> Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
I'd be okay with any number of countries using sanctions to "punish" the US for any number of things. It's their right as sovereign nations. The irony here is that it's a double edged sword.
But what I'd really prefer would be a more direct say over who my country is sanctioning and why.
Is the US building a pipeline to Mexico? Is Mexico a corrupt, authoritarian dictatorship that routinely interferes in Western politics? If my aunt had balls, would she be my uncle?
Does Mexico use those pipelines to project power into North America? If anything it would be the reverse as the US is a net exporter, but in reality it’s not quite comparable.
Have you been reading too much propaganda lately? How does it feel to know that you’ve been influenced by paid influencers? Most intelligent people aren’t influenced by the MSM drivel.
US opposition to a pipeline to Russia is confined to a small group of people who are strangely very friendly to Russia on all other matters. There is no widespread or popular opposition to Germany building a pipeline to Russia in the United States.
This doesn't really treat with the dollar-denominated world economy but I wanted to point this out to differentiate the current irrational foreign policy of the US government from the subject at hand.
About 25% of Germany’s primary energy are produced from gas, of which about 40% come from Russia (down from about 50% in 1995).[1]
The US sanctions against the Nord Stream project are seen by a number of Germans as a rather clumsy attempt to push the sale of their expensive liquified natural gas, which to a high degree is produced by hydraulic fracking.[2]
Talk about clumsy, I seem to remember Russia turning off the gas back in the 90s and everyone was surprised at just how easily nato’s entire infrastructure could be held ransom by the flick of a switch. The issue basically boils down to the survivability of US/NATO operations. And the Germans ambivalence - what with Gerard Schroeder essentially doing a crony deal for nordstream directly underscores that Germans know what we really care about is military survivability. Pretty much every foreign policy decision the US has made since the gas debacle has been to find alternatives to Russian oil. Admitting Georgia to NATO, supporting Ukraine, heck even Iraq and afghanistan have undertones of finding gas alternatives for Germany. The realist in me agrees, it kind of stinks that America seems a bit selfish. But I might remind you that Germany didn’t really like it when the gas did get shut off. I seem to recall their response was, hey America, do something! In the end, Most of what we have done hasn’t worked and then you have Germans themselves supporting nordstream which essentially undermines the entire strategy altogether. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US cedes Germany and leaves in the next decade. Now... what’s going to hurt the dollar more? A few sanctions now or departure from the European continent altogether? Ps also consider the source - the economist - they’ve never met a sanction or a trade barrier they could like so keep that in mind....
> Ps also consider the source - the economist - they’ve never met a sanction or a trade barrier they could like so keep that in mind....
They were in favor of sanctions against lots of countries, usually because of human rights abuses. I currently can't access their archives, but I am quite sure they were calling for sanctions on Germany as early as 1933.
Why is becoming dependent on US-supplied liquefied natural gas any better? If Germany has two or more reliable suppliers of natural gas (Russia and US), neither one can extort them by threatening to flip the switch.
Wat? Pretty much all eastern/former communist block countries that are in the EU oppose it. That's almost 40% of the block.
They can't directly confront Germany, but the US can, and it is doing so rightly. The project comprises the long term security of the Nato block, and the said countries have a major distrust towards Russia as it has they have suffered a lot under thier imposed communist regimes.
For a bunch of smart people, HN veers too much into hands off 'libertarian' side of things. US lets its hands off in the region, it will slowly be transformed again into a basket case of 'kleptocratic' countries in the way Russia is today.
----
The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia––all highly dependent on Russian gas––signed a petition against Nord Stream 2 in March 2016, highlighting the risks for energy security in Central and Eastern Europe.
Italy is in a similar bind.
In 2015, Italy accused the EU Commission of applying double-standards when the Commission did not reject the Nord Stream 2 project, as it did with the South Stream––a project which would have benefited Italy’s role as energy hub in the Mediterranean. For this reason, Italy complained about Germany’s influence in the EU Commission and called for equal treatment.
All those countries you mentioned are totally free to buy only from the US. Building a pipeline will not prevent anyone from buying gas from the US as long as it is competitive. The sanctions are mostly trying to strangle competitor/adversary and prop own industry using political means rather then market forces.
If gas supply based on that pipeline is controlled by a single state actor, that's the definition of not being competitive. The question is, why are people willing to prop up a monopolistic supplier in that manner instead of seeking real energy independence. Because Russian gas is cheaper right now? That's penny-wise, pound-foolish. The first puff is always free!
The Eastern European countries that were formerly occupied by the USSR would prefer to keep Russia economically weak. They don't want to be invaded again.
All those countries actually know what it’s like to live behind the iron curtain and don’t really want to do so again. What should happen is the US should move it’s German bases to a country that actually wants them there like Poland but doing so would probably risk a war. Germany might not like America on their soil but they also have to realize the status quo is certainly better than the alternative. This nordstream project just has German cronyism written all over it and I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of Europe is worse of because A few kleptocrats had to make a buck. They should be sanctioned quite honestly.
> a small group of people who are strangely very friendly to Russia on all other matters.
Can you give actual examples of this friendliness? I see it cited very often but I don't know any concrete example. I know Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia last September, that is sanctioning European companies for the Russia pipeline, and that he's doing anything that he can to destabilise Iran, which is supported by Russia. So it doesn't seem that friendly to me.
It's not possible because it is a bit of mass propaganda, from people who haven't yet realized the Cold War was decided thirty years ago and still see a KGB agent under their bed and in every dark closet.
The poster you replied to has a point, though. Trump certainly does seem to have many shady connections to powerful Russian figures, but the Trump administration's Russia policy is almost identical to the Obama administration's.
Ok, you could have come up with 100 examples. But the only one you give me is one from 2018, where Trump lifted sanctions on a Russian oligarch's companies. But Trump had imposed the sanctions himself some months before, he actually left the sanctions in place on the oligarch's assets and lifted those to his companies after he reduced his stakes in them.
PolitiFact explains well the context in this article:
"most experts we spoke to said this is a case of the Trump administration’s clumsiness, not coziness.
Back in April, when the sanctions hit the aluminum giant Rusal, it sent shockwaves through the global aluminum markets. The price of aluminum soared over the following weeks. Europe, which relies heavily on Russia’s metals market, faced the prospect of plant closures and lost jobs. Even now, the European Union strongly supports the lifting of sanctions."
"according to experts, the Treasury discovered it had bitten off more than it could chew.
"They were done clumsily," Alina Polyakova, of the Brookings Institution, said of the sanctions. "It seems clear that the administration did not plan for the dramatic effects on aluminum markets and the knock-on effects on European businesses.""
So the only example you came up with in fact says nothing of the presumed friendliness of Trump towards Russia. Next one.
> strangely very friendly to Russia on all other matters
This "friendly" policy is basically not considering what Russia does within its borders justification for military action. This was always the unofficial policy, with the new bit being the Trump administration doesn't pass moral judgement on what Russia does within its borders.
A pipeline between germany and Russia strengthens Russia (increased GDP, increased control over the EU) and weakens the EU (which is full of countries that have proven they cannot defend themselves). Increasing the chance of war with Russia, and creating another mess for the US to clean up.
Trump is also a big fan of Russia's activities outside its borders as we all know. I won't get into the "Russia if you're listening" or excluding American translators from his meetings with Putin, as we can consider one element of Russia outside its borders:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/26/trumps-be...
Why would there be a widespread anything about an issue in countries on a far away continent? It's administration job to care about geopolitics and long term consequences of decisions like building a pipeline. People not involved in politics won't because it doesn't influence their everyday lives directly. It's not possible for them to make a rational judgement about it anyway as they have very little information about the issue.
"Why would the United States be the one to decide if Germany is allowed to build a pipeline to Russia or not?"
Because America provides defence for Germany, and Russia has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at Germany, the US and others, and they are an antagonising state, actively trying to disrupt the governments in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, etc.
All these issues are quite fundamentally related, so it matters.
That said, I don't think a pipeline will matter that much.
The premise of the article is problematic because there are almost no alternatives for the USD outside the Euro, and possibly the Pound for a few things. The RMB can't effectively be a global currency until it becomes transparent, which means the CCP would have to give up control, which they won't do.
There is really nothing on the horizon - no digital/fintech/blockchain anything that will change the playing field.
If anything - as 5B people on planet earth go from $1/day to $20/day and come into the global economy, the USD will have even greater seigneuriage power.
>Because America provides defence for Germany, and Russia has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at Germany, the US and others, and they are an antagonising state, actively trying to disrupt the governments in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, etc.
Those have been there for a long time, even before the "disruption". Besides France has nukes too, so not much win there.
What is this protection that the US provides other than ensuring the US would be drawn into a war between the EU and Russia? France has enough nukes to provide MAD protection.
We had 200,000 US soldiers in Germany until reunification, and still have 40,0000. Germany saves money maintaining a significantly smaller military force. The benefit to Germany is such that US presidents use the idea of moving US troops to, say, Poland as a prod to encourage the German government to spend more on defense: https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/w...
> Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday underscored her commitment to NATO, pledging to raise Germany's defense spending to the alliance's 2% target "by the early 2030s."
> "The preservation of NATO is in our own interest, more than during the Cold War," Merkel said while addressing lawmakers in German parliament.
> "At the moment, Europe is unable to defend itself," she added, urging the bloc to stay together.
Much is for the US and their military adventures, not for NATO or NATO-related things. It supports the US war machine. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Africa, ... Much of that has nothing to do with defending Germany, defending the US or defending NATO...
The US and its allies/friendly countries currently outspend Russia approximitely fifteen times.
If Germany would spend 2% of its GPP on military, then it would approach Russia in absolute numbers, That would be crazy.
What we really need is LESS military spending and less military adventures of the US (Iraq, Syrian, Libya, ...). The US has destabilized the whole middle east and north africa. The refugees are going to Europe, not the US...
The US will stay in south germany for the near future, because it provides excellent logistics for US wars in middle east, asia and africa.
Obviously since Germany isn’t currently under attack, German bases are used for other operations. But the German government doesn’t seem eager to get the US military out of the country, and has reacted negatively to Trump’s signaling in that direction.
Recent events have convinced me that I was at least partly wrong about my previous view of the United States having bases all around the world. Europeans love to complain about America, but when Trump threatened to pull out of NATO, in the face of an ascendant Russia, the European reaction certainly wasn’t “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Likewise in Asia, while the Taiwanese and Japanese have always been warm to American military support, the growing power of China has definitely sparked discussions about America’s continued commitment to obligations in that region.
I don't think you have much insight into thoughts of European countries. What you claim was a response to Trump, is actually much more complex. There are different views in different countries and within them.
Germany is also no longer the front to the communist block - which no longer exists and only Russia is left as direct opponent. So it may make sense to have NATO defense moving east. Many Germans think that the US politics against Russia leads to nothing good.
What Trump does/says is fully inconsistent. NATo is obsolete. Then it is great. He wants to reduce military. Then record money flows into the military. He wants to get out of Iraq, then he blackmails Iraq to let the US stay. He uses kurds to fight against ISIS and then he hands them over to Assad...
The main political reaction in Germany to him is to have not too much changed and hope for a more rational US government.
"If Germany would spend 2% of its GPP on military, then it would approach Russia in absolute numbers, That would be crazy."
It is her contractual obligation. Currently Germany does not have an Army anymore but a museum. How many tanks are operational? 100? Russia has 10.000...
Well, you claim that there is a contract which binds NATO countries to spend 2% of their budget on military and that only Germany is not spending 2%.
Everything of that is wrong, There is no contract. The goal of 2% is set for 2025, not now. Currently a bunch of countries spend less than 2%.
And: large parts of the US military spending is completely unrelated to NATO.
Next you need to ask yourself if these approximate numbers make sense:
Europe minus Russia, without the US: defense spending of 350 billion USD. NATO has defense spending of 950 billion dollar.
Russia: defense spending: 65 billion USD.
Europe is already outspending Russia five times. NATO is outspending Russia by 15 times.
This looks like lack of money is not the actual problem NATO has.
Your comparison is fatally flawed. If someone declared that the US/Europe doesn’t need to spend so much on social welfare or transit, because Russia and China spend much less in nominal dollars/euro, one would quite rightly point out that a dollar buys much more food or miles of subway tunnel in Russia than the United States.
> Perhaps most importantly, the more methodologically sound approach to comparing defense spending based on PPP illustrates that the gap between U.S. expenditure on the one hand and that of Russia and China on the other has closed dramatically over the past 15 years. Today, when taken together, spending by Russia and China is roughly equal to U.S. defense expenditure, with Russia representing a much larger share than previously recognized.
Moreover, even PPP probably doesn’t accurately depict the difference. Beijing spends about a billion dollars a year to operate a subway serving a city of 20 million people. New York spends ten times as much for a system half the length and half the ridership. Moscow spends 1/7 as much as New York to operate a larger system with more ridership.
Military expenditures probably scale much closer to something like a subway system than the overall PPP basket of goods. In that case, we are probably looking at less than a factor of two advantage in what that spending actually buys.
> The military is labor heavy, and production is mostly domestic.
Russia is decades behind in high-tech and has only limited access to western technology in many areas. The country largely lives of selling natural resources. There is a many years ongoing embargo on high-tech in many areas - also from the EU. There is basically limited technological cooperation with Russia in many high-tech sectors right now.
The result is that Russia has only a few somewhat competitive areas in military technology and needs to invest a lot of money into those: Nuclear weapons, rockets, space technology, etc. Selling those weapons helps their industry a bit.
This affects for example how much money they have to deploy even tanks:
That Russia has cheap clothes for their soldiers, or can mass produce tanks for their soldiers does not help them, if they don't have a competitive high-tech industry. Keeping the nuclear weapons (rockets, submarines, launchers, spy satellites, ...) is extremely expensive and where the money goes.
For the West it's much easier to cooperate on technology and weapons.
See the list of carriers: most of them are from US, NATO or allies.
It's clear that 65 billions USD doesn't buy much on the world market, even though the costs at home are low. The rest of the economy does not support their high-tech needs...
It's not that Russia has no competitive weapons, but the breadth and depth is simply not there. Russia selectively chooses areas where they develop competitive weapons with their more limited resources.
