Read what Russian anarchists thought of Wagner’s march to Moscow. Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing …

… read about the mining industry seeing green.

The future of mining is the pale shimmering green of spodumene, a silicate that can be refined into lithium. Nick Bowlin, writing for The Drift, [[link removed]] learned the secret of spodumene at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada, a mining conference held annually in Toronto. “Following a land acknowledgment, Ken Hoffman, head of the battery materials team at McKinsey, took the podium in front of a large room packed with hundreds of people,” writes Bowlin, whose deep report is filled with this same juxtaposition. Miners, and especially mining companies, have, through the necessities and trends of energy transition, found themselves passively greenwashed, as the materials they extract become essential to any post-fossil fuel future. “A world that does not rely on fossil fuel combustion will need rechargeable battery technology at an unprecedented scale, in everything from the cars we drive to grid-scale energy storage infrastructure, with enough capacity to power a city when the sun sets and everyone turns on their lights. None of this will be possible without lithium,” explains Bowlin. The government of Chile’s threat to nationalize its lithium deposits, enacted after the conference, offered one balance of local control over harms of extraction. In Bowlin’s telling, acknowledgments of past inhabitants of land abounded, with much less on offer for Indigenous people presently opposed to mining.

IF YOU READ MORE THAN ONE THING

Deficient Deficit Thinking

Austerity is a set of policy choices that ensures the durability of wealth at the expense of human flourishing or, even, survival. In the European Union, despite popular support for green investment and renewable energy, the austerity policies of the 2010s meant seven lost years of green investment. As the 2030 goals for reduced carbon output approach, the likelihood that Europe will once again prefer budget balances over capital investment in a sustainable future looms large.

“Meeting the target of 55 precent emissions cuts by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels) requires further investment of about 2 percent of GDP [[link removed]] in total each year for transport, homes, and electricity. The EU committed to enhanced Fit for 55 (2030) targets in 2022. What it now needs to find are funds, which means letting go of old ideas about fiscal responsibility,” write Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay at Phenomenal World [[link removed]].

If Europe is unwilling or unable to change its rules on spending, which the authors fear is likely, then the 2020s risk becoming another lost decade, where wealth management for a few is prioritized over the work of building a livable future for us all.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Po No More

The Po river flows from the western Italian Alps across the north of the country until it meets the Adriatic Sea in the east. For thousands of years, it has been a tremendously important revenue for farming. In recent years, drought after drought has drastically diminished its water levels, creating a crisis that rainfall has not solved.

“Forty-eight percent of Italian hydroelectric production derives from roughly 890 plants in the Po Valley, with 31 percent of the nation’s thermoelectric energy sourced from 400 additional plants across the area. When snow and rain don’t fall, turbines can’t turn. Because of low water levels, one hydroelectric plant shut down, sending energy producers looking for alternatives,” reports Kenneth R. Rosen at The Dial. [[link removed]]

Managing water scarcity may be new for the inhabitants of the Po Valley, who have relied on abundance for centuries, but in the face of a warming world and climate change, adopting new techniques and water efficiency will be vital if the river is to continue to meet needs. That includes, especially, better coordination. Watersheds have their own boundaries, ones that transcend other divisions.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE War Games: Part II

When people play games, they learn not just the rules of play, but how to operate in a world structured by those rules. As gaming has moved from Pentagon-run simulations or RAND-imagined scenarios, it has allowed people to experience a wider range of actions. Players are no longer confined to the roles of commanders or generals, as in strategic simulation, but are participants in virtual worlds, ones that shape who they are as people.

In “ Wargames Resurgent: The Hyperrealities of Military Gaming from Recruitment to Rehabilitation [[link removed]],” Aggie Hirst makes the case that International Relations should take the study of games seriously. This includes strategic games, which have long been studied, through ebbs and flows of scholarly interest, but also the games people play in their spare time, which inform how they understand the world and their role in it.

“Since 2014, a gaming renaissance has been underway across the US defense establishment. From simple card and counter games to augmented/virtual reality training systems, and from basic training to four-star command, today gaming is entrenched across the military's strategic planning architecture, teaching and training regimes, and administrative infrastructure,” writes Hirst. “To date, IR has neglected to engage with this revival.”

