🇷🇺🇺🇦 Discussion: Relations with Russia and the war in Ukraine

blueharvest said:
www.dailykos.com

Treasury Secretary Yellen calls for unfreezing Russia's assets and sending it all to Ukraine.

Bad-Ass Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called for unfreezing Russian Central Bank assets seized after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in their resource-driven war by Vladimir Putin. The assets have become an active discussion among many of the...
www.dailykos.com
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The main problem with using those assets is that it will damage the US dollar's status as world reserve currency. Other countries (China, Saudi Arabia, etc) will be less willing to invest in the USA, and thus we'll see much higher inflation and interest rates on the national debt.

Given that we're already seeing very high inflation, the fact they're even considering this shows how out of touch they are. I guess Yellen will keep living in safety and luxury regardless.
 
The deteriorating relations between Russia and Israel arguably represent a failure of Putin. Though he's obviously infinitely wiser than I am, I am perplexed that he seemed to believe better relations were possible. Israel is the world's number 1 or number 2 ally of the USA, and meanwhile Iran has proven to be a key partner of Russia. To my ground level of knowledge, it seems friction was inevitable. Perhaps Putin was engaging in maskirovka.

It's widely reported that Israel had special forces operating in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian air defense in Syria are no longer ignoring Israeli missiles, and Moscow has recently hosted the leadership of both Yemen and Palestine.


It may also be that Israel wants to better support Ukraine in order to get better press coverage in the USA.
 
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DA_Champion said:
The deteriorating relations between Russia and Israel arguably represent a failure of Putin. Though he's obviously infinitely wiser than I am, I am perplexed that he seemed to believe better relations were possible. Israel is the world's number 1 or number 2 ally of the USA, and meanwhile Iran has proven to be a key partner of Russia. To my ground level of knowledge, it seems friction was inevitable. Perhaps Putin was engaging in maskirovka.

It's widely reported that Israel had special forces operating in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian air defense in Syria are no longer ignoring Israeli missiles, and Moscow has recently hosted the leadership of both Yemen and Palestine.


It may also be that Israel wants to better support Ukraine in order to get better press coverage in the USA.
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Anything that helps Ukraine is fine by me. :)
 
blueharvest said:
apnews.com

Ukraine's troops are rationing ammunition. Yet House Republicans plan to take weeks to mull more aid

Congressional leaders are warning that shortages of ammunition and supplies are resulting in Ukraine losing ground in the war with Russia.
apnews.com apnews.com
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I have heard that Ross Perot predicted this would happen back in 1992, if Bill Clinton succeeded in transferring all American industry to Mexico and China. But here we are and the USA cannot manufacture enough shells, missiles, etc to fight a conventional war.

I think that was well known by a lot of people.

What I had personally not realized was how strong Russian manufacturing was. They're outproducing the US+Europe by a vast margin.
 
DA_Champion said:
I have heard that Ross Perot predicted this would happen back in 1992, if Bill Clinton succeeded in transferring all American industry to Mexico and China. But here we are and the USA cannot manufacture enough shells, missiles, etc to fight a conventional war.

I think that was well known by a lot of people.

What I had personally not realized was how strong Russian manufacturing was. They're outproducing the US+Europe by a vast margin.
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Probably because the government there can force the issue. They are likely running out of other things because of it.
 
squeekness said:
Probably because the government there can force the issue. They are likely running out of other things because of it.
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Yes and no.

There's a limit to what government can force -- in the absence of a skilled work force or access to natural resources, government will never be able to force production.

Germany prior to world war I and ii and even today is an example of a country with a skilled workforce but a lack of access to natural resources. Part of the reason Hitler invaded the USSR is that he believed that he would need to control the USSR's resources to eventually be able to fight the USA.

The United States has natural resources, and had a skilled workforce -- and Bill Clinton gave it up. The country can build websites and social media and microbrews and hedge funds and consultancies and law firms and that sort of thing, but it now has a much harder to r building microchips, cars, weapons, etc.

Russia obviously has natural resources. I think people realize how skilled its workforce was. You need a lot of amazing engineers to build hypersonic missiles or to neutralize drones with electronic warfare. That's not something Putin can just turn on as he's not a God. They've clearly been prioritizing that for thirty years.
 
Back in the day, a lot of us opposed NAFTA and it's ilk. In WW2, the US just basically outproduced the rest of the world and the war was won, in part, by the sheer weight of its productive capacity. The same can be said of the Civil War. Marx himself predicted the defeat of the south early on based on production and understood that the economy of the north was superior. What happened a few decades ago is that profits became more important than production and the balance shifted too much to the former.

Biden, to the credit of this senile old man who couldn't find his way out of a nursing home, understands this and has moved to shift the pendulum. There can certainly be a balance, but to abandon domestic production comes with huge risks when you see the international tensions that exist today.

For those of you who don't know, the economy of the USSR grew tremendously from the early 30s on, but, unfortunately for them, their political structure both stunted and corrupt.
 
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