A brief note on war crimes.

 July 25, 2022

A brief note on war crimes.

I wouldn't classify this issue vis-à-vis Ukraine as a major American policy consideration, but I do want to make note of this continuing hypocrisy of war, that is only lightly changed form in this Ukraine-Russia war.

Has anyone else also noticed that in recent years, roughly in the post World War II through the War on Terror period, the "dirty trick" played by rival armies on each other was to repeatedly say they were "not actually attacking medical facilities and hospitals", but actually in fact attacking medical facilities and hospitals? When, for example they wanted to deliver a "shock and awe" moment? Bosnia, Kosovo, and Fallujah all provide examples of that, from all sorts of belligerents. That which is denied at the outset, but is done under the cover of the fog of war…

The football lineman that tells you that "yeah, eye gouging and facemask-ing is a foul, and everyone does it"? You've heard that, you know, and you don't deny it.

What I want to note about this kind of war crime, is that in the midst of this Russia–Ukraine war, it is slightly changing its character. Pretty recently, Russia has been "caught" attacking grain supplies, and have started denying that they attack grain supplies. In this milieu, shall we say, whatever belligerents deny that they do at the outset, they absolutely, assuredly, will do.

I wouldn't classify this as a major problem for American public policy, because we are systematically structured as a self-sufficient society when it comes to food supply. That gets back to our physiocratic roots in economic policy, all the way back to our beginning. The little bit of food we import is mostly novelty or specialty, and nothing that is an essential staple in any quantity. However, all the talk about how the Russian – Ukrainian war is going to affect the global grain supply is about how it will affect our European allies. 

The idea of the united European economic zone with its own currency produced a problem where now the whole of Europe is in some way unified into one "farm", where there are very unclear boundaries, for where grain can flow freely, and where there should be export and import controls. Basically, this means that Europe has had to embrace mercantilism with little recourse to physiocracy to support their farmers and the rest of their economic base. And the effect of this has been that Europe is very reliant on Ukrainian grain and grain sources from the rest of their "periphery". It's not unlike the problem of the late Roman Empire, that was hugely reliant on grain supplies from Scythia (Central Asia). 

Europe embraced mercantilism and undermined any hope of physiocracy, and they'll reap the rewards, or lack thereof, from that. 

But for Americans, we should at least preserve the caution that we shouldn't follow along with the European delusion, as we have for far too many years during the War on Terror period.