STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The Ukraine/Russia Self-Defeating Conflict: Both are Economically Intermeshed to the Degree that Hurting One Seriously Damages the Other. 

Time to Stop Fighting and Start Making Money in Both Countries! 

Let’s get the Interested EU, East European countries and the USA involved in a constructive economic program for both countries. This way everyone wins.

And just for the record: No statement could be more false than the one that Russia has changed the borders of the Ukraine by annexing Crimea. As I have pointed out almost a year ago, Russia has had both a historical imperative to the warm waters of the Crimea for which it had fought a major war in the late 19^th Century, losing millions of civilians and soldiers in that process. Furthermore, Russia had been promised when the Soviet Union was dismantled-- through side agreements and verbal assurances –that Crimea was and will continue to be part of the Russian sphere of influence. Despite those assurances, America and its NATO allies entered into costly economic/kinetic war that really resolved very little in terms of territorial hegemony. More importantly, this economic warfare which we successfully implemented has come to point where it is now becoming self-destructive both to Russia and to the Ukraine.

The reason is really quite simple.

Russia and the Ukraine are so economically intertwined that by trying to hurt one bank in Russia, we in the west, are really damaging a corresponding bank in the Ukraine. Witness the fact that Foreign Direct Investments [FDI] from Cyprus [Russian Banking Cut-Out Country] fell from 33% to 29% in Ukraine 2013 to 2014. [Stratfor, 2/18/2015]. Similarly, Russia and the Ukraine are one major oil/gas terminal made up of interlacing pipelines; wherein both Roseneft and Lukoil [both Russian firms] sold off 240 filling stations in the Ukraine to an Austrian Company AMIC Energy Management.

This worldwide accepted narrative that Russia has pre-empted western attempts by Kiev to enter the EU is not completely true nor enlightening. That narrative as usual serves the more bellicose desires of those strategic neophytes who pontificate about antiquated geopolitical spheres of influence which now have evaporated into a vapor cloud of computing. These are now amorphous Cyber-Nations, funded by binary numbers consisting of ones and zeros.

So what is to be done?

It imperative for the USA to initiate, along with its French/German/ Austrian and Chinese partners, a financial packet which will address both the monetary requirements for economic rehabilitation in both of the twin countries of Ukraine and Russia. This is a unique opportunity for the leading financial Eastern and Western Superpowers in partnership with their respective private financial conglomerates to create a new menu of finance products/partnerships.  These should appeal to the youth of both nations so that they might start respective hi-tech and manufacturing incubators that can act as models of economic entrepreneurship in the 21st Century. Why not reconfigure an impending disaster into a hopeful opportunity for peace and prosperity? 

The Ukraine and Russians must remember that they have far more in common than they have differences. Kinetic military actions will have to become subservient to the economic imperatives of MUTUAL DEPENDENCY! Otherwise, what will hurt one will also hurt the other. Cut off one limb in Russia and you may be unwittingly amputating two separate limbs in the Ukraine.

This time let us think out-of-the-box!  Where are the Silicon Valley Boys? Its time to grow up and influence developing economies in a positive way.
Let me reiterate an interesting thought by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Whosoever would be man must be a conformist.”
Or, in the words of the great economist, Adam Smith:

“Man, an animal that makes bargains.”

In the Information Age: Make Commerce not War.