Economic Benefits of War in Ukraine

I recently watched a video that stated that Ukraine lost a lot of people to war, and that current population of the country is only about 27 million. Most of the losses are either refugees that fled to Europe or Russia or inhabitants of occupied territories that Russia has given Russian citizenship and now wants to draft into Russian military.

The video uses these numbers to draw a conclusion that Ukraine will not recover from war demographically.

I would like to disagree not with numbers but with conclusion. I generally used to continually claim that world suffers from overpopulation and that reduction of population is beneficial to any nation and the world in general. That does apply to Ukraine as well. The more people will die in war, the more wealth will be left to those who remain. Cynical but truth, nonetheless.

Second issue is question of loyalty. There is significant pro-Russian minority in Ukraine that actually prefers to be part of Russia. Most of them also want to extend that wish to the entirely of the country without regard to the fact that majority of Ukrainians do not see themselves as Russians and see Russia as enemy. 

Half of these Russia sympathizers Russia already claimed in their annexation of Crimea and creation of DNR and LNR puppets, but some still remain scattered here and there across Ukraine. War will help weed these people out. 

During peace time they refused to just move to Russia or elsewhere, because selling their apartment is a hard and they erroneously believed they are majority of country's population. Now that war destroyed their homes and communities most of them have fled the country, some to Russia but most to Europe. 

As I mentioned in my other article, for a person who thinks that Ukraine is not even a country, leaving it behind is just an issue of practicality and possibility. For such people, as war endangered their lives and destroyed their homes, it also opened them towards resettling in Europe by claiming to be a refugee. Russia also offered people in areas they have reached to leave with retreating Russian army and promised to resettle them in Russia at government expense.

As those for whom Ukraine is not a country leave, only those for whom Ukraine one and only their country remains. These patriots will be able to rebuild their country much better and faster without all these naysayers getting in the way and complaining about Ukrainian language or culture.

However, there is one other issue and that is an economic one. There are two areas that can benefit from population reduction and that is mining and farming. I will begin with mining.

Mining in Ukraine is concentrated in Donbas area. It was started in late 19th century by John Hughes and other European and Russian businessmen. Biggest city in the area Donetsk, used to bear Hughes's name. Area grew rapidly and in soviet times was the most densely populated in Ukraine.

However, there is a problem with mining in Donbas: it still uses outdated 19th century shaft method of mining. Modern mining is all open pit mining. Open pit produces a lot more coal than a shaft and require a lot less people to work the equipment. These facts make shaft mining unprofitable compared to open pit.

Converting to open pit however is not easy. The pit itself takes a lot more open space compared to shaft. To convert to open pit almost every settlement in Donbas will have to be levelled to the ground and population resettled somewhere else. Because of that Thatcher government in UK choose to close their mines in northern England instead of converting them to open pits. They did not want to resettle the miners elsewhere, nor would they commit to simply exterminating them. 

Donbas population is whooping 6 million people. Resettling them peacefully would not be prohibitively expensive but also politically complicated. As strange as it sounds, residents of Donbas are attached to their area and would resist moving elsewhere. Just as British miners who resisted Thatcher, they view their mining communities as source of power and influence and would not want to be divided and separated from each other. They tend to mistrust Kyiv government and would remain skeptical, no matter what alternative accommodation Kyiv would offer them.

Thus, war was essentially the only solution to Donbas problem. Constant shelling already levelled many towns with the ground and Russia kept shelling more and more. Russian military heavily relies on multiple rocket launchers that cause a lot of damage to cities and other civilian infrastructure. People, unwilling to move in peacetime, are much more willing to do so in wartime to save their lives. The fact that there is war in Ukraine makes them eligible for refugee status in Europe and elsewhere. That will entice some to migrate to a wealthy western nation.

Second issue is agriculture, but problem there is the same as in mining and thus the same solution will work here as well. Ukrainian soil (Chernozem) is very rich in nutrients and very suitable for any farming.

However, agriculture was practiced in Ukraine since time immemorable, long before tractors, combines and other agricultural machinery was invented. Agricultural machinery allows a single person or a small group of people to work huge swathes of land. Without such machinery it would take thousands of people to do the same. Since Ukraine practiced agriculture long before agricultural machinery was invented, rural population of Ukraine is much higher compared to modern agricultural leaders such as the US or Australia. Ukrainians are accustomed to much smaller pieces of agricultural land, that are too small to make agriculture profitable in 21st century. 

