Oil and Gas Investor Op-ed: At What Price $tarbucks

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Americans appear to agree: leave Russia, take the earnings hits.

While American stocks’ exit is disappointing, the disappointment is not derived from losing a few or many dollars; it’s because of why it’s necessary: to discontinue a relationship with (let’s say it) a monster.

In a world that has evolved to 2022, this isn’t supposed to happen anymore. In ancient history, whole villages were destroyed, the occupants killed in the pursuit of territorial expansion. Modern warfare more commonly attempts to avoid civilians.

Yet, here we are: One person in Russia wants to take over another nation and is destroying whole cities and their occupants.

At some point in the future, some or all will be rebuilt. It reminds me of the 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat’s “broken window fallacy”: destruction isn’t an economy. Economies lift people from the multitudes of depths of insecurity; destruction undoes this and sets the whole world that much further from lighter concerns, such as the price of Starbucks stock.

In terms of depths of misery, Ukrainian parliament member Anastasia Radina spoke vividly in response to questions by a CNN interviewer in mid-April. A question: Will Putin’s appointment of the Russian general known as “the Butcher of Syria” result in “more hell on the battlefield?”

Radina said, “I don’t think we can differentiate between ‘stages of hell’ that Ukraine is now going through.”

Dante named nine. As of writing this, the Ukrainian people were entering the 49th.

Further giving clarity to what was at stake by Ukraine’s defiance of Russia, Radina pointed out that “right now it is Ukraine and Ukraine’s forces who are fighting for every inch of NATO territory. ... This is not just our war. This is the war of the whole world.”

Can peace be achieved via concessions? “‘Concessions to Russia’ is not the way to establish peace in Ukraine.” In 2014, as to eastern Ukraine, including Crimea, “We were told [by the West] not to escalate, and we were told that would bring peace. This never happened. ... And where did that bring us?”

In summary, “The only way to actually establish peace and freedom and the very existence of Ukraine is to win on the battlefield.”

A YouTube vlogger, “4K Urban Life,” posts un-narrated walking tours of European cities, including many in Ukraine. I found these while wanting to know what Ukraine looked like. Among the posts is a three-hour walk through Kharkiv in 2020. Young couples, children playing, picnics, parents strolling babies, people dining at street-side cafes, public art and enormous parks.

An excerpt from the “About” description read, “Enjoy the calm atmosphere of the city. Admire the urban architecture and quiet cobblestone streets.” Now, this is no more.

When Americans and other NATO allies began investing in Russia after 1990, it was heralded as a great new opportunity—cultivation of economic ties that should ensure peace. “Glasnost.”

I was leery. The country’s people were many generations removed from anything resembling transparent capitalism and had never known a true democracy. The last semblance of eventually achieving this ended in 1917.

“Fresh Air” host Terry Gross interviewed Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, on March 15. Her take on the stakes is similar to Radina’s—that Ukraine’s fight is a fight for all of NATO.

“If [Putin] is successful in Ukraine, I think he will continue to move forward,” Yovanovitch said. “Maybe not immediately because he’s bitten off an awful lot with Ukraine.”

But Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 “and got away with it.” In 2014, he invaded eastern Ukraine “and got away with it.” Today, “he’s invading Ukraine again.”

“We need to make sure he doesn’t get away with it because if he does, then I think there is the likelihood that at some point he will continue moving west.”

She concluded, “The kind of world we’re going to be living in, when this is all done, is being determined now.”