Day: April 21, 2023

The Long Peace

The war ended in1945 with the defeat of the axis powers…..and Europe entered into an age of reconstruction and a long peace(?).

Then there is Asia.

Japan surrendered after the US dropped 2 nukes on their homeland….unfortunately Asia did not have the same reaction to the end of the war.

Violence erupted everywhere….China, Vietnam, Indonesia so on and so on….But why was there little peace in the Far East?

And yes this is one of those historical perspectives that I have become famous for throwing at my readers.

Decolonisation is one reason for the eruption of violence across the Asian continent. The outbreak of civil wars from the ruins of the Second World War was another historical phenomenon that contributed to the instability of the region, as local actors sought to take advantage of the changes in the balance of power on the ground to build new postcolonial states to their liking. Ho Chi Minh and his Communist Party may have defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, but they also attacked non-communist nationalists who had rejected their right to rule an independent – communist – Vietnam. If the communists dominated their Vietnamese adversaries during the First Indochina War, in Indonesia a series of violent civil clashes saw the non-communist Republicans led by Sukarno vanquish their communist competitors. The Chinese civil war is another example that Spector analyses: civil and national wars of liberation continued across Asia beyond 1945, something that Europe did not encounter (with the important exception of Greece).

The Cold War did much to spread violence across the Asian continent. The key moment was the victory of the Chinese communists over the nationalists in 1949, prompting American efforts to contain the potential Sino-Soviet threat to the region. Contesting ideologies were part of the problem. So were security concerns. The spectre of the Japanese march across the Pacific in 1941-42 was never far from American minds. But the same was true for Mao, who feared the possibility of another hostile invasion coming from the sea. Spector deftly shows how, between 1950 and 1954, the Americans and the Chinese clashed directly in Korea and indirectly in Vietnam, entangling their struggles for ideological influence and national security with the civil and colonial wars that had been brewing across the continent for years.

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/fight

Some of the problems the US is having in Asia these days can be traced back to the end of World War 2…..

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I Read, I Write, You Know

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Sanctions–Ineffective At Best

I have made my opinions on sanctions to my readers….these do little to turn the course of international relations….take Cuba, Iran, China, etc etc….of all our sanctions have we changed anything?

Now with Ukraine and Russia going at it like oversexed hogs….sanctions are once again in the news….and in the news….

But is the world behind our efforts to make change?

Not really.

Looks like the US will have to threaten the world to get them to play along…..

The White House plans to send a clear message to its European partners in the economic war against Russia, “you are either with us or against us.” Two US Treasury officials will visit European and Central Asian partners next month to demand all sanctions on Russia be implemented.

Treasury officials Liz Rosenberg and Brian Nelson will meet with leaders of financial institutions in Switzerland, Italy and Germany. The AP reports the officials will have a simple message, “1. Continue to provide Moscow with material support or 2. Keep doing business with countries that represent 50 percent of the global economy.”

Rosenberg and Nelson will provide their European counterparts with intelligence on alleged sanctions evaders. If those countries fail to crack down on those still doing business with Russia, then Washington is threatening to issue “penalties.” It is unclear how far the Joe Biden administration is willing to punish NATO allies for violating sanctions.

The policy echoes President George W. Bush’s doctrine that countries must either actively align with Washington in its Middle East wars, or else be judged as working “with the terrorists.” 

(antiwar.com)

Is sanctions a type of siege warfare?

In the distant past, the one place that people could escape a marauding army was behind the walls of a castle. Though this usually protected them from any immediate danger, it created problems of its own. While under siege and waiting for outside help or for the attackers to leave in frustration, those behind the walls could ultimately run out of food and even potable water, which would lead either to surrender or a slow, terrible death.

Although they’re never portrayed as such, in our own time, a form of siege warfare is applied to whole countries, usually poorer ones, through the misuse of sanctions.

There are innumerable forms of sanctions: opprobrium, boycotts, embargoes, denial of service, travel bans, export bans, divestment, asset seizures, blockades, censure, and much more.

…

We have often been told that sanctions like those used against Iraq will eventually lead to the overthrow of governments Western powers don’t like. History doesn’t bear this out. If anything, in countries as diverse as North Korea, Iran and Cuba, sanctions appear to have had the opposite effect, becoming a useful tool for rallying these populations behind their leaders. Just as Russian war crimes are making it more likely to increase Ukrainian resolute resistance, sanctions that hurt average Russians will tend to make them more loyal to Putin and less likely to resist him.

Sanctions as Siege Warfare

Let’s be honest….sanctions are at best…. ineffective.

Now we have the war in Ukraine and as predictable sanctions are our most publicized tactic….(besides the massive amount of monetary support that no one wants to talk about)

Joe Biden’s administration keeps boasting about how successful international sanctions have been in punishing Russia for invading Ukraine. But that boast is increasingly hollow, both with respect to the extent of international unity and the success of the sanctions. Instead of being a success story, the U.S.-led sanctions campaign against Russia is fast becoming another example of a chronically failed tactic.

The administration’s propaganda about widespread global support relies primarily on 2 resolutions condemning the invasion that the UN General Assembly approved, one in March 2022 and the other in February 2023. However, both resolutions were purely symbolic, toothless measures. They did not commit member states to take any action. Nevertheless, more than one-fifth of the UN members, including such key players as China, South Africa, and India, defied Washington’s pressure and cast negative votes or abstentions.

A more graphic and substantive indication of the unwillingness of countries not already in Washington’s geopolitical orbit to join the crusade against Moscow is their refusal to impose economic sanctions. Except for the NATO bloc and long-standing U.S. security dependents in East Asia, the global map is nearly devoid of countries that have adopted punitive measures. Such absence of support throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America is especially striking.

Economic Sanctions Are Simultaneously Ineffective and Cruel

There is nothing now or in the past that illustrates just how effective sanctions are to try and control the situation…..

Hint:  They are far from effective.

And yet they will most likely be more sanctions in the news as the conflict drags on.

Typical War Department waste of time.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”