Radio War Nerd EP #419 — Economic War on Russia Update, feat. Ben Aris
Guest: Ben Aris, founding editor BNE IntelliNews
Recorded: January 10, 2023
RWN guest Ben Aris joins us for our semi-annual review of the US-led economic war on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Spoiler: the economic war is not going according to plan.
Total time: 1:05:26
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (43)
Ty Rwn, my husband finally understands why I like this channel so much.
Every time Ben is on I learn so much. A really good guest. He should be on more.
'russia wins through sheer numbers' is a weird thing to say because the videos I see are always a couple vehicles doing hit-and-runs and platoon sized elements seizing tree lines. If the Russians are using human wave attacks to beat Ukraine, maybe Ukraine should post some of those videos instead of all these vids of FPV drones ramming the backside of a single BMP.
Just a semantic point but the idea that Russia could win through superior numbers does not automatically assume they are wastefully throwing themselves into human wave attacks. It simply means that in a battle of attrition - regardless of what form the combat takes on the tactical battlefield - they could replace losses and bring in fresh units more readily than their Ukrainian counterparts.
So Michael Hudson, Yves Smith et al were correct about this... 18 months ago. Glad we finally got there.
Ben isn’t the perfect guest, but overall I really enjoy his episodes
We're not hiring prostitutes here, Jeff
At the end Ben claims that t he Russian economy is the fastest growing economy in Europe. Where does he get this figure, I haven’t been able to corroborate it. Did he more strictly in terms of PPP?
If you don’t read or listen to any Ukraine/Russia analysis Ben Aris might sound intelligent. But if you stay up to date on this conflict Ben Aris is clearly improvising while taking huge hauls on a copium tank. Ben adds a dash of Russiaphobic rhetoric for good measure. Good grief this man is insufferable.
Care to be more specific?
Excellent episode. I follow this war closely but was unaware of how relatively well Russia's economy is performing.
It’s a shame you all didn’t get into Russia’s non-oil & gas industries. I keep finding it funny how Apple has an ad for its titanium iPhones but pretends like the vast majority of titanium isn’t in Russia. But we haven’t heard much about wheat exports and that whole debacle either.
I am now very curious about the supply line for that Apple titanium.
The Americans aren’t producing 100k 155mm a year, it’s closer to 40k. 100k is their goal by the end of next year
And Russians are producing at least 3m (not 2m) and by some, less reliable, estimates closer to 5m of 152mm a year. But Aris is always very cavalier with numbers he throws around.
Too much of what this guy said is either outright wrong or misleading to comment on. Much is right or ok but lots way off. Disappointing. I know this is a pointless post but it’s just venting at a usually outstanding podcast.
Go on …
It’s astonishing how wrong the “people” ben cites are, with everything they think, all the time
Care to be more specific?
I guess the russians are making the calculus that, if you sell the gas to the west, they'll give you USD, which you can use to give to americans to get googaws, which they take and give to Asians to build the googaws and sell back to you. If you sell the gas to Asia directly, you get the googaws directly. Buyer of last resort this, exporbitant privilege that, there's only so much deindustrialization you can really get away with right?
Aris has a good feel for European politics. That said, there’s an interesting disconnect between “Europe wasn’t willing to take pain and therefore they couldn’t defeat Russia” on the one hand, and “Europe is taking a lot of pain and they still can’t defeat Russia” on the other.
Not really. Europe wasn't willing to commit mutually assured economic sepuku at the start of the war; it was willing to go along with the increasingly shrill escalatory mood among policy makers and think tankers as the war dragged on. It's very much the same dynamic as a gambler being unwilling to lose all of their money in one go, but rather opting to gradually double-down on subsequent bets after losing the first one, in the belief that they'll recuperate the loss. Things have very much been driven by psychological forces rather than economic rationality; the xxth economic sanctions package is feasible now in a way that it wouldn't be at the beginning for the same reason a gambler would be unwilling to bet all of his money on the very first bet rather than trickle it down into nothingness. Leaving that dynamic aside, the reality is that by arriving at the xxth sanctions package gradually, we've both given ourselves and Russia time to adjust, thereby lessening the economic damage. One could argue the end result is that we've hurt ourselves more than Russia, but no one either could have or did predict that Russia would be posting 3-4% rGDP economic growth in 2023 despite the sanctions. If your assumption is significant economic damage to both sides, but that Europe will weather it way better than Russia, then there's no disconnect - it has just not been shown to be true, thus far.
hold on you're telling me that someone blew up the pipes and along with it most of the fixed low long term price gas and as a result the same gas now goes out as LNG and paid for at unstable inflated spot prices *at the same places*? that's insane I bet the russians are laughing themselves numb all the way to the bank
Yes. That is what happened.
Listening to RWN it seems the chief problem of the US is that it is run by a schlerotic and insulated elite. i'm interested in the idea of ruling class regeneration - is that a possibility? Can things get so bad that a different, more competent and energetic faction within the elite overthrows the dominant faction? How many times and for how many decades can the US elite fail without consquences internal to the elite?
if you want my entirely unqualified opinion, "it'll happen sooner than we expect, and if history is any guide it'll get very messy very fast"
The true lesson is war is a logistic and people business.
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Ben Aris is, as usual, and incredibly knowledgeable guest. I would raise one point of contention, with a throway mention he made to German unions keeping the price of German labour high. That's not quite right, German wages have actually been supressed compared where they could be (excuse the age of this article): https://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2015/0915miller.html "Germany’s repressive labor policies kept a lid on wage growth. In every year from 2000 through the onset of the financial crisis in 2009, German compensation per employee increased more slowly than the eurozone average, and less even than in the United States. During the 1990s, German workers’ real wages rose along with productivity gains, meaning that employers could pay the higher wages without facing higher labor costs per unit of output. After 1999, wage gains no longer kept pace with productivity, and the gap between the two widened."
It's the same thing said about France, though. It's always the fault of the unions that [insert bad thing here]. Pro-capitalist economists have to excuse the rent-seeking behavior of capitalist enterprises by blaming those darn greedy unions. Otherwise you'd have to acknowledge things like class warfare, and the fact that the businessplace is a zero-sum tug of war between labor and capitalists...
If I were Russia I’d be more concerned about the economy when the war ENDS, not now
That'll depend a lot on what concessions (if any) they're able to squeeze out of Ukraine, I suppose.
I want to know if the war has helped Russia's mayonnaise situation
What is Russias cultural appetite for mayonnaise? I thought mayo was just a viscous medium for Americans to eat deli meat.
As crazy as it seems, is Russia actually going to win this war? Like, are they going to accomplish whatever they were imagining they were going to do in Ukraine AND blow up Europe's economy while coming out ahead? I mean... it's no longer "What would victory look like for Russia?" it's "How can the West win here?" I mean, the U.S. is doing fine economically, unlike Europe, but they've certainly lost 'legitimacy,' whereas Russia might have pissed off the Europeans, but they're still able to do business with most of the world.
Yes
Oh would you look at that, some fresh anti-white racism
Call me a dork, but I love these economic warfare eps. Like 🥦 for my podcast-addled 🧠. Keep em’ coming, fellas!
Same
A lot of those (formerly) yacht-owning Russians are also richer because their yachts were confiscated. Governments that took possession of them quickly found out how much they cost to maintain. Boats don’t make you richer.
“The SECOND happiest day in a boat owner’s life …”
Classic war nerd curse of recording something right before a major “HAPPENING”
People have seriously underestimated Ansar Allah. Are there any older episodes or readings that talk more on that group?