alanjjohnstone
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I confess ignorance of Silvio Gesell’s freigeld and had to read up on it
DJP, I was surprised by the minimal effect of tactical battlefield nukes and I added the caveat that it depends on the accuracy of the research. It came from 1977, almost 50 years old, so does it still stand? I don’t have the technical expertise to judge.
Here is the full study
https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/
Here is a 2007 update
https://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/lecture2007_weaponeffects.pdf
But regardless of the effects, the most important aspect is how it is perceived by politicians. It could be viewed as a fait accompli and only condemned. Or it could be tit for tat with a similar response on some low populated region of Russia. But the real issue is whether would it lead to escalation and does the standard MAD deterrent theory still hold?
An interesting essay on whether the Russian invasion was legal and if in fact “legality” is relevant.
“…International law is clear: The presence of an adversary military alliance on Russia’s border is not an armed attack that could justify self-defence by force under jus contra bellum. Likewise, the separatist regions of Ukraine do not satisfy the criteria of statehood for Russia to assert the right to join any collective self-defence. Humanitarian intervention by force to protect civilians without UN Security Council authorisation remains illegal. That is according to Russia’s own judgement on NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
However, the fact that these are not legal justifications for the use of force does not mean that they bear no legal significance. On the contrary, they point to the need for a harder look at allegations of violation of other branches of international law that just do not receive the same level of attention as jus contra bellum and international humanitarian law.
For instance, there is a debate on whether the verbal promises made by officials of NATO states in the early 1990s not to expand the alliance eastward represent legally binding obligations that have since been breached. Allegations of violations of human rights law against Russian minorities in Ukraine have also been made…”Who benefits from the Russian sanctions?
The 72.5-metre Axioma was seized from the steel billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky in March after sanctions by the UK, EU and the US.
However, the yacht was not sold for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for a US investment bank, JP Morgan, which claims Pumpyansky owes it €20.5m.
JP Morgan said the fact the billionaire had been subjected to sanctions meant the terms of the loan had been breached because it legally could not accept repayments from Pyrene
Curious about the use of battlefield nukes and their effect, I read this February 2022 article on the hypothetical scenario of Russia using a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon and was surprised by how feasible it was if Putin sought to make a statement on Russian resolve rather than gain any real actual tactical advantage.
America Isn’t Ready for Russia’s Battlefield Nuclear Weapons
How would the West respond when such a nuke that inflicts relatively little damage (if the article is scientifically valid) but delivers a very big message?
Lauren Boebert, “Let freedom reign!”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, “Congratulations to Giorgio Meloni and to the people of Italy,”
Steve Scalise “it’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out socialists with conservatives—and great bold conservative women like Meloni and [U.K. Prime Minister Liz] Truss. We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States”
115 “provocative maneuvers and close encounters” between U.S. and Chinese forces this year.
China initiated 93 of the incidents, while the U.S. triggered 22. They ranged from “modest actions” by one or two ships or planes to “large-scale maneuvers” like a Chinese air force exercise involving 62 warplanes along China’s maritime border with Taiwan.
“This has resulted, on some occasions, in close encounters between the ships and planes of the opposing sides—with only the skillful action of pilots and helmsmen preventing a potentially deadly collision.”
“This good fortune, however, is not likely to last forever,” the group cautioned, “and, with the frequency and scale of these maneuvers increasing by the week, the likelihood of a mishap is increasing exponentially.”
New New Labour
Lisa Nandy said the party was “coming back to finish the job” of New Labour, with the party undergoing a dramatic transformation and now “fit to govern”.
Paul Donovan, the chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management comments, “Advanced economy bond yields are not supposed to soar the way UK gilt yields rose. This also reminds investors that modern politics produces parties that are more extreme than either the voter or the investor consensus. Investors seem inclined to regard the UK Conservative Party as a doomsday cult.”
The yield on the 2-year gilt rose as much as 66 basis points, on top of Friday’s 41 basis point increase, on expectations the Bank of England will respond to the tax cuts with steeper interest-rate hikes.
Donovan’s verdict is that the tax-cut plan offered by new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng could generate a short-term sugar high but wouldn’t generate a meaningful medium-term boost. And he said a rational response to the tax cuts would be simply to save them, in anticipation a future government would reverse the cuts.
It is always assumed that economic recessions and cutbacks results in increased class consciousness and more class struggle.
But equally workers can be drawn to simplistic solutions of blaming their problems on scapegoats
Giorgia Meloni has won Italy’s election, according to exit polls, and is on course to become the country’s first female prime minister and most right-wing government since World War Two.
Turnout was low – 63.82%, almost 10 points down on 2018. Voting levels were especially poor in southern regions including Sicily.
A bit off-topic but the talk of nuclear war reminded me of an old article I wrote about the India-Pakistan threat.
The Insanity of Nuclear War Thinking
https://www.countercurrents.org/johnstone300414.htm“If the adversary feels that you are unpredictable, even rash, he will be deterred from pressing you too far. The odds that he will fold increase greatly, and the unpredictable president will win another hand.” – Richard Nixon
Decisions about nuclear use in many of these cases came down to only a handful of people. Nuclear weapons require constant vigilance and caution. For as long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of an inadvertent, accidental or deliberate detonation remains.
From 1928
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/09/editorial-do-we-want-censor-1928.html
The Socialist Party of Great Britain is unique in keeping open platform for the expression of the point of view of opponents.
We oppose all forms of suppression, not in response to some abstract principle, but because we recognise that Socialist Society demands for its operation, as for its achievement, a responsible, intelligent population, used to drawing its own conclusions from the observation of facts and the weighing up of the arguments of opposing schools of thought. We only know our position to be correct because it survives continuous criticism. We do not deny that suppression may be immediately useful to the British or the Irish governing class. We do deny that it can serve the purpose of the Socialist movement.
A welcome criticism of neo-Mathusians
Seibert and Rees produced a bad faith argument about the inability of technology to support a larger population in order to buttress their conclusion that we need to limit the fertility of people in the global south.
There is a near consensus among the scientists who study the subject that there are technical pathways to a world where 10 billion people can live well and stay within the biophysical limits of the planet’s environmental systems.
One sector guaranteed to grow
UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said military spending will double from its current level to hit £100bn in 2030 as a result of Liz Truss’s commitment to increase the armed forces’ budget to 3% of GDP.
