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Radio War Nerd #320 — Ukraine-Russia War: Sanctions & Economic Warfare, with Ben Aris (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-09 01:52:50
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Ben Aris, editor BNE IntelliNews

Recorded: March 7, 2022

We talk to previous RWN guest Ben Aris [RWN #316] about sanctions, Russia's resource weapons and economic warfare in the Ukraine-Russia war.

Check out Ben's media outlet BNE IntelliNews, and follow Ben on Twitter.

Total time: 1:23:14

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

P Red

Aww what your in Montreal now? I was there for work 2 days ago, damn lol

Tiburon Feliz

Does anyone have the link to the wall street journal article they referenced in the beginning?

Steff

Scary and superb episode

Simon

Guys, look up Gonzalo Lira on Youtube. Chilean, grew up during terror of Pinochet. Now stuck in Kharkov, by choice, even though thugs went looking for him at his apartment, to disappear him perhaps as so many others apparently have been, after Russia media showed a small footage of one of his Telegram feeds speaking about his views on both Ukraine/Zelensky and Russia/Putin. Interesting they still have internet service, heat, electricity, hot coffee even. This with the cauldron pincer move by Russia almost complete. Had it been the US invading... And Zerohedge says now Ukranian women are falling prey to thugs in NATOSTAN Poland pushing them into prostitution? At least with Russia it won't look like Damascus, nor Libya, afterwards. A meme I read a few days ago has stayed with me. It said, "A people that voluntarily and silently cowered in lockdowns for 2 years, now ask Ukrainians to die fighting against Russia, while they watch from far away."

Greg

Truly

Max

Would love an episode on 1973 (for starters the Yom Kippur war and especially the oil embargo that followed). Many other huge things that year (especially for the financial system). Seems like a good prequel to the 1979 episode.

David Andrews

Why on earth should NATO (the US) go to war with Russia over Ukraine?

Old Mate

I love this "lets just concede that we will never let Ukraine into NATO and we can stop this" line. As if that would somehow close Pandora's box. Laughable. EDIT It's quite clear that Ben, Mark and John don't understand agricultural production if they think not having sanctions would've led to a different outcome for the global wheat(and grains in general) supply. The moment Putin put boots on the ground in Ukraine, he interrupted the 2022 crop. Sanctions mean little when there isn't any wheat to sell

etienne

last I checked they said they wanted the Republics + recognition of Crimea + neutral Ukraine, do you think that covers it? I think the guys let it slide for the sake of not derailing the convo but I agree it's misleading

VictorBout

Ben Aris' presentation is full of factual inaccuracies and mis-analysis. In a broad sense, it massively overstates the degree of EU agency in this whole mess. I suppose it's useful as an illustration of the perspective of a type of EU bureaucrat on what's happening, but this perspective is quite narrow and clouded by partisan bias, i.e. "first major invasion since WW2" etc.There are also a number of inconsistencies in his own interpretation, where on one hand he says "Russia has been planning this for years", and on the other hand suggest repeatedly they have been caught with their pants down, in particular with regard to the RCB asset freeze. I don't understand why you guys don't even attempt to point out this inconsistency and examine possible explanations.

VictorBout

One specific inaccuracy: Russians have NOT been locked out of their USD/EUR currency accounts, although a ban on buying USD/EUR currency was put in place just today by the Russian government. Russian can still withdraw cash up to 10,000 USD from existing USD/EUR accounts, in USD, and above that sum must be withdrawn in rubles. I am in Russia, just checked with my bank today that this is the case, money can be ordered with a 1-week delay. A bank run is likely, and already happening to some extent, but that's a different issue. A major part of the impact of the sanctions on regular Russians so far have to do with measures the Russian government itself imposed internally as a result, which have had both stabilizing and destabilizing effects.

Lo

“We started a war” No we didn’t lol. The thrust of this discussion is that Russia is a poor smol bean who should be allowed to do what it wants to who it wants. It’s not that all the sovereign states surrounding Russia hate it and wanted to join a defensive alliance (an anti-Russian alliance even); NATO recklessly expanded. Hell, the fact that NATO /already/ borders Russia is completely ignored because you guys bought the laughable bullshit that Putin is threatened by NATO. The threat is that Ukrainians get access to EU development funds and Putin is willing to murder a bunch of Ukrainians to stop that. This is not a complicated issue lol

P Red

Lol what, EU membership was never on the table before now and after a brief flirtation it’s off again. Ukraine was always a pawn

Adam Koslin

It's an old, bad (but still pretty true) joke that NATO has three purposes; to Keep The Americans In, Keep the Germans Down, and Keep The Russians Out. Russia can accurately assess NATO's hostility to its interests without being paranoid and assuming that a NATO invasion is imminent. It's the wavering back and forth between those two assessments which gets both Russophiles and Russian foreign policy in hot water.

