News Round-Up, August 28, 2023
A Phoenix's Resilience…
Former President Donald Trump finds himself embroiled in a multitude of legal battles, reminiscent of the destructive wildfires that plague our planet. These disputes, varying in intensity, resemble an unyielding inferno, with some posing greater challenges than others. Yet, President Trump has shown his resilience, refusing to be easily defeated and persisting with unwavering determination.
There is a growing concern across Europe about the possibility of President Trump returning to power. Many people fear that he may rise from the ashes like the legendary phoenix and once again wield his influence in the political arena. Understandably, people are worried about the potential consequences of such a scenario, given the impact of his previous presidency. The thought of him returning to power is like the lingering smoke of a smoldering wildfire - a constant reminder of the danger that could still be lurking just beneath the surface.
Ironically, it could be argued that President Trump's adversaries have unintentionally strengthened his position by transforming him into a symbol of martyrdom. In denying him a peaceful exit from the political stage, they have inadvertently created an apparently insurmountable obstacle, -a hard nut to crack. This unintended consequence has opened the door for his —-triumphant—- return.
The legal disputes faced by former US President Donald Trump have undoubtedly resulted in a multifaceted and financially draining process for the "good luck" of the defense lawyer of the former president. In today's world, it has become increasingly apparent that not all disputes are equally significant. Some have far-reaching consequences, impacting ordinary individuals without financial support, unfortunately. In light of this realization, it is essential to recognize that this is a challenging legal system task.
Finally, it is only through the revelation of the ultimate truth that we can effectively chart a course toward a more transparent future for the former or next president and the fairness of European governments.
Moreover, the only sure thing in life is that the final word will always be the second to last. As we publish this report, a new twist has emerged in the legal case against the former president. U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled the federal trial in Washington for March 4th—one day before "Super Tuesday," which could decide the Republican presidential nomination process. Chutkan's decision implies that Trump will probably have to face trials in at least three different criminal cases while he campaigns for his party's nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election.
Most read…
The U.S. is pumping oil faster than ever. Republicans don’t care
GOP presidential candidates are blaming pump prices on President Joe Biden’s clean energy policies, even though the U.S. is churning out record amounts of oil.
POLITICO:COM By BEN LEFEBVRE, 08/28/2023 Great power rivalries: the case for realism
When assessing the geopolitical landscape, the primary aim of any state, whether democratic or authoritarian, is to ensure its own survival. That comes down to military might and alliances.
Le Monde Diplomatique by *John J Mearsheimer, TodayThe World Is Contemplating a Second Trump Administration
Possibility that former president will win next year’s election has capitals across globe on edge
WSJ by Stacy Meichtry in Paris, Austin Ramzy in Hong Kong, and Bojan Pancevski in Berlin, August 28, 2023.Hawaiian Electric says power lines were shut off hours before wildfire
Reuters, August 28, 20234 an hour agoBloom Energy Can Finally Live Up to Clean Power Buzz
Power-starved data center owners are knocking at the door of the Californian maker of fuel-cell electricity generators
WSJ By Carol Ryan, Aug. 28, 2023 
“Throughout history, the Hawaiian Islands have stood as a symbol of resilience and the unwavering determination of its people. Today, we witness this strength again as communities unite to support those in need. AES Hawaii stands in solidarity with our Hawaiian sisters and brothers, pledging to stand alongside Maui as they confront this challenging period. We recognize the magnitude of the devastation caused by the infamous fires, and it is during such times that we must unite to assist. Our sympathies extend to all those impacted by the destructive fire in Maui and their loved ones. Although we acknowledge that there are no words to ease the pain and sorrow they are experiencing adequately, we would like to offer assistance and aid to these individuals during this trying time.
Andrés Gluski, AES President and Chief Executive Officer
Image by Germán & Co. The U.S. is pumping oil faster than ever. Republicans don’t care
GOP presidential candidates are blaming pump prices on President Joe Biden’s clean energy policies, even though the U.S. is churning out record amounts of oil.
POLITICO:COM By BEN LEFEBVRE, 08/28/2023 The late-summer surge in gasoline prices is heightening the risks that inflation poses for President Joe Biden, and offering Republicans a new chance to pin the blame on his green agenda.
The GOP narrative has a major hole: U.S. oil production — already the highest in the world — is on track to set a new record this year, and will probably rise even more in 2024. But the ever-increasing flow of U.S. crude has failed to keep a lid on gasoline prices, showing once again that a global market drives the fuel prices that shape presidents’ political futures.
And that means events far beyond the nation’s borders will play a sizable role in voters’ verdict on “Bidenomics” — as global oil prices rise and fall in response to banking conditions in Europe, China’s slumping real estate market, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and the latest maneuvers by Saudi Arabia.
“The U.S. consumer blames whoever is in the White House” for high gasoline prices, Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist for financial advisory firm LPL Financial said in an interview. “Biden’s people have to be watching this despite a stronger economy, which is an irony.”
It’s not the outcome that some experts had hoped for from the United States’ rise to energy superpower. Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Walter Russell Mead predicted in 2018 that abundant U.S. energy supplies would enable energy markets to “shrug off geopolitical shocks,” while Ed Morse, a long-time oil market analyst, foresaw in 2015 U.S. oil production would drive prices down sharply and herald “the end of OPEC.”
