Thread by @docrussjackson

The 2008 crash was a big influence on the war in Ukraine: it severely damaged western free-market capitalism, allowing state-led forms of capitalism to flourish in China, Russia & the Gulf states.

Is Ukraine becoming a proxy war for competing ideologies?

theconversation.com/ukraine-wars-s…

The 2008 global financial crisis showed markets did not have the ability to solve problems, & it damaged confidence in the political class & democracy itself.

Banks were bailed out while the people endured austerity, causing many to question deregulatory free-market capitalism.

Until now, each different strand of authoritarian capitalism appeared to be its own island, only occasionally linking with another, but today’s Ukraine war appears to change all that. It is fast turning into a proxy war between autocratic and liberal democracy.

China, the Gulf States, maybe India – & pro-Trump Republicans – are at best ambivalent about Russia’s war, while the rest of the world is not.

Russia may be struggling militarily in Ukraine, but this proxy battle for the future of #capitalism is not going to be won by missiles.

The west, led by the US and EU, managed to ensure that the 2008 crisis would not be as devastating as it could have been. They did this with a combination of austerity, cutting interest rates to zero, and massively increasing the money supply through quantitative easing.

But this came with a high price tag. Inequality steadily becomes worse, even before the recent surge in inflation.

As in 1929, we have a demand problem: if people can’t afford to buy the goods and services that producers are selling, more economic instability will be on the way.

While authoritarianism may seem less attractive now Putin is demolishing Ukraine, the conditions that breed populism are getting stronger: until the west truly reimagines capitalism (a 2020s version of the new deal?) the proxy ideological war of 2022 will keep finding new fronts.