[h=1]The US Massacre in Kunduz Exposes the Bankruptcy of Obama’s National-Security Policy[/h]
US President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference in Washington. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
The aerial destruction that rained down on a hospital complex run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, a provincial capital in northeast Afghanistan, on October 3 puts an exclamation point on the story of America’s 14 years of warfare in that Central Asian country. At least 22 people were killed, among them doctors, other medical personnel, and patients, including three children, and dozens were wounded in the attack.
Beyond the obvious, immediate implications of this massacre—which serves as a reminder that for all of those 14 years, the United States has engaged in a brutal, mismanaged and ill-conceived war—more broadly the ruins of the Kunduz hospital are a symbol of America’s unfortunate reliance on air power, including drone strikes and bombers, to combat a host of insurgent groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere in Africa.
After the events in Kunduz, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF, issued a series of scathing statements, demanding an investigation of the incident by an impartial international body “under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed.” Christopher Stokes, MSF’s director general, said that the group is “disgusted” by the statements of Afghan government officials who justified the attack by claiming that Taliban fighters were present.
“Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound.” —MSF director-general
“Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning,” said Stokes. “The hospital was full of MSF staff, patients and their caretakers.” And he slammed the United States for its ever-changing excuses about the bombing. “Their description of the attack keeps changing—from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government.”
The attack was particularly egregious because MSF had repeatedly supplied the United States with the precise GPS coordinates of its hospital complex in recent days and weeks. (President Obama’s spokesman called the Kunduz bombing a “profound tragedy” rather than a war crime, and he said that Obama has complete “confidence” in investigations by the Defense Department, by NATO, and by US and Afghan military officers—but he refused to call for an independent investigation, as demanded by MSF.)
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been piling up for years, of course—most of them the result of indiscriminate Taliban attacks, including randomly placed IEDs and suicide bombings, but a large number caused by what the United Nations calls “pro-government” forces—that is, the United States and its allies and the Afghan National Security Forces. In October 2013, in a special issue of The Nation, “America’s Afghan Victims,” investigative journalist Nick Turse and I researched and wrote a package of stories that provided an account of the ongoing carnage in Afghanistan. In it, we tried to cut through the murky smokescreen that has obscured the toll of dead and maimed among civilian victims from the start of the war in October 2001 through the end of 2012. We documented 458 separate incidents that resulted in as many as 6,481 civilians killed by American forces during that period, and we provided a detailed, interactive database and chart covering every one of those incidents.
At that time, according to data from the UN, human rights groups, and private researchers such as those at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, it was clear that at least 19,000 Afghan civilians perished during the first twelve years of the war, from violence on all sides. But we also showed that neither the US military nor the government of Afghanistan nor the UN have anything like a complete count of the war’s toll, and that the numbers that exist understate the scope of the tragedy. Since then, of course—as underscored in red by the Kunduz massacre—the toll has only grown. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which only began trying to track casualties eight years ago, between 2007 and 2012 there were at least 14,728 civilian deaths; since then, even as the American presence has been cut back, another 8,260 more civilians died through mid-2015. Again, based on our reporting, those numbers are only a fraction of the actual total.
Despite massive US assistance, the Taliban has demonstrated staying power and the ability to control large areas.
If there’s such a thing as an “Obama doctrine” of US national security policy in place, it’s built around two pillars: first, using air power to counter “malign” actors such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, rather than direct, on-the-ground involvement of US forces; and second, the arming and training of proxy forces and newly built national armies to carry out the battles on the ground. Yet both pillars are crumbling. Few if any experienced national security policymakers and military experts believe that airstrikes can do more than harass or disrupt well-organized insurgencies, and the doctrine of using air power—developed during and after World War II in the Strategic Bombing Survey, proselytized by Robert McNamara and the Vietnam-era Whiz Kids—has been thoroughly discredited, as argued convincingly this week by James Russell of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Just this week, TheNew York Times reported extensively on the failure around the world of US efforts to support proxy forces and fledgling national armies, ranging from the $65 billion spent to build Afghanistan’s crumbling army, tens of billions spent in Iraq to rebuild the army that the United States dismantled in 2003, and the $500 million effort to organize a rebel force in Syria against the Islamic State that managed to put only “four or five” fighters in the field.
