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Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On April 13 2022 21:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: What?! How does Germany have a need for Coal that they have to import it? Isn't Coal/Steel one the reasons Germany became a global empire in less than 15 years in late 1800's...
Producing Coal under EU worker and environmental regulations is expensive, so its often actually cheaper to import coal from somewhere where its mined without strict regulations then mine it yourself.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
On April 13 2022 20:10 Artisreal wrote: How is the Geman-Russian relationship built on Steinmeier? I don't quite understand the viewpoint. Can anyone explain?
I do remember him holding a Ukraine fundraising concert at his residence and one soloist was Russian. Seems to be retaliation for that to me (but not sure here as I'm lacking info), as they will receive Scholz it seems?
Steinmeier is seen as the person behind the German/Russian relations, which is why Ukraine doesn't want to give him a PR photo-op. They view his diplomatic policy as contributing to Russia's willingness to go to war again.
Its not about a single incident during a charity.
I see, no wonder that I couldn't place it at first as it dates back to the mid 2000s onwards. Thanks. I'm interested why he's the person to blame, instead of the heads of Government 1990-2020? Is there a comprehensive source to read up on?
On April 13 2022 21:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: What?! How does Germany have a need for Coal that they have to import it? Isn't Coal/Steel one the reasons Germany became a global empire in less than 15 years in late 1800's...
Producing Coal under EU worker and environmental regulations is expensive, so its often actually cheaper to import coal from somewhere where its mined without strict regulations then mine it yourself.
a comedian once had a sketch. the gist was that it's cheaper for the state to house coal workers in a multi-star-hotel than to have them work in a mine due to the subsidies needed for any company to make a profit from it.
a green think tank publicised a study that calculated a subsidy per black coal worker of roundabout 230k€ in 2008. The Spiegel reported 80k€/worker in 2003. truth might be somewhere in between.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
Thats because this "argument" is BS.
Heating with electricity is inefficient and expensive when compared to Oil/Gas, let alone the more modern systems. Switzerland is far less reliant on gas for heating yet electrical heating is not prominent at all and if anything it's actually getting even rarer nowadays.
Gas is important for many industries, thats where it really hurts. I'm no friend of the german abolishment of nuclear but acting like this is the reason for the issue is just uninformed. Germany is also trying its hardest to get alternatives running asap (LNG terminals and so on) but these take time to build. Quitting cold turkey would be horrible for the german economy (which still has plenty of industry), you could probably count the days until the support for the sanctions/ukraine would evaporate once they get hit even more than they allready are. Per capita germany is also not doing much less than most other western european nations and it doesn't have the army with tons of stuff sitting somewhere it can just give away.
The pipelines from russia were a good solution, basically no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
These are all good reasons for Ukraine to not "like" germany but the picture that is painted often seems very onesided.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
Thats because this "argument" is BS.
Heating with electricity is inefficient and expensive when compared to Oil/Gas, let alone the more modern systems. Switzerland is far less reliant on gas for heating yet electrical heating is not prominent at all and if anything it's actually getting even rarer nowadays.
Gas is important for many industries, thats where it really hurts. I'm no friend of the german abolishment of nuclear but acting like this is the reason for the issue is just uninformed. Germany is also trying its hardest to get alternatives running asap (LNG terminals and so on) but these take time to build. Quitting cold turkey would be horrible for the german economy (which still has plenty of industry), you could probably count the days until the support for the sanctions/ukraine would evaporate once they get hit even more than they allready are. Per capita germany is also not doing much less than most other western european nations and it doesn't have the army with tons of stuff sitting somewhere it can just give away.
The pipelines from russia were a good solution, basically no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
These are all good reasons for Ukraine to not "like" germany but the picture that is painted often seems very onesided.
Heating with electricity is 100% efficient. 1 kWh electricity is converted to 1 kWh of heat.
1 kWh of gas is converted to ~0.85 kWh of heat (discounting the loss of transmission and supposing a rather recent gas boiler).
If you generate 1 kWh of electricity from a simple power plant with 37% efficiency, then you are right. If you generate the power from renewables or nuclear, you are wrong. If you use a heat pump with a decent source, 1 kWh of electricity gives you 3-4 kWh of heat (discounting transmission losses). If you insulate your home, you need 10-40% of the former energy demand and makes the most sense.
