Sri Lanka crisis forces 13-hour blackouts, hospitals stop surgery

Power regulator urges government employees to work from home to save fuel and hospitals suspend routine surgeries as economic crisis deepens.

A woman works inside a shop attached to her house during a power cut in Colombo

 [Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters]

Published On 31 Mar 202231 Mar 2022

Sri Lanka has announced nationwide 13-hour daily power cuts from Thursday and more hospitals suspended routine surgeries after running out of life-saving medicines, as the cash-strapped island’s economic crisis deepens.

The South Asian nation of 22 million people is in its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, sparked by an acute lack of foreign currency to pay for even essential imports.

KEEP READING

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list 1 of 4

As prices soar in crisis-hit Sri Lanka, many forced to moonlight

list 2 of 4

Sri Lanka seeks another $1bn from India: Report

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Sharp rise in Sri Lanka fuel prices as economy reels

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Sri Lankan papers run out of newsprint as economic crisis worsens

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The state electricity regulator said it was extending Wednesday’s 10-hour power cut by another three hours from Thursday, enforcing a 13-hour rolling nationwide blackout.

The Indian Ocean island nation had been under severe electricity rationing since the start of the month and the monopoly said an earlier increase in power outages from seven hours to 10 hours was imposed because there was no oil to power thermal generators.

More than 40 percent of Sri Lanka’s electricity is generated from hydropower, but most of the reservoirs were running dangerously low because there had been no rains, officials said.

At least two more hospitals reported suspending routine surgeries because they were dangerously low on vital medical supplies, anaesthetics and chemicals to carry out diagnostic tests, and wanted to save them for emergency cases.

The country’s biggest medical facility, the National Hospital of Sri Lanka in the capital, said it had also stopped routine diagnostic tests. An official added, however, that the facility continued to receive power supply from the national grid.

A man tries to fix his three-wheeler engine using a mobile phone torch on a main road during a power cut in Colombo [Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters]

The country’s electricity regulator has urged more than a million government employees to work from home to save fuel.

“We made a request to the government to allow the public sector, which is about 1.3 million employees, to work from home for the next two days so we can manage the fuel and power shortages better,” Janaka Ratnayake, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka, told Reuters news agency.

Amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades, foreign exchange reserves have fallen by 70 percent in the past two years and were down to a paltry $2.31bn as of February, leaving Sri Lanka struggling to import essentials, including food and fuel.

The drawn-out power cuts on Wednesday were partly caused by the government’s inability to pay $52m for a 37,000-tonne diesel shipment that was awaiting offloading, Ratnayake said.

“We have no forex to pay,” he said, warning of more power cuts over the next two days. “That is the reality.”

Widespread protests

Sri Lanka’s main fuel retailer said there would be no diesel, the fuel most commonly used for public transport, in the country for at least two days.

Local broadcasters reported widespread protests across the country demanding fuel for private vehicles, which are also used for public transport.

There were no reports of violence, but hundreds of motorists blocked main roads in several towns while dozens demonstrated outside the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo demanding the removal of governor Ajith Cabraal.

Officials from the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation urged queueing motorists to leave and return only after imported diesel is unloaded and distributed.

Fuel prices have also been repeatedly raised, with petrol costs nearly doubling and diesel up by 76 percent since the beginning of the year.

Colombo imposed a broad import ban in March 2020 to save foreign currency needed to service its $51bn in foreign debt. But this has led to widespread shortages of essential goods and sharp price rises.

The government has said it is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund while asking for more loans from India and China.

Sri Lanka’s current predicament was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which badly hit tourism and remittances. Many economists also blame government mismanagement including tax cuts and years of budget deficits.

The country’s statistics office on Wednesday announced economic growth of 3.7 percent for the 2021 calendar year, before the crisis began to bite – up from a record contraction of 3.6 percent the previous year.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

Solomon Islands Won’t Allow Chinese Military Base In a Bid to Reassure Australia

Jenni Marsh, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The Solomon Islands won’t allow China to build a naval base off its coast under a proposed security pact, the Pacific Island’s leader pledged, in a bid to ease the concerns of nearby Australia.  

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said in a statement Friday that his government understood the consequences of giving Beijing’s warships a safe harbor some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the Australian coast, and wouldn’t allow that to happen. 