The seizure of Kunduz by the Taliban, the first provincial capital it has controlled since 2001, is a glaring sign of that failure. Despite massive American assistance and training to the Afghan National Security Forces over many years, the Taliban (as well as a newly emerging Islamic State force, exploiting rifts within the Taliban) has demonstrated not only staying power but the ability to seize and control large areas and to menace provincial capitals and even strike in Kabul itself. Backed by Pakistan, the Taliban—under a new commander, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who took control in the wake of the just-reported 2013 death of Mullah Omar—has made gains across the country. Earlier this year, Afghanistan’s interior minister designated 11 provinces as severely threatened and nine more facing medium-level threats. From Badakhshan and Kunduz provinces in the far northeast to Ghazni, Logar, and Kunar provinces in eastern Afghanistan and around Kabul to the vast province of Helmand in the south, the Taliban has carried out significant offensive actions. According to a gloomy report from the Brookings Institution, “Insecurity has significantly increased throughout the country, civilian deaths have shot up, and the Afghan security forces are taking large, and potentially unsustainable, casualties.”
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Though President Obama has insisted that the rebooted Global War on Terror will take pains to avoid civilian deaths, the Kunduz bombing came just five days after another, even more extensive massacre, this one in southern Yemen. On September 28, the American-backed Saudi Arabian air force obliterated a wedding party, killing at least 131 civilians, including 80 women huddled under a desert tent. The war in Yemen, which pits a rebel force of Houthis against remnants of the toppled, pro-Saudi regime that formerly ruled the country, is devolving into a proxy battle between Iran, which nominally backs the Houthis, and a US-Saudi coalition that is intent on using military force to restore Saudi dominance of the Arabian Peninsula. In the latest in a series of what appear to be indiscriminate air attacks that have killed many civilians, calls for an independent inquiry into the massacre by the UN were blocked by Saudi Arabia, with American support.
The Obama administration appears to have learned the lesson that affairs in the Middle East cannot be reordered to conform with American ideas about democracy and civil society by deploying tens or hundreds of thousands of US troops in feckless “state building” missions. But it has yet to grasp the related lesson that Washington cannot defeat insurgencies, even terrorism-inclined ones, by remote control via drones or by air power that deploys fighter jets and AC-130 gunships. Indeed, as even Donald Rumsfeld seemed to conclude in the waning days of his tenure as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, by blowing up low- and mid-level insurgent commanders, the United States is creating more terrorists than it kills.
The White House should draw the conclusion from the Kunduz massacre that there isn’t going to be a military solution to Afghanistan’s civil war. For fourteen years, under relentless US military action and the presence of up to 100,000 US troops, the Taliban hasn’t gone away. Since 2001, the one inescapable conclusion has been that only a power-sharing arrangement among all of Afghanistan’s factions, including the Taliban, can provide even the hope of ending the war. To get there will require diplomacy at least as intensive and prolonged as the process that led to the historic agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers over Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program.
In 2015, there have been promising signs that both the Afghan government and the Taliban might be ready to talk peace, and several recent meetings have been held between the parties toward that end. Last spring, China demonstrated a willingness to involve itself in brokering a deal, which could be important because Pakistan, the Taliban’s chief sponsor, is an erstwhile ally of China. Iran, now that it’s shown its own readiness to reintegrate into the global polity, could be an important partner in bringing Afghanistan’s warlords and tribal chieftains toward a deal. For President Obama, whose instincts seem to tell him to favor diplomacy over war, there’s an opportunity to follow his success with Iran by one in Afghanistan, too.
US President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference in Washington. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)The aerial destruction that rained down on a hospital complex run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, a provincial capital in northeast Afghanistan, on October 3 puts an exclamation point on the story of America’s 14 years of warfare in that Central Asian country. At least 22 people were killed, among them doctors, other medical personnel, and patients, including three children, and dozens were wounded in the attack.
