The Multipolar World Dies in Ukraine
What does it take for a country to be able to determine its own future? As Russian Iskander missiles hammer Ukrainian cities, that existential question has become live for the great powers once again.
For Europe especially, the first and most urgent answer to this question is the necessity of independent military power. For the past several years, French President Emmanuel Macron has been a major advocate of European “strategic autonomy.” In the wake of the invasion, this has received a newfound sense of urgency and acceptance in Germany and elsewhere.
The whole piece is worth reading as yet another aspect of EU failure, a project which was never going to be what its proponents claimed. As Balkus says, as well as defence failures, Europeans have not even attained the prospect of energy independence.
The Europeans may regret their decision, with the exception of France, to move away from nuclear power as a baseload energy source and accelerate the closure of their nuclear plants. It takes between five to seven years to build a new nuclear plant, but having long abandoned the process knowledge needed to build these projects, even those schedules may be unachievable for Europeans. The first new nuclear reactor built in Europe in 15 years went online in Finland this month; the project started in 2005 and was delivered 13 years after it was initially scheduled to be completed. Nuclear is no longer an alternative in any time frame that would matter for Europe.
4 comments:
Thanks for that. An interesting if rather gloomy read. The most depressing issue is how small countries (such as the UK) can be successful in gaining independence from institutions like the EU, but find that makes them even less powerful against bigger sharks who operate at greater distance. The world could be wonderful if only people traded for mutual gain, but of course they don't.
And I like the idea of "process knowledge". Obvious, really, once it is named. I saw it all the time at work, on a very small scale. What makes cost-saving redundancies so hard to deal with is not just the fear that you will be next; it's the loss of people who know how to actually do the job.
Sam - I saw process knowledge all the time at work too. The loss of it becomes a problem when knowledge of purely bureaucratic processes take precedence over more practical matters. The EU was never going to get that right.
I've observed the same thing myself at work. I wonder if it's w feature of our age?
Tammly - I'm sure it is a feature of our age.
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