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John Mearsheimer: Ukraine Salon
The Biden Administration is engulfed in a staggeringly expensive folly in Ukraine with no forseeable good outcomes. John Mearsheimer will argue twin themes: First, we are in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West versus Russia – see the other as an existential threat. That makes a workable peace agreement beyond reach. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict that is likely to have a variety of terrible consequences. The worst possible outcome is a nuclear war, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.
Second, Russia is going to win the war, although it is not going to decisively defeat Ukraine. It will end up, however, conquering a large swath of Ukrainian territory and making it part of Russia, while at the same time turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state.
The Committee would not be holding this salon over Ukraine if we had been faithful to constitutional processes. The systematic provision of $113 billion in military assistance to Ukraine in its war with Russia makes the United States a co-belligerent requiring a congressional declaration. But no co-belligerency declaration has been initiated by Congress nor sought by President Joe Biden. If Congress were required to vote, it would balk at co-belligerency as it balked in 2013 when President Barack Obama asked for a declaration of war against Syria and as it balked in 1999 when President Bill Clinton asked for a declaration of war against Serbia.
G7 in ameriška hegemonija sta zgodovina
Martin Wolf, glavni ekonomski komentator v Financial Timesu:
Moreover, both the “unipolar” moment of the US and the economic dominance of the G7 are history. True, the latter is still the most powerful and cohesive economic bloc in the world. It continues, for example, to produce all the world’s leading reserve currencies. Yet, between 2000 and 2023, its share in global output (at purchasing power) will have fallen from 44 to 30 per cent, while that of all high-income countries will have fallen from 57 to 41 per cent. Meanwhile, China’s share will have risen from 7 to 19 per cent. China is now an economic superpower. Via its Belt and Road Initiative it has become a huge investor in (and creditor of) developing countries, though, predictably, it is having to deal with the consequent bad debts so familiar to G7 countries. For some emerging and developing countries, China is a more important economic partner than the G7: Brazil is one example. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva may have attended the G7, but he cannot sensibly ignore China’s heft.
Kaj lahko spremenijo F-16?
Pričakovati čudeže od nekaj zastarelih in inferiornih letal z doletom 500 km, brez ukrajinskih vzletišč in brez zračnih tankerjev bi bilo precej naivno. Ampak tukaj gre za PR učinke. …dokler jih Rusi ne sklatijo, kot so v staro železje spremenili čudežne Himarse in Patriote. Eden izmed dobrih zapisov o specifiki F-16 je spodaj.
Je morda kdo pomislil na začetek mirovnih pogovorov? Ali pa mora za ameriške interese prej umreti še zadnjih nekaj deset tisoč ukrajinskih vojakov, ki so še ostali od začetnih +300 tisoč vojakov?
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A few days ago U.S. President Joe Biden announced the training of Ukrainian pilots for the F-16 multirole fighter aircraft:
President Joe Biden told G7 leaders on Friday that the US would join in efforts to train Ukraine’s pilots on fourth generation fighter jets including the F-16s, a senior administration official told CNN on Friday.
This has obviously been in the planning for some time. The timing of the announcement at the G7 summit was simply chosen to maximize the propaganda value for Biden.
The process we have seen has repeated itself again and again. As pro-Ukrainian blogger (with no military knowledge) describes it:
This has clearly become a proxy war between Russia and NATO, supercharging the political considerations inherent to any war. Ukraine’s goal is to wheedle as much military aid as humanly possibly out of NATO, especially the United States. The United States’ goal is more complex: give enough aid to push Russia back, but not so much that its proxy war with Russia escalates into an actual one.This dynamic has created a Hunger Games scenario where Ukraine is constantly playing to the cameras to cajole extra gifts from the wealthy sponsors who watch its every move over the internet in real time. I had decided against using this analogy until I saw Ukrainians themselves using it. There is something grotesque and sobering about finding yourself in this position, and writing about it. But it is what it is.
Orbanov slalom med pridigami good guys, permisivnostjo bad guys in nacionalnim interesom
Zabavno
Novi BRICS
South Africa reported that applications for joining the BRICS are received almost weekly. According to Anil Suklal, Ambassador-at-Large for Asia and BRICS at the South African Foreign Ministry, we are talking about 30 countries. At the moment, BRICS consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. News portal NewZimbabwe reported last week, citing internal BRICS documents, that joining the group is now sought by:
Greece: another chapter
Po končanju waterboardinga Grčije s strani trojke je relativni napredek velik, toda Grčija je danes še vedno 20% pod ravnijo pred začetkom finančne krize:
“Nevertheless, this relative improvement in the economy is a key reason why the ND is likely to win. But the emphasis is on relative. The recent fast GDP growth since COVID is coming from a really low level of GDP. The Greek economy remains still some 20% smaller than before the Great Recession and euro debt crisis. And the recent investment rise is mostly in unproductive real estate investment. “
Greece has a general election today. The conservative New Democracy party under Kyriakos Mitsotakis currently forms the government, having defeated the leftist Syriza party under Alexia Tsipras in the 2019 election. In 2019, New Democracy took 39% of the vote to Syriza’s 32%. When Syriza took power in 2015 at the height of the euro debt crisis, Syriza polled 35% to ND’s 28%. Disillusionment with Syriza among previous strong working-class support was enough for the ND to gain a substantial victory in 2019. The former social democrat party PASOK, which had adopted neo-liberal policies during the debt crisis, polled only 10% and the Communists (who called for leaving the EU) fell to just 5%.
Although voting is formally compulsory, turnout was only 57% in 2019. Indeed, voter turnout has steadily fallen since Greece joined the EU in the early 1980s, but it did rise during the euro debt crisis between…
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Kako zapreti 3-kratni zaostanek v znanosti v zgolj 7. letih?
Kitajska je je bila leta 2015 na 3-krat nižji ravni kot ZDA glede prispevka k “high quality” znanosti (po metriki najbolj ugledne znanstvene revije Nature), leta 2022 avtorji iz kitajskih raziskovalnih inštitucij po prispevku k znanosti prehitele kolege iz ameriških raziskovalnih inštitucij.
G7: where is that recession?
The G7 leaders meet this weekend in Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the first atomic bomb holocaust dropped by American bombers on the city in August 1945, leading to the deaths of at least 100,000 citizens. But the G7 leaders’ main deliberations will not be about that, but instead on how to ‘contain’ China and ‘protect’ Taiwan from Chinese ‘aggression’ through further militarization of the island as a thorn in the side of Chinese leaders. It’s a form of what the British police call ‘kettling’, namely to surround and contain demonstrators in public protests. It is no accident that, with the North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) is now expanding its role into Asia, that Ukrainian leader Zelensky has been invited to address the G7 leaders. As a counter, the Chinese are holding a conference of central Asian states in Xian. Such are the machinations of the intensifying geo-political conflict.
But…
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Ameriški “iraški” načrt za Ukrajino: Nafta in plin za ameriška podjetja ter korupcija kot mazivo
Kot pravijo, “true American interests are all about oil and arms“. Če ste že pozabili Irak, Libijo in Sirijo, Ukrajinski primer se odvija prav zdaj pred našimi očmi:
As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree.
US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation’s oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports.
This comes soon after Ukraine’s Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising “big business” for others.
In September, Zelensky also symbolically opened the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that his country is “open for business”, offering more than $400 billion in “public-private partnerships, privatization, and private ventures” for US companies.
DAMIJAN blog 
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