Spodaj je dober komentar v Naked capitalism o izidu nemških volitev in o novem norem evropskem načrtu o 700 milijardah evrov, ki naj bi jih – po napovedi nemške zunanje ministrice v odhodu – EU države na podlagi skupne zadolžitve namenile za vojaško pomoč Ukrajini. Načrt je nor. Prvič, ker bi to pomenilo, da bi članice EU morale del svojega proračuna odtegniti (1) domačim izdatkom za socialne zadeve, (2) vlaganjem v družbeno in prometno infrastrukturo in/ali (3) vlaganjem v razvoj. Po poročilu Maria Draghija bi morale države EU namenjati letno okrog 800 milijard evrov za gospodarsko in tehnološko prestrukturiranje, sicer bo Evropa še pospešila tehnološko zaostajanje za Kitajsko in ZDA. No, očitno bo orožje za Ukrajino imelo prednost pred razvojem. 

In drugič, teh 700 milijard evrov ne bo opazno pospešilo gospodarske rasti v Evropi, (1) ker je multiplikator vlaganj v obrambne namene manjši od 1 (izdatki za pokojnine imajo multiplikator okrog 1.4, izdatki za infrastrukturo pa blizu 2) in (2) ker Evropa 78 % orožja za lastne potrebe uvozi, od tega 63 % iz ZDA (kot izhaja iz poročila Maria Draghija). Z drugimi besedami, države EU so tik pred tem, da se odločijo s 700 milijardami evrov stimulirati ameriško in izraelsko vojaško industrijo. Norost brez primere.

Očitno je razum izgubil domovinsko pravico v EU. Na drugi strani imamo ameriškega predsednika, ki ga imajo evropski voditelji za norega. Toda Trump je (ob že uveljavljenem ukrepu prenehanja vojaške pomoči Ukrajini) napovedal zmanjšanje vojaških izdatkov za polovico in da bo v to prepričal preostali dve velesili – Kitajsko in Rusijo.

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Spodaj je dobra kronologija dogodkov, ki so vodili do začetka vojne v Ukrajini. Napisal jo je Leonid Ragozin, novinar iz Latvije, ki je pisal za The Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeero itd. Splača se prebrati, ker pomaga razumeti, kdaj in zakaj je prišlo do preobrata v politiki Zelenskega glede mirne rešitve državljanske vojne v Donbasu in kakšna je bila vloga Trumpa in Bidna pri tem ter zakaj je Trump glede Ukrajine mirovnik. Vse stvari, ki se zgodijo, imajo zelo dolg rep.

(Drugje v slovenskih medijih tega seveda ne boste zasledili. Z razlogom)

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Last month, Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the war in Ukraine “would never have started” if he’d been president. At first blush, this seemed like a classic Trumpian boast—yet another off-hand exaggeration from the mind that brought us statements like “I alone can fix it” and “nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president.” But, in this case, Trump may well be right. A close examination of the events leading up to the Ukraine war suggests that the conflict would have been avoided if Trump had defeated Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Trump pursued plenty of tough policies toward Moscow during his first term, including the imposition of new sanctions and expulsion of a number of Russian diplomats, but he also acted as a restraint on the hawkishness of Washington’s security establishment. Such moderation ceased under Trump’s successor. As soon as Joe Biden moved into the White House, Washington adopted a far more confrontational stance toward Russia. Kyiv followed suit. This was a fateful pivot, one that has received too little attention in stories of the conflict. By insisting on a policy of high-handed intransigence, Biden and the hawks in Washington led millions of people into disaster.

In April 2019, during the third year of Trump’s first presidency, Ukrainians elected Volodymyr Zelensky as their new president. The former comedian had no background in government, but he ran on a clear and popular promise: to end a grinding, low-intensity war in eastern Ukraine. That war had begun in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea, and pro-Russian separatists—backed by Moscow—seized control of parts of eastern Ukraine. Unlike his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, a favorite of the Washington foreign policy establishment, Zelensky presented himself as a peacemaker and pragmatist. He promised to respect the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population (of which he was part) and pledged to negotiate directly with Moscow to bring about an end to the fighting.

