Category Eastern Europe

No Deal Brexit?

This is a little out of our normal lanes of discussion, but I have watching Brexit for a while. In the end, economic power = military power, so the impact of this is worth examining. The UK is one of four of the ten largest economies in the world that are located in Europe (note that Russia is 11th, behind Canada). Here is a rough comparison between them:


……………………GDP……….Population…..Per Capita GDP……..PPP
Germany………3.8………….83.1……………..46,259…………………56,052
UK……………….2.8…………66.8………………42,300…………………48,710
France…………2.7………….67.2……………..40,494…………………49,435
Italy……………..2.0…………60.0………………33,190…………………44,197

Russia…………..1.7………146.7………………11,585…………………29,181

United States…21.4……..330.8……………..65,281…………………65,281

 

Spain……………1.4………….47.3……………..29,614…………………42,214

Netherlands….0.9………….17.5……………..52,448…………………59,687

Ukraine…………0.15……….41.7……………….3,659…………………13,341

 

These are 2019 World Bank data, which pre-dates the coronavirus. GDP is in trillions. Population is an estimate as of 2020. It is in millions. Per capita is the World Bank 2019 figures, so as to again dodge the coronavirus. It is in dollars.

So, to put in simple terms, UK and France are about the same population wise, GDP wise and in per capita GDP. Germany is a little larger and a little richer. Italy is a little smaller and a little poorer. This is a good group of candidates for a long-term comparison. 

Now, I happen to think that economically, Brexit is a bad idea. What I expect to see over time is a change in the UK GDP compared to other western European countries. But we probably won’t really know what the full impact will be until we have gotten through the coronavirus issues and economies and the rest of the world have re-adjusted back to a more normal existence. Meaning, it may be a few years before we appreciate and fully understand the impact of Brexit and its long term effects. So maybe revisit this post in 2022? 

 

Disputed Elections – week 18

Pretty much the same-old-same-old with Belarus. The protests in Belarus drag on with no clear end in sight. The demonstrations this weekend were stated to include “thousands” of demonstrators protesting at a reported “more than 70 different sites” or “more than 120 marches.”

Clearly it is no longer “tens of thousands” protestors and far from more than hundred thousand protestors that we saw on some of the weekends. The strike called last month didn’t seem to do much. Does that mean that the protests are losing virulence, or are they just hunkered down for the long term? The Belarus opposition is now opening up “People’s Embassies:” in a dozen countries and has support in many countries in Europe. Meanwhile, Belarus has closed its borders to try to combat the Coronavirus. Considering that Lukashenko has never taken the virus seriously before, most likely it is to try to stem the “brain drain” of talented and young people bailing out of Belarus.

This is beginning to look a whole lot more like the failed protests in Venezuela than the various color revolutions in Eastern Europe that overthrew the governments of Ukraine and Georgia. Lukashenko may be able to suppress/contain the protests but it will be at considerable long-term cost to the economy. The country already has a declining population (see graph below). Turning a country of 9.4 million into a new type of Gulag in hardly the basis for a modern, growing economy.

There were more than 130 or 170 protestors detained/arrested this weekend. Many news reports state that over 30,000 people people have been detained in Belarus since the start of the protests in August. Many accounts are reporting that four people have died since this started as a result of government crackdowns.

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from previous months, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Casualty Counts from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War

A tail of a multiple rocket ‘Smerch’ sticks out of the ground near the town of Martuni, the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. (AP Photo)

Last week Azerbaijan announced that they lost 2,783 troops killed during the six week 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. They also reported more than 100 missing-in-action. Another 1,245 are being treated in medical facilities. Fighting ended on 10 November, so I gather this is the wounded that had to be hospitalized for more than a month. There are certainly a whole lot more wounded that have been treated and released (more than 10,000?). The government has said that 94 civilians were killed and more than 400 wounded (wounded-to-killed ratio of over 4.25-to-1).

Armenia has previously announced at least 2,718 troops killed.

Article is here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-azerbaijan-says-2783-troops-were-killed-in-fighting-over-nagorno/

Equipment losses are discussed here:

Losses in latest Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)



Also see: 

Results from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Disputed Elections – week 17

The protests in Belarus drag on with no clear end in sight. The demonstrations this weekend were stated to include “thousands” of demonstrators. This is clearly a lower figure than the “tens of thousands” were have seen claimed before and from the more than a hundred thousand protestors that we saw on some of the weekends. Does that mean that the protests are losing virulence, or are they just hunkered down for the long term? The strike last month didn’t do much.

