Author: p_c_neary@hotmail.com

Ignore the Press. Stop re-tweeting, and close your social media. Put aside your worst fears and let’s reason together. Things may have just changed (maybe not), but that change was inevitable.

If you read my post back in November (Woeful Roe), you were not surprised by the text of the recent leak of the first draft opinion in the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the precedent of Roe v. Wade and re-energizing the national abortion debate. If you welcome personal ethics, you were probably appalled by the leak itself, a serious breach of decorum, which is, after all, that thin veneer of civilization that stands between us and the Twitterverse. That should be the opinion of all people of goodwill, regardless of their views of the draft text and decision.

I take no special pride in early identifying the reasoning Justice Alito used in his draft: his reasoning was there for all to see, if one cared to look, in decades of pro-life legal scholarship. One hardly needed a psychic to see this result coming, and it was precisely the result Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg feared when she said “Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped may prove unstable” about Roe v. Wade.

Much of the resulting coverage in the press has bordered on hysteria. Headlines predict a return to the bad old ’50s, or to the dark medieval ages, or to the future dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale. Oddly enough, with “nones” being the second-largest belief group in America and traditional religious participation plummeting, from where will all these fanatical religious leaders come? As to the perceived end of privacy rights, another conjured apocalyptic possibility, those spreading it seem to ignore Alito’s own text (in the draft) which specifically outlines why Roe and abortion are different, and the other privacy rights (e.g., gay marriage, interracial marriage, contraception) remain standing precedents. And majority opinions are binding, which is not the case for dissents.

Why the hype? I always point out it is important to ask the question “who benefits?” whenever such hype occurs. In this case, Democrats smell an issue to energize their base in the face of possibly calamitous November mid-term elections. And I note the GOP feels the same way: notice how quiet they’ve been, fearing the Dobbs decision could complicate what they saw as a sure thing! One should never be surprised when politicians sway with the wind on what others feel are life-and-death issues. The GOP famously welcomed the pro-life movement with mostly rhetorical support for decades, and only the emergence of the Trump phenomenon actually resulted in pro-life actions. Meanwhile, for all my Democratic and Progressive friends, I remind them thus it always was for them, too. President Obama had a super-majority (filibuster-proof) in the Senate and a majority in the House in 2009. He promised he would codify Roe into federal law as one of his first acts in office, thus obviating the decision for the Supreme Court. And he never did it.

We are (as a nation) going back, but only to 1973, the year Roe was promulgated. That decision ended discussion on abortion, because there can be little discussion about fundamental rights. Some states allowed abortion then (a novelty) while most proscribed it. Then the Supreme Court stated the discussion was over. Now it resumes. I do feel empathy for those who demonstrate such grief about the pending decision, and it is the empathy of a shared experience. For those on the pro-life side, it is the same emotion we felt in ’73, and for almost fifty years since. It is the sense something has changed, something has been taken away that once was sacred, and now all things are different. The difference is, this time the pro-choice side can continue to discuss the issue and how it plays out in every state. After Roe, the pro-life side was practically grasping at legal straws. It was only the weakness of Roe’s reasoning and the persistence of the pro-life argument that eventually won the day, and that took five decades.

So on what is there to compromise? I said I would go first:

First off, I want every child welcomed into our nation. I support three months of full-paid maternity leave (does it need to be more?). I want universal coverage for prenatal care, delivery, and well-baby care. I think we should have more generous child-care support, and not limit it to working mothers. I want to reinstate and make permanent the child support provisions made under the stimulus act to alleviate childhood poverty. I don’t want new federal bureaucracies: give the money directly to parents or in vouchers for services rendered, and don’t limit access based on non-relevant criteria (e.g., no religious prohibitions). I will support tax increases to fund the same, as long as they are partnered with reductions in programs that are obviated by these measures.

Won’t this recreate the “welfare queens” phenomenon identified by President Reagan? Maybe, but only at the margins. No one seriously thinks there are large numbers of women making babies to get a check; the income doesn’t equal all the costs. Will there be someone. somewhere, who does? Yes. So what? Every program has people who cheat or game it, but we don’t end all the programs, because they work for the most part. Whatever the impulse (or lack of thought) behind any pregnancy, I want it to result in a child who grows up with great potential. And that means a healthy pregnancy, a safe birth, loving parents(!) and early childhood development in a safe and thriving environment. We tried the “cut-off the resources” approach, and we ended up with a sickly, poorly educated, and maladjusted cohort. That’s failure with a capital “F”. Time for something new.

