The recent January figures provided by Russia’s own department of finance is that Revenues are down by 40% and Expenses are up five times. This is before Price caps on oil products comes into effect. China and India are unable to absorb what the rest of the world was buying. NATO’s support of Ukraine is costing Putin lives and materiel.
Putin’s strategy is a creeping artillery barrage which leaves no infrastructure. Ukraine will be Ukrainian…but unliveable.
China faces a myriad of its own problems. Its population is shrinking, like Russia, for different reasons stemming from its single child policies. It faces pressures on its food supplies.
US withdrawl of high tech is going to impact China’s manufacturing due to the lack of chips. Canada is well placed to thrive but it needs skilled people added across Canada through immigration who are adequately housed and actively adding value to its normally commodity based products.
Nuclear war is the black swan wild card in all this. How crazy can Putin get? How aggressive can the US get against China?
Diefenbunker: that is the name of the Carp Museum, post cold war bomb shelter that was to house the Canadian government in the event of a nuclear war. Today we still have the new CSIS head quarters at the end of Blair Road. It cost a billion to build.
The Russian invasion of the Ukraine Donbass was prompted, Russia claims, by NATO encroachment and election shenanigans that has resulted in a proxy war between the USA and Russia. The Americans are providing the weaponry and the Ukrainians are providing the soldiers. As Canadians we are spectators but also complicit. Canada is sending materiel support to the Ukraine. This is to say that we are busy in Ottawa with the mundane: budget shortfalls, Light Rail misery, OPS bloat and ineffectiveness but this matter in the Ukraine could easily go pear shaped.
Where are the civil defence shelters, plans for communications, iodine pills, emergency rations, and all the “duck and cover” emergency manuals? We have had a habit recently of calling everything an emergency. Affordable housing, Climate Change, Black Lives Matter are among the emergencies that have been proclaimed. But we all know that fires, explosions, floods, tornados and now derechos are the real thing. We know they are because suddenly we do things differently, priorities change and lives are on the line.
There is some talk at a strategic level about resiliency and I agree. We need to see evidence of emergency planning like never before because when the big one hits (hopefully is never does) we need to be ready.
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