True, the Russians don't reveal the full scale of military costs. But the US does the same:
When nations agree to targets, and they did a long time ago, its material. That it's not technically part of the treaty is relevant, but not so important.
The 2% target was established long ago, there's a renewed 'agreement' since Trump took office, but it's along the same lines: European states will wait for Trump to be out of office and then ignore it.
The fact remains America provides defence for Europe, and Europe is willing to let that happen because, well, it's very expensive, among other things.
The fact remains that NATO is not an US security organization where other Nations buy protection. Trump may think that, since he knows the Mafia from his real-estate business.
Nobody has asked German citizens yet, if we want to invest 2% of the GDP into defense and where it should be invested.
Basically a military & governments have decided that for us, which is entirely undemocratic and a fully un-controlled process.
It's great that the military-industrial complex can on its own decide how much to spend, without any outside interference. This leads to a situation, like in the US where roughly a trillion USD is spend on military, which is an insane amount of money.
The US has bases all over Europe, they spend a fortune on their own defensive tech, capabilities and leadership which Germany et. al. depend on, which acts as a massive deterrent, but also provides security partners with 'almost free R&D'. Also, the US specialises and practices so many things that are just far beyond the reach of pretty much all European forces.
The ability to put bases, air support of all kinds, intelligence, drones, etc. pretty much anywhere is basically beyond most of Europe. When a war broke out on their border (Libya), for better or worse there was an intervention. Obama reluctantly agreed and didn't want to play a lead role, but without US drones, AWACS, and electronic warfare, special forces on the ground, the UK and French fighters wouldn't have been able to do anything at all. This is actually quite a good demonstration of how specific capabilities are huge enablers of others.
Trump's NATO talking point about partners not spending enough is very fair, and most European nations are in violation of the treaty, which is doubly problematic because while NATO is strategically beneficial to the US, it's basically vital to European integrity -> they need it more than the US and spend only 1/2 of what was agreed upon.
If the US simply 'did not exist' - Russian Imperialism would reach just about as far as in the Soviet era. Basically, Poland would be back to being the 'buffer' between Germany and Russia.
Everyone in the 1990's thought all of that would melt with the cold war, unfortunately, neither China nor Russia moved along the expected path, so here we are.
American sanctions of Iran are not remotely big enough to make a dent in currency issues.
I do however think that as finance spreads into different areas, Americans will have more difficulty with said sanctions. Dubai exists as a financial centre basically because it's outside the direct influence or insight of American or European agencies. It's basically an entire micro-economy of dirty money.
? Dirty money is welcome anywhere. The whole overpriced apartment ghost towns that spread in most popular american cities are basically storage for dirty money.
Yes, I would like to see a more specific breakdown of what crimes Dubai will protect specifically and what crimes the US will and what crimes the EU does.
I would not be surprised to hear there is some qualitative difference, but I think it should be explained before we accept either “Dubai is dirtier” or “everywhere is equally dirty” premise.
>If the US simply 'did not exist' - Russian Imperialism would reach just about as far as in the Soviet era
We can speculate a lot, but that's a this is, speculation. This comment and a lot of others smell of American exceptionalism to me as a non US citizen.
If there was no Cold War, or there was one that Russia would've won against Western Europe, half of Europe would still be occupied as the USSR wouldn't have fallen.
> The ability to put bases, air support of all kinds, intelligence, drones, etc. pretty much anywhere is basically beyond most of Europe. When a war broke out on their border (Libya), for better or worse there was an intervention. Obama reluctantly agreed and didn't want to play a lead role, but without US drones, AWACS, and electronic warfare, special forces on the ground, the UK and French fighters wouldn't have been able to do anything at all. This is actually quite a good demonstration of how specific capabilities are huge enablers of others.
I'm not sure this can really be considered an instance of "protection" provided by the US. As far as I remember, the Libyan war was more of an instance of civilian unrest that the government was equipped to and on the verge of dealing with when American intervention toppled it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...), thus causing the present state where no one faction is strong enough to control the whole country. In fact, it is hard to think of any protracted armed conflict on Europe's periphery in the past two decades that was not either directly instigated or least comes with a strong case of having been surreptitiously promoted by the US.
First, I was indicating that this 'ability to project force' is protection, I wasn't indicating that the war in Libya was a form of protection.
Second, I don't think it's fair to say the conflicts in Europe's periphery are surreptitiously promoted by the us: the war in Crimea, Russia invasion of Georgia, conflict in Yugoslavia, 'Troubles' in Ireland etc. - these were not 'made in the USA'. Neither was the Arab Spring.
Because that's what being the leader of the free world means. The U.S. has the economic and military resources to give freedom a fighting chance of survival. If we choose not to counterbalance the influence of autocracies, that freedom won't last long.
EDIT: I don't prefer autocracies, live in EU, and I do appreciate the need for counterbalance. Yes, in many important ways you are (more) free.
Yet, while USA has 2 parties instead of 1, both are beholden to capital interests, including their healthcare, monopolized internet, schools, and even their military has vast ties with capital interests. Citizens are significantly dependent on their "credit scores" while banks easily give loans in their names to other people (so called identity theft). People start saving for their children's education even before they are born and still end up with college debt. 0.7% of the population is in prison, and cops can legally rob you (asset forfeiture).
Let's not forget overthrowing the first democratically elected government when they nationalize their oil sector, instating a dictator, and then invading the country. That's what sharing free¹dom means.
Baltic states are great trading partners offering a range of highly valued products and services from white birch plywood that is ideal for laser cutting to security software development. If Russia moved on the Baltics the US would meet them at the border, NATO or not.
Europeans killing each other is bad for international trade, and threatens nations we are more ideologically aligned with than others.
We’re there to prevent them from killing each other more than we are there to prevent The One True Enemy (whoever it might be today) from invading wily nilly. We don’t want them killing each other, because when they do, it is bad for business and diplomatic relations. More importantly, if we allow their natural tendencies towards hot European on European action to occur today, there really is a global threat because these are advanced economies that could easily pump out nukes and lob them at each other which is generally not great for the health of anyone on the planet.
In short, by serving European interests, we actually are serving our own interests because in some very important ways, our interests are in complete alignment. Germany is generally more at peace with the world than Japan at any given moment, but give them cause to build up their military and the time to do it and they could easily be a bigger threat to the United States than Russia, but they have no inclination towards treating us as an enemy so long as they’re under a system that protects them equally from France as it does from Russia or Costa Rica or Sealand.
If MAD were all that you actually needed, NATO wouldn't exist.
It's entirely reasonable to believe that France is not going to commit national nuclear suicide merely to defend Czech or Poland from a Russian invasion. MAD - mutual assured suicide - would only be utilized in a case where their own existence were threatened.
That's where a very powerful traditional military comes into play.
That's why NATO exists instead of merely relying on having a stockpile of nukes to point at Russia. You might actually have to stand off Russia in a real military confrontation or at a minimium give the strong impression that you can if necessary. Russia can gamble that France isn't going to commit suicide via nuclear weapons to save Lithuania, and it would be a correct bet, at which point it's down to traditional military vs military.
"France has enough nukes to provide MAD protection."
It's never so simple.
First, does France have the ability to deliver them? Under what conditions? With what warning, etc. etc.
Second, is the fact that nukes are the biggest hammer in retaliation, and most things need to be proportional.
Would France use nukes on Russia if Poland was invaded?
What if Russia tried to 'pull a Crimea' in E. Germany i.e. small forces without uniforms, supporting insurgencies, disrupting communications. Tons of money pouring in changing elections, disrupting governance. Would that be a case for nukes?
It's far more complicated, and Europe cannot defend itself - this is the tacit admission of their own leaders. So America still provides baseline defence capabilities.
The unfortunate reality is that Europe actually could defend itself, but it's not willing to either spend what's necessary, or to coordinate along those lines, which might be even harder as the EU doesn't provide for that and it's a really big existential deal. The reason there isn't material progress on it is because it's really, really expensive and nobody wants to pay bills if America will continue to pay it form them.
Trump is a loathsome figure, but he's exactly right on this issue. European leaders will make some happy talk, public statements, but really they're just waiting for Trump to be gone so they can go back to what they hope will be the status quo.
France won't fire nukes over Russia annexing a Baltic country. US might actually do something about it as they showed many times they are willing to go to war to defend their interest.
The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony. Part of this is ensuring regional powers are either allied (in the case of NATO countries or Saudi Arabia) or contained (in the case of Russia and Iran).
It is a fundamental rule of Geopolitics that every country assert itself to the best of its abilities with the strengths they have. One of Russia's biggest strengths is natural resources. It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
George Friedman explains in this book [1] that Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable, but if Russia has the off switch for Germany's economy, NATO's response is drastically weakened.
Whatever scenario may come to pass, European reliance on Russian natural resources disrupts the US's containment strategy which it needs in order to maintain its dominant position in the region. So yes, it will say something if it feels like that is under threat.
Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
> Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two.
This is in the book that forecasts that Japan will attack the US in 2050 except that it'll be all space-borne battlestars and lasers and hypersonic weapons. Among other preposterous scenarios. Riiiight.
> It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
Loaded language. Don't you think Western Europe has thought of this? And hey, if Russia turns off the tap they turn off their revenue stream. Besides, Europe, like the US, keeps strategic fossil fuel reserves.
> The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony.
> Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
Seems to me that if the US keeps sanctioning foes and allies alike every country bar the US will consider this a bad thing.
It's really not so far-fetched to think Russia would annex a Baltic state sometime in the future. They've shown they have the capability and political will to annex similarly prepared countries' territories.
It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.
Baltics and Crimea are not comparable.
- Crimea has Russia's only warm water port and would never be given up
- Russia already has Baltic access (Kaliningrad and StPetersburg)
- Crimea has been majority ethnic Russian for centuries and welcomes Russia
- Baltics hate Russia
In summary, there is absolutely no logical reason Russia would annex Baltic state.
However, there are plenty reasons why non-Russian interests always repeat this narrative.
Russia doesn't need Baltic states. Their ports lost their value and the population is dying from poverty, drug addiction and alcoholism (fertility rate in Baltic states under EU is significantly lower compared to soviet times).
Why would Russia need several bankrupt dying states? To feed and develop them like in Soviet times getting nothing but hatred in response? Ditto for Ukraine BTW.
For a start Russia already has a Baltic state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast and, not only that, has access to the Baltic itself. So there's zero geopolitical strategic advantage.
Anywhere that Russia has "annexed" has had a majority ethnic Russian population and historical ties to Russia. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are not majority ethnic Russian, do not speak Russian, and are part of the EU (and NATO) so they're clearly not aligned geopolitically with Russia and it would cause major regional ramifications, undoubtedly triggering a war with NATO, and/or the EU (both nuclear entities). It would be wholly unprecedented in modern times.
"United States have no geopolitical strategy, but a lot of self proclaimed geopolitical strategists."
I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event.
The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone.
He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of the region.
There was no end to his disappointment when he came to understanding that all that geopolitical BS he learned was for nothing, and he came to station the most boring post-Soviet hillbilly town.
I think most Americans, even the most educated ones tend to greatly overthink "geopolitical conspiracies"
Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.
For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.
How to say... Russians invasions are acts of war, squarely and simple, but they do so without any tinfoil "geopolitical conspiracy" in mind.
There is no bigger "grand plan" to them than to an 8th century Viking raid: more subjects, loot, and territories to use to stage further invasions.
Danes cared more for how tasty the British were, before they started to care about the British throne and court politics in the bigger Post-Roman world.
The "conquest" of Crimea was a response to an implied threat to a natural gas trade with Europe in the followup of a western-sponsored coup.
(to be even more specic, Crimean events were mostly about regaining the control of the Black Sea Fleet naval base, while Donbass events were about reacting to a hostile coup, but the two things are closely related)
It was also an object lesson to all the minor powers in the region: you cannot take US money to have a small victorious colour revolution anymore. Not in Russia's backyard.
Please don't go on about downvotes. It's against the site guidelines, is tedious, and usually turns out to be wrong. In the end your post got almost no downvotes relative to upvotes.
I think it was the approach that a former ally (Ukraine) would open up the door to NATO/USA and Russia didn't like having a USA naval base right on its doorstep, and losing control of the Black Sea. There may already be USA'S military bases nearby (Romania, Bulgaria, etc) but not THAT close.
LOL, please, show any country looted by Russia. Even during Soviet times most of Russia GDP was spent to raise quality of life in republics, especially Baltic republics.
And now Russia spend enormous amount of money to develop Crimea. Where's the looting?
Heh, I cannot Reply to brnt's post so I am using 1 lvl higher. My favourite examples are ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Mongolia, etc. Cherry picking moments in time to redefine borders is dangerous to say the least. Give the Italians half Europe and Near East? Give Greece everything from South Italy (Magna Grecian) all the way to Afghanistan?
Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we will give Crimea to Russia (and let's have a WW3 and all be dead me give the planet the break it deserves (from human stupidity))
Look at the context (Crimea, 2020). If we are choosing between ancient greeks and russians then the language/culture/identity of the people should matter.
This is not about Ancient Greece/Rome/Russia/etc. My comment was: you cannot cherry pick which moment in History, a country's borders are convenient to you. I remember talking to a colleague from Poland that was proud that X centuries ago, Poland (or whatever the country/nation was called at the time had conquered big parts of then-Russia, even conquered Moscow. If we all think like that then a WW3 (Romans, Nazis, Mongols, etc.) is certain.
Let's stick to the borders we got, and in the future let's rener them useless (e.g. European Union).
I believe in a Star Trek society. Not "we kicked butts back then so let's get back those lands".
People speaking a language is not a useful way of choosing your borders. Otherwise most of Latin America can revert to Spanish control, the US can be annexed by the UK, countries like Morocco can be colonies of the French again. The fact is that spreading your language is a basic element of empire building. The fact that Crimea, Ukraine etc have so many Russian speakers reflects their past.
Russia feels that Crimea and eastern Ukraine is actually part of Russia. It was separated at paper, but it wasn't separated in souls. So you can expect further conquests of Ukraine parts, until there's no more people in the remaining Ukraine parts who identify themselves as part of Russian culture. And probably those who remain will just be conquered by Poland and that's about it.
> For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks
As a counter-example (one of many), Russia has been for a long time losing money by subsidizing Belarusian economy with cheap oil.
