The Siege of the Ukraine

As tensions build around Russian military activities near the Ukrainian border, American news coverage has been focused on whether or not there will be an actual invasion of the Ukraine. This coverage misses the point. Let’s clarify.

What Does Russia Want?

The Russian Government wants the total reincorporation of the Ukraine into Russia, as it was prior to 1991. The Russian people may not be so intent on having this, but President Vladimir Putin has done a lot over the past two years to silence dissent. He’s demonstrated rather effectively his indifference to the priorities of the people he governs. When I speak of Russia as a subject with an agenda for the rest of this article, understand that I am speaking of Putin and his court circle.

Putin has openly acknowledged his agenda. In an article from July 2021, He reviewed the shared history of Russians and Ukrainians since the Middle Ages, concluding:

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.

— “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukranians“

However, Putin’s historical survey of their shared history has some omissions, the most glaring of which is the Soviet Terror Famine of 1930-33, in which at least 5 million rural Ukrainians died [Source: Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 1986, p. 306]. The Ukrainian people are well aware of this history.

Source: Washington Post, “Four maps that explain the Russia-Ukraine conflict“

During Stalin’s reign, Russians were settled in the eastern Ukraine, in and around the cities of Donetsk (then called Stalino) and Luhansk (then called Voroshilovgrad). This is part of what has become the standard playbook of 20th century ethnic takeover of land. Given the premise that people should have self-determination, the government manipulates this by:

1. Planting people of your ethnicity in a contested area;
2. Killing enough people who are not of your ethnicity to terrorize the rest of them into pulling up sticks and running away.

Is Putin Rational?

Putin was schooled by the KGB, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. The KGB changed its name several times since its founding as the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) in 1917, but maintained consistency of outlook and methods. This was the secret police organization of the Soviet Union. The people who staffed it have a tradition of being highly rational. Cynical and amoral, yes, but rational nonetheless.

The modern Chekist sees himself as the shield of the nation. Without the security services, Russia would go to hell in a bucket. People would start imbibing pluralist, liberal ideas from the West. Russia is bombarded with these ideas from Western media and the Internet. Left to their own devices, ordinary people would absorb these ideas and start living however they pleased. The Chekist must act vigorously to protect the nation from this rot.

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is the direct descendent of the Cheka-NKVD-MVD-KGB after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It inherited its culture whole, along with many of the practitioners.

For the Chekist, the only reality is power. The only thing better than power is more power. The Chekist only respects strength. Making imaginary snowballs with your hands and going on about how nobody wants war is not respectable behavior.

Why Should Anyone in the US Care about the Ukraine?

If Russia were to absorb the Ukraine, it’s not as if Putin would declare himself sated and go on about selling natural gas. We will be in conflict with Russia. This conflict can be deferred, but not avoided. We can have this conflict now, or we can have it after Russia digests the Ukraine and is that much the economically stronger for it.

What Is Putin Trying to Do Now?

Putin has given himself many options. He has forces so close to the Ukraine that he can order a sudden hard turn, invading from several directions in a matter of hours. He can also maintain this threat for weeks and make the Ukraine suffer economically.

Putin has the Ukraine under siege right now. Investors hate uncertainty, so Putin is making anyone considering investing in a Ukrainian enterprise nervous. Further, Ukrainians who are serving in the national defense forces are not available to work in wealth-producing activities. This weakens the Ukraine in the long run, because you can only have the army you can pay for.

The NATO countries should be taking action to penalize Russia for its aggression now.

Will Economic Sanctions Cause Putin to Back Down?

Probably not. As Putin sees it, annexing the Ukraine is a necessary condition for Russian greatness. He’s willing to endure some pain to achieve that, particularly as he himself will not experience the pain.

Putin turns 70 this year. He has been clear in articulating his geopolitical outlook. He would welcome the chance to leave the annexation of the Ukraine into Russia as his legacy.

COVID-19 Timeline and Facts

The official name for this disease we are fighting is COVID-19, and that is the name I am going to stick with. We all have questions. I am providing a resource for thinking about it, with links to people who are more knowledgeable regarding specific aspects than I am. More facts -> less speculation -> less panic.

