PULASKI POLICY PAPER – P. Przybyło: The last oil peak in the history of the world – geopolitical, sociological, and economic factors that shape the future of the Energy sector
Pulaski Policy Paper no 11, 2020, November 27, 2020 Current global energy consumption forecasts indicate that although renewables are set to expand by 50% between 2020 and 2025, they will not fully replace fossil fuels in our lifetimes. However, if recent geopolitical, economical, and sociological factors are taken into account, this prediction becomes obsolete. The world is about to enter a period of rapid energy transformation. At the end of 2019, modern renewable energy (excluding the traditional use of biomass) accounted for an estimated 11% of the total final energy consumption (TFEC) globally. The highest share of renewable energy use (26.4%) was in electrical uses excluding heating, cooling and transport. […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER – T.Smura: Modernisation Programmes of the US Armed Forces – Gearing Up for ‘Great Power Competition’
Pułaski Policy Paper No 5, 2020. 28 May 2020 On February 10, 2020 the US President Donald Trump submitted the 2021 defence budget proposal to the Congress in compliance with the constraints imposed by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019. The Department of Defense is expected to receive US$ 705.4 billion out of US$ 740.5 billion for national security. The major goal of the proposed budget is the implementation of the National Defense Strategy, which is primarily concerned with the ‘great-power competition’ – particularly against China and Russia that possess comparable military capabilities to the United States. The FY 2021 DoD budget is presumed to increase by only 0.1 percent […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER: T. Otłowski – Peace at Any cost? Implications of the US-Taliban Deal in Afghanistan
Pułaski Policy Paper No 3, 2020. 03 March 2020 In September 2019, President Donald Trump decided to suspend talks with the Taliban due to alleged violent actions against Western troops and Afghan citizens. It was clear, however, that the move of the US president was an element of a political game and his negotiation tactics. Perhaps Trump’s cabinet realised that the continuation of the peace negotiations with the Taliban would lead to a conference with their representatives at the White House, which was scheduled to take place in September 2019, on the 18th anniversary of 9/11 attacks. Shortly afterwards, it became clear that Trump’s decision to postpone the talks was a […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER: S. Koziej – Scenarios for the Turkish Crisis in NATO
Pulaski Policy Paper No 2, 2020. February 4, 2020 In recent years, the North Atlantic Alliance has faced a number of external challenges, whose majority was related to the Russian neo-imperialism, the permanent crisis in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the China-US hegemonic rivalry across the world. NATO has also been struggling with a plethora of internal issues such as Transatlantic tensions that had been provoked by Donald Trump’s policies as well as the growing risk of European disintegration. The Turkish crisis has become another problem that the Alliance must face. The recent decisions of the Turkish government – conducting an unexpected operation against Syrian Kurds; purchasing […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER – J. Gajda: The Death of General Soleimani – a Turing Point in the US-Iran Conflict?
Pułaski Policy Paper No 1, 2020. 04 January 2020 On January 3, 2020, news agencies around the world reported that a convoy of cars had been attacked by an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) near Baghdad International Airport. As it turned out, the drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani (commander of the elite Quds Force) and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (commander of Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah militia) along with five other officers. Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran promised retaliation to avenge the death of their general. Their first decision, however, was to announce three days of mourning and call for an extraordinary meeting of the Supreme National Security Council, which was chaired […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER – R. Lipka: The London Summit as a Test for NATO Unity
Pułaski Policy Paper No 9, 2019. 24 December 2019 On December 3-4, 2019, the North Atlantic Council held a summit meeting in London to commemorate the 70th anniversary of NATO founding treaty as well as the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. The summit turned out to be another tense meeting for NATO. The disputes between the member states materialised on the first day of the summit. The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, accused Turkey of supporting the Islamic State. On the other hand, Macron’s recent comments on NATO provoked sharp criticism from Donald Trump[i]. Furthermore, on the eve of the summit a rumour had surfaced that Ankara […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER – T.Otłowski: Consequences of Caliph Ibrahim’s Death—What’s Next for the Islamic State?
Pułaski Policy Paper No 8, 2019. 11 December 2019 The death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – the self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim and the leader of the Islamic State (IS) that had been hiding in Idlib province in northwestern Syria – triggered a number of analysts to announce a major breakthrough in war against the caliphate and the Islamic extremism in general. It seems, however, that those overly optimistic claims are premature. The Islamic State is apparently capable of existing and functioning without a charismatic leader, such as al-Baghdadi, due to its characteristics, current organisational structure, and the attractiveness of the ideology that this movement represents. Furthermore, given that Caliph Ibrahim had been […]
PULASKI POLICY PAPER – R.Lipka: The Demise of the Arms Control Era: Washington and Moscow-Beijing axis on a Collision Course
Pułaski Policy Paper No 7, 2019. 30 September 2019 On 8th August, 2019 a mysterious blast rocked Nyonoksa, a small village located on the White Sea coast in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, Northern Russia. State Atomiс Energy Corporation ROSATOM acknowledged that an accident at the military firing range in Severodvinsk claimed the lives of five workers whereas three others were seriously injured.[i] The incident happened during alleged tests of a liquid reactive propulsion system. The public has been galvanized by news reports published shortly after the explosion that initially claimed a spike in radiation levels. Shortly afterwards, on 13th August Russian news agency Tass confirmed that the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology […]
