The Compromise Russia and Ukraine Have to Make

Last week, I heard of a 28-point proposal that the Trump administration presented to Ukraine and Russia to end their brutal war. I decided to take a look at it. Here's a link to it if you want to read it too. It's got a lot of interesting things in it. The way it has 28 points is interesting by itself, because this is exactly twice the points of Woodrow Wilson's "14 Points" you may have heard about in history class, which was the president's plan for ending World War I. That plan was followed to some extent, though it was only a part of ending that war. Does it therefore take twice as many points to end the Russo-Ukrainian War as World War I? Anyway, a lot of the 28-point proposal looks quite reasonable to me. I'd like to focus on two points in particular. I'm predicting some will disagree with my opinion of the proposal and the points I'm about to mention, but that's okay - we can talk about it if you'd like.

21. Territories:

a. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk to be recognized De-Facto as Russian, including by the United States.

b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be frozen at the contact line, which would mean a De-Facto recognition at the contact line.

c. Russia to give up other agreed upon territories they control outside of the five regions

d. Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk region that they currently control, and this withdrawal area will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognized as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarized zone.

Here we have the section talking about territorial changes. I'm not sure what a "de facto" recognition would mean, as opposed to full recognition. Nonetheless, ever since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it's been clear to me that Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk have been culturally Russian for a long time. Crimea was only given to Ukraine in 1954 (back then, it was a transfer from one Soviet republic to another). Ukrainians have never been the majority there, while (at least in the past few decades) Russians have. The method of annexation was certainly questionable, but Crimea does fit in more with Russia than Ukraine apart from geography. Similarly, Donetsk and Luhansk have had Russian-speaking majorities for decades, and those two oblasts were where pro-Russian separatists ignited the very next chapter of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Percent in each oblast speaking Russian, as of a 2001 census. Sevastopol, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are the ones where Russian is the majority. Image by Alex Tora.

I slightly disagree with the next provision freezing the front line in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, but there is a substantial Russian population in Zaporizhzhia oblast, and only some would be given to Russia anyway. It also provides a land connection between Donetsk and Crimea for the Russian part of Ukraine. Ukraine would still have plenty of Black Sea coast, including the major port of Odesa. There are also points protecting both Russian and Ukrainian commerce on the Black Sea in the peace proposal.

As for the other two provisions from point 21, they both sound reasonable. Russian troops should withdraw from Ukrainian-majority areas that they are in now. The part about a DMZ in the Donetsk oblast is interesting, but I'm not sure what the reason behind it is, as in I'm not sure why that's better than either Ukraine keeping what it has there or Russia taking all of that oblast (which would be "de facto" recognized anyway).

Besides the argument from redrawing borders to correspond more with ethnic boundaries, there is also an argument to be made from a different country's history. During World War II, Finland was fighting a war to keep its independence from Russia. Between the World Wars, the Soviet Union was busy trying to get everything Russia had before World War I back into Russian (or rather Soviet) control. The Soviets succeeded in many areas, but failed in Poland (the first time, that is, in 1920). Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also left, as was Finland. The Soviet Union got its way with Poland, the Baltic countries, and Moldova over the course of the war. As for Finland, there were two different Soviet invasions: the Winter War and the Continuation War. Finland, like Ukraine today, was technically on its own. As in Ukraine, the invasions only got so far before becoming stalemates, and yet another comparison is that Finland, like Ukraine, later launched a counter-invasion. The result in the end was that Finland lost somewhat small portions of its land to the Soviet Union, while most of Finland kept its independence. Interestingly, Finland stayed neutral in the Cold War afterward, joining neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.

Finland had to give up some land in World War II but still won the fight to keep its independence. Does a similar result await Ukraine?

Moving on:

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to pass in its bylaws not to accept Ukraine at any point in the future.

While this might be a hard-to-swallow pill for Ukraine, there is a geopolitical comparison to be made for this too, not just in Finland. Most people know about how Germany was divided into four occupation zones and then two (West and East Germany) after World War II. Fewer people know that the same initially happened with Austria. Vienna, like Berlin, was divided into four zones too. However, unlike Germany, Austria managed to reunite only a few years into the Cold War under the condition that Austria would join neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. To this day, Austrian law prohibits Austria from joining any military alliance. Therefore, throughout the Cold War, Austria was a neutral country between NATO and Warsaw Pact members. Similarly, Ukraine could become a neutral country between NATO members and Russia today. Did I just imply that we're in a new Cold War? Yes, but that's a topic for a different blog post.