Here is an animated world map showing when and where first confirmed cases occurred. As of 1 Jan, it was only known in China, and not at all understood.

date	event
7 Jan	The Chinese identify the disease as a species of coronavirus, which causes respiratory tract infections within humans. A coronavirus has an envelope of lipids which protects the virus RNA when transferring between host cells.
12 Jan	China shares the genetic sequence of the coronavirus.
13 Jan	China reports the first death related to the virus.
13 Jan	Thailand reports the first case outside of China.
16 Jan	Japan reports its first case of COVID-19
20 Jan	South Korea reports its first case of COVID-19
21 Jan	The World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that the virus can be transmitted from human to human. The US reports its first case of the virus.
25 Jan	Australia confirms its first case of COVID-19. France confirms three cases of the virus, which are the first in Europe. Canada reports its first case of the virus.
1 Feb	China has 14,380 confirmed cases and over 300 virus-related deaths.
5 Feb	Ten passengers on a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, test positive for the virus.
9 Feb	Virus-related deaths are now over 800; this is greater than the death toll from the 2002-03 SARS epidemic (773).
12 Feb	In Japan, 175 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship test positive for COVID-19.
13 Feb	China changes its reporting to include both laboratory-confirmed cases and clinically diagnosed cases. China now reports 14,840 cases in Hubei province. WHO will align its reporting four days later.
19 Feb	Total worldwide deaths from COVID-19 climb above 2,000. China expels three reporters from the Wall Street Journal. Iran reports its first cases of COVID-19.
20 Feb	South Korea encounters a sudden rise in cases, up to 104.
23 Feb	South Korea now has over 340 cases; the government puts the country on the highest level of alert.
25 Feb	The deputy health minister of Iran, Iraj Harirchi, who is leading the nation’s COVID-19 effort, has contracted the virus.
1 Mar	The number of new cases of COVID-19 in China’s Hubei province increased for two consecutive days, after having fallen off for several days. South Korea (3,736) and Italy (1,128) have the most cases outside of China. The Dominican Republic reports the first case of COVID-19 in the Carribean.
7 Mar	The number of known global cases of COVID-19 exceeds 100,000.
13 Mar	WHO announces that Europe has replaced China as the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
18 Mar	Where we stand worldwide: 191,127 cases, 7,807 deaths.

How Much Worse Is This Than Ordinary Influenza?

The best data I have been able to collect is that COVID-19 is at least twice as communicable as ordinary flu, and at least ten times more lethal. Nations with transparency are reporting between 1%  and 3% mortality from COVID-19, as compared to about 0.1% from ordinary flu. All this has to be tempered by the fact that many nations, including the US, are late to the party on testing, so we don’t really know how many people have the virus.

Coronaviruses are hardy little suckers. The virus isn’t really alive, so it doesn’t need to eat. It can endure for hours or even days on some surfaces, waiting for a host to latch onto. Soap demolishes that lipid envelope around the virus, which is why there has been such an emphasis on hand-washing. Alcohol and bleach also destroy them.

How Long After a Person Is Infected Will Symptoms Appear?

This is called the incubation period, and we are still collecting data, since COVID-19 is new. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a study this week that found the median incubation period to be just over 5 days and 97.5% of people who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days of being infected. Don’t be surprised if later findings materially change these numbers.

Note that these measures are statistical. For example, if you go into a big crowd, then wait at home six days and have no symptoms, you can’t say for sure that you were not infected. That is not an analytically valid conclusion. Even if you were symptom-free after twelve days, all we could say with assurance is that it is highly probable you were not infected.

The incubation period gives the virus its outbreak characteristics. Left to run its course with normal human behavior, a single person can pass the virus to a large number of other people during the incubation period, while being unaware of his own condition of infection. This could produce a sufficient number of critically ill persons to swamp health care capacity. The idea behind flattening the curve is to reduce the risk by reducing the number of persons that you can potentially pass the virus to if you are infected and don’t know it.

How Soon Can We Have a Vaccine?

That depends: How do you feel about side effects?

If you want a vaccine at the levels of safely to which you are accustomed as an American, that vaccine has to go through clinical trials. It will probably take 12-18 months, but possibly longer. The organizations developing the vaccine are going to have to have sufficient capital to see them through the expensive research and the expensive clinical trial procedure. It’s risky, because you don’t know that your drug is going to make it through clinical trials. If something goes wrong, back to square one. You’re not going to have a couple of doctors come up with a vaccine in their kitchen.

If you’re willing to skip the clinical trials, you could have something faster — but what? How do you balance the risks of the disease against the risks of the vaccine? How do you even know how effective the vaccine is? You could have a whole lot of bereaved Americans looking for someone to sue.

Developing a vaccine could also be tricky because the coronaviruses exhibit significant antigenic variations even within a species. [See under Preventive Measures in the linked document]

Naturally, there are people seeking to take advantage of the confusion. There is a scam going on now where a person claiming to represent an institution such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) tries to sell you a “COVID-19 vaccine reservation” over the phone. There is no such program.

