Sen. Mark Kelly exposes the truth: Everyone is lying about Ukraine

 Here’s what we know about the war in Ukraine.

Everyone is lying.

On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona leaned into Stephen Feinberg, President Trump’s pick to be deputy secretary of Defense, and challenged him to defend Donald Trump’s lie.

“Mr. Feinberg, did Russia invade Ukraine?”

Feinberg could not answer the question with a yes.

That was a lie.

Feinberg and everyone in that conference room knows Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago this week.

Mark Kelly answered a lie with propaganda

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, questions Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Defense secretary, during Hegseth's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

Within hours, Kelly put out a video clip on X, formerly Twitter, that was its own small distortion, an artfully edited piece of propaganda that pales in comparison to Feinberg’s lie, but nonetheless is one.

It made Feinberg look like a blubbering fool, and more to the point, made Kelly look even more the stern prosecutor.

What Kelly left out was Feinberg’s explanation — that he could not definitively answer Kelly’s question because it could frustrate President Trump’s talks to end the Ukraine war.

“There’s a very tense negotiation going on now,” Feinberg told Kelly, as reported by The Hill.

“I don’t think some person who’s not informed on this, not involved in discussions, should make statements public that could undermine what the president and the secretary’s intent is.”

That’s more than mere blubbering.

But it also underscores the lies of Donald Trump, who has maneuvered himself to a place where he blames Ukraine for the war, calls its leader a “dictator” and soft pedals Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, the monster, lies to President Trump

Putin is, in fact, a monster who started a war that has killed anywhere from 110,000 to 500,000 people and maybe more. We just don’t know.

Such is the fog of war.

Putin’s soldiers have summarily murdered Ukrainian civilians, kidnapped Ukrainian children and leveled entire cities.

The monster also lies.

He pretends to be the friend of the United States. He endearingly calls our president “Donald.” This may fool Trump. It should fool no one.

Meanwhile, the leaders of Europe and Canada preformed their own theater of the absurd this week by winging to Kiev and swearing undying support for Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

What nonsense.

Europe lies about its support for Ukraine

For three years, Ukraine has been in the maw of the Russian bear while Europe and Canada (and the Biden White House and GOP-led Congress, for that matter) nattered on about Ukrainian courage while refusing to provide adequate material and financial support to defeat the Russians.

The Europeans have spent more than the Americans, for sure, but even the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the German research institute that tracks such funding, notes that the donor countries, and in particular the Europeans, have provided “low” support for Ukraine.

The institute also slams Europeans for putting “small domestic priorities” ahead of a war that is central to Europe’s defense.

Germans pay three times more per year for tax subsidies for diesel fuel than they do for military aid for Ukraine, the institute’s Christoph Trebesch said.

“When looking at the government budgets in most European donor countries, Ukraine aid over the last 3 years looks more like a minor political ‘pet project’ rather than a major fiscal effort.”

Worse yet, the governments of Europe have been dropping their guard for decades, underfunding their defense budgets and leaving it to the United States to protect them against the authoritarian and historic enemies to the east.

Europe hardly even funds its own defense

So, when Donald Trump bilaterally begins peace negotiations with the Russians, there’s a realpolitik logic to it. If the Europeans are unwilling to defend their own nations, why should the U.S. include them in peace talks?

After Trump’s election and authoritarian-like bluster about America taking control of Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, the Europeans began to imagine their continent without an American defense umbrella.

Some pulled the alarm and said it is time to raise defense budgets as high as 5% of GDP.

This panic was too much for Benjamin Tallis, one of the heavy hitters in European security and the director of the Democratic Strategy Initiative, a political think tank in Berlin.

Opinion: At first I laughed at Trump. Not any longer

“I find it interesting and a little regretful that some people have spoken since Trump’s remarks about a wake-up call or about plunging Europe into chaos with these calls for 5% defense spending,” he told Deutsche Welle TV.

“If this is what it took to plunge you into chaos, you haven’t been paying attention for the last three years.”