I still want a nation-wide ban on abortion, perhaps through a personhood statute, but maybe that will take time. In the meantime, the programs I mention (and any others you would like to recommend) should work to eliminate the economic argument for abortion, especially for the poor. Now that we are not arguing about a fundamental right, can people agree there are hard and easy cases? Is there anyone who supports a woman’s right to abort a fetus because it may not have the designer characteristics she bargained for during in vitro fertilization? Or have a late-term abortion because she’s up for a promotion? What about forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest? These are hard cases, and all of them are fractions of the total issue. Small fractions, but nonetheless tragic cases with real world effects. Can we not find compromises here? If we make exceptions to an abortion ban for rape and incest, what are the protections so it doesn’t become a convenient excuse? Remember, Roe began with a mother’s health, but that was interpreted to include her mental and economic well-being, so this is an argument with a history.

I’d like a greater commitment to supporting adoption at all levels of government, with an emphasis on adoption within the country. Remove adoption from the culture wars surrounding church & state or gay rights: there are many ways to facilitate adoption, with too many children and not enough adopting parents. Let people and the agencies who run the process work it out as they see fit.

Want to provide more contraceptives? I’m against all but Natural Family Planning, but can we compromise on supporting those which are clearly not abortifacient (preventing implantation as a back-up)? Make them free (they’re not costly now).

I’d like to see a suite of pro-family policies at the state and federal level, encouraging nuclear families and parents who stay married. It’s not about judging people whose marriages fail: it’s simply about the obvious fact that the children do best in a stable, nuclear family. So we want more of that, please.

Pro-choicers are feeling the dread, man. Pro-lifers are expectant (pun intended), but they know that now the real work begins. Once Roe is gone, the nation can begin to have an adult discussion about a very serious issue. Oh, there will be political demagogues doing what they always do. There will be pundits saying crazy things just to rile you up. There will be cases of overplaying the laws and that will infuriate both sides. Yes, we could just fall back on posting our favorite memes and hashtags, caricaturing the other side as outlandish and reveling in the praise of the like-minded. Or we could have that discussion, compromise, and get on with our lives and our nation’s future.

I’d really like to hear about where you think the compromises may be!

Another partisan issue is voting; Captain Obvious would agree. After all, voting involves choices among parties (in most places), so who gets to vote and under what circumstances is obviously a matter up for partisan debate. Some democracy advocates would disagree saying “it’s a fundamental human right” and the UN Declaration on Human Rights supports this view. Yet even fundamental rights have limits: children don’t vote, and no one seems to get upset about that.

In the United States, there are two camps–both extreme–currently waging war over voting rights and procedures. On the right, Trump supporters claim the 2020 election was rigged, full of vote fraud which illegally denied then-President Trump a second term. In his supporters’ view, this fraud requires a tightening of voting rules and greater oversight by State elections officials, up to and including the ability to overrule and replace slates of electors in future elections. On the left, the push to enact greater restrictions is seen as an attempt to disenfranchise (mostly) minority voters who vote overwhelmingly for Democratic Party candidates, and to build in an illegal backstop to overrule majorities and ensure Republican electors in the future. Their meme is “Jim Crow 2.0” recalling the many ways southern states denied black Americans their franchise for almost one-hundred years.

As I usually admit, both sides have basic facts to support their contentions, but both exaggerate or outright lie to make a stronger case. Let’s examine the whole truths, shall we?

For starters, the notion everybody has a right to vote. Advocates chant this, but no one, and I mean NO ONE, really believes it. Children (as noted) don’t deserve a vote. People who are unconscious don’t merit a vote. You and I may disagree about how young is too young, or how conscious someone needs to be, or if felons or non-citizens should be allowed to vote. But the principle stands: some people do not have a right to vote. In fact, the original text of the US Constitution said very little about who could vote, other than that if one was eligible to vote in one’s state, one was eligible to vote for federal office. States were left to decide the franchise, that is, who could vote.

Much is made of the sexism and racism of the original state decisions to limit voting to white men who owned property. This was more a case of elitism than anything else (since it disenfranchised more white men than women or blacks). It was elitism to believe (as those passing the laws feared) that large groups of voters could be bought or directed by others. Yet even the white men of property all knew of cases of ‘saloon meetings on election day’ when wealthy candidates bought rounds of drinks for eligible voters in exchange for trips to the voting booths. More voters simply meant more opportunities for fraud in this view.