These are all good reasons for Ukraine to not "like" germany but the picture that is painted often seems very onesided.
Yeah but it's much easier to point fingers at Germany like everyone always does ...
With modern heat pumps it's actually quite effective. Add some solar or geo energy and you have a good heating system. This was always the plan in Germany (and I imagine in most parts of Europe) but until then Nord Stream 2 was the simple solution, especially for the industry. Concrete and steel industry need temperatures above 800°C and that is just not done with heat pumps.
On April 13 2022 22:30 Velr wrote: Per capita germany is also not doing much less than most other western european nations and it doesn't have the army with tons of stuff sitting somewhere it can just give away.
Not even just that, we tried that with our anti air rockets and it turned out most of them where too old to work... at least the anti tank weapons seems to work. But bottom line is, you are correct. Our military stockpile is not really in a state to give a lot of material support. There were some mentions of armoured IFVs in the news this week or last one, and with those it turned out that even if we wanted to send them, pretty much none are operational atm and they would need a few months of overhaul first...
Also what a lot of people tend to forget is that germany has a very strong peace movement, sending weapons into a conflict zone is a new thing for us (before you come out of the woodworks, yes there is some BS mental olympics going on whenever a german arms manufacturer sells weapons to a questionable customer, but I think everyone can see how that is different from the german goverment itself sending those, rather than just approving the sale).
Even I made that mistake, initially I believed that germany didn't send weapons to ukraine out of fear of economic backlash from russia. After having looked more into it, I find it more plausible that it was due to the mentioned peace movement and the fact that its pretty much how we mostly try to handle things: work with politics and economics rather than military force.
People can think of that what they will, but before they judge us too harshly for this, they should be aware of our history. At this point I am no longer sure for example, that if estonia had not put in an official request to send those old artillery pieces, germany might not have cared.
The pipelines from russia were a good solution, basically no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
I am not sure if I would agree with that after crimea, though it is really hard for me to not be a captain hindsight on this like everyone else.
These are all good reasons for Ukraine to not "like" germany but the picture that is painted often seems very onesided.
I agree with that, in general there seem to have been more open anti german sentiment since mutti merkel is gone. So much so that even our president complained about it at some point. An anecdotal example for that would be stuff like 'germany being against sanctions', the closer you get to the actual source of the news, you see that its other nations as well that were holding things up. But every step further removed from the original source, those other nations would no longer be named and it was reduced to '...germany among others' at best and just germany being named at worst. I don't mean to excuse the actions of my government by saying 'but those others did it too', but rather asking people to keep things more in perspective and have more realistic expectations.
On April 13 2022 20:07 mahrgell wrote: And still, politics is after all a game of optics.
Before yesterday, German media and public political statements were all about "Why haven't we yet confirmed the delivery of available Marders and Leopards to Ukraine?" and "Why hasn't Scholz traveled to Kyiv yet?"
Today I see mostly articles and opinions across party lines that regardless of how correct it would be, there is no way for Scholz to travel to Kyiv right now or that those weapons should be released at this point in time.
This little act pretty much guaranteed every German office to take an additional week to "check" everything, simply because they would get blasted by public opinion otherwise.
And no, this is not Germany specific. No country in the world would have their president declared a persona non grata, then their chancellor (or whatever equivalent) being "summoned" and then happily declaring a ton of assistance. Especially with the chancellor and president from the same party and the president having extremely favorable ratings in the public.
It will take at least a week for this to move far enough out of the minds of people so things can resume. This is a week, where Germany may not get any pictures as a reward. But I think Ukraine is losing more on this.
So regardless of the prior history: It was simply a game of politics played badly. And even Ukraine's handling of their diplomatic negations with Russia is more professional than this.
And to be clear: This is without any personal judgment from me on the issue. But just the basic theory of politics.
I think this may actually be German specific. Many other countries as a rule hate their politicians. When other countries snub them the people find that an endorsement of their beliefs that their politicians are pricks.
