FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
A
s the Ukraine war grinds on, the
West continues to prevail on the
economic battlefield. Its sanc-
tions are punishing Russia’s
economy. Russian attempts to counterat-
tack appear likely to backfire. And the
result is a psychological blow to China,
whose state-capitalist system was already
looking vulnerable.
Start with the sanctions. By freezing
the bulk of Russia’s foreign-exchange re-
serves, the West disabled Moscow’s main
tool for defending its currency. In the first
two weeks of the war, the ruble lost nearly
half its value against the dollar. Soaring
import prices, panic-buying by Russians
and shortages induced by other sanctions
combined to drive inflation up to 2 per-
cent per week. If this rate were to be
sustained, Russia’s annual inflation
would come to a catastrophic 175 percent.
Russia’s leaders have scrambled to
prop up the ruble, but this has caused
new difficulties. The central bank has
doubled its key interest rate, punishing
businesses and households and causing
forecasters to predict a deep recession.
Authorities have slammed on capital con-
trols, banning ordinary Russians from
exchanging rubles for dollars and limit-
ing their ability to get dollars out of their
own bank accounts. Russians with mar-
ketable skills are fleeing the country. As
many as 70,000 tech workers have report-
edly left already.
The confrontation has also hit foreign
investors. Russia has banned nonresi-
dents from selling stocks traded in Mos-
cow. Sanctions have obstructed interest
payments to foreign bondholders. Ap-
palled by the obliteration of Ukraine’s
cities, some 500 Western businesses with
operations in Russia have pulled out,
many with no clear plan as to how they
might sell assets and recoup capital; the
British oil firm BP is expected to take an
$11 billion hit from its exit. Foreign busi-
ness confidence is unlikely to recover so
long as Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin.
Russia’s latest gambit is to demand
payment for its natural gas exports in
rubles. The idea is to force Germany and
other energy importers to buy the Rus-
sian currency, thereby boosting its value.
But the German government appears
ready to call Putin’s bluff: Instead of
agreeing to pay in rubles, it has taken the
first formal step toward gas rationing.
Rather than deprive itself of revenue that
it desperately needs, Russia may well
back down. Either way, its threat has
reinforced Germany’s determination to
wean itself off Russian exports.
What does all this mean for China,
Putin’s most significant ally? China’s
economy is far larger and more sophisti-
cated than Russia’s, but it looks newly
vulnerable.
To begin with, Beijing’s $3 trillion-plus
stockpile of foreign-currency assets looks
less potent. If Russia’s reserves could be
frozen, so could China’s. Likewise, if Rus-
sia can’t generate leverage from its highly
concentrated exports — until its invasion
of Ukraine, it supplied more than half of
Germany’s imported natural gas — it
appears unlikely that China will be able to
fight sanctions by threatening to cut
exports of consumer electronics. Yes, Chi-
na supplies around 80 percent of the
U.S. market for the niche industrial in-
puts known as “rare earths.” But the
United States is protecting itself by stock-
piling and recycling them.
What’s more, China’s economy appears
susceptible for other reasons. Much as
Putin invaded Ukraine out of a misguided
sense of national pride, so China’s leaders
have refused to buy effective foreign vac-
cines against covid-19. Instead, even as
domestic vaccines fail to work, they have
isolated their country from the rest of the
world, imposing draconian quarantines
on visitors. With the advent of the espe-
cially contagious BA.2 omicron variant,
however, this is not enough. China has
been forced to lock down economic hubs
such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, hob-
bling its growth outlook.
Meanwhile, China’s financial sector is
shaky. Property developers are defaulting
on bonds, and their auditors are quitting
with alarming frequency. Fully two-fifths
of bank loans are tied to real estate, so the
trouble is poised to infect the banking
system. China’s broader economy is ad-
dicted to debt, so if banks have to call in
their loans, the pain will be widespread.
China’s government has compounded
its problems by clamping down on its
impressive digital economy. It has fined
tech champions, blocked stock market
listings and driven founders into exile.
Last summer, at the stroke of a pen, it
wiped out most of the $100 billion for-
profit tutoring industry. Given that Chi-
na’s population is aging and its workforce
is shrinking, the government needs the
productivity fillip from tech firms —
which is why Beijing’s top economic offi-
cial recently made nice with the sector.
Not everyone expects this charm offen-
sive to last. Authoritarian governments
have a hard time tolerating disruptive
innovation.
The West has been through a grueling
few years. Populists have risen, alliances
have frayed, and everything from infla-
tion to the chaotic withdrawal from Af-
ghanistan appeared to signal incompe-
tence and fragility. But the Ukraine crisis
has changed the mood. The conflict is far
from over, to be sure. But for now, the
West exudes an unfamiliar confidence.
