take any more Ukrainian land, so he should...throw more young Russian men into the meat grinder? Or, maybe since a disproportionate number of Russian casualties had Muslim names, he can afford to throw them into the meat grinder.

Putin is much better off giving back Donetsk and trading that in for reversing de-Russification in Ukraine.  What Putin/Russia seems to be doing is very short-sighted in my view if they do grab Donetsk.

But what is there to prevent Ukraine from agreeing to reverse de-Russification in order to get back the Donbass, and then immediately going back on that promise five minutes after the last Russian soldier has left? That would only reveal his complete powerlessness. I dare say that would increase the chance of Swan Lake suddenly being shown on every Russian TV channel.

If I were him, what happens after I die, and when Russia falls into a period of weakness, is simply not my concern. My concern is to survive in the present. I would withdraw to the pre-February 24 boundaries and declare that I had accomplished my goal of protecting Russian-speakers in the Donbass, and then arrest any Russian ultra-nationalists who dare question me. The military will also be thoroughly reduced into little more than a few parade groups, with whatever funds I can afford to lavish on the military going to some special forces and a credible nuclear deterrent.

As with previous attempts on peace, I'll believe it when I see it.  Either way, the West will not lift most sanctions until Russia leaves Crimea and the Donbass.

Not just that. No foreign investor, whether from the western countries, or even China or India, will put more than a nominal amount into Russia as long as Putin is in power, even if all sanctions are lifted. Nationalizing foreign investment turned out to be yet another of Putin's tactics to look tough to the west, which ended up causing long-term damage to the Russian nation.

I can't decide whether it is more likely Putin is dissembling (when it comes to the details there is nothing really there regarding protecting Ukraine for another round), or it's real. Real means the Putin's fantasies, and fantasies about Russia recreating its empire, are dead.

Putin has shown himself to pivot the focus of his domestic propaganda as necessary. He was a pro-western liberal, before he became a religious conservative, before he became a neo-Soviet revanchist. He can simply pivot again to be an isolationist.

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I was thinking of Russia has a status in Ukraine similar to French in Canada.  I am fairly majoritarian so I totally get where Ukraine is coming from.

That comparison is in complete denial of the war's impact. If France tried to conquer Canada on the pretext of protecting French-speakers, and bombed cities like Montreal and Sherbrooke into rubble, then the Quebecois people would have given up their language overnight.

The Russian language itself has become associated with the enemy. Even places named after Russian historical figures such as Pushkin and Katherine are earmarked for renaming. Ukrainians who were speaking Russian before the war switched overnight to Ukrainian, to show their loyalty to the Ukrainian nation. Putin declared that he would protect Russian-speakers wherever they are, and the Russian-speaking cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol discovered what that "protection" actually meant. So, the only way for the people of these cities to protect themselves from that "protection" is to stop speaking Russian.

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Well China has always been one for dominating and subjugating its neighbors since time immemorial so supporting Russia, while monstrous, is consistent with its history, if not with its supposed opposition to intervening in the internal affairs of other countries.

And it’s not like Chinese students are going to be taught anything but propaganda, so they will doubtless continue to believe that Russia stronk and all that.

There was a strain of thought among Chinese nationalists in the early 20th century that, since the Qing Dynasty is the domain of the barbarian Manchus, all of its possessions should be free to go their own ways, with the new liberated China itself merely consisting of the core 18 provinces.

It's true that, for centuries, Chinese rulers never understood how to interact with foreign powers in a truly equal fashion: it was either push them from a position of strength, or temporarily accept that the other side was superior. But, obviously, those Chinese whose livelihoods depend on interacting with foreigners quickly learn this skill one way or another.