On April 13 2022 20:25 Harris1st wrote: I do understand the before part. The after part, not so much. Why is everyone relying on Germany for weapons of all things? We don't have any. We produce them, yes (with Russian gas btw. The irony). Ordering and shipment of newly produced stuff takes years. We could supply them in 2024 or sth. Most of our neighbours have a higher military budget and a bigger standing army. The words "military, weapons, war" are only touched with a 10 ft pole. That's why every politician here tries to dance around it. Velr said it earlier:
On April 13 2022 17:34 Velr wrote: No, germany did reform and actually critically looked at it's history. Arguably it did this a little late, but it did it to great effect.
Russia never did anything of the sort. Who is the blame for the fall of the CCCP according to Russia? "The West", this is still the dominating sentiment. You don't hear any serious german saying the allies are to blame for nazi-germanies end. The only reason Russia sort of reformed is because it couldn't sustain itself any longer and it basically crashed and burned internally. There was no big cultural change or effort put into making such a change, so here we are again, same shit slightly diffrent costume.
The two are not alike, Russia is very much the direct successor of the CCCP and wants to achieve its former "greatness". Modern Germany is not trying to do the same, not at all.
All German weapon sales come with a contract that gives Germany the right to veto resales so that I can’t buy their weapons and resell them to Saudi Arabia. Germany dragged their feet a lot on other countries providing German weapons to Ukraine early in the war.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
... no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
This is such an infuriating piece of westsplaining. No, it wasn't for historical reasons. We had accurate intelligence about what Putin was doing. And we weren't blinded by money when Putin started invading Georgia and Ukraine. That intelligence was shared over and over again with NATO allies. Who, rudely and cynically, kept stonewalling on the issue because reality was unpalatable at the highest political level in most Western countries.
Trust me, if you had been in a single committee meeting on these topics, you'd be raging at this point as well. All of this could have been avoided a decade ago.
On April 13 2022 20:25 Harris1st wrote: I do understand the before part. The after part, not so much. Why is everyone relying on Germany for weapons of all things? We don't have any. We produce them, yes (with Russian gas btw. The irony). Ordering and shipment of newly produced stuff takes years. We could supply them in 2024 or sth. Most of our neighbours have a higher military budget and a bigger standing army. The words "military, weapons, war" are only touched with a 10 ft pole. That's why every politician here tries to dance around it. Velr said it earlier:
On April 13 2022 17:34 Velr wrote: No, germany did reform and actually critically looked at it's history. Arguably it did this a little late, but it did it to great effect.
Russia never did anything of the sort. Who is the blame for the fall of the CCCP according to Russia? "The West", this is still the dominating sentiment. You don't hear any serious german saying the allies are to blame for nazi-germanies end. The only reason Russia sort of reformed is because it couldn't sustain itself any longer and it basically crashed and burned internally. There was no big cultural change or effort put into making such a change, so here we are again, same shit slightly diffrent costume.
The two are not alike, Russia is very much the direct successor of the CCCP and wants to achieve its former "greatness". Modern Germany is not trying to do the same, not at all.
All German weapon sales come with a contract that gives Germany the right to veto resales so that I can’t buy their weapons and resell them to Saudi Arabia. Germany dragged their feet a lot on other countries providing German weapons to Ukraine early in the war.
You mean like those Polish Migs? Where we had to listen to 3 days of entire Europe yelling" buuuhuu Germany is not allowing Poland to send their Migs to Ukraine". And suddenly Germany allowed it and Poland went fully... "Uh shit no, we can not deliver them, imagine them flying from airfields in Poland to Ukraine, what if Russia retaliates, nonono..." And then came up with this brilliant idea of "but how about we use Ramstein in Germany..." and then the US vetoed it...
Yeah, i can understand how Germany is clearly to blame here...
To my knowledge the only deal that was really delayed because of Germany was the Latvian (? Or was it another Baltic nation?) Artillery pieces prior to the Russian invasion.
But Germany allowed the transferal of the BMP1 from Czechia (those were the first real IFV delivered to Ukraine), Germany allowed the transferal of the T72 from Czechia (again, the first actual tanks). So what again are we talking about here?
Also jokes on you, Saudi Arabia doesn't require any resellers. Their entire army is loades with German stuff directly supplied by Germany because for some reason they are categorized as trustworty and totally not part of any conflicts. Yo, mental gymnastics deluxe.
On April 10 2022 17:50 Ghanburighan wrote: The arguments that "cutting Russian energy imports" will a) cause industries to collapse, and b) make people freeze, is unproven at best, but probably worse.