With all that said, I think the 28-point peace proposal is the most reasonable I've seen so far for ending the Russo-Ukrainian War. I wouldn't have a much better proposal myself. Therefore, I hope this proposal works, and I hope you can see why it would be a good idea.

American Coinage vs. Inflation

Last week, the U.S. Mint minted its last pennies for circulation. In my opinion, this was long overdue, but I'm glad the Mint is at long last taking action to get rid of practically useless coinage. I remember having conversations with one of my coworkers last year who agrees with me that the penny and even the nickel should no longer be produced. In my opinion, the lowest denomination of coins should be dimes.

This isn't the first time a denomination of coin has been made obsolete. Back in the day - and I mean WAY back - there were half cents. They were some of the first coins the U.S. Mint ever produced, and they stopped getting minted in 1857. The funny thing about half cents is that not only are they valuable today collecting-wise, but they were also more valuable back then than the penny, nickel, or even dime today. Using an inflation calculator, a half cent back then would be worth about 16 cents today! In terms of composition and size, the half cent was made of pure copper and just a little smaller than a quarter. Since 1965, quarters have been made of copper too with a nickel plating. Since 1982, pennies have been made of copper-plated zinc rather than almost pure copper, and even with that change, the metal of a penny is now worth three times as much as the penny itself. The half cent isn't the only obsolete denomination of coin. There used to be two- and three-cent coins, as well, which were somewhat impractical, and twenty-cent coins, which never really caught on because there were quarters.

The half cent, ironically almost as valuable as a quarter today.

Think about it: when was the last time you were able to pay for anything for less than a nickel, or a quarter for that matter? The least expensive thing I can think of ever buying would be a handful of small candies from a dispenser for a quarter. I've never paid for anything cheaper. To pay for anything with pennies anymore, you need a lot of them. "Five-and-ten" stores are now dollar stores, and even dollar stores have lots of things you have to use more than one dollar for. I'd say that pennies and nickels should have stopped being minted before the end of the 20th century, since they could no longer pay for anything by using only one of them.

Although I mentioned the quarter is the lowest denomination coin I've used to pay for anything, I say the dime should be the lowest denomination minted because it would be more convenient numerically. For example, if something is worth $1.61, we can round it to $1.6 rather than rounding it up or down to the nearest quarter ($1.5, 1.75, 1 1/2, or 1 3/4). That would make prices have no more than one digit after the decimal point. It would also make the sizes of coins match up with the value: dime, quarter, and half dollar. Dollar coins, on the other hand, are currently between quarters and half dollars in size, though they and half dollars aren't used much anyway. Then again, if we bring back Eisenhower dollars, the size and value match up very well.

Given the long history of inflation that has happened since the penny and half cent were introduced, I think we've been overdue to stop minting pennies for a long time, and I say the nickel should be next. Lincoln and Jefferson are still honored on $5 and $2 bills. Perhaps I'll see the day when prices have only one digit after a decimal point!

A Whole Month Gone...

The shutdown still sucks.

We're now over a month into the federal government shutdown that started on October 1st, which means the whole month of October was taken up by the shutdown. I still got to work (though many of my coworkers did not), though it was often tricky to work on projects that would take up a whole workday, so I often did half-days. Either way, I miss my regular line of work, and I didn't think the shutdown would last THIS long. Has Congress gone insane?

The votes on the CR have been almost the exact same time after time, the only differences being some absent senators at times. In a previous post, I wondered if Democrats would vote for the CR just in time before the Trump administration would lay off federal workers. Well, the layoffs have already happened - weeks ago! Now, no one seems to have a good guess as to what will finally make the Senate agree on a clean CR. Would it be the first missed paycheck? Nope. Would it be right after the "No Kings" rallies? Nope. But certainly, senators would care enough to pass a CR before November 1st, when SNAP benefits would run out! Still, nope!

The day before the shutdown started, a visitor I talked to predicted the shutdown would be even longer than the last one (which was the longest). I hope he's wrong, but he could be right. Either way, this is certainly an uncertain time for the federal workforce and many others. Who knows when the shutdown will finally end, but since it's anyone's guess, I at least hope that it will end sometime this week so that we can have a bit of normalcy again, and I really hope that this isn't followed by another shutdown on November 21st, when the "new" CR would expire.