Vesna Radivojevic

I’m admittedly at the John Dolan’s level of financial illiteracy, but Russia has a huge markets still open in China, India, Africa and substantial swaths of South America. Honest question: is being cut out of Western trading sphere such a death sentence as this guest presents it to be?

Doug Cartel

Russia has said, since 1991, that a NATO-aligned Ukraine is an unacceptable, existential threat to them, not least because of the ability to stage nukes a 5 minute flight from Moscow. All we had to do was *not do that* and things would be fine. NATO said time and again Ukraine was not strategically important to them. Then somewhere along the way the neocons decided that Putin wasn't an obedient enough stooge, even though *he was their guy*, and they went sure, lets' push this issue. Let's expand NATO and piss off the Russians for doing the one thing they said was a red line above all others. Don't forget, there's a faction in DC that loves the idea of bleeding Russia out in an Afghanistan Sequel. So the question is, is NATO membership for Ukraine really THAT important to you? You would risk nuclear war so Ukraine could have nukes? Really?

Edward P Slocomb

One aspect of Russia's economy that I was surprised to find missing from this discussion is the direct cost of the war itself. Even with minimal losses it would be somewhere on the order of a hundred billion per year, wouldn't it?

Barticus Maximus

Guest request: Russell "Texas" Bentley and/or Scott Ritter. 2 guys who did call it correctly

Lo

If Putin had waited a few years, the inertia of NATO would have torn itself apart. It was rapidly heading that way! Thanks to Putin thinking he needs to end his stupid life becoming the King of Slavs, he’s made NATO more relevant and entry into it desirable in Finland and Sweden than ever before my lifetime. Good fucking job! This, too, is NATO’s fault. For the idiots in the crowd, Putin cannot plausibly claim that he’s threatened by NATO on his borders because Estonia is on his borders and Estonia is in NATO. Estonia acceded to NATO in 2004. Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, just when there was a popular mobilization in Ukraine to join the EU - which importantly - is not NATO! NATO was right there, on Russia’s inviolable borders for a full decade, but it became a threat to Russia when Ukraine looked like it was going to join an organization Russia doesn’t like *that isn’t NATO!* I looked it up today and Poland has received like a hundred billion euros in development funding from the EU. Ukraine hasn’t, because Ukraine is not in the EU. In that time, Russia has not provided Ukraine a hundred billion euros in development funding. In fact, Russia spent the last *eight years killing Ukrainians. Wow I guess the fukken CIA needed to convince those poor Little Russians that they should turn away from their betters in Moscow

Lo

Does anyone here actually know the process by which a country becomes a part of NATO? Did you ever think to look it up before uncritically accepting - and then repeating - the claim that NATO was doing an imperialism when various former members of the Warsaw Pact acceded to a defensive alliance that they had to spend their own money to join? No, obviously not. You can either think that the nations between Germany and Russia are sovereign entities or that Russia has valid security claims in demanding that NATO expansion cease. These are mutually exclusive conditions because accession to NATO is a function of national sovereignty. The current members of NATO cannot say that their security alliance’s composition is subject to the whims of outside powers, but there’s a reason new member accession requires a unanimous vote of the current members. All of this is Russia bitching that it wants to have great power status despite its neighbors disliking and fearing it and it not having the economic or cultural impact of like South Korea. Eleven time zones and a nuclear arsenal yet K-pop is more impressive. A country having wounded nationalism grants the sovereign right to get over it. The thing about being an internationally respected nation is that you don’t need to do unprovoked invasions to prove it. When you have the sort of international respect Russia wishes it had, nations will join your unprovoked invasion against their interests. A bunch of former Warsaw Pact nations did just this in Iraq and Putin is trying to get that same high with the help of Belarus

Lo

If the Little Russians would simply accept the dominion of the Great Russians, this harvest - and all future ones - could come in on time. :^)

Lo

There aren’t any good reasons which is why it’s not happening.

