Glede na zadnje spremembe v evropski zeleni paradigmi lahko parafraziramo Gallilea: In vendar se je začelo vrteti. V podnebno-energetske agendo se vrača duh realizma. Postalo je jasno, da večina članic ne bo izpolnila podnebnih ciljev brez večje naslonitve na hidro in jedrsko energijo.

Prve spremembe v paradigmi so se zgodile lani s spremembo podnebne taksonomije EU, kjer je bila med trajnostne vire vrnjena tudi jedrska energija kot premostitvena tehnologija v prehodu k podnebno nevtralni družbi. To je pomembno predvsem iz vidika, da lahko države jedrsko energijo vključijo v svoje nacionalne energetsko podnebne načrte, da lahko tudi subvencionirajo naložbe v jedrske elektrarne na podoben način kot obnovljive vire in da lahko tudi zasebni investitorji te naložbe uvrstijo med trajnostne, ki zadovoljujejo ESG kriterije.

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Zelo dobre poante Stephena Roacha. Kaj mislite, kdo bo zmagal? Doktrina Sun Tzuja ali Georgea Busha mlajšega?

Roughly 2,500 years earlier, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu offered an equally profound perspective. In The Art of War, Sun wrote, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory,” stressing the complementarity of these two aspects of military decision-making. But Sun also counseled, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” – an admonition not to fixate on short-termism.

Notwithstanding Porter’s role in shaping the modern debate about strategy, today’s American body politic has little patience for long-term thinking. This was not always the case. George Kennan, first as a diplomat and later as an academic, devised the containment strategy that the United States used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Andrew Marshall, as the head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, pushed the envelope on US military strategy. And Henry Kissinger, of course, was the ultimate practitioner of what has been dubbed “Grand Strategy.”

But these were exceptions, not the rule. Ever since former US President George H.W. Bush famously mocked “the vision thing” ahead of the 1988 presidential campaign, strategy has been held in low regard in Washington. The real-time feedback of ever fickle focus-group polling has become the North Star of US policy decisions.

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Zelo zanimiv komentar v Eurointelligence, ki primerja starost največjih 40 nemških (146 let) in 5 največjih ameriških podjetij (manj kot 50) let in to povezuje z manjšo inovativnostjo. Starejša podjetja so bolj konzervativna in manj inovirajo, mlada podjetja pa se lahko prebijejo in zrastejo zgolj preko inovacij. Vendar zadeva ni tako enostavna. Ni problem v tem, da ima Evropa stara podjetja, problem je, ker okolje ne spodbuja rasti in razvoja novih, inovativnih podjetij. Münchau v komentarju pravilno opozori, da je problem Evrope (1) v skorajda nedelujočem kapitalskem trgu, ki za razliko od ZDA ne išče tako intenzivno visokih donosov v startupih; (2) v visokih korporativnih davkih, prek katerih je mogoče sofinancirati socialno državo in (3) v pomanjkanju ciljnih državnih subvencij tehnološkim podjetjem (za razliko od ZDA, kjer so ključne nove tehnologije nastale zaradi kanaliziranja vojaških izdatkov v podjetja, ki so jih razvijala). Kitajska je tukaj podobna ZDA, vendar za faktor 10-krat bolj intenzivna. Zato sta Kitajska in ZDA tehnološka voditelja, Evropa pa vedno bolj zaostaja.

No, in iz te perspektive nič ne kaže, da bi se v Evropi v bodoče kaj spremenilo, kajti evropski socialni model se ne bo spremenil, EU pa je tvorba majhnih nacionalnih enot, s 27 različnimi nacionalnimi prioritetami, kar ne omogoča kritične mase pri javnem financiranju novih tehnologij (denimo na vojaškem področju). Čez 10 let bo povprečna starost evropskih podjetij za 10 let višja.

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Ob prvi obletnici razstrelitve treh izmed 4 cevi Severnega toka 1 in 2 je Pulitzerjev nagrajenec Seymour Hersh objavil dodatna pojasnila, zakaj naj bi ZDA razstrelile Severni tok. Niso ga razstrelile, ker bi želele Putina prestrašiti pred agresijo, pač pa, da se Nemčija sredi zime ne bi premislila in začela spet uvažati ruski plin. Ni šlo za politični pritisk na Putina, pač pa na Nemčijo, da ta ne bi prenehala s sankcioniranjem uvoza ruskega plina.

I do not know much about covert CIA operations—no outsider can—but I do understand that the essential component of all successful missions is total deniability. The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months it took to plan and carry out the destruction of three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea a year ago left no traces—not a hint of the team’s existence—other than the success of their mission.