Instead, while the United States’ reliance on OPEC for oil imports has diminished, the country’s fuel market is still dependent on decisions made at the oil cartel’s meetings in Vienna — no matter how much oil comes out of U.S. shale fields.
U.S. oil production is forecast to average an all-time high of 12.8 million barrels a day this year and keep growing to 13.1 million in 2024, the federal Energy Information Administration said in its latest forecast. That’s up from the most recent trough of 5 million barrels a day in 2008, and probably enough to help the U.S. to keep its title as the No. 1 global crude oil producer.
Global forces, meanwhile, could cause pump prices to ease next year, with the Paris-based International Energy Agency forecasting that oil supply next year will outstrip demand.
That hasn’t stopped GOP White House hopefuls from lambasting Biden and his energy policies, including the green incentives included in the climate law he signed a year ago.
In one campaign ad, former Vice President Mike Pence pretends to fill his pickup truck and blames Biden’s energy policy for “causing real hardship” for Americans, while ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has vowed to bring oil production back to the United States.
And Sen. Tim Scott (R.-S.C.) railed last month on the Biden administration, which he asserted “has shut down energy production in America.”
“Why won’t this President tap into our abundant energy resources here at home and bring down prices at the pump?” he asked.
In fact, though, oil production from federal lands and waters has risen on Biden’s watch, reaching past 3 million barrels per day last year. The high mark during President Donald Trump’s term was 2.75 million barrels a day.
That’s data the White House rarely trumpets since it contradicts Biden’s 2020 campaign pledge to end new drilling on federal land, something his administration has not done.
“We remain focused on prices for American consumers, and prices have come down significantly since last year,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in an email. “We will continue to work with producers and consumers to ensure energy markets support economic growth and to lower prices for American consumers.”
Behind this rhetoric is the jump in the national average price for regular gasoline to $3.87 a gallon last week, up more than 30 cents in a month, according to the American Automobile Association. Prices had held near $3.50 for most of the year, but it may be a while before drivers see that level again, especially after an explosion forced the shutdown of the nation’s third largest refinery on Friday.
The price has caught the attention of drivers and political commentators, even if it’s far less dramatic than the surge to the all-time high of $5.02 per gallon in June 2022. The Biden administration responded at the time by releasing some 200 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, draining nearly half of the federal government’s stockpile, a move that the Treasury Department has credited with helping shave 40 cents a gallon off gasoline prices.
The U.S. wasn’t supposed to be this exposed to the global market’s whims.
The advent of fracking that kicked off the U.S. oil boom in the late 2000s raised hopes of a new era of so-called energy independence. In this scenario, the newly oil-rich United States could pull back from the Middle East, insulate itself from volatile market shifts and retreat into a comfortable shell of energy self-sufficiency.
The reality has been far different, said Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“People assumed [the shale boom] would bring a massive change in geopolitics and that this would fundamentally change the U.S. relationship with OPEC and we’d chart this path towards energy independence that would really upend energy geopolitics,” Cahill said in an interview. “That just hasn’t happened.
“We’re the largest oil producer in the world,” he said. “We’re the largest natural gas producer in the world. But the reality is that energy prices in the U.S. are still dependent on global markets.”
That’s because even as oil fields in states like Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota have propelled the United States to the top of the oil producer charts, regional markets still find it easier to import certain grades of crude oil from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The U.S. still imports about 40 percent of the oil it consumes, even though exports of crude and petroleum products continue to outstrip those shipments.
No matter how much oil the United States produces, it’s still a familiar story, said Amy Jaffe, a global affairs professor at New York University: Gasoline prices rise when the world’s major economies run hot, and fall when they’re not.
“We believed because the U.S. could drill and be successful that we were in this permanent age of abundance,” Jaffe said in an interview. ”But we’re still facing this fundamental question of how cyclical will this industry continues to be.”
The 2022 run-up in fuel prices occurred after a rare one-two punch when U.S. fuel demand rebounded after a pandemic-driven market crash, and after the invasion of Ukraine led European nations to cut imports from Russia, scrambling trade flows.
This summer’s rally, however, has largely been driven by the decision by OPEC and Russia to withhold supplies to ensure prices don’t weaken. And the cuts by Saudi Arabia in particular of 1 million barrels per day on top of the OPEC+ agreement have put a spotlight on Washington’s fraught relationship with the kingdom.
The United States’ growth transformation into a production heavyweight may lead some politicians to believe they could be more aggressive with Saudi Arabia when it came to human rights — Biden had promised in 2020 to make Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a “pariah” over the regime’s murder of a dissident journalist. But that attitude only goes so far once prices at the pump tick up, analysts said.
“The U.S./Saudi relationship has deteriorated since the U.S. has become less energy dependent on the Middle East, but they are still viewed as strategic partners,” Tamas Varga, market analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said via email. “Saudi Arabia plays an important role to represent U.S. interests in the region and the U.S. is a significant supplier of weapons to the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia, however, has its own agenda in the oil market which is contradictory to U.S. interest.”