“... (We) made ourselves considerably dependent upon the United States for our security. There’s nothing wrong with being good allies, but that means really paying your way and doing your share, and that’s where Europeans and Canadians have been rather delinquent. So, we’ve left ourselves without the true capabilities to stand up for ourselves.”

Then there's Trump, the biggest liar of them all

Meanwhile, Ukraine has turned into a meatgrinder, tearing up the young men of the two warring states.

“(Casualty) estimates suggest Russia has lost over 700,000 killed or injured, while Ukraine has lost around 400,000, with tens of thousands missing,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Russian exile, Putin critic and professor of public policy at the University Chicago.

“Yet the front lines remain largely static, resembling a war of attrition reminiscent of World War I trench warfare.”

Now, Donald Trump has reframed the global discussion about Ukraine from war to peace with this observation:

“We’re losing all those soldiers. And they’re not American soldiers, they’re Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, but when you’re talking about a million-and-a-half, I think you’ve got to bring that one to an end.”

A peace that rewards Russia for its bloody theft and cruelty will only provoke future wars. So, I’m glad to see Mark Kelly lean hard into would-be Trump defense advisers.

But if the United States manages to shepherd this mess to a lasting and just peace, then the biggest liar of them all, Donald Trump, will have landed on the conflict’s most cogent truth:

“We’ve got to stop that war.”

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ukraine peace deal exposes a hard truth: Everyone is lying | Opinion

Dollars and Dominance: How Military Strength Secures Financial Power

 A new paper co-authored by Professor Pierre Yared shows how geopolitical strength and financial privilege reinforce each other, with implications ranging from interest rates to national security.

Stephanie Walden November 26, 2024

Compared to the rest of the world, Americans enjoy some significant economic perks: relatively low interest rates, more stable prices for imported goods, and greater purchasing power when shopping from many international retailers online. These benefits are due, in part, to the fact that the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. That means it’s a benchmark for pricing global financial transactions, the preferred medium for international trade, and a safe haven in times of crisis. This exorbitant privilege, as it’s often called, allows the US government to borrow more cheaply than other nations — and wield outsized influence in the global economy.

But what creates this financial dominance? The answer may lie not only in economic factors but in geopolitical might. “Economists have been wondering about what underpins a country’s ability to be a global reserve currency for a long time,” says Pierre Yared, the MUTB Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School. “The novel point we’re making is that this financial status is very much related to the ability to dominate the globe militarily.”

Yared recently co-authored a paper examining this intricate relationship between military strength and global financial dominance. The research found that transitions in military dominance have historically coincided with shifts in financial privilege — and that maintaining the stability of US financial markets is not just an economic imperative but potentially a matter of national security.

Key Takeaways:

• Military might and financial privilege appear to be deeply interconnected, with transitions in global hegemony (world geopolitical leadership) historically coinciding with shifts in currency dominance.
• The US dollar’s status as the global reserve currency is perhaps more closely tied to America’s military power — and perceived likelihood of prevailing in conflicts — than previous economic analysis has accounted for.
• As such, disruptions to US financial markets, such as debt ceiling crises, could have national security implications by potentially eroding America’s borrowing advantage.
• Geopolitical events can significantly impact currency values and borrowing costs around the globe, with periods of heightened tension often increasing the US government debt’s relative value.

The Military-Financial Nexus

Traditional economic analyses have chalked up the US dollar’s dominance to factors like market liquidity, trade linkages, and the sheer size of the US economy. While these elements certainly play a role, Yared and his co-author argue that military power is a crucial, often overlooked factor in this calculation. “If you want a global store of value, you want an asset that will preserve its value in a cataclysmic state of the world,” explains Yared. “Only a government with a very strong military can ensure that a country will most likely prevail and preserve the value of the assets it issues.”

The paper presents several lines of evidence supporting this connection. For one, there’s historical precedent. The study traces the evolution of global reserve currencies, revealing a pattern where emerging military powers often become financial powerhouses — like the transition from British to American hegemony after World War I, which aligned with the pound sterling losing its primacy to the US dollar.