DumbDumDumbDumb

*pointing at head* Don't have to calculate costs in dollars when you've been effectively cut off from the petrodollar economy

Lo

it’s bad that the West will need to find substitutes for sapphire substrates for optics production but that’s an easier problem to solve than Russia being able to turn its sapphire substrates into optics. A cool thing that went completely unaddressed in this discussion is that Russia cannot replace any of its advanced hardware losses right now. Russia’s abject lack of advanced tooling came up briefly, but it would probably be worth mentioning that the PRC also cannot (as of yet) indigenously produce the most advanced semiconductor etching tools. I personally think globally integrated supply chains and commerce-under-peace were preferable to a resumption of Great Power rivalries, but I guess Globohomo must be fought at any cost

a random Mark

I don't get it. Putin's main grievance was that Ukraine not gain NATO membership. The west (US of A) has made it clear for years that would not happen. So Putin already has what he said he wants. Why then the invasion?

Lo

Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to join the EU, which it looked set to do in 2014. “NATO on Russia’s borders” is not a serious security claim because NATO was on Russia’s borders for like a decade prior to 2014. Even then, it’s ludicrous to pretend that land-based missiles mean shit when Russia has a reliable second-strike capacity with its SSBN fleet. The actual threat is that if the “Little Russians” start living better than the “Great Russians” thanks to EU development money, it’s much harder to justify the extent socioeconomic order. Why after all, are the Poles doing so much better than any kind of Russian?

Lo

There’s roughly an order of magnitude more institutions using SWIFT than China’s competing CIPS protocol. One funny thing that didn’t come up in this discussion is that global markets yet again bought dollar instruments to hedge against exogenous shocks. Russia and China will have an easier time with de-dollarization as soon as either of them invent something more appealing to panicky investors than the greenback

Random1208

The two most likely outcomes are that 1) Russia conquers Ukraine and reinstates Yanukovych backed by indefinite Russian occupation, then moves on to Moldova and the Baltics, or 2) Russia loses and some kind of resistance movement and/or civil war begins against Putin. Whatever is left of Ukraine as an independent country in 2 months should definitely join NATO. As should Finland, Georgia and other countries.

Lionel Boyd Johnson

I think it was a recent RWN episode where I heard this, can't remember, it's all blending together these days: In Putin's grievances speech he talked about Ukraine becoming a de facto member of NATO and that NATO was upgrading Ukrainian infrastructure to increase their compatibility with NATO technology. He named 5 airports that had been already through these NATO compatible upgrades. When the bombing started, these 5 were among some of the very first targets. So no, NATO wasn't officially opening to Ukraine, but according to Putin, it was a creeping security threat. If true, or if that's simply what his intelligence was telling him, it gets easier to understand his concerns and why he felt the need to suddenly move.

J P 3

Putin's actions remind me a bit of the Confederates and cotton and the American Civil War. What happened? The British and other manufacturers cultivated other sources of supply. Yes, there were massive sources of disruption in the first couple years, but coming out of the Civil War, the net result is southern cotton never regained its position. Of course not all commodities are like cotton, but I think there's going to be a move to find other sources of supply (e.g. including bringing back on line sources that are currently sanctioned). In cases where product design needs to change as a result of commodity shortages, companies will search for alternatives. Russia's reliance on an export-driven growth model is also a limiting factor. Time will tell, but I still think this is a massive blunder by Putin. If he had tried to take some territory on the margins, put Russian troops in break-away "republics" I don't think you have the same kind of unified response from Europe. The push for regime change and the drive to Kyiv clearly changed the calculus for everyone. China's apparent support for the action too, has almost certainly changed the calculation as well for many pacific rim countries. Hopefully there is a resolution soon, but unfortunately, I think things are likely to escalate and get worse.

Tyler Berglund

Incredibly informative episode, thanks. Looks like I’ll be buying gold, currency’s and stocks are gonna be weak for years.

Sam Zeng

Its over now after the invasion, there is no going back. Really this was something that needed to be solved in 2014. American is back baby.

James

Ben Aris says Russia will slip behind irretrievably because it won’t have access to modern machine tool tech … who says they won’t be able to get it from China? Along with a swift replacement. This could all be quite good for China

Jelle Haandrikman

Thank you having guests that can speak clearly and illustrate things from both sides. It takes a lot of work to distill this on your own. One side wants to overthrow Ukraine, has high hopes for Russia and says that the West has shot itself in the foot. The other side tells that Ukraine is winning, Putin is done for and the West will prevail. While it looks like Ukraine will prevail, the West and both Russia have shot their relevant foot off.