Every time I watch some "expert" on TV taking about some country, I think one thing - does this person have any real experience with the topic he/she is taking about? Have they visited the country they are dissing on TV, even once? Most of these so called experts are paid too.
This is not just faux news either, the experts are on all channels. No wonder the public has low trust of news these days.
Sucks to know that even a person who is such a high ranking official like an ambassador gets such shitty advice.
It’s worse that that even. Lots of people who have experience and “know” are selling their opinion (trying to influence) to the audience. So often it’s their half of s story.
Brings back memories of U.S. soldiers being handed books about Arabs that were clearly orientalist and did not at all contribute to a real, unbiased understanding of Iraq, their culture etc.
I heard and read the text, that's an "elders of zion" level tinfoil.
If readers are ok cherry picking from his work, and go on, they should also argue his points that there be a stealthy Russian amphibious landing on US soil, and Russian agents flooding US with "psychotronic agent" to steer US elections...
The guy just puts a shopping list of all obvious nasty things that could happen to the West, and call it a strategy. Few things from that coming true, does not mean them acting on this as a guiding policy.
Continuing the parallel with Danish: yes, Vikings main interest with British Islands was loot and plunder, but they were not dumb to the level where they make invading the British harder for themselves. When given a chance, they would thoroughly mess up British political arrangements with all means available to them.
> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.
Which is in stark contradiction to the sophisticated goals of the West to control as much of the world's market as possible in order for mega multinationals to be able to exploit cheap labor and maintain their insane margins, so that they're able to pay their executives an ex-politicians millions of dollars per year.
Very unlike the goals of Russian oligarchs indeed and much more sophisticated.
It’s probably not sarcasm. In many places this sentiment is prevalent. Introduce „freedom” and „democracy” to create „free market” and seed „capitalism”.
> For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.
Not sure how this benefits Russia. Each country has stategic reserves. Gas / oil is the only thing Russia can sell to the Western Europe in order to finance their own system. Russians have to sell it. Blackmailing countries is not in their business.
You make it sound like it would genuinely be in Germany's interest to not have a pipeline with Russia. Americans are no more rational than Germans, so if what you say is true, where is the harm in letting Germans make their own decisions rather than having Americans make those decisions for them?
The word “sanctions” just describes a set of decisions that a sanctioning country can make. Any country is free to make any decision it wants to. If one country doesn’t like the decisions that another country makes, they can sanction them whereby the sanctioning country makes decisions about how it’s going to interact with the sanctioned country and typically how it will interact with other countries that also interact with the sanctioned country. The effectiveness of any sanction is determined exclusively by how much other countries want whatever it is that the sanctioning country has to offer. Liechtenstein has every right to start sanctioning the USA if it wants to, but it would have to first assess what would happen if it forced the world to choose between it and the USA.
Not saying Americans are right to impose, but as a neighbor European and an Earth citizen I do believe it would be in our collective interest not to create additional pipelines to Russia, or anywhere else for that matter.
Germany should build some HVDC or regular long-distance transmission lines so they can use their wind electricity without routing through neighbors and build more wind farms.
Does the Trump administration and the rest of the US have a policy? To me it looks like chaos. US government is directed by a real-estate and tv guy. He would have difficulties locating Russia on a map and at the same time claims to be the best expert in military, strategy, trade, health care, basically everything.
If it is not clear, the US for the last two decades is not moving forward, but backwards in international politics. Trump has exposed this even more.
Trying as a strategy to contain Russia is simply not going to work and the US really needs a massive upgrade in political brains, and not more weapons.
> but if Russia has the off switch for Germany's economy
You are completely missing the part where Germany has already been running on Russian gas for decades, from land based pipelines. I think that you might be unaware of how permeable to natural gas the iron curtain had been.
The power Russia gains from Nordstream isn't the power to stop supplying Germany (they could already do that and then go broke), the power they gain is the power to keep supplying Germany while playing with the off-switch for their dearly loved "Slavic brother nations". The geopolitical relevance of Nordstream is not Russia selling more gas, it's about Russia deriving more influence per unit of gas.
Ever wondered why Poland is refusing so hard to switch from dirty lignite to cleaner gas? It's not just money and miners, far from that.
Dependence goes both ways. Russia was reduced to (or built from the ashes as) a resource extraction economy; it's extremely dependent on Europe paying for its gas.
> possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable
Russian doctrine is that the satellite countries are buffers to be used as needed, like Kleenex.
It's 100% certain Russia will annex Baltic countries whenever it pleases. To say otherwise just makes you "a useful idiot", as Lenin is credited with saying.
Russia could have annexed the Baltic states when they secceded in 91, but chose not to. From their perspective, they had enough of empire and grew tired of propping the periphery. There was no need for these states to join Nato, and they could have remained as independant partners benefitting from trade with 2 blocks. The fact they chose to move away from Russia has more to do with corruption than logic.
Russia's war with Georgia and annexation of Crimea rather vindicates the Baltic states' decision to join NATO. Russia has made it manifestly clear that it wants the right to interfere in any country's politics that hosts a sizable Russian minority, and that it is willing to bring in the tanks should the host country refuse.
Russia-Georgia conflict started by Georgian invasion. It's a fact acknowledged even by EU. I guess that just "forgot" to publish it in the media and continue to confuse people saying that Russia started it.
It was a conflict initiated by Georgia but actually they were asked by US to start it.
It won't likely trigger a nuclear war. It would trigger a conventional war that would see NATO forces directly confront the Russian military and attempt to push it back out of the Baltics (and try to inflict severe damage if Russia refuses).
Neither side with nukes would be fighting for survival and would not jump to nuclear threats or exchange until or unless their own existing territory was at risk of annexation / loss.
Russia would shift to a nuclear warning posture if pushed back to their borders. If NATO pursued and threatened territory taking, Russia would threaten nuclear response at that point, especially if it was in a particularly weakened condition or believed it couldn't hold its ground.
On the NATO side, there's practically no threat of the US, France or the UK losing territory to Russia in a Baltic-focused conflict (or in Eastern Europe for that matter). To draw a nuclear threat from NATO would similarly require the nuclear powers to be under threat of losing their own territory (and they'd probably have to believe they can't hold their ground). The UK isn't killing ten plus million of its people in a nuclear exchange with Russia for the sake of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania's territorial integrity as nation-states.
I think the only way that gets nuclear is if Russia plays the crazy card and proclaims that it now regards the annexed Baltic territory as its own and puts up the nuclear warning then and there (move in, take territory, immediately raise the crazy nuclear flag, test the resolve & risk aversion of the other side to respond militarily once the nuclear flag is out of the box). Then NATO has to decide if it believes Russia will actually act crazy.
Ukraine is not a Baltic state, the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are all in the EU and NATO members. No way the EU would let that slide.
I never said Ukraine is a Baltic state. Take out a map. Think about why the Baltic states can hardly be defended militarily. Think about what would be different if Ukraine were in the Nato (and a decent amount of Nato troops on the UA/RU border).
"No way the EU would let that slide."
They EU has no ability in military things if the UK is out. The Nato would not let it slide but they also would not fight back to win it back. It would be cold war II.
Sorry to be a pedant, but the UK's military capability is at an all time low. We have made awful purchasing decisions across the army, navy and air force, as well as failing to recruit enough people. There isn't a part of the UK military which isn't in crisis. We are not the force your post suggests we are.
Awful purchasing decisions from the US, uniformly. The deeper into this rabbit hole one goes, the stronger the smell of rats. One truly wonders who was persuaded to give away the entire fleet of carrier-borne aircraft to the US Marines - and how...
I read it as political stupidity rather than malice. Maybe not though. The requirement to have VTOL craft for our new carriers was an unforced error though, that necessitated the much more expensive model of the F35 that even the US doesn't generally use. We could've just opted for a better carrier design, or retrofitted.
Or just... kept the perfectly serviceable (indeed, newly refitted) fleet of Harrier VTOL carrier aircraft? Instead of practically giving them to the US? Who were mysteriously happy to have them, despite the ostensible F35 replacement being an American product?
The entire thing reminds of this[1] Futurama bit. "You won't be needing Harriers anymore, will you? I take Harriers now, F35 come next decade".
France has a more capable and experienced force than Russia. Also, while small individually, the combined forces of the EU far exceed that of Russia. And the US has troops stationed in Estonia, they would most certainly not let that slide. Russia can't defend its population centres either, the whole discussion is quite absurd.
I wish people wouldn't invoke useful idiot that often. It degrades the message to "everyone with a different point of view is an idiot, who doesn't realise they're being used". That's not a great message on a discussion board and rarely will lead to something constructive. And if you really hold that opinion and can put some irrefutable reasoning behind it... why not do that instead?
There's also an economic reason: if not for Russian gas, Germany will have to buy several times more expensive US gas. One more way to rule Germany (another is military bases).
The Nordstream II project is curious, because it is just a project to double capacity of the existing Nordstream pipelines. It comes in addition to other pipelines which already supply Europe from Russia. If this pipeline has any political relevance it is making Germany less dependent on Poland's and Ukraine's relationship with Russia. The Russian influence on Germany stays the same.
Why? They rolled tanks into a chunk of balkanised land already and nobody lifted a finger. I think anyone that spends some time considering that shudders to imagine how bad it could get with absolutely nothing happening.
> George Friedman explains in this book [1] that Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable
That would be less inconceivable than what they've already done in Ukraine.
> Why would the United States be the one to decide if Germany is allowed to build a pipeline to Russia or not?
Because the US is the sole guarantor of German sovereignty. It's why the US has tens of thousands of troops in germany. It's why US decides if and how much oil/gas Japan or South Korea gets from Russia. It's why the US decides if the Dutch get to sell ASML semiconductor equipment to China. It's why the US dictates whether Canada arrests a chinese executive. Pax Americana. Protection doesn't come cheap. It certainly isn't free.
> Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
Of course not, but germany is in no position to dictate anything to the US. That's the point. If germany had tens of thousands of troops stationed in the US and provided safety to the US and mexico was germany's enemy, then germany would prevent the US from doing business with mexico.
I'm not saying it's right or moral. It's just basic geopolitics. If you depend on another nation for your safety and host tens of thousands of their troops in your country, you are really not a sovereign nation and hence don't have the luxury of making all the decisions on your own.
"Along with the reliability woes of air force jetliners, only about a third of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter jets are combat ready and just a quarter of its 130 army helicopters are operational, mainly because of shortages of spare parts. Only one of six submarines and fewer than half of 244 Leopard tanks are working, according to a recent report to Parliament."
My guess is its to keep enough professional officers and enlisted staff to be able to mobilise and upgrade their capabilities quickly (with or without allies) in the even the risk evaluation changes.
Note that Costa Rica has no defence force at all.
> failing at this gamble
Yes, all adult decisions are based on uncertainty. Especially when resources are limited.
German troops have very good discipline, and a far more reliable education than american troops. While certainly far from ideal, the state of the Bundeswehr is often painted worse than it is. You completely gloss over the fact that german (special) forces are in a lot of countries.
Furthermore, Germany isn't militarily threatened by any country with capabilities to invade it. France and Britain are close allies, the US kinda still is, Russia's economy is extremely reliant on Germany and the other countries around it are to small to pose a serious threat.
At first glance, but it's probably better for Europe to be grudgingly aligned with the top power that it's generally aligned with than to be a more independent 3rd or 4th power. It's the same reason the UK is better off in the EU, even if they don't like it.
Germany aggressively uses EU money to bludgeon mainly Eastern European states info accepting policies made in Brussels. Germany has done a lot worse as well obviously.
I live in Poland and I am ok with US bullying others around because it increases stability even if we all have to pay for it.
The problem with that pipeline is that Russia will get a way to cut off Ukraine and Poland without cutting Western Europe (their biggest customers). This increases chances of them invading rest of the Ukraine or maybe even Poland in the future.
Without big bully to prevent countries doing deals that decrease stability in other countries we have no recourse. Sadly it's too late for that particular project to be stopped. Previous administration missed it or didn't intervene on purpose. It doesn't make any sense to put sanctions on Russia because of their land grab in Ukraine while allowing them to build a pipeline that destabilizes the region even further.
>Without big bully to prevent countries doing deals that decrease stability in other countries we have no recourse.
The problem here is that many do argue right now that the US is doing this themselves and is a large factor in lots of instability in say the middle East.
As someone from a country neighboring Poland, I am very familiar with this reactionary mindset and find it disgusting. (Poland seems to be in a very reactionary period right now in general.) - Yes, we were part of the USSR, which was responsible for many crimes, but that doesn't mean we now need to be unsophisticated U.S. bootlickers incapable of looking at each individual situation and evaluating it on its own merits.
For example, it is easy to see how the U.S. would not tolerate the sort of of military exercises done near the borders of Iran off the coast of Mexico. But somehow when U.S. does it, it's fine. Same with the recent airliner disaster, which took Iran 3 days to admit to, longer than it should have, but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster.
Hard to argue the Iraq War was any good, same for Libya, or the sponsoring of fundamentalists in Syria, in fact the American relationship with gulf monarchies, or even Israel, is hardly based on any moral principles.
The record in Latin America is too long to even get into etc. etc.
"...but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster."
If you are referring to flight 665 in 1988 you are wrong. Crash on July 3, here a reaction on july 4:
""The U.S. government deeply regrets this incident," Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flight8...
"In 1996, (~7years), the governments of the U.S. and Iran reached a settlement at the International Court of Justice which included the statement "... the United States recognized the aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the loss of lives caused by the incident ..."[16] As part of the settlement, even though the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
But the US admitted within a day that it was one of their ships that shot down the plane.
Compare that to next day of the recent crash when an iranian official posted on the next day that it was scientifically impossible to have been an iranian missile.
But at least they think they have arrested the person who posted the video showing the crash and making the cause obvious.
"On 14 January it was announced that Iranian authorities had arrested the person who had published a video of the aircraft being shot down."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51114945
Except the U.S. never formally apologized, which you conveniently glance over. Iran did. The background is also important, which is an illegal U.S. assassination of a top Iranian general.
It is true that some U.S. officials admitted the mistake quickly, however the official position of the U.S. government was defiant for 7 years. The official position of the Iranian government was apologetic within 72 hours and cooperative with Ukraine even faster. That's despite the fact that the U.S. homeland wasn't threatened or encircled by Iran, whereas the U.S. constantly maneuvers around Iranian borders and the tense situation came about because of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S., while on an officially accredited diplomatic mission(!)
