A Reminder of Why It’s the G-7 and Not G-8

And also why we have sanctions against several Russian citizens, firms and financial institutions. Hint: It has something to do with the orange areas:


Source: Euromaidenpress.

In particular:

Source: Ukrainian Defense Ministry via Euromaidenpress.

For those inclined to dismiss the current conflict as merely a civil disorder, I refer them to this historical map.


Source: Story of Hawaii Museum.

34 thoughts on “A Reminder of Why It’s the G-7 and Not G-8

  1. -E

    This is a terrific, patriotic post!

    I was thinking about how the USA completely and utterly squandered the peace dividend following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pushing NATO membership into the FSU countries was absolutely brilliant. Must find markets for agriculture and weapon systems produced in the most advanced socialist sectors of the US economy.

    Then there are the circumstances in the Ukraine leading up to the actual Russian invasion of the Crimea but that would get into pesky details and raise uninteresting questions.

    American policy in regards to Russia and the Ukraine is something that Lord Keynes would fully approve of as the USA is clearly the culturally superior actor and has the right to do things that it would never allow other nation states to do. Moreover, if there ever was a full frontal conflict between the USA and Russia, imagine the re-building opportunities! There would be tremendous fiscal stimulus.

    1. Menzie Chinn Post author

      -E: You are free to forward those “pesky details”, in order to enlighten the Econbrowser readers as to why Russian intervention via proxies, direct intervention, long range artillery, is justified. I’m willing to engage.

      After all, there might have been some very good reasons to try to develop a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere.

      1. Moses Herzog

        This is cracking me up. You mean that blathering I was doing in the prior thread late last night while salivating over Hailee Steinfeld in that Bumblebee advert, was actually near to correct?? Is this your indirect way of telling me “Moses you kinda got that one right” about the locale of the IP address?? This is good because it dilutes some of my worry about how insane my perceptions of things are.

        I was going to ask you “What if some readers are colorblind Menzie??” but that’s even too Dad-jokie for me. I did still get it in though.

        For the sake of, and in the name of, transparency and intellectual honestly, I will say I understand the first two maps, FEEL I should understand the 3rd map, but don’t actually understand the 3rd map. No, I don’t want someone to tell me. I’m going to copy that or DL it and see if I can ferret this one out. I have the strange sense I’m going to semi-hate myself for not knowing what the pink map means once I figure it out.

        1. Menzie Chinn Post author

          Moses Herzog: IP addresses can be anonymized, so it’s of little use to refer to it.

          If you click on the link below the map, all will be revealed.

          1. Moses Herzog

            @ Menzie
            Very true.

            I suppose the professional ones, of who I am kind of referring to, have a proxy set up. But am I naive to guess that they didn’t make it Chicagoland USA?? I guess the good news for us is, the mixture of overly political statements along with poorly written English is at least a slight showing of the “foreign troll” poker cards. The Russian/EastEuropean troll efforts would all be predominantly humorous if the southern redneck portion of our population didn’t fall for it so easily. Then it becomes slightly maddening.

      2. Moses Herzog

        Yeah, I was right, I hate myself for not getting this one more quickly. Have actually been in Anshan at least once, have travelled through Jinzhou, and one of my best friends in China, his hometown was Harbin. I was trying to remember if I had been to Shenyang. My memory seems to say yes, but I can’t swear to it. I think I may be getting a couple visits I made to Anshan mixed up with Shenyang in my head. I could mention other cities of Liaoning which have a particular personal interest to me, but would bore the hell out of the dear blog reader. My last two years in China got slightly hazy due to certain liquid commercial products I was consuming in large amounts to retain mental health.

        Certain cities in that region are really fascinating, because you can sometimes see 3 different types of architecture in the same city or same area—Japanese, Russian, and obviously Chinese, depending on what quarter of the city you are in. I will let the gentle reader guess which of those three tends to have the most structural “integrity” and durability. It’s fascinating to note, at least in years past, some of the more important Chinese government bureaus were located in guess whose buildings?? But that’s a useless yammering on for another day when I have something fermented nearby to imbibe.