Beyond the obvious, immediate implications of this massacre—which serves as a reminder that for all of those 14 years, the United States has engaged in a brutal, mismanaged and ill-conceived war—more broadly the ruins of the Kunduz hospital are a symbol of America’s unfortunate reliance on air power, including drone strikes and bombers, to combat a host of insurgent groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere in Africa.
After the events in Kunduz, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF, issued a series of scathing statements, demanding an investigation of the incident by an impartial international body “under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed.” Christopher Stokes, MSF’s director general, said that the group is “disgusted” by the statements of Afghan government officials who justified the attack by claiming that Taliban fighters were present.
“Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound.” —MSF director-general
“Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning,” said Stokes. “The hospital was full of MSF staff, patients and their caretakers.” And he slammed the United States for its ever-changing excuses about the bombing. “Their description of the attack keeps changing—from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government.”
The attack was particularly egregious because MSF had repeatedly supplied the United States with the precise GPS coordinates of its hospital complex in recent days and weeks. (President Obama’s spokesman called the Kunduz bombing a “profound tragedy” rather than a war crime, and he said that Obama has complete “confidence” in investigations by the Defense Department, by NATO, and by US and Afghan military officers—but he refused to call for an independent investigation, as demanded by MSF.)
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been piling up for years, of course—most of them the result of indiscriminate Taliban attacks, including randomly placed IEDs and suicide bombings, but a large number caused by what the United Nations calls “pro-government” forces—that is, the United States and its allies and the Afghan National Security Forces. In October 2013, in a special issue of The Nation, “America’s Afghan Victims,” investigative journalist Nick Turse and I researched and wrote a package of stories that provided an account of the ongoing carnage in Afghanistan. In it, we tried to cut through the murky smokescreen that has obscured the toll of dead and maimed among civilian victims from the start of the war in October 2001 through the end of 2012. We documented 458 separate incidents that resulted in as many as 6,481 civilians killed by American forces during that period, and we provided a detailed, interactive database and chart covering every one of those incidents.
At that time, according to data from the UN, human rights groups, and private researchers such as those at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, it was clear that at least 19,000 Afghan civilians perished during the first twelve years of the war, from violence on all sides. But we also showed that neither the US military nor the government of Afghanistan nor the UN have anything like a complete count of the war’s toll, and that the numbers that exist understate the scope of the tragedy. Since then, of course—as underscored in red by the Kunduz massacre—the toll has only grown. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which only began trying to track casualties eight years ago, between 2007 and 2012 there were at least 14,728 civilian deaths; since then, even as the American presence has been cut back, another 8,260 more civilians died through mid-2015. Again, based on our reporting, those numbers are only a fraction of the actual total.
Despite massive US assistance, the Taliban has demonstrated staying power and the ability to control large areas.
If there’s such a thing as an “Obama doctrine” of US national security policy in place, it’s built around two pillars: first, using air power to counter “malign” actors such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, rather than direct, on-the-ground involvement of US forces; and second, the arming and training of proxy forces and newly built national armies to carry out the battles on the ground. Yet both pillars are crumbling. Few if any experienced national security policymakers and military experts believe that airstrikes can do more than harass or disrupt well-organized insurgencies, and the doctrine of using air power—developed during and after World War II in the Strategic Bombing Survey, proselytized by Robert McNamara and the Vietnam-era Whiz Kids—has been thoroughly discredited, as argued convincingly this week by James Russell of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Just this week, TheNew York Times reported extensively on the failure around the world of US efforts to support proxy forces and fledgling national armies, ranging from the $65 billion spent to build Afghanistan’s crumbling army, tens of billions spent in Iraq to rebuild the army that the United States dismantled in 2003, and the $500 million effort to organize a rebel force in Syria against the Islamic State that managed to put only “four or five” fighters in the field.