For his first year and a half in office, Zelensky acted on those promises. In July of 2019, he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone and pushed for negotiations with European mediation. The two men also discussed a potential exchange of prisoners. In December 2019, Zelensky met with Putin in Paris, and the two agreed to negotiate a comprehensive ceasefire. By March of 2020, Zelensky was so optimistic about reaching a settlement that he told the Guardian he would end the conflict by December of that year.

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This should be absolutely common sense, and failing to do so would be a strategic mistake of the highest order by Europe.

There’s a fascinating parallel to be made between the current geopolitical situation and that of China’s “Six Fallen States” story during the Warring States period.

Su Xun, a famous scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote about it: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/101547

This was a time when several Chinese states – in fact all 6 of them, hence the name “6 fallen states” – fell to Qin, another state which as a consequence managed to unify China for the first time under the Qin dynasty about 2,300 years ago (which is where the name “China” comes from, incidentally).

How did Qin achieve this? Interestingly not so much through military defeat as through a policy of appeasement by the other states – where they progressively ceded territory for what they thought was “buying peace”. To quote Su Xun, “giving lands to Qin to gain peace [was] just like carrying firewood to put out a fire, the fire will go on as long as the firewood is being supplied”. Su Xun also noted that the six states were “overwhelmed by their enemy’s bluster” – a psychological tactic that led them to hand over resources, simultaneously weakening themselves while strengthening Qin.

These six states, despite their collective strength which far exceeded that of Qin, were gradually consumed by their own strategic myopia: some tried to buy security through submission, others aligned with the aggressor against their natural allies, while the rest fought alone and fell one by one.

In this instance China and European countries together are obviously natural allies as none of them would – theoretically – want their sovereignty to be challenged by the US. Neither wants stuff like trade wars, ceding territory (like Greenland for Europe), digital colonization, etc. So it would make perfect sense for them to maintain independent relations and sometimes work jointly to pressure the US when their interests align. If they work together, there’s very little Trump can do to intimidate them, as they make up more than double of the US’s GDP.

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David Goldman v Asia Times:

“Betrayed!,” shouts the headline in Der Spiegel, Germany’s top left-wing news outlet.

“Trump’s embrace of Putin is a Molotov-Ribbentrop crisis for Europe,” declares Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the London Daily Telegraph.

The putatively pro-Trump New York Post devoted its Feb. 21 front page to an extended screed against the US president by neocon wordsmith Douglas Murray.

From the howling in the war camp, you’d think it was the end of the world. But it’s not the end of the world: It’s just the end of them. Nothing fails like failure, and the twenty-year campaign to launch regime change in Russia from Ukraine failed miserably, as the Russian Federation built more weapons than the whole of NATO combined. Relentless Russian gains hollowed out the Ukraine Army.

The war party’s only hope is to blame their failure on Trump, and to spin out the conflict until it becomes a permanent state of war. 

Trump has offered a grand design for a global builddown of armaments that would allow the United States to cut its defense budget in half and avert an eventual American debt crisis. That would leave the permanent national security establishment in Washington, Brussels, and London irrelevant and unemployed. The establishment won’t go down without a fight.

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Ne spreminja se le liga prvakov, temveč tudi okolje, v katerem posluje Uefa, v katerem se igra liga prvakov in v katerem navsezadnje živimo. Dogajajo se geopolitične spremembe, vsako leto je mogoče zaznati tektonske kapitalske premike. Kdo v tem kontekstu pridobiva in kdo izgublja – katera celina ali blok?

