If you want to read something depressing, check out Leonid Bershidsky’s post at Bloomberg on Ukraine’s corrupt government officials:

Returns filed before the Sunday deadline show that many Ukrainian officials and legislators have taken the opportunity to legalize many years of unofficial income and create an official justification for their lavish lifestyles.

The European Union, which the Ukrainian wants to join, did its best to impress on officials in Kiev that it wanted them to declare their incomes and property in a publicly accessible electronic system. It was a condition of European financial assistance and one of the terms of the agreement allowing coveted visa-free travel to the EU. The Ukrainian parliament at first passed the necessary bill in a watered-down version, then had to vote again on a text approved by the EU. Finally, by early September, the system was ready and officials had 60 days to file their declarations. The resulting documents shocked Ukrainians, whose per capita gross domestic product, with purchasing power parity, is just $7,449 — one-seventh of the U.S. level. The social networks were flooded with jokes about how the flow of aid from the International Monetary Fund could now be reversed.

Keep in mind that these aren’t the corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian official who ran the country before they were ousted by a coup. They’re the corrupt pro-Western Ukrainian officials who succeeded them.

There’s a lot to take in from Douglas A. Olliphant’s analysis of the battle to retake Mosul at War on the Rocks. I’m glad, for example, that he highlights the interfactional conflicts among the Kurds:

While the Peshmerga have performed well since their retreat before ISIL in August of 2014, there are concerns that they might alter internal political boundaries by force of arms, rather than by political processes. In addition, tensions remain between the competing factions of President Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and those of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, dominated by the Talibani family. Most notably, the PUK accuses the KDP of stockpiling weapons for use against other Kurdish parties and being far more concerned about preserving power in the Kurdistan Regional Government than actually fighting against ISIL.

IMO characterizing the KDP and PUK as political parties is a stretch. They are actually Kurdish tribal factions, each headed by the hereditary rulers of their respective tribes, and when they aren’t turning their guns at the Turks or Iraqis they’ll be pointing them at each other. Here in the United States in particular they’re being portrayed as liberal democratic freedom fighters which I think is setting us and the Kurds up for disappointment.

And then there are the Turks. How much influence do they want to maintain in Northern Iraq? There have been some signs that they want to reclaim Mosul as part of Turkey.

And how will Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs treat the non-Arabs in Northern Iraq?

As in all of Iraq, the major tension in Mosul still rotates on two axes: the tensions between Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs and those between the Arab Sunni and Arab Shia. However, Mosul is further exacerbated by the presence of a wide variety of other groupings — Turkomen (both Sunni and Shia), Yezidi, Christians, Shabak, and others. The position of most of these communities has always been precarious, but ISIL’s actions exacerbated existing tensions and disrupted the prior equilibrium. Recreating a political arrangement that allows all these groups to live in peace with their neighbors while maintaining sustainable minority communities will be very difficult and perhaps impossible for some of the most devastated groups.

These minority communities have taken a one-two punch of disruption, first at the hands of ISIL in 2014 (not that their lives were perfect before), and then as political pawns between Kurdish and Arab interests in the Ninewah plain around Mosul as ISIL has been pushed back. There has already been one incident of violence between Kurdish Peshmerga and indigenous Turkomen Shia fighters. While cooler heads prevailed in that incident, the battle for Mosul could easily engage multiple flashpoints at once, leaving leaders unable to moderate the actions of their forces.

Moderation has not been the strong suit of any of the parties involved with the possible exceptions of the United States and Brits. If we attempt to stop the contending parties from killing each other, will we suddenly become unwelcome guests?

Initially, I was baffled by Faisal Al Yatai’s criticism of U. S. policy with respect to the Suez Crisis, which occurred sixty years ago. That was when Egyptian President Abdel Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal. In reaction Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt with the intentions of restoring the canal to Western control and removing Nasser.

The U. S. did not participate.

The part that I was baffled by was his apparent condemnation of U. S. non-action. What he was actually criticizing was our failure to capitalize on the goodwill we had acquired by not being just another colonial power:

The result is also well known: Britain and France limped out of the region, replaced by the United States. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president, became a popular figure across the world. And, in the popular retelling at least, a new era of decolonisation was sparked across the world.

There is another aspect to the crisis, however, that is rarely discussed. The untold story of Suez is that the US could have genuinely forged a new diplomatic relationship with the Middle East, but kept getting drawn back into imperial intrigue. Suez could have been a turning point between the US and the Arab world, but neither Europe nor Nasser would accept it.

The root of the problem was power and politics. America under Dwight Eisenhower viewed itself in two ways: as the coming power after the battering the European powers took in the Second World War, and as the supporter of those who wanted to be free from colonisation.