Image by Germán & Co.In international relations, better to be Godzilla than Bambi
Great power rivalries: the case for realism
When assessing the geopolitical landscape, the primary aim of any state, whether democratic or authoritarian, is to ensure its own survival. That comes down to military might and alliances.
Le Monde Diplomatique by *John J Mearsheimer, TodayThree decades ago, many experts in the West believed we had reached the end of history and that great-power war had been relegated to the dustbin of the past. That illusion has been shattered. The world faces not just one great-power rivalry, as it did during the cold war, but two: the US vs Russia in eastern Europe (over Ukraine) and the US vs China in East Asia (over Taiwan). Both security competitions could easily turn into hot wars.
In essence, there has recently been a great transformation in international politics, which is bad news for the West. What went wrong? What explains this change and where is the world headed? Answering these questions requires a theory of international relations: a general framework that can explain why states act as they do and help us make sense of a complicated and uncertain world
Realism is the best theory for understanding world politics. States are the key actors in the realist story, and they coexist in a world where there is no supreme authority that can protect them from each other. This situation forces them to pay close attention to the balance of power, because they understand that being weak can leave them vulnerable. Thus, states compete among themselves for power, which is not to say they do not cooperate when their interests are compatible. But relations among states — especially great powers — are competitive at their core. Moreover, realist theory acknowledges that war is an acceptable instrument of statecraft and that states sometimes start wars to improve their strategic position. As Clausewitz argues, war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Realism isn’t popular in the West
Realism is not popular in the West, where war is widely considered an evil that can only be justified as a means of self-defence, as it is in the UN charter. Politics by other means? No way. It is also unpopular because it is so pessimistic: it assumes that security competition among the great powers is an unalterable fact of life and inevitably leads to tragic results. Finally, realism maintains that all states — whether they are liberal democracies or not — act according to the same logic. In the West, however, most people believe that regime type matters greatly and that liberal democracies are the good guys while authoritarian states are the main instigators of war.
Unsurprisingly, liberal theory, which is the main alternative to realism, is privileged in the West. Nevertheless, the US has almost always acted according to the dictates of realism and disguised its behaviour with a more moral rhetoric. It allied with the Stalinist Soviet Union during the second world war, and it backed a host of ruthless autocrats during the cold war — Chiang Kai-shek in China, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Rhee Syngman in South Korea, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
The one exception is the ‘unipolar moment’ (1991-2017), when both Democratic and Republican administrations abandoned realism and tried to create a global order based on the values of liberal democracy — rule of law, market economies and human rights — under the benign leadership of the US. Unfortunately, this strategy of ‘liberal hegemony’ was a near-total failure, and it played a major role in creating the troubled world of 2023. Had American policymakers adopted a realist foreign policy after the cold war ended in 1989, the world would be considerably less dangerous today.
Self-help world
There are different realist theories. The political scientist Hans Morgenthau famously argues that human nature drives states to pursue power. Leaders, he maintains, possess an animus dominandi — an innate desire to dominate others. In contrast, the principal driving force in my theory is the structure or architecture of the international system. Its defining features push states — especially the great powers — to compete relentlessly for power. In effect, states are trapped in an iron cage.
The starting point is recognising that states operate in an anarchic system, where there is no all-powerful protector to call upon if another state threatens them. Therefore, states must take care of themselves in what is essentially a self-help world. This task is complicated by two other aspects of the international system. All great powers have offensive military capabilities, although some more than others, which means they can cause considerable mutual damage. Furthermore, it is difficult if not impossible to be certain that another state has benign intentions, mainly because intentions — unlike capabilities — are hidden inside the minds of policymakers and cannot be fully discerned. It is even harder to anticipate what another state might do in the future, because one cannot know who will be in charge, and a state’s intentions will almost certainly change if the circumstances it is facing are altered.
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite, not just Putin. I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interestsUS envoy to Moscow, 2008.
States operating in a self-help world where they might confront a powerful rival bent on attacking them are naturally going to fear each other, although the level of fear will vary across cases. The best way for a rational state to survive in such a dangerous world is to be especially powerful relative to other states, and certainly to make sure it is not weak. As the Chinese experience during the ‘century of national humiliation’ (1839-1949) shows, when a country is weak, more powerful states are likely to take advantage of it. In international relations, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.
The European Union might appear to be an exception, but it is not. It emerged under the protection provided by the American security umbrella, which made war among member states impossible and freed them from the need to worry about each other. This basic fact of life explains why European leaders of all stripes live in fear that the US will pivot to Asia and leave Europe in the rear-view mirror.
In short, great-power politics is characterised by relentless security competition, where states not only look for opportunities to gain relative power, but also seek to prevent the balance of power from shifting against them. This latter behaviour is called ‘balancing’, which can be done by building up one’s own power or forming an alliance against a dangerous opponent with other threatened states. In a realist world, power refers mainly to a state’s military capabilities, which ultimately depend on having an advanced economy and a large population.
Advantages of a regional hegemon
The ideal situation for a great power is to be a regional hegemon — to dominate its area of the world — while making sure that no other power, medium or great, is able to challenge it. The US is the paradigm of this logic at play. During the 18th and 19th centuries, it worked assiduously to achieve hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. During the 20th century, it helped prevent imperial Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from becoming regional hegemons in either Asia or Europe.