Even in Germany, every study on the effects of going cold turkey shows a small recession in the worst-case scenario. Politicians are hiding behind words like "uncertainty" and "volatility" but I haven't seen a single study that shows a mechanism by which the effects are catastrophic enough to be called a "collapse". Considering that Germany was asking EU nations to take up to 6% recessions so that German pensioners wouldn't lose a part of their savings in the aftermath of 2008, it's perverse at best to say that the "never again" country can't make any concessions to stop Russia from repeating its own history. Especially as it's one of the world's largest economies, with a very low debt to GDP ratio. It could easily subsidize the worst-affected individuals and companies.
And just as a cherry on the cake, wealthy Germany has been undermining EU common energy policy for years, securing much lower gas prices from Russia than other countries in the region. Now, it's unwilling to even come up to parity on those, while much poorer countries are cutting Russian gas entirely (Lithuania, Estonia, etc).
You cannot even say it wouldn't be political suicide as a majority of Germans have been saying that the government isn't doing enough. It's the government and lobbyists who are dragging their feet.
I haven't looked into this in detail and just trusted the think tanks and politicians saying it's impossible. The numbers and my (limited) knowledge of how fast replacing infrastructure could be put in place make total collapse sound plausible. If studies point out the opposite, could you please link them? I just assumed oil was relatively easy, but lacked political will because the real issue is gas, which heats and powers over half of northern Europe.
Hey, sorry for the delay. Was out hiking. Here's the paper everyone's citing.
I saw other studies earlier which came to the same conclusion, but these guys were more thorough.
A little late but cutting off gas would not be impossible. Breugel looked at it from a European perspective and DIW from a German one:
We can live without Russian gas. With Covid we closed down whole sectors of the economy and it did not lead to collapse. Neither will cutting of Russian gas. The question is if we're willing to take the economic hit or not.
On April 13 2022 20:25 Harris1st wrote: I do understand the before part. The after part, not so much. Why is everyone relying on Germany for weapons of all things? We don't have any. We produce them, yes (with Russian gas btw. The irony). Ordering and shipment of newly produced stuff takes years. We could supply them in 2024 or sth. Most of our neighbours have a higher military budget and a bigger standing army. The words "military, weapons, war" are only touched with a 10 ft pole. That's why every politician here tries to dance around it. Velr said it earlier:
On April 13 2022 17:34 Velr wrote: No, germany did reform and actually critically looked at it's history. Arguably it did this a little late, but it did it to great effect.
Russia never did anything of the sort. Who is the blame for the fall of the CCCP according to Russia? "The West", this is still the dominating sentiment. You don't hear any serious german saying the allies are to blame for nazi-germanies end. The only reason Russia sort of reformed is because it couldn't sustain itself any longer and it basically crashed and burned internally. There was no big cultural change or effort put into making such a change, so here we are again, same shit slightly diffrent costume.
The two are not alike, Russia is very much the direct successor of the CCCP and wants to achieve its former "greatness". Modern Germany is not trying to do the same, not at all.
All German weapon sales come with a contract that gives Germany the right to veto resales so that I can’t buy their weapons and resell them to Saudi Arabia. Germany dragged their feet a lot on other countries providing German weapons to Ukraine early in the war.
You mean like those Polish Migs? Where we had to listen to 3 days of entire Europe yelling" buuuhuu Germany is not allowing Poland to send their Migs to Ukraine". And suddenly Germany allowed it and Poland went fully... "Uh shit no, we can not deliver them, imagine them flying from airfields in Poland to Ukraine, what if Russia retaliates, nonono..." And then came up with this brilliant idea of "but how about we use Ramstein in Germany..." and then the US vetoed it...
Yeah, i can understand how Germany is clearly to blame here...
To my knowledge the only deal that was really delayed because of Germany was the Latvian (? Or was it another Baltic nation?) Artillery pieces prior to the Russian invasion.
But Germany allowed the transferal of the BMP1 from Czechia (those were the first real IFV delivered to Ukraine), Germany allowed the transferal of the T72 from Czechia (again, the first actual tanks). So what again are we talking about here?