This picture shows a flag factory in China that figured out that, regardless of Beijing's official stance, it had business to make:
https://twitter.com/bqB9Ml6aFloKS2F/status/1507954062087577607

These propaganda lessons are a clear sign that Xi is nervous that Ukraine has become a lightning rod for disagreement within the Party. The WSJ reports that former Premier Zhu Rongji, who presided over the economic liberalizations of the 1990s, criticized Xi on several points. The gist of the article can be seen here:

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4476606

To be fair, such discontent has been bubbling under the surface throughout Xi's rule. But, the Party Congress this autumn means politics in Beijing is in high season, and by co-incidence, lockdowns and Ukraine are providing a channel to question his leadership.

Going back in history, one thing that rattled the CCP leadership to the core was Desert Storm. The militaries of Iraq and China shared much of the same equipment, doctrine, organization, and training. So, the speed and scale of the US victory horrified Beijing, and indicated that its military needed a complete revamp. Russia's ongoing failures in Ukraine aren't as comparable a disaster, but will certainly force a rethink among the CCP leadership. Xi - just like Putin - made revamping the military one of his priorities, and Putin just learned what he had to show for it. I wonder how much sleep Xi has lost in the past month.

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https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-03-28/Russia-sets-fixed-gold-price-as-it-restarts-official-bullion-purchases.html

Russia de facto pegs RUB to Gold. Very interesting. If indeed we are on the road to a possible de-dollarization in the far future there is a case for RUB to be a possible future reserve currency.  Russia is a large natural resource surplus economy with significant gold production and reserve which would make a good case for the RUB being a currency for people in the far future to hold to preserve value.   A similar case can be made for Australia's AUD they perhaps one day peg their currency to gold.

So the Russian state will be buying gold at a fixed rate that's lower than the prevailing market rate even according to the artificial exchange rate.

Okay, is the Russian state freely selling gold at that rate? If not, it's not a market, and no one is fooled.

https://news.writecaliber.com/financial-services-gulf-russia-proposes-swift-alternative-to-india-for-ruble-payments/

"Russia proposes SWIFT alternative to India for Ruble payments"

Russia wants to use its SWIFT alternative, SPFS, for India to pay for Russian oil which will be in INR using CNY as the reference currency.  Too bad Russia cannot work PRC's credit card alternative UnionPay into this deal or else this deal pretty has all of Russia's counter-sanctions moves into one.

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-not-considering-buying-crude-russia-rupees-2022-03-28/

India is denying any suggestion that it will use Rupees to import Russian crude.

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LOL Russia has gotten quite petty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/03/31/russia-demands-wikipedia-take-down-information-about-ukraine-war/?sh=48a0567866f2

Translation: they're preparing to block it.

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

A bill has been introduced in the Ukrainian parliament to ban religious groups headquartered in nations that are deemed aggressors. That refers to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
https://risu.ua/en/a-bill-banning-the-moscow-patriarchate-in-ukraine-sent-to-the-parliamentary-committee-for-consideration_n127799

A Jesuit Catholic priest who worked in Ukraine says that, due to church attendance being far higher in Ukraine than in Russia, he believes that almost half (!!) of practicing members of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine, and hence the church schism between Moscow and Kyiv has been both symbolically and materially crippling.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/03/30/ukraine-putin-kirill-242725

Father Nazar said he learned “from authoritative sources” that 46 percent of the Russian Orthodox Church is in Ukraine. Moreover, “whereas Ukrainians go to church in big numbers, in Moscow—among those who say they are Orthodox—only 2 percent go to church on Sunday, and this is partly due to a certain discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church that goes back to [the time of] Dostoyevsky.”

He explained that “the Russian Orthodox Church has always been too aligned with the authorities in Russia, whether it was the czars or those in power during the Soviet Union period and now with Putin.” He said, “It’s a church that runs services, but has no prophetic power because it is under pressure to be absolutely aligned with the state.” Moreover, “the Russian Orthodox Church gets its money from the state, not from the people, and so it cannot take risks, nor can it be a prophetic church.”

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As an Atheist American, I do not believe in the banning of freedom of religion in ANY country.

There are shades of what happened to the Church of England during the Revolutionary War.

