{"id":9336,"date":"2024-08-30T10:22:52","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T10:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/?p=9336"},"modified":"2026-03-11T16:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:06:45","slug":"a-batalha-neoliberal-pela-reconstrucao-da-ucrania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/type-article\/the-neoliberal-battle-for-ukraines-reconstruction\/","title":{"rendered":"A batalha neoliberal pela reconstru\u00e7\u00e3o da Ucr\u00e2nia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size\"><time datetime=\"2024-08-30T10:22:52+00:00\">agosto 30, 2024<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:23px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The country\u2019s postwar future is almost as riven as the war itself.<br>__<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>At a breakfast discussion at Davos in January 2023, the BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that Ukraine\u2019s postwar recovery could become \u201ca beacon to the rest of the world about the power of capitalism\u201d. The scene could have been a parody of Russian propaganda: the head of an American asset firm telling a rapt crowd of the Western business and political elite that Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction would not only be a cash cow but would be touted as a capitalist success story \u2013 presumably something to congratulate themselves about at future breakfasts in Davos. For Fink, Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction presented not just a business opportunity but an ideological one. If Western political leaders saw the war in Ukraine as an occasion to reinvigorate EU and Nato enlargement, then Fink and his ilk viewed it as an opportunity to revive a waning faith in capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea sounds somehow familiar. Fink\u2019s words reflect the continuation of a more than 30-year project adopted by \u2013 and in some ways, imposed on \u2013 Ukraine and its neighbours. The \u201cdisaster capitalism\u201d of the current war was preceded by the administration of 1990s \u201cshock therapy\u201d, a series of radical neoliberal reforms following the fall of the Soviet Union, from which the country never fully recovered. The current war has introduced an innovation on the old formula: the fusion of neoliberal economic policies with cowboy advances in technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation. Wartime Ukraine has already seen a dramatic influx of Western donor funds, consultants, experts, engineers and Silicon Valley venture capital. The result has been radical experiments in the introduction of AI-enhanced platforms for mine clearance and the rapid collation of commercial satellite data (both supplied by Peter Thiel\u2019s Palantir); and economic strategies like the \u201cfast state\u201d, a Ukrainian government proposal that envisions a state so streamlined that it \u201cdisappears in one\u2019s own efficiency\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction will be an unimaginably daunting task. The World Bank recently assessed that it would cost close to $500bn. Beyond the staggering cost in human life, war has devastated the economy: in the first year of the conflict, the country lost between 30-35 per cent of its GDP. Poverty more than quadrupled and one in three families are now food insecure. Over 15 per cent of Ukraine\u2019s territory \u2013 comprising some of the most fertile farmland on Earth \u2013 is now contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction are being built now. Yet, as the political economist Oleksandr Svitych told me, the current strategy is misguided, reflecting \u201cthe global and still dominant liberal rationality, whereby everything must be modelled according to the market\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction is complicated by how it had already been mired in economic crises for years prior to Russia\u2019s war. When the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the early transition was ruinous. Privatisation of state property was rapid and largely arbitrary. An oligarchy crystallised in the 1990s, and proved to be one of the country\u2019s most resilient institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPost-Soviet transformation turned out to be de-modernising rather than modernising, with no new vector of development to replace a Soviet project which had itself been stagnating by the 1970s,\u201d the sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko writes in his book Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War. Through deindustrialisation, jobs disappeared. And soon, so did people. On the eve of independence, Ukraine had a population of 52 million; in 2020, it was just 44 million. Many of its well-educated, highly skilled labour force sought work abroad, and in 2020, Ukraine was one of the top recipients of migrant remittances in Europe with respect to GDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s party Servant of the People (SN) won power in 2019 in part due to his popular TV series of the same name, which satirised this post-Soviet neoliberal reforms\u201d was introduced, including budget cuts, sales of public property and slashing of labour protections. Meanwhile, technology