Sunday, January 11, 2009

Dealing with Russia in the 21st Century

What did you expect? In the latter half of the previous century, you confront Communism and win. Free markets beat planned economies. And what did you win? The winnings was the right to have the economies run by your way. Russia must play on your ball field by your rules.

If the US had not beaten Japan and force on it American capitalism, Japan’s economy would not be the behemoth of the Pacific. We bombed their steel mills and then rebuilt them after the war and put our old aging mills out of business. You win the war; your children lose their jobs. Hurray for us.

In winning, sometimes you sow the seeds of future conflict by being too harsh in terms of surrender as after WWI and sometimes future conflict arises by making your adversary adopt you system. They may have a knack for it. Given a new system, they out compete an old hand at competition.

Had we kept the USSR with its competitively disadvantaged planned economy, we would be living high on the hog today. Europe would be dictating terms to them, exploiting their natural resources to our advantage and not theirs.

But Noooo… We had to totally defeat Communism. We had to convince them their system was not as good as our and they had to become capitalist. And they did.

What did you expect? That we would all go to Disney World and live happily ever?

We have met the enemy and they are us.

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