Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
National self-sufficiency has suddenly become important in the wake of the geopolitical earthquake created by the Russian/Ukrainian conflict. But it will be far harder to achieve than many people think.
Some familiar metals just moved to a critical minerals lists in the United States as supply chain difficulties made even nickel and zinc supplies problematic. Will bringing manufacturing “back home” really solve the problem?
Three days without electricity would be a disaster. Three weeks worldwide would be a catastrophe. Three months would probably spell the end of modern civilization.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The fall of the Berlin Wall was to bring about one, integrated world market where goods and services freely traversed borders without the interference of meddling ideologues—where the agricultural, mineral and man-made treasures of one country would be available to anyone, anywhere who was willing to pay for them: oil, gold, diamonds, soybeans, palm oil, wheat, computers, software and myriad other products of the earth and of human endeavor.
President Trump’s announcement that he thinks the U.S. should consider buying Greenland was widely ridiculed. But what he is proposing has a long pedigree in American history. And, he is tapping into very deep yearning in the American psyche.