And the history of American politics is rife with voting fraud. Anyone familiar with the two centuries of Tammany Hall control of New York City or the Daley machine’s sixty-year run in Chicago knows that such organizations knew precisely how much corruption and vote fraud was needed for every election, from ward member to President. Top those stories off with the hundred years of poll taxes, rigged literacy tests, and violent intimidation of black voters under Jim Crow laws. It was very late in the Twentieth Century that most of the blatant voter fraud and disenfranchisement was wrung out of the US democratic process, at the cost of many new laws and controls.

But’s that all (dirty) water under the bridge: what about today? One cannot see today’s exaggerations for what they are if you don’t know the history!

Let’s start with the fraud claims in the 2020 election. President Trump and lawyers representing him filed sixty-three lawsuits claiming voter fraud. They were heard in a variety of states, under various Republican- (including Trump) and Democratic-appointed judges. All of these suits were denied, most in summary judgments. That is, the attorneys filing the suit made claims, but when asked by the judge to present ANY evidence to support the claimed fraud, they did not do so. So it’s not a matter of not considering the evidence; no evidence was produced. Some lawsuits presented evidence, but never in sufficient numbers to affect the outcome of the election in that state, rendering the suit moot. Some more outrageous claims, like those of rigged voting machines, are not being adjudicated as (disproven) vote fraud accusations but as defamation by the individuals making the claims. Even various recount efforts by pro-Trump organizations and legislatures have failed to find anything which undermines the legitimacy of Biden’s 2020 victory.

Why do so many Trump supporters (and even Republicans in general) still believe the election was rigged after this unbroken record of failure? First off, there is the recent historical precedent. What’s good for the (Democratic) goose is good for the (Republican) gander. Democrats clung to the 2016-election-was-rigged-and-Trump-is-a-Russian-stooge fairy tale to this day, and Trumpers love a good tit-for-tat. Second and more importantly, the 2020 election was held during a pandemic which made for really dicey voting conditions and delayed outcomes. States changed voting rules and procedures, often late in the election cycle, in a genuine attempt to assist voting when gathering in public on election day may not be advised or even permitted. Some of these changes violated State constitutions and were thrown out; most were allowed as prudent responses to an unprecedented situation. In general, these rules favored absentee/early voting.

Nothing wrong with absentee/early voting, although it does require special and different forms of verification than in-person voting. States like Colorado had pioneered the effort and had strong procedures in place. But other states tried to enact new early/absentee processes on the fly, while the government officials responsible for implementation were not even working in-person. This led to debates about fairness, ballot verification, voter identification, drop-boxes, and nursing home ballot harvesting. None of these situations demonstrated any fraud which could have changed the state’s electoral outcome. But they did delay vote total announcements, and that was a major problem.

As predicted by several analysts, the delayed announcements of voting results were inevitable, and had an obvious effect: Republicans tended to favor in-person voting, where rapid processes were in-place that resulted in quick vote totals. Democrats favored absentee or early balloting (the kind that took longer to count). This resulted in election night preliminary results indicating President Trump would be re-elected, and morning-after results showing he lost. Which the President and his supporters were never going to believe, no matter how many recounts, lawsuits or fact checks were done. Hey, some on the left still believe that Al Gore beat George W. Bush, so delusion is bipartisan.

Now some red states are rolling back the pro- early/absentee processes they enacted during the pandemic, and some Democrats are crying foul. The amusing thing here is (1) there is no evidence the changes increased the number of Democratic votes, and (2) there is no evidence the changes increased the total number of votes. The 2020 election was a vast experiment with red and blue states making different choices about voting rules, but with an odd outcome: the changes neither affected the total turnout nor the partisan results. And this tracks with decades of research on the issue. So Republicans are doing something meaningless in terms affecting Democratic voters, and Democrats are fighting it even though it doesn’t make a real difference. This may be the ultimate “no there, there” issue. What did happen is when people voted changed (Democrats early and absentee, Republicans in person on election day), but not the number of people voting. Furthermore, some of the red state changes are the same as or less restrictive than those which already exist in blue states, which hardly is evidence for claims of “Jim Crow 2.0”. Georgia has been the principle battleground for these charges. If you want a solid review of what’s changing and why, Georgia Public Broadcasting has it here. Suffice it to say the changes place Georgia in line with voting processes in New York, and New Jersey, and even Delaware, so Jim Crow is more widespread than we knew.

Gerrymandering remains a problem, but I note that the same folks who decried it as a great Republican threat to American democracy (sic) are now chuckling at the Democratic party’s clever use of it to secure more seats before the 2022 mid-terms. Perhaps it isn’t quite the existential threat some imagined.