In Egypt, those two desires were in tension. The latter desire would lead the US to back Nasser, who wanted to lead Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries out of the colonial era. But Nasser wanted Egypt to be genuinely free, not to simply replace the subservience to Britain with a reliance on America. At first, he sought to be neutral between the US and the Soviet Union – a policy that the US could not accept.

I don’t think he’s reading the situation quite correctly “Nonintervention” means you don’t take sides in local disagreements. What actually happened is that we maintained a tense neutrality towards both Egypt and Israel right up to the Six Day War. During that period France was Israel’s greatest patron not the U. S. During the 60s Egypt cozied up to the Soviet Union.

IMO much of present U. S. policy with respect to the Middle East stems from our decision to back Israel and Israeli goals. That brings us right up to the present day, fighting wars in a half dozen Middle Eastern and West Asian countries all at the same time. We put ourselves in that position one step at a time.

I strongly recommend that you read Dan Drezner’s Washington Post account of what he saw in Russia. It boils down to these:

1. Russian-American relations are going to be bad for a good long spell.
2. Russia’s grand strategy is for Russia to be treated like a great power. That’s it.
3. Russia’s economy is not in great shape.
4. Vladimir Putin is, like, super-passive-aggressive.
5. The last great liberals of the world are in East Asia.

To which I’d add that Russia’s economy hasn’t ever been in great shape. The idea that economic sanctions will motivate the Russians relies on false premises. Whatever happened to the idea that you can catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar? And I think that Dan means “neoliberals” in his last bullet point.

Speaking of summaries, at Bloomberg Mark Whitehouse has an excellent summary of what’s wrong with the U. S. economy in one chart, above. If I were to draw the trend lines, it would be even starker. Business investment is plummeting as a share of GDP.

He goes on to flail around a bit, trying to explain why that has happened, trying out inadequate infrastructure spending, a shift to “less capital-intensive activities”, and decrease in demand. None of those is really adequate, viz.:

Consumers are spending more not less.

Let me offer two very different explanations: political corruption and healthcare spending.

Businesses, big businesses in particular, are shifting to protected activities and those include the creation of intellectual property and activities that aren’t subject to competition from overseas and they’re using political contributions to extend those areas. That’s inherently corrupt. Healthcare spending, as I’ve pointed out in the past, is not capital intensive (although revenues are rising capital spending in the sector is either flat or declining) and wage gains are highly concentrated at the top of the income ladder within the sector.

It may come as a shock but there has been an active debate on policies this election cycle. It’s been going on at RealClearPolitics. In the segment on immigration Canadian-born F. H. Buckley’s opening statement includes an excellent contradistinction of Canada’s immigration system with ours:

About 15 percent of the people in the U.S. (including illegals) are foreign-born, but it’s 20 percent in Canada, and yet immigration is not an issue there. All Canadian political parties strongly favor immigration and their country’s current policies for admitting new arrivals. And it’s a system Donald Trump would love.

There are 10 times more undocumented aliens per capita in the U.S. than in Canada — about 11 million in the U.S. versus 100,000 in Canada. The difference comes down to a difference in will. In Canada illegal immigrants are given a refugee hearing and put on a plane and sent home if they fail. And while some Americans might think this heartless, no one in Canada seems to think it’s a problem.

The cross-border difference in attitudes comes down to three things. First, Canada accepts vastly more legal immigrants than the U.S. — about 250,000 a year in Canada vs. 1,000,000 in the U.S. On a per capita basis, the U.S. would need to admit about 150 percent more immigrants annually to match Canada. As such, worries about illegal immigrants are considered less pressing in Canada. “We’ve already done our part,” they think.

Second, the Canadian system gives preference to immigrants who can be expected to make native Canadians better off. What that means is that Canada admits a lot more people on the basis of economic merit. What Canada wants are people who are going to start out as givers, not takers. It’s wrong to distinguish between American givers and takers, as Mitt Romney did, but it’s just fine to distinguish between would-be immigrant givers and takers.

Canada prefers younger immigrants, people who are educated, people who want to go to places where there are labor shortages, people who are going to start businesses in Canada and hire Canadians. In absolute numbers, Canada actually admits more immigrants under economic categories than the U.S. There are about 160,000 such immigrants a year in Canada versus 140,000 in the U.S. Remarkably, a country one-tenth the size of the U.S. takes in more people who promise to make the native-born better off.

Our system by contrast emphasizes what’s euphemistically called “family reunification” which in essence rewards illegal behavior. A relatively small but very vocal minority gets its way. Whether that’s good for the country as a whole or not is open to dispute.