The seizure of Kunduz by the Taliban, the first provincial capital it has controlled since 2001, is a glaring sign of that failure. Despite massive American assistance and training to the Afghan National Security Forces over many years, the Taliban (as well as a newly emerging Islamic State force, exploiting rifts within the Taliban) has demonstrated not only staying power but the ability to seize and control large areas and to menace provincial capitals and even strike in Kabul itself. Backed by Pakistan, the Taliban—under a new commander, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who took control in the wake of the just-reported 2013 death of Mullah Omar—has made gains across the country. Earlier this year, Afghanistan’s interior minister designated 11 provinces as severely threatened and nine more facing medium-level threats. From Badakhshan and Kunduz provinces in the far northeast to Ghazni, Logar, and Kunar provinces in eastern Afghanistan and around Kabul to the vast province of Helmand in the south, the Taliban has carried out significant offensive actions. According to a gloomy report from the Brookings Institution, “Insecurity has significantly increased throughout the country, civilian deaths have shot up, and the Afghan security forces are taking large, and potentially unsustainable, casualties.”
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Though President Obama has insisted that the rebooted Global War on Terror will take pains to avoid civilian deaths, the Kunduz bombing came just five days after another, even more extensive massacre, this one in southern Yemen. On September 28, the American-backed Saudi Arabian air force obliterated a wedding party, killing at least 131 civilians, including 80 women huddled under a desert tent. The war in Yemen, which pits a rebel force of Houthis against remnants of the toppled, pro-Saudi regime that formerly ruled the country, is devolving into a proxy battle between Iran, which nominally backs the Houthis, and a US-Saudi coalition that is intent on using military force to restore Saudi dominance of the Arabian Peninsula. In the latest in a series of what appear to be indiscriminate air attacks that have killed many civilians, calls for an independent inquiry into the massacre by the UN were blocked by Saudi Arabia, with American support.
The Obama administration appears to have learned the lesson that affairs in the Middle East cannot be reordered to conform with American ideas about democracy and civil society by deploying tens or hundreds of thousands of US troops in feckless “state building” missions. But it has yet to grasp the related lesson that Washington cannot defeat insurgencies, even terrorism-inclined ones, by remote control via drones or by air power that deploys fighter jets and AC-130 gunships. Indeed, as even Donald Rumsfeld seemed to conclude in the waning days of his tenure as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, by blowing up low- and mid-level insurgent commanders, the United States is creating more terrorists than it kills.
The White House should draw the conclusion from the Kunduz massacre that there isn’t going to be a military solution to Afghanistan’s civil war. For fourteen years, under relentless US military action and the presence of up to 100,000 US troops, the Taliban hasn’t gone away. Since 2001, the one inescapable conclusion has been that only a power-sharing arrangement among all of Afghanistan’s factions, including the Taliban, can provide even the hope of ending the war. To get there will require diplomacy at least as intensive and prolonged as the process that led to the historic agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers over Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program.
In 2015, there have been promising signs that both the Afghan government and the Taliban might be ready to talk peace, and several recent meetings have been held between the parties toward that end. Last spring, China demonstrated a willingness to involve itself in brokering a deal, which could be important because Pakistan, the Taliban’s chief sponsor, is an erstwhile ally of China. Iran, now that it’s shown its own readiness to reintegrate into the global polity, could be an important partner in bringing Afghanistan’s warlords and tribal chieftains toward a deal. For President Obama, whose instincts seem to tell him to favor diplomacy over war, there’s an opportunity to follow his success with Iran by one in Afghanistan, too.
The oopsie above will create far more poor hopeless people that hate us and want revenge than we will ever be able to take
out with our expensive drones etc..
Foreign policy since 9/11 complete comedy but obviously the result of emotions and the miltary industrial complex and not rational thinking about the big picture
Cest la vie
out with our expensive drones etc..