States may find a way to limit gerrymandering, but I am not optimistic. It must be done using State constitutions, not the federal one, since the US Supreme Court has called gerrymandering an unfortunate but inevitable fact of electoral life (my words). The move to create new or additional review mechanisms to certify an election is troubling, and might provoke a constitutional challenge if implemented. Oddly enough, some state legislatures once appointed their own choice of federal electors, regardless of the votes cast, in effect treating the vote as a popularity contest. However, once a state commits to using an election to determine slates of Presidential electors, it would be legally dubious to somehow ignore the results and select other electors. And the US House of Representatives need not accept them (another thing which already happened).

Finally, there are those who claim that since there is no widespread evidence of voting fraud, there is no reason for new or additional restrictions on voting. Those holding this view are guilty of the magic amulet fallacy (“See this magic amulet; it keeps away tigers.” “I don’t believe it.” “You don’t see any tigers, do you? It must be working!”). Voter fraud has always been an issue, and it was one mitigated by increasing identification and verification processes. If the states wish to move toward more options for voting (early, absentee, online, whatever) they need to enact more and better processes to prevent voting fraud, which will occur. One need not be an alarmist or a racist or a partisan, just familiar with history and technology, to see why.

In summary, Republicans are attempting to suppress Democratic votes, and vice versa. The fact that one side seems more successful (in passing new rules) is not a moral judgment. More importantly, there is no evidence the changes make the difference that is (privately) believed by the Republicans or publicly-decried by the Democrats! That fifty-state experiment in 2020 showed that the increases in voting, and the partisan shifts, were the same in blue and red states and in states with fewer/more restrictions. The 2020 federal election was legitimate, as was the 2016 one. All that changed is when people voted: Democrats before the election, Republicans on election day.

Most importantly, don’t question the legitimacy of the election process, and remember to vote!

Ever wonder why the prices at gas stations go up so fast, but come down so slow? Not around here, where PEMEX continues to own most stations and even those run (under an aborted attempt to introduce competition) by other oil giants must buy their gas from PEMEX! But it’s a common enough phenomenon in the States as to anger the average person.

Ask your favorite liberal/progressive, and it’s a conspiracy of sorts. President Biden and some of his spokespeople coined #PutinPriceHike to blame the rise on everybody’s least favorite authoritarian. Putin certainly isn’t helping, but gas started rising long before the war in Ukraine. Senator Elizabeth Warren beat a familiar war-drum: “The cause of rapidly rising energy prices for consumers and manufacturers is clear: some of the nation’s largest and most profitable oil and gas companies are putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends for investors, and millions of dollars in CEO pay and bonuses ahead of the needs of American consumers and the nation’s recovery from the pandemic.” Big Oil profits are at or near record levels. From the conservative side, pundits blame Joe Biden for cancelling the Keystone pipeline and pausing new drilling leases on federal land. Yet a pipeline doesn’t increase production, and thousands of leases remain unused. What’s really going on here?

Strap in, this may take a while, and if you’re open-minded and not careful, you might learn something!

All these claims have some truth: the best propaganda always does! But none of them captures the whole story, which is far more complicated (bad) but also interesting (good). I’ll attempt to make it simple:

After in-depth research, I uncovered this unassailable fact: not a single one of the major oil companies (hereafter Big Oil)– neither ExxonMobil, nor bp, not Chevron or Marathon–is registered as a 501.c.3 charity; look it up. Apparently, all of them are for-profit enterprises; I know you’re shocked. And as such, they try to make more (and more, and more) profit, all the time. There is a technical term for businesses which don’t seem dedicated to profiting: bankrupt. Not that this justifies just any old behavior (like price-fixing or profiteering, just to name two), mind you, but also keep in mind that there is an entire part of the federal bureaucracy (in the Justice Department) which spends all its time looking for such things. So don’t be surprised when Big Oil makes money, and know that someone is always looking over their shoulder if they do it the wrong way.

Let’s look at the other end of the spectrum: the price at your local pump. It is there the pain is felt, and no, you’re not imagining it: prices do go up faster than they come down. Is that Big Oil? Big Oil owns around one percent of the gas stations in the US; the rest are independent or have affiliations, which are unique supply contracts (if you’re a bp station, you only offer bp gas and products). About fifteen cents of the cost of each gallon of gas goes into paying for the overhead of owning/running a station: breaking even for the gas station owner means charging 15¢ over the price he/she paid. Most look to charge about two cents more for profit (yes, gas stations on average make just two cents profit per gallon). The federal and state governments also tax gas sales: so different tax rates in different states are another cause of price differences.