was adopted as a symbol of the modern government, and a ministry of digital transformation was established. Though it would be easy to dismiss as a gimmick, the idea built on one of Ukraine\u2019s undeniable strengths: the country\u2019s burgeoning IT sector. IT exports tripled to nearly $7bn a year between 2016 and 2021 alone. The \u201cstart-up nation\u201d idea has become integral to Ukrainian national identity in wartime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet some of the government\u2019s early policies drew criticism. Beginning in 2020, Zelensky attempted to introduce reforms that would limit the role of trade unions and scale back regulations around hiring, firing and management. This drew backlash from the EU as it conflicted with the bloc\u2019s \u201csocial market economy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luke Cooper, Director of PeaceRep\u2019s Ukraine programme at the London School of Economics, said that \u201cwhile Ukraine\u2019s trade unions had initially been successful in mounting opposition to reforms to the labour code that reduced collective bargaining rights, these were passed after the full-scale invasion in the context of martial law (with protests forbidden)\u201d. The war also prompted further liberalisation, sometimes as a requirement of international aid: last year\u2019s $15.6bn loan from the International Monetary Fund was reportedly conditional on Kyiv cutting back on social expenditures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government\u2019s \u201cfast state\u201d scheme marries liberalisation with technology. The wildly popular app Diia, which was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), places \u201cthe state in a smartphone\u201d. It allows citizens to access a digital passport (the first in the world), birth certificate, register the birth of a child, and even report Russian collaborators. The app will also be critical to Ukraine\u2019s war reconstruction efforts, as users can use the app to log war damage to property. With typical bombast, Ukraine\u2019s Western partners are touting Diia as a revolutionary tool that will transform the globe. At an event showcasing the app in Washington last year, USAID administrator Samantha Power said that where Ukraine was known as the bread basket of Europe, the country would now also be renowned for the app, \u201can open source, digital public good\u201d, a gift to the world. That objective would be fulfilled with Washington\u2019s help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Western tech companies, the war was an opportunity to test their pioneering technologies in real time. The Silicon Valley firm Palantir has furnished Ukraine with cutting-edge AI that allows it to rapidly collate information from several sources, including commercial satellite data and app messages shared by soldiers on the ground. Previously, hundreds of analysts would have been required to do the same. Technology provided by Palantir can also map safe routes for Ukrainian drones, allowing them to circumvent air defences and Russian jammers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other Western companies have been assigned significant roles in Ukraine. Along with JP Morgan, BlackRock is assisting in the creation of a reconstruction bank, the Development Fund of Ukraine, which will be registered in Luxembourg; BlackRock will also coordinate investments in the economy. Ukraine \u201cshouldn\u2019t be talking to [BlackRock] or other big asset-manager funds whose model is very financialised and poorly calibrated to Ukraine\u2019s specific needs,\u201d Cooper at LSE told me. These needs include rebuilding critical infrastructure, providing housing to the internally displaced, and growing Ukraine\u2019s production capacity. Predictably, Russian officials have seized on BlackRock\u2019s involvement, claiming that Kyiv has \u201csold itself\u201d to American firms. (Of course, officials there have said nothing of their own country\u2019s long-running relationship with BlackRock, a major investor in Russian banking and energy enterprises until 2022.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Critics are wary that foreign donors have reinforced rather than challenged the prevailing neoliberal approach of Western firms. \u201cIf you read USAID\u2019s programmatic documentation, it emphasises the need for \u2018entrepreneurship\u2019, \u2018empowerment\u2019 and \u2018resilience\u2019,\u201d Svitych, the political economist, said. \u201cIt may seem natural and even humane that donors encourage Ukrainian citizens to take control of their lives and become self-sufficient. The downside of this approach, however, is that it downplays structural inequalities \u2013 such as poor public infrastructure or lack of adequate labour protections \u2013 and injustices which the state \u2013 not individuals \u2013 has the mandate and capacity to redress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Western donors have also promoted hollow anti-corruption politics, which play important functions in Ukraine. The World Bank defines corruption as \u201cthe of public office for private gain\u201d, but that definition shields the private sector is also employed as a catch-all excuse for the catastrophic failures of Ukraine\u2019s transition to capitalism. In