Nobody's Noticed Kaliningrad

Most of the aggregators missed yesterday's biggest story, but CNSNews had it: Russia Claims NATO Ally Lithuania Is Blockading Kaliningrad, Warns it Will Respond. Over the past week or so, I've begun to think the biggest outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be in the Baltics, and Kaliningrad has become the locus. According to Wikipedia, following its capture by the Red Army ihn April 1945,

The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 placed it under Soviet administration. The city was renamed to Kaliningrad [from Königsberg] in 1946 in honor of Soviet revolutionary Mikhail Kalinin. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is governed as the administrative centre of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, the westernmost oblast of Russia.

As a major transport hub, with sea and river ports, the city is home to the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy, and is one of the largest industrial centres in Russia. It was deemed the best city in Russia in 2012, 2013 and 2014 in Kommersant's magazine The Firm's Secret, the best city in Russia for business in 2013 according to Forbes, and was ranked fifth in the Urban Environment Quality Index published by Minstroy in 2019.

The problem is that Kaliningrad Oblast is an exclave, Russian territory outside Russian borders. Land connections between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia must transit Lithuania. Per the CNSNews story,

A new potential flashpoint between Moscow and NATO emerged when Lithuania, citing incoming European Union sanctions on Russian steel and other ferrous metals, said those items could no longer be transported across its territory to Kaliningrad.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it summoned a senior Lithuanian diplomat and informed her Russia viewed the actions as “openly hostile.”

It said the ministry had informed charge d’affaires Virginija Umbrasiene “that if in the near future cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the territory of the Russian Federation through Lithuania is not restored in full, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests.”

. . . The governor of Kaliningrad, Anton Alikhanov, claimed earlier that the restriction would impact 40-50 percent of goods moving between the region and the rest of Russia.

. . . [O]ver the coming months more and more goods will be affected: E.U. bans on Russian imports will target wood, cement, fertilizers, seafood, and liquor from July 10; coal and other solid fossil fuels from August 10; and crude oil from December 5.

The EU disputes Russia's claim that this is a "blockade", but given the context that Kaliningrad is one of the largest industrial centers in Russia as well as a naval base, the EU sanctions on Russia will turn into a major handicap, "blockade" or not. And as of earlier this month, via an official NATO release:

Fourteen NATO allies along with two NATO partner nations, Finland and Sweden, are currently participating in the exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22) with over 45 ships, more than 75 aircraft and 7,500 personnel.

This premier maritime-focused annual exercise kicked off from Stockholm, Sweden, on 05 June. It takes place in the Baltic region from June 5-17 and provides a unique training opportunity to strengthen combined response capabilities critical to preserving freedom of navigation and security in the Baltic Sea. This is the 51st iteration of the exercise series, which began in 1972.

Let's ask a question here. Sweden applied to join NATO only this past May 15, and only three weeks later, they're hosting NATO's premier maritime-focused annual exercise? I'm sorry, things in the real world don't happen justlikethat. Pope Francis is no dummy when he speaks of "the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented". The Baltic is a key inflection point here, and it's been part of Western strategic thinking all along. According to Reuters,

Moscow summoned EU envoy Markus Ederer to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday. EU spokesperson Peter Stano said Ederer asked the Russians at the meeting "to refrain from escalatory steps and rhetoric".

The standoff creates a new source of confrontation on the Baltic, a region already set for a security overhaul that would hem in Russia's sea power as Sweden and Finland apply to join NATO and put nearly the whole coast under alliance control.

I'm starting to think what's really going on is that the West was completely surprised by the Russian inabiity to succeed in its Ukraine invasion, and there's been a hasty recalculation -- Russia has committed and largely squandered a major part of its military force in Ukraine, and it's now vulnerable in the Baltic and likely elsewhere. Lithuania is a NATO member and in particular has closely aligned its military planning with Poland. Any Russian military threat against NATO is now simply idle.

Putin is in serious danger of losing important Russian territory and is likely unable to do much about it. This is an interesting development indeed.

Pope Francis On Ukraine

There's been a certain amount of commentary -- at minimum, somewhat bewildered -- about Pope Francis's recent remarks on Ukraine. The full text of a wider-ranging exchange in which he made them is here. I think they should also be taken in the context of official remarks by Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State:

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, has reiterated that Ukraine has a “legitimate” right to defend itself from Russian aggression, but he also has warned that weapons being sent there by other countries could lead to a “terrible” escalation of the war.