Survival, of course, is the primary goal of states, because if a state does not survive, it cannot pursue any other goals, such as prosperity or spreading an ideology. Relatedly, great powers can cooperate if they have mutual interests and cooperation does not undermine their position in the balance of power. For example, the superpowers cooperated during the cold war in signing the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, although US-Soviet relations remained competitive at their core. Moreover, there was substantial economic intercourse among the European great powers before the first world war, but there was also significant security competition among those same countries, which trumped economic cooperation and eventually led to war. These examples point up that great-power cooperation always takes place in the shadow of security competition.
Some critics maintain that realism is dismissive of international institutions, which are the key building blocks of a rules-based international order. This view is incorrect: realists recognise that institutions are essential for waging security competition in an interdependent world — as NATO and the Warsaw Pact did during the cold war — and for facilitating economic and political cooperation — as the WTO and the UN do today. They emphasise, however, that the great powers write the institutions’ rules to suit their own interests, and under no circumstances can institutions coerce a great power to act in ways that threaten its security. In such cases, a great power will simply violate the rules or rewrite them in its favour.
That logic flies in the face of the widely held belief in the West that liberal democracies behave differently from authoritarian states. Authoritarian states, so the argument goes, are the real threat to the rules-based order and more generally the chief obstacle to creating a peaceful world. But this is not how international politics works. Regime type matters little in a self-help world where states constantly worry about their survival. The US is the quintessential liberal state, for example, but its leaders illegally attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 and Iraq in 2003, and waged a covert proxy war against Nicaragua during the 1980s. Great powers of all types act ruthlessly when they think their vital interests are threatened.
Some scholars argue that the ‘nuclear revolution’ has made realism less relevant today. Nuclear weapons, they suggest, guarantee a great power’s survival — who would dare attack the homeland of a nuclear-armed state? — thus eliminating the need to compete for power. Relatedly, they maintain that the fear of nuclear escalation will also deter two countries with nuclear arsenals from fighting a major conventional war. There is no evidence, however, that the great powers have ever embraced this logic. The Soviet Union and the US spent trillions of dollars competing for power throughout the cold war, and China, Russia and the US are doing the same today. These nuclear-armed great powers feared for their survival and prepared for conventional war against their rivals. This is not to deny that great-power war is less likely in a nuclear world, but it remains an ever-present threat, thus keeping realism as relevant as ever.
Where should the US fight?
Realism also suggests that the only areas of vital strategic interest to great powers — beside their own region — are those containing other great powers or an abundance of some critical resource on which the world economy depends. Thus, American realists maintained during the cold war that there were just three areas of the world outside the Western hemisphere where the US should prepare to fight: Europe, Northeast Asia, where the Soviet Union was located, and the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Almost every realist opposed the Vietnam war, because it was fought in Southeast Asia, a region of little strategic significance at that time. Today, however, Southeast Asia matters greatly to the US, because China has become a great power. This explains why Washington is prepared to defend the status quo in Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Liberalism, in contrast, does not prioritise among different regions of the world. Its primary goal is to spread democracy and capitalism as widely as possible. Although liberal rhetoric emphasises the evils of war, proponents of a liberal foreign policy are often willing to use force to achieve this ambitious objective. The Bush Doctrine, which aimed to democratise the greater Middle East at the end of a rifle barrel, was a manifestation of this. It is no accident that almost every prominent realist opposed the 2003 Iraq war. That war was the brainchild of neoconservatives, who are especially hawkish advocates of spreading liberalism abroad, and was widely supported by proponents of liberal hegemony.
Ironically, liberal approaches to foreign policy contain a decidedly illiberal element. At its core, liberalism emphasises the need for tolerance, because it recognises that individuals will never fully agree on the best way to live or be governed. Accordingly, liberal societies try to create space for individuals and groups to operate as much as possible according to their own beliefs. But when liberals turn to foreign policy, they act as if they know for certain what type of regime would be best for every country. Specifically, they believe the rest of the world should become like the West and they use the various tools at their disposal to push them in that direction. This illiberal approach to dealing with the world is doomed to fail, not only because there is no consensus about the ideal political system, but also because of realist logic. States are sovereign entities that defendtheir vital interests against threats, especially those which come from a competing state that is trying to change their system of government.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the bipolar world that underpinned the cold war gave way to a unipolar system centred on the US. Unipolarity then turned into multipolarity in around 2017, with China’s rise and the resurrection of Russian power. The US is still the most powerful country in this new world, but China, with its formidable economy and growing military might, is a peer competitor. Russia is clearly the weakest of the three. Two new rivalries have emerged in this multipolar system, each operating according to a different realist logic. Like the US-Soviet antagonism after the second world war, the US-China security competition is mainly about regional hegemony, even though it could, like the US-Soviet antagonism, spread worldwide. The current US-Russia rivalry is due not to any fear that Russia could dominate Europe, but rather to the US’s aggressive behaviour.
The US-China rivalry
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, China was not considered a great power. It certainly had the population size to qualify, but it did not have the wealth needed to build sufficient military forces. That situation began changing in the early 1990s, when the Chinese economy started growing rapidly. Today, China has the second largest economy in the world and the capability to develop cutting-edge technologies. Predictably, Beijing is using its economic might to build up its military.
China’s goal is to become by far the most powerful state in Asia and to gradually push the US military out of East Asia, thereby establishing itself as a regional hegemon. Beijing is also building a blue-water navy, which indicates it is committed to projecting power all around the globe. In essence, China is imitating the US, which makes perfect sense as that is the best way for a country to maximise its security in an anarchic world. Chinese leaders have another reason for wanting to dominate Asia. They have territorial goals based on nationalist logic — like taking back Taiwan and dominating the South China Sea — that can only be achieved if China is a regional hegemon.
The US has long sought to prevent any other country from achieving regional hegemony, as it demonstrated repeatedly throughout the 20th century. Thus, it is fashioning a containment policy to prevent China from dominating Asia. That balancing effort has both a military and economic dimension.
Regarding the former, Washington is refashioning alliances originally forged to contain the Soviet Union into a coalition to contain China, and creating new arrangements to reinforce it. This campaign includes building — or reviving — security pacts like AUKUS (Australia, the UK and US) and the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: US, Australia, Japan and India), and strengthening the longstanding bilateral alliances the US has with Japan, the Philippines and South Korea.
Transatlantic rift
On the economic side, Washington seeks to limit China’s development of cutting-edge technologies in a bid to ensure that the US controls the commanding heights in this all-important sector. This economic competition could create a serious rift in transatlantic relations because European countries — which are already hurt by the cut-off of economic intercourse with Russia — are looking for customers in China.
China and the US are destined to compete ever more intensely for power in the foreseeable future. That struggle will be fuelled in part by the famous ‘security dilemma’, where what one side does to defend itself is interpreted by the other side as evidence of offensive intentions. There are two additional reasons this security competition will be especially dangerous. First, it centres on Taiwan, which almost every Chinese person considers sacred territory that China should control, but which the US is determined to keep as a de facto independent state allied with Washington.
Second, any future war between these bitter rivals is likely to be fought over islands in the waters off China’s coast, largely by air, missile and naval forces. It is not difficult to imagine plausible scenarios where a war breaks out in that geographical setting, even by accident. A China-US war on the Asian mainland would be far more deadly and thus much less likely, as was the case with a possible war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the heart of Europe during the cold war. A major land war in Asia therefore seems unlikely, but it will still take astute diplomacy on both sides to avoid one.
The US helped to create this perilous rivalry by ignoring realist principles. In the early 1990s the US faced no rival great powers and China was economically underdeveloped. As liberalism prescribes, American leaders embraced a policy of engaging with China: helping fuel its economic growth and seeking to integrate it into the international order. They assumed that a wealthy China would become a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in that American-dominated order and eventually evolve into a liberal democracy. In short, a powerful but democratic China would be a peaceful China that would not challenge the US.
Engagement was a colossal strategic blunder. If American policymakers had been guided by realist logic, they would not have sought to speed Chinese growth and would have tried to maintain the power gap between Washington and Beijing instead of reducing it.
The conventional wisdom in the West regarding the Ukraine war makes it sound like Russia is behaving in Europe the way China is acting in Asia. Putin is said to have imperial ambitions that begin with creating a greater Russia along the lines of the old Soviet Union and then re-conquering the former buffer countries of the Warsaw Pact, ultimately threatening the security of all Europe. Ukraine, which he purportedly aims to conquer and integrate into Russia, is his first but not his last target. In this view, what NATO is doing in Ukraine is containing Russian power, much the way it prevented the Soviet Union from dominating all of Europe during the cold war.
This story, no matter how often it is repeated, is a myth. There is no evidence that Putin wants to incorporate all of Ukraine into Russia or seeks to conquer any other country in eastern Europe. Furthermore, Russia does not have the military capability to achieve that ambitious goal, much less become a European hegemon.
While there is no question Russia attacked Ukraine, it is equally clear that the conflict was provoked by the US and its European allies when they decided to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders. They sought to bring Ukraine into NATO and the EU and turn it into a pro-Western liberal democracy. Russian leaders have repeatedly emphasised that this policy is an existential threat to Moscow and will not be tolerated. There is no reason to think they do not mean it.
The US ambassador to Moscow in April 2008, when the decision was made to bring Ukraine into NATO, said in a memo to then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, ‘Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players ... I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.’ Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor at the time, opposed bringing Ukraine into NATO: ‘I was very sure ... that Putin [was] not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, that would be a declaration of war.’
The Ukraine conflict
The conflict in Ukraine began in February 2014, six years after NATO declared it would become a member. Putin subsequently tried to settle the conflict diplomatically by convincing the US, which was driving the policy, to abandon the idea of bringing Ukraine into the alliance. But Washington refused and instead doubled down at every turn — arming and training Ukraine’s military and including it in NATO military exercises. Fearing that Ukraine was fast becoming a de facto NATO member, Russia sent letters on 17 December 2021 to President Biden and NATO itself demanding a written commitment that Ukraine would not join the alliance and instead be a neutral state. Secretary of state Antony Blinken tersely replied on 26 January 2022, ‘There is no change; there will be no change.’ A month later, Russia attacked Ukraine.
From a realist standpoint, Moscow’s reaction to NATO expansion into Ukraine is a straightforward case of balancing against a dangerous threat. Putin is committed to preventing a military alliance dominated by the most powerful state in the world, which was a mortal foe of the Soviet Union, from making Ukraine, which ‘is on the doorstep of our house’, a member. In fact, Russia’s position is akin to America’s Monroe Doctrine, which says that no distant great power is allowed to station military forces in its backyard. Given that diplomacy failed to deal with what the Russians saw as an existential threat, Putin launched a preventive war aimed at keeping Ukraine out of NATO. Moscow views this as a war of self-defence, not a war of conquest. Of course, Ukraine and its neighbours see it quite differently. To say this is not to justify or condemn the war, but simply to explain why it happened.
Given the myth that Putin is committed to open-ended expansion, one might think NATO enlargement, too, was based on realist logic: the US and its allies were aiming to contain Russia. But that view would also be wrong. The decision to enlarge NATO was made in the mid-1990s, when Russia was militarily weak, and the US was well-positioned to force expansion on Moscow. Again, we see the perils of being weak in the international system. Nor did Russia pose a threat to Europe in 2008, when the decision was made to bring Ukraine into the alliance. So, there was no need to contain it then or now. Indeed, the US has a deep interest in pivoting out of Europe to East Asia, and enlisting Russia in the balancing coalition against China, not getting bogged down in a war in eastern Europe and driving the Russians into the arms of the Chinese.
Like the misguided policy of engagement with China, NATO enlargement was a component of the liberal hegemony project. The aim was to integrate eastern and western Europe, ultimately turning all of Europe into a giant zone of peace. Realists like George Kennan opposed NATO expansion because they recognised it would threaten Russia and lead to disaster.
Europe would be in far better shape today if realist logic had carried the day and NATO had not expanded eastward, and especially not committed itself to eventually including Ukraine. But the die is now cast: unipolarity has given way to multipolarity and the US and its allies are now engaged in serious geopolitical rivalries with both China and Russia. These new cold wars are at least as dangerous as the original one, and maybe more so.
*John J Mearsheimer is professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He is the co-author (with Sebastian Rosato) of How States Think: the Rationality of Foreign Policy, Yale University Press, 2023.Just Exceptional...
“Words fail to capture the resplendent magnificence of this exquisite beverage. Its qualities transcend the boundaries of human expression, rendering it a true paragon of its kind. Indeed, it stands unequivocally among the most exceptional —-elixir—- concoctions ever produced…
Ilustrations by Germán & Co.The World Is Contemplating a Second Trump Administration
Possibility that former president will win next year’s election has capitals across globe on edge
WSJ by Stacy Meichtry in Paris, Austin Ramzy in Hong Kong, and Bojan Pancevski in Berlin, August 28, 2023.President Donald Trump appearing on a Beijing TV screen as U.S. votes were counted in November 2020. PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
The U.S. presidential election is more than a year away, but allies and adversaries around the world have already begun to contemplate—and even plan for—the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
For many foreign capitals, the possibility of a second Trump administration is a source of anxiety. Allies from Paris to Tokyo regard Trump as an erratic leader with little interest in cultivating long-term ties to counter Russian and Chinese expansionism.
Others, including Beijing and Moscow, see potential benefits from Trump, whom they view as a transactional leader who might be willing to strike deals to ease tensions in hot spots such as Ukraine and Taiwan, according to analysts. Nationalist and populist politicians also voice support for Trump’s ambitions.
Policy makers and politicians were reluctant to make public statements that might rile the current administration or an incoming one. But officials interviewed by The Wall Street Journal did share their thoughts about what a Trump return to the world stage would mean for geopolitics.
Among the most widespread fears is that Trump would spark a global trade war. The candidate has threatened to impose fresh tariffs on all goods imported into the U.S.—hitting friend and foe alike—a move that risks sowing divisions in trans-Atlantic relations in a time of war.
Trump has also threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a move that his former national security adviser John Bolton recently described as a near certainty if he is elected again.
Some governments are moving to lock in military assistance to Ukraine to strengthen security there in case a newly elected Trump scales back U.S. support. Members of the Group of Seven wealthy nations are trying to reach bilateral agreements with Kyiv to provide weapons that meet NATO standards.
“There’s a strong possibility Trump might be re-elected,” said Benjamin Haddad, a French lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron’s party. “It forces us Europeans to read the writing on the wall and take more responsibility.”
With Russia digging in for a long fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin is waiting out the Biden administration in the hope that Trump, if elected, would back away from helping Kyiv. U.S. support for Taiwan could waver under Trump, according to analysts, if Beijing dangles concessions on trade.
“Trump values U.S. allies less, and Beijing therefore expects that U.S. alliances and coalitions would fray and ease pressure on China,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Those scenarios send a chill down the spine of allies in Europe and the Pacific.
The Biden administration has worked to corral allies in Asia, deepening military cooperation and helping mend relations between Japan and South Korea. And Washington has sent billions of dollars in arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, allowing Kyiv to hold its own on the battlefield against Russia.
