Imposing sanctions in baby steps

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The UK and EU are seriously discussing further packages of sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, and trying to pressurise Trump into implementing further US sanctions as well. There does seem to be a feeling that the US Congress might be willing to impose further sanctions, although there is considerable doubt as to whether Trump will support it. Sir Starmer is doing his best to sound tough as he talks about ‘ramping up’ (one of his favourite phrases) economic sanctions against Putin and Russia. But hold on a minute. Over three years into a disastrous war in which hundreds of thousands have died, and there are still more sanctions which haven’t been applied yet? When he says ‘we will apply more sanctions unless you…’, what I hear is ‘we haven’t yet done everything we could’.

How effective sanctions have been – indeed, how effective they can ever be – is a question which people who can’t think of anything else to do don’t really want to discuss. The reasons for that are entirely understandable: if countries are unwilling to move to direct military aid of Ukraine, and if sanctions don’t force Russia to back down, then all that is left is a negotiation which will inevitably make concessions to Russia. It represents neither fairness nor justice, but if all that we can think of are sanctions, then we should seriously have been applying them to the maximum already. Tough talk without tough action simply condemns more Ukrainians to fight and die.

But here is the truth that they can’t or won’t admit: sanctions aren’t forcing Russia into backing down and probably never will. Telling members of the Russian regime that they can’t come to London (one form of sanctions which has been applied) isn’t actually the sort of punishment which makes them quake in their boots, and they are still obtaining most of the goods they require by other routes. There are three main reasons why sanctions are probably doomed to failure.

The first is that Russia is big. It has an abundance of natural resources, and is able to produce much of what it needs; maybe not in the cheapest or most efficient way, maybe not always to the same standards, but a big country will always be more resilient in the face of sanctions than a smaller one.

The second is that they are not being universally applied. There are still plenty of countries (including, of course, China) willing and able to supply Russia with the goods it needs. That actually reflects a deeper problem, which remains unaddressed: not all countries see the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the same simple terms as the EU / UK, namely an unprovoked invasion of one country by another. That’s not to say that they’re right in coming to a different interpretation, but whether they’re right or wrong is irrelevant to the ground fact that they are continuing to both buy and supply goods which are subject to sanctions by others. Many of us might regret that the world does not have an effective means of disciplining a rogue state, but regret doesn’t change the facts.

The third reason is that sanctions hurt the economies of those applying them, so companies are finding ways around sanctions. As trade with Russia has dropped, demand from countries aligned with Russia for the same goods has miraculously increased. Some of those countries are landlocked and the goods can only reach them by traversing Russia. The idea that they all get to their planned destination, or even that they all stay there when they arrive, is for the birds. Western companies are supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and pretending not to know, and their governments are pretending not to notice. And the capitalists make their sales and take their profits.

That sanctions will not, and probably cannot, achieve their aim is a dismal conclusion to draw, but if it’s what we are going to depend on, then implementing them in packages over a period of years and turning a blind eye to alternative supply routes doesn’t cut it. Sir Starmer’s projected strength is actually a cover for weakness.

Ends and means

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The letter sent by the Trump administration to the authorities in Stockholm instructing them to drop all schemes related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or else explain themselves to US federal lawyers, was mildly amusing to start with. It appears that the US Embassy has occasionally needed permits from the authority for building activity, there is a fee involved, and the only way of paying such a fee is to set the authority up as a supplier (and thus payee) on US systems. A simple case of someone pressing a computer button to send a letter to all payees without giving the matter any real thought. It’s hardly as though the US can simply ask someone else to give it the relevant building permits (although it’s possible that some members of the US government don’t actually realise that).

It isn’t just an amusing little gaffe, however. What it reveals is that the US government is attempting to force any organisation which receives any money, for whatever purposes, from the US government to drop any attempts at building a more balanced and representative workforce, not just in relation to the specific US government related activities, but to all its activities, world wide. There is room for some doubt as to whether the presidential directive is entirely lawful when employed solely to US companies operating solely in the US, but the idea that it can be extended to any activity carried out by any organisation anywhere in the world just because they might be in receipt of a small payment for goods or services supplied to the US government is a dramatic piece of over-reach. It assumes, for example, that US law and Trump’s authority automatically over-rides the laws and mores of whichever country in which an organisation might be based. We’ve already seen some UK companies start to remove all mention of diversity from their websites, and one wonders how many others are quietly complying without making any public statement, as though – heaven forfend! – having a diverse workforce was never really important to them, but was seen as a means to present themselves in a good light and thus make money in a particular marketplace (the UK/EU).