ATH409

Finland, Georgia etc won’t join NATO unless they want to get ukraine’d, or in the case of Georgia I guess, double-georgia’d. Sweden has already said they aren’t joining NATO, if they aren’t, I don’t think it’s likely Finland will. If Russia is successful I don’t see how any eastward expansion of NATO towards Russia is possible.

ATH409

I would say in those times there wasn’t a “globalized” economy and the empires of Europe already had large sources of cotton elsewhere in the first place, like In Egypt, Sudan and West Africa. Russia has a lot more export power than the South ever had, and we live in an incredibly globalized economy that relies on those exports and doesn’t plan ahead for when those exports are gone. I think it’s certainly possible that the west can move away from Russian exports, but it will certainly not be a quick transition and not without economic backlash. I don’t think the west has any plans yet for investing in other markets to transition other than begging Venezuela and Iran for a deal and begging OPEC to increase output. I think they’re hoping the immense sanctions will result in a quick walk-back or retreat from Russia so things can settle back to the way it used to be, but the more time goes on it doesn’t look like that’s happening. But it depends on how bad things get I guess.

ATH409

Times like these remind me of that Lenin quote - "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"

Kirth Gersen

I respectfully disagree with this suggestion. Texas Bentley did correctly predict the start of hostilities during his recent appearance on the Grayzone, I'll give you that. That said, Texas appears to be greatly msinformed about a great many topics. Just to pick a random quick one, Texas maintains that Putin is a communist. A laughable and demonstrably false assertion. Either Texas is actually fooled on this one, or he is performing his duties as a self-described "propaganda officer" to make Putin more palatable to western leftists. I don't hate the guy, I just don't see him as a viable source of unbiased information.

Chris H

"First invasion since the second world war. Major one." Excuse me? I think the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, and Vietnam might have a few words to say about that.

Chris H

One of the advantages of the West from the perspective of foreign nations and the rich is that it was a safe, law based place to park money. That's gone now and it will have major consequences.

Kiel Cone

The Ukrainian border is where 80% of the cities and most of the people are located. Not all borders are equal in influence or size (since you intentionally don’t mention how much smaller those other countries borders with Russia are compared to Ukraine).

Chris H

I think you're underestimating how much Russia can turn to China for alternatives re: advanced technology. The two nations are going to cooperate more on RND, not less. Russia will be in a lot of pain for the next 5-10 years, but I think it will have recalibrated and recovered to a large degree by that point. "What about sanctioning China for dealing with Russia?" you might ask. If Russia is too big to cut off from the global economy as you've quite rightly argued, China is impossible to cut off.

Jimothy Realname

John pronounces Montreal closer to the "proper" anglo-canadian way than any other american podcaster

Chris H

NATO wants to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

Chris H

@Vesna, Short to medium term, it's going to hurt a lot. Long term, Russia will integrate with China and global south and find its feet again. Ben contradicted himself a lot in this episode.

Chris H

Not sure about Russel, but definitely yes to Scott Ritter.

Random1208

You can only rattle a saber while it's in a scabbard. Now that Russia has engaged in a false flag, followed by an unprovoked invasion, other countries are going to get Ukraine'd whether they join NATO or not. Better to join and have a better chance of survival.

ATH409

How are they supposed to join NATO if merely showing interest is grounds for invasion from Russia? Finland discussed the possibility recently and Russia threatened military action, and from what we’re seeing in Ukraine, they are not bluffing. I haven’t heard anything from Finland about it since. As I said Sweden already completely denied the possibility.

Ivan M

Please add ASMR tag to each episode featuring this wonderful guest.

J P 3

Pre-Civil War 80% of Britain's cotton was derived from the slaveholding south. During the 1860s, Egyptian cotton began to replace U.S. cotton. Before the Civil War, many of the richest families were southern plantation owners who exerted significant influence over national politics. After the war, their influence and power was more constrained. They recovered some power in the decades that followed, but never to the degree that they had pre-1860. A lot of this is going to play out in ways that we can't anticipate. However, there is no question that lifting sanctions on Venezuela and Iran would make it easier to buy and sell oil and gas on the global market from these countries. That added supply would put downward pressure on global prices. It would have an impact on the calculus of other global producers. The U.S. doesn't have to "beg" Venezuela for its oil either. I'm sure at this point that Maduro would be happy to sell oil again to U.S.-based refiners. Going forward I suspect Putin is going to have to work through China if he wants to access global markets, and that means China is going to charge a premium for that access. That's a net gain for China, not Russia.

