Pecunia nōn olet: Taking advantage of wartime opportunities

A commentary by NS

According to Reuters, this month Latvia bought their first batch of diesel from China instead of from Russia because EU sanctions on Russian diesel kicked in.

Of course that's still Russian diesel; it just traveled more miles around the world than you probably ever will. China increased its diesel exports by 50% over the past couple of months. As one does.

But think about the children. I mean climate change. Can we just make it so EU countries continue to buy Russian diesel and instead just send some money to China? It would be the same effect, except there would be a lot less pollution and there would be no CO2 emissions for all that shipping from Russia to China and then from China to the EU. Such a waste.

Reminds me of a story I heard about the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. Now I don't know 100% if it is true, it's kind of third hand, but my gut tells me it is.

As you may or may not remember, there were three sides to the war in Bosnia in the 1990s: Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. They equally hated each other, but Bosnians and Croats sort of allied against the Serbs for convenience, Serbs were the biggest, and so to counter them Croats and Bosnians united not because they particularly liked each other but because that way they could counter the Serbs.

That of course did not stop some Croatians in Bosnia from selling weapons and ammunition to the Serbs. Business is business and money is money. So in the story I heard some Croats in Bosnia were selling artillery shells to Serbs in Bosnia, so Serbs could bomb Bosnians who were allies of the Croats. That went on for a while but shipping those shells through the mountainous terrain and checkpoints by various independent warlords in Bosnia is fraught with all kinds of business risk and insuring the shipment with Lloyds of London was not quite an option. Lots of "packages" would never arrive.

So after a while the Serbs suggested to their Croat vendors that maybe it would be far more efficient if instead of shipping the shells they could just give them coordinates where they need to shell (their allies) Bosnians. And so it was. Rather then ship artillery shells to Serbs who would use them to bomb Bosnians, the Croats did it instead, on Monday. On Tuesday they would then join their allies Bosnians to attack the Serbs together.

And you probably think, no, that didn't happen.

Yes it did. If you think it couldn’t happen, you don't know war. That is not even the craziest story from that war.

We live in interesting times.