War

March 14, 2022

The rain fell, the wind blew, spring crept in around here while we settled into the new world of war. It snowed last week in eastern Ukraine. The news footage showed columns of refugees carrying children or holding their hands and dragging suitcases, nearly obscured by the wind-blown storm. They were the lucky ones. We also saw the bodies, casualties of shelling and long-range rockets, some covered, others lying where they died. The scene has been repeated, and repeated.

The news that day reported the temperature close to zero while the shells flew. Was this the way it was around Kyiv in the winters of 1941 through 1945? Here we debate the impact of higher gas prices. They are not the only thing to debate.

This land has been wracked by death. More than four million Ukrainians died in Stalin’s forced-collectivization famine of 1932-1933. Nearly seven million more, including 1.5 million Jews, were killed during World War II, when Nazis, collaborators, partisans, and Soviet troops massacred civilians and each other. The return of Soviet control brought back Soviet terror and a famine in 1946-1947 that killed one million, another half-million were purged and sent to prison camps. On December 26, 1991, after the USSR collapsed, Ukraine became independent.

In 1975, in the depths of the Cold War, New York Times military correspondent Drew Middleton wrote Can America Win the Next War? and concluded the huge Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies massed in Central Europe and primed to attack through West Germany might defeat NATO forces. The end of the Cold War and the stampede of Western businesses into Russia made the European war scenario seem dusty and quaint.

Putin’s assault on Ukraine shows he wants to turn back the clock. The hypothetical endgame then was use of nuclear weapons. It is again, today.

No one knows where this is going. The matchup of Ukrainians with Javelin anti-armor tubes and Russian tanks has produced a bloody quagmire. The wider war may come. Sanctions are pushing Russia into an economic stone age. The world could be dragged along.  

Last week James Grant, in Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, wrote that “in America, before the Russian assault, too much money was chasing too few goods. Post-assault, too much money is chasing even fewer goods.” He cited London Daily Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who points out that “Putin has the means to cut off critical minerals and gases needed to sustain the West’s supply chain for semiconductor chips, upping the ante in the middle of a worldwide chip crunch.”

Evans-Pritchard added: “Furthermore, he could hobble the aerospace and armaments industry in the U.S. and Europe by restricting the supply of titanium, palladium, and other metals. If he controlled Ukraine, his control over key strategic minerals would be even more dominant … The Kremlin could unleash an inflation shock every bit as violent as the first oil crisis, with a recession to match.”

Aircraft builder Boeing has suspended its titanium contract with Russia’s VSMPO-AVISA, which is partly owned by the state conglomerate Rostec. The company said it had a diversity of titanium sources and adequate inventory. Reuters reports that Boeing obtained about one-third of its titanium from the Russian company; other major producers are China, Japan, Kazakhstan. French aircraft builder Airbus said that it would continue to rely on VSMPO-AVISA for half its titanium.  

Grant reminds that in 2018, when the U.S. sanctioned Russian aluminum producer Rusal, the consumer price index, the measure of inflation, rose by 2.4 percent. He adds that “Things are very different in this congressional election year with a CPI running above 7 percent.”

At the end of the first week we and everyone else tried to carry on. We went to the mountains for a 25-kilometer trail race, stepping back into a world I had lived in years ago. Runners focused on the task at hand, climbing Pinnacle Peak, the second-tallest mountain in the state. We hung around at the finish and visited.

The next day I spread one of those Home Depot lawn-care products on the grass then spent a half-dozen hours clearing the plot that last summer had been a garden. I dragged sacks of yardwork out to the street for the pickup guy. As I tugged on the bags the woman across the street waved. “Beautiful day,” she yelled. “Summer is here,” I answered. “I’m glad, except for the yardwork.” She said she and her husband hired a lawn service when they moved into their home. I wiped my perspiring forehead and looked down at my bags.

She said they would be moving to Ohio for the summer, her husband will be doing research at Wright-Patterson Air Force base. I wondered if he’s working on some top-secret project to upgrade weapons we’re sending to the Ukrainians. I said I’d keep an eye on the house.

Someone interviewed a guy from New Jersey who was volunteering for the “international brigade” the Ukrainian government is organizing. He had no military experience and hoped someone would train him to shoot.

The Grant predictions already are proving out, as prices for everything spiral up. The price of gas is now an American melodrama. Regular was above $4.00 this weekend in most states, diesel was closing on $6.00. The 7 percent CPI is out of date with the elections eight months away.

At this moment, in those frigid Ukrainian cities, men and women are shooting down Russian helicopters, evacuating women and children, digging trenches, making Molotov cocktails. They’re building tank traps, loading magazines, pulling victims from rubble, caring for their wounded and burying their dead, attending church services, getting married. They are teaching reverence for life in the midst of hell. Let’s offer a prayer with them, and pay for our gas.