A Crimean War? What Year is This? 1853?

Protests broke out en masse in the Ukraine after the Ukrainian government cancelled a free trade agreement with the European Union.

I'm not going to pretend to understand the ethnic/socio/linguistic history of the region and any feuds the sects of people living there have. Squabbles of a racial/tribal/cultural nature are pointless and can never be mediated or resolved because there is no actual problem to identify and solve and thus the cycles of hate usually wind up spinning for eternity.

Yet since the initial spark that set the thing off was due to a cancelled trade agreement...is it correct to assume this is an economic issue? If it is, then the answer to the conflict may lie in the domain of mathematical formula(es).

Once you are out of the murky waters of the silly tribal or linguistic reasons for conflicts and enter into the domain of the world's only official and accepted language (Math) then maybe some actual reasoning can take place.

Ukrainian Economic Analysis

GDP: 176 Billion
Global Economic Power Ranking: 54/193
Style of Govt.: Gangsterism
Population: ~46 million
Grade: D-

Ukraine has the population and the scientific literacy rates to be a B grade economy yet it is it is being hindered by various factors.

After the fall of the soviet union many satellite states of that "union" (it was not a popular union) were left having to start their economies again from scratch. The soviet production chain had factories all over making specialized parts mostly for stupid war gadgets. So something like the tank tread factory was in one area, the turret factory was in another region and maybe Ukraine had a munitions factory...etc, etc, etc all sending the parts to be assembled in another factory in another region of the soviet union.

When the union collapsed in 1991 these specialized war gadget factories closed down. The supply chain become obsolete because no one was assembling these tank parts (or whatever widget) and the specialized factories making these parts closed.

With a blank sheet of paper to start any sort of industry to power its economy, the future may have looked pretty bright for the Ukraine. They could have gone high-tech, they could have gone to electronics, or anything really. The sad reality of the matter was the governments in these newly formed independent countries were not formed by the brightest and best individuals in the region...but for the most part formed by the most dangerous gangsters in the region.

So the Ukrainian economy of today isn't at its full potential. The only high tech production is in the aerospace industry, the Ukraine relies for much of its GDP on old school shit like coal mining. It has a lot of great potential yet the corruption and gangsterism has handicapped that potential greatly.

People in the Ukraine understand this and know they want better. They have the option of throwing their economic poker chips in with two catalyst organizations and the options are the following...

Options

To keep any nationalistic/historic/etc biases from clouding the economic analysis of their "options" so to speak we will refer to the economic catalystic organizations as Option A and Option B.

Option A

GDP: ~17 Trillion
Global Ranking: 1/193
Style of Govt.: Varying (party-democracy, pseudo-democracy, gangsterism)
Population: 507 million
Grade: A

Their first option boasts some pretty decent numbers for an economic organization. Throwing their chips into this pot with the right agreement would be pretty tempting.


Option B

GDP: ~2 Trillion
Global Ranking: 8/193
Style of Govt: Pseudo-Democracy
Population: ~145 million
Grade: B

Option B is ok too. It's this nice country with a lot of potential. The style of government is a bit odd. They use this sort of revolving door gimmick to bypass the term limit law (max time a head of government can serve) and basically the same guy has been the head of state for 12 years and has 4 years left in his current term (in 2018 he will be head of state for 16 years).

A good cut off year where you can no longer be called "head of state" and might have to be referred to as a "dictator" a la Gaddafi or Castro is probably a nice round number like 15 years. When the head of state crosses the 15 year mark I think its style of government variable can be changed to "Dictatorship" instead of "Pseudo-Democracy."

Ukraine has already been in a union with this organization in the past.


Decisions, Decisions....

Who would you throw your chips in with? Option A or Option B?

I'm sure you've figured it out but...

Option A is the European Union
Option B is Russia

Many would come to the conclusion that Option A is the wise decision.

As stated in the first paragraph in this article, the protests started the day after the Ukrainian Government rejected a free trade deal with the European Union. I understand the protesters anger I think, it seems like a logical decision to want to deal with the EU.

I mean why reject throwing your chips in with the Number 1 economy on earth at this moment to sign on with an under achieving sinking ship that just spent 51 billion dollars of tax payers money on a stupid skiing exhibition? It seems like a bad idea.


Is There An Option C?

Is it possible that they could have free trade agreements with BOTH the EU and Russia thus maximizing their economic opportunities full scale? I don't know...there's too much bullshit in the way.

I mean theoretically all three concerned parties in this region could realize we are living in 2014 and become best of pals, get along, and start devoting their time and efforts to the advancement of science and maybe even getting started on the infrastructure for the Global Power Hyper-Grid in that area.

But what's more likely going to happen is they are going to conveniently bypass the fact that we are currently in the year 2014, they will pretend we are living in the year 18-fucking-53...and have a second Crimean War.

Whatever, at least people get to play with those cool gun toys. That's going to be fun for them. Shooting guns and having a fun war is cool too.