There were more the 300 protestors detained/arrested this weekend. Lukashenko and his son were banned by the Olympic committee from the games. Lukashenko leads the Belarus Olympic Committee and his son is the first vice-president of the committee.

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from previous months, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Disputed Elections – week 16

Well, the protests in Belarus drag on. Not sure where this is going. Major events this week:

  1. Thousands protested this weekend. Was it tens of thousands?
  2. They switched the protests to a “march of neighbors,” meaning instead of protesting in the heavily policed downtown, they did about 20+ separate protests across the various neighborhoods in Minsk. I gather this is an attempt to complicate the police’s job and to reduce the number of people arrested. It is a change of tactics.
  3. 313 people were detained/arrested
  4. Lukashenko claimed he would step down after a new constitution is adopted. “I am not going to shape the constitution to suit my needs. I am not going to be the president once the new constitution is in place.” He has been in power for 26 years.
  5. Have no idea what is going to be in the new constitution or when it will be completed. It does not appear that the opposition are putting much faith in the process, or have any role in it.

Anyhow, it appears to be more of the same for several more weeks. 

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Disputed Elections – week 15

Protests in Belarus continue as before. One protestor, 31 year old art teacher Roman Bondarenko, died last week in a hospital, probably as a result of a severe beating by plain clothes police officers (of course, their interior ministry denies this). His funeral on Friday was attended by 5,000 people and there were again tens of thousands of protestors this weekend in Minsk (see picture above). There were 345 protestors arrested/detained this weekend compared to over 900 last week. At least four protestors have died since the protests have begun.

The strike, which was called for on 26 October, has not really taken hold. So for now, it appears that Lukashenko has the advantage although there seems to be no end in sight for the protests. How long does this continue and what is the eventual outcome? 

Results from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

This six-week war is now over. It was effectively a two-week war with a four-week poorly maintained ceasefire. Now I gather a more permanent ceasefire is in place, with 2,000 Russian troops placed between the warring factions. Russia is not entirely a neutral player here, having somewhat favored Armenia while Turkey supported Azerbaijan. But as Azerbaijan clearly won this round (and this has been going of and on since 1988) and took territory, then I suspect it is resolved for now. The president of Azerbaijan is touring the battlefield (his conquests) while the government of Armenia is in turmoil with several ministers resigning. Most governments don’t do very well after they lose a war and are usually replaced.

The big story from this war was the extensive use of drones and loitering munitions. These things trashed dozens of tanks, probably well over a 100. There are multiple videos of them, and some people have assembled body counts based upon these videos. I gather Armenia has stated that their losses are 2,317 killed, with other reports indicating 21 captured and several hundred missing. There are also losses from the Republic of Artsakh. Azerbaijan also suffered hundreds of losses and it may have been as high as 1,500, based upon an interpretation of a statement from the President of Azerbaijan. There were also Syrian fighters or mercenaries, which an outside agency reported 293 deaths. There were also civilian casualties. Overall, it looks like this conflict resulted in the deaths of at least 4,000 people and maybe over 5,000.

Losses in latest Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

It does open a few questions. 

  1. Is that main battle tank antiquated?
  2. Are drones the air force of the future?
  3. Is this simply the result of conducting a war with air superiority?

This last point is important. Is what happened to Armenia in this war any different to what happened to Iraq in 1991? How does the efficacy and efficiency of the air campaign in the 1991 Gulf War compare to this conflict? The answer to this question certainly influences the answer to the first two questions. Is this just another example of the advantage of air supremacy, or is there a bigger lesson here?

The second point about drones also needs to be examined in some depth. It does not appear that Armenia had an effective air defense or good countermeasures against the drones. What would have been the difference if they did? Azerbaijan does have an air force, which took some loses, but their primarily prosecuted their air-to-ground campaign using drones. This may have been the poor mans or the cost-effective way of doing this. They could purchase a lot of relatively inexpensive drones and effectively prosecute and air-to-ground campaign to a degree that they could not have done using considerably less expensive manned aircraft. This does lead to the question, is an air force of drones much cheaper in the long run than an air force of manned aircraft? In the end, budget is always a limiting factor, so do drones simply give you more bang for the buck? So, from an analytical point of view, we are not just looking at a comparison of which is better, an air force of mostly drones or mostly manned aircraft; but also which is cheaper. This is potentially a fairly complex piece of analysis.

