The Economic WarCutting off Europe's Gas Supply Is Putin's Last Throw of the Dice
Away from the fighting the most important moves are in the economic sphere, especially in the energy markets. These moves are geared to influencing the military situation although their more important consequences may end up over the long-term being away from the war, reflected in the stresses and strains imposed on the global economy. As for influencing the course of the battles in the short-term, which is what is intended, their effects may be limited.
On any given day in this war there is a lot going on: routine Russian missile attacks against towns and cities; new strikes by Ukrainian artillery against Russian assets; vast movements of war materiel by road, rail, and air; air defenses trying to take out drones, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft; and probing attacks on the ground from both sides, some that do little more than test the other’s defenses though others shift the front lines. These front lines stretch right across the east and south of the country, with separate operational dynamics in Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson. Crimea is increasingly drawn in the action, and naval activities in the Black Sea continue.
Naturally we can get fixated on one aspect of this war. This last week we have been trying to work out what is happening with the Ukrainian offensive in the south. At other times the main preoccupation has been with mounting evidence of war crimes or exporting grain. Even as we wait for more news about the current battles there have been alarming developments in and around the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya, where Russia is engaged in one of its dangerous games of brinkmanship, seeing if it can extract some benefit from a dangerous situation before – hopefully - it pulls back.
Away from the fighting the most important moves are in the economic sphere, especially in the energy markets. These moves are geared to influencing the military situation although their more important consequences may end up over the long-term being away from the war, reflected in the stresses and strains imposed on the global economy. As for influencing the course of the battles in the short-term, which is what is intended, their effects may be limited.
Western Economic Warfare
Making sense of the economic dimensions to this war can be even trickier than making sense of the military dimensions. This is not only because of the difficulties of working out what is going on but also what matters. In the economic as in the military spheres it is one thing to establish who the various measures are hurting and the damage they might cause, but quite another to assess how they might affect the conflict.