Gas stations fill their tanks between once and twice a week, and the price they pay changes constantly. So they are in a slim margin business with high volatility; the only saving grace is most everybody needs their product, and people like to re-use the same stations for convenience. But the gas station owner might be selling gas he bought last week for a price he is anticipating next week (cheaper or dearer). Guess wrong one week, no problem. Guess wrong too many weeks: bye-bye. So they generally raise prices faster and lower them slower. Note, we’re not talking about huge profits here. Why not? Because the gas station across the street gets its gas deliveries on different days, and is facing the same challenge. If the first station raises its prices too soon or too much, the second station gets more business. If it happens all the time, the first goes out-of-business. Ahhh, competition. I’m sure we all have stories of gas-price wars which resulted in some amazing deals-at-the-pump.

And in case you were wondering what the biggest cause of retail gas prices is, the chart above shows the correlation between oil prices and retail gas prices. This is what we call a strong correlation, almost certainly causation. There are only minor times–usually a result of some crisis or shock to the global supply chain, where the two prices don’t vary directly. But what about Big Oil’s massive profits? Don’t they prove price gouging?

I’m am sure you heard that ExxonMobil raked in $23 billion in profit in 2021. The same goes for all Big Oil. But did you know ExxonMobil lost $22.4 billion in 2020? Their net profit for two years was $600 million, which is nothing compared to revenues. All Big Oil took a huge hit in 2020. They went on a down-sizing binge (cutting costs) and started selling off assets that didn’t fit with (some of) their commitments to move away from fossil fuels. The combination of a large drop in expenditures, profits from businesses they sold, and the rise in oil prices resulted in . . . record profits. Not gouging, not conspiracy, just a fortunate turn after a very, very bad year. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, with 2021 profits of almost $153 billion, also a record year; where’s the concern for that number, which came after two previous record years of profit?

Big Oil is a very robust industry, for a reason. They pioneered the concept of scenario planning. With the long-lead times for production, market volatility, and vulnerability to geopolitics, they had to! Royal Dutch Shell–as it was then named–pioneered the process of looking at alternative futures way back in the 1970’s, and used the work to anticipate things like the 70’s oil shocks and survive them as a business. I attended an executive education seminar at Oxford in the early 2000’s, and we were still studying Shell’s techniques then!

Speaking of long lead times, what’s up with all those leases President Biden mentioned? And what happened to the US fracking revolution, which made us energy self-sufficient during the last administration? It can take decades to go from field exploration to buying leases to approving permits to putting in the drill rigs and pipelines to pumping oil. These are costly endeavors which may or may not produce marketable oil. Companies speculate on leases, buying some on the prospect there is oil and others to keep them out of another company’s hands. After you acquire a lease (for example, from the US federal government which owns about about 47% of all land out west), you still have to do research on the site, and test for suitability of the site and the oil. If it passes, you must begin the permitting process, which involves sate regulators and environmental agencies and activists. All this process is proper, but imagine how long the studies and lawsuits take. Then comes erecting the drill site and laying the pipeline, and finally, pumping oil. The outlays prior to any possible revenue are huge, and must be accounted for by the revenues resulting from the drilling which does produce. There is nothing unusual or sinister in the number of non-drilled leases held by Big Oil right now. Those decrying the President’s moratorium on federal leases are also just making noise. And all those saying these things know better.

The fracking revolution did itself in. Hundreds of small US companies used the fracking technique to generate sizable increases in US oil production, making the US the world’s largest producer at one point. The competition between the frackers was cut-throat, and OPEC dearly wanted to starve them out by increasing production of Saudi (and Russian) oil at less cost. Then came the Covid economic collapse, which Big Oil survived, but which doomed many frackers. The remaining fracking companies are being more careful about capital investments and profitability, acting more like Big Oil and less like internet start-ups.

Likewise, new pipelines do not increase production. If there is excess production somewhere in the system, and excess refining capacity somewhere else in the system, a pipeline between the two locations can increase overall production, but only in this relatively unusual case. Most pipelines are simply more efficient means of transport, which is not a bad thing, but hardly a near-term solution to anything. Oh, and pipelines face all the same regulatory hurdles as the drilling sites, so no, they are not fast.

Which brings us to “the Turn.” The Turn is the common term used by green energy advocates AND Big Oil for the move away from fossil fuels. British Petroleum even legally changed its company name to “bp” and started citing themselves as “beyond petroleum” (no, no one believed it). Big Oil and green energy advocates use the same phrase, but mean very different things, and the concept has implications for today’s gas prices. As in, if oil prices are high and Big Oil profits are up, and they want to make more profit, why don’t they starting producing more oil? I have explained how it takes time, but Big Oil is not even doing those smaller, simpler things they could to increase oil production immediately. What gives?