“Ukraine is resisting Russia based on this principle,” Parolin said in a recent exclusive interview with CNA, referring to the right of self defense.

They should also be seen in the context of CCC 2309:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

I've always been impressed by the respect this shows for Clausewitz's view that chance and uncertainty, which bring guesswork and luck to the fore, play a major part in war. Thus evaluation of conditions for moral legitimacy ultimately depends on the prudential judgment of political leadership, and the conditions will always be subject to change. Consequently, there can be no black and white. The Vatican's official position leans in favor of Ukraine, but potential escalation, taking into consideration the power of weapons that could be used, could change the conditions for moral legitimacy.

I don't see how Francis's remarks contradict existing Church policy or teaching:

To answer this question we have to move away from the normal pattern of “Little Red Riding Hood”: Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad guy. Here there are no metaphysical good guys and bad guys, in an abstract sense. Something global is emerging, with elements that are very much intertwined. A couple of months before the war started I met a head of state, a wise man, who speaks very little, very wise indeed. After we talked about the things he wanted to talk about, he told me that he was very concerned about the way NATO was moving. I asked him why, and he said, “They are barking at the gates of Russia. They do not understand that the Russians are imperialists and will allow no foreign power to approach them.” He concluded, “The situation could lead to war.” This was his opinion. On February 24, the war began. That head of state was able to read the signs of what was taking place.

What we are seeing is the brutality and ferocity with which this war is being carried out by the troops, generally mercenaries, used by the Russians. The Russians prefer to send in Chechen and Syrian mercenaries. But the danger is that we only see this, which is monstrous, and we do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented. And note the interest in testing and selling weapons. It is very sad, but at the end of the day that is what is at stake.

It seems to me that, irrespective of any specifics Francis may have in mind, trends like the development of a pan-Baltic economic zone that I've discussed here are in fact making Putin and others in Russia uncomfortable. I've said here that I don't think either Finland or Sweden mooted NATO membership out of the blue after Russia invaded Ukraine; they perceived the need for such a thing well before last February. The invasion simply created a credible pretext. Isn't this something Francis and the unnamed head of state might credibly have discussed? Indeed, Francis is an ethnic Italian whose mind is likely to move in a Machiavellian direction, not without reason here.

So I don't see anything off with the observation that factors leading to the war were "perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented". Indeed, Francis's position is on the face of it not inconsistent with Trump's position since the February invasion, which has been that it would not have taken place if he were president. We can argue that neither Francis nor Trump understands the circumstances, but they are arguable, and indeed, it's arguable that there were good reasons Putin didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was president. These matters are well within the prudential judgment of political leaders.

Farther down, Francis makes an observation I've made here, and indeed, President Zelensky has said the same thing:

The world is at war. A few years ago it occurred to me to say that we are living the third world war piece by piece. For me, today, World War III has been declared.

He goes on to ask,

What is happening to humanity that we have had three world wars in a century?

Good question. Recall that a generation ago, US policymakers were being told history was over, there weren't going to be any more world wars. What was wrong with US policy planning that kept us oblivious? Isn't Francis asking that very question? Couldn't political leadership have anticipated developments better?

Frankly, I think Francis is underrated. In fact, I've come to like the guy.

Wait A Moment: Just How Many Laptops Has Hunter Lost?

I ask this because a new figure (at least, new to me) has been making the talking head rounds, Andrew Kerr, an investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner. Kerr is currently best known for revealing a Dec. 3, 2018 recording, previously undiscovered on the laptop Hunter abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, in which Hunter rambles at length on the theme, "Yeah, my father will take any policy positions that I want him to adopt."

In at least one interview, though, Kerr suggests this isn't the only one of Hunter's laptops that's gone astray. I haven't been able to find any hard-copy piece by Kerr on the subject, but I did finally run into another piece from last summer here:

In an explicit video obtained by the Daily Mail, Hunter Biden told a sex worker back in 2019 that allegedly, Russian drug dealers had stolen his laptop that may have contained "sensitive information" after they partied with him in Las Vegas back in 2018.

The video in question — reportedly filmed via his laptop — showed the 51-year-old after a sexual encounter with the woman. Throughout the video, Biden rehashes an alleged drug fueled period of time spent with the Russian dealers. The lawyer said that he "was with these guys. The one guy was, not like you anyway… each night he'd be like 'there's going to be so many people here, crazy f***ing party' and each night it's nobody."