Foreign policy since 9/11 complete comedy but obviously the result of emotions and the miltary industrial complex and not rational thinking about the big picture
Cest la vie
Maybe the US want MSF out of Afghanistan. They bombed the Al-Jazeera offices for the same reason
Banana brain also wanted to bomb AJs main office in Qatar, and Qatar is a key US ally in the ME
Its Foreign Policy by muppets and knuckleheads
"you don't know the bigger picture" was an excuse used all the time in Vietnam
...before it all went
up
Banana brain also wanted to bomb AJs main office in Qatar, and Qatar is a key US ally in the ME
Its Foreign Policy by muppets and knuckleheads
"you don't know the bigger picture" was an excuse used all the time in Vietnam
...before it all went
upAfghanistan is like that book by Heller, Catch 22
Chinese arms pour into the Afghan warzone which are used to shoot US personnel while US corporations make a fortune with chinese labour and factories sending smartphones to the US
We live in a crazy world run by crazy people, then when it all goes up the little guy has to sort out the mess that the bored people in power create
Chinese arms pour into the Afghan warzone which are used to shoot US personnel while US corporations make a fortune with chinese labour and factories sending smartphones to the US
We live in a crazy world run by crazy people, then when it all goes
up the little guy has to sort out the mess that the bored people in power createYeah just seems like no matter what we do the world will be run by power hungry sociopaths.. that's why they are at the top as you need to trample on everybody else to make it there... But I still strongly believe without central banking system ablity to do whatever it pleases and continuously prop/create credit the word would be a much more equal place and the sociopaths would have a much harder time grasping more power as they are the ones that are currently favored and the system is rigged for by central banking policy over the long haul in its current state..
most at of the brilliant non sociopaths end up doing high end math/science/medicine etc.. Plus many of those types surprisingly get brainwashed politically/economically anyway and are dolts when it comes to societal issues just regurgiating something they heard on the TV..
9/11 ironically was my "awakening" event.. well our response to it like many initially I was bombarded with the images non stop and hell bent on revenge.. Soon after I slowly grew out of my naive science dork self and started questioning everything..
another example of rich sociopath
Brazil's richest man dreams of taking over Coca-Cola and firing all of its employees
.
(Scott Olson/Getty)
Jorge Lemann, founding partner of 3G Capital
He already controls Burger King, Kraft, Stella Artois, and Heinz.And for a while now, Brazil's richest man, Jorge Lemann, has been eyeing $178.2 billion beverage-giant Coca-Cola, according to Bloomberg.
"We'd love to take a look at Coca-Cola," Lemann said in 2008 at a private meeting, according to the report.
"We could run it with 200 people," he joked.
That would mean cutting most of Coke's 100,000 employees.
Lemann has strung together some of the biggest acquisitions of all time in the past five years through his investment company, 3G Capital. The 76-year-old billionaire is known for his cutthroat management style and the swift layoffs that follow an acquisition.
most at of the brilliant non sociopaths end up doing high end math/science/medicine etc.. Plus many of those types surprisingly get brainwashed politically/economically anyway and are dolts when it comes to societal issues just regurgiating something they heard on the TV..
9/11 ironically was my "awakening" event.. well our response to it like many initially I was bombarded with the images non stop and hell bent on revenge.. Soon after I slowly grew out of my naive science dork self and started questioning everything..
another example of rich sociopath
Brazil's richest man dreams of taking over Coca-Cola and firing all of its employees
.
(Scott Olson/Getty)
Jorge Lemann, founding partner of 3G Capital
He already controls Burger King, Kraft, Stella Artois, and Heinz.And for a while now, Brazil's richest man, Jorge Lemann, has been eyeing $178.2 billion beverage-giant Coca-Cola, according to Bloomberg.
"We'd love to take a look at Coca-Cola," Lemann said in 2008 at a private meeting, according to the report.
"We could run it with 200 people," he joked.
That would mean cutting most of Coke's 100,000 employees.
Lemann has strung together some of the biggest acquisitions of all time in the past five years through his investment company, 3G Capital. The 76-year-old billionaire is known for his cutthroat management style and the swift layoffs that follow an acquisition.
