The Costa Rica model
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During a discussion of what Russia might mean by demilitarising Ukraine, John Kiriakou introduced an existing arrangement in which a state has no armed forces at all, and then explained why he did not expect it to be available here.

The arrangement

Kiriakou described Costa Rica as the working example. The country, he said, "just doesn't have a military. It just doesn't exist." In its place there is "a national police force, but there is no military. There's no navy."

He gave the maritime provision in exact terms: "They have a little coast guard with, you know, one boat in the Atlantic and one boat in the Pacific, but that's it." The specificity is the point of the example, total demilitarisation is not a theoretical condition but an administrative one, and it has a concrete inventory.

Why it would not apply

Kiriakou raised the model conditionally, and Ted Rall supplied the objection immediately: the West would never tolerate it, because Ukraine is a major weapons purchaser. Kiriakou agreed and went further, adding that Ukraine is also "a major weapons manufacturer."

Asked what Ukraine actually makes, he answered that its output is prolific: "with the 9 millimeter and the Kalashnikov, they have factories just pumping them out." He attributed this to Soviet inheritance, drawing the parallel with Romania, which he said manufactures "billions and billions of 9 millimeter ammunition every year."

The argument in outline

The passage sets a demilitarised state against a manufacturing one. Kiriakou's implicit reasoning is that demilitarisation is available to a country whose armed forces are only a cost, and unavailable to one whose armaments industry is an export sector and a customer relationship with its allies. The Costa Rican coast guard's two boats and the Ukrainian small-arms factories are offered as the two ends of that range.

Kiriakou had prefaced the whole discussion by saying he could not identify Russia's motive for continuing the fighting, and that the Russian position over recent weeks did not make sense to him, the Costa Rican aside being one of several possibilities he canvassed rather than a prediction.

See also

- Ukraine as a proxy war
- Sanctions And The Russian Adjustment
- Volodymyr Zelensky
- Ted Rall
