It was so exciting. The Lithuanian authorities would go to Ukraine, heat up Maidan, first in the world share lethal weaponry with Ukrainian nationalists from Lvov. Those weapons would be used to kill Ukraine's Russians with no consequences (just yet) for us. What not to like here?
We in Lithuania do not know that our actions lead to inevitable backlash - reactions - sooner or later. May be, the reaction time arrived now:
"Economic globalization was supposed to make wars harder to start. What if the experience with Russia right now is demonstrating that globalization actually makes them harder to prevent?
For at least the past decade, a prevailing theory in international affairs has been that economic interdependence across the globe makes conflicts less likely. If everybody is tied together economically as never before, then everybody would suffer from large-scale conflict. Therefore, nobody would take that chance lightly.
But Russian leader Vladimir Putin may be turning that equation on its head by moving 100,000 troops to the border of Ukraine and threatening an invasion. Knowing that a move on Ukraine would set off ripple effects in the world economic village, principally by threatening the thin line of Russian energy on which Europe depends, Mr. Putin may be calculating that interdependence works to his advantage. Taking over Ukraine is so important that he's willing to pay the economic price; stopping him isn't so important to the West that it is willing to pay the price.
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal has reported that, while the U.S. is threatening harsh economic reprisals against Moscow for any move on Ukraine, it's reluctant to take steps to curb Russian energy exports, or to expel Russia from the dollar-denominated international finance system. Why? Because, in today's global energy market, such moves would risk raising energy prices for U.S. consumers while also hurting the economies of European allies.
The Biden administration has begun an intense week of diplomacy designed to head off a Russian move on Ukraine, so this test of wills may be approaching its climax. It can hardly be a coincidence that Mr. Putin has threatened Ukraine in the depths of winter, when Europe's need for Russian gas is highest, and public fears of lost access to that gas are greatest.
Nor is it just energy that gives Russia leverage. The head of Britain's armed forces warned Russia over the weekend against any attempt to sever underwater communications cables on which the world financial system is dependent.
These fears were certainly less acute during the Cold War, when the world had limited economic interaction with the Soviet Union. Globalization may have given Mr. Putin more of a stake in economic stability, but it has given him more leverage than his predecessors.
And if that's true in the case of a potential conflict with Russia, imagine what it would be like with China. The economic cost of a conflict over Chinese aggression would be truly catastrophic, precisely because the economic entanglement is so great. China's leaders certainly know this -- and may conclude that this cost is so high the rest of the world would blink at taking steps needed to stop, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
If control of Ukraine is so important to Russia, and control of Taiwan is so important to China, they may be more willing to pay the economic price to achieve their goals than the West is to stop them. And because they run authoritarian regimes willing to crush any internal unhappiness over economic ripple effects, they could conclude -- perhaps correctly -- that they can endure the economic pain more easily than can those trying to stop them.
In that sense, globalization may turn out to have an asymmetric effect, to the detriment of the U.S. and democracies in general.
Of course, the autocrats could miscalculate. A surge of unrest in Kazakhstan, a Russian ally, illustrates that economic dissatisfaction at home isn't always cost-free, even for dictators.
Still, Kazakhstan also could show how dictators can squelch economic dissatisfaction. Russia has rushed in troops to help Kazak leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev crush the unrest. Kazakhstan may end up illustrating the cost that even strongmen pay internally for economic pain -- but it could demonstrate how effective they are at limiting that cost.
Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, warned last week of a world in increasing disarray, and noted that Mr. Putin "has shown himself to be comfortable using military force, energy supplies, and cyberattacks to destabilize countries and governments he views as adversarial." Economic globalization, it turns out, isn't a cure for turmoil." [1]
Unfortunately, now we are talking not only about the Russians in Ukraine, but also about the fate of us, Lithuania, in Eastern Europe. Maybe we've already lost our games?
1. U.S. News --- CAPITAL JOURNAL: A Theory About Global Ties Is Tested
Seib, Gerald F. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 11 Jan 2022: A.4.
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