“Government is conscious of the security ramifications of hosting a military base and it will not be careless to allow such initiative to take place under its watch,” he said. “Contrary to the misinformation promoted by anti-government commentators, the agreement does not invite PRC or any other countries for that matter to establish its military base here,” Sogavare said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China. 

The Solomon Islands confirmed it wanted to broaden its “security and development cooperation” to new countries last Friday, after copies of a draft security agreement with China were leaked on social media. Ministers from Australia and New Zealand voiced concern about the regional impact of such a deal, which would allow Beijing to deploy soldiers and military police to the country if requested by the local government. 

Although China has the world’s largest navy by some measures, it has denied claims it’s trying to build a “string of pearls” of bases to project power further from its coasts. Still, the U.S. Defense Department said in its annual report on the Chinese military in November that the country may be using commercial maritime ties to establish a more robust logistics network for its navy.

The draft Solomons Island agreement gives Beijing the ability to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopovers in” the Pacific Islands’ waters, according to the leaked copies. 

Sogavare said if China wanted to set up a naval base in the Pacific, it would have done so with Papua New Guinea or Fiji, regional nations that have longstanding bilateral ties with Beijing. The Solomon Islands has only had formal relations with Beijing since 2019, when it switched allegiance from Taiwan.   

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday that security cooperation between China and the Solomon Islands was designed to “protect people’s safety and property.” “There’s no military element to such cooperation,” he added at a regular briefing in Beijing. “Media speculation is purely unfounded and driven by ulterior motives.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

 

U.K. Ministers Won’t Block Chinese Takeover of British Chipmaker

Emily Ashton, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government has decided not to intervene in the takeover of Britain’s biggest semiconductor plant by a Chinese-owned company, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Britain’s national security adviser Stephen Lovegrove was asked by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to review the sale of Welsh-based Newport Wafer Fab to Nexperia NV last August to see if there were “real security implications.”

Lovegrove has now concluded that the takeover can go ahead, the person said. The decision was first reported by Politico.

Nexperia Hits Back at U.K. ‘Sneering’ at China Ties in Chip Deal

The move to allow Nexperia to acquire the U.K. chipmaker sparked alarm among lawmakers in Johnson’s ruling Conservative party, who argued it was a national security concern because the Netherlands-based firm is ultimately owned by China-headquartered Wingtech.

Both the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Johnson’s office had no immediate comment.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

 

Era of Shocks Replaces Great Moderation, U.K. Budget Chief Says

Philip Aldrick, Bloomberg News

BC-Era-of-Shocks-Replaces-Great-Moderation-UK-Budget-Chief-Says , Philip Aldrick

(Bloomberg) -- The era of easy growth and economic stability is over, with the war in Ukraine confirming that the world is caught in a period of successive shocks, the head of the U.K. government’s forecasting body said.

Richard Hughes, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, said that policy makers have had to accept that uncertainty is the new normal.

The war is the fourth shock to the U.K. economy and the third globally in little more than a decade following the financial crisis in 2008, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

“The ‘Great Moderation’ is over,” Hughes said in an interview. “We seem to be living in world of global, novel, large, idiosyncratic shocks. It’s a huge challenge for forecasters, a huge challenge for policymakers. Ukraine has introduced a huge amount of volatility to the outlook.”

The global economy enjoyed an period of unusual stability from the 1980s to the financial crisis, a period dubbed the “Great Moderation” by economists James Stock and Mark Watson in 2002. 

The financial crisis upended that era, leading to stagnant wages, lackluster growth and weak productivity. Bank of England policy maker Jonathan Haskel has termed it “The Great Economic Disappointment.”  

The OBR has judged that the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid have all left permanent scars that reduced both the level of U.K. output and the pace of GDP growth.

Hughes, who oversaw the OBR’s latest forecasts for the Treasury’s Spring statement last week, said the war in Ukraine may be the next event to cause lasting economic damage in the U.K., due either to the conflict itself or through feedback from sanctions against Russia.

“We have not taken a view that this shock will be a supply hit to the U.K.,” he said. “That depends on the duration of the conflict and the duration of the international response. In the long run, what really matters is the outlook for supply.”

Hughes also downplayed the risk that rising inflation poses to the public finances, something Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has touted as a reason to keep a firm lid on spending.