Still as an Atheist American, I do not understand the distinctions between the various strains of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Still one must certainly wonder to what extent this is a direct result of Glasnost era reforms, which effectively allowed a counter-weight to the "Atheist State".

It is also clear that the ROC claims a distinct supremacist style position over other Eastern Orthodox Christians....


Personally more of a "ni dieux ni maitres" scene, but totally grok on what the Ukrainians are pissed off.

In a very simplified nutshell, the Eastern Orthodox Church didn't evolve into a single, centralized hierarchy like the Catholic Church. It has an Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, who's morally seen as the leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, but who doesn't lead a central institution like the Pope in Rome. As more Eastern Orthodox nations emerged, the EP recognized the autocephaly of their national churches, which institutionalized a link between the Orthodox Church and the national identity. Also, because the official title of the Patriarch of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', this implies that the ROC claims jurisdiction over all the Rus' lands, including Belarus and Ukraine. On a side note, that's also why the ROC especially despises the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church: because the circumstances in which it emerged were especially outrageous.

Hence, when Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople recognized the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, he effectively declared Ukraine to be entirely separate from Russia, as if it were Romania or Greece. The fact that the Patriarch of all Rus' no longer had jurisdiction over Kiev, the ancestral heartland of the Rus' civilization, was even more painful. That Eastern Orthodoxy was organized on explicitly national lines, unfortunately, makes it much easier to blur the line between religion and nationalism. Mind you, the churches of other denominations weren't entirely innocent: the Catholic hierarchy wedded itself to many right-wing dictatorships, but the fact that they answer to a corporate HQ in Rome prevented them from becoming entirely mouthpieces of el caudillo, especially after the Vatican itself liberalized its tone in the 1960s.

It's impossible to answer your comment about the Glasnost reforms, in this sense. The notion that some people are superior to others is heretical to the most elementary of Christian teachings, but that hasn't prevented Christians who sought to climb power structures from claiming otherwise. You don't need to be a believer in the Orthodox Church to be a Russian nationalist chauvinist. The Soviet Union itself imposed its culture throughout its empire. Putin himself didn't talk much about religion until he found it politically convenient. He justified the annexation of the Crimea by claiming that it's as sacred to the Russian people as Jerusalem is to the Jews - enough blasphemy to make Jesus on the cross smack his face with his bloodied palm, but convenient for Vladimirovich.

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Taiwan's foreign minister has personally become a Twitter troll against the Moscow-Beijing bromance.

https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1508603212500127744

https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1509169520644345857

My gut feeling from the start was that China will do everything to help Russia short of actually helping Russia, and so far that's holding. Lots of flowery language with this visit, but no concrete announcements were made.

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Ukraine is denying they were responsible for the helicopter attack.

https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1509945260499255308

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https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1510395999302389764

Just when mud season is in full swing. Either Putin knows his military can't take more than another month of fighting and he's high on copium; or he's really, really dumb.

Also, he seems to be under the impression that damaged units can be instantly healed by throwing gold at them, like in Civ. It doesn't work that way.

I don’t see how Zelensky can agree to any peace treaty with Russia that results in giving up land or Putin and his commanders being placed on trial for crimes against humanity

I think you mean not placed on trial?

Anyway, as much as we'd like to hope the war ends with a coup in the Kremlin, the reality is that such a coup would have to be led by someone more ruthless than Putin, meaning it's almost impossible he wouldn't also be implicated in war crimes. I think the best reasonable scenario would be if Russia was defeated like Iraq in Desert Storm, and Putin became like Saddam post-1991. Russia would be completely pushed out of Ukraine and other post-Soviet conflict zones, with its military and economy in ruins; but the leader is ever more ruthless and secure in power, in large part because no one really wants to see him fall. And, since Saddam only fell because of a US invasion, I wouldn't bet on any Russians ever facing war crime trials.

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I’m sure the Czechs require no lectures in betrayal from the Russians; 1968 is well within living  memory.