Also jokes on you, Saudi Arabia doesn't require any resellers. Their entire army is loades with German stuff directly supplied by Germany because for some reason they are categorized as trustworty and totally not part of any conflicts. Yo, mental gymnastics deluxe.
This is some really bizarre take on the issue of MiGs. Germany wasn't even the part of those talks as far as I am aware. Not in any major way, anyway, as this was an intra NATO discussion and the main parties interested were Poland and US. The proposition was to fly them to US base, they mentioned Rammstein, but it really could be any US base. In essence, our govt. said to US, if it really is such non-issue, then we give those planes to US, and US can transfer them to Ukraine. Obviously, it turned out to be an issue.
Since then, Poland isn't publicly discussing ways in which it is helping Ukraine militarily, because of the shit show the whole affair was. Diplomacy should not be conducted via Twitter.
Ok I take back what I said earlier. I forgot that Germany was a bit uncooperative in the first days of the war so it is possible that Steinmeier's visit was denied because of that instead of what happened before the invasion. Still not sure if rejecting the visit was a good move.
On April 13 2022 20:25 Harris1st wrote: I do understand the before part. The after part, not so much. Why is everyone relying on Germany for weapons of all things? We don't have any. We produce them, yes (with Russian gas btw. The irony). Ordering and shipment of newly produced stuff takes years. We could supply them in 2024 or sth. Most of our neighbours have a higher military budget and a bigger standing army. The words "military, weapons, war" are only touched with a 10 ft pole. That's why every politician here tries to dance around it. Velr said it earlier:
On April 13 2022 17:34 Velr wrote: No, germany did reform and actually critically looked at it's history. Arguably it did this a little late, but it did it to great effect.
Russia never did anything of the sort. Who is the blame for the fall of the CCCP according to Russia? "The West", this is still the dominating sentiment. You don't hear any serious german saying the allies are to blame for nazi-germanies end. The only reason Russia sort of reformed is because it couldn't sustain itself any longer and it basically crashed and burned internally. There was no big cultural change or effort put into making such a change, so here we are again, same shit slightly diffrent costume.
The two are not alike, Russia is very much the direct successor of the CCCP and wants to achieve its former "greatness". Modern Germany is not trying to do the same, not at all.
All German weapon sales come with a contract that gives Germany the right to veto resales so that I can’t buy their weapons and resell them to Saudi Arabia. Germany dragged their feet a lot on other countries providing German weapons to Ukraine early in the war.
You mean like those Polish Migs? Where we had to listen to 3 days of entire Europe yelling" buuuhuu Germany is not allowing Poland to send their Migs to Ukraine". And suddenly Germany allowed it and Poland went fully... "Uh shit no, we can not deliver them, imagine them flying from airfields in Poland to Ukraine, what if Russia retaliates, nonono..." And then came up with this brilliant idea of "but how about we use Ramstein in Germany..." and then the US vetoed it...
Yeah, i can understand how Germany is clearly to blame here...
To my knowledge the only deal that was really delayed because of Germany was the Latvian (? Or was it another Baltic nation?) Artillery pieces prior to the Russian invasion.
But Germany allowed the transferal of the BMP1 from Czechia (those were the first real IFV delivered to Ukraine), Germany allowed the transferal of the T72 from Czechia (again, the first actual tanks). So what again are we talking about here?
Also jokes on you, Saudi Arabia doesn't require any resellers. Their entire army is loades with German stuff directly supplied by Germany because for some reason they are categorized as trustworty and totally not part of any conflicts. Yo, mental gymnastics deluxe.
This is some really bizarre take on the issue of MiGs. Germany wasn't even the part of those talks as far as I am aware. Not in any major way, anyway, as this was an intra NATO discussion and the main parties interested were Poland and US. The proposition was to fly them to US base, they mentioned Rammstein, but it really could be any US base. In essence, our govt. said to US, if it really is such non-issue, then we give those planes to US, and US can transfer them to Ukraine. Obviously, it turned out to be an issue.
Since then, Poland isn't publicly discussing ways in which it is helping Ukraine militarily, because of the shit show the whole affair was. Diplomacy should not be conducted via Twitter.
This was a conversation about former German hardware being delayed or not delivered due to the German veto. And those Migs are one of the 4 major cases where this German approval was a public topic. (regardless of what you were aware of...)