Deniability, as an option for President Joe Biden and his foreign policy advisers, was paramount. No significant information about the mission was put on a computer, but instead typed on a Royal or perhaps a Smith Corona typewriter with a carbon copy or two, as if the Internet and the rest of the online world had yet to be invented. The White House was isolated from the goings-on near Oslo; various reports and updates from the field were directly provided to CIA Director Bill Burns, who was the only link between the planners and the president who authorized the mission to take place on September 26, 2022. Once the mission was completed, the typed papers and carbons were destroyed, thus leaving no physical trace—no evidence to be dug up later by a special prosecutor or a presidential historian. You could call it the perfect crime.

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Speech by Lord Robert Skidelsky — economist and award-winning biographer of John Maynard Keynes — in the House of Lords, September 21, 2023:

“My Lords, I thank the government for giving this all too rare opportunity to discuss the most fateful foreign policy issue of our day. I see that I have been bracketed with one or two other notable troublemakers; I am very happy to be speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

I feel more isolated in this House when I speak on foreign policy than on any other subject, despite my strong feeling that what I am saying urgently needs to be said. I was one of a handful of Peers who opposed NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The three main parties supported both policies. I managed to avoid speaking about Afghanistan in this House, though not writing an article in the Guardian headed ‘Seven pointless years in Afghanistan’, in which I argued that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban was the only way to bring an unwinnable war to an end. I clearly have an excellent track record in what my noble friend Lord Owen calls appeasement.

Before staking out my distinctive position on Ukraine, let me emphasise one point on which I think we are all agreed: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was an act of aggression against an independent state contrary to the UN charter and fully deserving of the condemnation it received in this country and around the world. I would go further and say that it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder, since it achieved the exact reverse of what Putin intended, alienating Ukraine irretrievably from Russia. As I said a year ago, you do not call Ukrainians your brothers and then try to bomb them into submission. That is common ground.

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Kratek odgovor: Zaradi zavestno sprovocirane vojne v Ukrajini s strani ZDA in seveda zaradi posledične ruske agresije. Spodaj je dober vpogled v zavedanje ameriških obveščevalnih služb, da je zgolj vprašanje časa, kdaj se bo Rusija smrtonosno odzvala na ameriško stopnjevanje vojaške ekspanzije v Ukrajino.

(še n-tič poudarjam, da ne opravičujem ruske agresije na Ukrajino, pa čeprav je bila ta sprovocirana z dejanji ZDA, medtem ko je bila ameriška agresija na Irak, Libijo, Afganistan itd. nesprovocirana s strani napadenih držav, pač pa sfabricirana s strani ZDA. Torej med temi agresijami so razlike in kontekst je pomemben, vendar to samega akta agresije velikih držav ne opravičuje.)

In an interesting speech about the way US imperial aggression provokes violence around the world, antiwar commentator Scott Horton made reference to an April 2022 article from Yahoo News that had previously escaped my attention.

The article is titled “In closer ties to Ukraine, U.S. officials long saw promise and peril,” and it features named and unnamed veterans of the US intelligence cartel saying that long before the February 2022 invasion they were fully aware that the US had “provoked” Russia in Ukraine and created a powderkeg situation that would likely lead to war.

“By last summer [meaning the summer of 2021], the baseline view of most U.S. intelligence community analysts was that Russia felt sufficiently provoked over Ukraine that some unknown trigger could set off an attack by Moscow,” a former CIA official told Yahoo News’ Zach Dorfman, who adds, “(The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.)”

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In to že če gledamo samo predelavo materialov za baterije, proizvodnjo baterij in proizvodnjo električnih avtov. Kaj šele, če pogledamo razvoj jedrskih reaktorjev (ki so ob hidro energiji edini pravi stanovitni vir brezogljične električne energije) ali kitajske naložbe v (sedaj tako moderne, vendar srednjeročno ogljično problematične in energetsko nevzdržne) solarne in vetrne elektrarne.

Ne samo glede Ukrajine, tudi glede obnovljivih virov in jedrske energije se dogaja “Minskyjev moment” – dramatičen preobrat po dolgem obdobju zanikanja dejstev. Microsoft je začel s kampanjo najemanja jedrskih strokovnj

Zakaj? Ker ne zaupajo več, da bo javno omrežje, v katerega se vključuje vse več nestanovitnih in občasnih obnovljivih virov sonca in vetra, vzdržalo in lahko 24/7 ponujalo stalno in dovolj električne energije.

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Word is out: Microsoft is plunging ahead on nuclear energy.

They want a fleet of reactors powering new data centers. And now they’re hiring people from the traditional nuclear industry to get it done.

Why?

Lack of stable long-term power, whether clean or dirty, is constraining Microsoft’s growth. They need to build big data centers that consume electricity all the time and the old assumption that somebody else’s reliable plants will always be around to firm up your wind and solar is falling apart.

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