War And Peace
The US realises that Ukraine is losing. China stages a dress rehearsal for war. A very bad man dies.
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Monday May 20th
In today’s obituaries of Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi the word ‘hardliner’ often appears in the first sentence. That must count as a euphemism - a mild word used because the truth is too awful to print.
This correspondent has often quoted Al Jazeera, given its extensive coverage of the Ukraine war. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take more than a cursory reading of its Middle Eastern coverage to appreciate how far from a balanced, neutral, news organisation it is. ‘Heavyweight’ is its preferred term for Raisi and ‘rigged’ is a word not used when telling the story about his election, at the second attempt, to the Presidency in 2017. A brief mention is made of the killings of political prisoners in 1988, ordered by Raisi and three others, but no details are given of the scale of the murders or the accompanying torture and all-round horror.
A senior official in the then-Iranian government, a deputy of Ayatollah Khomeini, put the number killed at between 2,800 and 3,800. Others say it was nearer 30,000. Batches of six prisoners were carried to their places of execution by fork-lift trucks and then hanged from cranes.
Raisi was a Holocaust denier, praised the October 7th Hamas attacks, supported and supplied arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine and held the view that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the creation of a Palestinian state ‘from the river to the sea.’ Last December he cancelled a scheduled a trip to Geneva for fear of arrest under international laws related to those 1988 murders. He never tried to hide his part in those killings, stating that he should be ‘honoured and esteemed’ for his role. An advocate of total sharia law, Raisi described amputations of thieves hands as part of Iranian ‘honours’.
Overnight, social media carried unverified clips of firework celebrations in various Iranian towns and villages following the news of Raisi’s death.
Tuesday May 21st
Chechen and Russian forces are gathering in the border area between Kursk Oblast (Russian) and Suny Oblast (Ukrainian). The Institute for the Study of War says that a group of around 10,000 troops are positioned north west of Kharkiv city and do not, yet, look like an organised, cohesive, force that represents any kind of strategic threat. That said, there are enough of them to pull away defenders from other parts of the front line, areas that that are already short of both munitions and men.
Ukraine has a big problem with border areas. Russian aircraft operating just inside their own country are essentially flying in safe space. They have adapted their weaponry such that they can now release so-called glide bombs that hit Ukrainian targets with devastating effects. Without ever entering Ukrainian airspace. The Americans continue to deny Ukraine the ability to attack those Russian aircraft (and their bases) with US-made missiles. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated yesterday that the White House is unwilling to allow Ukraine to strike at Russian territory with anything other than Ukrainian made weapons.
It’s not just about glide bombs. ‘Sanctuary’ areas just inside Russia allows the Kremlin to assemble, with impunity, forces just about anywhere, keeping the Ukrainians guessing about where the next attacks will come from. That latest incursion into the Suny region is the most recent example.
In an under-reported break with American doctrine, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron publicly stated (sort of) earlier this month that Ukraine is free to hit whatever targets it likes with British-supplied weapons.Although Cameron’s words did contain hints of (deliberate?) ambiguity, they were interpreted by some as giving the green light for use of the UK’s Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Russia. At the very least, that’s how Moscow interpreted Cameron’s remarks.
This kind of creeping escalation has been in evidence since the war started. Countries that once drew the line at soldiers helmets now send missiles. Cameron is probably testing Russia’s reaction and, assuming there is, as usual, none (apart from harsh Kremlin rhetoric) expect other countries to follow Britain’s lead.
Wednesday May 22nd
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is speaking today in Killarney at a conference where Powerscourt is organising the media logistics. Her speech contains much that is worth quoting. There is a lot of stuff that we know but are at risk of forgetting. Attention spans are sometimes woefully short.
The war actually began in 2014 with the Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas. The day before the invasion of February 2022, Russian troops held 7% of Ukraine. Today, they occupy 26%. And, something the PM didn’t say, that number is growing, slowly, every day.
Russia has destroyed 80% of Ukriane’s thermal power generation capacity and 30% of nuclear. The response has been remarkable and includes the building of 114 megawatts of wind generation as part of a 660 megawatts increase in alternative energy production. That just shows what you can do if you try, a lesson that needs to be learned by governments struggling with the green energy transition.