“From an economic point of view, you want inflation low and stable. But from a fiscal point of view, some kinds of inflation are beneficial,” Hughes said. “Inflation that feeds into nominal wages helps the public finances because wages are taxed more than profits.”

“This bit of inflation has been particularly good for receipts for those two reasons. There’s been a nominal wage response and the frozen thresholds.”

Read more: Sunak Gets Budget Boost as Borrowing $34 Billion Below Forecast

That phenomenon is known as fiscal drag, where more people are drawn higher rates of tax as their wages rise above fixed income tax thresholds. At least 2 million Britons will be caught rates due to Sunak’s four-year freeze on thresholds, OBR documents show. 

At the Spring statement last week, Sunak warned that debt servicing costs would increase four-fold to 83 billion pounds ($109 billion) next year due to higher inflation and interest rates. Hughes said the cost of higher inflation, on debnt servicing and welfare payments, was just two-thirds of the increase it delivers to government receipts.

He stressed that inflation remains a risk to the public finances, particularly as the amount of government debt linked to inflation is higher in the U.K. than other European countries. The upside would vanish, he said, if wages weren’t rising rapidly or if tax thresholds were eased.

Hughes was speaking after The Times newspaper reported that Sunak “viscerally hates” the OBR for making “policy judgments” that overshadowed his Spring statement. 

Citing unnamed government sources, the newspaper reported that Sunak was unhappy the OBR said U.K. households faced the sharpest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s and that personal tax cuts he announced unwound just one sixth of the rises since he took office. 

The OBR’s figures dominated media coverage of Sunak’s Spring economic statement in which the chancellor cut taxes for 30 million working people. “The chancellor has not raised any of these issues with me,” Hughes said in response to the article in The Times. 

The OBR documents show that the chancellor saw the forecasts eight days before the Spring statement. Its projections also handed the chancellor a 15 billion pound windfall, 10 billion pounds of which which Sunak used to cut taxes.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Campaign lobbies Tanzania President Hassan to protect 70 000 Maasai from resettlement

Lenin Ndebele

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
AFP

Tanzania is set to move 70 000 Maasai pastoralists to make way for trophy hunting and elite tourism.

The country's president was handed a petition on the sidelines of the EU-AU Summit last week.

Activists say the government is intimidating people and claiming that moving them is for the greater good of Tanzania.

A petition to stop the forced resettlement of more than 70 000 Maasai people from northern Tanzania was handed to the country's president on the sidelines of the recently ended European Union-African Union Summit in Brussels, Belgium.

The petition, which had been signed by 2.7 million by Friday last week, was handed to President Samia Suluhu Hassan's senior staff by Avaaz, an American-based online activist network.

READ | Tanzania's Maasai evicted in favour of tourism, group says

In an interview with News24, Sarah Morrison, Avaaz's campaign director, said they intended to draw the president's attention and show her international solidarity against the government's intentions to resettle the Maasai people.

"We hope that by standing in solidarity with the Maasai of northern Tanzania, we amplify their call and raise attention to the threats they are facing. We also hope that if the president sees the global community mobilising behind this call, she will champion the rights of her people, and oppose any attempt to evict them from their ancestral lands," she said.

On 21 January, the Tanzanian government revealed plans to evict 70 000 Maasai people from their 1500km2 ancestral lands in Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo in the Arusha region.

As more people move in, some are building fenced farms, limiting wild animals' space to roam. Livestock can overgraze the grasslands and in many places in the Mara, the diversity of habitats and wildlife has dropped.

The government plans to lease the land to a United Arab Emirates-based company that will create a wildlife corridor for trophy hunting and elite tourism.

The renewed decision by the government seeks to overrule a 2018 East African Court of Justice (EACJ) ruling that stopped the government from evicting Maasai communities from 1 500km2 of ancestral, legally registered land.

Morrison said this was the second time her organisation has worked to defend the Maasai people.

She said:
In 2013, we worked with Maasai elders of Ngorongoro District when they were facing similar threats of eviction. We launched our online campaign and, as this grew, the then-president promised they would never be evicted from their ancestral lands.

"And so, last week when the Maasai community got in touch with us again telling us about the ratcheting threats of eviction, we did what we believe is right: stand with Indigenous people and mobilise to help protect their rights.