What is the future of the energy business?

If you ask any environmental group, anyone concerned about climate change, anybody in the automotive or energy business, they will agree. The Western model of economic development based on the Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricants (hence POL) used by the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) has been wildly successful, but must come to an end. It was labelled the POL-ICE connection and it is an ongoing revolution in the developing world. Those most concerned about climate catastrophe say it must end now or soon, like in ten years. The industrial giants (including Big Oil) think thirty-forty years, with some residual use after that. But it will end, and it must be replaced with some other energy source.

Now why would Big Oil ever agree to such a “Turn?” Well, the answer to that lies at your local Mickey-D’s. Yes, McDonald’s. You might have heard this story, but it’s a great one worth re-telling. Ray Kroc’s hamburger business was going poorly, and he was taking out personal loans to keep it afloat. A lawyer he brought in to review the business and give advice told Kroc his problem was simple: “you don’t quite understand the real business you are in. You are not in the business of selling burgers. You are in the business of real estate.” Kroc accepted this re-framing of his business proposition and made McDonald’s (with its standard menus and ingredients, franchises and leases) into the behemoth you behold today.

Big Oil realized more than decade ago that they weren’t in the gas business. They were in the energy delivery business. Oil and gas just happened to be the preferred energy products at a place and time, but what Big Oil was good at was delivering energy where and when it needed to be. The green energy advocates think they know the answer: electric cars and charging panels and charging stations. That is one possibility. Big Oil has run the scenarios, and they have made many small bets: electric cars and charging stations and solar, but also natural gas, hydrogen power, and driver-less cars and rigs, touch-less energy transfer, batteries, wind and hydroelectric and tidal power generation, even carbon-capture technology which (if it worked) could extend the POL-ICE combination. See, Big Oil is not sure which will win, and they are placing many bets, waiting to see what’s next.

Which recalls the last Turn, from horsepower to the POL-ICE connection. Some very sage experts in those times pointed out that a man on a horse could ride into the vast countryside with great assurance that he could provision his mount, as the countryside was where the hay was grown. What would happen when all those “drivers” started driving all those “automobiles” out of the city? They would litter the roadsides, out-of-fuel monuments to folly. Except that didn’t happen. Businesses grew to fuel and service the cars, governments built new and more and better roads, and something new and different happened.

All of which is a long way of saying the one thing Big Oil is NOT going to do right now is start many new leases, wells, or pipelines. They have been warned there is not much long-term future in fossil fuels, and they are think they are well-positioned to survive and thrive as “the Turn” commences, once it is clear which way it is going.

So let’s review, shall we. The POL-ICE era is ending, but no one knows how soon. Some advocates believe they know best how it will transition; most businesses and governments are hedging their bets, as there is a fortune to be made or lost. Big Oil may be the least likable business consortium since Big Tobacco. The oil and gas business is (and has always been) cut-throat but very profitable if you can stay ahead of the market. The major inputs to the retail price of gasoline are the price of a barrel of crude oil, taxes, station operating expenses and profit, in that order (from greatest to least). The only way to affect immediate supply and demand in the gas and oil business is to either shut down production or delivery (see the Arab Oil embargo in 1973) or to drastically decrease consumption (see the recent Covid economic collapse). There is no way to quickly increase the supply, unless there is untapped potential being intentionally withheld from the market. The only case where that currently applies is Saudi Arabia, who can literally turn on the spigots, but they are not in any way disposed to do so, nor have they (apparently) been given an impetus or inducement to do so. Saudi did just agree to increase production in the five year time-frame. Higher prices at the pump lag behind reductions in oil prices because that is how the industry (from Saudi Aramco to Bill at the corner station) keeps profitable.

You will see Congressional hearings soon, and both Republicans and Democrats will trot out the same hackneyed talking points we disabused here. Don’t fall for it; don’t re-tweet them or like their social media posts. Gas prices are high for very obvious reasons. You don’t have to like it (I don’t), but be smart about the subject, not partisan. And for God’s sake don’t drive the speed limit in the passing lane.

You could be excused if you believed you had fallen asleep and awoke to find yourself in Europe in the 1930’s. Armies massing? Bogus staged provocations? Claims of the illegitimacy of neighboring states or governments? Interstate war? Same as it ever was.