Vsekakor izgublja Evropa (resda ne v nogometu), ki jo duši drastična regulacija. Ob tem mi ne moremo biti v vojni z vsemi in ne moremo pridigati celemu svetu, kako mora biti nekaj urejeno, saj so dejstva drugačna. Z novim predsednikom ZDA smo dobili še nekoga, ki razmišlja o uvedbi carin, kar bo še poslabšalo konkurenčnost evropskega gospodarstva, ne vidim nobene moči evropske politike. Ne vidim niti enotnosti. Evropa bo na žalost še izgubljala, in to po lastni krivdi.

Kaj bi morali spremeniti?

Morali bi se poenotiti, ne vem pa, ali je to mogoče. Morali bi se odpreti in trga ne bi smeli tako močno regulirati. Nihče, niti Kitajska, ne bi smel biti – in ni – naš sovražnik, vse bi morali obravnavati kot partnerje. Pridigamo drugim, kako bi se morali obnašati, obenem pa imamo sami problem prav s tem.

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Morda smo zašli na področje vsiljene politične korektnosti. Imajo ljudje tega dovolj in pričakujejo predvsem praktične rešitve oziroma preproste odgovore?

Vsi imamo dovolj politične korektnosti. Pri nas, v zahodnem svetu, svobode govora ni več. Ne moreš več povedati, kaj si misliš. Na eni strani so desni populisti, ki imajo preprosto retoriko – migranti vam jemljejo službe in se ukvarjajo s kriminalom, zaradi propagande LGBT družin ne bo več, uničili vam bodo otroke in tako naprej. To je tako poenostavljena populistična retorika, da jo lahko razume vsakdo. Na drugi strani je skoraj vsa zahodna mainstream politika (ta politika ni ne leva ne desna) in večina mainstream medijev, ki nagovarjajo ljudi z intelektualno-arogantne višine.

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Kaj se zgodi, če izpade elektro omrežje? V celotni državi, celotni Evropi. Zaradi kibernetskega napada na operacijske sisteme elektroenergetskega sistema. To je tema romana Marca Elsberga z naslovom Blackout (2012). Pred leti mi jo je podaril prijatelj iz IT panoge. Na začetku je tema in mraz. Ne delajo telefoni in internet. Ni pitne vode, ker ne delujejo vodne črpalke. Ne delujejo bencinske črpalke. Po enem dnevu se začne kvariti hrana v zmrzovalnikih in hladilnikih. Trgovine so zaprte, ker ni dostave. Drugi dan se začne ropanje trgovin. Ko zmanjka dizla za agregate, se zaprejo bolnišnice. Ljudje na intenzivni negi umirajo. Tretji dan je splošni kaos. Začne se vojna za hrano.

Če niste brali romana Marca Elsberga, je na HBO miniserija v šestih delih.

Markus Reisner, častnik avstrijske vojne, že tri leta ponuja izjemno kvalitetne in dokaj objektivne analize ukrajinske vojne. Vedno se mi je zdelo zanimivo, da mu poveljstvo avstrijske vojske dopušča te analize javno objavljati.

Spodaj je zadnja analiza ukrainskega purgatorija. Bodite pozorni na zadnji del, kjer diskutira dve opciji: mirovna pogajanja ali vnaprejšnja predaja Ukrajine (preemptive capitulation). In poglejte sklep glede vloge Evrope po Jalti 2.0, ki se pravkar dogaja, v kateri Evropa ni subjekt, ampak objekt dogovora svetovnih voditeljev. Evropa ni za mizo, pač pa na mizi.

Če ste prezrli kolumno Javierja Blasa ta teden v Bloombergu, je spodaj nekaj odlomkov. Blas je malce raziskal strateške dokumente in ugotovil, da Ukrajina sploh nima tega silnega bogastva nahajališč mineralov redke zemlje, ki jih je Zelenski letos ponudil Bidnu za nadaljevanje vojaške pomoči in ki jih zdaj želi Trump rezervirati za ameriška podjetja. Ukrajina nima niti plina in nafte za svoje potrebe. Tudi če bi Ukrajina po nekem čudežu imela 20 % svetovnih zalog redke zemlje, bi to pomenilo okrog 3 milijarde dolarjev letnih prihodkov oziroma ZDA bi prišle do željenih 500 milijard dolarjev v zameno za zaščito Ukrajine v 166 letih.