"Having worked with Maasai communities across East Africa, we understand the vital role they play in stewarding conservation efforts. We believe conservation efforts must champion Indigenous people and protect their rights," she said.

Joseph Moses Oleshangay, from the Legal and Human Rights Centre in Tanzania, said the government was intimidating people and also claiming that the resettlement was of public interest.

He said:
In 2013, we worked with Maasai elders of Ngorongoro District when they were facing similar threats of eviction. We launched our online campaign and, as this grew, the then-president promised they would never be evicted from their ancestral lands.


The Ngorongoro Conservation Area was established by law in 1959 as a multiple Land Use Area for both Maasai pastoralism and wildlife conservation.

Loliondo, which has an area of around 4 000km2, was designated as a Game Control Area, a form of wildlife management that allows for co-existence between people and wildlife, in 1955.

The Maasai people, who largely occupy both the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo, are the same community that was forced by the then colonial government out of the now Serengeti National Park in 1958.

Giving an historical context, Oleshangay said as far as the late 1970s there were plans to resettle Maasai pastoralists out of Ngorongoro Conservation first on ecological carrying capacity claims. This has since changed to threatening the wildlife and tourism industry.

WAIT, WHAT?!
Woman jailed for abusing rights to freedom, democracy

The Hanoi People’s Court has sentenced a woman to 21 months in prison for “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to violate interests of the State, rights and legitimate interests of organisations and individuals.”

VNA 

Friday, April 01, 2022 

Le Thi Thu Huong at the court (Photo:baovephapluat.vn)Hanoi (VNA) – The Hanoi People’s Court has sentenced a woman to 21 months in prison for “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to violate interests of the State, rights and legitimate interests of organisations and individuals.”

The decision was made at a first-instance trial on March 31 under Article 331 of the 2015 Penal Code.

49-year-old Le Thi Thu Huong, from Vu Di commune, Vinh Tuong district, the northern province of Vinh Phuc, had worked as a freelancer for some press agencies, including “Bao ve phap luat” (Law Protection) newspaper.

However, the newspaper ended the labour contract with Huong following a definite term from November 2015 to November 2018.

According to investigations, since 2020, Huong created and used Facebook accounts “Le Thu Huong (Hoang Ly)” and “Huong Le” and a Zalo account “Hoang Ly” to publish and spread articles, information and images with biased and distorted contents defaming the prestige of collectives and the honour of leaders of the newspaper, and violating legitimate rights and interests of organisations and individuals.

Huong also sent denunciations with the above-said contents to leaders of the Party, the State and some centrally-run agencies.

The Department of Information and Communications of Hanoi concluded on January 10, 2022 that the articles published by Huong’s Facebook and Zalo accounts have distorted and biased contents that defame organisations and individuals.

Centrally-run agencies and units like the inspection and personnel departments at the Supreme People’s Procuracy also affirmed that Huong’s denunciations are groundless./.

Explosion At Mine In Eastern Serbia Kills Eight, Others Feared Trapped

Forty-nine people were on duty when the incident occurred at the Soko coal mine on April 1. (file photo)

Eight people have been killed and 20 others injured after an explosion at the Soko coal mine in eastern Serbia.

The accident happened at around 5 a.m. local time on April 1, when part of the pit mine collapsed after what officials said may have been a methane-gas blast.

Rodoljub Zivadinovic, director of the nearby Aleksinac Health Center, said there are fears more people could be trapped in the mine.

He said the mine's management told him that a total of 49 miners were on duty when the accident occurred.


8 killed in Serbia coal mine accident

Rescue operation is ongoing, miners remain trapped underground


Talha Ozturk |01.04.2022

BELGRADE, Serbia

At least eight miners were killed and 30 others injured on Friday morning in a coal mine accident in Serbia.

Serbian state television reported that a part of the pit collapsed in the Soko mine near Sokobanja town in the country's east.

According to the report, there was a methane gas explosion that brought down parts of the mine shaft leaving some miners trapped.

A total of 65 miners were rescued.

More than 20 others were injured, said Rodoljub Zivadinovic, the director of the Aleksinac Health Center where the miners were brought for treatment.

All non-emergency operations have been canceled, said Goran Vidic, the director of the General Hospital Aleksinac, another hospital in the region.

