(i) Bill Mitchell (in http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=49344)
The legacy of shock therapy
I wonder how the likes of Jeffrey Sachs are now thinking given all the shocking destruction in the Ukraine right now?
I imagine, given their hubris in the 1990s when they marched into the wreckage of the Soviet Union and proceeded to impose – Shock therapy – on Russia and the satellites.
Instead of taking the time to build the social, legal and political institutions that protect nations against dictatorships this gang of Washington-consensus economists created havoc – dramatically increasing inequality and poverty, reducing life expectancy and setting the new nations up for failure and a return to authoritarian regimes.
The IMF and the gang of economic consultants from US universities and elsewhere that went into these nations seemed to believe that if social protections for citizens were abandoned, public wealth handed over to a new generation of bandits, and an open slather was created for greed and speculative ventures that somehow the nations would mature and become havens for democracy and stability.
The arrogance and idiocy of that lot is beyond imagination.
They marched into Russia under Boris Yeltsin’s impramatur and forgot to see what the people who lived there would like to see for their nations freed from the Soviet rule.
In their haste to sell the wealth off and kick old people out of their apartments and turn of their heaters – as market prices were imposed on housing etc – they didn’t think for a moment that a legal framework, based on a constitution that gave rights and freedoms would be necessary.
I saw this first hand when I did some work in Kazakhstan some years ago.
There were old people living in tin sheds in the harshest of winters on the outskirts of Almaty, who had lost their housing and pensions when the Shock Therapy gang rode into town.
I learned a lot first hand of the consequences of the approach taken immediately after the Soviet system collapsed.
They also didn’t eliminate the culture of authoritarianism – and the resentment to the so-called ‘liberalisation’ allowed it to consolidate under a new set of authoritarian types.
They also created a new breed of capitalist who commandeered the public wealth and companies and created untold personal wealth at the expense of the people.
This wealth found its way into property markets in London and elsewhere, into luxurious possessions and has been used to pervert political processes around the world by capturing Western political parties through funding and personal payola.
And remember the so-called – 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis – which saw the elected parliament dissolved after they rejected a decree by Boris Yeltsin who rode into Moscow with tanks, and had the army storm the Supreme Soviet Building (parliament) and murder at least 137 citizens and injure many more as he imposed Presidential rule by decree.
The likes of Putin were on training wheels watching all that.
And in 1996, Yeltsin, on the advice of his close adviser, engineered things to have Putin installed as the President of Russia (Source).
Putin wasn’t elected – he was installed by an authoritarian predecessor under a constitution that allowed Presidential decree.
Putin had played along with the Shock Therapy gang and enriched himself in the process, along with his mates.
But his Presidency has largely rejected that approach and consolidated power among a cabal of … ‘oligarchs’.
And as an aside – don’t you just love the terminology of the West – ‘oligarchs’. The Koch Brothers and their types are financiers or industrialists or entrepreneurs. But the Russian capitalists are ‘oligarchs’.Meanwhile, the IMF and the Jeffrey Sachs types have moved on – oblivious to their on-going destructive legacy and reinventing history to absolve themselves of responsibility.
I also could talk about the role the IMF and the West, in general, has played in modern day Ukraine.
This article is interesting in that regard – What You Should Really Know About Ukraine (January 27, 2022).
Don’t get me wrong though.
I do not intend to ameliorate the Russian behaviour which is unambiguously shocking.
Further, on the new confiscation drive – luxury yachts etc – if these fortunes are so illegitimate, why are we just confiscating their ill-gotten gains now.
Why has the British government – both parties – allowed these characters to distort property markets in London and why have they taken funding from them?
Why don’t the Western governments immediately stop buying gas and oil from Russia – sales of which dominate their massive current account surplus which gives Russia the capacity to continue to buy whatever imports they desire?
Why hasn’t the banking restrictions been imposed on Sberbank and Gazprombank, which facilitate those trades?
I also note that the British Labour Party bosses are now threatening expulsion of any members including MPs who dare to question NATO or the role of the West in all of this.
The freedom party it seems.
Shocking hypocrisy given its role in Iraq.
And, finally, my friends at the Rose Mark Campaign in Japan have recently issued (February 26, 2022) a statement – [Statement] No War! Let us condemn the invasion of Ukraine along with the struggle between Great Powers for spheres of influence – which is worth reflecting on.
Which of the Western powers in recent years has not been complicit in given the Putin regime in the Russian Federation the scope to pursue his agenda?
I just wish Russia would stop killing children and citizens in general.
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(ii) Alfred de Zayas
(https://twitter.com/Alfreddezayas/status/1496954600166932482)
Alfred de Zayas@Alfreddezayas
Allowing Azerbaijan to get away with naked aggression in 2020, created a dangerous precedent and constituted an invitation to Ukraine to invade and subjugate the Donbas Russians.
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Alfred de Zayas@Alfreddezayas
In the light of the impunity manifested by Azerbaijan’s illegal war against the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh, Russia had reason to believe that Ukraine would imminently conduct a blitzkrieg against Lugansk and Donetsk.
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Alfred de Zayas@Alfreddezayas
The war against the self-determination of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh entailed violations of the Rome Statute articles 5, 6 and 7 – aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