The reaction of some of Trump’s UK acolytes in the UK, praising his actions despite their impact on UK companies, betrays a belief that ends are more important than means to them. The much-vaunted ‘sovereignty’ to ‘make our own laws’ that they sought through Brexit is only important to them if it delivers on their agenda. Who’d have thought it?

Short term wins aren't always victories

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The precise details of the ‘trade deal’ agreed between Trump and Sir Starmer are less than entirely clear at present, but it appears that the UK has conceded rather more than it has gained, in order to get back to a position which is not quite as bad as the current one, but not quite as good as the one which pertained before Trump started his tariff campaign. I was rather taken by this description from Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian:

“This has been less a trade deal between allies – a process of give and take that in the long run hopefully leaves both sides better off – than a hostage negotiation. Pay Trump what he feels he’s due, and you get your economy back in roughly the state it was before, though missing a few fingers and probably traumatised.”

The bigger question is how long it will last. With someone as fickle as Trump in charge, today’s best deal ever can easily be redefined tomorrow as the work of a complete loser, and it will all be the fault of the groundwork that the Biden administration carried out. Sir Starmer is in a bind, even if he doesn’t realise it yet. The more he proclaims it as a good deal for the UK, the more His Orangeness will think that he didn’t demand enough – and reneging on deals that he himself negotiated and signed is always an option, as Canada and Mexico have already discovered. Bullies who think that they can get more will always come back and try for it. Assuming that your negotiating partner is honest and trustworthy simply doesn’t work with someone like Trump – and there are plenty of victims willing to attest to that.

Is it better to have done a deal than not done it? In principle, yes, of course. Being slightly less worse off is obviously an improvement – for an individual participant. Whether allowing and facilitating a strategy of divide and conquer is better than forming alliances with a bloc (the EU), which has rather more clout, to deal with the orange menace collectively is a much harder question to answer. The impact of the deal, when we know the detail (which will have some good things and some bad things in it), will be relatively small in economic terms. The bigger significance is whether it encourages or discourages Trump’s approach of bullying his way around the world. I suspect the former is more likely than the latter.

Greenland might be a useful diversion

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Long-described as the world’s second-oldest profession, spying is something which most states above a certain, albeit undefined, size undertake on a regular basis. Understanding the thinking of other states seen as potential adversaries is something which many rulers over the centuries have found useful. Spying on ‘friends’ is also common – who knows when friends might turn into enemies or what they might be holding back? There’s something more than a little disingenuous in the Danish Foreign Minister’s claim this week that “we don’t spy between friends”, given that the Danish intelligence services actively assisted the US to spy on Germany’s former Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

It's still more than a little strange, however, that Trump should have decided that a major priority for the US intelligence services should be Greenland. It’s not as though the country actually poses any immediate danger to the US – a country of 56,000 inhabitants is hardly likely to invade New York. And a dispassionate observer might well believe that there are one or two rather more significant potential threats to the US.

The focus of espionage activity is apparently to be twofold: intelligence gathering on the independence movement and identifying individuals likely to welcome a US takeover. In theory, it should be an easy task to resource. The three US intelligence agencies (CIA: 21,500; DIA: 16,500; NSA: 30-40,000) employ more than 68,000 people between them (unless Elon Musk has fired most of them by now); allocating a few thousand to monitor 56,000 Greenlanders shouldn’t be too much of an ask. How many of those are Greenland specialists, though, might be more of a problem. Some 70% of the population speak only Greenlandic, and I’d be surprised if as many as 1 of those 68,000 ‘spies’ could understand what they are saying. And when it comes to intelligence ‘on the ground’ (as opposed to remote electronic monitoring), someone unable to communicate in the language might just stand out a little.

A country planning a takeover might well find it useful to identify in advance a sufficiently large cohort of people who would welcome the invasion (and perhaps fill posts in the new government) in order to give it a gloss of respectability, but previous attempts at going door-to-door to find someone who would welcome the Vice-President and his wife were less than entirely successful. They found no-one. On another occasion they had to resort to handing out MAGA hats to homeless people as a reward for eating a Trump(Jr)-provided meal. Even the CIA, with its renowned ability to destabilise and topple governments, will find it a challenge to make a coup look like some sort of popular uprising.

Trump’s obsession with Greenland is an odd one, especially given that he could get most of what he really wants (which is about US corporations getting access to valuable mineral rights – and maybe building a hotel and a few golf courses?) by friendly negotiation, but that, it seems, is not the way that the ‘art of the deal’ works. Still, whilst sympathising with Greenlanders, there’s something mildly reassuring about seeing him give so much of his limited attention span to the question.