"The situation here is difficult, there are also relatives, people are upset. Unfortunately, this is not our first accident. Aleksinac and its surroundings are known for that, it has happened again now," said Vidic.

A rescue operation is underway as it remains unclear how many people are trapped underground.

Ukraine's 10-point plan 

Journalist Farida Rustamova obtained the full list of Kyiv's proposals to Moscow on March 29

March 29, 2022

Source: Meduza

Journalist Farida Rustamova obtained a list of the written proposals Ukrainian negotiators delivered to their Russian counterparts in Istanbul on March 29, 2022. Russia and Ukraine have not agreed to these measures, but Moscow says it will study and discuss the ideas. Russia’s lead negotiator, Kremlin adviser Vladimir Medinsky, summarized some of these proposals to journalists on Tuesday, while Rustamova got access to the text of the communiqué. Meduza translated Ukraine's proposals below. Kyiv's fundamental offer to Russia is “permanent neutrality.”

Proposal 1: Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocs and refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.

Proposal 2: These international security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or certain areas of the Donbas. The parties to the agreement would need to define the boundaries of these regions or agree that each party understands these boundaries differently.

Proposal 3: Ukraine vows not to join any military coalitions or host any foreign military bases or troop contingents. Any international military exercises would be possible only with the consent of the guarantor-states. For their part, these guarantors confirm their intention to promote Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

Proposal 4: Ukraine and the guarantor-states agree that (in the event of aggression, any armed attack against Ukraine, or any military operation against Ukraine) each of the guarantor-states, after urgent and immediate mutual consultations (which must be held within three days) on the exercise of the right to individual or collective self-defense (as recognized by Article 51 of the UN Charter) will provide (in response to and on the basis of an official appeal by Ukraine) assistance to Ukraine, as a permanently neutral state under attack. This aid will be facilitated through the immediate implementation of such individual or joint actions as may be necessary, including the closure of Ukraine’s airspace, the provision of necessary weapons, the use of armed force with the goal of restoring and then maintaining Ukraine’s security as a permanently neutral state.

Proposal 5: Any such armed attack (any military operation at all) and all measures taken as a result will be reported immediately to the UN Security Council. Such measures will cease when the UNSC takes the measures needed to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Proposal 6: Implementing protections against possible provocations, the agreement will regulate the mechanism for fulfilling Ukraine’s security guarantees based on the results of consultations between Ukraine and the guarantor-states.

Proposal 7: The treaty provisionally applies from the date it is signed by Ukraine and all or most guarantor-states. The treaty enters force after (1) Ukraine’s permanently neutral status is approved in a nationwide referendum, (2) the introduction of the appropriate amendments in Ukraine’s Constitution, and (3) ratification in the parliaments of Ukraine and the guarantor-states.

Proposal 8: The parties’ desire to resolve issues related to Crimea and Sevastopol shall be committed to bilateral negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for a period of 15 years. Ukraine and Russia also pledge not to resolve these issues by military means and to continue diplomatic resolution efforts.

Proposal 9: The parties shall continue consultations (with the involvement of other guarantor-states) to prepare and agree on the provisions of a Treaty on Security Guarantees for Ukraine, ceasefire modalities, the withdrawal of troops and other paramilitary formations, and the opening and ensuring of safe-functioning humanitarian corridors on an ongoing basis, as well as the exchange of dead bodies and the release of prisoners of war and interned civilians.

Proposal 10: The parties consider it possible to hold a meeting between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia for the purpose of signing a treaty and/or adopting political decisions regarding other remaining unresolved issues.

Summary by Kevin Rothrock

Sergei Karpukhin / TASS / Scanpix / LETA

IAN BREMMER 

End of globalization for Russia

March 29, 2022

GZERO Staff

Who poisoned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich? Does Russia's invasion of Ukraine mark the end of globalization? Will Shanghai's lockdown begin to shift China away from its zero-COVID policy? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

First, who poisoned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich?