I think the Russian diplomats are more concerned about pleasing their own big boss in order to not get poisoned or defenestrated, rather than convincing any foreign opinions. That's usually the best explanation for when diplomats representing dictatorships seemingly go berserk.

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More genocidal talk. Setting up a justification for crimes which will inevitably be revealed.
https://twitter.com/francska1/status/1510898134481788930

Zelensky and the west need to make it a non-negotiable precondition for any talks, that Russia's state media must immediately stop inciting genocide and threatening other countries. It would be immediately deliverable, and would be a tangible sign of compromise.

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Russia needs to be denazified.

A historical irony is that the Allies did a half-hearted job denazifying Germany. They (both the west and the Soviets) realized they needed people to run their parts of Germany, so they quietly installed many senior Nazis in positions of power in the new post-war governments. West Germany only had its cultural reckoning in 1968, but East Germany never quite did. Denazifying would have to be done by the nation's own citizens.

If there's any hope, it's the younger generation of Russians, whom polls indicate have a similar mindset with same-generation Europeans than older generation Russians. Putin's propagandists know that they've lost the youth.

The lawless West? Based on what? There have been two basic principles in the system of international law set up after WWII: don’t annex other countries by force and don’t commit genocide. The latter hasn’t always been adhered to but the former was about the only law actually adhered to…well, except for Russia. They’re the ones engaging in might makes right. Drawing a moral equivalence between Russia and the West…are you fucking serious?! What bullshit is this? Goddamn, do you tankies keep spawning from a basement somewhere? I - and others - have already had this discussion with the Brazilian and New Jerseyite fascists. Your position of equivalence sucked then and sucks now, except you suck even harder because the evidence keeps pouring in of how utterly much you suck. Have you noticed the emerging genocidal actions of Russia? Remember this? Or this? Or all the other atrocities posted in this thread? Read some human rights reports before trying to draw false equivalences.

To be fair, the complaint from many in the developing world that the west cared far more about Ukraine than about many other wars in the Middle East or Africa isn't without merit. Many Arabs complained that Putin committed the same war crimes in Syria, but these barely received any attention in the west. Worse still, western countries are selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is committing obscenities in Yemen which are just as bad as in Ukraine, and has been doing so for seven years. The only mitigating factor against western complicity is that the Saudi army has proven to be even more corrupt and incompetent than the Russian army.

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It's been almost two weeks since the last KIA of a Russian general. Back in early March, Russia was losing a general every three or four days.

I wonder what changes were made since then. Part of me was even thinking that Putin was intentionally sending generals into harm's way for coup-proofing.

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Serbia?!

They probably realized that since the motion was going to pass, they might as well vote with the winning side. Voting no would have exposed them to real consequences without materially helping Russia.

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Guys guys, obviously genocide is bad, but it's important that we remain vigilant in case Ukraine hypothetically does something I imagined in my head that would make them worse than Russia. I am a very smart moderate.

Moderate? The people claiming Ukrainian atrocities are at the very tips of the horseshoe and getting closer and closer to holding hands.

Wait what ? Its one thing to say what Russia is doing is worse. It is true and Russia is clearly the aggressor and has done much more evil than Ukrainian soldiers.  However Ukraine executing captured POWs is still an atrocity people saying they exist is not crazy. IMO the clear solution is to continue giving lend lease but we should restrict it such that any cancelation is only contigent on Ukraine cooperating with prosecution of any war crimes their soldiers committed.

I imagine the EU have quietly told the Ukrainians that a non-negotiable condition of accession is that Ukrainian troops who committed war crimes against Russian POWs must be subject to a harsh court-martial, as well.

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Serbia?!

They probably realized that since the motion was going to pass, they might as well vote with the winning side. Voting no would have exposed them to real consequences without materially helping Russia.

Myanmar is what surprised me.

Myanmar's representative is loyal to the former government of Aung Saan Suu Kyi, and not the military junta. The Afghan representative is also loyal to the former government, and not the Taliban.

