The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Russia - Be Careful What We Wish For | Frankly #17

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

We were reminded this week of how precarious and dangerous the ongoing NATO/Russia situation is. An errant missile in Poland on Tuesday nearly started World War III (thankfully - cooler heads prevailed). The situation in Ukraine is horribly complex - but are people in the USA even paying attention? Many naively believe getting rid of Putin or 'winning' militarily vs Russia are valid and reasonable goals. But from a systems vantage there is more going on here than the mainstream narrative - we are in the liminal space between a unipolar and multipolar world order - a time fraught with various risks.  Our collective understanding/response is vital to livable futures.     For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/17-russia-be-careful-what-we-wish-for To Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jY3QpjxiPk

In addition to being energy blind, our culture is largely geopolitics blind. This week's, frankly, I'm going to talk about what's going on between Russia and the United States in the country of Ukraine. And the situation we all find ourselves in as we navigate a unipolar world towards a multipolar world, which is inevitable. and how we navigated is absolutely critical to all our futures and planetary futures. Good morning. It is Thursday, November 17th. Two days ago, we came very close to World War III. Ukrainian missile landed in Poland. The initial suspicion was it was from Russia. And all of this comes to the fore yet again. To be on, honest, to be frank, the NATO-U.S., Russia, Ukraine situation has been in my mind all year.

Because relative to inflation or jobs or climate change, this issue, the risk of a nuclear exchange, everything else pales in comparison. Because if there is a nuclear exchange, a nuclear escalation, the moment of the moment that we woke wake up to that, everything in our world changes forever and all of the benign pathways that the pro-social followers of this podcast and millions and millions of people around the world are working on towards sustainable pathways are off the table. So I had planned on doing a Halloween, a Thanksgiving reflection on energy. And I might say, still do that next week, but here are my thoughts on the Russia situation. So first of all,

there's a narrative, right? When a country goes to war, there's a narrative. I think with modern day public relations, nations have gotten really good at that. The nation that I live in and I'm a citizen of and dearly love, the United States, has been very successful. at making Putin out to be the evil Antichrist that is responsible for all this. Putin may be a thug. I don't like the guy. I suspect that there are people in Russia that love their dogs and like to go fishing and watch sports and care about the environment just like I do, and that these nation leaders are similar in many places. But my point about Putin is there seems to be this thing.

theme that if he is deposed or assassinated or resigns for health reasons or there's a coup, that this is a win for the West and that we will get our way again because some pro-Western leader will replace him. I think this is dangerously flawed. From this perspective, Putin is the West friendly alternative because if he is replaced in all likelihood it will be was someone who is very hostile to the West, more hostile than he is. Why? Because a lot of the leaders, the over 60, you know, leadership in Russia and in the United States, by the way, are a product of what happened 30 years ago.

30 years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed. And the United States and other countries sent in people, the Harvard boys, to get favorably. resources to get resources, oil, minerals, food, agricultural, directed to the West. So leaders in our country, the United States, remember that. And they would like to have a week in Russia and maybe have better terms to import and have access to oil and natural gas and wheat and minerals, etc. and Russia remember that and feel they were looted. So it's unlikely that there's going to be some pro-Western replacement for Putin. On that theme, it's also an incredible risk that if something

happens to Russia where it would actually be crippled or under some new leader kind of collapsed the way that the Soviet Union did, there are huge risks with that as well. First of all, Russia is the largest exporter of wheat from a biophysical standpoint, which is the things that I know quite well. Russia is one of the top three oil producers in the world. It's sitting on a gargantuan amount of natural resources with a relatively low population. The world cannot function remotely like it is today without continued access to Russian resources. On top of the world, that, we came very close to nuclear war during the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were all kinds of orphaned nuclear weapons that if Yeltsin hadn't come in and somehow controlled all that,

there would have been warlords and rogue warheads being sold to the highest bitter state actors, non-state actors. Now that situation is even worse. There's over 6,000 nuclear weapons sprinkled through. the country of Russia. And if there's some destabilization and some people talk about NATO winning versus the U.S. I'm a NATO winning versus Russia. What does winning even mean? I don't think we can go back to before February 2022. So there are major destabilization risks with a weakened or crippled Russia. The other thing I don't think a lot of people think about is, is this really a military operation? Or is the military just a front for a deeper economic salvo towards the West? Putin has long talked about de-dollarization and the imperialist West. And already many, many countries in the world

are lining up trade agreements with the brick countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia and Iran are jumping on top of that, Argentina, lots of other countries. The problem that we have is looking at the world from a unipolar military angle is very tethered to a unipolar financial angle. And the United States still has the seignorage, the economic benefits of the U.S. dollar being used to price all the oil in the world and many of the commodities. So the ultimate plan for Putin may be, how can I know, an alternative currency that is resource-backed, not just backed by a financialized economy.

And a lot of people say, oh, well, Russia is so small in GDP, measured strictly by GDP, yes. It's not that much bigger than Spain. but using purchasing power parity, it is significantly bigger. But from a biophysical standpoint, it is a leviathan in the world economy. Just like I think neoclassical economist and all of our business schools in the world are teaching a flawed view of how our economy really works. Using that energy lens, Russia is way more important to the world economy than a strict financial accounting would give.

You know, it's, this is a fig leaf of a proxy war, barely. I think most people paying attention know now that this is the U.S. and NATO versus Russia in the country of Ukraine. If President Biden's new proposal gets approved, that will mean we had over $90 billion the U.S. sent to Ukraine in terms of new military. We're trying out new weapons there. there's NATO troops on the ground. That is 33% bigger than Russia's entire military budget. So what does winning mean here? Does it mean that the Eastern Oblast get carved out and are part of

Niovo Russia and that we go back to the way things were? I don't know. I think we have to, the systems-aware pro-social future thinkers among us have to look two or three steps ahead at what's happening here. And of course, the phase shifts in human history are when resources get tough, people go to war and try and get other people's resources. If we continue down that path, it can only end in nuclear war. Because these narratives of this country's bad and this country's good, coupled with stray missiles or accidents going into NATO territory is a recipe for Armageddon. And I want to talk about well-being a different economic system that values nature and community and the best things in life are mostly free and how to use energy more conservatively

to bridge fossil hydrocarbons with renewable technology towards some slower, simpler, resilient system. But all of that is off the table unless we navigate what's coming. I, in saying these things, I'm not anti-American. I'm pro-Megafuna. I'm pro-complex life. And that's what is at risk

with this football game, with nuclear weapons going on in the background. I'm not an expert on nuclear war or Russia or anything, but it's part of the global problematic that we face, a huge part. And I'm just a guy with a podcast in Wisconsin that cares deeply about our future, but I feel to not talk about what's going on between the U.S. and Russia and there are other countries involved, certainly. but we're not on a good path.

And yeah, thanks for listening. And next week we'll have a little lighter fare.