Why a guy at 76 even gives a fuck about that shit anymore is beyond me it's the rich and famous doing pissing contests... It's madness
spend some of your stack and enjoy the few years u got left.. Just can't understand the "fiat stackers" ... Maybe I would if I were a sociopath lol.. Guess it's that built in lieing mechanism humans have.. Ability to deny/lie to themselves that they are a self centered ahole that could give two shits about their fellow man..
spend some of your stack and enjoy the few years u got left.. Just can't understand the "fiat stackers" ... Maybe I would if I were a sociopath lol.. Guess it's that built in lieing mechanism humans have.. Ability to deny/lie to themselves that they are a self centered ahole that could give two shits about their fellow man..
Such is the wold of genetics and hubris and Darwinism
Never forgot about a German industrialist who was about 76 at the time(1980s)
Got everyone together in a room (executive style) and doled out his millions and property amongst them all.
Signed it all off in a nice legal way.
Then went into an ajoining room and drank a lethal cocktail
Control is everything.
That's why Adolf and Stalin never went bacteriological warfare or poison gas, they lose control of events, the free for all suddennly becomes personal. That's why all suicide bombers are under 35
Nuclear weapons are a waste of time, it means they've lost control, and losing control means they are a loser
Never forgot about a German industrialist who was about 76 at the time(1980s)
Got everyone together in a room (executive style) and doled out his millions and property amongst them all.
Signed it all off in a nice legal way.
Then went into an ajoining room and drank a lethal cocktail
Control is everything.
That's why Adolf and Stalin never went bacteriological warfare or poison gas, they lose control of events, the free for all suddennly becomes personal. That's why all suicide bombers are under 35
Nuclear weapons are a waste of time, it means they've lost control, and losing control means they are a loser
Very very few winners have been losers in the past, and like boxers who have been losers in the past they become winners and legends in human history(marciano)
The two that spring to mind for me are Robert the Bruce in Scotland and the American industrialist William C. Durant
It's not well written but he basically started GM, got booted out, then got chevrolet going and re-acquired GM in the biggest financial comeback in history
The two that spring to mind for me are Robert the Bruce in Scotland and the American industrialist William C. Durant
It's not well written but he basically started GM, got booted out, then got chevrolet going and re-acquired GM in the biggest financial comeback in history
Nat Grid CEO coming out and saying decentralized energy is the future. Solar/microgrids with power plant as augmenting.
http://www.energypost.eu/interview-...large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/
http://www.energypost.eu/interview-...large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/
A proper future would embrace micro generation and it could happen in the US. In the UK they employ local regulations and councils to turn the procedure into a red tape nightmare, stifling innovation
Not everything is panning out as it should. Uber should be killing the taxi business but apps like gett are tearing the old radio taxi firms to pieces and empowering individual taxi drivers like never before. The only real casualties are the old entrenched manual radio businesses. Individual taxis can compete on price much of the time plus they have competitive advantages like bus lanes during busy periods and street pickups for extra income
$10 fixed fares in the US and #5quid in the UK are drawing a huge amount of business
Not everything is panning out as it should. Uber should be killing the taxi business but apps like gett are tearing the old radio taxi firms to pieces and empowering individual taxi drivers like never before. The only real casualties are the old entrenched manual radio businesses. Individual taxis can compete on price much of the time plus they have competitive advantages like bus lanes during busy periods and street pickups for extra income
$10 fixed fares in the US and #5quid in the UK are drawing a huge amount of business
The last two weeks of September was quite the time for news – the Pope’s visit, the Speaker’s exit, the Chinese President’s visit, the United Nations General Assembly, huge Hurricane Joaquin, weird House committee rants, flowing water on Mars, more Trumpeting, the new Daily Show.
But the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Seattle on his way to the east coast, was little heralded in the nation at large. Disputes over computer hacking, cyber-plundering and limits on U.S. firms’ access to Chinese markets have tensions high between the two federal governments, to the point where unleashing economic sanctions on Chinese businesses is a definite possibility.
China’s increasing territorial assertiveness in South East Asia is also weighing on everyone’s mind.
But Washington State is doing well with China.
Washington State exports more stuff to China than to any other nation. Airplanes top the list, but petroleum and agricultural exports aren’t far behind, especially soybeans, wheat, corn, potatoes, fruit, wine and wood. All needed for a population four times as large as the United States.