SEBASTIAN MALLABY
Economic
maneuvers by
the West are
stifling Putin
BY CÉLINE GOUNDER
AND MOLLYANN BRODIETracy Kitchen Delong lives in the
Tampa Bay area with her
1 1-year-old grandson. When he
contracted covid-19 in August
2021, she had to take three weeks off
work to care for him. Her employer
didn’t offer paid family medical leave,
so she canceled the Internet and cut
back on groceries. But she still got
behind on rent and, under threat of
eviction, moved out of her apartment in
November.
Rehison Walker got sick during the
omicron wave. He had to take two weeks
off from his job at an automotive colli-
sion repair shop in rural Kansas, and, as
in Delong’s case, his employer didn’t
provide paid sick leave. “I was sick
enough to go to the hospital,” he said. “I
thought I was going to die. I couldn’t
breathe.” Walker had health insurance,
but he didn’t want to take on the out-of-
pocket costs at the same time as he had
lost income. So instead, he declined to
go to the hospital.
How is it that in one of the world’s
wealthiest countries, Americans have to
make such difficult choices? And how is
it possible that, as we face another po-
tential covid wave this spring, we still
have not resolved this problem?
Early in the pandemic, the federal
government required employers with
fewer than 500 employees to offer paid
sick and family leave. But those protec-
tions, the first of their kind in
U .S. history, lapsed at the end of 2020.
As a result, the United States remains
one of the only developed countries
without universal paid sick leave or
family medical leave.
Americans are desperate to put thepandemic in the nation’s rearview mir-
ror, but how can we do that when so
many workers are concerned about get-
ting sick? Consider, for example, that
low-income workers and people of color
are far less likely than high-income work-
ers to have jobs that allow them to work
from home. They’re also much less likely
to have paid sick and family medical
leave. Should we be surprised, then, that
Black, Hispanic and low-income workers
are more worried about getting covid,
not only because they fear being serious-
ly sick, but also because they fear missing
work, losing wages or losing their jobs?
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation
(KFF) s urvey found that 3 in 10 low-
i ncome workers have gone to work de-
spite having covid symptoms or a covid
exposure simply because they couldn’t
afford to take time off. During the omi-
cron surge, 1 in 4 low-income workers,
1 in 5 Hispanic workers and 1 in 8 Black
workers reported that missed workdays
due to covid illness or quarantine had a
major impact on their family’s stress
and finances.
Paid sick leave is also good public
health policy. Researchers estimate that
because of the emergency sick leave law
in 2020, one covid case was prevented
per day for every 1,300 workers who
newly gained the right to paid sick leave.
That’s because infected people who can
afford to stay home from work or school
are less likely to infect others.
Women, foreign-born and part-time
workers, who make up a large propor-
tion of America’s caregiving workforce,
are especially likely to work sick due to a
lack of paid sick leave. This can have
domino effects for those they care for,
such as the elderly and people with
chronic medical conditions and disabil-
ities. When we don’t care for our care-givers, we put other vulnerable popula-
tions at risk, too.
The Biden administration has called
on Congress to reinstate and expand
emergency paid sick and family medical
leave for covid. But with Democrats and
Republicans in stark disagreement over
how much more to spend on the pan-
demic and where those funds will come
from, it’s unlikely federal funds will be
available to subsidize paid leave. What-
ever funding Congress does pass will
likely be for tests, treatments and vac-
cines, not safety nets for workers. As
such, state and local governments could
step up. (Some, such as California, al-
ready have.) Private-sector employers
and businesses could as well.
Delong has been living with her
7 2-year-old mother since November. In
February, she and her mother fell sick
with covid. Fortunately, Delong had just
started a new job offering 75 percent of
her wages while on leave. Had it not
been for that policy, she said, she “would
have been at square one all over again.”
Delong believes she has almost saved
enough money to move into her own
place with her grandson soon. Paid sick
leave at her new job made all the differ-
ence. She considers herself lucky, be-
cause she understands that for far too
many American workers, the strain of
the pandemic still looms as a serious
threat to their family’s well-being.Céline Gounder, senior fellow and editor at
large for Kaiser Health News, is an internist
and epidemiologist and the host of the
“American Diagnosis” and “Epidemic”
podcasts. Mollyann Brodie is executive vice
president and chief operating officer at the
Kaiser Family Foundation and executive
director of KFF’s Public Opinion and Survey
Research.Guaranteed paid sick leavecould help put covid behind usLM OTERO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A grocery store worker in Dallas wears a mask and face shield as she serves a customer in April 2020.Some commentators on the
Ukraine war — generally in the
class of foreign policy realists —
are ready for the denouement be-
fore the full story is played out.