Poland can not export or gift away those planes without German approval. (something Germany initially refused and got the usual responses for, hurrdurr evil Russia loving nazis) And no, those planes could not be transferred via Ramstein without German approval. In the end, it turned out that Germany approved both, but you are right, the main parties were Poland and the US, because it was them who blocked the deal.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
... no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
This is such an infuriating piece of westsplaining. No, it wasn't for historical reasons. We had accurate intelligence about what Putin was doing. And we weren't blinded by money when Putin started invading Georgia and Ukraine. That intelligence was shared over and over again with NATO allies. Who, rudely and cynically, kept stonewalling on the issue because reality was unpalatable at the highest political level in most Western countries.
Trust me, if you had been in a single committee meeting on these topics, you'd be raging at this point as well. All of this could have been avoided a decade ago.
Thats not even a typical western perspective. People were massively woried about this in Sweden, at least since the debate on nord stream 2 started. Even Trump got it right, as I showed in an earlier post:
On April 04 2022 06:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: I am honestly curious to see if said leaders respond. Especially Merkel whose legacy seems to be slowly sinking. Heck Politico, a couple of days ago, essentially called her a Russian asset.
Slowly but surely, it’s begun to dawn on Germans that Merkel’s soft-shoe approach to Russia — which reached its zenith with the 2015 decision to green light the Nord Stream 2 pipeline despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its role in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine — didn’t just open the door for Putin to go further, it effectively encouraged him to do so.
I don't think anybody saw this coming 7 years ago that Putin would go full lunatic. Heck most people didn't see this coming 8 weeks ago.
EDIT: If not for Merkel, Putin would have maybe gone allin back in 2015 already. Who knows
Economic integration is fine and good, getting yourself dependent on a murderous dictator for energy (if you have options) is really bad. If you do it because of irrational fear of nuclear power it's even worse.
I don't have sources for it now, but it seems like something that a lot of people complained about already back then. To me it always seemed - at least since the assassinations of journalists, political opponents etc started - insane to make yourself dependent on Putin's gas. From an environmental and geopolitical point of view a complete disaster. And not that hard to spot. Even this fucking guy got it right (jump to 6:40 to avoid the initial word salad):
There has been possible alternatives to Russian gas for decades in Europe, including connecting the Iberian network, which imports gas from north africa, to France, or building LNG terminals. Rejecting these has been a repeated choice of the France-Germany block, allowing Europe to become captive to Russian gas. Given the Schröder example, one is lead to think that german and other EU elites have been captured by Russian interests. As a Portuguese, it's really amusing to hear Germany claim that, after decades of wrong political choices, a sudden adjustment shouldn't be done as it's too painful.
There are probably a lot of industry implications (BASF?) besides higher energy prices, but it's disappointing to compare the difference in political tone and help provided by Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltics vs France or Germany.
On April 13 2022 21:30 Elroi wrote: Why do you think heating in Germany relies so much on gas instead of electricity? It's because of the strong history of being against nuclear power (dating from the 70s), which is just unequivocally one of the biggest political own goals in modern European politics. And besides, around 12% of German electricity production comes from gas (and another 20% from coal, much of it Russian, which is just insanely bad, but I digress).
Sorry, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have. My initial post had at least some connection to the war in ukraine, but I can't really make that connection here, so I am just gonna drop it.
... no one (including me) expected russia/putin to go full retard aside from some eastern europeans which were more worried for (what used to be) historical reasons.
This is such an infuriating piece of westsplaining. No, it wasn't for historical reasons. We had accurate intelligence about what Putin was doing. And we weren't blinded by money when Putin started invading Georgia and Ukraine. That intelligence was shared over and over again with NATO allies. Who, rudely and cynically, kept stonewalling on the issue because reality was unpalatable at the highest political level in most Western countries.
Trust me, if you had been in a single committee meeting on these topics, you'd be raging at this point as well. All of this could have been avoided a decade ago.
I am already annoyed with the whole mansplaining crap, can you guys refrain to accuse people of westplaining? Because we are reaching a point when you can’t say something without being accused of somethingsplaining and seriously, it’s dumb. Eadtern europeans are not the only ones having a legitimacy to talk about eastern europe.
Or we stop discussing at all about any other country and situation than our own and we can close this thread, and every other.
EPT