. . . President Joe Biden's son detailed the night that he believes his computer was taken stating, "I went out to the hot tub by myself, which hangs over the edge of the f***ing top floor, with glass, it's ridiculous. And so I'm sitting there and that's the last I remember. And I don't ever pass out, ever. I wake up and the only people that are there are Miguel, the guy frantically running round gathering things up, ok – and Miguel, and Pierce, this guy, his friend."

. . . This is when, the father-of-five began to get suspicious about the location of his device. "I think he's the one that stole my computer. I think the three of them, the three guys that were like a little group. The dealer and his two guys, I took them everywhere. F***ing everywhere, crazy out of your mind sh**," the Yale alum claimed.

If this story is true -- at least, it comes from Hunter himself -- this is an entirely separate laptop, allegedly stolen in 2018 from a Las Vegas high-roller suite by shadowy cronies with Russian connections. This isn't the same laptop as the one Hunter left with the Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019 and never picked up. At about 11:21 in the interview linked above, Kerr refers to this episode and says that at minimum, the last user-updated file on the Delaware laptop is from April 2019, so that at minimum, the Las Vegas laptop, if it exists, is not identical to the Delaware one, copies of which are currently in various hands.

At about 14:11, Kerr goes on to say that Hunter had a large number of Apple devices that were also linked to this laptop, and backups for which were kept on it, so that there are potentially many more data sources available on the laptop that haven't yet been explored.

There are several questions here that are so far unanswered. One is simply the enormous bills that Hunter ran up during that legendary 2018 cocaine bender. Kerr suggersts in the interview that Hunter was moving from one $10,000 a night suite to another in Las Vegas before he eventually wound up at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. We know very little about this -- where he was, whom he was with, and especially how much this all cost. Even given his salary as a director of Burisma and the baksheesh from China, I've got to think his expenses on that bender alone far exceeded his income. Who picked up all his tabs?

Second, we already know that Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, who is said to be funding Hunter's current lifestyle and has a team of 30 lawyers investigating the abandoned laptop, seems to be the go-to fixer at this point. Just what is he up to?

And as I've already asked, even a Hollywood lawyer can't afford to pay Hunter's various tabs, bail him out of his multimillion-dollar tax problems, and hire 30 other lawyers to look into the laptop. Who's really behind this? We might hear more after the election, at least.

So, Who's In Charge At The White House?

I'm back to my theories on what's actually going on in President Brandon's brain. As I've been saying for some time, I don't think it's senility or dementia; his thinking strikes me as purpose-driven, however obscure that purpose may be. Among the recent headlines saying he's surpassed modern records for presidential vacation days, I see most recently that the Brandons are returning to the beach this weekend:

For the second time this month, President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will be spending the weekend at their North Shores beach home. The couple was in town the first weekend of June to celebrate Jill’s birthday, which was June 3, and this weekend is Father’s Day.

According to the White House’s Daily Guidance and Press Schedule issued June 16, the presidential couple are leaving Washington, D.C., at 11 a.m., Friday, June 17, and are expected to arrive in the Rehoboth area by 11:55 a.m. The guidance doesn’t say when the Bidens will be leaving the area; it just says they’ll be in town through the weekend. However, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a restricted flight-area notice that lasts until 7:15 p.m., Monday, June 20.

I submit that if the president's thought processes are organized and purpose-oriented, then here we see a good part of his purpose, which we might characterize as "avoiding work". Haven't we all known people like that? Think about Wally in the Dilbert comic, then relate him to the real-world equivalents in our own careers. Don't we see those people in Joe? Let's see how this breaks out in the policy sphere. Take a recent report from Politico:

For more than a year, Democratic lawmakers and like-minded advocates have pleaded with Joe Biden to create a “gun czar” to address the epidemic of violence.

Each time, the president’s team pushed back with force, contending it has the perfect person already in place, someone with command over the issue and extraordinary access to the president himself.

That person is Susan Rice.

. . . Her ascendence to the role of point person on guns marks the latest chunk of policy turf over which she has claimed jurisdiction, joining a sprawling portfolio that stretches from policing and racial justice to student loan debt, immigration and health care policy, including a prime piece of protecting abortion rights.

The scope of her fiefdom is as remarkable as how she managed to secure it. Having eschewed a public-facing role, Rice has relied on a combination of internal maneuvering and bureaucratic know-how to place herself at the nerve center of some of the fiercest debates roiling Washington. And she’s further cemented her status with the president in the process.