In the beginning was a failure of
deterrence. After years of passive West-
ern reaction to his adventurism — in
Georgia, Crimea, Syria and elsewhere —
Vladimir Putin thought he could pursue
a relatively costless invasion of Ukraine.
It was a miscalculation, but not an
irrational one. A swift and steely reaction
by President Biden was probably not the
outcome Putin’s intelligence services
ranked as most likely. After having cham-
pioned the abandonment of both Syria
(as vice president) and Afghanistan (as
president) to terrible fates, Biden’s forti-
tude would not have been assumed.
As the conflict began, foreign policy
realists across the ideological spectrum
thought (like many others) that the war
would be a rout in Russia’s favor. This
outcome would have had the virtue of
strategic simplicity. The red line against
Russian aggression could have been
drawn at the inviolable borders of NATO
countries. The invocation of Article 5 —
the mutual-defense portion of the North
Atlantic Treaty — would have obviated
the need for difficult strategic choices.
While few — apart from America’s ex-
treme right — were rooting for it,
Ukraine’s swift defeat would have limited
the bloodshed and resulted in a comfort-
able clarity of costs and risks.
Yet Ukraine refused to cooperate in
the story of its own collapse. A combina-
tion of brilliant national leadership by
Volodymyr Zelensky, widespread patri-
otic courage, NATO-provided weapons
and lumbering Russian incompetence
has allowed David to stop Goliath in his
tracks. But rather than being conven-
iently killed, the well-armed giant is
pausing to refit, resupply and reconsider
his options.Among an increasingly vocal group of
policy realists, this shockingly positive
outcome overall remains a long-term
defeat for U.S. interests. The argument
goes like this: A bloody stalemate in
Ukraine — featuring crimes such as the
leveling of Mariupol and Kharkiv — is not
only a humanitarian nightmare. Con-
tinuing this unwinnable war would cause
radiating destabilization.
How long will Europe stay united
against Putin when countries face energy
shortages, lost jobs and the reality of
accommodating millions more refugees
beyond the 4 million estimated to have
already fled? How will Britons react
when they experience, say, a 50 percent
or more increase in energy costs? Won’t
the German advocates of appeasing Pu-
tin — who are only temporarily quieted —
eventually remake their argument in an
atmosphere of acute economic suffering?
The U.S. economy is not as dependent
as Europe’s on its economic relationship
with Russia. But won’t the disruption of
global energy markets — resulting in
higher prices at the gasoline pump —
place tremendous political pressure on
Biden? Might this economic dislocation
help return one of Putin’s few remaining
allies — Donald Trump — to power?
Some foreign policy experts also warn
that crippling Russia might turn it into a
terrorist state, like North Korea, while it is
pushed ever closer to China for support.
“The main challenge today,” Samuel
Charap of the Rand Corp. argued recently
in Foreign Affairs, “is that Ukraine’s
brave resistance — even combined with
ever-greater Western pressure on Mos-
cow — is highly unlikely to overcome
Russia’s military advantages, let alone
topple Putin. Without some kind of deal
with the Kremlin, the best outcome is
probably a long, arduous war that Russia
is likely to win anyway.” Such a protract-
ed conflict, he warned, would “cement
the current extreme level of hostilitybetween Russia and the West,” which
would undermine U.S. interests in re-
gional and global stability over the long
term.
“However distasteful it may be to
reach a compromise with Putin after the
carnage he has unleashed,” continued
Charap, “the United States should work
to secure a negotiated settlement to the
conflict sooner rather than later.”
There are at least three problems with
this approach:
First, any likely, hurried peace that is
forced on Ukrainians would almost cer-
tainly involve territorial concessions to
Russia. This would constitute another
massive failure of deterrence, essentially
inviting Putin to threaten and intimidate
non-NATO countries.
Second, while the gung-ho provision of
weapons to the Ukrainian army could
eventually raise some risk of direct NATO
conflict with Russia, we don’t appear
close to that point yet. Biden has been
correct to avoid a no-fly zone, but he is
not yet close to exhausting the number
and sophistication of missiles that could
be responsibly sent. Missiles to take out
more planes, more ships, more tanks.
NATO needs to test the further limits of
possible victory against Russia in
Ukraine. It hasn’t yet.