The researchers also assessed how geopolitical risk impacts currency values and borrowing costs. Periods of heightened geopolitical tension tend to increase the US government debt’s relative value. “When that risk goes up, US privilege increases, because financial markets start valuing US assets relatively more,” notes Yared. “Treasury bonds sell at a higher premium during periods of geopolitical stress, because those are the periods when people shift toward the safest assets — and those will be associated with the country most likely to dominate in a geopolitical conflict.”

This relationship is illustrated in Figure 2 of the report, below, which visualizes the link between geopolitical risk and the United States’ borrowing advantages over a time frame spanning 1980 to 2020. The solid line represents the United States’ borrowing advantage, measured as three-year government borrowing costs for other developed countries in excess of the borrowing cost for the United States. The dashed line shows the United States’ geopolitical risk index. Key events like the Gulf War, Iraq War, and Ukraine conflict are marked, showing spikes in both geopolitical risk and the United States’ borrowing advantage, with a 45% correlation between the two measures.

In addition, the study examined the relationship between military conflict outcomes and debt repayment. In the aftermath of war, victorious nations historically tend to repay debts and maintain currency value, while defeated countries often experience significant inflation and currency devaluation. This indicates that military success directly translates into financial credibility and stability. In other words, the country issuing the safest asset is also likely to prevail in a geopolitical conflict and not devalue that asset.

A Game-Theoretic Model

To explore these dynamics further, the researchers developed a theoretical framework modeling interactions between two countries and international investors. The model considers factors like geopolitical risk, military spending, and investor perceptions.

The model revealed a complex interplay of forces. The researchers identified a two-way interaction wherein military strength often confers financial advantages, which in turn enable greater military spending, creating a self-reinforcing loop. However, the model also suggested a potential for fragility in the global financial system: If two countries have similarly deep financial markets, there may be a greater risk of rapid shifts in dominance.

Intriguingly, the model indicated that under certain conditions, a shift in global financial dominance could occur peacefully — without war — driven instead by coordinated changes in investor expectations.

The Interplay of Financial Advantage and Military Might

The research offers several critical insights for understanding geopolitical dynamics, particularly in terms of the relationship between the United States and China. “The United States can dominate militarily and financially in part because it has deeper financial markets and it can absorb a lot more capital than everybody else,” explains Yared.

But this dominance isn’t guaranteed, and the global financial landscape is evolving. China’s efforts to internationalize the Renminbi (also known as the Chinese Yuan) could have significant implications.

“We’re now in a world where capital is polarizing around a Western bloc and an Eastern bloc,” says Yared. “If China does successfully internationalize its currency, then that is actually a national security threat for the United States.” That’s because a globally accepted Renminbi would reduce the world’s reliance on the US dollar and allow China to compete more effectively for global capital, potentially eroding America’s financial and military advantages.

The research goes on to highlight the interconnectedness of economic policy and national security. Events that disrupt markets, such as debt ceiling crises, could have far-reaching consequences. “It’s a national security issue because it means that, moving forward, the United States would have to pay much more to borrow from financial markets to fund its military,” explains Yared.

From the World Stage to Wall Street: Why the Military-Financial Nexus Has Big Business Implications

Geopolitical events aren’t just headlines happening in a vacuum in far-flung corners of the world. Current tensions ranging from Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine to war in the Middle East to China’s economic ambitions stand to have tangible impacts on corporate strategies and financial markets worldwide. Yared elaborates that some analysts believe we’re already in a second Cold War, which has implications for significant structural changes in international trade and financial flows.

In other words, the stakes are high. This research speaks to future business leaders seeking a framework to anticipate potentially seismic shifts in the global financial order. “The US dollar plays a special role in this world, and our research provides a way to think about counterfactuals and patterns you can observe in markets during times of geopolitical stress,” says Yared. “Our study also explores a critical question: Under what circumstances might the dollar lose its crown as the world’s reserve currency?”

