Tanks, I Needed That
It has been almost a year now since Russia invaded Ukraine in its latest round of aggression against its former significant satellite country to the west. They began their hostilities against Ukraine in the same month (February) in 2014, but the world was in a significantly different place vis-a-vis Russia back then and the global community more or less stood by and let Russia have its way with parts of Ukraine, most notably by taking control of the entirety of the Crimean Peninsula and its main port city of Sevastopol. There were sanctions and there are even more sanctions now, but Russia seems to have learned how to manage around sanctions, especially with the help of its friendly allies like China and Iran. Meanwhile, the western world (as defined mostly by NATO) have ratchet up their resolve to stop Putin’s aggression by supplying Ukraine with a constant and improving stream of munitions to fight the Russian bear.
There have been missiles and air defense systems and now the emphasis seems have gone back a step to tanks. This began with Polish tanks (there has to be a joke in thee somewhere) and then German tanks, and, as of today’s news reports, despite some protestations as to complexity and difficult maintenance protocols, there are American tanks that are supposedly state-of-the-art. I thought we had all abandoned traditional land-based wars and yet, here we are back in the day of Patton and his march across Europe to eradicate the Nazi Panzer columns and put Rommel in his place once and for all. So much for the theory that traditional warfare was a thing of the past. I guess drones and tanks have to find some common ground in modern warfare since none of us want to use the N word (nuclear), which seems one of the few things we can all agree on as a species. The most galvanizingly negative thing any leader can suggest is that nuclear weaponry may be utilized in their war efforts. Once said, that nasty thought does not easily go back into the bottle, and the world rallies around the opposition to that leader’s cause with alacrity.
I think we have all learned a lot about globalization due to the Ukrainian war and perhaps its for the best. Some people like to suggest that the Ukraine war has brought globalization to a screeching halt, but most would strongly disagree. If anything, the conflict and its impact on all of us has not spurred on nationalistic tendencies except in the moment. It has really shown us just how important we all are to one another and the reliance we all have on global trade flows. Whether it is Russian gas into Europe or Ukrainian wheat to almost every corner of the earth, the goods that have been disrupted and the supply chain damage that has spurred on global inflation has been felt rather directly in an eye-opening manner. Economic development since the days of Adam Smith have been predicated on the division of labor and the optimization of production. That has meant that global demand for goods and services has driven development to the farthest corners of the world and brought the most emergent parts of the world into the mainstream in ways that only the internet and telecommunications can rival.
This goes way beyond outsourcing. This goes to the sourcing of critical raw materials and the value added approach of optimizing fabrication and manufacturing to take into account everything from labor costs to transportation ease. These have all been necessary ingredients for feeding the demands of an 8 billion person world with vastly expanded consumer wants and needs. Globalization has actually been a beautiful thing if you stand back and look at it objectively. Ignoring the minor dislocations that are inevitable and cause the occasional left-behind group screaming bloody nationalistic slurs, the benefits to mankind have generally been enormous. I know there are lots of people who like to think that we have promoted excess through this exportation of western consumerism and that such an approach imbeds in it the seeds of our own destruction. But man has continuously surprised himself with his ability to innovate around his problems and think his way out of thorny dilemmas. That said, it is surprising how he has, as yet, been unable to innovate out of his worst enemy, which is his very own base instincts of greed and aggression. We still turn to war to solve our fabricated problems, thinking that we can muscle our way to prosperity when war actually does the exact opposite. It is the aftermath of war, like we saw in the second half of the last century that brought forth the greatest surge in prosperity and the ability to serve our own collective needs the best.
That thought combined with the re-emphasis we are seeing in Ukraine for tanks has brought a thought to my mind. If Ukraine is the modern version of WWIII, which I have already argued, then perhaps when we get to the end of this road (something I predict for 2023 based on what I see as the depleting reserve of munitions and the few remaining parts of Ukraine that are not already in shambles), we will see another surge in innovation prosperity. Remember the joke about the guy who bangs his head on the wall and when asked why, he says that it feels so good when he stops? Well, since I can find very few valid justifications for war that seem totally rational, perhaps we do it so that we can enjoy what it brings when we stop. I will go out on a limb right now and prove my worth as an eternal optimist by saying that if the war in Ukraine ends as I think it will in 2023, that means that in the five or so years after 2023 we should experience a period of extreme prosperity and growth that will be predicated on increased and improved globalization. The pump primer of that will be the rebuilding of Ukraine itself, not to mention the global supply chains that have suffered during the conflict and shown us their weak links.
This morning I was reading an article in the New Yorker that caught my attention, as so many of their features seem to. It was about the use of 3D printing in the construction arena. I must admit that I hadn’t thought of the construction arena as a place where avant-garde modernism lived, but the article reminded me of Le Corbusier and Buckminster Fuller and their mid-century efforts (that would be post WWII) to reform the human habitat with structures like concrete cubes and geodesic domes. It seems that the innovation in construction is going through a rebirth on the backs of 3D printing and that its happening in places like Austin, Texas, where homes are being printed in an effort to find a better, more cost effective and rapid way to build necessary housing.
The article discusses the challenges of 3D printing evolution (progress is always slower than any of us want or need), but it also discusses the extreme potential it represents. It seems that NASA is all over the issue because they feel that being able to build habitats on the Moon and on Mars may well be the key to finding the future for man in space. It has occurred to me that Ukraine might prove to be the ideal test ground for 3D printed construction since, thanks to the Russians, so much of its existing structures have been demolished in their Dresden-like blitz of the citizenry. The Putin strategy of inflicting winter misery on the people of Ukraine has had its toll on buildings more than on morale. I think that may prove to be the silver lining of this whole Ukraine mess. That all causes me to say, on behalf of Ukraine and the entire human race, to Vlad the Destroyer, tanks, I needed that.