It is astounding how few people know how powerful extreme religious fervor can be. That is a prime tool for the extreme right in US, Brasil, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi, Yemen and elsewhere, notably Russia. In most cases the drift rightward is gradual and largely undetected. How can anybody be surprised when that has been with us since before The First Crusade in 1096.
Putin & coexplicitly understood they could do better than Stalin if they actively promoted the Russian Orthodox Church, not least be rebuilding cathedrals to help rekindle ethnic pride.
We all should be acutely aware that the USSR had many Ukrainian and Georgian leaders so ethnic Russian nationalism was subordinate to Communist ideology and even Russian nationalism. Putin finally used the tools established by Stalin, but made them pure. This fact alone allows much greater latitude than would a purely secular rule.
In WW II Stalin brought back the Russian Orthodox Church to help the war effort, but all the priests became KGB agents. Post USSR the church is still controlled by the FSB. There have been accusations of Russian Orthodox churches around the world spying for mother Russia.
Not all religions do this, but some religions have historically or are actively trying to control the minds of their congregations for political purposes. The Russian Orthodox Church effort goes right to the top in a way rare in most countries these days.
This is administration, politics, not the military. I guarantee you that the military has pretty much stated the following:
"You want Ukraine to win? Give them what they need, in overwhelming numbers. Stringing along support will only increase casualties on both sides, and runs the risk of preventing Ukraine from wining back their land."
No, this is politics, not the military. I've been around military, retired and active duty, all my life. If you give them clear goals (give Ukraine what it needs to win), they are going to lay out a clear plan for you. It's the politicians that muck it up.
I smell geopolitics as the culprit. We found out last fall that the MiG-29 transfer to Ukraine last spring was axed due to pressure from China. China might be in the middle of this too.
In this article from
Re:Russia, Russian economist and banker Vyugin writes about the reasons Russia confounded expectations and did not suffer economic collapse in 2022, and then adds some guesses about the future.
I thought it was pretty good reading, and I think underscores a basic reality: the sooner W. Europe weans itself off Russian fossils
and does so with renewable eneryg , the sooner economic pressures will become effective against Russia. The replacement has to be renewable and not just fossil imports because the market is essentially fungible
Europe has some pretty significant challenges converting completely to renewables. I don't think they can do it without also adopting nuclear power. Cambridge Physics professor David MacKay laid out the math making an all renewable future for Europe problematic.
He unfortunately died in 2016 and some advancements have been made since, but the hill is still very steep. Carbon Commentary updated his figures in 2017 based on what was known then. They point out the problem is a little easier, but it was still huge. The cost of installing enough renewables to serve all of the UK at a level of 50KWH per person per day had dropped from 93K Euros to 18K Euros. It may be lower today, but the at 18K Euros that costs 1.1 trillion Euros. And that's just the UK.
Keeping David MacKay's 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air' up-to-date | Carbon Commentary
To me the greatest impact of the sanctions is increasing costs associated with Russian NG exports and petroleum to the EU. It's forced Europe to acknowledge that they had energy issues and that those issues enabled Putin. It's more the societal awareness of a problem and the immediate realignment of trade that has impacts vs sanctions on Russia. It's the rapid hastening of energy transition in Europe. This will hasten the decline of the petro states globally and that's the impact. Russia has helped bring about a renewable energy future...irony...sad terrible irony
Europe came to dominate the world when wind power moving ships was the key technology. They were able to move the largest ships with wind and had sophisticated sail systems other parts of the world didn't have. That combined with better weaponry allowed Europe to dominate the world.
Then as fossil fuels started to come into use, the first major source was coal and Europe had plenty. With the technological advantages to start with Europe dominated the industrial revolution along with European cultural spin off the United States. Then technologies to use oil instead of coal came into use and the country that had a lot of oil and a large industrial base has dominated the world ever since. The US was able to make the transition to an oil based economy easily.
Europe still had a lot of wealth and the ability to export a lot of technological goods that were difficult to find anywhere else in the world so they traded their goods for oil and kept going. But Europe has been almost completely dependent on the rest of the world for its energy needs since oil became the main source of energy.
Germany was able to succeed in the early phases of WW II because it had a supply of oil from Russia. They thought it would be cheaper to seize the oil instead of buying it so they invaded and it went pear shaped. Rommel in North Africa thought that if he had enough resources, he could push the British out of North Africa and tap Middle Eastern oil for Germany. It was a pipe dream. As brilliant as Rommel was as a battlefield commander, he never really grasped that what he wanted to logistically impossible.
The Afrika Korps was never going to get the resources it needed to conquer Egypt. The Italians were doing all they could to supply his forces, but there were limits to how much could be moved to Libya and how much it took to get those supplies to the front. The further Rommel got, the longer his supply lines got. By El Alamein, the Afrika Korps was burning 90% of it's fuel moving supplies to the front line. That's not sustainable.
Rommel expended massive resources capturing Tobruk hoping to shorten his overland supply lines, but even after capturing Tobruk the port was within air strike distance for the RAF and that shut it down as a viable port. Rommel didn't have the air assets to protect Tobruk and its approaches. He got some supply through Tobruk, but the RAF managed to sink many of the ships.
Anyway, Germany's war effort completely hinged on oil. In some ways WW II was the world's first energy war.
Europe should pursue renewables as much as is feasible, but they are not going to get 100% there with renewables alone.