Wait a moment. Isn't Ron Klain still chief of staff? But the story doesn't mention him until farther down:

Rice’s elevated stature in the West Wing has come with fierce loyalty from colleagues and praise so superlative-laden that it borders on deification. More recently, it has led to speculation inside the White House that she will succeed Ron Klain should he leave the chief of staff post.

I think there's a subtext here. Ron Klain was supposed to be in charge -- look at this puff piece from February 2021 in CNN:

Unusually visible, involved in practically everything, and free in sharing his opinions on what has become the new administration's must-follow Twitter feed, White House chief of staff Ron Klain has emerged as the building's most central figure aside from the President himself.

His combination of deep Washington experience and long professional ties to President Joe Biden have rendered Klain one of the most powerful chiefs of staff in history, officials and those close to the White House said, one uniquely positioned to confront the parallel crises facing the nation while also channeling a President he understands implicitly.

Except now Klain is on his way out, and Politico is trying to figure out who really runs the show. The odd thing is that both the CNN and Politico stories pump first Klain and now Rice, but a couple paragraphs farther down, they discount the influence of both. For instance, in Politico:

To some former colleagues and outside advocates, Rice has come to personify a kind of risk-averse, incremental approach to policy-making that they fear falls far short of addressing the country’s needs — and will ill-serve Democrats in the midterms and elections beyond.

“Rice is seen as a domestic policy lightweight and a block to any good things that happen to cross her desk,” said the leader of one progressive organization, who asked to withhold their name out of fear of angering Rice and the White House. “So everybody who wants to do big things has a vested interest in her desk being as empty as possible.”

If that's the case, then why is Biden so closely identified with two highly controversial policies, first, the abolition of fossil fuels, and second, pansexualism, including bringing transsexuals into the mainstream, having men compete in women's sports, and radical abortionism? He's been very clear for months now that rising fuel prices aren't his fault, but they're fine anyhow, because they'll make everyone buy electric cars? Or the latest leak that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, he'll declare a national health emergency?

I think the reality here is that he isn't listening to anybody, at least nobody in a conventional political job, although the agenda he most frequently expresses is much closer to Klain than Rice. But if Klain is out and Rice is in, why isn't he backing away from killing fossil fuels or supporting transgenders on the Day of Visibility? But these positions are nevertheless neither delusional nor hallucinatory. They're this-wordly and oddly consistent with some arcane purpose, whatever that may be.

His son Hunter, of course, claims Dad listens to him. That may be more credible than theories about either Ron Klain or Susan Rice. I'm inclined to see both Hunter's advice and an overriding desire to avoid any kind of real work as better explanations for the big guy's approach to the office.

Given The Perspective Of Yesterday's Post, Where Does Russia Stand?

What intrigues me about the Russia-Ukraine War is how it's first sent me to look at early modern history in Poland, the Baltic region, and Ukraine. But the map above is from Wikipedia and shows the Swedish Empire at its greatest extent about 1720, when the rise of Russia changed alignments. Here's the Wikipedia summary:

The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries (Swedish: Stormaktstiden, "the Era of Great Power"). The beginning of the empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, and its end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War.

. . . After the victories in the Thirty Years' War, Sweden reached the climax of the great-power era during the Second Northern War, when its primary adversary, Denmark–Norway, was neutralized by the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 (this is when the Swedish empire was at its largest extent). However, in the further course of this war, as well as in the subsequent Scanian War, Sweden was able to maintain its empire only with the support of its closest ally, France. Charles XI of Sweden consolidated the empire. But a decline began with his son, Charles XII. After initial Swedish victories, Charles secured the empire for some time in the Peace of Travendal (1700) and the Treaty of Altranstädt (1706), before the disaster that followed the king's war in Russia. The Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava put an end to Sweden's eastbound expansion, and by the time of Charles XII's death in 1718 only a much-weakened and far smaller territory remained. The last traces of occupied continental territory vanished during the Napoleonic Wars, and Finland went to Russia in 1809, with Sweden's role as a great power vanishing as well.

Sweden is the only Nordic country to have ever reached the status of a military great power.

