The Nobel Prize-winning American economist Paul Krugman goes back to the beginnings of the American Civil War, looking for the reasons why the Southerners of the Confederation had then believed that they could indeed defeat the Northerners.
In April 1861, rebel artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, with that battle now considered the beginning of the American Civil War.
That war, however, as Krugman notes in his New York Times article, would be catastrophic for the South, which lost more than 20 percent of its young men on the battlefield.
“But why did the separatists believe that they could do it?” Krugman wonders, before beginning to give himself some answers.
“One reason was that they believed they had a powerful financial weapon. “The economy of Britain, the world’s leading power at the time, was heavily dependent on the cotton of the (US) South, and they believed that stopping this supply would force Britain to side with the Confederacy.”
The American Civil War did indeed initially affect American cotton exports, leaving thousands of workers back in England without work.
“In the end, of course, Britain remained neutral – in part because British workers saw the Civil War as a moral crusade against slavery and rallied around the Union (including the American Civil War) despite their suffering.” , writes Krugman, according to which what happened then on the other side of the Atlantic bears similarities to what is happening today in Ukraine.
“THE Vladimir Putin saw the dependence of Europe, and especially of Germany, on Russian gas in the same way that slave owners saw Britain’s dependence on cotton: as a form of economic dependence that would force these nations to accept its military ambitions. “, Writes Krugman in the New York Times.
However, Putin “was not completely wrong,” continues the American Nobel laureate, who in another article a few days ago “had accused Germany of its unwillingness to make financial sacrifices for the sake of Ukraine’s freedom.”
“Or Germany’s response to Ukraine’s calls for military assistance on the eve of the war was pathetic,” Krugman wrote, admitting that he was “trying to embarrass Germany in order for it to become a better defender of the Republic.”
“Britain and the United States have been quick to supply lethal weapons, including hundreds of anti-tank missiles that were so critical to repelling Russia’s attack on Kyiv. Germany, on the other hand, offered… helmets. “
“It is not difficult to imagine that if, say, Donald Trump was still president of the United States, Putin’s bet that international trade would act as a force of coercion rather than peace would have been justified.”
According to Paul Krugman, however, the relationship between globalization and war is not as simple as many assume.
“There has been a long-held belief among Western elites that trade is good for peace. America’s longstanding push for trade liberalization, which began before World War II, has always been partly a political plan: Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, firmly believed that the lower echelons “Increased international trade would help lay the foundations for peace.”
The European Union was also an economic and political undertaking, which came from the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1952 with the explicit aim of making the industries of France and Germany so interdependent that there would never be another European war.
“As for the roots of Germany’s current vulnerability, they go back to the 1960s when the West German government began to promote – under Ostpolitik – the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union, in the hope that gradually greater integration “With the West, it would strengthen civil society and push the East closer to democracy.”
For the record, “Russian gas began to flow into Germany in 1973,” Krugman notes, before asking the question “does trade promote peace and freedom?”
“In some cases, definitely yes,” he replies. In other cases, however, authoritarian leaders may feel that democracies can turn a blind eye to abuses of power in order to avoid financial losses.
Paul Krugman “does not talk only about Russia” as he notes in his article. He also talks about the European Union, which has been sitting and watching – without reacting – for years Victor Orban systematically overthrowing liberal democracy. In fact, Krugman continues to wonder whether this (European) weakness (reaction to Orban) can and to what extent can be related to the large investments of European and German interests in Hungary…
The “really big question,” however, according to Krugman, is that of China, whose greater integration into the world economy could be interpreted in two ways: either as a reason to avoid daring adventurous policies (a Chinese military invasion, in Taiwan, for example), either as a subversive development of the potentially weakened or timid way in which the West could respond to these adventurous policies if they move from theory to practice.
Krugman does not propose a return to protectionism. He argued, however, that national trade-related security concerns should be taken more seriously.
“Law-abiding nations must show that they will not be discouraged from defending freedom. Authoritarian leaders may believe that the economic exposure of democracies to authoritarian regimes will make them afraid to defend their values. “We have to prove them wrong,” the Nobel Prize-winning American economist wrote in the New York Times.
“And this in practice means that Europe must move fast and stop importing Russian oil and gas, and that the West needs to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, not just to keep Putin away, but to brings about a clear victory. “The stakes here are much higher than in Ukraine.”
New York Times
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