Venezuela didn't vote because its voting rights were suspended due to non-payment of dues.

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Based Spanish ship captain!

https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1511985384623910917

The accent seems to be Slavic from Central Europe, not Spain. It's totally understandable.

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I will also say an unpopular opinion, but I am sure of it: by starting the war against Ukraine, Russia has doomed itself to disintegration. The disintegration of Russia is now inevitable, regardless of the outcome of the war here. In 5-10 years, there will be many smaller states on the map instead of Russia, so we need to prepare for this.

It's great to see you alive and well!

I've had a thought about Russia's future, and want to hear what you think:

Suppose say that Ukraine scores a decisive victory on the battlefield: Russians are routed in the Donbass and Kherson, and Putin has no choice other than to retreat to pre-2014 borders (he doesn't use nukes because NATO actually warned him they would obliterate what remains of his troops). Russia is unable to prevent Ukraine from quickly joining the EU or NATO. Ukraine becomes a nuclear latent power akin to Japan.

Because this betrayal is so blatant to those Russians who had been waving Z flags, Putin abruptly pivots on his propaganda apparatus. Suddenly, mysterious documents appearing on state TV claim that NATO had been planning to use Ukraine as a base to invade Russia. They then claim that Russia conducted a pre-emptive strike to completely degrade Ukraine and NATO's ability to invade Russia; and that while Russia lost thousands of troops, it was a small price to pay to protect the Russian homeland. The FSB are ordered to arrest anyone who merely posts the word "betrayal" on VKontakte.

Putin also decides to massively slash the size and scope of the Russian military, both because he can't afford to maintain a large army, and to further reduce the risk of a coup. The Russian military is reduced to just three functions: 1) parades in Red Square 2) a few elite Spetsnaz HQ'd far from Moscow 3) a few hundred actually useable nukes. He also massively ramps up the FSB, turning Russia into a totalitarian police state. The west relaxes a few sanctions, but Russia's economy remains a complete basketcase.

This Russia is little more than a giant North Korea; but Putin both is too afraid of, and can't afford to, start any more wars. Western leaders continue to call Putin a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague, but quietly prefer him to remain in the Kremlin.

My question to you is, would you, as a Ukrainian citizen, accept that scenario? How would Ukrainian society react to that development? And, how plausible do you think that is?

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After the Soviet collapse, Russia lost half of it's population. It was a catastrophic loss for Russia to lose the breadbasket of Ukraine as well as the rest of the former USSR.

Without Ukraine, Russia is a great power, with Ukraine it is a superpower. Putin needs Ukraine to bring back the Russian empire.

It gets worse. A big chunk of the Soviet military-industrial complex was located in Soviet Ukraine, especially ships and engines. Post-USSR, Russia was able to continue using these now Ukrainian resources as long as Russo-Ukraine relations were strong.

Post-2014, these relationships were severed, and Russia has since struggled to cope with these losses. Its only aircraft carrier is now a burnt-out hulk with no timeline for repairs, and it now has to source components for the engines of its fighter jets from China. That was supposed to have been a red flag (pun intended) that the Russian army wasn't as glorious and mighty as its predecessor, but not enough people noticed.

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A dark joke on Chinese social media is that Putin has decided to retaliate for the sinking of the Moscow, by ordering the sinking of a warship named the Kyiv.

The Soviets had a carrier named the Kiev, which was retired and now has a new life as a tourist attraction off China's northern coast.

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Assuming Ukraine emerges as a sovereign and democratic state, it will be impossible for it not to acquire Japan-style nuclear threshold status - no nukes officially, but the ability to build a sizeable arsenal if the government gives an order within a few weeks. And once that happens, it will be impossible to convince Iran not to build nukes. Non- proliferation will be all but dead.

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Does Ukrainian Armed Forces have the capability of striking that deep into Russia? Or is the consensus that this was sabotage?