 

Adapted from “Global Hegemony and Exorbitant Privilege” by Pierre Yared, the MUTB Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School, and Carolin E. Pflueger, associate professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

道义高地容不下背信弃义

编者：2019年人民日报的评论，到了2025年居然如此应景。一叹人心难料，二叹世事多歧，三叹世间之无常，身处天地间，唯奋力而平心而已。

看清美国某些政客“合则用、不合则弃”的真面目  (时间： 2019-06-11

来源： 《人民日报》)

“利者，义之和也。”一些目光短浅的美国政客怕是不明白这个道理，反而亲手抛弃了曾经自我标榜的国际道义，让世人看清了什么叫见利忘义、什么叫背信弃义。

　　上世纪40年代以来，美国成为全球头号强国，并逐渐改变曾经的“孤立主义”政策，积极参与全球事务，宣传其价值理念，极力塑造“第一大国”形象，编织了美国“自由世界领袖”“必不可少的国家”等神话。然而，这届美国政府却要将本就广受质疑的所谓道义家底彻底败光。

　　美国一些政客嘴上说着“自由、公平和互惠的贸易”，却不断挥舞关税大棒，搞极限讹诈；口口声声说“打造开放投资环境”，却以“莫须有”名义打压他国企业；自身发展遇到问题，却蒙骗民众，转嫁国内矛盾；天天高谈阔论国际责任，自己却单方面退出巴黎协定等国际条约；自我标榜“维护世界和平的重要力量”，却肆意干预他国内政；毫无根据地指责别国侵犯人权，自己却执意退出联合国人权理事会……咨询机构盖洛普的一项民调显示，在抽取的134个国家中，对当下的美国持正面看法的人持续减少，和几年前相比降幅高达近20个百分点。

　　现如今，大家都看清了所谓美式道义的真相：符合美国利益的就是“道义”的，无助于实现“美国优先”就是“不道义”的。连美国众多盟友也吃了大亏。美国单方面退出由其牵头的跨太平洋伙伴关系协定，给其他参与国来了个措手不及；美国单方面宣布退出伊朗核问题全面协议，使多年艰苦谈判的成果付诸东流；美国刚与欧盟发表暂缓加征关税的联合声明不到一个月，就再次要挟对汽车加征25%关税……提出“软实力”概念的约瑟夫·奈都不得不承认，美国的“软实力”已经遭到削弱。

　　美国对国际道义的扭曲和蔑视，暴露了一些美国政客极端实用主义的处事做派。在他们看来，国际交往根本毫无价值、规则可言，仿佛除了赤裸裸的利益交换，就是力量对抗。而所谓“道义”，不过是他们争夺话语权、营造舆论，并最终谋取私利的工具而已。美国学者劳伦斯·达根一针见血地指出，“美国的政策是打着‘理想’旗号的变相帝国主义”“是用道德高尚的辞藻对损人利己的行为进行解释”。这就不难理解，为什么一些美国政客总是嘴上说一套，实际做一套，对待国际规则更是“合则用、不合则弃”。

　　人无德不立，国无德不兴。真正的国际道义，不仅是国际话语权的基础，更代表着国际社会对一些问题的共识，表征着人类文明对一些价值理念的尊崇。比如要互助合作，而不能以邻为壑；要遵信守义，而不是反复无常；要相互尊重，与他国平等相待，而不能搞唯我独尊、霸凌主义那一套……肆无忌惮践踏公认的价值准则，只能成为众矢之的，遭到国际社会的谴责。正所谓“得道者多助，失道者寡助”，美国决策者应当明白这个道理。

　　美国前总统林肯有句名言，“人所能负的责任，我必能负；人所不能负的责任，我亦能负。如此，你才能磨炼自己，求得更高的知识而进入更高的境界。”美国作为全球大国，理应负起应有的责任。越是在复杂问题面前，越应显示出与自身体量相匹配的风度和智慧。要知道，在当今世界，一个国家的国际影响力，并不简单取决于其拥有的力量，归根到底靠的是守住共同的价值，推动形成更广泛的共识、达成更广泛的合作，最终实现互利共赢、共同发展。

　　“所守者道义，所行者忠信，所惜者名节。”一个国家只有堂堂正正，才会赢得世人的认可。奉劝美国一些政客搞明白一个最基本的道理，那就是道义高地容不下背信弃义，背信弃义无法对自己的国家和人民负责，也无法对世界发展和人类文明进步负责。