Third, this might be our generation’s
best, and perhaps only, chance to enforce
true limits on the greatest threat to
European and world peace. Under Putin,
Russia is already a rogue terrorist state,
closely aligned with China. How will the
effective accommodation of Russia’s bar-
baric aggression make global stability
more likely?
Rallying their peoples to accept the
temporary economic burdens required to
confront Putin is now the main challenge
for European leaders and the U.S. presi-
dent. It will not be easy, but it will
certainly be easier than following the
Zelensky example.MICHAEL GERSONHow long will we stay aligned against Putin?At this point, the Republican Party
really ought to change its name.
It’s not a coherent political party
anymore. To comply with truth-
in-advertising standards, it should call
itself the Republican Hot Mess.
And yes, this is an election year, and the
Hot Mess could take control of one or even
both houses of Congress. At a time of
overlapping crises at home and abroad,
that is a gamble the nation should not take
— and an outcome Democrats and inde-
pendents must do everything in their
power to prevent.
Most endangered is the Democrats’
slim majority in the House, where Minori-
ty Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) —
desperate to move into the expansive of-
fice suite occupied by Speaker Nancy Pelo-
si (D-Calif.) — is spending much of his
time dealing with a loony-bin caucus that
seems determined to embarrass the party
leadership.
The member of his ranks currently
giving McCarthy the biggest migraine is
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), who re-
cently said on a podcast that, since taking
office, he has encountered “sexual perver-
sion,” including an invitation to “come to
an orgy,” and has seen individuals who
publicly stand against illegal drugs “do a
key bump of cocaine right in front of you.”
Cawthorn, 26, said he was shocked by
all of this, “being kind of a young guy in
Washington, where the average age is
probably 60 or 70.” He added: “I look at all
these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked
up to through my life — I’ve always paid
attention to politics — then all of a sudden
you get invited.” The clear implication is
that these unnamed hedonists are col-
leagues of his in Congress.Fearful of losing support in his quest for
the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy has been
loath to punish or even meaningfully re-
buke Cawthorn’s fellow loony-bin resi-
dents such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor
Greene (Ga.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.),
who both spoke recently at a conference
organized by an avowed white nationalist.
But Cawthorn’s allegations were so be-
yond the pale that McCarthy finally called
him in and dressed him down. He told
reporters later that Cawthorn “did not tell
the truth,” that there was “no evidence” to
support his claims and that his words
were “unacceptable.”
Does this mean the GOP is beginning to
come back to its senses? Not really. McCar-
thy has said that Greene and Gosar, both
of whom have been stripped of their com-
mittee assignments by the Democratic
majority, will be placed on committees
again if Republicans take control. McCar-
thy also tiptoes around the antics of such
clowns as Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.),
who called a fellow member of Congress
“the Jihad Squad,” and Rep. Matt Gaetz
(Fla.), who is under investigation for al-
leged sex trafficking. The inmates are
running the asylum.
Over in the Senate, where Democrats
need Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking
vote to have a majority, we saw last week
the disgraceful way Republican senators
handled their questioning of Supreme
Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) tried unfairly to
paint Jackson as lenient on child pornog-
raphers. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) asked wheth-
er she believed babies are racist. Sen. Mar-
sha Blackburn (Tenn.) pressed her to de-
fine the word “woman.” Sen. Lindsey
O. Graham (S.C.) angrily sought to hold
her responsible for the way Democratic
senators have treated Republican nomi-
nees in the past.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
has said Senate Republicans will not pro-
duce a legislative agenda ahead of the
midterm elections, apparently believing it
is dangerous to let voters know exactly
what they might be voting for. On the
other side of the Capitol, however, McCar-
thy is working on a “Commitment to
America” set of proposals.
I agree that some members of McCar-
thy’s caucus need to be committed, but not
in the way he means.
Looming over the whole Hot Mess, of
course, is former president Donald Trump.
From his Elba at Mar-a-Lago, Trump has
been trying to boost the prospects of in-
cumbents and challengers who support
his “big lie” about the “stolen” election —
and to end the careers of Republicans,
such as Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who stand
for the party’s traditional values.
Trump recently pulled his endorse-
ment from Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), who is
seeking a Senate seat, because Brooks —
who went so far as to give a fiery speech at
Trump’s Jan. 6 rally — has said it is time to
move on from the 2020 election. How far
out on the fringe do you have to be to get
and keep Trump’s support?
By making every race all about himself,
Trump could be his (putative) party’s
worst enemy. It would be beyond ironic if
Democrats held on to their majorities
thanks to his whims and grudges.EUGENE ROBINSONDon’t call it aparty. That’sthe RepublicanHot Mess.I agree that some membersof McCarthy’s caucusneed to be committed,but not in the way he means.