Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I have been critical of the strategy. To state the obvious, war is bad and sad and insert virtue signaling here, but it has happened since the beginning of time, and it isn’t going to stop. To quote Frederic Bastait “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” So then, accepting war occasionally happens and eventually they end, the question of Russia-Ukraine strategically is simply “how does it end?”
Without a formal treaty, NATO has been hogtied beyond providing weapons. But weapons with no troops and air support looks a lot more like a proxy war against Russia, fueled by unfettered and unsupervised spending, which extends the endpoint and causes far more untold suffering for the Ukrainian people, more than 6.8 million who have been displaced so far. The reality is, like in the game of Risk, if you give your opponent long enough to attack your entry blockade to “Europe”, no matter how many reinforcements arrive over subsequent turns, without an intervention that splits your own troops and focus, they will eventually win.
And yet, yesterday the EU supported phasing out 90% of Russian imports of crude within 6 months, with an exemption for crude on pipelines to satisfy Hungary and other landlocked states. Their stated goal is to “cripple the Russian war machine” but the reality is “summer is coming”. Manufacturing of everything from fertilizer (direct) to cars (indirect) requires energy and energy creation requires natural gas which is not replaceable. Heat waves, wind droughts, and virtually non existent battery storage means that Russia holds the hammer and can half its exports of natural gas, likely double the price in the supply-demand tug of war and still end up in the same financial position. In fact, after the ruble feel against the US dollar post invasion, it is now stronger than it was and the central bank slash rates from a high of 20% to 11% yesterday. Russia isn’t being hurt by this strategy, the West is.
All of which makes you wonder, do the EU and US administrations know this? My sense is yes and the goal has pivoted from a “save Ukraine” objective to a “let’s make fossil fuels so expensive that consumers demand we pivot much faster and declare victory on climate change so we look like hero’s” objective. That this strategy is equally preposterous doesn’t matter. That the world can’t (and shouldn’t) ween off fossil fuels since technologies for power storage and a culture of “on demand” power isn’t going anywhere. That seems to have been lost in the frenzy to prevent Greta’s childhood from being stolen (ummmm, Uvalde, anyone?).
Sadly, this tweet explains it best. climate change fear porn is, and always has been, about money. Which makes admitting you were wrong about the energy transition even more difficult, and you don’t care who you hurt in the way. Especially the Ukrainians.
Have you read Micheal Chricton's State of Fear? I think you would enjoy it. It's a little out dated now, but it is interesting to see his take on all of this. He even adds his own comments at the end.
And we haven't heard yet about how much we all will be expected to pay to rebuild the grid so we can move the "free" wind and solar from the surrounding counties into Houston to eliminate the $7,000/kwh (not a misprint) difference between the power markets last month. In CA the ratepayers revolted at a $80/month surcharge. Wait until ERCOT sends us the tab for helping Tesla owners bulk up their charging stations.