I don't agree with arresting the person who posted the video for sure, but neither do I agree with the torture of Chelsea Manning for exposing U.S. war crimes, prosecution of WikiLeaks, Snowden, treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement, violent treatment of Standing Rock protesters etc. We could go on forever.
The point is when you have the leader of a world superpower like the U.S. saying that he'll never apologize for the United States of America, "no matter what the facts are", when none of U.S. presidents have been prosecuted for war crimes, when the indiscriminate use of devastating sanctions, including on medicine, leads to devastating civilian outcomes, when the U.S. uncritically lets Israel carve progressively more and more of the West Bank, when you have the U.S. President threatening Europe and openly admitting to stealing Syrian oil, then maybe the U.S. does not have any moral superiority to lecture others.
And let me be clear, I don't want to see the U.S replaced by say China either, I want it to be counterbalanced, so that no outrageous actions on the international stage can be taken by either party. I'd love to see the EU be its own player as well.
The pipeline thing is easy to evaluate. It clearly gives Russia more leverage over East block countries. Now look who oppose it and who pushes it and you will know who our ally is. Doing huge business deal that destabilizes the region while having sanctions over Russia invading part of Ukraine is just big betrayal. We can't count on Germany helping us. The only big player left who is interested is US. Additional bonus is that they have proven throughout history that they are acually capable of doing something.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
The pipeline thing is easy to evaluate. It clearly gives Russia more leverage over East block countries. Now look who oppose it and who pushes it (while having high ranked politicans accepting lucrative positions paid by Russians) and you will know who our ally is. Doing huge business deal that destabilizes the region while having sanctions over Russia invading part of Ukraine is just big betrayal. We can't count on Germany helping us. The only big player left who is interested is US. Additional bonus is that they have proven throughout history that they are acually capable of doing something.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
>Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
On the other hand, imagine that you're Canada and the US decides to build a pipeline to China/North Korea. Would you want Germany to back you up against the US? Because that's what's happening with Nord Stream 2. The US got into the whole thing quite late. Other European countries, such as Poland, Denmark, Estonia and others, were already against the pipeline, but Germany pushed it through anyway. Germany and Russia cooperated on dividing up Europe before.
It also endangers the basic principle of a rules-based, open world.
If you think that's a good idea, imagine what happens to an economy when civil law and contracts are not enforced, even without any threat of violence.
To pick just one example: if you're trying to get a loan to build a factory or buy a house, it's good for you that there are laws and trusted courts that would cause you a whole lot of pain if you failed to repay.
It's no different in international politics, only that treaties between states are backed not by some external force, but by each country having a strong interest in remaining within that system that outweighs any short-term benefits from skirting its responsibility.
I guess some of this is mildly counter-intuitive. But really there is game theory far more complex than this regularly understood on primary school schoolyards.
There's no such thing as a rules-based, open world. International relations is a state of anarchy and perpetual conflict that only fleetingly resembles peace during those periods where there's a global hegemon that can enforce those "rules". Within a country, those courts are the hegemon.
"Each country having a strong interest in remaining within that system that outweighs any short-term benefits from skirting its responsibility" was the theory prior to 1914 as to why the Great War would never actually happen.
Exactly. Rules must always be enforced by some higher authority. Because the highest functional units of governance are nations, this means that there will always have to be some "most powerful" nation enforcing order.
> There's no such thing as a rules-based, open world.
You're living in one right now. Anarchy need not be synonymous with chaos, especially if disputes and conflicts are relatively unimportant (due to easy defense making 'rights' self-enforcing). The point of courts is then to arbitrate disputes in a publicly-visible way, enforcement is relatively less important.
The only reason courts have authority to arbitrate disputes is because they are backed up by the will and authority of the government, which in turn has a monopoly on the use of force in society.
Now you are bumping on the reason I think the founders put the 2nd amendment in the bill of rights. Govts have to be balanced at some point by the will of the people
The Founders also raised an army to put down a tax revolt in Appalachia—though to their credit they ultimately resolved the dispute through negotiation rather than bloodshed.
Of course that’s the reason. Different people use different euphemisms, for the same reason we do now. (“Defend against tyranny.”) But we’re talking about an amendment the founders wrote shortly after they took up arms to overthrow their government. It’s clear what they were talking about: https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/second-amendment-hist...
> Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
That was Noah Webster, dictionary guy. He’s clear that the second amendment embodies a personal right to bear arms (so the citizens aren’t disarmed, like in Europe) so they can overthrow the government.
Note, the point is not to overthrow the government in any real sense, but rather to make it incredibly costly and perhaps outright infeasible for the government to actively use state-organized violence against its own people, as dictatorships everywhere are wont to do. Combine an armed populace with a strong tradition of being loyal to the Constitution and its principles first and foremost, even in the context of a standing army or similar, and it's especially clear what the 2nd Amendment was supposed to achieve.
The federal government is light-years ahead of whatever private citizens can get their hands on; 71% of americans are overweight or obese; 30% of americans have some kind of chronic pain.
If a shooting war broke out between the federal government and private citizens, the National Guard would just steamroll right on through them like they were made of thin air.
I think that the best way to exercise the second amendment is to organize militias at the state level, but even then, there still isnt enough cash for proper defenses against the federal government.
> ...the National Guard would just steamroll right on through them...
Even assuming that they could do this (which is plausibly quite wrong, as defense tactics can be very effective), what's the incentive? The people who serve in the National Guard are citizens themselves (who have sworn to uphold the Constitution) and every bit of effective defense makes it that much easier for them to defect while keeping plausible deniability. By contrast, if you've confiscated all the guns away (or bought them back) that dynamic just can't happen, at least not nearly as easily.
The presence of an armed citizenry does make for a huge difference in this scenario. No doubt about it.
Their incentive would be a manufactured one, painting the citizenry as part of some conspiracy/extreme party etc. Just look at how many Republican news outlets continuously portray the other side as extreme and crazy and dangerous.
Just having possession of armed weapons makes absolutely no difference to a modern, well equipped American military force. We’re talking about Armored Personal Carriers and Tanks rolling through cities, all communications being monitored or cut off. The arms may make it hard for the occupying force as there will be more shootouts but retributions will keep most of the populace under control.
The dynamic of Armed militias being a deterrent to a military occupation made sense in the 18th century but don’t make much sense today.
> We’re talking about Armored Personal Carriers and Tanks rolling through cities, all communications being monitored or cut off.
Assad literally used tanks against the civil uprising, and wasn’t able to stop it. (And doing so caused part of the army to defect.) Gaddafi was killed by the National Liberation Army, which initially armed itself by capturing tanks and weapons from military stockpiles.
Was either the Libyan or Syrian populace armed to the teeth? Did the availability of weapons (or the lack thereof) have any impact on what happened?
Comparing Syrian and Libyan military forces to American ones is also a stretch. We’re talking about orders of magnitudes of difference in armaments and intelligence.
I think Ghaddafi's soldiers defected because he ordered them to shoot up a non-violent protest in Benghazi, killing at least 500 unarmed civillians. That's when the protests turned into an armed insurgency, and Ghaddafi's supporters began leaving to join said insurgency.
Look at what happened in Afghanistan. A bunch of Toyota pickup trucks and AK-47s collected on the cold bodies of soviet soldiers is all it took for mujahideens to win the war, despite 20 years of war and trillions of dollars spent.
The main difference in the US would be that militias are even better equipped and better trained. Your tanks and APCs are completely irrelevant; they're useful to capture land, but by definition the US government has no land to capture in the US.
I expect the federal government to invent one. If it worked for Iraqi Freedom, the Spanish American War, Vietnam, maybe it'll work in Wyoming. Otherwise, we already condition our kids to solve conflict through violence, first by beating them when they do things we don't appreciate, and then by sitting them down in front of the TV where they can watch and learn as their only adult role model saves the day by inflicting grievous bodily harm onto other people (superheroes, star wars, fortnite).
Also, war is a lot less personal these days. There are a dozen or so Air National Guard units with access to weaponized drones in the united states. The public didn't even flinch at the onboard camera movies coming back from iraq and afghanistan showing people being blown up in their pickup trucks and SUVs.
Fighting against your own government isn’t like fighting against a foreign power. You have the advantage of asymmetric warfare, and also the advantage that the military will not follow orders to just “steamroll right in through” citizens. Egypt has F-16s, but that didn’t stop the government from getting overthrown when the military decided to stay neutral. Libya had advanced Soviet weaponry, but Gaddafi was overthrown and killed by rebel forces.
Unless you’re willing to level your own country (which for practical reasons even
tyrannical dictators are not), fighting armed citizens is nothing like fighting a foreign war. (Also, the track record for advanced nations losing wars in places like Afghanistan with vastly inferior weapons is significant). The Syrian civil war also started with a civil uprising, with armed civilian guerrillas fighting government security forces. Again, there were defections when soldiers refused to fire on citizens, and that led to establishment of the Free Syrian Army, comprised of defectors from Assad’s regime.
Here is how it played out when Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The Pakistani military was armed with modern US made aircraft and weapons, launched Operation Searchlight, which killed at least 300,000 Bangladeshis. Civilians took control of arms depots and started shooting back. That precipitated Bangali units of Pakistan’s military to mutiny and start fighting for independence. Military assistance from India helped win the war, but that started many months later. Without being able to take control of those arms depots to begin with, Bangladesh never would have been able to start the war that led to independence. (The American Revolution, by the way, played out more or less the same way. Guerrilla attacks at first, seizing weapons and supplies, creating a more formal militia, and then getting assistance of a foreign power.)
It’s not some crazy NRA fantasy. We have numerous examples of despotic regimes with modern weapons and aircraft being overthrown in civilian uprisings. I come from a country that exists because of such events. The Second Amendment is there to preserve that option. Had Bangladeshis been armed like NRA wingnuts in 1970, hundreds of thousands of innocent people might have been alive today, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women may not have gotten raped by the Pakistani military, etc.
The firearms are not enough. The Mukti Bahini were heavily assisted by members of India's Research and Analysis Wing. India provided weapons, ammunition, logistical support, and many of the refugees who volunteered were recruited and trained on Indian soil. Months before the revolution had even started Indian spies fabricated evidence linking Pakistan to the 1971 Indian Airlines hijacking, which India used to justify a ban of all Pakistani flights across its airspace, preventing Pakistani carriers from resupplying East Pakistan by air. Indira Ghandi herself was basically a foreign ambassador for Bangladesh, traveling the world not only to drum up political support for the cause, but to also to justify India's impending war with Pakistan to the international community. India and the USSR went to bat for Bangladesh at the UNSC, and India was the first U.N. state to give Bangladesh diplomatic recognition. Bangladesh also had many allies among warsaw pact countries such as the GDR (East Germany), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Soviet Union, during the war. All of whom supported the cause in some way, be that medical services for wounded soldiers, diplomatic/economic support, scholarships for Bangladeshi students or other things.
That's what separates Bangladeshi force from 99% of NRA wingnuts: training, organization, support from foreign allies. Because of these differences, I do not expect a similar international response to occur in the event of a civil war in the U.S. And I think such is ultimately what will make or break an insurgency.
India undoubtedly assisted. But Operation Searchlight began in March 1971. The first civilian response began March through May. Members of the Pakistan military defected in April. The order for the RAW to assist the guerrillas was given in late April. The Warsaw Pact countries declared their support in August. Direct military intervention from India ended the war in December.
Without armed resistance from the people, there would have been nothing to support.
A de-facto monopoly on the use of force is a domain of easily-defended rights within a broader context of anarchy. The two notions are more or less equivalent. Going from that to matters of "legitimacy" or even "authority" is all about taking that state of things as given and building a sensible set of rules and institutions around it.
No, I’m living in a world dominated by American hegemony. International institutions like the UN are valuable but when the other Western countries tried to set up a rules-based international order after WWI it only lasted 20 years.
the reason the league of nations failed (in many, but not all regards) has more to do with the economic and geopolitical situation at the time then it being a non american institution.
the strife of the great depression and it's results on politics was probably it's biggest factor.
literally any institution today is either dominated by, or boycotted by ... yanks!
examples of domination are NATO, WTO, WHO, UN, ... while those that get boycotted are things like ICC, or climate summits (Paris etc). There is no middle-ground for them. It's either "their way or the highway" as they like to say.
The reason these organizations aren't successful is because of the power imbalance in them. They aren't a neutral territory or in any way an inclusive and neutral platform. It is a lie.
To get an idea of how yanks really feel about the rest of the world just look at Trump. He very openly treats foreign leaders literally shoving them out of the way. If you think Trump is alone in his arrogance - he is not. Just look at the wikileaks cables or look at the files that got leaked into archive.org by a misconfigured .htaccess from State Department. These US politicians don't think we are peers. That much is clear of how they speak in their internal comms at embassies and consulates. Most of them don't even know how to read a feckin map.
It's world full of multilateral agreements: World Trade Organization, United Nations, Bern copyrights, Paris Agreement on climate, Geneva Conventions, nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Antarctic treaty, etc.
So how are those multilateral agreements doing, anyway?
The Geneva Conventions are an admirable code of conduct, but they don't in any meaningful way define international relations, since at least one belligerent in virtually every armed conflict since and including the Second World War has flagrantly flouted them. Countries that are decent enough to follow the Geneva Conventions don't get into wars with each other anyway. The Berne Convention similarly doesn't deter developing countries that pirate IP and shrug it off.
How did the UN work out in Rwanda? Why is it that the UN Human Rights Council typically contains most of the worst human rights abusers in the world? The UN can be a useful tool for addressing certain situations, but that typically only happens when someone--usually the US--makes a concerted effort of forcing the issue, as one of our most underrated presidents did in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Left on its own devices, it doesn't work.
The rest of the stuff likewise relies upon the US to make it work. The Paris Agreement is fundamentally untenable now that the US has withdrawn; not only does the US produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, but they also provide the needed economic counterweight to push other non-compliant countries like China into compliance. And I don't think the Paris Agreement is the only instance of this.