Defining the task helps

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The standard advice for anyone finding themselves in a hole is to stop digging, but the ability to follow that advice depends on the ability to recognise a hole when you see one. Not all holes are immediately recognisable, especially if the digger believes he’s engaged on an entirely different task, such as laying the foundations for a really strong and robust wall.

That may be at the heart of Sir Starmer’s problem over things like the winter fuel allowance. Everyone watching him can see the hole getting deeper and deeper, with his probability of being able to escape it rapidly diminishing, and the likelihood of others being dragged in increasing with equal rapidity. His own loyal troops are increasingly bewildered about his enthusiasm for shifting earth, and even the Labour-supporting Mirror is now telling him that it’s time to stop. To no avail. Every call to lay down his shovel simply results in him expending even more elbow grease – and credibility – on throwing even more soil out of the hole.

It makes little sense unless the task he thinks he’s undertaking has nothing to with fuel or pensioners, it’s all about demonstrating toughness. Sticking to a decision as support for it drains away reinforces his self-image as someone willing to take unpopular decisions (or ‘difficult’ decisions to use his preferred euphemism). From that perspective, the more unpopular the decision, the better; the greater the criticism, the more he feels encouraged. Every siren call to stop, every vote lost as a result of the policy, merely strengthens his perception that he’s showing his strength and determination.

I may have read somewhere that his father was a tool-maker, although I suspect that the tools were a little more sophisticated than mere spades. Maybe he imparted some knowledge about choosing the right tools for the job. But one little life lesson that Sir Starmer appears not to have learnt is about correctly defining the job before selecting the tools. Unless he’s actually a Tory plant whose real task is to destroy the Labour Party from within. Now there’s another possible explanation which makes some sense of his actions.

They're not all that different

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During the last week, who said “I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad”, and who thinks that “the British Empire was a force for good in the world”? For those who might not have kept up, the answer, of course, is those two famous peas-in-a-pod, namely Fromage and Sir Starmer. The point that they are both trying to make is that ‘we’ should be proud of ‘our’ history rather than ashamed of it, an aspiration which completely fails to understand the nuance between being proud of one’s country on the one hand and supporting everything it has ever done on the other.

They’re not alone, of course; there are plenty of other politicians, Labour and Tory alike, whose views on the issue are little different from those of Reform Ltd, but there are at least some of us who might be more likely to take pride in a country which recognised its chequered past, was able to admit and face up to the fact that its history hasn’t always been covered in glory, and that much of its wealth is based on theft and expropriation. It’s easy enough to identify the bad things that were done in the Empire like the occasional massacre, and the exploitation of people and territories to seize the wealth for the colonialists. Finding things that are unequivocally 'good' is a lot harder. Claiming that one of the good things was the abolition of slavery rather overlooks the fact that much of the wealth extracted from the empire was extracted on the back of slavery: reversing a policy and compensating the slave owners (but not the slaves) after more than two centuries of benefiting from slavery is rather hard to present as being a ‘net good thing’ for anyone taking an objective view.

The other ‘benefits’ usually claimed by empire apologists are the building of railways (all the better to extract goods and resources), the introduction of English law, Christianity, and the spread of the English language. Implicit in the claim that they are all ‘good’ things is the inherently racist belief that all of those things are better than anything that the mere natives had developed, or might have gone on to develop, for themselves. Whilst there is a clear advantage to being able to speak what has become the world’s lingua franca, claiming that as a benefit of imperial rule ignores the fact that English only achieved that status because it was imposed on so many conquered peoples by the imperial rulers or (in the case of the other great driver of English linguistic dominance) by white settlers driving native Americans from their lands. Presenting that as an unarguable net benefit is problematic, to say the least.

What the convergence of views between Sir Starmer and Fromage (to say nothing of all the others in between) does tell us is that English nationalism is based on a highly ethnocentric view of the world, a view based on an innate sense of superiority and exceptionalism. It’s a world view in which lesser peoples (and that includes the Welsh, Scots and Irish) should know their place and be grateful for that which was forced on them by military conquest. It’s a world view from which they are unable to escape, and in which it is incomprehensible to them why anyone might see things differently. It shouldn’t go unquestioned.

Not the epitaph Starmer would choose

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Sometimes, people talk about aspects of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system used for most elections in the UK as though they were design features. But the system was never really ‘designed’ at all; what we have today has evolved over a period from a system which was used when the number of people voting was strictly limited and elections were more about choosing an individual to carry the banner of the wealthiest in parliament than about choosing a government. Having said that, if it had been designed by what have been for the best part of a century the two main UK parties, they would almost certainly have included the ‘feature’ that the system should work to preserve the dominance of those two parties and freeze out, as far as possible, any challengers.

