What a relief to read historian Adam Tooze’s nuanced take on Russia and the prospect of President Vladimir Putin invading most of Eastern Europe and stitching the former Soviet Union (USSR) together again.
Now that the Beijing Winter Olympics are over and he won’t have to worry about distracting from Xi Jinping’s global spectacle, it is possible Putin will start his bizarre empire rebuilding campaign as the Ukraine crisis escalates.
It can’t be nice living next door to a nervous autocrat with access to lots of weapons — unless you’re his ally President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
Economically, Ukrainians haven’t had a great time since the breakup of the USSR. The country’s GDP per capita is 20% below the 1990 level. But it’s worth remembering that in the 32 years since the USSR was unbundled, the US — w it h and without its European allies — has invaded far more countries than Russia. However the tension with Putin over the Ukraine unfolds, it does seem likely there will be refugees. Poland is already preparing for an influx of Ukrainians. The Polish government has asked all Polish mayors to pinpoint buildings that could be suitable as refugee shelters. So far it has not provided state funds for refurbishing those buildings, but it seems keen to help.
There are already 1-million Ukrainians living in Poland; they poured in after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. It’s unclear whether this 1-million is included in the estimate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of 82.4-million people worldwide who have been forcibly displaced. Forcible displacement, says the UN, can be due to “persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order”.
Distressingly, the 82.4-million is more than double the figure of 10 years ago. Even more distressing is that most of those displaced persons do not qualify for refugee status because, though desperate, they have not crossed their border. They are staying within their own country, ostensibly under the protection of their own government, even when that government is the reason for their displacement.
The figure is set to increase forever, given that each year only about 8% of refugees are settled.
It doesn’t feature, yet, on any list of refugees or displaced persons, though Ukraine is on the list of the world’s top 25 exporters of major arms.
Ironically, Russia is its second-largest customer after China. But Ukraine’s share is minuscule compared with the big five on the list — the US controls 37% of global exports, Russia 20%, France 8.2%, Germany 5.5% and China 5.2%.
As it happens, none of them features on the UNHCR’s latest list of major sources of refugees; indeed, these countries are generally located at a considerable distance from places that are.
The June 2021 list of refugees is dominated by Syria, which accounts for 6.7-million refugees, Venezuela for 4- million, Afghanistan for 2.6-million (this is likely to increase), South Sudan for 2.2-million and Myanmar for 1.1-million. None features on the list of arms exporters or on any list that would indicate they had a significant arms industry.
And yet, with the grim exception of Venezuela, which seems to be a failed state, their refugee problem was caused by continuing violent conflict.
So how is it possible in the 21st century, when so much of the world has become more alert to the damaging externalities caused by corporate activity, that the global arms industry is allowed to continue to thrive without restraint? If companies producing carbon emissions are, rightly, obliged to start cleaning up, why are arms manufacturers not under the same pressure?
How many refugees and displaced persons can track the start of their grim existence to something like the “fire and forget” antitank missile? If the manufacturers of such weapons are not obliged to deal with the damage they cause, the countries from which they operate should.
Instead of struggling with limited funding and reluctant bureaucrats in the potential recipient countries, perhaps the UNHCR should look to allocate refugees from war-torn regions to the countries that provided the weapons. If it is unsure, it can make the allocation proportional to the share of the global arms industry.
Or, because there may be some reluctance to relocate to Russia and China, the arms manufacturing countries should be obliged to fund reasonable standards of accommodation for an indefinite period for each refugee.
This would reveal just how costly the global arms industry is for all concerned. It might even alleviate the level of war-related strife around the globe.
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