Once You Have Had the Virus, Are You Immune?

We don’t know. Considerations include:

• Does your immune system remember the virus?
• How often does the virus mutate into another form that your immune system does not recognize?

You may hear discussions of herd immunity. Basically, that is a condition where enough people become immune to the virus, either through vaccination or by contracting the virus and surviving the infection that the virus runs out of people to infect. However, we don’t know what the casualty rate of building herd immunity is going to be, or how long it will really serve as a shield. Letting people get infected to build herd immunity is not a satisfactory approach to public health, particularly if the infection brings significant mortality rates and complications for persons with long-term illnesses.

Here is a more in-depth treatment of the issues around COVID-19 immunity.

As a comparison example, HKU1 has been known since 2005. It is a coronavirus that causes upper and lower respiratory infections. People stay immune to it less than a year.

What Is Happening with Testing?

The CDC sent diagnostic test kits to about one hundred state, county and city public health laboratories across the US. Each local lab had to verify the kits. Of the first fifty kits that were sent out, the local lab that received them was unable to successfully verify the kits in about forty instances. Until this could be rectified, all test results had to be sent to Atlanta for analysis, imposing a bottleneck [source: New Yorker].

The population of South Korea is about 51.5 million. The country has over 8,500 diagnosed cases of COVID-19. They hit testing hard; reaching the capacity to test over 10,000 people/day. Four privately owned companies started developing and building test kits after the Chinese published the genetic sequence of the virus in mid-January [source: Al Jazeera].

To provide a proportional test capability for the US population, we would have to be able to test over 63,000 people/day. We are not there yet.

There Is a Soup of Conflicting Information out There. Whom Do We Believe?

I start by assuming that doctors know something about infections and diseases. Stay off Mount Stupid.

A good source is Healthcare Triage. He is up-front about what he knows factually and what he doesn’t. Here is a video lasting about 35 minutes on COVID-19 issues, which I highly recommend.

I like what I have seen out of former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb. He is decisive and he knows how to prioritize.

Here is the Coronavirus Resource Center at the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.
— Karl Krauss (1874-1936)

We are at war. Take this seriously, but not hopelessly. Understand risks and prioritize; don’t leave the front door wide open while bolstering second-floor windows. America won’t be the same country when this is over. Get your mind around it.

Flexible Or Unprincipled?

There are a lot of questions out there right now. I have them also. Answers are not readily forthcoming, but can we refine the questions?

Who Put the Syrian Kids on Donald Trump’s Milk Carton?

Was the missile strike on Syria on 7 April an impulsive and emotional response to video evidence of suffering children? Assembling the available evidence since the 2016 campaign, it sure looks that way. But even if this is true, what can we take away from it?

It is highly unlikely that a sudden whim from the President provoked top-down assessment of an option to use force that had not be previously considered. More probably, a course of action involving missile strikes on Syrian government assets was already on the table, and the images of children suffering the effects of sarin broke through to executive attention and resulted in this course of action being considered where it wasn’t before.

This would indicate that there will be other opportunities for a person with an agenda and the right kind of supporting materials to influence executive policy in both foreign and domestic situations.

Where Is the Boundary between Flexible and Unprincipled?

The entire Trump presidency puts this question to the nation, along with related questions, such as, “Can a policy you disagree with ever be principled?”

Certainly, Trump has given every indication of having a very limited set of operating principles. We have every reason to believe that, if someone were to take a shot at him today with a rifle, by this evening he would have a new-found interest in gun control. Everything that had been said during the campaign about Second Amendment rights would be, in the immortal words of Ron Ziegler, rendered inoperative.

However, this is nothing new. We have more antecedents than just the Nixon Administration to recall in order to gain perspective. There are obvious similarities between Trump and FDR; I mentioned these a year ago. FDR was fully capable of meeting with six people, all of whom had mutually incompatible agendas, and have each of the six walk away from the meeting fully believing that, “Roosevelt agrees with me completely.” Then FDR would follow a seventh course, or perhaps do nothing.

Nevertheless, FDR was popular with the country. You can see the newsreels of people in the street crying when he died in April, 1945. Whatever he really believed, FDR conveyed the belief that the troubles of the people in the nation really mattered to him. The principles he publicly stood for were to try anything to get out of the Depression; it just happened that anything always led to an expansion in the role of the federal government.