In that regard it has worked as it would have been intended to work, giving those two parties turns at being in government (with a built-in bias, obviously, in favour of one of them – nothing says that the turns have to be of equal duration). If that is the intention, then the system works really well. Right up to the point at which it doesn’t. Inherent within the system is the possibility of reaching a tipping point. As long as a challenger party’s overall support remains below about 25%, and is evenly spread across constituencies, whichever of the two incumbent parties can achieve a little over 30% with their support irregularly distributed can achieve an overall majority of seats in parliament, and the other can form HM's loyal opposition. Democracy it ain’t, but it serves its intended beneficiaries (Labour and the Tories) well, and explains why they are both so reluctant to change it.

However, if the tipping point is ever reached (and the whole point is that it isn’t supposed to happen), the system facilitates a challenger party sweeping the board, with an even lower percentage of the vote. We’ve seen the consequences of that this week in the English local elections. Labour and Tory alike are behaving as though the way to freeze Reform Ltd out is to adopt their policies and be more like them. More rational souls might wonder what the point of keeping them out is if you’re going to do the same as them anyway – and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that if their views are thus legitimized, many voters might conclude that they should simply vote for the real thing.

A far better approach (which also has the not-exactly-inconsequential advantage of being more democratic as well) would be to adopt a proportional electoral system. The Lib Dems, Plaid, and the SNP would support such a change, and even the head Fromage is on record as saying he supports it (although if he thinks he might stand a better chance of becoming PM under the existing system, that might change – politicians’ principles have been known to become flexible when political advantage is at stake, and Fromage didn’t exactly have a lot of principles to start with). The Labour Party membership have supported the idea in party conferences, and with his current majority, Sir Starmer has a superb one-off opportunity to make a change which would be game-changing (as well as being likely to give Labour a share in power for more of the time). It seems, though, that he’d prefer to alternate between acting like a rabbit caught in the headlights and outright panic. Labour accused the Tories this week of gifting the by-election to Reform Ltd by not campaigning, but the person who is really gifting the next election to them is Sir Starmer himself. ‘The man who facilitated the UK’s slide into authoritarianism’ is probably not the epitaph Sir Starmer would choose. But then I suppose few of us get to choose our own epitaphs.

It's not just a game

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Most people are familiar with the game called ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. Thee are variations on it, and whilst it was originally conceived as a two-player game, the theory can be applied to any number of players. In the game, the most rational action for any individual player is to compete with others (because (s)he doesn’t know whether the others are going to compete or co-operate), but the most rational approach for the group of players as a whole is to co-operate, and maximise the total rewards gained. That co-operation implies communication and trust, things which don’t always happen in real life.

Climate change can be represented as a version of the game, in which former PM Tony Blair participated yesterday. He is right, of course, when he says that people "feel they're being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know the impact on global emissions is minimal". For all the talk of taking individual responsibility or ‘think global, act local’, no one individual can make a significant difference to climate change overall. And it isn’t just individuals – no single nation can make enough difference acting alone, even the very biggest nations. We’ve seen people arguing on a Wales level or UK level along the lines of ‘our contribution to carbon emissions is so small that stopping it will make no difference’. It’s true. In a world population of 8 billion, 3 million Welsh people, or even 66 million UK residents can only make a minuscule difference. It follows that the rational thing for any group of 3 million (or 66 million), let alone any individual, to do is to ignore the impacts and carry on as usual. After all, 66 million is only 120th of 8 billion.

What the game also teaches us, though, is that if every player decides to compete rather than co-operate, we all lose out in the end, compared to what would have happened had we all co-operated. The first vicious twist in the game is that if some attempt to play co-operatively, whilst others attempt to play competitively, the co-operators lose out by even more than they would have done had they played competitively. It is, therefore, entirely rational to compete unless and until everyone decides to co-operate. That, it seems to me, is ultimately the argument of those who accept the reality of man-made climate change, but reject taking the necessary action to address it. (Those who reject the overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change are, of course, in a separate category entirely, where rationality at any level no longer necessarily applies.)

The second vicious twist is that, applying it to the question of climate change, we end up collectively taking the wholly irrational decision to make the world uninhabitable for humanity as a direct result of individuals and countries making entirely rational choices about their own actions and behaviours. How we get to a world in which acting for the good of all is seen as a better choice than pursuing individual greed and desires is another question entirely. Climate change isn’t the only issue where that question arises, but it’s not a question which the Blairs of this world seem to be capable of even considering.