Yeah, it's quite a story involved in the Russia-Ukrainian negotiations, and apparently claimed that he was poisoned. And it's interesting, he is, of course, a very well-known Russian oligarch. He's made his billions of dollars, purely because of the support and alignment with President Putin. And he has been fairly public in his concern with opposition to the war. Indeed, one of the reasons why some of the sanctions have been more limited against him than they would've been is because Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, reached out to the Biden administration and said, "This guy's actually being useful to us, and so it would be, you don't want to hit him too hard." And clearly, the Kremlin is angry about that. And so, I have no intelligence at all about who would've been responsible for his poisoning, but if it happened, the list from the Kremlin would be as long as my arm.

Does Russia's invasion of Ukraine mark the end of globalization?

No, but it marks the end of globalization for Russia. And even if we're able to get to a ceasefire, even if we can get a frozen conflict in Ukraine, and increasingly that does look likely to me, in part because the Russian military performance on the ground in Ukraine has been so abysmal and there isn't the general mobilization and negotiations are increasingly reflecting a climbdown from the Kremlin from the military aims that they originally had when they thought they were going to get to Kyiv and take over in a relatively short order. But that's very different from the idea that sanctions will be removed. And even if you unfroze the Kremlin's assets, which I think you could do if you had a negotiated settlement and all the Russian troops verifiably moved out of Ukrainian territory, or very, very far from that, but you're not going to get the Europeans willing to actually invest in Russia going forward. You're not going to see the Americans or the Europeans say, "No, okay, we're comfortable now with Nord Stream 2 or with getting oil and coal and gas from Russia."

So I believe that Russia's relationship with the West, with the advanced industrial economies, is broken irrevocably, and that's a really big deal. The broader question is to what extent that also starts to disalign China more from the advanced industrial economies as well. Now if that were to happen, you'd say that's a tipping point against globalization. We are not there right now. I hope that doesn't happen because the interdependence is enormously important, not just for the global economy, but also for the avoidance of war. But that's a really big question that we're going to be looking at very carefully in the coming weeks.

So finally, will Shanghai's lockdown begin to shift China away from its zero-COVID policy?

Maybe at the margins, but I don't see it. Keep in mind that Xi Jinping really believes that the Americans are massively irresponsible for allowing a million people to die during COVID, and the fact that the Chinese economy is taking a huge hit and a lot of Chinese citizens are being massively inconvenienced by Shanghai being locked down, and it's the biggest city in China. Sothis is a huge deal. And this is after the Port of Shenzhen and the city was closed and Jilin and other places across China.

But Xi Jinping's position is, this zero-COVID policy, it's my policy. I implemented it, and I'm stopping the Chinese from dying. And what we are seeing is that, once they implement a complete lockdown, you very quickly go from symptomatic cases to asymptomatic cases because they're getting much more clarity and transparency in exactly where the COVID has spread, and then they're shutting it down. And the impact on that is, of course, I mean limitations on individual rights and liberties, and it's also a huge economic hit in the country. And it wouldn't surprise me, we're not going to see 5.5% growth, nothing close to that in China this year. But zero-COVID is going to stick, and that's going to be a big problem for the Chinese continually until they get mRNA vaccines and therapeutics that work at scale. They're not close to that right now.

• The Graphic Truth: What does Roman Abramovich own? - GZERO ... ›
• The US is at war with Russia: 4 scenarios from here - GZERO Media ›
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• Will COVID-19 kill globalization? - GZERO Media ›
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History shows how elective wars ultimately fail

Wars like Ukraine, waged with no urgent reasons for action, often become the undoing of those who started them

By EDMUND ADAM

THE CONVERSATION

MARCH 30, 2022

Scene from the arrival at an evacuation point of a large convoy of cars and buses carrying hundreds of people from Mariupol and Melitopol, March 25, 2022. 

Photo: Chris McGrath / war.ukraine.ua

Throughout history, elective wars like the one in Ukraine — armed military conflicts that countries wage without compelling and urgent reasons for action — have mostly failed to achieve their aims. Instead, they worsen the problems they set out to solve and often become the undoing of those who started the conflict.

One of the oldest written records of how this dynamic played out is contained in the work of Thucydides, the Athenian historian and general who chronicled the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) between ancient Greece’s most powerful city-states: Athens and Sparta.

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides records that in 416 BCE, the Athenians decided on a whim to invade the island of Melos, which, although an ally of Sparta, didn’t join Sparta in the war against Athens.

