Reflectii

Part 4. Mental escalators of violence in US policy and media makers. Part 4B. A competitive, threat-orientation towards international relations: Psychological patterns described by Lakoff, Spranger, and Allport

False Bias #2. Life Is Competition; the Goal Is to Beat Adversaries and Stay on Top. Let’s take a look at actual, representative lines from Damon Wilson’s 2019 testimony, two years before he became president of the National Endowment for “Democracy,” and three years before Russia’s military action in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Ukraine. As we do so in this and the next several essays, I’ll point out several biases that I find in Wilson’s way of thinking, a pattern of thinking common to many of the minds that are forever leading our foreign policy. These biases of thought—cognitive biases—skew the mind and allow only certain perceptions of life, international relations, and human dynamics. I write about them at greater length and with more examples in my unpublished works, but I’ll provide some condensed ideas here.

This summer blockbuster lived up to the hype. In Madrid this week, NATO allies substantially boosted their forces in Eastern Europe, struck a deal to invite Sweden and Finland into the club, and dropped a once-in-a-decade strategic concept that strove to break new ground on China and climate change. What do these developments mean—and which ones flew under the radar? How will history judge this consequential gathering? From Madrid to Washington, our experts are here with answers.

This one was a decade in the making. On Wednesday, NATO released its new Strategic Concept—a sixteen-page document of dry diplomat-speak sketching out the Alliance’s future path as it takes on threats posed by Russia, China, climate change, and more. But what were the allies really saying amid all the jargon? And what did they leave out? Experts from the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative carefully combed through the document and dropped their insights in the margins.

Amid the horror that has befallen Ukraine and its people, one rare uplifting aspect of the tragedy is the remarkably warm and generous reception that Ukrainian refugees fleeing the carnage have received from European nations.

Na stałe bazy NATO na wschodniej flance się nie zapowiada. Sojusz ograniczy się do powiększenia sił szybkiego reagowania. W razie wojny ich odsiecz nastąpi dopiero wtedy, gdy Moskwa zdąży zamienić Estonię czy Przesmyk Suwalski w połączenie Buczy z Mariupolem.

The ongoing world energy crisis… seems to have proven for once and all that energy independence is a matter of national security.

To transition to renewable energy, America would have to transform its energy infrastructure and invest heavily in wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars, all of which require rare earth materials as central components. A single industrial-size wind turbine, for instance, requires about one ton of four different kinds of rare earth materials.

A Conversation With Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan

The global energy market is in a state of upheaval. The war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions against Russian oil and gas have forced the West, especially Europe, to quickly find new energy sources to keep the lights on and the cars running this summer. In the United States, rising gas prices are pushing President Joe Biden to make a controversial trip to Saudi Arabia to encourage the oil-rich state to increase production. This scramble for quick-fix energy solutions comes as the world is trying to kick its addiction to fossil fuels and reduce the effects of climate change. How will these short-term needs affect the urgent but longer-term transition to clean energy? And could today’s energy market turbulence be a harbinger of challenges to come as the global energy system is remade?

If Sweden and Finland succeed in joining NATO, their addition could provide the fringe benefit of enhancing U.S. strategies and tactics against a rival far removed from Atlantic waters, according to analysts.

The focus of the US media and economists for the past several months has been increasingly on inflation. In recent weeks, however, US policymakers awoke as well to the realization that inflation is chronic, firmly embedded, and growing threat to the immediate future of the US economy.

When Colombians went to the polls Sunday to choose a new president, both choices on the ballot meant change and more than a little uncertainty about the future. It’s no surprise, then, that now that the results are in, Colombia finds itself on edge, teetering between high expectations and high anxiety.