Markets and casinos shouldn't be the same thing

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Here’s a statement that some might be surprised at me making: Markets work. As a way of matching buyers and sellers, or capital with investment opportunities, markets are an effective and efficient method, better than anything else humanity has managed to devise thus far. There are, however, two caveats.

The first is that there is no such thing as a completely ‘free’ market. All markets have rules by which they operate. One of the reasons for that is that the assumptions used by theoretical economists when considering markets – that all participants have equal power and that all have perfect knowledge of what is happening – are blatantly inaccurate. Markets can only work effectively if those (and other defects) are corrected, so we have rules which must be followed. There will always be disagreements about what those rules should be, but the key issues are who makes the rules and in whose interests they operate. Those arguing for completely ‘free’ markets are invariably arguing for markets which are slanted in favour of those with the most power and the most knowledge. No surprise there.

The second caveat is that a real market is about those basics mentioned above, such as matching real buyers with real sellers, exchanging real things. Yet, when it comes to the world’s financial markets, most trading is nothing to do with that; it is, instead about gambling and speculation, with people trying to leverage large trades for very small profit margins on a day-by-day or even hour-by-hour basis. And in some cases, what is being ‘traded’ (i.e. being bet on) isn’t even something with any real existence beyond acting as a gambling chip. Crypto currency is a case in point. It has no real ‘value’ and its price fluctuates wildly. As a means of winning (or losing) a fortune in  short time, it’s ideal, but its value as any sort of ‘investment’ is doubtful, to say the least. Yet, lured by the improbable apparent ‘value’ of these ethereal ‘assets’, some governments are trying to pretend that they are real enough to be treated as investments by the man or woman in the street.

It's perhaps obvious why Trump would wish to do this – he has after all issued his own bit of crypto, from which he’s made a lot of money at the expense of his cult followers. It’s less obvious why the UK Chancellor would be considering anything similar. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to regulate crypto currencies as such (although the whole point of some of them is to set them up in such a way that they are very difficult to regulate effectively, not least in order to facilitate tax evasion), just as other types of gambling are regulated, including for the safety and protection of the punters. Seeking to regulate them as though they were ‘investments’, however (which is what she seems to have in mind) is dangerous, and risks creating the impression that an inherently risky proposition has somehow been rendered safe. It’s a bad message to be giving out.

People are more important than land

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If Donald Trump were to content himself with annexing the southern part of Ontario Province rather than the whole of Canada (initially at least, always reserving the option to return for more at some future date), he would probably see that as being a major concession to Canada. From such a perspective, Putin only seizing 20% of Ukrainian territory also looks like a huge concession. It may look like a strange definition of ‘concession’ to most of us, but it’s easy enough to see how it would look different to someone who believes that the strong and powerful should be free to exercise their strength to get whatever they want. A bully who settles for less than he could take will always see himself as being generous.

That doesn’t alter the fact that the reality remains that, unless other states are willing to commit their own armed forces on the side of Ukraine (and I really hope that they’re not), sooner or later the country will either be swallowed up by Russia or else a negotiated peace settlement will involve the de facto, if not the de jure, surrender of lands, leaving the world with another of those long term frozen territorial disputes around borders. It’s neither fair nor just, but in the absence of any means of compelling the surrender of conquered territory, it’s a hard fact. Encouraging Ukraine to fight on merely adds to the terrible death toll which has already occurred – one of the few things on which I agree with what Trump says.

It's still somewhat depressing that, even recognising that harsh reality, the debate and negotiation all seems to revolve around what land and territory should be ceded to whom, with little consideration for the people living, whether currently or formerly, in those areas. One of Putin’s demands is for Ukraine to respect the rights of Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. (Being a native Russian speaker in Ukraine doesn’t make someone a Russian of course, any more than being a native English speaker in Wales makes someone English, although it's a distinction lost on Putin.) But what about the equivalent rights of Ukrainian speakers in the occupied territories? Or even those living in those territories whose native tongue is Russian but who nevertheless consider themselves Ukrainian? What about the citizens of those territories who have been forcibly removed to remote regions of Russia – to say nothing of the children who have been abducted, adopted, and who Russia has attempted to indoctrinate into hating their own families and nation?

Land and territory are tangible; people can swap maps with different proposals as to where lines should be drawn. But land and territory have always been moved between states, usually by the exercise of force. They are ultimately less important, however, than the lives and wellbeing of people, and the right of those people to choose their own nationality and identity. I’m far from convinced that that relative importance is receiving due attention in any negotiation process, but then neither Trump nor Putin are individuals who particularly care about people.