There is little surprising in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Even recently, the Biden administration released unprecedented amounts of US intelligence clearly indicating Russia was preparing to do so, and US government officials made one dire prediction after another. These may have become background noise to some, but if so, those ignoring the warnings missed the true significance. Government officials rarely predict something as serious as war: they almost always emphasize first the ongoing negotiations and offer a tepid “war remains possible” walk off statement. In the past two weeks, US officials flipped the script: talking about how Russia was preparing, warning war was imminent, then giving a feeble “we still hope for negotiations.” It was a tell that an invasion was inevitable.

For some of us, this has been obvious for much longer. Long-time Russia hands remember seventeen years ago when Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century. Neither the holocaust nor Nazism. Neither the holodomor nor the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Not Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The end of the largest authoritarian menace in history was what bothered Putin. Putin publicly dedicated himself then to re-establishing Russia as a great power, feared and respected by the world. Everything he did subsequently was toward that end.

Putin’s Russia will never be a world power, and he knows that. His economy is a mix of what we used to call Third World extraction (oil and minerals) and oligarchic capitalism, benefiting a few corrupt officials. Russian demography remains a disaster: rampant alcoholism and early male death, misogyny and violence leading to few marriages and even fewer births, a shrinking population unparalleled in peacetime. The average Russian is little better off than he was under Communism: and that is totally irrelevant. Putin has a iron grip on Russia itself: he openly jails political foes and kills dissidents with impunity. Russians either admire his strength or fear his vengeance. Remember, this is a country where you can stop in Red Square and take a tourist photo with a Stalin look-alike!

Long term, Russia remains in mortal danger, but Putin has played a mid-term game. Russia was initially too weak to do much but posture. He stabilized the Russian economy during oil price spikes and drops and solidified his position with the oligarchs: they know he will turn on them on a dime if they conspire against him, but they are free to make money if they don’t. He fundamentally remade the Russian military from a massive conscript force to a much smaller, more modern, volunteer force capable of threatening any neighbor, if not NATO writ large. He weathered the so-called color revolutions, losing a client state in Ukraine but holding on to Belarus. He threatened and invaded Georgia, putting its move toward NATO on ice. He has been welcomed into Kazakhstan, and has a “bond without limits” with China (no, I don’t believe this means much either, but it doesn’t hurt).

After President Obama failed to enforce his own red line in Syria (Assad’s chemical weapon attack), Putin moved quickly to ensure his Syrian ally’s security. Then he turned to Ukraine and unleashed his “little green men,” Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) which occupied ethnically Russian potions of the Donbas river basin and all of Crimea.

Russia never accepted the Maidan revolution which had chased off a Russian-friendly government in Kyiv. The Crimea occupation was part practice and part toe-in-the-water experiment. Would the West respond forcefully to naked aggression covered with the only the most transparent fig-leaf? Sanctions indicated the answer was no, and the subsequent Minsk accords gave Russia some cover for its defacto seizures.

Meanwhile, Putin began preparing to finish the job. Russia amassed over $630 billion in hard currency (mostly non-US dollar) reserves in case of future sanctions. His oligarch friends probably did the same with their personal fortunes. The EU estimates current sanctions (pre-invasion) cost the Russian economy $50 billion annually. Assuming the new sanctions are twice as bad, Russia will run out of reserves in . . . only six and a half years! Putin negotiated agreements with friendly states, especially China, to continue trade without using dollars in the event of tightened US sanctions. He began a drumbeat in state-controlled Russian media to show Ukraine was a base of “NATO aggression” or “fascist forces” threatening ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

What happens now? Putin may stop at the Dnieper river to assess the situation. He may not try to take Kyiv in order to avoid the urban destruction and outrage that would entail. He may be willing to occupy ethnic Russian majority areas, establish a land bridge to Crimea and Moldova, and eliminate Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. From these positions, Putin could pause to negotiate a cease fire and the establishment of a rump Ukrainian state with a government more amenable to Russia. He does not need to, nor does he probably want to, engage in a long-term occupation, which might become the focus of an insurgency.

The Biden administration was dealt a bad hand here: given Putin’s obvious intentions, the West needed to start to act long ago to deter him. However, every administration inherits bad situations, and they are responsible for resolving them. George W. Bush wanted to be “the education President,” focusing on America’s relations with Mexico and embracing “compassionate conservatism”: he got 9/11 instead. President Biden said he knew the world’s leaders on a first name basis; now has come his moment. The President has rightly rallied NATO, even encouraging Finland and Sweden to join in. But this won’t be over soon.