Tymoshenko draws our attention to the conversion of Ukrainian children’s toy manufacturing facilities (and other civilian factories) into arms production. That’s something that happens in most wars. American factories were converted to military use at speed and scale during World War 2 and many analysts think that the Allied victory over Germany was, for the most part, a story about production capacity. Some military strategists think that America no longer has the existing civilian capacity to convert, should it go to war with, for instance, China. By contrast, China is scaling up its economy-wide manufacturing capacity (already pretty large), not because Xi Jingping has a fetish about industrial production, but because he knows that he might need that capacity to convert to production of tanks, planes and missiles.
When the war ends, Ukraine is going to need a lot of reconstruction. Perhaps as much as $1 trillion dollars worth.
Thursday May 23rd
China is today conducting an unannounced major military exercise around the island of Taiwan. Beijing describes the manoeuvres as ‘strong punishment’ for recent ‘separatist’ actions. It can be safely assumed that the recent inauguration of the new Taiwanese President, William Lai, a man not known for warm overtures towards China, is at least one catalyst. The Chinese government really doesn’t like Mr Lai. Beijing has labelled him a ‘dangerous troublemaker’.
China’s military looks like it is practising a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, something it hasn’t done before. Beijing usually warns in advance when it plans to make incursions into Taiwan’s airspace or cross the disputed ‘median line’ that marks the wholly unofficial maritime border in the South China Sea. The Chinese have labelled the exercises 2024A, leaving some us wondering when B or C are likely to take place and what they will consist of.
China’s last major military drill involving Taiwan was in 2022 when, over four days, live fire exercises were conducted on an unprecedented scale. There was lots of activity, seemingly to signal ‘we can blockade you whenever we like’. That was in the wake of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi provocative visit to Taipei. Beijing also stopped its informal recognition of the median line after Pelosi’s visits. Very few people think her trip to Taiwan was a resounding diplomatic success.
The current drills, scheduled to take place over two days, also contain similar hints of that blockade threat, but the use of amphibious vehicles and other weaponry carries the rather obvious additional threat: ‘invasion’.
Grant Shapps, the UK’s defence secretary might be getting a bit demob happy. In a major break with the U.S. Shapps declared that China is sending ‘lethal aid’ to Russia. Everyone else in the world, especially in Washington and Beijing, has been careful not to call Chinese exports to Russia (essentially swaps for oil) ‘arms’. They might be vital components for the manufacture of arms, but they mustn’t be called arms.
In another potentially significant shift, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, called on the White House to drop its opposition to American arms being deployed to attack targets in Russia. Blinken has been in Ukraine and it looks like he has realised that Ukraine is losing. An uncharitable correspondent might ask why it took a visit to Kyiv for him to work this out.
Friday May 24th
Joe Biden’s CHIPS Act and other pieces of major legislation have several goals, the most obvious being to boost the US economy and to create jobs. But there is also a national security element to White House thinking. Biden is worried about American manufacturing in general and semiconductor production in particular. He really doesn’t want Chinese chips in US cars, planes or refrigerators. There are also fears arising from the fact that one of the world’s leading chip makers is located in Taiwan. TSMC now accounts for almost half of the total Taiwanese stock market and its share price is, for now, unperturbed by the Chinese simulated invasion taking place around Taiwan.
Bloomberg economics has taken a stab at what a blockade - not an invasion - of Taiwan would cost. It is estimated that the world economy would be disrupted by around $5 trillion. It might turn out that the world will be less than happy with that result and would have a vested interest in any blockade ending quickly, perhaps by not coming to Taiwan’s aid. In those circumstances, perhaps, China could take Taiwan without firing a shot. That, at least, might inform current thinking in Beijing.
We are also provided with estimates of the costs of costs of a full-blown invasion. Taiwan’s GDP would fall by 40% in a year and the rest of the world would lose 10% of global GDP. That involves a massive shock to ‘…global trade and supply chains, disrupt regional trade, tank global financial markets and likely trigger Western sanctions on China’. All this would be a much bigger deal, not least in economic terms, than either the Global Financial crisis or the Covid pandemic.
The issue is that all these egotistical men are only interested is showing themselves as strong men - in the light they see themselves in … which of course is a figment of their very warped imagination - sadly they are able to inspire/terrorise people around them to do their bidding, no matter how cruel or bizarre it is.