        1. Moses Herzog

          I feel this clarification is unnecessary, but want to make extra clear, when I use possessives referring to buildings, I am referring to who did the architecture obviously, not the original and rightful owners/bearers of the land/buildings. I think that was clear–but have encountered people outside of this blog that would take issue with smaller items than my wording there.

      3. ilsm

        Good point. US’ [and its pawn] NATO since Clintons are not different from Imperial Japan in the 1930’s. If you maintain a uniform moral view.

      4. ilsm

        The oligarch now in charge came up through a coup against a constitutional government. Have there been elections since?

        Was it CIA? You decide!

        https://www.quora.com/Was-the-CIA-involved-in-the-overthrow-of-President-Yanukovych

        The best excuse for ignoring CIA involvement at Maidan is the chocolate billionaire could afford it.

        Successful regime change; big bonus, it is selling $1T plus for new nuclear weapons and another several TR for the new cold war. And brigade combat sets prepositioned in the Balts!!!

    2. Moses Herzog

      @ -E
      Boris Yeltsin was a great leader, with great moralistic intentions and a great vision for his country. Bill Clinton knew that, and Bill Clinton also tried to make others attain a better cognitive recognition of a highly misunderstood leader. Yeltsin was viewed as “weak” because Yeltsin actually gave a damn about the common Russian worker, the Russian “man on the street”, and the world community he lived in. Unfortunately because the man liked to “get his drink on” he was misperceived by his own countrymen and thus far hasn’t gotten his “just due” from the history books. That’s sad for all involved. But I’m wondering if you felt all the loans the Yeltsin government worked very hard to procure for his Mother Russia were in some form or fashion “abuse” from the USA, did you guys plan on sending the money back??? Let us know when Putin and the Russian Mafia (who stole the money Yeltsin worked so hard to procure) planned on sending the check, so we can inform the proper US authorities of the future deposit.
      http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=stu_llm

      1. pgl

        Yeltsin’s reign was textbook crony capitalism. I should know living in Brooklyn where a lot of his good buddies came to live after they ripped off Russia.

  2. 2slugbaits

    -E For future reference, it’s just Ukraine, not the Ukraine. No definite article.

    Menzie I see the pictures of tanks and rocket launchers, but where are the little pictures of future Trump hotel sites?

  3. joseph

    Trump on Saturday: “This used to be the G8, not the G7. Something happened a while ago where Russia is no longer in.”

    Something happened?

    You have to wonder if Trump is taking direct orders from Putin to whitewash the something that happened.

    1. pgl

      Not clueless but very clever. All problems will be blamed on Obama. Including the fact that Trump’s Attorney General is a member of the KKK. You see – the Trumpsters are racist because we let a black man in the White House!

  4. Moses Herzog

    I don’t play on Twitter anymore. I mix with the 4Chan losers on Reddit now. But Euromaiden’s official account on Twitter used to be one of the better Twitter follows to know what was going on over there in East Ukraine—which is not always the easiest to ferret out, for obvious reasons. They posted very user friendly and detailed maps, and I would argue, much better info than most of the other sources on Ukraine. Troop movements, isolated skirmishes, hidden artillery reserves near the border—you name it and they had it, and I never caught them in lies or false information.

  5. pgl

    There is a lot of excitement about the possibility of oil off the shores of Crimea. This is one of the reasons why Putin wanted to annex it. And I’m sure Trump covets the economic rents from these oil reserves. We know Putin has shares of some of Russia’s major oil companies. Putin and Trump are kindred spirits in this form of crony capitalism.

    BTW – if you are worried that all of Putin’s profits are taxed at Russia’s 20% corporate tax rate, rest assured more of those profits end up in Cyprus at a tax rate of only 12.5% via transfer pricing manipulation. Paul Ryan and Orin Hatch gives this their two thumbs up!