Not to mention the WTO taking serious damage with the US imposing trade sanctions whenever if feels like it. It's not impossible that the entire system would fall apart if the current US hostility turns out to be more than a four year aberration. I wouldn't be sad to see the Berne Convention go, at least, but I'm not sure what state the world will be in by that point.
The Paris Agreement proves OP’s point. The US left the agreement and now the agreement is worthless. Who is going to bully China into compliance? If the rest of the countries meet their climate targets does it doesn’t even matter. Pebble in a lake.
There are no "rules" on the international stage. There is no way to impose any rules on a sovereign state. As such, what you perceive as "rules" are merely the lowest energy states that will change when the sovereign state decides that it doesn't want to abide by them anymore, and there's not a single thing anyone can do about that short of imposing sanctions or declaring a war. "International law" is a fictional construct, since there can't be any enforcement.
The concept is about the lack of a governing body that can enforce "rules". By definition "rules" (as in laws) cannot exist without a ruler (as in one who can enforce laws).
Someone who enforces rules doesn't need to be a ruler; two parties could agree on mutually acceptable rules with a designated external enforcer/arbiter. This is actually how Israel was ruled in time of the Book of Judges (although the unfortunate story there is it didn't work out so they ended up with a king). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kritarchy
James Rikard (author of Currency Wars) in his newest book Aftermath predicts that the dollar's reserve currency run may soon be over, and special drawing rights (SDR) reserve currency might only be 1/3 dollars. I think he is probably correct on this prediction but maybe not on another prediction: currencies like China's and Russia's might soon be 20% backed by gold. He makes the point that there is no need for 100% backing from gold since a smaller percentage would still prevent a country from printing new currency out of thin air.
I think the dollar has a lot of inertia so it might reign for a long while longer as reserve currency, but then I also think about how much debt we have. Our treasury can not account for $21 trillion (ref: Catherine Austin Fitts http://solari.com) and the amount of consumer, educational, real estate, etc. of debt worries me, but: I expect a slow burn of our economy, not falling off of a cliff, economically speaking.
We can adjust to a decade long slow downward economic trajectory, people are resilient.
> currencies like China's and Russia's might soon be 20% backed by gold. He makes the point that there is no need for 100% backing from gold since a smaller percentage would still prevent a country from printing new currency out of thin air.
What is the conceptual difference between a currency that is 100% backed by gold and one that is 20% backed by gold? Or rather, what is the difference between a currency that is 20% backed by gold, and another currency that is (a) 100% backed by gold; and (b) worth five times as much as the first currency?
I think that his point is that 100% gold backing would make the price of gold very high, and a partial gold backing would be easier to accomplish with many of the same benefits like better long term stability (if some shorter term pain).
That's what I was saying, but mark_l_watson is saying that in case 1 the price of gold is higher, meaning a smaller amount of gold to buy the same number of apples.
I don’t have Rikard’s book in front of me, but from memory I think he was saying that the price of gold would adjust to $10K/ounce if currency were 20% backed by gold, but the price of gold would have to be much higher than $10K/ounce if currencies were 100% backed by gold.
I don’t invest in gold, I have always thought that income property is the best investment for common people like myself. Rikard has a different opinion and thinks people should own gold in their portfolio (like 5% gold). I don’t understand the gold market, while income property is easier to understand.
In this case I interpret "backed by" as that the central bank will give you the corresponding amount of gold for your currency. But, the opposite would not be true, they won't give you currency for gold alone, you'd have to also provide the same kind of backing as for non gold backed currency.
So paid in gold or the currency, you'd get the same number of apples in each case. But if you'd convert the currency to gold via the central bank (rather than on the open market) you'd get 1/5 as many apples in the second case.
In normal operations this won't make any difference, no one in their right mind would use the central bank rather than the open market to buy gold. But it means that the central bank can't just print money as they see fit, reducing the risk of runaway inflation. It also acts as insurance in the case of runaway inflation, you'll lose at most 80% of the value.
The difference is, when you go to the gold standard, how much gold you acquire to support the currency.
After that, they are the same (but keep in mind, the value of a currency is dependent on a lot of factors, and not just the gold that is backing it. Otherwise currencies backed by nothing would all be worth nothing, which we know isn't true).
> (but keep in mind, the value of a currency is dependent on a lot of factors, and not just the gold that is backing it. Otherwise currencies backed by nothing would all be worth nothing, which we know isn't true).
True, but once you've pegged the currency to gold, it can't fluctuate very far from the price of gold. A change in one is necessarily an equal change in the other. Currency that isn't backed by gold is free to fluctuate independently of the gold price, but gold-backed currency isn't.
You could have a currency backed by a weighted basket of commodities, but that would be "backed by a weighted basket of commodities", not "backed by gold, but the backing is metaphysically different than you might expect".
> True, but once you've pegged the currency to gold, it can't fluctuate very far from the price of gold.
I think this depends on what your definition of backed means. If you include the government not just buying the currency for a given amount of gold, but also selling the currency for the same amount of gold, I agree.
But, otherwise, if the government guarantees it will only buy the currency for gold and not vice versa, then I disagree. For example, I could state tomorrow that I will guarantee to give anyone 1 oz. of gold is they give me $100 trillion in USD, and then technically USD would be backed by gold (by me), but such an offer would have no real effect on the how the market would value USD.
I might be wrong about what backed means, but if so, then I also don't understand what is meant by partially backed.
>since a smaller percentage would still prevent a country from printing new currency out of thin air.
When people argue against bitcoin, they say that limiting the supply is a source of deflation and that deflation is risky for a currency.
Money can be used to store value but first of all, it is meant to exchange value. Don't you kill your economy with such a supply-limited currency since your economy cannot grow beyond your ability of acquiring gold?
I never liked the idea of a 100% gold backed currency, but 20% sounds OK.
If new money is not printed out of thin air, it seems like prices for things would adjust. Slowly increasing money supply, faster growing productivity/goods/services would mean that prices would go up to keep things balanced. I am not an expert in this subject but it interests me.
Per Wikipedia, there are 187,000 tons of gold above ground, and about 2000 tons are mined a year. That's about 1%. If all the gold was used to support currencies, mining would only let you increase the currency supply by 1% a year. If the economy is growing by more than 1% a year, then the currency has to be deflating.
But all the gold isn't being used to support currencies. So here's a different scenario: A currency is 20% supported by gold. We need, because reasons, to increase the currency supply. 2000 tons of gold is 4 million pounds, which is 48 million (troy) ounces. Gold is $1500/ounce at the moment, which gives us $72 billion of gold mined in a year. That lets one country use the whole world's mining to create $360 billion of currency in a year. Well, in 2008, the US created $4 trillion to keep the economy from collapsing. So mining isn't going to let you prevent deflationary collapse when you need to.
Without a doubt short term, it is good to be able to inflate the currency when there is a 2007/2008 event. But the counter argument is that making many ‘best for the short term decisions’ can cause more damage in the long run. Do we want the best world for our lifetime, or plan for something that is sustainable so our grandchildren’s children will have a great life.
Native American Indians believe that major decisions should be made for what is best for the seventh generation after them.
I think it would put us on par with other countries, we would lose a nice advantage. Worst case scenario would be a sharp economic decline, but I optimistically think it would be a slow leveling out, a slow decline in consumer purchasing power, limit government expenditures, etc. But, I am not at all sure what will happen.
I think the point of the original article is yes, it is in some other countries interests to end the dollar being the sole reserve currency.
On the other hand, the USA provides stability, so everyone who is rational in the world should want any transition to be slow. The whole world is in this together, I think we prosper together, or suffer together. Let’s hope for the first option.
Have you ever been to third world countries and wondered why their shopkeepers, barbers, regular service people don't live in houses with good materials?
Because its too expensive for them. That expensiveness will come here to the US
I think the main immediately recognizable change would be a slide in dollar denominated assets— houses, stocks, bonds, etc, as countries and corporations and crime syndicates stop using the US as a safe place to invest their wealth. Though that may go along with inflation, so it might be hard to tell it’s happening right away.
The most direct impact would be an increase in costs because the American supply chain, which is currently almost completely dealt in dollars would need to factor in currency risks, since, for example, they may have to start paying manufacturers in Yuan, and shippers in Euros.
More indirect results would be things like making American companies less competitive than they are worldwide. For one thing, most American companies have little to no experience dealing with multi currency issues, while companies in other countries deal with these every day and do have experience. This will give those other countries and people a slight advantage against American competitors.
Also, America gets a decent chunk of stuff for free or cheaper than it would otherwise, because countries are paying Americans goods and services in return for pieces of paper. Those benefits will gradually reduce and disappear.
How does it matter if your reserve currency is 100% backed by gold if you lose access to your currency account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?
The lack of any viable alternative has kept the dollar in its current dominant position.
That alternative won't exactly announce itself so that US policymakers can rationally decide to change course about the weaponization of money.
It will instead, sneak up on the country in the form of weird little experiments that don't seem worth the time and effort to track or regulate. By the time one of them becomes the obvious marketplace disruptor, the die will have been cast.
Isn't the answer the euro? Stable, inflation proof, light or no sanctions. As brexit proceeds and more financial services move to mainland Europe, you won't even have to worry about the brits messing with it...
I seem to remember the EU agreeing to setup a psudo bank to deal direct with Iran so they can bypass restrictions on trade?
Every country sponsoring a currency approaching the reach of the dollar will begin to experience the same political forces as the US. Weaponization of the currency in the service of foreign and domestic policies is viewed as a cheap alternative to war. And so the pressure to weaponize will sooner or later become irresistible.
Didn't the whole Greece debt situation show why that could be a problem? One country's debt crisis caused the euro to tank 30% in a very short time. It ended up rebounding, but pretty much forced the EU to handle the situation (write off debt and provide low interest loans for the rest) or risk the whole thing exploding.
It seems like your betting on 5-10 countries not failing, when with most currencies you just have to deal with 1.
Which is probably why it's not currently the reserve currency, one would assume.
It’s more that the Euro has been a fiasco for Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain... It’s fundamentally problematic to have a single exchange rate between countries with different inflation rates, balances of trade, etc. - because you can’t have an exchange rate that works for everyone and the value can’t move between the other economies to balance out the differences.
The only way around that (apart from going to separate currencies with floating exchange rates) is to have some kind of fiscal balancing method. In the US, for example, federal taxing and spending tends to do this between the states. But that is probably politically impossible in the EU (redistribution from richer countries to poorer is pretty unpopular).
Definitely not the Euro. Its not only not inflation proof infact because poorer country will need higher inflation that's exactly whats going to happen. It's not stable, Brexit, Greece, spain, italy have all gone through a lot of recessions. Not to mention they don't have a central bond market. The Euro can't really ever be a replacement.
Only 19 out of the 28 european union members use the euro. So I don't think the euro (a 19 year old currency ) is the answer. Unless something changes, then in the future it might be one of the answers.
> you won't even have to worry about the brits messing with it...
The brits never adopted the euro as their currency, so they never messed with it to begin with.
> Stable, inflation proof, light or no sanctions. As brexit proceeds a
Stable... brexit. The problem with the euro is that its political foundation ( european union ) seems weak. With britain leaving the european union, with the EU sovereign debt crisis and potential for further problems in the near term, it's more likely the EU will break apart and the euro discarded than the euro will replace the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Being the reserve currency of the world requires the political and military backing of a stable superpower. For all our problems, the US isn't losing states like the EU is losing countries.
If the dollar's stranglehold in the world break, we'll probably get regionally dominant currencies. The dollar will still dominate the western hemisphere. The eastern hemisphere will be dominated by regional economic powers and their currencies.
1. the expansion is over. last expansion resulted in some pretty nasty stuff. from massive EU fund corruption to a member leaving.
2. on this last point, how many hundreds of albanias would you need to replace the particular qualities the brits were bringing to the table? the only thing the EU can do is bring Russia onboard. something France and Germany are already doing, to the horror of the Eastern Europeans and the US
The expansion is not over. There are still european countries wanting to join. Btw., the UK (especially Boris Johnson) was a proponent of more countries joining the EU.
France never wanted the UK in the EU in the first place. Maybe they were right? The UK was boykotting deeper EU integration on political, economical and defense levels, so after the UK leaving we may expect to see some progress.
Boykotting Russia everywhere leads us nowhere. Cooperation does. Russia is not even a candidate joining the EU. We have Turkey in the line of countries - which is not liked by many EU countries, but PROMOTED by the current UK prime minister. Even the US has requested in the past the EU to take Turkey as a member.
The US foreign policy is the current horror. Last time the US lawlessly invaded Iraq with a coalition of the willing. Now the US has many more countries unwilling to follow the foreign policy adventures of the least qualified administration since decades.
A country like Poland sees with horror, that the US is no longer clearly committed to NATO.
the UK was one of many countries objecting to the current form of the EU. this will not go away with one member leaving.
the EU is expecting another round of new participants in 2025. and the countries are the likes of Macedonia and Serbia. of course the EU politicians are already arguing about this, since the last expansion was a small disaster: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/eu-en...
personally i don't see how the EU can expand without major reform.
countries like Poland and Romania are strong Nato allies looking in horror at Germany and France cozying up to Putin. the US simply expected the two western countries to pay up. they preferred to pay Russia instead.
Maybe you can‘t remember those times, but I knew germans who were invading the USSR. I spoke to one who learned russian in the USSR in military prisons in siberia - he having served in the Waffen SS. I grew up in the cold war times. Then we saw the collapse of the USSR and its block. We‘ve made a lot progress since then. There is a russian view to that and we also need to listen to that, too.
The view of Russia about the NATO expansion towards their border is widely reported. We can ignore that or think it is unfounded, the reality is that these views influence the Russian politics.
Unfortunately, I don't get what you mean. Which organizations is the US barring these countries from entering? Is your solution to them the same that they should listen to the US views as well?
Neither makes sense. What will happen though , is that EU countries will make sure that more monetary independence is possible and that blackmail attempts by US government will not succeed. Trump has used that to undermine the European politics towards Iran. Trump is also using this as a threat against the EU and certain EU countries.
The Euro doesn't look great either. The EU's sovereign debt crisis gets worse every year. The economic growth of the region is predicted to lag the US. A rising banking crisis is being swept under the rug. An aging population. The EU proved during the Cyprus banking crisis that they will reach into bank accounts and confiscate deposits.
