Thursday, February 3, 2022

How Did We Arrive at the Ukrainian Extravaganza?

 One could make this a 700-page book but let's try to tell the story in fifty lines.

Once the Berlin Wall fell....around forty different issues lay there to be resolved.  One of these involved this nifty country of the Ukraine, which was kinda like South Korea of the 1960s....waiting for magical trade-door to open and propel the country into some modern trade partner.

For three decades.....this chatter carried on between the EU and the Ukraine.

What did the Ukraine have to offer?  Being the size of Texas, they had 41-million people.  

A decade ago, it's agricultural sector was around 11-percent of it's GDP.  

Ship-building?  Well....after the collapse of the Soviet Union....they had a decade of solid decline, and then found success over the past decade....making various types of vessels.

Twelve companies make up the transportation industry.....to make diesel locomotives, cars, farm-tractors, trucks, city buses, and subway trains.

The Dnepar motorcycles?  Made in the Ukraine.  

On a thousand levels....a trade door between the EU and the Ukraine made sense.  So around 2012....a discussion started up.  There were two Ukrainian groups (they may avoid talking about this today, but two groups were in on this deal).  One group wanted purely a economic and trade agreement.  The second group wanted an eventual NATO deal (invitation to join).  

So when the chatter hit its peak in 2013.....when a deal was very close, the Russians realized the full extent, and got fairly disturbed.  

Maybe if the EU had kept this to a low-key agricultural product deal.....things would have sailed through, and the Ukraine today would be the success story comparable to South Korea of the 1980s/1990s.  We'd have Dnepar motorcycles on every German street, and Germans running off to cheap beachfront vacations at Odesa.  There would be 40k Ukrainian tech geeks working in Germany on various IT projects, and Germany could buy plenty of electrical power from Ukraine at a decent price (note: it's mostly all 'evil' nuke power).  

The Russians saw this NATO potential as a problem, and in their mind.....some of the Soviet Union 'game' had not really ended.  

This threat of war having an ending?  No....even if Europe and the US get some edge to this and closes this chapter.....there will simply be another chapter in a couple of years, which we will revisit once again.  

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