The administration said the array of increasing sanctions were designed to deter a Russian invasion: they have failed to do so. The EU and nations across the globe are joining in sanctions. But will they last? The NordStream 2 pipeline is completed; all Germany did was stop certification. In effect, some bureaucrat in Berlin took the pile of papers off his desk and put them in a drawer. They could resume certification in a moment. Europe needs Russian natural gas (Russia provides over 40% of Europe’s needs), and they cannot fully replace it with exports from the US. Oil prices have spiked to around $100 a barrel, which will further fuel inflation. Putin is betting he, his oligarchs, and the long-suffering Russian people can hold out longer than the–in his view–corrupt and irresolute West. He has a point. Most people forget that the very strict sanctions regime the entire world placed on Saddam Hussein was crumbling just before the Bush administration decided to go to war. We couldn’t keep sanctions on an insignificant country with a certifiable murderer-in-charge; can we do better with Russia?

Was Russian occupation of Ukraine inevitable? Putin took the measure of current Western leaders, and decided he could act. President Biden’s gaffe about a “small invasion” probably didn’t help, but what he said was true (NATO and the US weren’t going to fight to defend Ukraine), even though saying the quiet part out loud was the final nail in Ukraine’s coffin. Putin cannot afford war with NATO. While he would have tactical advantages in location initially, he cannot forestall a NATO build up and eventual counterattack. Any hint of ambiguity about US forces in Ukraine might have given Putin pause. For example, if Biden had rushed the US airborne forces not to Poland, but to Lviv (in far western Ukraine near the Polish border), to set up a permanent defensive perimeter for US diplomats, refugees, and perhaps the Ukrainian government, Putin might have occupied only the eastern parts of the country and steered clear. Even more so if Biden had convinced NATO allies to loin in the action.

Some will counter that American public opinion does not support going to war over Ukraine, and that is true. Neither do I. Yet American public opinion rarely supports going to war. Prior to provocation, the American public wanted to stay out of both World Wars. One major challenge of the presidency is to make the case for why the United States should go to war, if the President sees the need. President Biden ruled out making that case early on, following public opinion rather than leading it. One forgotten lesson of the Cold War is you can only deter an opponent if you have the capability and will to go to war with him; if the opponent doubts either your capability or will, he will not be deterred. The West can’t start the deterrence process by saying “we won’t fight under any circumstances.”

President Biden has announced tougher sanctions. A telling sign was the reaction of the US stock markets: while other markets around the world cratered on news of war in Europe, the US indexes rose! Why? They were expecting much tougher sanctions than the President imposed. We should assume Russia was warned: it makes no sense to rely on some sanctions with a threat of greater ones, if you don’t make it pretty clear how much worse it can get. In the meantime, there is much more the West can do, if the United States leads. All western airlines should be forbidden to land in Russia, and Aeroflot should be denied landing rights anywhere in the West. A review of all Russians on visas in the West for immediate expulsion, and a halt to all Russian visas in process. Russian consulates closed, Russian embassies reduced to minimum personnel. Of course no Russian athlete or team should be allowed into international competitions.

The US military could commence immediate production of ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), once banned under the INF treaty (from which President Trump withdrew the US), and a replacement system for the Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. These two nuclear capable systems were the bane of Soviet leaders due to their short timelines (six minutes) to hit Moscow from Germany. The US should make clear to the Russian government that these weapons will be forward deployed in NATO countries IF Putin does not withdraw from Ukraine and re-establish the legitimate government in Kyiv.

The sanctions will hurt eventually, but will not soon force Putin’s hand. Instead, the West is in for a short (losing) contest for the future of Ukraine, but more importantly, a long contest to re-establish the notion of deterrence which has been lost. That means more spending on defense, more troops and agreements and exercises, more time and attention to foreign policy, and less time, attention, and money for everything else. All that just to maintain the status quo ante invasion.

Or Europe decides warm houses are more important than Ukraine. We lose focus. Americans resent double-digit inflation or a recession brought on by a massive rate increase by the Fed. China runs a sanctions evasion operation. And yes, China is watching how this all plays out for clues about its future interests in Taiwan.

For all intents and purposes, Putin has accomplished his initial objectives. Ukraine is his, and even NATO members like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia must be wondering about their security. Now the larger game is afoot. Does the US lead a reinvigorated NATO, and to what end? Do we find a way to pressure Putin and Russia to let go of Ukraine? Does China seize the moment, or simply lay low and provide Putin some cover? During the Cold War, every US presidential election had a subtext which went something like this: can this candidate stand up to the Soviet threat? Can they lead the free world, even if that means edging closer to war? That is a focus which was lost in the postwar period. Now it has returned with a vengeance.