The Melians’ pleas for justice fell on the deaf ears of the Athenians who demanded that the Melians surrender, pay tribute to and join Athens’s confederacy or face destruction. The campaign ended tragically with the entire civilian population of Melos facing all kinds of atrocities for refusing to surrender to the Athenians, who saw their unbridled power as sufficient basis to inflict grave injustice.

A painting shows Pericles’ funeral oration at the end of first year of the Peloponnesian War. Photo: Wikip;edia

Intoxicated by power, the Athenians replied, according to Thucydides’ account, essentially that “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This principle, Thucydides shows, was the driving force behind Athens’s aggressive approach toward its neighbors.

Over time, it fueled deep-seated anger and resentment among Melians and citizens of other city-states, who sought revenge by ultimately joining forces with Sparta to defeat Athens in 404 BCE.

Downfalls triggered

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, the dynamics of great power politics haven’t changed much in more recent history. The lure of using brute force to achieve quick economic and geopolitical gains has created a rolling tide of military mobilization that has carried countries into battle.

History often repeats itself in that those battles trigger the downfall of the stronger party who unnecessarily drew the first blood.

In the 1930s, fascist regimes used offensive wars as consolation when grandiose promises proved hollow. As the Great Depression dragged on, Italy’s Benito Mussolini sought to divert public attention from his economic failures through a series of costly military ler, adventures in Greece, the former Yugoslavia and Ethiopia.

These episodes created economic havoc for Italians, rather than glory, before Italy’s entry to the Second World War. The war accelerated Mussolini’s downward spiral even among his own fascist clique, which ousted him in 1943.

In the same time period, Adolf Hitler thought Germany needed lebenstraum — living space — to ease its economic strains. He then proceeded with unprovoked invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland to expand Germany’s territory, sparking the Second World War in 1939

.

High-ranking officials of the Nazi and Fascist Parties. Left to right: Herman Goering, Benito Mussolini, Rudolph Hess and Adolf Hitler. (National Archives of Canada)

To achieve his ideal of a racial utopia, Hitler’s war not only unleashed a genocide of six million Jews and persecution on a scale few could have imagined; it also undermined the entire German economy and the country’s military capabilities.

Hitler’s delusional leadership ultimately resulted in a series of defeats and defections, culminating in assassination attempts on Hitler himself and finally the collapse of Nazi Germany and the führer’s suicide on April 30, 1945.

The Middle East also saw a number of elective wars that marked the beginning of the end of the regimes that waged them. Muammar Gadhafi’s war against Chad (1978-87) is one example.

Saddam Hussein’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait is another.

Both regimes envisioned wars of national glory only to plunge their countries into quagmires that took huge human and economic tolls and severely diminished public confidence in their leadership.

ECOCIDE-

Oil well fires rage outside Kuwait City in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm. The wells were set on fire by Iraqi invaders before they were ousted from the region by coalition forces. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Why elective wars fail

War is often a failure in itself. However, elective wars constitute a special kind of failure.

First and foremost, they lose public support quickly. They often begin with saber-rattling and narratives that exalt an alleged heroic past and envision a war of national glory, similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric prior to the invasion of Ukraine.

But as the war drags on and the futility of war becomes more obvious, people begin to question the strategic importance and moral foundations of war. It’s difficult for regimes to galvanize public opinion or maintain people’s willingness to accept the sacrifices associated with war — especially when it’s a drain on resources, causes economic hardship and lowers living standards.

When that happens, regimes face two hard choices. One is to admit their mistake and reverse action. That rarely happens. The second is to suppress dissenting opinions, project an image of popular support for the war and stay the course despite mistakes that later lead to further errors and conflict within the power elite.

Elective wars often fail because they attempt to eliminate old animosities but instead create new ones. They also shred the ethnic bonds within conquered territories.

This results in time bombs that can go off at any moment, since few modern economies can function well within a hostile environment.

“The empires of the future are empires of the mind,” Winston Churchill presciently said in a 1943 speech at the height of the Second World War.

Churchill seemingly realized that wars aimed at territorial expansion won’t ensure national security or economic prosperity, and the future belongs to those who invest in education, knowledge production and innovation rather than wage meaningless wars that create nothing but misery.

Edmund Adam is a postdoctoral fellow, Department of Communication Studies & Media Arts, McMaster University. 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.