Fulcrum Macro Advisors’ Read Around the World in a Weekend: March 18, 2022

Russia/Ukraine War

• The New Yorker “The Weakness of the Despot”

  New Yorker Editor David Remnick interviews Stephen Kotkin who is considered one of the greatest scholars on Stalin and Russian history. They discuss Putin, Stalin, and the West and why Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

• Foreign Affairs “The End of Globalization”

  Peterson Institute for International Economics President Adam Posen writes on what Russia’s War in Ukraine means for the world economy.

• Center for Strategic and International Studies “Cryptocurrency’s Role in the Russia-Ukraine Crisis”

  Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, the United States and its partners have levied an unprecedented series of sanctions on Russia. These efforts have raised questions, including in Congress, about whether cryptocurrencies can be used by Russian actors to bypass sanctions. More broadly, the Russia-Ukraine crisis comes at a time when policymakers are trying to decide how to regulate digital assets. 

• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “Moscow’s Southern Accent?”

  The Ukraine war will reshape Russia’s influence in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Africa where they have long been active politically, economically, and militarily.

• American Purpose “Preparing for Defeat”

  Scholar Francis Fukuyama writes that he believes Russia is “heading for outright defeat in Ukraine” and “the collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic” and the West needs to be ready.

• Center for European Policy Analysis “The Suwalki Corridor”

  The Suwalki Corridor, a 65-kilometer-wide strip of territory linking Poland with Lithuania, is NATO’s most vulnerable chokepoint along its eastern flank. In the event of a conflict between Russia and NATO, Russia’s military—operating from the Kaliningrad exclave and from Belarus—could attempt to close the Suwalki Corridor and incapacitate NATO as a security provider for its three Baltic members.

China 

• Foreign Affairs “Xi Jinping’s Faltering Foreign Policy”

  Chinese President Xi Jinping has a problem: His foreign policy plans are now at risk because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  An expert explains.

United States

• Gallup Polls “Americans Still Pro-Israel, Though Palestinians Gain Support”

  Americans continue to express greater sympathy for the Israelis than the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, as they have throughout Gallup's trend -- 55% now sympathize more with the Israelis and 26% with the Palestinians

Latin America

• Foreign Policy “Washington Must Respond to China’s Growing Military Presence in Latin America”

  Colombia’s designation as a major non-NATO ally comes at a critical moment as China continues to press its sphere of influence across the Southern Hemisphere.

• Center for Strategic and International Studies “Russian Invasion of Ukraine Force a Rethink about Russian Presence in the Americas”

  Given the global revulsion toward Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, governments in Latin America and the Caribbean should rethink their relationship with Russia The brutality of this invasion should make Argentina and Brazil, two countries flirting with Putin, think twice about a deeper partnership with the Kremlin. The rest of the region should see Russia’s invasion as a wake-up call and reduce their ties in the coming weeks and months.

Africa

• “Mali Magic: The Digitized Manuscripts of Timbuktu Dating Back to the 16th Century”

  An amazing interactive experience: Mali Magic, a collaboration among Google Arts & Culture and a number of local and international organizations, allows users to read thousands of documents. Once, long ago, the city of Timbuktu was once an economic hub for trade on the continent and a center of learning. During a 10-month occupation in 2012, Timbuktu was taken over by rebel groups, where thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts came under threat and more than 4,000 were either burned or stolen by jihadis. Malian librarians and their assistants secretly transported hundreds of thousands of volumes into family homes in a bid to save them from destruction. Through those efforts, some 350,000 manuscripts from 45 libraries across the city have been kept safe. 

Terrorism

• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “The Insurgency of ISIS in Syria”

  Since the “defeat” of ISIS in Syria in 2020, the Islamic State has morphed into a non-spatial insurgency capable of conquering territorial boundaries.  For ISIS, their rural insurgency and desert combat is no less important than urban warfare as a means of achieving its objectives and ensuring its resurrection which now has an estimated 24,000-30,000 recruits. 

Global Markets/Commodities

• IMF Blog “War-Fueled Surge in Food Prices to Hit Poorer Nations Hardest”

  Global food prices are poised to keep climbing even after jumping to a record in February, placing the heaviest burden on vulnerable populations while adding to headwinds for the global economic recovery. Food commodity prices rose 23.1 percent last year, the fastest pace in more than a decade, according to inflation-adjusted figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. February’s reading was the highest since 1961 for the gauge tracking prices for meat, dairy, cereals, oils, and sugar. 

Book Recommendation of the Week:

The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry Today

(By Hal Brands, Yale Univeristy Press, January 2022, 318 pages)

The Cold War is a distant memory for many of us of a certain age and nothing more than a textbook history lesson for the rest of us under the age of 40.  But now, in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s brutal and bloody onslaught against Ukraine amid our collective prolonged worry and apprehension about an increasingly aggressive China, many seem to be struggling to understand what it will take to keep the peace.  History can and will guide us, so we go back to the history books for guidance and enlightenment.  

The first place we should start is with Hal Brand’s latest book.  Brands, a noted Cold War historian and former Pentagon advisor, presents an illuminating and richly researched lesson of how the US dealt with the challenge of the Cold War – that “Twilight Struggle” the West fought from the end of World War II until 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved itself.  Brands gives us a crisp examination of the many successes, and more than a few missteps US leaders experienced during these anxious years.  Ultimately, it was the power of ideas and free markets brought the West victory against a hollowed-out Communist empire – but it took extraordinary work, innumerable policies and programs, and a willingness to stand strong that won the peace.  

Brands ventures deep into those many challenges, strategies, and tactics the Cold War American Presidents, beginning with Truman to ending with Reagan and Bush, took up to win that “Twilight Struggle.” To be fair to potential readers, this is not light reading.  But it is an excellent read for those fascinated by Cold War history.  For everyone else who picks up this book, it is something of an incredibly well-timed primer for what it will likely require from all of us to strenuously defend freedom and democracy as we know it once again.