All this eventually gets to the first question, which is “Is the main battle tank antiquated?” I am not sure how you answer that question until you have answered the other two questions. 

 

Disputed Elections – week 14

Another round of protests this weekend in Belarus. Tens of thousands protesting and 900+ arrested/detained. It does not appear that there were the 100,000+ protestors that used to show up; and it does not appear that the strike, which was called for on 26 October, has taken hold. So for now, it appears that Lukashenko has the advantage. 

You can build a throne with bayonets , but it’s difficult to sit on it.

Boris Yeltsin
— Televised speech (4 October 1993), as quoted in A Democracy of Despots (1995) by Donald Murray. p. 8

Now, earlier versions of similar quotes have been attributed to Tallyrand (1754-1838) or Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844) when he was the King of Spain (1808-1813). But, as we have seen in Syria and many other places, people can remain in power for quite some time after suppressing a popular revolt.

Meanwhile, small protests continue in Khabarovsk (200-500 people at a rally on 14 November) and larger protests continue in Tbilisi, Georgia (thousands on 14 November). These are much smaller than before.

Finally, Russia has become the peacekeepers for the latest Nagorno-Kharabakh conflict, deploying some 2,000 troops into this region of the Caucasus for at least the next five years. 

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Disputed Elections – week 13

Well, from this very distant and poorly informed vantage point, things do not look good for the protest movement in Belarus. Tens of thousands protested again this weekend, but Lukashenko has detained or arrested more than 800 protestors and maybe more than a thousand. He has been arresting 200-300 each week, but this appears to be an increase in aggressiveness on the part of the government. They were very aggressive in the first week of protests with nearly 7,000 detained, but this seemed to fuel the protests. They then backed down and kept their detentions and arrests at a lower level. The fact that they have increased arrests now indicates to me that the government has grown more confident and thinks they can increase the pressure on the protestors and put an end to this.

Two weeks ago, and in a number of weeks before that, the opposition put out more than 100,000 protestors each weekend. They also called for strikes two weeks ago. I gather the strikes have not been widespread and the number of protestors in the street has been well less than 100,000 this weekend and on the previous weekend. Nobody seems to be reporting figures anymore on this, which I think is kind of significant. With the strikes not being widespread and universal, the number of protestors diminishing, and the arrests increasing, it appears that the balance has shifted towards Lukashenko and against the opposition.

By the way, there were also protests in Georgia this weekend (the Georgia mentioned in the Beatles’ song, not the Ray Charles’ song). The Georgian police fired water cannons at hundred of protestors calling for a re-run of the Oct. 31 parliamentary elections, which they claim were rigged. They also had tens of thousands of protestors this weekend and protests are continuing.

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Speaking of Disputed Elections (Belarus – week 12)

Nothing really new to report. Same-old-same-old. Tens of thousands of protestors this weekend, a couple of hundred protestors arrested, and the situation continues as before. It does not appear that either side is making much progress. It is not ramping up to push Lukashenko from power, and it is not dying down. On the other hand, the protest estimates for this weekend seems to be around 20,000 vice the hundred thousand they had on some weekends.

I have still not seen any analysis as to whether extended protests result in a higher probability of replacing the existing government. I guess this is something I could do if I wanted to stop work on my books for the next six months. 

Anyhow, this protest has now gone on for three months, which is about as long as the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine went (2013-2014).

 

P.S. On the morning of 13 October Svetlana Tikhanovksaya, the main opposition leader, issued out a statement:

“The regime has 13 days to fulfill three prerequisites:

  1. Lukashenko must announce his resignation.

  2. Street violence must stop completely.

  3. All political prisoners must be released.

If our demands are not met by October 25, the whole country will peacefully take to the streets with the People’s Ultimatum. And on October 26, a national strike of all enterprises will begin, all roads will be blocked, sales in state stores will collapse.”

P. P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews