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Ukraine – Cookie Monster Retires
A big fat rat is leaving the ship.
One might interpret this as the State Department's admittance of defeat in the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine:
On the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland – Anthony Blinken / State Department, Mar 5 2024
Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world.
…
[I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.
…
President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.
Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old – too young to retire regularly.
She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime.
That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure.
bigger
Neither was Russia 'weakened' by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe's east.
Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred.
As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:
Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.
As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s.
The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.
“Canuck
My post was directed at an earlier post by shadowbanned, which i forgot to headline my comment with.
Yes Baikal will keep the Chinese drinking for many decades to come. Whether pipelines are enough for agriculture is another story. I guess you could service a growing area, but you wouldn’t be able to turn the hills green.
But shadowbanned’s main point is a good one: Russia is likely to be one of the winners of Climate change, and that, of course, is another reason for the jealousy and desire to break up Russia.”
Posted by: Glasshopper | Mar 6 2024 15:11 utc | 420
Natural Climate change is also good for Canada.
And more c02 is good for anilas, plamnts and humans (1)
Green plants grow faster with more CO2
. Many also become more droughtresistant because higher CO2
levels allow plants to use water more efficiently. More
abundant vegetation from increased CO2
is already apparent. Satellite images reveal
significant greening of the planet in recent decades, especially at desert margins,
where drought resistance is critical. This remarkable planetary greening is the result
of a mere 30% increase of CO2 from its preindustrial levels. Still higher CO2
levels will
bring still more benefits to agriculture.
Plants use energy from sunlight to fuse a molecule of CO2 to a molecule of water,
H2
O, to form carbohydrates. One molecule of oxygen O2
is released to the air for each
CO2
molecule removed. Biological machinery of plants reworks the carbohydrate
polymers into proteins, oils and other molecules of life. Every living creature, from
the blooming rose, to the newborn baby, is made of carbon from former atmospheric
CO2 molecules. Long-dead plants used CO2 from ancient atmospheres to produce
most of the fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas that have transformed the life of
most humans – moving from drudgery and near starvation before the industrial
revolution to the rising potential for abundance today.
The fraction of the beneficial molecule CO2 in the current atmosphere is tiny,
about 0.04% by volume. This level is about 30% larger than pre-industrial levels in
1800. But today’s levels are still much smaller than the levels, 0.20% or more, that
prevailed over much of geological history. CO2 levels during the past tens of millions
of years have been much closer to starvation levels, 0.015%, when many plants die,
than to the much higher levels that most plants prefer.
Basic physics implies that more atmospheric CO2 will increase greenhouse
warming. However, atmospheric processes are so complicated that the amount of
warming cannot be reliably predicted from first principles. Recent observations of
the atmosphere and oceans, together with geological history, point to very modest
warming, about 1 C (1.8 F) if atmospheric CO2 levels are doubled.
Observations also show no significant change in extreme weather, tornadoes,
hurricanes, floods, or droughts. Sea levels are rising at about the same rate as in
centuries past. A few degrees of warming will have many benefits, longer growing
seasons and less winter heating expenses. And this will be in addition to major
benefits to agriculture.
.
More CO2 in the atmosphere is not an unprecedented experiment with an
unpredictable outcome. The Earth has done the experiment many times in the
geological past. Life flourished abundantly on land and in the oceans at much larger
CO2 levels than those today. Responsible use of fossil fuels, with cost-effective
control of genuine pollutants like fly ash or oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, will be a
major benefit for the world.
Introduction
Around the year 1861, John Tyndall, a prominent Irish physicist, discovered that
water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and many other molecular gases that are
transparent to visible light can absorb invisible heat radiation—such as that given
off by a warm tea kettle, the human body, or the Earth itself. Tyndall recognized that
water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, with CO2
a less important contributor.
Tyndall’s discovery came as the combustion of coal in the Industrial Revolution was beginning to release substantial amounts of CO2
. These emissions have coincided with a steady increase of atmospheric CO2
, from around 285 ppm (partsper-million) in the 1860s to around 400 ppm today.
Increased CO2 levels have likely produced some warming of the Earth and will
continue to do so in the future, although with ever decreasing efficiency because
of the “logarithmic” dependence of warming on CO2 concentrations, an important
detail discussed more extensively below. At the same time, more CO2 will have a
hugely beneficial effect on agriculture, forests and plant growth in general. The
benefits of more CO2 will greatly exceed any harm.”
1, https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FC7C4946-11A3-4967-BF28-8D0386608D3E
Posted by: canuck | Mar 6 2024 18:39 utc | 440
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