think hard, think well

I’ve been considering how to follow up my post about how ministering in Eastern Europe as an American has affected my political views. I realized that I others have probably written about this issue, and also that I’m under no obligation to provide all the answers on this blog (good thing for my wife and family).

But I would like to give just a few examples of how “It’s complicated,” as I mentioned in that post. I’ll start out by posting an email that I sent to a fellow missionary (many years in Chile, now based in the US), about mutual economic sanctions between the EU and Russia. In personal conversations like the one below, I’ve started using the expression “Putin gets his peaches” as shorthand for the unintended consequences of economic sanctions. Perhaps it will catch on, like “Bootleggers and Baptists.” You read it here first…

(26 November, 2014)

Americans have an instinct that “something” should be done, but we don’t always understand the long-run impact of our gov’t’s actions.

Economic sanctions have a very bad track record of affecting political change. Let me expand a little on what I wrote about the Russian sanctions. Back in August, we saw prices plummet on much of the produce, but especially peaches and nectarines (persikai ir nektarinai, as we would say here!). At their lowest, peaches were something like 2.50 LTL per kilo (roughly 44 cents per pound). We rejoiced, because we love produce–especially peaches and nectarines!

But when we watched the news, we discovered the reason for the low prices. Right as peaches and nectarines were being harvested, the Russian gov’t announced a ban on produce imports from the EU. Trucks were stopped at the Ukraine-Russia border and turned around in search of EU buyers. Needless to say, this was bad for farmers and merchants in Southeastern Europe especially, where they rely on exports to Russia (the timing of the ban was no doubt intended to cause maximum disruption). They were forced to redistribute this produce throughout Eastern Europe at dirt-cheap prices. The EU has a fund that bails out farmers in this sort of circumstance, so the wealthiest growers will have access to those taxpayer funds. (UPDATE 01Jan15: I just found this story from August explaining more madness: the EU paid farmers to destroy produce in order to prop up prices–a hilariously bad idea that I thought had been discredited after the Great Depression.)

In the end, who was not harmed by the sanctions? EU consumers, I suppose–although we are all taxpayers to the bailout fund. We bought more produce than we really would have needed at market prices, but I guess that’s nice for us. Putin and his small winning coalition can afford to have their peaches flown in individually, daily, wrapped in velvet cushions, from wherever they want–so they didn’t really suffer. The big-time EU growers will get bailouts. But who was harmed? The EU growers suffered, especially small-time growers without access to the big-time bailouts. The shipping companies lost money because of the inefficiency of going all the way to the border before being turned back to sell at low prices. The middle- and lower-class Russians suffered from higher prices and/or shortages.

When the economy suffers, the currency suffers–as I mentioned in the update. I could go on and on, but you get the gist.

I listened to this media appearance by one of my favorite scholars a while ago, and I recall that I basically agreed with his analysis and prescriptions.

Since I wrote that email, the Russian economy has continued to decline. Some scholars, like this one, argue that the sanctions give Putin a convenient scapegoat for Russia’s problems, which are deep and systemic.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you have perceived that I like to talk about political issues.

There are two balances that have been difficult for me to strike over the last six months. First, I want to talk about things that are important to me, but I don’t want to offend people who support us. I know this is largely irrational; people support us because God has called them to do so and because they believe God has called us to minister the gospel. Politics are important, but the gospel is most important, and we are in full agreement on that point; the rest is details. Nevertheless, I don’t want to give unnecessary offense to anyone, especially those who have committed to helping us.

Second, as an American living in Eastern Europe, I see firsthand the effects of American foreign policy on citizens of other countries. Of course, all the usual caveats apply: America cannot solve all the world’s problems, nor is it responsible for all the world’s problems; the American gov’t doesn’t speak for all Americans; policies aren’t wrong just because they hurt some people (just about every policy helps someone and harms someone else); et cetera. But it hurts me to see how blasé some Americans are (at least online) about political decisions and how they affect people that I know personally. Even if those decisions turn out to be justified, there are still people experiencing the consequences.

Being an American missionary living abroad has caused my positions to evolve on some issues; on other issues, I feel confirmed and strengthened in my previous positions. I’ll give an example that I hope to elaborate in a future post. If you know me at all, you know I’m a pretty extreme “libertarian” in American terminology (though I prefer to call myself a “Manchester Liberal“), and I’m generally opposed to foreign intervention by the US military for pragmatic rather than pacifistic reasons. Prior to moving to Lithuania, I was skeptical of alliances such as NATO and worried that American involvement in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine would only make things worse in the long run and be a quagmire for the US.

Yet now that I’m here, I’m glad for the Baltic States’ participation in NATO, because that makes an invasion by Putin highly unlikely (he would basically be declaring war on the US). The situation in Ukraine is more complicated, but I can see the value of international defensive alliances that make the possibility of “hot” war very slim between nuclear and nuclear-allied countries. If Ukraine were in NATO or the EU, perhaps Putin would never have made his move; if the entire world lines up on two teams who each possess the power to destroy the other, then both sides have a strong incentive to pursue peace. (I hope to talk about economic sanctions and how those are misunderstood by many in the West, but that’s another post.)

These aren’t developed arguments, but you can start to see how the situation is complex and should not be oversimplified. I guess that’s the lesson of life: It’s complicated. Each of us has a paradigm, a worldview, a lens through which s/he sees the world, and we integrate new evidence into that paradigm all the time. I certainly think that my current paradigm does a great job of explaining new evidence that I encounter, but I know that no individual paradigm or point of view can encompass or explain all the evidence, so I know I’m wrong and inconsistent on some issues. The trouble is that I don’t know where those inconsistencies are–if I knew which opinions were wrong, I wouldn’t hold them.