Now nuclear reactors will enter that list.
Bill Gates looks on as Lee McIntire, CEO of Gates’ nuclear technology company, TerraPower, and Qian Zhimin, President of the China National Nuclear Corporation, signs an agreement that allows the two companies to collaborate on advanced nuclear technologies that address safety, environmental and cost issues – fast reactors that get ten times the energy from the same amount of fuel as old reactors. Source: TerraPower
Bill Gates’ nuclear power company, TerraPower, signed an agreement with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) allowing the two companies to collaborate on advanced nuclear technologies that address safety, environmental and cost issues. The MOU was signed by TerraPower CEO Lee McIntire and CNNC President Qian Zhimin, as Washington’s Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen and Bill Gates looked on (see figure).
But the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Seattle on his way to the east coast, was little heralded in the nation at large. Disputes over computer hacking, cyber-plundering and limits on U.S. firms’ access to Chinese markets have tensions high between the two federal governments, to the point where unleashing economic sanctions on Chinese businesses is a definite possibility.
China’s increasing territorial assertiveness in South East Asia is also weighing on everyone’s mind.
But Washington State is doing well with China.
Washington State exports more stuff to China than to any other nation. Airplanes top the list, but petroleum and agricultural exports aren’t far behind, especially soybeans, wheat, corn, potatoes, fruit, wine and wood. All needed for a population four times as large as the United States.
Now nuclear reactors will enter that list.
Bill Gates’ nuclear power company, TerraPower, signed an agreement with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) allowing the two companies to collaborate on advanced nuclear technologies that address safety, environmental and cost issues. The MOU was signed by TerraPower CEO Lee McIntire and CNNC President Qian Zhimin, as Washington’s Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen and Bill Gates looked on (see figure).
China’s plan to build 400 new nuclear reactors by mid-century means a huge market for any company dedicated to design and build next-generation reactors. Last year, President Jinping called for even faster development of nuclear energy, as discussed in Forbes/Asia.
Bill Gates has long understood the essential role of reliable power in eradicating global poverty, and its evil stepchildren war and terrorism, and decided that nuclear was the best long-term solution for base load power.
Bill Gates: Beyond Microsoft, Money, Malaria. An eBook From Forbes
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What is needed for the next thousand years are new-generation nuclear fast-reactors, a design that gets ten times more energy out of the same amount of fuel as a traditional reactor. The waste is much easier to handle, cannot be used to make weapons, and is only hot for a few hundred years – not thousands.
TerraPower’s version of this reactor is called the Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR), a liquid sodium-cooled fast reactor that uses depleted or natural uranium as fuel, and can even burn spent fuel from our old reactors.
TerraPower plans to build a 600 MWe plant first by the early 2020s, followed by a larger 1,150 MWe commercial plant.
CNNC isn’t the first nuclear company to sign on with Gates and TerraPower. Last year, Babcock & Wilcox, the big manufacturer of Navy nuclear reactors, agreed to support TerraPower by providing design and fabrication of components and fuel, engineering, materials testing and operations support, among other services.
“Additional work must be done to define what a possible joint venture may look like, but this MOU signals that we are well on track,” said McIntire.
Unfortunately, the regulatory environment in America is so glacial that TerraPower and CNNC will build the first unit in Chinaand then deploy commercial versions of this new reactor to global markets within fifteen years.
The nuclear angle dovetails with the big announcement by Jinping that China is instituting a Cap&Trade program to address carbon emissions and global warming. China pledged $3.1 billion to help developing countries combat climate change, about the same as the United States.
It’s important that this Cap&Trade program work for China, as important as it is for the United States. The two countries together produce almost half of all carbon emissions in the world. Efforts by both nations will be front and center at the Paris COP-21 climate talks this December in the hopes of moving the world forward.
“Xi Jinping is scoring a propaganda coup by announcing China’s intention to introduce a national cap-and-trade scheme in 2017,” noted Macquarie University professor John Matthews in The Conversation. The irony is not lost on anyone that China is introducing the very scheme that failed to get through our own Congress amid calls that China would never join us.
