Russia invades Ukraine and ends globalization?
Life comes at you fast. Sometimes faster than others. Given the events that have upended assumptions about international relations, shaken the financial system and riveted the world since Razib pre-recorded this week’s paid-subscriber podcast with Samo Burja, founder of political risk consultancy Bismarck Analysis, we recorded a bonus mini-episode for all subscribers. On this extra episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Burja again, focusing solely on current geopolitical events.
Are things going according to the Russian plan? How long will the Russians stay, and how will this impact Europe? And what are the long-term consequences of the Western economic response to Russia’s incursion for the world’s geopolitical balance? Samo addresses head-on what he believes are the likely ramifications for the US, Europe, Russia and Asia.
Welcome back to the multipolar world, dominated by Keynes’ old animal spirits (paying subscribers, I highly recommend the week’s premium podcast with Samo where he talks about his firm Bismarck Analysis, and how they see the world). If you are among the many struck by the irrationality of Putin’s behavior, Samo’s approach to breaking it down without cant or emotion should be required listening.
Related: Putin’s Bet, A Contrarian View on Ukraine/Russia, Samo Burja and Drone Adoption Favors Quantity Over Quality In Warfare.
Russia invades Ukraine and ends globalization?
Good to hear such level headed, civil toned remarks from Mr. Burja. Thx for bringing him into our cyber world. Now I need to go listen to the first segment.
No one except perhaps his closest contacts can tell us if Putin is truly insane, or not. His desire for a "protection zone" to keep NATO away from Moscow might be considered part of a "long train of abuses" from his perspective as NATO moved ever Eastward. We note these added countries asked to join; they were not forced to do so. Putin does not acknowledge that at all.
But his desire to recreate a Russian Tsarist empire clearly goes against the rest of our Declaration of Independence, the life - liberty focus, and equal rights for all mankind (self evident or not). I perceive that these and related Enlightenment ideas grew out of the Western Christian culture. But I wonder how the presumably equally Christian Eastern Orthodox church did not seem to evolve into accepting the same core individual liberty oriented ideas. Perhaps Mr. Burja can address this in a future pod cast.
One last thing @Razib...we are about the same age and I do am skeptical of the foreign policy establishment, but we can't let things that happened almost 20 years ago make us no believe things out of hand forever. The intelligence community was dead-on about Putin's invasion so far.
Like all agencies they have their biases, agendas, etc. We know and accept all presidents lie. Well so do government agencies. We have to learn how to parse it.