If you overlay the map above with a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

you wind up with the approximate area that Russia now regards as in dispute -- militarily, it's attempting to regain control of Ukraine, but Putin has been making largely idle threats against what is effectively the full incorporation of the former Swedish Empire into NATO. Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion has applied to join the EU, would like to join NATO, but in the meantime has been concluding separate economic and defense agreements with Poland and the Baltics that look a lot like the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

All these maps in turn remind me of the map I posted Wednesday of a projected 2050 Baltic economic zone. Why is that map in particular even possible? I think it represents a return to economic and military conditions that prevailed before the rise of Russia as a modern state, especially before the late 1600s. This suggests to me that Poland, Sweden, and Finland are seizing the opportunity to expand their effective sovereignty under the NATO military umbrella, with Ukraine as a surrogate and with the endorsement of the EU.

Think about the current rhetorical meaning of the phrase "start World War III". It's been current throughout my lifetime, but actuallly most frequently in a corporate context -- "If you say that about Accounting, you'll start World War III." When we heard that in the 1970s, after Russia invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia with impunity, it was with the understanding that offending the Soviet Union was so unthinkable that it was comparable to bringing down the full authority of the CEO and the Board of Directors [i.e. the Almighty Himself] on one's own little department.

In contrast, by 2022, we have the US president quibbling with his secretaries of state and defense over the wording of highly provocative military threats against Russia, with the president complaining that if they're too strong, they'll start World War III. Except that we already know that as of 2022, the only actual result of such provocations has been to make Putin issue increasingly impotent threats. The strategic problem for the Soviet successor state is that it mustered nearly its full effective military strength against a third-rate power, which fought it to a standstill. Had it invaded even Poland, it's understood the result for Russia would have been clear disaster.

As a result, the most favorable realistic outcome for Russia given the current state of the war will be a cease-fire along roughly current battle lines, which would amount to a fairly minor extension of the borders following its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. It will not stop or negate the already enhanced alliances with the UK, Poland, and the Baltics. It would not prevent the admission of remaining Ukraine to the EU. But whether or not that even happens, the EU foreign and economic policy of integrating Ukraine will continue.

A negotiated settlement leaving Crimea, Donbas, and Mariupol out of Ukraine would not integrate these industrial areas into European economy, but Ukrainian grain and other industrial output would ship increasingly via Europe. This srikes me as a long-term trend, of which the current Ukraine conflict, and even the 2014 invasion, is just a symptom -- Russia is in a long-term decline that brings that part of Europe back to the 1600s.

The Actual Cause And Consequence Of Putin's War

The photo above was taken by Howard Lewsey, who is a UK-based railroad enthusiast, in Chitila, Romania. Posted on Facebook, it depicts a train of Ukrainian grain cars on their way to a Romanian port for export in order to bypass the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. It reflects several important factors in the Russo-Ukraine War that I've mentioned here in passing.

Even President Biden mentioned one of these factors in his speech to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia this week:

Folks, look, what Putin’s war has done is not only tried to wipe out the culture of the Ukrainians, decimate people, and commit innumerable war crimes, but is also — he’s also prevented the grain — thousands of tons of grain that are locked up in those silos, ready to be exported, but they can’t get out through the Black Sea because they’ll get blown out of the water. So we’re working on a plan to get it out through other countries by rail.

But guess what? Ukraine has a system like Russia has — a rail gauge that is different than the gauge of the rest of the tracks in Europe. So we’re going to build silos — temporary silos — in the borders of Ukraine, including in Poland, so we can transfer it from those cars into those silos, into cars in Europe, and get it out to the ocean, and get it across the world. (Applause.) But it’s taking time.

Well, silos are one solution, they're inefficient, and they're temporary. Biden mentions it as something he's doing to lower food prices, which I don't think will happen, because the whole issue is actually at the basis of the Ukraine war, not specifically the price of grain. But the issue in fact does go to the Russian railroad gauge, and the photo above reflects it as well.

The photo shows a Romanian locomotive running on track of the European standard gauge, which is 1435 mm between the rails. The green Ukrainian grain hoppers in the train behind it normally operate in Ukraine on the Russian gauge, 1520 mm between the rails. This is a big enough difference that cars using the Russian gauge can't operate on European track. This wasn't a problem as long as they were operating only from points in Ukraine to Ukrainian Black Sea ports like Odesa.

But as Biden says, in order to get the grain to European ports, something has to be done to overcome the difference in gauge. What's being done at the Romanian border is to use cranes to lift the Ukrainian cars off the Russian-gauge wheel assemblies and place them on European-gauge wheel assemblies. This is actually slightly more efficient than using silos to transload the grain from Ukrainian grain cars into entirely different Polish grain cars, but it's still expensive and time-consuming.