As I mentioned before the US and Australia did not have to deal with the issue of transitioning agriculture from manual to mechanized way. The only country that transitioned agriculture from manual to mechanized was UK. It was done by means of Inclosure Acts that displaced a lot of rural peasants from their land in rather disrespectful to human rights way that would be hard to do in modern times. 

Here again war can help to solve the problem by displacing surplus of rural population to cities or even abroad. Emptied land then could be divided into large modern farms, sized for modern heavily mechanized farming.

I will not claim here that great powers of the world conspired to get this war rolling because of the economic benefits I outlined, but these benefits will be felt in Ukraine and in Russia once the war is over. Now if only COVID or other virus will pick up its killing spree and we would enter New Golden Age.

We Need More Comprehensive Rules Regarding Self-Determination

 

In international law there exist two contradictory principles. One is right of people's and nations for self-determination and the other is invariability of national sovereignty and borders. That creates conflict of interests. A simple example of such conflict of interests would be if a part of an existing country wants to secede and form its own country. Right of self-determination says it has a right to do so. However, a country they currently part of then can claim that their possible independence violates their sovereignty and borders. Give them independence and violate integrity of their current nation borders or deny them independence and violate their right to self-determination. No matter what you do it will break one or the other law.

These conflicting principles led to a situation where in practice interests of powerful nations decide who gets independence and who does not. Force and influence decide who gets to be free and who ends up being oppressed. Uyghurs and Tibetans live under Chinese yoke because China is big and strong in that areas. Tiny South Ossetia, that has less people than Monaco, wins its unrecognized independence on the back or Russian arms.

Dictatorships are not the only ones at fault though. Spain suppressed Catalan independence and EU OK-ed it because they do not want to ruin their cozy relationship with Spain.

These are just few examples. World is full of areas and unrepresented nations, big and small who all claim right for independence, but unable to achieve it. There are also places like Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, Ethiopia and many others, where two or more distinct (nations)bodies of people vie for control over the territory and its government.

Nation state is a country where one body of people controls the government collectively. That can only work if there is only one such body of people in any given country. If there are two or more, then they will fight each other over the control of government. Once one group wins such control, they will use it to benefit only their ethnicity, sidelining or even drying extinct the other ethnicities. Multinational experiments, such as Yugoslavia or USSR failed because eventually consistent nations started accusing each other of hogging up all the wealth for their own people only and denying it to others. 

Yet collapse of Yugoslavia led towards international community repeating this experiment in Bosnia, where its three nations: Serbs, Croats and Bosnaks are deadlocked in never-ending Mexican Standoff and nothing ever gets done. As much as some might wish that these people would abandon their petty ethnic differences and unite behind one Bosnian banner, they do not do so. Croats and Serbs in Bosnia may hold Bosnian Passports but see Bosnaks as their enemies and people of nations of Croatia and Serbia respectively as their fellow countrymen. The remaining third nation of Bosnia, Bosnaks wish to unite their country but simply cannot. 

A solution is needed because leave things be and let things work out does no work. Fundamentally countries like Bosnia have to be divided until they reach one nation (polity of people) per country

However, that raises another question. If country is to be divided, then where borders should run and who should be entitled to a nation and who does not. That in turn can create new injustice to replace the old one. 

For example, Kosovo was granted independence in its administrative borders, drawn by Josef Tito. That left province with a Serbian enclave of around 10%. During Serbian control over the area, Serbs attempted to genocide Albanians of Kosovo, who were an ethnic minority in whole of Servia but majority in Kosovo itself. Solution, that granted Kosovo independence, now left Serb minority in new Kosovo, reversing the tables between ethnicities. 

As much as some may say it's fair that Serbs now experience what it's like to be a minority ruled by others who hate them, it's not a solution to a problem, it's just a reversal of roles. Serbia and sympathizers will protest, then do something and a constant chain of offenses will continue.

Kosovo's independence itself raised conflict between territorial integrity and right for self-determination. Sure, there were good reasons to allow Kosovo its independence and the decision was made by a representative of neutral enough country to forestall accusations of bias. However, it was a decision based on merits of the situations seen by a guy from Finland. There was nothing more substantial to back it up.