French officials have been warning European allies that the possibility of Trump’s return requires the continent to significantly expand arms production, from artillery to missile defense systems, so it can supply Ukraine on its own.
Eastern European countries and France are also pushing allies to admit Ukraine into NATO, a move that would significantly raise the stakes with Russia by providing Kyiv with security guarantees.
“We’ve been lucky with Ukraine to have an American administration that helped us,” Macron recently told Le Point magazine. “Can we let Ukraine lose and Russia win? The answer is no…We have to hold out over time.”
Military expenditures are rising across the continent, but Europe has struggled to wean itself off American hardware. Macron was blindsided when a German-led coalition announced plans to spend billions of euros on a program to buy Patriot missile systems from the U.S., snubbing a rival system developed by France, Italy and the U.K.
Macron has long been skeptical that President Biden’s election in 2020 signaled the end of the Trump era, according to Biden. Biden has recounted arriving at his first G-7 summit as president, declaring to his peers: “America’s back.” Macron replied: “For how long?”
Macron’s office declined to comment.
Trump has vowed to impose sweeping new tariffs, stating in a recent interview that he would set an automatic 10% tariff on all foreign imports to the U.S.
“When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let’s say a 10% tax,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business. “I do like the 10% for everybody.”
Economists were quick to warn that Trump’s proposal could ignite a global trade war and raise prices for U.S. consumers. The White House slammed Trump’s comments, saying Biden strongly opposes the plan.
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is focused on forging channels of communication in an effort to avoid the experience of 2016, when Trump’s election took world leaders by surprise. The government of Angela Merkel, who was then chancellor, struggled to gain access to the White House as Washington aimed a barrage of tariffs at Germany and other countries in Europe. Relations between Trump and Merkel quickly soured.
Leading members of the three parties of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition have been jetting across the Atlantic ever since they took power in late 2021, meeting with GOP officials and Trump confidants. A key Scholz aide, Wolfgang Schmidt, has made regular visits to Washington, forging links with key Republicans. In September, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will embark on a 10-day visit to the U.S., including an extended visit to Texas, a GOP bastion, to familiarize herself with the party.
Some governments welcome the possibility of Trump’s return. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who maintains a friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposes Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, has said on numerous occasions he hopes Trump wins the next election, even as Trump’s legal woes have mounted. “Keep on fighting, Mr. President! We are with you,” Orban wrote in a recent social-media post.
For China, Trump was the leader who ignited trade tensions with the U.S. while a Biden presidency held out the prospect of a return to the previous era of relations, when many U.S. policy makers supported free trade in the belief that it would liberalize China.
But Biden maintained much of his predecessor’s tough policies toward Beijing. Tariffs remained in place. Restrictions on Chinese technology companies expanded, including a U.S. ban on sales of advanced semiconductors and chip-making equipment to China last year.
“On policy substance, even though Trump kicked off the trade war, it was Biden that implemented policy more effectively and was able to bring in important allies that Trump had alienated,” said Mary Gallagher, a political-science professor at the University of Michigan.
South Korea and Japan this year turned the page on years of historical quarrels, allowing for deeper military coordination with Washington.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol forged a personal bond with Biden during an official state visit in April to the White House and on a recent trip to Camp David. That contrasts with Trump, who criticized Seoul for not paying enough for the roughly 28,500 U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea. Trump even suggested a troop drawdown.
Yorizumi Watanabe, a former Japanese diplomat, said he expects support for Trump to rise in Japan if he moves decisively to calm tensions with China. “When all is said and done, we need a strong American president.”
In the Middle East, the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia are weighing whether their push to establish diplomatic ties have a better shot with Biden in office or Trump. While leaders in both countries have had chilly relations with Biden, they are wrestling with the possibility that the Democratic president might be better positioned than Trump to broker a pact.
Trump remains broadly popular with the Israeli public and aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which bills itself as the most right-wing and religious in the country’s history. But Trump was critical of Netanyahu after the prime minister congratulated Biden on his 2020 victory.
In an interview this summer, Netanyahu praised Trump, but he declined to say whether he had been in close contact with him. “I think he did things that were superb for Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said. “So I value that.”
Iran is moving to release U.S. detainees in a bid to gain access to around $6 billion in oil revenue. The money, which was effectively frozen in South Korea under U.S. sanctions, is being transferred through Switzerland to Qatar for possible release to Iran.
This month, Iran moved four U.S. citizens from prison to house arrest, the first step in a hoped-for prisoner release agreement between Tehran and the Biden administration. Trump as president withdrew from the 2015 deal that placed limits on Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions. He ratcheted up sanctions on Iran and criticized the release of frozen Iranian funds by the Obama administration.
Securing the funds is now a key objective for Tehran, a visible signal to ordinary Iranians that the regime is seeking to improve the country’s troubled economy, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “They’re trying to get as many concessions as they can out of the Biden team,” he said.
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Image by Germán & Co.Hawaiian Electric says power lines were shut off hours before wildfire
Reuters, August 28, 20234 an hour agoHomes damaged by fire are seen in Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii, U.S., August 14, 2023. REUTERS/Jorge Garcia/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Hawaiian Electric's (HE.N) shares jumped more than 40% on Monday after the utility said its power lines in West Maui had been shut down for more than six hours before wildfires started in the area during the afternoon.
The company's shares were trading at $13.55, after at least two trading halts since the markets opened on Monday. The stock has lost more than half its value since the Aug. 8 wildfires.
Hawaiian Electric said the lawsuit filed against it by the county of Maui was "factually and legally irresponsible," pointing to the county's responsibility in the Hawaii wildfires.
The county of Maui last week sued Hawaiian Electric, accusing the utility of acting negligently by failing to shut down its equipment despite warnings that hurricane winds could knock power lines down, sparking wildfires.
The county said downed power lines started the wildfires that destroyed the historic town of Lahaina earlier this month, killing at least 115 people and displacing hundreds more.
Hawaiian Electric said on Monday that a morning fire on Aug. 8 caused by power lines that fell in high winds was subsequently reported "100% contained" and later declared "extinguished" by the Maui County Fire Department.
The utility said another afternoon fire started in the same area more than six hours after all of its power lines in West Maui had been de-energized, which could not be contained by the fire department and spread out of control toward Lahaina.
"We were surprised and disappointed that the County of Maui rushed to court even before completing its own investigation," said Shelee Kimura, president and CEO of Hawaiian Electric.
The lawsuit alleging negligence was "particularly troublesome," Wells Fargo analyst Jonathan Reeder said on Friday, adding that the brokerage viewed the lawsuit as an attempt to shift blame rather than sticking to an earlier narrative that it was a weather-induced tragedy.
Image by Germán & Co.Bloom Energy Can Finally Live Up to Clean Power Buzz
Power-starved data center owners are knocking at the door of the Californian maker of fuel-cell electricity generators
WSJ By Carol Ryan, Aug. 28, 2023 Data centers can’t get enough power from the main grid, even before generative AI makes them hungrier for electricity. It’s good news for one Californian clean energy stock.
Bloom Energy BE 2.01%increase; green up pointing triangle, generated a lot of excitement when it went public in 2018 and its shares surged more than 60% on their first day of trading. But the stock has turned out to be a disappointing investment, delivering average annual shareholder returns of minus 9% since that first close, compared with the 10% gains of the S&P 500 over the same period.
The fast-growing business has never managed to turn a profit, although it has ambitious plans for a 15% operating margin by 2025. One reason is that the promising technologies Bloom Energy is betting on, such as green hydrogen and carbon capture, are taking longer than expected to develop. The company sells electrolyzers that split water to produce hydrogen, but orders in this part of its business aren’t expected to be significant until 2025 at the earliest.
Demand from data centers will come sooner. Bloom Energy makes fuel-cell servers that generate electricity on site, so customers can be less dependent on the traditional grid. They run on natural gas or biogas, and users will be able to switch to green hydrogen once there is more plentiful supply. Hospitals and military facilities that can’t risk a power outage have been early adopters of on-site electricity generation.
These “micro grids” could solve a major problem for power-sucking data centers. In Northern Virginia, which is the world’s most important data center market, the state’s main utility company recently said it could take up to three years to build the transmission lines necessary to meet demand for new data center projects.
The same problem is cropping up in Europe. Amsterdam and Dublin have slowed or halted some new data center projects because their local electricity grids can’t cope. Data centers and data transmission networks consume around 3% of the world’s electricity, based on data from the International Energy Agency. This is expected to at least double as more smart devices are connected to the internet and generative AI takes off.
Constraints on the mainstream electricity supply should make Bloom Energy’s product more appealing. The company has struggled to pick up business in states such as Texas, where very cheap grid electricity makes Bloom’s power uncompetitive. This may change over time if companies are willing to pay a bit extra for reliable electricity, or as wait times to get connected to main power lines grow longer.
“Grid congestion is becoming a bigger problem. If you’re a data center or hospital that needs 24/7 power now, you will be looking for alternatives,” says Sangita Jain, analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Growing demand from data centers isn’t the only challenge that traditional power suppliers face. At this year’s Edison Electric Institute conference, Elon Musk told utility bosses that electricity demand is set to triple as more electric cars hit the road and industrial processes are electrified to help companies reduce their fossil fuel use.
And climate change will make the grid less reliable, as storms and wildfires damage overhead lines more frequently. Based on the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, U.S. electricity customers experienced seven hours of power interruptions in 2021 on average, almost double the levels seen a decade ago. Because of these stresses, the U.S. market for micro grids is expected to grow by 19% a year through 2027, according to Wood Mackenzie research.
Meanwhile, Bloom Energy’s valuation has come down after several years of disappointment. The company’s enterprise value is equivalent to 2.5 times projected sales, compared with eight times in early 2021, when clean energy stocks were on a tear.
And losses are narrowing, thanks to rapid growth. The company expects a positive adjusted operating margin this year, and free cash flow is forecast to follow next year, according to FactSet. That and the roughly $900 million of cash on Bloom’s balance sheet limit the risk that it needs to raise additional funds from shareholders.
Investors seem to have become resigned to disappointment from Bloom just as its focus on a promising growth market is finally showing signs of paying off.