  6. Moses Herzog

    This Chinese deal, made so Trump can get his personal Indonesian loan, is extremely dangerous as it gives China a 5G technology “backdoor” into USA networks. This is yet ANOTHER sign that the senile Wilbur Ross and marathon TV watching Donald Trump, have no idea what the hell they are doing. This is from June 7, which I guess would have been Thursday.
    https://youtu.be/k6tuKlmJFCk?t=1m49s

      1. Moses Herzog

        I am ashamed to confess, many many years ago I liked and semi-respected Lou Dobbs. At one time (like, literally decades ago) he hosted a relatively neutral show on CNN and even (hard as it is to believe now) was a likable guy. The nearest he got to extremist rhetoric was when he let Stuart Varney come in for a 2 minute editorial. When it was he changed, or if he was that good at hiding his true colors, I have no idea. I remember Dobbs railing against immigration only to find he had them doing cheap work around his properties.
        https://www.thenation.com/article/lou-dobbs-american-hypocrite/

        This is one of the many great secrets that Republicans have managed to keep from “Joe six-pack” all these years since the days of Reagan. That they are not in any way, shape, or form, “anti-immigrant”. The only way Republicans are “anti-immigrant” is as far as it gets them to threaten the girl babysitting their own children, and doing the suburban wife’s housework (so she doesn’t look like a complete useless pig to her friends) that they’re going to turn her into ICE, and so she should put up with below legal wages, sexual abuse, and no healthcare or she’ll be turned in to ICE the next day. But no one who watches Lou Dobbs can read. So they will never read or know. Republicans such as Trump and Pence like rounding up immigrants in their personal homes, with their families—does anyone of intelligence think they can’t figure out where those illegal immigrants work en masse and that it would be a much easier and more effective way to hand out stiff penalties, including prison time to illegals’ employers??? That’s NEVER going to happen, because guys like McConnell, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, and Ted Cruz aren’t going to have those who employ illegals funding their next competitor’s political campaign, or even more frightening, having their own wives actually do real domestic work.

        1. baffling

          have to agree with you about lou dobbs. at one time he was a good business journalist. then somehow he simply became a shill for the conservative right. and his business journalism became horrendous. his fixation with immigration has become stale. another newsman, kudlow, did the same thing. i think i know what happened to them. they got OLD.

      2. Moses Herzog

        @pgl
        It’s not that I can’t see why some people find it humorous, and I totally “get” why you do. It’s probably a more mentally healthy outlook on your part. But I think I have too much of my Dad in me (on that score anyway) and it just makes my blood boil. But I’m still glad you shared, and it’s always interesting to see Lou Dobbs is still riding the no stops bullet train directly to Hell.

        1. Moses Herzog

          @Baffling
          Trust me, age is not an excuse for stupidity and dumb moves in life. I’ve reached an age I wish I could use that as “an out” on the many dumb things I have done that have piled up over the years. The reality is, that one doesn’t fly—experience should start filtering out mistakes. NO, Dobbs has never hit the Bill O’Reilly income stratosphere, but he’s made enough he can insulate himself. And he may be similar to Trump that he knows many of the things he spouts are lies, but also knows there’s a very large demographic out there to sell those lies to.

  7. joseph

    The petulant child who was out of his depth talking about milk with Justin Trudeau is off to talk about nuclear weapons with Kim Jong Un.

    Sleep well, everyone!

    1. Moses Herzog

      @ Darth Trampis
      It is even said that these strange Russian people have special Jedi powers over foreign leaders, in which they are, in essence, hypnotized to do Russia’s bidding:
      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/debacle-in-quebec.html

      It is also told “by the sages of old” that there are only two Sith Lords at any one time. A master who embodies the power of the dark side of The Force, and an apprentice who craves the power of the dark side. Anyone is welcome to look at the photo linked below and pontificate which one of the two Siths donald loser trump illustrates. In fact, I personally encourage this conjecture. Just don’t do that at the same time you’re eating your Sunday morning pinecone donut, or you may have an unwanted projectile emanating from your belly.
      https://brobrubel.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/czz3vhyuaaad8w9-jpg-large.jpeg

  8. Baffling

    Ever notice -E and peakloser are never on the same blog at the same time. Makes you wonder what goes on in those russian rumor mills.