As a point of fact, it isn't true that the dominant currency imposing costs is new...that has always happened. Britain did it in order to secure continued use of the £, and the US has done it before now. It is a normal extension of foreign policy (because finance is not separate from politics, as the Rusal example shows).
It isn't some kind of authoritarian aberration either. The point is that the US has most to lose from a system of free trade so is the one who shoulders most of the burden for securing it. You don't secure something by sitting back and letting people ride all over it.
And yes, some people who don't want to play by those rules will grouse. But the system will always lean towards one dominant currency, it is just easier that way (the UK losing control was was unexpected and took nearly six decades to play out after the point of obvious decline). The world is awash in dollars, no need to worry (if anything, the issue is that some are too reliant on too much dollar funding...not that the world is moving away).
It is kind of unfortunate that the Economist keeps getting worse. The election of Mango Man and Brexit has truly addled the minds of some generally smart people (or made clear that their smartness wasn't actual intelligence but an ability to just parrot whatever they were told was "right").
> It is kind of unfortunate that the Economist keeps getting worse. The election of Mango Man and Brexit has truly addled the minds of some generally smart people (or made clear that their smartness wasn't actual intelligence but an ability to just parrot whatever they were told was "right").
Sad to agree. It really is eye opening to see how many of “the smart people” get is so damn wrong over and over because of narrative or hope or just some weird political blindness.
Yep, have been reading for 15 years and it has only got really bad over the past few years (imo, it started before Trump).
I actually wouldn't say it is about having an official position either. The OP really isn't about liberalism vs illiberalism...politics/finance are inseparable and the US is the guarantor for an open financial system. The article ends up arguing for the position of Iran/Russia/China (and the illiberal voices within the EU like Juncker) who extract from the system without paying in. You can't respond to illiberalism with liberalism. Imo, this is a fairly obvious aspect of international relations that, in the past, the Economist rarely missed. But since the switch in editor, it has become: our goal is Trump bad, let's write an article that shows this so we will get there any way we can.
It isn't only Trump though. In other areas, writers dispense with liberal values whenever it suits (which is increasingly common these days).
I’m not sure I get your argument. It doesn’t appear the Economist article is claiming that the dominant currency has only just started imposing costs.
Their claim is that the recent increased costs, and more relevantly their almost arbitrary nature, hasn’t just led to the usual suspects grousing, but has also started causing allies who didn’t grouse in the past, to actively seek and build alternatives.
As a result, the USD may potentially lose its status as the dominant currency much sooner that it may have otherwise.
Yes, the main contention of the article is that this is unusual. If you think it through: the only way this article makes sense is if that claim is made...otherwise, the US was doing this in the past and it made no difference (which is true).
I think you are taking a slightly expansive definition of ally. You are referring to the EU? A significant grouping within the EU does not regard the US as an ally (particularly economically, ref France bringing down Bretton Woods...the US is the giving tree here, the more you give, the more the EU takes)...and all of the people grousing are the usual suspects (China, Juncker, etc.).
And no, you need to justify an extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence. None of this is even remotely extraordinary (and counter to the fairly obvious evidence of the dollar's position growing...not receding).
I guess this is good for bitcoin! Good enough liquidity, can't be blocked, many tumblers, cheap transactions - maybe it will become a preferred way for international settlements, replacing gold?
I'm pretty sure it does. The more debt increases against a property, the more valuation is boosted since the price of the unique property is bundled with the debt.
This is how nations have been looking at debt for some time. Yeah, you can make a margin call on the US (directly or via a partner), but what are you going to replace that resource pipeline with?
Ha Ha mises.org. What a joke!
An institution which has been wrong about everything for the past 100 years is predicting a dollar cash? What a surprise!
"Starvation sanctions kill people. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly already died as a result of this administration’s relentless assault on their economy; those human beings are no less dead than they would have been if the US had killed them by dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily, have had very little to say about Trump’s attacks on the nation’s economy. The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their sick.
I’m titling this essay “Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare”, and I mean it. I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.
If the US were to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there’d be international outrage and the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major hit. Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime. Yet America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer essentially no consequences at all. There’s no public or international pressure holding that form of violence at bay, because it’s invisible and poorly understood."
We have enough of the endless wars AND endless sanctions. Framing it as a dichotomy between the two unnecessarily constrains the debate. Framing and constraining the realm of options is a very successful political strategy.
Ever since I saw Ray Dalio's video about the economy and long term debt cycle I have been really worried.
The thing that scares me more is that we don't hear any politicians talking about this stuff. In particular presidential candidates. The only one that seems to actually understand technology and the economy (Yang) is proposing an increase in entitlements, although hopefully the VAT can improve revenue somewhat. I know he knows who Ray Dalio is since he mentioned his name.
I think there needs to be a plan for an international system that is not dominated by one country like the US dollar and is technologically sophisticated. Some kind of multi-government backed cryptocurrency, possibly paired with a decentralized resource tracking system.
I feel like there are a bunch of people who think there is no problem and a bunch on the other side who think the situation is dire. My guess is that there is a real situation that we have to plan for and it seems like a very bad idea to put off that planning.
This is an interesting article, but exposes the Economist's bias and lack of an honest historical accounting. While the it is new, interesting, and important that the world is becoming more skeptical of the dollar, it is kind of laughable that the only reference to Iraq and sanctions is the ones that were in the news recently.
Iraq and many other countries have been subject to crippling US sanctions many times in the past. In the 1990s, sanctions were issued by the Clinton administration that were so severe that hospitals were scrubbing the floors with gasoline (https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/us-war-iraq-legacy-of-bl...).
"In June, 1991, Medicine For Peace medical teams began working in Baghdad pediatric hospitals. The following is a description of what they found:
"The hospital was in darkness. Ventilators, incubators, dialysis machines were not functioning and any patients dependent on these support systems had died. We made ward rounds with Iraqi physicians, many trained in the US and Great Britain, who were despondent and demoralized. No x-rays, lab tests, or possibility of surgery. Worse of all, intravenous fluids and supplemental feedings for the scores of malnourished children were in short supply, the pharmacy had exhausted its store of antibiotics for treatable infections, and there was not one vial of morphine to relieve the pain of children suffering with tumors on the cancer ward."
Outside of the US, economic sanctions of this magnitude are often regarded as war crimes. They are routinely deployed against the populations of official US enemies and have been for some time under the theory that if we make life as bad as possible for the people, maybe they'll overthrow the regime. Hint: It usually doesn't work and the regime uses the sanctions to (correctly) characterize itself as under attack by foreign enemies.
In the modern instance, the case for sanctions in Iraq can only be described as barbarous bullying. The Iraqi government voted to remove US troops in response to an unprovoked assasination on an Iranian top general on their soil while performing what is claimed to be a diplomatic peace mission (another war crime). In response, the US employs sanctions to bully the Iraqis into acquiescing to an unending occupation that they have judged does not serve their interests.
Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister (paraphrased, talking about austerity in Greece) said that where they used to use tanks, they now use banks. In the case of Iraq, sadly, tanks, banks, and aerial bombing have all been used in various combinations at various times.
The modern instance has far less apparent rational motives. The threat of imposition of sanctions on Iraq is coming almost solely from the President of the US, framed as a retaliatory gesture. The language used implies the threat is guided primarily by emotion rather than by a sober realpolitik diplomatic move.
It appears that most of the government, even most Republicans in Congress, disagree with the idea. Though Republicans are currently in a vulnerable state with regards to political pressure from the President, I find it unlikely that a bill imposing sanctions will be enacted without a significant change after the 2020 elections.
The other major change is that under the current administration America has been pointing its financial weapons at allies as well.
That’s the major change the article is talking about, without being fully explicit about it. Russia and China have been wanting to move away from the dollar for over a decade.
It’s the fact that the EU now also wants to do so that has changed.
The greatest long term impact of Teump’s Iran policy will likely be the creation of Instex (or more relevant, whatever follows it) that will help the EU and Asian countries move away from the US as the center of the financial world.
> The Iraqi government voted to remove US troops in response to an unprovoked assasination on an Iranian top general on their soil while performing what is claimed to be a diplomatic peace mission (another war crime).
I’m not sure if this is satire. The Iranian General was coordinating attacks against American forces with the Iranian-backed militia forces in Iraq.
It’s true that lame-duck Iranian-backed Shiite politicians passed the non-binding resolution on US troop withdrawal, supported by an Iranian-backed lame duck Prime Minister, which many outlets fail to report was incidentally boycotted by the Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers which will have a much larger share of the vote after the next election.
Yep that wall has broken down. There are already long term implications to Trump craziness. What ever he is doing is extremely short sighted and plays right into China's hands, the one thing he is railing against.
There's the possibility that the USG believes the dollar's primacy is going to come to an end in the relatively near future. There are other factors at play that could weaken the dollar's status that matter more than sanctions, including:
(1) The geopolitical shift away from a unipolar world, with the rise of states such as China.
(2) The upcoming end of the petrodollar, as nations shift to renewable energy.
If you believe the reign of the dollar will come to an end anyways, you might as well use its power while you have it and throw sanctions around to weaken your rivals.
This possibility comes along with the rise of a new political brand for the Republicans: “We do whatever we have to to get ours”. In the early stages under GW Bush/Rumsfeld this was the lighter “We do whatever we have to to advance American interests throughout the world” but under Trump/Murdoch it is now “advance the interests of those who are loyal to me”.
That will play well in an economic crisis. I don’t think the brandmakers for liberalism in America are prepared for that fight. Right now the brand on the left is something like “we can and should demand a better wage and better benefits from Daddy!” but that falls flat in a crisis.
That all said, we’re not in that crisis yet. So perhaps it’s fine to focus on the present, where we certainly have the money to increase workers benefits.
The dollar’s exceptional liquidity makes it more valuable, which is good for people who have dollars, but it’s bad for people whose costs are in dollars (American exporters). The dollar’s strength since the earlier 1980s (the first major flight to liquidity during the era of free movement of capital) has been terrible for American industry. It’s like Dutch disease, but instead of a commodity like oil causing unbalanced trade, it’s the dollar itself.
Whether China's yuan should be freely convertible to other currencies is something the PRC has struggled with for years. A freely convertible yuan would increase China's influence on the world financial system, but it would also increase the influence of the world financial system on China. And it would require much easing, if not elimination, of China's exchange controls.
A decade ago, a freely convertible yuan was seen as likely. But China has backed off from that. Xi Jinping's "China 2025" is about autarky - reducing China's dependency on the rest of the world.
So, the yuan as a world currency isn't really happening yet.
Yes because USA Vs the world will have USA as a winner (if this is what you imply) which is 5yo thinking. EU although it still going through some growing pains, appears to be far more mature than today's USA, which is burning bridges and building walls (I mean figuratively). If/as the planet continues to decrease its dependency to USD then the might will decrease further with it. USA has the No1 debt on this planet. I don't see any other countries of that size going bust and needing to print new money every other year because they cannot afford to run their states. I am using this childish and realistic example so you include that in your thought process.
As for the army, EU is in the process of considering/designing an EU army, since the "US hegemony" seems to be in deep .... with USA's latest leadership. And thank you for speeding up this process.
Can you expand on this? What's the financial function of an army? What's the military function of a currency? I can imagine what you might say but I'd like to read it to know for sure.
So far US invaded or staged a coup in every country that had audacity to refuse using US dollar. That is one of the most important functions of US military power.
Also, countries with US military bases aren't really sovereign. They can't for example refuse to invest significant portion of their GDP in US treasuries.
agree with your comment except the last semi-sentance.
the euro has other issues, including dismal growth rates of the Euro area, an ineffective ECB, multiple diverging national financial strategies, and very long term, the massive ageing and shrinking of the european population. i don't see the Euro as anything but a very short term panacea. it needs to solve its structural issues before it can become more than it is.
The yuan won’t be freely convertible because that would open the floodgates to capital flight from China. As long as that possibility exists, free convertibility will not.
Yeah, on top of the issues of infrastructure around payments/settlements/collateral management/kyc laws that often go ignored in these discussions as well as the high correlation of lowering (euro)dollar usage globally with lower global growth rates… ideally you'd have higher growth rates with lower (euro)dollar usage if there was any serious alternative.
Fundamentally speaking, I think non CB backed cryptos (combined with hedging tools via futures/options/swaps/ndfs/etc) have a better chance because they can be used to lower the costs intl of payments/settlements/etc, esp in these times when the trust in central banking becomes more and more contested. But I only see this happening slowly until there's a catalyst to push this to the next level.
I would expect cryptocurrency to ascend in a series of hops, “chaos is a ladder” style. Every time a central bank somewhere takes home their toys, crypto will click forward.
Given the extreme questionability of all currencies for anyone who wants to, y'know, hold on to currencies; why not just do without? There isn't any theoretical reason a world currency is needed. Instead of pricing Yuan and Euros in terms of some third currency people could price them in terms of each other and cut out the middle man.
Speaking as an Australian; about 3-4% of our trading by value is with the United States. I shouldn't ever have to see a value priced in US dollars. I really don't care what the price of anything is in US dollars. The only reason the US dollar impacts me as far as I can tell is because it is embedded deeply into SWIFT and is required internationally to trade in oil. Important in practice but not in theory.
7 days late here, but its not an accident that things are priced in USD in the middle of transactions, and its not purely because the US wanted it that way.
Imagine if you as an Australian wanted to trade with venezuela. You go and make a deal selling something for some bolivars. But by the time you get the money the bolivars are not the worth the same in AUD as when you started the deal. Now you might say that the Venezualans should just hold some AUD in order to trade with australia. but they want to trade with the rest of the world as well so they would have to hold some of everyones currencies based on how much they plan to trade with them. This is infeasible so instead they use USD as the middle man to trade with everyone else, and everyone else agrees that they will accept USD for their trades. this removes the currency risk between countries assuming the USD is liquid and remains somewhat steady, which it has for the purpose of world trade.
It's not about whether dollar sucks in absolute terms. It's about whether it sucks less than other currencies. It's tied to the largest economy in the world, and the strongest military in the world (importantly, including the strongest navy as well), by quite a margin, and as such, it's not going anywhere. You don't need to run faster than the bear, you just need to run faster than the other guy.