Afaik, they don't. But of course there is the possibility that they somehow have gained that capability (from NATO presumably).

Methinks the manage of the missile research institute had pocketed lots of government funding, and he was tipped off that Putin was coming for him, so he burned down the building to destroy the evidence.

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One other thought I had about the current price of RUB is that RUB-USD rate is actually deceptive since the USD itself has strengthened a lot last couple of months due to clear signs that the US Fed will raise interest rates aggressively this year.   If you look at RUB-JPY cross rate the RUB-JPY rate has surged is about the same as it was in 2018.  To be fair that is the result of Russia raising its short-term rates to 18% which clearly has hammered the economy in terms of removing liquidity from the economy.  But clearly, on this narrow metric, Biden's plans to reduce RUB to "rubble" has for now failed.

Dude, the Ruble isn't even a convertible currency right now. The Russian central bank banned sales of forex to Russian citizens last month. This means the official RUB rate is artificial. Just like in the Soviet times, the ruble is actually trading at a huge discount on the black market. So yes, the official RUB rate is indeed deceptive, but not in the way you imply.

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Europe accepting to pay for Russian gas in roubles? Boris Johnson saying Russia could win the war? German intellectuals writing open letters suggesting Ukraine should surrender? But I thought Europe was united for Ukraine? lol

1) We'll have to see for how long that the EU is willing to continue importing Russian oil and gas. The Germans don't care that the gas they use comes from Russia - just that it comes from somewhere. They're even willing to import more from countries like Algeria, Qatar, and Angola, which aren't renowned for their human rights. That's what makes Russia so vulnerable at this point: most of its exports are commodities.

2) Of course, Boris Johnson is saying that Russia could win this war, because he can't allow complacency to set in.

3) The German intellectuals claiming that Ukraine should surrender are old and increasingly marginalized figures of the 68 generation. They, at best, represent an idealist faction within the SPD. They don't even represent German industrialists who might want to resume business with Russia. Astonishingly, the German party that's the most hawkish on Russia is...the Green Party.

And people who called out the European hypocrisy (from both sides, from the ones asking them to do more to help and the people against the sanctions on Russia) were criticized for pointing the elephant on the room.

The economy vs national security debate is the key to understand the start of this new global order. Easy to push for intense structural de-globalization in rhetoric only but not really do it when you know you’re among the places which most rely on the economic benefits of said globalization and would be among the more affected places if a reversal trend were to start.

That explains the positions of places like Germany who want the war to end for a quick return for business as usual logic, one friendly to their wallets. That’s not going to happen and they will eventually have to be honest about what they care more about: Globalization or Ukraine.

I think this is a not entirely accurate narrative. Even if Putin magically threw his hands up and said "OK fine the west wins, we're entirely leaving Ukraine", there will not be a return to business as usual. At best, foreign investors will view Russia like they view Argentina or Venezuela. At best. And the longer this situation drags on, the less the potential value of Russia to even the greediest industrialist.

Elsewhere, you see that governments are willing to sacrifice short-term economic interests for long-term political agendas. Trump's trade and economic war against China was his only policy that enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington - despite the billions it cost many US companies. Biden continued Trump's policy with gusto, and was more effective in rallying other first-world economies in joining the policy which Trump started. And that is far more consequential than the EU importing Russian oil and gas.

More likely, it will be globalization-but-on-our-terms. European governments will definitely encourage their companies to set up low-cost manufacturing in Ukraine when peace returns, probably even encouraging them to leave China for that purpose. I can see a future US government actively encouraging its companies to move their low-cost manufacturing to Latin America for a similar purpose (it's already happening - the new NAFTA triggered a boom in industrial real estate in northern Mexico). Geopolitically unfriendly countries like China and Russia would be deliberately frozen out of the full benefits of globalization, and their elites are told they will only enjoy these if they undertake domestic political liberalization.

Of course, that policy will be inconsistently applied and is politically manipulative. But, such is politics.