Engaging with that revival means taking seriously what people do in games, how individuals and institutions use them, and what understanding of the world games instill in their players. To do this, Hirst conducted a total of 73 interviews between 2017 and 2019 with designers, instructors, trainees, and veterans across the then-four branches of the US military: the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy. (Members of Space Force, a branch created in December 2019, were not included, as the branch did not exist when the study began.)

“This article argues that hyperreal games — that is, games that produce realities — play an increasingly important role in the attraction, production, management, and recovery of warfighters. The core argument developed is that unlike simulations, which model scenarios, games are productive of people, values, and identity,” writes Hirst.

In her article, Hirst examines four different ways the US military and people within it use gaming. Recruitment gaming is games as a tool for just that, from the military-produced America’s Army first-person shooter. Training with games involves tools specifically adapted for simulated battle, where a squad can run an exercise virtually before testing it out on the course, or where pilots can log time in virtual reality flight simulators when needed. Deployment gaming is the use by soldiers and others to play games in the dead time between action, bonding, and processing together. Finally, there’s rehabilitation gaming, where veterans and others turn to games to process feelings about war, and sometimes to regain skills like eye-hand coordination that were lost to combat.

Concludes Hirst, “IR and associated fields must now develop theories, concepts, methods, and research communities adequate not just to new realities of games but to the distinctive hyperrealities they produce.”

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] CREATIVE CAPSULE CALL

Hello readers! We interrupt this regularly formatted Critical State to invite you to apply for the Creative Capsule Residency [[link removed]]. This virtual residency, supported by Inkstick Media [[link removed]] and Bombshelltoe Policy x Arts Collective [[link removed]], is looking for journalists, artists, and international security experts, at all skill levels, interested in working on a project about global security issues. The deadline for applications is July 21, 2023. Apply here [[link removed]]!

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] RECEIPTS

Larry Schwab remembered [[link removed]] Aug. 16, 1968, when he witnessed firsthand the deaths and injuries from a then-classified cluster munition used by the United States. Schwab had been drafted into the US Army, and as a conscientious objector with a medical degree, he was assigned the care of a battalion deployed to Vietnam. “In the after-action report, I learned that what I witnessed was an early instance of US forces deploying cluster munitions in combat. I saw a new weapon-invention and its frightful indiscriminate killing efficiency,” he wrote. The weapon killed 85 North Vietnamese soldiers, one US soldier, and injured 27 US soldiers.

Tibisay Zea reported [[link removed]] on the way grain shortages are changing a dietary staple in Senegal. Baguettes, wrote Zea, are “the long, crusty and airy bread the French left behind in their former West African colonies,” but because the grain doesn’t grow in Senegal’s tropical climate, the country has long imported grain from Russia. Sanctions on dollar transactions levied against Russia after the invasion made it hard for Senegal to buy the grain, leading the government to turn toward domestic production of other grains as a way to achieve wheat independence. “It looks and tastes more like whole wheat bread,” Michelle Jonas, a client at the Point Chaud bakery in Dakar, told Zea.

Justin Salhani outlined [[link removed]] the absurdity of France’s attempt to formally portray itself as a colorblind society while being unable to understand how race and history led police to shoot teenager Nahel M. at a traffic stop. “Nahel’s death is just the latest in a string of police acts of violence against France’s racialized population. Most of the police’s victims have been Black or of North African ancestry,” wrote Salhani. “Still, in recent years French officials have rejected any description of their institutions as racist and instead granted them even more liberties that have led to deaths.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL-PLAYED

Today’s barriers are tomorrow’s nesting material [[link removed]].

It’s a Bonaparty world [[link removed]].

Even the security dilemma is subject to active carcinisation [[link removed]].

The Bart Jacobins [[link removed]].

Scared of monsters under the bed? With its Patton-ted technology, the cuddly Sherman tank [[link removed]] can have you sleeping as soundly as a fox in a foxhole.

Entire political science courses will be taught on the demand for, and inclusion of, the nine-dash line in Barbie’s impressionistic world map [[link removed]].

The name’s Dugnutt. Bobson Dugnutt [[link removed]].

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Follow The World: DONATE TO THE WORLD [[link removed]] Follow Inkstick: DONATE TO INKSTICK [[link removed]]

Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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