Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Russian in Georgia

I rarely comment on international affairs as the issues are too complex, but in this case there are general points to be made. The break-up of the Soviet Empire was a humiliation for the Russians, as many of the countries that became independent had been part of the Tsarist empire for centuries. Others, including the Baltic republics, had enjoyed just a brief period of independence from 1918 to 1938. All of these ex-Soviet countries have ended up with significant Russian minorities. It is also a fact that post-Communist Russia is not turning out to be a very nice country, though that should have been expected. A further complication is that Western Europe is becoming dependent on Russia for its energy supplies. All of which creates problems all-round, and especially for the ex-Soviets.

If I was a politician in any of these countries I would want to make sure that my Russians would not become a focus of discontent. If there were any areas with significant concentrations of Russians, I would organise plebiscites with a view to redrawing national boundaries, even if it meant having enclaves of Russian territory and the loss of mineral rights, pipelines and other sources of what are, in effect, rental income. It just is not worth trying to hang on to territories where the inhabitants want to be independent or part of another country.
Where the Russians are dispersed, matters are more complicated. The first priority here must be to make sure that economic opportunities are available to all, which means that land value taxation must be a key policy. The other issue relates to citizenship and other rights. As I understand it, Russians in Estonia were, and possibly still are, required to take a language test and satisfy other requirements if they are to obtain citizenship, which thereby makes them EU citizens. At the same time, Russians in general seem not to have shared in the prosperity of the country, which is far from being a welfare state, and the same applies to Latvia. A possible way round the problem would be to give Russian residents of the Baltic states the usual rights of EU citizens, to work in any EU country, which I am not sure is the situation at present. Apart from considerations of natural justice, this would give these Russians a vested interest in things remaining as they are and possibly reduce their numbers. This policy has prevented the Israeli Arabs from becoming a source of unrest for the past sixty years – despite the trouble all around, the Israeli Arabs are well aware that they enjoy greater freedom, security and prosperity than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East and that is it not in their interest to rock the boat.

Finally, there are the military implications of all this. Was it a good idea for the Baltic republics and the former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO? The Russians may be the bad guys but it is not surprising that they now feel encircled. What was the point, other than to treat Russia as a potential enemy? Now it is on the way to becoming an actual enemy. And if Russia sent its army into Estonia, what precisely would the NATO response be? Would anyone risk a nuclear confrontation? And what of Sweden, which has almost dismantled its defences to save money? The possibility of joining NATO is now being discussed, a notion which goes against a tradition of over 200 years of neutrality. Looking further back into history, however, Sweden once projected its power over the entire Baltic and included in its territory Finland, Estonia and parts of what are now Russia, including the site occupied by St Petersburg; most was lost to Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Finland at the beginning of the nineteenth, and there was a narrowly avoided war with Russia in the 1850s. The stupid thing about all this renewed confrontation with Russia is that if there is any real enemy; the threat, surely, is a common one against both Russia and all the western countries? And boxing the Russians in by encircling them with threatening alliances just helps to feed their paranoia and makes it more difficult for a reasonable leadership to emerge.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...