Sanctions are the modern equivalent of siege warfare- using starvation as a weapon. I’m not sure why it’s looked upon as being a kinder, gentler approach than dropping bombs on civilians. It’s still violence. People still die.
I read a paper on the implementation of oil trade based on an independent crypto currency backed by Oil exporting countries, the author laid all out and how the US will never allow that to happen, sorry I lost the page source.
325 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 64.6 ms ] threadWhy would the United States be the one to decide if Germany is allowed to build a pipeline to Russia or not?
Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
I'd be okay with any number of countries using sanctions to "punish" the US for any number of things. It's their right as sovereign nations. The irony here is that it's a double edged sword.
But what I'd really prefer would be a more direct say over who my country is sanctioning and why.
This doesn't really treat with the dollar-denominated world economy but I wanted to point this out to differentiate the current irrational foreign policy of the US government from the subject at hand.
Current US policy, to the extent that we have policy today, is a whole other matter.
About 25% of Germany’s primary energy are produced from gas, of which about 40% come from Russia (down from about 50% in 1995).[1]
The US sanctions against the Nord Stream project are seen by a number of Germans as a rather clumsy attempt to push the sale of their expensive liquified natural gas, which to a high degree is produced by hydraulic fracking.[2]
1) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
2) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
They were in favor of sanctions against lots of countries, usually because of human rights abuses. I currently can't access their archives, but I am quite sure they were calling for sanctions on Germany as early as 1933.
Doubly so if you own the ships too.
They can't directly confront Germany, but the US can, and it is doing so rightly. The project comprises the long term security of the Nato block, and the said countries have a major distrust towards Russia as it has they have suffered a lot under thier imposed communist regimes.
For a bunch of smart people, HN veers too much into hands off 'libertarian' side of things. US lets its hands off in the region, it will slowly be transformed again into a basket case of 'kleptocratic' countries in the way Russia is today.
---- The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia––all highly dependent on Russian gas––signed a petition against Nord Stream 2 in March 2016, highlighting the risks for energy security in Central and Eastern Europe.
Italy is in a similar bind. In 2015, Italy accused the EU Commission of applying double-standards when the Commission did not reject the Nord Stream 2 project, as it did with the South Stream––a project which would have benefited Italy’s role as energy hub in the Mediterranean. For this reason, Italy complained about Germany’s influence in the EU Commission and called for equal treatment.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/04/22/n...
but if you can pick up the penny(-wise) now, and let somebody else pick up the pound(-foolish), you make bank and leave before the going gets tough.
That has nothing to do with their objections to the pipeline, to the contrary.
Can you give actual examples of this friendliness? I see it cited very often but I don't know any concrete example. I know Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia last September, that is sanctioning European companies for the Russia pipeline, and that he's doing anything that he can to destabilise Iran, which is supported by Russia. So it doesn't seem that friendly to me.
Maybe you should have asked for 100, or 1000. I can probably come close to 100 though.
PolitiFact explains well the context in this article:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jan...
"most experts we spoke to said this is a case of the Trump administration’s clumsiness, not coziness.
Back in April, when the sanctions hit the aluminum giant Rusal, it sent shockwaves through the global aluminum markets. The price of aluminum soared over the following weeks. Europe, which relies heavily on Russia’s metals market, faced the prospect of plant closures and lost jobs. Even now, the European Union strongly supports the lifting of sanctions."
"according to experts, the Treasury discovered it had bitten off more than it could chew.
"They were done clumsily," Alina Polyakova, of the Brookings Institution, said of the sanctions. "It seems clear that the administration did not plan for the dramatic effects on aluminum markets and the knock-on effects on European businesses.""
So the only example you came up with in fact says nothing of the presumed friendliness of Trump towards Russia. Next one.
This "friendly" policy is basically not considering what Russia does within its borders justification for military action. This was always the unofficial policy, with the new bit being the Trump administration doesn't pass moral judgement on what Russia does within its borders.
A pipeline between germany and Russia strengthens Russia (increased GDP, increased control over the EU) and weakens the EU (which is full of countries that have proven they cannot defend themselves). Increasing the chance of war with Russia, and creating another mess for the US to clean up.
Seems pretty consistent foreign policy to me.
Because America provides defence for Germany, and Russia has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at Germany, the US and others, and they are an antagonising state, actively trying to disrupt the governments in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, etc.
All these issues are quite fundamentally related, so it matters.
That said, I don't think a pipeline will matter that much.
The premise of the article is problematic because there are almost no alternatives for the USD outside the Euro, and possibly the Pound for a few things. The RMB can't effectively be a global currency until it becomes transparent, which means the CCP would have to give up control, which they won't do.
There is really nothing on the horizon - no digital/fintech/blockchain anything that will change the playing field.
If anything - as 5B people on planet earth go from $1/day to $20/day and come into the global economy, the USD will have even greater seigneuriage power.
Those have been there for a long time, even before the "disruption". Besides France has nukes too, so not much win there.
In response to Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO, Germany’s reaction was not “oh, good, those useless Americans will leave.” It was: https://www.dw.com/en/merkel-vows-to-hit-2-nato-spending-tar...
> Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday underscored her commitment to NATO, pledging to raise Germany's defense spending to the alliance's 2% target "by the early 2030s."
> "The preservation of NATO is in our own interest, more than during the Cold War," Merkel said while addressing lawmakers in German parliament.
> "At the moment, Europe is unable to defend itself," she added, urging the bloc to stay together.
Much is for the US and their military adventures, not for NATO or NATO-related things. It supports the US war machine. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Africa, ... Much of that has nothing to do with defending Germany, defending the US or defending NATO...
The US and its allies/friendly countries currently outspend Russia approximitely fifteen times.
If Germany would spend 2% of its GPP on military, then it would approach Russia in absolute numbers, That would be crazy.
What we really need is LESS military spending and less military adventures of the US (Iraq, Syrian, Libya, ...). The US has destabilized the whole middle east and north africa. The refugees are going to Europe, not the US...
The US will stay in south germany for the near future, because it provides excellent logistics for US wars in middle east, asia and africa.
Recent events have convinced me that I was at least partly wrong about my previous view of the United States having bases all around the world. Europeans love to complain about America, but when Trump threatened to pull out of NATO, in the face of an ascendant Russia, the European reaction certainly wasn’t “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Likewise in Asia, while the Taiwanese and Japanese have always been warm to American military support, the growing power of China has definitely sparked discussions about America’s continued commitment to obligations in that region.
Germany is also no longer the front to the communist block - which no longer exists and only Russia is left as direct opponent. So it may make sense to have NATO defense moving east. Many Germans think that the US politics against Russia leads to nothing good.
What Trump does/says is fully inconsistent. NATo is obsolete. Then it is great. He wants to reduce military. Then record money flows into the military. He wants to get out of Iraq, then he blackmails Iraq to let the US stay. He uses kurds to fight against ISIS and then he hands them over to Assad...
The main political reaction in Germany to him is to have not too much changed and hope for a more rational US government.
It is her contractual obligation. Currently Germany does not have an Army anymore but a museum. How many tanks are operational? 100? Russia has 10.000...
Tanks? Not sure that this is our biggest concern right now.
Yes, Indeed. tanks are not the biggest problem. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/21/pepe-escobar-you-say-y...
PS: "Germany is only one of 19 NATO members that have not met the 2% GDP spending goal set at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales."
PS. : the spending goal is in the future: 2025. It‘s also a political goal, not a contract.
And the current data can be seen here:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_...
Look at the numbers, they are vastly different from what you claim.
They are "vastly different" because most countries don't share their fair burden. Trump may be wrong in many things, here he is right.
In the PDF you provided "NATO guideline 2%" But hey, why spent it on the military? Let the US spent/fight for us.
Everything of that is wrong, There is no contract. The goal of 2% is set for 2025, not now. Currently a bunch of countries spend less than 2%.
And: large parts of the US military spending is completely unrelated to NATO.
Next you need to ask yourself if these approximate numbers make sense:
Europe minus Russia, without the US: defense spending of 350 billion USD. NATO has defense spending of 950 billion dollar. Russia: defense spending: 65 billion USD.
Europe is already outspending Russia five times. NATO is outspending Russia by 15 times.
This looks like lack of money is not the actual problem NATO has.
The same is true for Military spending. The military is labor heavy, and production is mostly domestic. If you don’t adjust for purchasing power, you’re comparing apples and oranges: https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/why-russian-military-expen...
> Perhaps most importantly, the more methodologically sound approach to comparing defense spending based on PPP illustrates that the gap between U.S. expenditure on the one hand and that of Russia and China on the other has closed dramatically over the past 15 years. Today, when taken together, spending by Russia and China is roughly equal to U.S. defense expenditure, with Russia representing a much larger share than previously recognized.
Moreover, even PPP probably doesn’t accurately depict the difference. Beijing spends about a billion dollars a year to operate a subway serving a city of 20 million people. New York spends ten times as much for a system half the length and half the ridership. Moscow spends 1/7 as much as New York to operate a larger system with more ridership.
Military expenditures probably scale much closer to something like a subway system than the overall PPP basket of goods. In that case, we are probably looking at less than a factor of two advantage in what that spending actually buys.
Russia is decades behind in high-tech and has only limited access to western technology in many areas. The country largely lives of selling natural resources. There is a many years ongoing embargo on high-tech in many areas - also from the EU. There is basically limited technological cooperation with Russia in many high-tech sectors right now.
The result is that Russia has only a few somewhat competitive areas in military technology and needs to invest a lot of money into those: Nuclear weapons, rockets, space technology, etc. Selling those weapons helps their industry a bit.
This affects for example how much money they have to deploy even tanks:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22600/russia-cant-affo...
For example they have only a single old aircraft carrier:
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-admiral-kuznetsov-murmansk-f...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUpZDb3W0Q
The US OTOH has none or ten whole carrier fleets...
Russia has submarines and a lot of nuclear technology. From time to time an old one sinks. The older ones are rotting somewhere...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48897468
That Russia has cheap clothes for their soldiers, or can mass produce tanks for their soldiers does not help them, if they don't have a competitive high-tech industry. Keeping the nuclear weapons (rockets, submarines, launchers, spy satellites, ...) is extremely expensive and where the money goes.
For the West it's much easier to cooperate on technology and weapons.
See the list of carriers: most of them are from US, NATO or allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...
It's clear that 65 billions USD doesn't buy much on the world market, even though the costs at home are low. The rest of the economy does not support their high-tech needs...
It's not that Russia has no competitive weapons, but the breadth and depth is simply not there. Russia selectively chooses areas where they develop competitive weapons with their more limited resources.
True, the Russians don't reveal the full scale of military costs. But the US does the same:
https://www.thenation.com/article/tom-dispatch-america-defen...
You are disingenuously arguing against the wind.
Yes, there is, a kind of contract.
When nations agree to targets, and they did a long time ago, its material. That it's not technically part of the treaty is relevant, but not so important.
The 2% target was established long ago, there's a renewed 'agreement' since Trump took office, but it's along the same lines: European states will wait for Trump to be out of office and then ignore it.
The fact remains America provides defence for Europe, and Europe is willing to let that happen because, well, it's very expensive, among other things.
Which are in the future. The target is for 2025.
> remains America provides defence for Europe
The fact remains that NATO is not an US security organization where other Nations buy protection. Trump may think that, since he knows the Mafia from his real-estate business.
Nobody has asked German citizens yet, if we want to invest 2% of the GDP into defense and where it should be invested.
Basically a military & governments have decided that for us, which is entirely undemocratic and a fully un-controlled process.
It's great that the military-industrial complex can on its own decide how much to spend, without any outside interference. This leads to a situation, like in the US where roughly a trillion USD is spend on military, which is an insane amount of money.
NATO isn’t just there to defend against Russia, it is effectively an unbroken continuous occupation of Europe by the US.
The US has bases all over Europe, they spend a fortune on their own defensive tech, capabilities and leadership which Germany et. al. depend on, which acts as a massive deterrent, but also provides security partners with 'almost free R&D'. Also, the US specialises and practices so many things that are just far beyond the reach of pretty much all European forces.
The ability to put bases, air support of all kinds, intelligence, drones, etc. pretty much anywhere is basically beyond most of Europe. When a war broke out on their border (Libya), for better or worse there was an intervention. Obama reluctantly agreed and didn't want to play a lead role, but without US drones, AWACS, and electronic warfare, special forces on the ground, the UK and French fighters wouldn't have been able to do anything at all. This is actually quite a good demonstration of how specific capabilities are huge enablers of others.
Trump's NATO talking point about partners not spending enough is very fair, and most European nations are in violation of the treaty, which is doubly problematic because while NATO is strategically beneficial to the US, it's basically vital to European integrity -> they need it more than the US and spend only 1/2 of what was agreed upon.
If the US simply 'did not exist' - Russian Imperialism would reach just about as far as in the Soviet era. Basically, Poland would be back to being the 'buffer' between Germany and Russia.
Everyone in the 1990's thought all of that would melt with the cold war, unfortunately, neither China nor Russia moved along the expected path, so here we are.
American sanctions of Iran are not remotely big enough to make a dent in currency issues.
I do however think that as finance spreads into different areas, Americans will have more difficulty with said sanctions. Dubai exists as a financial centre basically because it's outside the direct influence or insight of American or European agencies. It's basically an entire micro-economy of dirty money.
I would not be surprised to hear there is some qualitative difference, but I think it should be explained before we accept either “Dubai is dirtier” or “everywhere is equally dirty” premise.
We can speculate a lot, but that's a this is, speculation. This comment and a lot of others smell of American exceptionalism to me as a non US citizen.
I'm not sure this can really be considered an instance of "protection" provided by the US. As far as I remember, the Libyan war was more of an instance of civilian unrest that the government was equipped to and on the verge of dealing with when American intervention toppled it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...), thus causing the present state where no one faction is strong enough to control the whole country. In fact, it is hard to think of any protracted armed conflict on Europe's periphery in the past two decades that was not either directly instigated or least comes with a strong case of having been surreptitiously promoted by the US.
Second, I don't think it's fair to say the conflicts in Europe's periphery are surreptitiously promoted by the us: the war in Crimea, Russia invasion of Georgia, conflict in Yugoslavia, 'Troubles' in Ireland etc. - these were not 'made in the USA'. Neither was the Arab Spring.
