“This is the hope, that Europe now realises the danger and starts a green Manhattan project” (Yuval Noah Harari).
The whole thing is worth to listen to but this is my favourite part. Solving the climate crisis and undercutting dictators at the same time sounds like a good idea to me.
However this horrible chapter in European history will end, a few things are certain:
1. Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be remembered as a hero by history, whatever baggage he may carry. (Who cares about Churchill’s disastrous World War 1?)
2. The EU, as this article from The Guardian dramatically demonstrates, has slayed so many sacred cows, that its future will be interesting to follow. (Nothing unites like a common enemy!)
3. Germany is rearming. (This will make the former coal and steel coomunity more important than ever.)
4. Sweden sends weapons to a country engaged in an armed conflict. This hasn’t happened since the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939. (Sweden has not been at war for over 200 hundred years. But guess in what direction the guns have been pointing during those centuries.)
5. Turkey is invoking the Montreux convention.
The list could be made longer. And will probably be made longer by future decisions. For instance: Nordstream 2 will probably never open. On the contrary, every country that today is dependent on Russian gas is likely to scramble to replace it, sooner rather than later.
To sum up, as long as Putin is in power, the west, and especially the Russians, will have to adjust to the new reality of a Cold War 2.
Sweden and Great Britain has been at war. For two years! I did not know that. But since not a single shot was fired and trade continued between the countries (and Sweden even let their “enemy” “occupy” an island so that the trade could continue), this is perhaps not surprising.
“Until this week, US taxpayers were literally and directly paying for the Civil War, a conflict whose origins stretch back to the earliest days of the American colonies and continues today on the streets of our cities and towns” (Jason Kottke).