#117 Economic Sanctions

 

Economic sanctions can be used for good, as they are against Russia, or Ill, as they were against Canadian truckers. 

 

Christian Worldview

I’m beginning today’s podcast by citing three books that made the same prediction. 

First: The Commanding Heights by Yergin and Stanislav tell the history of economics and politics throughout the 20th century.  The story begins in 1900 with most of the world enjoying free-market capitalism.  In the mid-century, many countries moved to a more socialist economy.  By 2000, they had mostly moved back to free-market economies.  The book was made into a three-part video series in 2002.  When the story closes, they re-assure the viewer that the world has established free-market capitalism that will probably endure.  Then the very last line is an eerie predictor of the events of the last few days of February 2022.  

Second: In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman makes the same assumption in 2005: That the world has become Flat, and that individuals trading across the globe will make all of us richer. 

History tells us when one country knocked off its neighbor, to extend the border of the victorious country.  In our third book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama observed in 2006 that the world had moved almost exclusively to political democracies and economic free-market capitalist systems.  Thus, he predicted there would be no more wars because they interrupt economic growth.  Mr. Fukuyama did not consider the Christian Worldview.  People are still fallen, and while there was a very nice period of relative peace in the world, the war would return.  And now, it has. 

Back to that first book I mentioned.  In the video version, the voice-over is done by David Ogden Stiers who my generation remembers as Doctor Winchester in the TV series MASH.  With the world safely ensconced in political democracies and economic free-market capitalism, in the very last line of the video program, he leans into the microphone and asks, “But no one knows what will happen, come economic hardship, or a world war.”  Now we know.  The world did NOT remain solidly in the free-market capitalist category.  

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stunned much of the world.  But not those of us who understand the Christian Worldview.  Because, when we read The Commanding Heights in 2002 and The World is Flat in 2005, and The End of History in 2006, we knew those authors were not looking at the world through the lens of reality.  In economics, we call their view “normative,” which means, the way they wanted the world to be.  Christian Economists see the world as it is, and that’s fallen.  We call that “positive” economics.  

 

The Cold War

We won the cold war via economics.  Referring to Commanding Heights again by Yergin and Stanislav, they tell the fascinating story of Oleg Gordievsky, a double-agent who was squired out of Russia in the trunk of a car across the Finish border.  The next day in London, when agents asked him about military power, he directed their attention to the economy, which was cratering under Socialism, as all economies do.  This message was sent to President Reagan,