Another feature of the photo is the flat car between the Romanian locomotive and the train of green Ukrainian grain cars. Not only are the track and wheels incompatible between Europe and Ukraine, but the couplers that hold trains together are also incompatible. The flat car shown has a European coupler to connect it to the Romanian locomotive, with a Russian style coupler on the other end to connect it to the Ukrainian grain cars. This is another inefficiency, and discussion on that Facebook post indicates there's a shortage of that type of car.

Both the Romanians and the Ukrainians are working to eliminate the problem by extending European gauge track into Ukraine, which will be the inevitable solution going forward. This will have the equivalent result to the post-Reconstruction measure following the US Civil War of converting the Confederate railroad gauge, coincidentally the same as the Russian gauge, to the Union gauge, coincidentally the European gauge. This created a single US rail network that extended the Industrial Revolution into the South. The effect here will be further to integrate Ukraine into the European industrial economy, probably more significant than simply adding Ukraine to the EU.

The problem for Putin is that this isn't happening just in Ukraine. According to Wikipedia,

Rail Baltica (also known as Rail Baltic in Estonia) is an ongoing greenfield railway infrastructure project to link Finland (via ferry or an undersea tunnel), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania with Poland and through this with the European standard gauge rail line network. Its purpose is to provide passenger and freight service between participating countries and improve rail connections between Central and Northern Europe, specifically the area in the Southeast of the Baltic sea. Furthermore, it is intended to be a catalyst for building the economic corridor in Northeastern Europe. The project envisages a continuous rail link from Tallinn (Estonia) to Warsaw (Poland). It consists of links via Riga (Latvia), Kaunas and Vilnius (Lithuania) whose total length in the Baltic States is 870 km, with 213 km in Estonia, 265 km in Latvia, and 392 km in Lithuania. Rail Baltica is one of the priority projects of the European Union: Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).

The rail networks in the Baltic countries after World War II and the Soviet seizure of those countries had used the Russian gauge and were primarily used as export outlets from Russia to the Baltic ports. This will transform the Baltic rail network to a north-south alignment of European gauge that will integrate the Baltic economies with the European industrial economy. A subsequent stage will be either rail ferries to Finland or an undersea rail tunnel that will bring the European standard gauge into Finland, which has always used the Russian gauge due to its status as a Russian economic satellite.

This development predates Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and the Wikipedia entry says it's "one of the priority projects of the European Union". It's pretty clear that such an investment would be unthinkable without the Baltics being part of NATO. I would imagine that Finland, envisioning the benefits of a direct European rail connection via the Baltic rail project, would have been mooting NATO membership well before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The investment in something like an undersea rail tunnel and the resulting economic benefit would be too great without an equivalent investment in defense, something Putin must also recognize.

But note the map I posted yesterday of a Baltic economic region envisioned for 2050. This is clearly intended as a consequence of, among other things, the Baltic rail integration into the European network. But note how ambitious that map is -- not only does it include Finland, it includes Belarus and even St Petersburg. And of course, Ukraine lies just to the south of Poland and Belarus. The EU is pretty clearly intending to extend its economic influence into Russian territory, and this will involve cultural change, including effective representative government and likely severely reduced political dependence on Moscow.

Faced with the EU's intent, I think Putin saw invasion of Ukraine as something of a last-ditch measure to forestall it. The problem is that the invasion, already a failure from that perspective, is simply going to hasten the conversion of Ukraine's rail gauge to the European standard and its integration into the European economy. As I've been noting here, Poland and the Baltics have already been making separate agreements with Ukraine for both defense and economic cooperation; they already have Ukraine in mind as part of the Baltic-centered community.

And this will leave Belarus between Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics. I don't think Putin or his successors can hold onto it for long.

Revisiting The Ukraine Dilemma For The US Right

There's been a steady rise in opinion favoring some sort of negotiated settlement of the Ukraine war, and although the US Right has been consistently against US support for the war, the appeasement option is no longer limited to the Right. For instance, on the 19fortyfive site,

Since it became evident a few weeks into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine that Moscow’s troops were stopped cold outside of Kyiv, there has been a near-universal belief in the West that Ukraine would eventually win. All that was needed, many pundits claimed, was to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces sufficient numbers of weapons and ammunition. As the war now grinds towards the four-month mark, it is becoming painfully evident that the odds are stacked in Russia’s favor.

. . . Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will soon come face-to-face with the ugly prospect that continuing to fight will only bring more death and destruction to its people, cities, and armed forces – but be insufficient to stave off defeat. The truth is, military fundamentals and simple capacity are in Moscow’s favor. It is unlikely those factors change in time to avoid defeat for Kyiv and its brave people. That is the ugly, bitter reality of war.

Or this less coherent piece from the Hot Air blog:

The war increasingly looks like a straightforward contest to see which side will collapse first. The horrendous casualties taken by the Russian in close-quarters fighting around Kiev combined with promises of massive western military aid for Ukraine seemed unsustainable for Putin’s army, making them a likely loser.

But now that the war has shifted to the east and become a long-range slugfest in open terrain, the forecast has shifted. Unable to match the range of Putin’s artillery, it’s the Ukrainians who are taking horrendous casualties while Russian soldiers remain out of reach.

. . . “[E]very day that Western heavy-weapons supplies are delayed is measured in hundreds of Ukrainian casualties,” sources told the WSJ. The west may have done just enough to support the war without actually preventing Ukrainian defeat. What was the point of extending this conflict only to let the battle for the Donbas turn into a turkey shoot for the Russians?

The Right's position all along has been that support for Ukraine simply extends inflationary spending and ignores domestic problems like a baby formula shortage. There have also been echoes of the appeasemnt argument that it's a "quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.” Ukraine is poor and corrupt, let them go.

This piece in the left-wing Daily Kos makes somewhat more sense of the argument in the links above that Ukraine is running out of ammunition -- but the ammunition they're running out of is their less effective legacy Warsaw Pact ammunition, which is being replaced by more effective NATO ammunition for the new weapons they're receiving.

Ukraine’s own ministry of defense acknowledges how much more effective NATO guns are, compared to the Soviet crap they’re phasing out (and Russia is stuck with), saying “these new [NATO 155 mm] shells are more effective than their Soviet equivalents, and hence their consumption is lower.” The accuracy is ridiculous. Russia can’t pull off stuff like this, because if they could, we’d see them release the drone footage.

Zelensky in recent speeches has referred to a bigger picture of overall progress and overall objectives:

Do you remember how Russia hoped to capture the entire Donbas in early May? It is already the 108th day of the war, it is already June. Donbas is holding on. The losses suffered by the occupiers, including in this area, are extremely significant. In total, the Russian army today has about 32,000 dead souls. For what? What did it give you, Russia?

No one can say now how long this burning of souls by Russia will last. But we must do everything to make the occupiers regret that they have done all this, and to hold them accountable for every murder and every strike at our beautiful state.

The problem remains that any negotiated solution that leaves Russia in control of Ukrainian territory will be just an invitation to try again, which was the situation after 2014. The second problem is the clear agenda of Soviet revanchism in Russian ruling circles, which isn't likely to change no matter the state of Putin's health. Slovakia, the Baltics, and Poland are most acutely aware of this, but clearly Russian ambitions have forced Sweden and Finland to abandon long-held neutrality.

So far, we still have the statement from US Defense Secretary Austin, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” More recently, he's said the US objective is "to ensure that we're providing Ukraine what Ukraine needs right now and . . . to look ahead to ensure that we're helping Ukraine to build and sustain robust defenses so that Ukraine will be able to defend itself in the coming months and years."

The problem I see at this point is that even an end state that restores Ukraine to pre-2014 borders doesn't necessarily weaken Russia "to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine". The more I study economic trends on the Russian frontier, the more I see an intent to integrate Finland, the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine into a coherent economic zone that will establish iteslf to the detriment of Russia.

The map at the top of this post should give an idea of where things are headed, and the economic zone envisioned there definitely includes not only the Baltics and Finland, but it extends to Belarus and parts of northwestern Russia. Ukraine is simply on its southern border.

Geostrategic planning needs to accommodate this likely development, as well as likely bitter Russian opposition to it. The current Russo-Ukraine War is just a stage in that process, which I think is inevitable. But if it's in Western interests for it to take place, it must follow that the West has to ensure that Russia "can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine", which in this case it definitely will do.

As I've said, so far it looks as though Secretaries Austin and Blinken have been able to carve out an area of discretion over Ukraine where Biden can't interfere. However, future political leadership will need to account more clearly for the likely direction of developments in this emerging region, of which Ukraine is only a part.