Just about everyone thinks that the alliance of Iraq, the U. S., the Turks, and the Brits will oust DAESH from Mosul. At the South China Morning Post Bhavan Jaipragas speculates with some alarm about what will happen next. Some of its members will probably head home:

There is rising concern among regional counterterrorism officials that the US-backed war machine encircling Islamic State (IS) is inadvertently spawning a jihadist alumni network in Southeast Asia and elsewhere made up of fleeing militants seeking a safe haven in their home countries.

“The threats posed by foreign terrorist fighter returnees are real and imminent,” Jeremy Douglas, the representative for the UNODC in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told This Week in Asia . “Increasing military pressure on [IS] in Syria and Iraq is now expected to result in more returnees including many that will want to pursue violent jihad in the region.”

If the Telegraph’s estimates are to be believed, DAESH’s fighters are from 86 different countries with the greatest numbers in descending order from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Russia (presumably Chechnyans), Jordan, Turkey, France, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, and Germany. A few hardened combatants could wreak an enormous amount of damage.

The present strategy in Mosul is not extermination. Quite to the contrary—we’re encouraging DAESH fighters to withdraw. To where?

One of the theories is that they’ll return to their home countries. Another is that they’ll go to fortify Raqqah, the notional capitol of DAESH’s caliphate. A third is that they’ll go to one of the outposts of DAESH’s caliphate. These include Libya, Nigeria, and Philippines. I suspect that all of those will be true in varying degrees.

At Big Think Paul Ratner proposes a list of the 20 greatest inventions in history. His list includes the usual suspects—fire, the wheel, the printing press, the semiconductor, nuclear fission. I think his list is weighted a bit towards power generation.

I also think that at least one of the items on his list doesn’t belong: the personal computer. It’s just an elaboration of the semiconductor and a much more important invention that doesn’t even make his list: the digital computer.

There are others, some much more rarely mentioned, that belong on the list of greatest inventions, too:

• Food preservation. Without the ability to retain surpluses most of the other inventions on his list would never have been invented.
• Knitting and weaving. It’s beautiful, functional, and thrifty. It’s one of the foundations of civilized life.
• Writing. Oddly, paper makes his list. Without writing paper would never have been invented. Writing allowed human beings to retain the spoken word, a critical development.
• The phonograph. Just as writing allows us to retain the spoken word, the phonograph allows us to retain sound—a basic conceptual development.
• Double entry bookkeeping. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of maintaining accurate financial records. Double entry bookkeeping is non-obvious to boot.
• Selective breeding. Very few of the things we eat today are in the form that nature made them. Useful characteristics have been carefully fostered through selective breeding.
• Paint. This one’s about preservation, too. Painted surfaces withstand the elements longer than non-painted ones. It’s also pretty.

I don’t think language is an invention. I think it’s more a characteristic. I also don’t think that agriculture is an invention. I think it’s an elaboration of horticulture which in turn is an obvious elaboration on returning to places where you found useful plants previously.

What else would you propose for a list of the greatest inventions?

I think that the argument that Howard J. Shatz and David A. Shlapak are making at RAND, in favor of the next president’s maintaining the global U. S. security and economic regime is a noble one:

There is no doubt this system has been good for the world, producing 70 years without a great power war—the longest such stretch in modern history—a standard of living in the West that is the highest ever achieved, and billions lifted out of poverty around the globe.

But less remarked upon is the fact that it has also been good for America.

Carefully built and tended following the destruction and horror of World War II, the system has kept America out of devastating foreign wars in Europe and Asia. It has enabled Americans to attain lifestyles that the last generation that fought a global war could never have imagined as they suffered horrific casualties at Iwo Jima or wondered if they would survive the Battle of the Bulge.

Even less remarked upon is that the global system was designed by and made in America. The United States built it and has sought to sustain and expand it, joined in partnership with a voluntary association of a large and diverse array of the richest, freest, most advanced countries in history, all of which find it in their interest to work with the United States. Because of it, the United States enjoys a remarkable position of power and possibilities.

I just wish they’d do a better job of it. For example, where’s the cost-benefit analysis? Few would doubt that keeping the peace is good. I don’t think it’s as clear that our paying $600 billion a year is more effective than it would be if we paid $400 billion a year.

I also think they should be considering the run-on effects. Does our shouldering as much as we do of the bill have the dual effect of building U. S. support for dubious adventurism by our notional allies as well as encouraging them to engage in it? I’m thinking in particular of the war in Yemen.

Also, doesn’t who pays the bills and who reaps the rewards make a difference? At this point the top 1% of income earners pay something between a third and half of federal taxes but they also receive by far the greatest proportion of incremental income—at least half and maybe a lot more. When the foundations of the present U. S. security and economic regime were laid, ordinary Americans received a lot more of its benefits than they do now.