Russia, long ally of Serbia, protested Kosovo independence on the grounds of Serbian territorial integrity. Later Russian ceased this precedent to hold referendums in Crimea and then claim that people of Crimea should have self-determination to secede from Ukraine. Now EU claimed that Ukrainian territorial integrity cannot be violated in this manner.

Sure, Russia is a dictatorship, it is unduly biased towards Serbia, there was a proper due process in Kosovo but not in Ukraine, Russia has history of electoral fraud and so results of referendum it organized cannot be trusted, Serbs were committing genocide in Kosovo and Ukrainians did not and many other reasons why Kosovo's independence is justified, and Russian annexation of Crimea is not. 

However, it is not written anywhere in particular what is fair and what is not. Lack of clear rules on self-determination is to blame that it used more as a pretext to war or foreign interference than a real body of rules that can govern humanity. For Europe its territorial integrity of Ukraine but right for self-determination of Kosova's Albanians. For Russia its self-determination of Russians in Crimea but territorial integrity of Serbia. Net result that is not an international law but an excuse to carve up the map as one sees fit and more war as a result.

However, it does not have to be this way. A comprehensive set of principles to govern people's right for self-determination can be created to prevent any further wars and accusations of bias and unfairness. 

Such rules have to include minimum size of polity that can be considered for independence. Density of their residence in the area of question. Special provisions have to be made in split areas where half of population wants independence, and the other half does not. Safeguards against saturating area with recent settlers to alter its demographics also has to be accounted for. Options for resettlement to nation of their choice should be offered. 

Geographic implications on nation they want to secede from and many more. New nations should not geographically disadvantage the original nations by blocking all their access to sea, like Eritrea did to Ethiopia. New borders have to be defensible and not put either nation in jeopardy of invasion. Natural barriers like rivers and mountains should be considered as borders whenever possible. Natural resources also have to be considered, new nations should not hog up all the valuable resources such as oil from the nation the want to secede from.

Borders of the new nations should be drawn to avoid including any ethnic minorities. If unrepresented nation/ethnicity makes up 60% of region's population they should get 60% of region territory, not the whole of it. Credible historical population figures should be considered if the current controller of the area deliberately brought migrants of their main ethnicity to the region to dilute its ethnic composition. Population stuffing should be discouraged. Recent migrants should be told to either accept separation from their nation or return to their provinces of origin.

Finally, referendums on self-determination should be organized, held by UN. Votes should be counted by UN in presence of all concerned parties and neutral observers to avoid accusations of electoral fraud. Votes should be counted not only for region as a whole but also for each individual city and sub region. Areas that vote against independence should not be forced to secede with the rest of the province.

Hopefully my proposal principles on nations' self-determination will be able to create a better and both more fair and more workable world where each polity of people will be able to have a country of their own. A world where bigger ethnicities will not oppress smaller ones. A world of rule of law.

Government Should Control Weather

 

Recent storms, rains, cyclones and other tantrums of capricious weather get me convinced that we should use advanced knowledge of weather and climate to simply control weather and shape it to out liking. Government can easily use this knowledge to control weather and prevent damaging cataclysm, while ensuring perfect sunny days for citizens to enjoy. 

Why suffer floods and thunderstorms when you can just launch coolant into a cloud and make it rain couple of km away from the shore. Floods and cyclones cause a lot of damage to properties and kill a lot of people. We do not need to suffer these tantrums of nature, when we can simply tame it to our needs.

I wonder why people fail to realize that it is not only possible but also very easy to do. Even Wikipedia has an article about that.

Not only we can prevent damage, but we can also create rain where it's needed, for example over the agricultural land to help crops grow. One can easily move clouds into hinterlands and make rain over farmlands to make them more productive. With some more complex tricks it likely possible to stop or create hurricanes (cyclones).

 

While we talk about some stupid green initiatives and "preserving" nature, our enemies in Russia and China already control weather. I think hurricanes that hit Louisiana were man-made, they hit America far too consistently. We can do that too and make some off Chinese coast. 

However, what we really need is to not hit Chinese but to prevent bad weather from causing damage to our cities and people. Weather was out of control long enough and we should finally reign in it and make it peaceful and docile.

Weather control is important part of national security. It can be used in unconventional warfare to cause damage without taking any retaliation or responsibility for the act. Because of that we need to master control over weather to prevent Russia and China from destroying us with cyclones and hurricanes.