Nagorno-Karabakh

So this just happened: https://eurasianet.org/nagorno-karabakh-surrenders-to-azerbaijan 

Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the first international geopolitical conflicts I became aware of in the post-Soviet early 1990s. It helped shape my interest in geopolitics along with HW’s Iraq War, the IRA/ETA insurgencies (and the coming-of-age European institutions), as well as a band of former Afghan mujahideen who would become Al Qaeda. I remember my PolSci 10 professor being surprised that enough of us in the class knew about Nagorno-Karabakh, where it was and why there was a conflict. That was in 1996.

Fast-forward to 2007 and I was in Baku for a project doing a household survey on poverty and remittances. While the local consultants—Vagif and Yashar—were touring me around the city, we passed by some poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, with people peeking out tenement housing and the car harangued by beggars. They said the neighbourhood was for internally displaced persons—refugees—from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict about a decade ago. These people, they said, were kicked out of their homes by the Armenian victors of that conflict who set up the Republic of Artsakh and its capital Stepanakert. Next on the tour were the natural gas plantations along the Caspian Sea.

Fast-forward again to 2020 and, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a renewed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This time, with a few decades’ worth of Azeri petrodollars going into military spending, plus a Turkey eager to bring back the days of the Ottomans in more ways than one, and a Russia more focussed on its Western flank than the Caucasus, Azerbaijan had the upper hand. A 6-week conflict with Armenia ended with newly (re)occupied territory in Artsakh and a Russia-brokered peace deal to keep Stepanakert connected to Yerevan through the Lachin Corridor.

Now comes 2023. Russia is distracted with a protracted war in Ukraine and couldn’t be bothered with a conflict in some Azeri-owned boondocks, if one goes by international recognition. Azerbaijan took the initiative, starving Artsakh for months by blockading the Lachin Corridor; any trade or aid going into Artsakh had to go through Azeri-controlled territory. With a weakened and hungry Artsakh, a distracted Russia, and an Armenia still hurting from 2020, it was only a matter of time before Azerbaijan got rid of a 3-decade pain in the neck. And so it did.

Let them be Billionaires

So I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations today. According to Forbes’ 37th Annual World’s Billionaires List for 2023, the world’s 2,640 billionaires are worth a total of $12.2 trillion (yes, with a T). Now it got me thinking: what if we could somehow redistribute all that wealth but—since we’re being nice and we assume all this wealth was somehow honestly and ethically earned through personal talent, grit, and kind luck—still allow each of the billionaires to keep $1 billion each?

Now, before you cry for all those 2,640 people whose wealth we’re redistributing, please remember that reducing their wealth to $1 billion each by no means makes them paupers: they literally remain billionaires. To put this in perspective, the net worth of the entire British royal family—that’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla down to those minor royals with funny hats—is about $500 million. Even after the wealth redistribution, each of our billionaires would still have double the net worth of the entire House of Windsor. So rather than making them paupers, our rather generous redistribution scheme leaves them with more than a kingly sum.

So, back to the envelope’s backside. If we do take that wealth and leave those 2,640 billionaires with $1 billion each, we will have $9.56 trillion for redistribution or redistributive social spending. So what can we do with this pot? Well, a lot:

·       Give about $1,200 to everyone currently alive on this planet
·       Provide $14,507 to each of the 659 million people living below the international poverty line of $2.15 per person per day
·       Fund the UNHCR ($9.1 billion in 2022) 100 times over and give refugees some proper living conditions
·       Feed the world’s 828 million people living in hunger
·       Close the estimated global healthcare financing gap of $176 billion per year for half a century
·       Build 82.4 million Singapore-style public housing flats, which is more than enough to house the more than 100 million estimated homeless people around the world
·       Eliminate the $1.75 trillion total accumulated student debt in the US as of 2023, and have enough left over for future generations of college students
·       Pay reparations for African American slavery ($4.7 trillion estimate) and Native American genocide ($3.4 billion settlement and counting) several times over
·       Match total charitable and philanthropic donations ($485 million in the US in 2022) many times over
·       Etc. What good for humanity can you do with $9,560,000,000,000?

Or the billionaires could turn them into gold coins, put them in a large vault, and swim in it just like Scrooge McDuck. That looked fun and not painful at all.