this self-serving view, the system itself wasn\u2019t responsible; the failures of capitalism can be blamed on a few malign individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unsurprisingly, tech solutionism has also merged with anti-corruption politics: Diia has been touted as an antidote to corruption. As Zelensky has said of the app, \u201ca computer has no friends or godfathers, and doesn\u2019t take bribes\u201d. But it is also incapable of empathy, which may prove desirable when cutting social benefits. A \u201cnew social contract\u201d announced by the government in March 2023 envisions a reduced role of the state, slashing its support for citizens to a bare minimum. The new plan involves the digitisation of benefit payments as a way of \u201cstrengthening control\u201d over their allocation. In practice, this means that fewer people will be determined eligible for government assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet Cooper noted that there have also been tentative signs that the government is reversing some of the \u201cliberalisation excesses\u201d of recent years, such as rolling back unusually generous corporate tax rates. Cooper maintains that this shift was precipitated by wartime necessity. \u201cYou can\u2019t fight a war with free-market economics,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t make such enormous increases in defence spending without ending up with a state-dominated economy. And you can\u2019t do that without raising taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukrainian officials have also indicated that they might be more discerning about foreign investors. Last year, the finance minister Sergii Marchenko gave a speech at the London Ukraine Recovery Conference that reflected this shift. \u201cTraditionally, we were open to any form of money,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we are not. If you want to invest in Ukraine, you must accept the priorities of Ukraine.\u201d The nationalisation of strategic assets throughout the war has also prompted a backlash among some supporters in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A mong Ukraine\u2019s most daunting tasks will be convincing the 6.5 million citizens who have fled the war to return and rebuild the country. The government is in an unenviable position: to maintain interest from foreign investors, who are typically drawn to the region for its cheap labour force, it will also need to ensure Cooper stressed that the \u201cturbo liberal regime\u201d of the past must be abandoned for good. \u201cFundamental to all of this will be actively growing the incomes of the working population and not relying on the myth of \u2018trickle-down economics\u2019.\u201d The availability of good jobs will also be essential to reducing dependency on post- conflict foreign aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s recovery will take generations. There is no doubt that \u201cshock therapy 2.0\u201d has provided a valuable military, technological and economic testing ground for liberal ideologues, Western governments and Silicon Valley companies. But the more important question \u2013 whether these things will also deliver durable development, opportunity and security to Ukraine \u2013 leads to a far more ambiguous conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Originally published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/the-weekend-essay\/2024\/08\/the-neoliberal-battle-for-ukraines-reconstruction\">The New Statesman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The country\u2019s postwar future is almost as riven as the war itself.__ At a breakfast discussion at Davos in January 2023, the BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that Ukraine\u2019s postwar recovery could become \u201ca beacon to the rest of the world about the power of capitalism\u201d. The scene could have been a parody of Russian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"author-name":"Lily Lynch","choose-language":"EN","wds_primary_category":36,"wds_primary_alameda-themes":0,"wds_primary_projects":0,"wds_primary_dynamic-publications-cat":0,"wds_primary_type-tax":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[22,140,23,174],"alameda-themes":[166,168],"projects":[164],"dynamic-publications-cat":[],"type-tax":[56],"class_list":["post-9336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-type-article","tag-en","tag-lily-lynch","tag-ukraine","tag-war","alameda-themes-development-and-de-development","alameda-themes-sovereignty-order-and-justice","projects-surplus-humanity","type-tax-geopolitics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22110,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336\/revisions\/22110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"alameda-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/alameda-themes?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"projects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/projects?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"dynamic-publications-cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dynamic-publications-cat?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"type-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-tax?post=9336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}