Europe is paying energy transit fee with weapons.
But first need to establish collective mechanisms for the countries that have adequate supplies to ensure supplies shared by alternative routes for those that donât.
Likewise for sharing burden of reduced grain from both Ukraine and Russia and for assisting poorer countries like India that are buying discounted Russian oil.
Letting the damage just fall wherever it does the most damage is the opposite of the insurance provided by collective security which is how we got back to another major war in Europe in the first place.
Both enforcement and insurance measures go together with collective security. That is the basis on which states were formed out of tribes and on which the EU is forming now and on which the UN was supposed to provide the framework for global security.
Australia should play a quite MAJOR part in this.
While other countries are damaged by the war Australia (or rather than owners of resources exported from Australia) is benefiting from the higher world prices for grain and LNG.
A âwindfall war profits taxâ should be imposed with all funds used to support the collective response.
There are increased costs associated with production to meet the shortfall in supply that should be taken into account in calculating what is actually a âwindfall war profitâ (retrospectively) as distinct from what would be necessary to produce anyway.
Perhaps some people here familiar with trade, transport and legal issues could suggest how such a fund could be organized?
A super profits tax comes to mind, but that resulted in the mining industry uniting to destroy the Labor government. I doubt Labor is interested in clashing with that sector again and the Liberals would never consider it.
Bearing that in mind it needs careful design. Governments and opposition do things in war to overide sectional interests that they wonât do normally.
eg The mechanisms being setup for expropriating oiligarchs are fascinating 
Yeah. Iâm hoping for a West-wide tariff or seizure of Russian assets.
Our election is likely blocking any urgent action on taxation policy. By the time the election is over, any oil company tax would likely kick in after the peak has passed.
Interesting point. West-wide tariffs and seizures could go together with âwar profits taxesâ so Australia is simply contributing to common policy in same way as Germany has agreed to for oil and they will eventually agree on for gas.
Unlike Bushmasters etc I agree that raising tax issues during election campaign would not have been feasible. But it becomes feasible immediately afterwards so would be good to have more detailed design work started now. I gather âsuper profitsâ were hard to define uncontroversially and the same would be true for âwindfall war profitsâ.
Edit add:
Iâm assuming there would still be sanctions in place for quite a long time eg to pay reparations (and contribute).
Iâm thinking a 10%+ tariff on all imports and exports for the next decade. Siphoned off at border control of the Western countries. That would cripple Russian military recovery and provide a consistent flow of cash to feed into rebuilding Ukraine.
Re https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1522339619903352836/photo/1 via @Benny40
The mentioned github repository has useful graphs.
There are also other related repos listed in same google search âOryx GitHub ukraineâ but I only looked at the first.
For context it would be nice to show graph of depletion of the deep storage reserves for the various types.
That would be less gratifying since those reserves include >17K of artillery (4k self propelled, 12 k towed). But that more sobering picture is what needs to be understood.
Itâs very difficult to get an accurate number of the functional Russian reserve equipment. Theyâve got 10k tanks of various types, but 7500 of them have been poorly maintained or stripped for black market parts theft.
The real reserve and the theoretical reserve are two very very different things. Expect there to be a lot of Russian officers jailed for corruption when this war finishes because much of the current phase of the war effort is crippled by this widespread theft and cannibalism.
Agreed. Estimates of damaged, captured on both sides also inaccurate but there is open discussion of the basis on which announced numbers by each side are adjusted.
All the more important to focus on what the actual impact of damage and captures is eg by detailed comparison of the impacts of various different possible estimates for the proportions that can be recovered from deep storage (in each category) and the costs/delays of recovery.
It is easy to overestimate the stupidity with which Russians are losing equipment. Ukrainians will also become more willing to abandon equipment as the supply of new equipment improves.
eg In Vietnam a major difficulty Liberation Armed Forces had with recruits from captured troops previously working as puppet troops for American side was teaching disciplined use of ammunition.
US forces just fired vast amounts in the general direction while âSir Charlesâ (Victor Charlie) had to carefully aim each bullet since they had very long and limited supply lines for ammunition.
I carefully read every post that mentions a Bayraktar. Iâm surprised they werenât used to kill covid in 2020 and avert a pandemic.
I was expecting much worse performance from US, NATO, EU and Australia in response to invasion partly because of the abysmal inability to coordinate effective global action on covid. We STILL havenât vaccinated the world and are just waiting for the next variant as though the pandemic is over despite unrestricted spread everywhere.
That is an interesting contrast. The EU seems to understand more clearly the threat that Russia poses and are willing to adapt to counter that threat, whereas with covid many tried hard to ignore it.
Oryx is the most accurate battlefield damage tracking because every single item has been visually identified from photos / videos. Itâs an impressive bit of work.
Just wanted to add how starkly the picture changes depending on assumptions about impact of theft of equipment and usage of parts of from equipment (âcannibalizationâ).
Graphs show Ruscists are abandoning nearly 8 times as much equipment as Ukrainians (cf about 4 times as much destroyed and more than twice as much captured).
For artillery graph shows nearly 4 times as much lost. But total is less than 200 compared with 17K in deep storage. It would be surprising if they could not recover ten times those losses from deep storage. It would be older equipment but replenished at a much faster rate than NATO can produce and supply for Ukraine.