The principles we have seen from Trump are counterpunching, strength and bellicosity. It would be helpful if we saw more of these principles at work representing the nation, rather than in the service of Donald Trump the person. This still would not satisfy those people who don’t want America to be about counterpunching, strength and bellicosity, but it would be a step in the right direction.

I should also point out that we’ve tried other approaches. The Obama Administration had entirely consistent and predictable responses to atrocities in Syria: Do nothing. These did not lead to a satisfactory outcome.

In a position of leadership, refusal to divulge principles is not an option. People will not suspend judgment because you withhold information. They will attempt to fill in the blanks themselves, deducing your principles from the available information. It won’t do to complain about the inferences people draw from your behavior after having refused to put your own word out.

Can Congress Stop Airlines from Overbooking?

Why not? Isn’t that fraud? The airline is representing it has seats available that it doesn’t really have.

I understand that the airlines will, in turn, claim to be subject to traveler games with multiple reservations and cancellations. There is a risk involved, where the travelers don’t want to get bumped and the airlines don’t want to fly empty seats around.

When you run a business, you bear business risk. We don’t let dry cleaners evade their negligence by stamping Not responsible for losses due to negligence on the dry cleaning tickets. They can try it, but it won’t hold up in court. Similarly, it is bad public policy to let the airlines dump the risk of matching capacity to demand on the consumers.

Are We Overestimating the Ability of China to Help with North Korea?

This question was raised on the BBC’s Dateline London show this week. The idea behind the question is that the PRC may not be able to influence North Korea as much as others in the world believe possible.

At the same time, people are calling for a diplomatic solution to the problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear aspirations. Even the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has warned of a “head-on collision” between the US and North Korea. However, what a diplomatic solution would look like is unclear. North Korea expelled outside inspectors in 2003, formally withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What can anyone reasonably offer Kim Jong Un in exchange for permanently scrapping his nuclear program?

Reviewing North Korea’s nuclear history reveals there has been little to no success in halting the country’s progress in its nuclear program. However, another detail that has not been addressed is hidden in the history: North Korea is unreliable and cannot be trusted. Every single deal that has been reached in the past has been broken by North Korea. With this in mind, North Korea’s demands for  recognition as a nuclear power and its promises to not use nuclear weapons recklessly or its ending programs in exchange for the United States and South Korea halting joint military exercises must be met with suspicion. This raises the question, how do you negotiate or make a deal with an actor you cannot trust?
— Kevin Princic, “North Korea: Navigating the ‘Land of Lousy Options'”, 20 Jan 2016 [http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/2016/01/north-korea-navigating-the-land-of-lousy-options/]

China is definitely worth engaging, as China is North Korea’s windpipe. Anything China can do is a contribution. Nevertheless, the options are all rather bad at this point.

Is Kemalism Finished in Turkey?

General Mustafa Kemal took control of a national assembly that opposed the concessions required by the Allies at the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. He defeated the Allied forces, forcing a revised settlement at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. In 1924, Kemal abolished the Caliphate and Turkey became a one-party republic. He proclaimed a program called the Six Arrows:

1. Republicanism;
2. Populism, here focusing on transfer of political power from aristocrats and tribal leaders to citizens;
3. Nationalism,
4. Secularism, separating national law from Islamic law and enforcing only the former;
5. Statism;
6. Modernization.

As an instance of both populism and modernization, Kemal required Turks to have last names. He changed his name from Mustafa Kemal to Kemal Atatürk (Father of the Turks). He invited westerners including John Dewey to advise the government on how to achieve modernization.

The referendum being held today asks the country whether the executive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should be granted constitutional changes bringing all state bureaucracy under his control. The office of prime minister would be abolished and the president would have greater powers to issue decrees and dissolve parliament. He would also have greater powers over the judiciary.

As of this writing, with over 95% of the votes counted, the BBC reports that Yes votes are leading 51.4% to 48.6% for No.

Erdoğan has sought to reverse the secularism of Kemal while expanding on nationalism and statism. He has taken a hard line with separatist Kurds. In 2016, an attempted coup d’état of uncertain origin broke out in Turkey which was defeated. The Erdoğan government claims that the coup was masterminded by a former ally, Fethullah Gülen, now living in exile in Pennsylvania.

What becomes of Kemalism? There were some roots of authoritarianism in Kemalism; all evidence indicates that Erdoğan is returning to at least this level of authoritarianism. At the same time, he always has been more Islamist than Kemalism could tolerate. Early in his life, he was jailed and banned from political office for expressing Islamist political views. This ban was annulled by his allies in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002 after winning a national election victory.