Torej Zelenski je ponujal nekaj, česar efektivno nima in Trump zahteva to nekaj, česar Ukrajina nima.

What Ukraine has is scorched earth; what it doesn’t have is rare earths. Surprisingly, many people — not least, US President Donald Trump — seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment. It’s a folly.

It’s not the first time that Washington has gotten its geology wrong in a war zone. Back in 2010, the US announced it had discovered $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including some crucial for electric-car batteries, like lithium. The Pentagon went as far as describing Afghanistan as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

All very important stuff, the kind of geo-economic shock that redraws the global political map. But it was, as many said then, and as everyone knows now, a complete fantasy. The same applies to Ukraine’s alleged riches.

Ukraine Doesn’t Have Rare Earths

Despite the talk about its huge potential, Ukraine isn’t known to hold any reserves of the main rare earths elements sought after by Donald Trump.

If the focus in Afghanistan was largely copper and lithium, key to the electrification of everything, the spotlight in Ukraine is on rare earths, a collection of 17 elements that high school chemistry students would remember for their tongue-twisting names. The list includes the likes of praseodymium, dysprosium and promethium.

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Jeffrey Sachs je druga oseba, ki jo cenim zaradi intelekta in intelektualne poštenosti. Že pred vojno in zadnja tri leta vojne v Ukrajini konsistentno navaja zgodovinska dejstva in razlaga, zakaj in kako je prišlo do vojne v Ukrajini.

Spodaj je najprej njegova kronologija zgodovinskih dejstev, ki je vodila do vojne v Ukrajini (vključno z njegovim klicem v Belo hišo decembra 2021 in zagotavljanjem Bele hiše, da Ukrajina ne bo sprejeta v Nato ter da bo Bela hiša kljub temu provocirala Rusijo z (navidezno) odprtimi vrati za ukrajino, ne glede na posledice), …

… nato pa še nedavni govor Sachsa v evropskem parlamentu, kjer je dodatno pojasnil ta klic z Jackom Sullivanom decembra 2021, iz katerega je Sachs ugotovil, da ZDA forsirajo vojno glede stvari, s katero sploh ne mislijo resno (sprejem Ukrajine v Nato).

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Cenim ljudi z intelektom in intelektualno poštenostjo. Ljudi, ki znajo objektivno pretehtati dejstva in izluščiti bistvo. Tudi če ne gre v prid njihovim vrednotam in prepričanjem. In tudi če gre kontra splošnemu prepričanju. In ne maram ljudi, ki se prodajajo kot intelektualci, čeprav zgolj prodajajo ideologijo, preoblečeno v “kvazi analize” in začinjene s “kredibilnostjo” lastne blagovne znamke. Zelo malo je pravih intelektualcev. In John Mearsheimer je eden izmed njih. Spodaj je njegovo predavanje iz septembra 2015, leto in pol po Majdanu, glede konflikta v Ukrajini.

Pred enim desetletjem je bilo jasno, kako se bo končalo za Ukrajino, če bo sledila ameriškim interesom in se zapletla v vojno z Rusijo. Eno so ameriške snubitvene obljube, nekaj povsem drugega je realnost bojevanja proti največji jedrski sili in nekaj tretjega je potem račun, ki ga izstavijo Američani za “nekaj, česar niso mogli zagotoviti”. Absolutno perverzno in nemoralno je

Poskušajte premisliti zadnjih 11 let (od Majdana naprej), kaj je Ukrajina z insceniranim pučem dobila in kakšno ceno je doslej plačala in kakšno ceno bo plačevala od tukaj do večnosti za ameriško zaščito. Bilanca je globoko negativna. In ta bes Ukrajincev se bo preusmeril proti tistim, ki so Ukrajino spravili v to mizerijo.