Random1208

Because we now see Russia is going to invade them anyway. They'll be more likely to survive what's coming as NATO members.

ATH409

But again, when you’re a country interested in your own security, why would you perform an action that you know will guarantee a military response from Russia, like attempting to join NATO? This type of rapid expansion could cause WW3, because if countries along Russia’s periphery all start trying to fast track into NATO, and Russia predictably intervenes, what’s going to stop NATO from actually getting involved then? Why should these countries refuse to not provoke the beast so to speak, since that significantly reduces their chance of being invaded? Finland is not a russian puppet state, it has remained that way even in soviet times, they’ve been relatively peaceful and have had fine relations with Russia for as long as I can remember. Why would they risk giving all of that up by guaranteeing they become a victim by trying to join NATO? I don’t see any reason Russia would invade Finland regardless, and I don’t see any reason why Russia would be invading countries Willy-Nilly now anyways. Purposefully provoking them seems like a terrible idea when they have just demonstrated that they indeed are not bluffing.

Random1208

Because for those countries, not joining NATO will have the same result as joining: being invaded. Therefore, they should join and be better able to endure what's coming. Learn the lesson of Munich.

ATH409

I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying, I’m sorry. Showing interest in NATO means a guaranteed invasion from Russia, not showing interest doesn’t. Maybe they would invade anyway, who knows. But that possibility isn’t guaranteed like joining NATO is. Countries like Finland and Sweden are much better off staying neutral, and they’re staying that way as we speak. I don’t see any reason why Russia would randomly invade Finland or Sweden anyway.

Kendall

AGREED! So pleasant to listen to, in his analysis and form. The content remains grim, to lift a word that Mark employs often.

Random1208

Since Russia is going to invade those countries anyway, they should join NATO so they and their allies can defeat Russia and survive as independent countries.

Hamud

Such a soothing audio rundown of central bank confiscations lol

Md0

Great guest with an interesting perspective on the region and relations. Here's an interesting tidbit/rumour I heard today from a Syrian: Syrians on Assad's side are being offered a $1000 a month to go and fight in Ukraine, but once there about half of them flee to Poland to get into the EU. Life in Damascus is getting quite expensive as well and might be one of the reasons for some of them to go. I can't verify all this, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Peter Z

Electronics/circuitry was mentioned

Ander Pierce

The progress towards de-dollarization is bad news for US citizens (like me) who enjoy the privileges our status as global reserve currency brings us. Unfortunately its good news for China, Iran, Cuba, Russia Venezuela, and every independent power that might run awry of US imperial policy and have our currency weaponized against them. It's a shame we couldn't have played a little better and had a secure enough currency that it remained global reserve currency for another century or two ;-)

John

Really enjoyed the bit about wars hurting all participants: goes against American interventionist orthodoxy, probably most embodied by the war in Afghanistan. Mark, would you consider devoting sometime to talking about McFaul? It's hard to find the eXile book now, but your clashes with McFaul were an amusing and illuminating digression. I think people now don't know just how involved he was with the cooper wire stripping of Russia.

Lionel Boyd Johnson

Your whole argument lies on the assumption that Putin would attack a NATO country - he's never done so and we have no shred of evidence to believe that he would, it would be suicide. The entire reason he moved in Georgia and Ukraine is that they were NOT part of NATO, but rather talking about/ taking serious steps to join NATO. You totally missed ATH409's point, it looks like.

ATH409

Empires don’t last forever, let’s hope the fall of this one isn’t as disastrous as usual.

Andy Cassidy

Another great episode, cheers lads

Ersatzanime

I don't think you have a very high opinion of Europeans if you think paying 15 cents more for a can is going to dissuade us from supporting Ukraine. I've seen countless atrocities, so paying more at the pump, or whatever it takes, is a small price to pay. The EU is about preventing war in Europe, all the economic stuff is just busy work.

Ellen Harold

Preventing war? I thought that was NATO?