    1. Moses Herzog

      “The Red Web” by Soldatov and Borogan is a good book to read. Here is some interesting talk also. One thing I like about Masha Gessen, is sometimes she’ll say “we don’t know” or “We don’t know the answer to that question”. In 2018, from an analyst or a commentator these words are gold. Because instead of feeling a compulsory need to talk and fill in broadcast space to appear to be the expert—the true answer often is that no one, or very few people know the answer to the question. And often times, the people who do know, stand to gain from the information being cloudy.
      https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/in-the-trump-era-we-are-losing-the-ability-to-distinguish-reality-from-vacuum

      Another thing I think many people are missing about Trump. And Gessen makes this point with better words than I do here. Many people notice that Trump lies. That’s an obvious observation, that Trump lies all the time, right?? But how many people fully understand, that Trump lies, with no real “deep strategy” involved in the lying. It is a type of lie told only for the sake of telling any lie—->>> to see what he will get called out on, what he can say just to say a lie, and then to normalize the process where no one even thinks anything during or after he tells the lie. It’s a “testing of the waters” like children do. “Let me stick my hand in the cookie jar a 20th time, and see if Mommy gives me the same punishment she did the other 19 times I stuck my hand in the cookie jar—that is—nothing”

  9. ilsm

    Enough TDS to go around? G-7 is a vestige of the US run post WW II world order. Now a neocon machine to run the world.

    If ‘regular’ Russian forces are in East Ukraine they are popular there. If a Russian navy base is in Sevastopol then what is the worry? It is 6000 mils form NY harbor.

    Note, what you see in this map is modest and could be important to the local neighbors.

    While US busting up Syria and occupying Syria east of the Euphrates is a long way from any interest of the “common defense”. That also bothers a NATO member a lot closer and a lot more blood in the Kurd “game”. Then there are US “allies” saving al Nusra in Idlib and dividing NW Syria………

    Next G-7 will offer NATO membership to the Russian killers in Tbilisi.

    Good thing Putin does not draw red lines like the G-7 and Netanyahu.

  10. Ed Hanson

    I do not have then answer to this question, and would be quite interested in others thoughts.

    The sanctions current and anticipated will not force Russia from the Crimea. Ukraine does not have the military might to do so. NATO has shown that it will not use force to remove Russia from the Crimea. It becomes logical to conclude that Russia and the Crimea is now a fact and will remain so. Crimea is way too critical to Russia, sanctions are tiny in comparison; and to repeat, Ukraine will not remove Russia, NATO will not remove Russia; Russia will stay. So why not include Russia in the the important dialogues? Isn’t there more upside than downside if so?

    Ed

  11. anon3

    Another Obama foreign policy success! Ole Barry was serious when he told Medvedev he would have ‘more flexibility’ after the 2012 election. We just didn’t know that when he said ‘more flexibility’ he meant more flexibility to turn a blind eye to Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine……….much the same as he turned a blind eye to ISIS that lead to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Syria and Iraq. I guess he was too busy working out a ‘deal’to let Iran get nuclear weapons.
    Obama giving a pass to Russia to enslave Crimea and parts of the Ukraine — OK.
    Trump silly talk about letting Russia back in G-7 — a mortal sin.

    1. ilsm

      Anon3,

      The choco oligarch’s 2014 coup sustained bc Putin did nothing and the US’ Mrs. Kagan, neocon in charge, of the DoS “crisis desk” confirmed the fait accompli.

      What is Ukraine? The choco oligarch has about 21% of the seats in the parliament. The areas of supposed Putin aggression are chunks fitted to Ukraine sometime between beating the Turks who were supported by Frances and Great Britain back in 1858 and the creation of former soviet states.

      “Enslave” Cossack populated Crimea and Russian orthodox parts of kluge Ukraine is war mongering blither.

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