China’s announcement may be the critical domino to fall. This week India, the world’s third-largest emitter and last major economy to submit emissions plans, promised to decrease its emissions by a third over the next 15 years. Although its economy is relatively small and weak, and its people too poor for detail goals and timetables, India’s plan is a long-awaited contribution towards reaching a global deal to address global warming at the U.N. climate summit in December.
But as Mark Clifford writes in Forbes/Asia, “Propaganda coups are nice theater, but they don’t clean the air. The euphoria over China’s announcement should not obscure some tough questions.”
It is really difficult to build the actual market for Cap&Trade anywhere. But it’s particularly difficult to monitor the program in China, given the relative weakness of the central government relative to the local and regional governments. Cap&Trade lends itself quite well to corruption.
Europe’s experiment with Cap&Trade has been variable, and they’re a better market-driven economy than China in general, and for Cap&Trade in particular.
But China needs it to work – if you’ve been to Beijing lately, you know why (see figure).
In fact, TerraPower’s CTO, John Gilleland feels that, “They’re very serious. In some ways, they’re more serious than we are.” He knows that China believes in climate change and wants to reduce the smog that’s choking its cities and threatening their emerging health care system.
It is critical that China deals with this issue now. China burns 4 billion tons of coal a year, almost as much as the rest of the world combined, and coal use in China has been rising steadily for the past decade. Despite the recent economic dip, China’s power sector will double in the next 20 years.
It’s imperative that clean energy, like new nuclear, dominate that growth – not coal.
China’s plan to build 400 new nuclear reactors by mid-century
Wow, nuclear wasteland here we come!
The USA managed about 100 reactors before the local population finally realised what a crappy deal they are
It's like burning your floorboards to heat your home
Middle class white collar petty criminals have a lot to answer for.
Financial services. Nuclear generation. Local government. Corporations. Healthcare.
Will they ever do something that DOESN'T leave a mess for the next generation to sort out???
Wow, nuclear wasteland here we come!
The USA managed about 100 reactors before the local population finally realised what a crappy deal they are
It's like burning your floorboards to heat your home
Middle class white collar petty criminals have a lot to answer for.
Financial services. Nuclear generation. Local government. Corporations. Healthcare.
Will they ever do something that DOESN'T leave a mess for the next generation to sort out???
China burns more fossil fuel and pollutes the air as much as the rest of the world combined. Clearly innovation and investment in nuclear is needed to solve our long-term energy problems. They have a growing economy with 20% of the worlds population, what else would you suggest they do over the next 15 years?
Nukes only long-term solution for cheap/clean fuel as the population approaches 10B people. The alternative sources are getting cheaper and better but you still need baseload.
US just too risk averse at this point, nobody wants one in their backyard, tons of fear/misinformation. You can put those things anywhere as long as you setup safe logistics. There have been very few accidents with transport.
At some point in our lives, before we are lying on a bed staring at the ceiling and sucking at our last hours of air, we need to find some purpose for our existence which doesn't involve making obscenely rich people richer.
or as eek would say:
"find some purpose for your existence before ya croak!"
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"It really came out of the blue," Mr Wood says. "I wish I could tell you that I was always focused on charitable endeavours, but the reality was that I was focused on myself, on my career, and on how much money I could sock away in my bank account."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34465031
or as eek would say:
"find some purpose for your existence before ya croak!"
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"It really came out of the blue," Mr Wood says. "I wish I could tell you that I was always focused on charitable endeavours, but the reality was that I was focused on myself, on my career, and on how much money I could sock away in my bank account."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34465031
Bill Gates has played a crucial role in cutting the global poverty rate in half over the last 20 years. He is now investing billions of dollars in helping the world with it's energy needs, probably not likely to going to see any ROI on this investment. He is 60 and they won't even have the first reactor ready for atleast 10 years.
Of all people to disparage as greedy sociopaths, I don't think he is on the list.
Of all people to disparage as greedy sociopaths, I don't think he is on the list.