EDIT: I don't prefer autocracies, live in EU, and I do appreciate the need for counterbalance. Yes, in many important ways you are (more) free.
Yet, while USA has 2 parties instead of 1, both are beholden to capital interests, including their healthcare, monopolized internet, schools, and even their military has vast ties with capital interests. Citizens are significantly dependent on their "credit scores" while banks easily give loans in their names to other people (so called identity theft). People start saving for their children's education even before they are born and still end up with college debt. 0.7% of the population is in prison, and cops can legally rob you (asset forfeiture).
Let's not forget overthrowing the first democratically elected government when they nationalize their oil sector, instating a dictator, and then invading the country. That's what sharing free¹dom means.
We’re there to prevent them from killing each other more than we are there to prevent The One True Enemy (whoever it might be today) from invading wily nilly. We don’t want them killing each other, because when they do, it is bad for business and diplomatic relations. More importantly, if we allow their natural tendencies towards hot European on European action to occur today, there really is a global threat because these are advanced economies that could easily pump out nukes and lob them at each other which is generally not great for the health of anyone on the planet.
In short, by serving European interests, we actually are serving our own interests because in some very important ways, our interests are in complete alignment. Germany is generally more at peace with the world than Japan at any given moment, but give them cause to build up their military and the time to do it and they could easily be a bigger threat to the United States than Russia, but they have no inclination towards treating us as an enemy so long as they’re under a system that protects them equally from France as it does from Russia or Costa Rica or Sealand.
It's entirely reasonable to believe that France is not going to commit national nuclear suicide merely to defend Czech or Poland from a Russian invasion. MAD - mutual assured suicide - would only be utilized in a case where their own existence were threatened.
That's where a very powerful traditional military comes into play.
That's why NATO exists instead of merely relying on having a stockpile of nukes to point at Russia. You might actually have to stand off Russia in a real military confrontation or at a minimium give the strong impression that you can if necessary. Russia can gamble that France isn't going to commit suicide via nuclear weapons to save Lithuania, and it would be a correct bet, at which point it's down to traditional military vs military.
It's never so simple.
First, does France have the ability to deliver them? Under what conditions? With what warning, etc. etc.
Second, is the fact that nukes are the biggest hammer in retaliation, and most things need to be proportional.
Would France use nukes on Russia if Poland was invaded?
What if Russia tried to 'pull a Crimea' in E. Germany i.e. small forces without uniforms, supporting insurgencies, disrupting communications. Tons of money pouring in changing elections, disrupting governance. Would that be a case for nukes?
It's far more complicated, and Europe cannot defend itself - this is the tacit admission of their own leaders. So America still provides baseline defence capabilities.
The unfortunate reality is that Europe actually could defend itself, but it's not willing to either spend what's necessary, or to coordinate along those lines, which might be even harder as the EU doesn't provide for that and it's a really big existential deal. The reason there isn't material progress on it is because it's really, really expensive and nobody wants to pay bills if America will continue to pay it form them.
Trump is a loathsome figure, but he's exactly right on this issue. European leaders will make some happy talk, public statements, but really they're just waiting for Trump to be gone so they can go back to what they hope will be the status quo.
It is a fundamental rule of Geopolitics that every country assert itself to the best of its abilities with the strengths they have. One of Russia's biggest strengths is natural resources. It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
George Friedman explains in this book [1] that Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable, but if Russia has the off switch for Germany's economy, NATO's response is drastically weakened.
Whatever scenario may come to pass, European reliance on Russian natural resources disrupts the US's containment strategy which it needs in order to maintain its dominant position in the region. So yes, it will say something if it feels like that is under threat.
Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century/dp/07...
This is in the book that forecasts that Japan will attack the US in 2050 except that it'll be all space-borne battlestars and lasers and hypersonic weapons. Among other preposterous scenarios. Riiiight.
> It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
Loaded language. Don't you think Western Europe has thought of this? And hey, if Russia turns off the tap they turn off their revenue stream. Besides, Europe, like the US, keeps strategic fossil fuel reserves.
> The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony.
> Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
Seems to me that if the US keeps sanctioning foes and allies alike every country bar the US will consider this a bad thing.
It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.
Baltics and Crimea are not comparable. - Crimea has Russia's only warm water port and would never be given up - Russia already has Baltic access (Kaliningrad and StPetersburg) - Crimea has been majority ethnic Russian for centuries and welcomes Russia - Baltics hate Russia
In summary, there is absolutely no logical reason Russia would annex Baltic state.
However, there are plenty reasons why non-Russian interests always repeat this narrative.
Why would Russia need several bankrupt dying states? To feed and develop them like in Soviet times getting nothing but hatred in response? Ditto for Ukraine BTW.
Anywhere that Russia has "annexed" has had a majority ethnic Russian population and historical ties to Russia. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are not majority ethnic Russian, do not speak Russian, and are part of the EU (and NATO) so they're clearly not aligned geopolitically with Russia and it would cause major regional ramifications, undoubtedly triggering a war with NATO, and/or the EU (both nuclear entities). It would be wholly unprecedented in modern times.
I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event.
The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone.
He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of the region.
There was no end to his disappointment when he came to understanding that all that geopolitical BS he learned was for nothing, and he came to station the most boring post-Soviet hillbilly town.
I think most Americans, even the most educated ones tend to greatly overthink "geopolitical conspiracies"
Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.
For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.
The people of Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine would beg to differ.
There is no bigger "grand plan" to them than to an 8th century Viking raid: more subjects, loot, and territories to use to stage further invasions.
Danes cared more for how tasty the British were, before they started to care about the British throne and court politics in the bigger Post-Roman world.
(to be even more specic, Crimean events were mostly about regaining the control of the Black Sea Fleet naval base, while Donbass events were about reacting to a hostile coup, but the two things are closely related)
It was also an object lesson to all the minor powers in the region: you cannot take US money to have a small victorious colour revolution anymore. Not in Russia's backyard.
edit: oh wow downvotes, I am so surprised /s
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That sounds like a geopolitical ambition to me.
And now Russia spend enormous amount of money to develop Crimea. Where's the looting?
- Crimea became part of Russia before Texas became part of US
- Crimea became part of Russia before (around the time) US independence
- Kievan Rus' is older than Aztec Empire
- Before the US, the colonies were English, French, Dutch, Swedish, etc.
- Before the colonies, it was of course Native American land.
- Before the Anglosaxons, Britain was Celtic.
- Kievans are much older than Russians. Russia was created by a few Swedes forking the local Slav tribes.
- Before Moscow, there were Poles Bulgarians and Mongols.
Shall we go on?
Should British demand their colonies back?
Should Indians demand their land?
Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we will give Crimea to Russia (and let's have a WW3 and all be dead me give the planet the break it deserves (from human stupidity))
Let's stick to the borders we got, and in the future let's rener them useless (e.g. European Union).
I believe in a Star Trek society. Not "we kicked butts back then so let's get back those lands".
Similar thing can be said about disputed teritorries in the east, around Donbas.
Of course that's still not the excuse for what Russia did, taking both places by force, however, this makes fixing this more complicated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics
This is either a typo or some next-level tinfoil hattery...
As a counter-example (one of many), Russia has been for a long time losing money by subsidizing Belarusian economy with cheap oil.
This is not just faux news either, the experts are on all channels. No wonder the public has low trust of news these days.
Sucks to know that even a person who is such a high ranking official like an ambassador gets such shitty advice.
Are you sure about that?
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlini...
If readers are ok cherry picking from his work, and go on, they should also argue his points that there be a stealthy Russian amphibious landing on US soil, and Russian agents flooding US with "psychotronic agent" to steer US elections...
The guy just puts a shopping list of all obvious nasty things that could happen to the West, and call it a strategy. Few things from that coming true, does not mean them acting on this as a guiding policy.
Continuing the parallel with Danish: yes, Vikings main interest with British Islands was loot and plunder, but they were not dumb to the level where they make invading the British harder for themselves. When given a chance, they would thoroughly mess up British political arrangements with all means available to them.
Today's Russia seems more assertive again with their geopolitical interests.
Which is in stark contradiction to the sophisticated goals of the West to control as much of the world's market as possible in order for mega multinationals to be able to exploit cheap labor and maintain their insane margins, so that they're able to pay their executives an ex-politicians millions of dollars per year.
Very unlike the goals of Russian oligarchs indeed and much more sophisticated.
Not sure how this benefits Russia. Each country has stategic reserves. Gas / oil is the only thing Russia can sell to the Western Europe in order to finance their own system. Russians have to sell it. Blackmailing countries is not in their business.
Germany should build some HVDC or regular long-distance transmission lines so they can use their wind electricity without routing through neighbors and build more wind farms.
If it is not clear, the US for the last two decades is not moving forward, but backwards in international politics. Trump has exposed this even more.
Trying as a strategy to contain Russia is simply not going to work and the US really needs a massive upgrade in political brains, and not more weapons.
You are completely missing the part where Germany has already been running on Russian gas for decades, from land based pipelines. I think that you might be unaware of how permeable to natural gas the iron curtain had been.
The power Russia gains from Nordstream isn't the power to stop supplying Germany (they could already do that and then go broke), the power they gain is the power to keep supplying Germany while playing with the off-switch for their dearly loved "Slavic brother nations". The geopolitical relevance of Nordstream is not Russia selling more gas, it's about Russia deriving more influence per unit of gas.
Ever wondered why Poland is refusing so hard to switch from dirty lignite to cleaner gas? It's not just money and miners, far from that.
Russian doctrine is that the satellite countries are buffers to be used as needed, like Kleenex.
It's 100% certain Russia will annex Baltic countries whenever it pleases. To say otherwise just makes you "a useful idiot", as Lenin is credited with saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
It was a conflict initiated by Georgia but actually they were asked by US to start it.
Neither side with nukes would be fighting for survival and would not jump to nuclear threats or exchange until or unless their own existing territory was at risk of annexation / loss.
Russia would shift to a nuclear warning posture if pushed back to their borders. If NATO pursued and threatened territory taking, Russia would threaten nuclear response at that point, especially if it was in a particularly weakened condition or believed it couldn't hold its ground.
On the NATO side, there's practically no threat of the US, France or the UK losing territory to Russia in a Baltic-focused conflict (or in Eastern Europe for that matter). To draw a nuclear threat from NATO would similarly require the nuclear powers to be under threat of losing their own territory (and they'd probably have to believe they can't hold their ground). The UK isn't killing ten plus million of its people in a nuclear exchange with Russia for the sake of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania's territorial integrity as nation-states.
I think the only way that gets nuclear is if Russia plays the crazy card and proclaims that it now regards the annexed Baltic territory as its own and puts up the nuclear warning then and there (move in, take territory, immediately raise the crazy nuclear flag, test the resolve & risk aversion of the other side to respond militarily once the nuclear flag is out of the box). Then NATO has to decide if it believes Russia will actually act crazy.
The baltic states can not be defended militarily. If Ukraine were in the EU, would be a different thing.
"No way the EU would let that slide." They EU has no ability in military things if the UK is out. The Nato would not let it slide but they also would not fight back to win it back. It would be cold war II.
The entire thing reminds of this[1] Futurama bit. "You won't be needing Harriers anymore, will you? I take Harriers now, F35 come next decade".
[1]https://youtu.be/kNyETSyc4qo?t=98
One of the signatories was the invader, the rest found obtuse reasons why they didn't have to defend Ukraine.
The next annexation will be the same.
Why? They rolled tanks into a chunk of balkanised land already and nobody lifted a finger. I think anyone that spends some time considering that shudders to imagine how bad it could get with absolutely nothing happening.
That would be less inconceivable than what they've already done in Ukraine.
Because the US is the sole guarantor of German sovereignty. It's why the US has tens of thousands of troops in germany. It's why US decides if and how much oil/gas Japan or South Korea gets from Russia. It's why the US decides if the Dutch get to sell ASML semiconductor equipment to China. It's why the US dictates whether Canada arrests a chinese executive. Pax Americana. Protection doesn't come cheap. It certainly isn't free.
> Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
Of course not, but germany is in no position to dictate anything to the US. That's the point. If germany had tens of thousands of troops stationed in the US and provided safety to the US and mexico was germany's enemy, then germany would prevent the US from doing business with mexico.
I'm not saying it's right or moral. It's just basic geopolitics. If you depend on another nation for your safety and host tens of thousands of their troops in your country, you are really not a sovereign nation and hence don't have the luxury of making all the decisions on your own.
Sole? So the German armed forces are for what exactly?
https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-germany-armed-forces-201...
That's the difference between the paranoid and the rational.
Mind you, failing at this gamble would have devastating effects, as was evidenced by many occupied nations during the last major conflict in Europe.
Note that Costa Rica has no defence force at all.
> failing at this gamble
Yes, all adult decisions are based on uncertainty. Especially when resources are limited.
For example, it takes the US Army almost 2 years to train helicopter pilots. Similar for Air Force or Navy pilots.
Furthermore, Germany isn't militarily threatened by any country with capabilities to invade it. France and Britain are close allies, the US kinda still is, Russia's economy is extremely reliant on Germany and the other countries around it are to small to pose a serious threat.
Without big bully to prevent countries doing deals that decrease stability in other countries we have no recourse. Sadly it's too late for that particular project to be stopped. Previous administration missed it or didn't intervene on purpose. It doesn't make any sense to put sanctions on Russia because of their land grab in Ukraine while allowing them to build a pipeline that destabilizes the region even further.
The problem here is that many do argue right now that the US is doing this themselves and is a large factor in lots of instability in say the middle East.
For example, it is easy to see how the U.S. would not tolerate the sort of of military exercises done near the borders of Iran off the coast of Mexico. But somehow when U.S. does it, it's fine. Same with the recent airliner disaster, which took Iran 3 days to admit to, longer than it should have, but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster.
Hard to argue the Iraq War was any good, same for Libya, or the sponsoring of fundamentalists in Syria, in fact the American relationship with gulf monarchies, or even Israel, is hardly based on any moral principles.
The record in Latin America is too long to even get into etc. etc.
There's also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qatUWwIeg
It is true that some U.S. officials admitted the mistake quickly, however the official position of the U.S. government was defiant for 7 years. The official position of the Iranian government was apologetic within 72 hours and cooperative with Ukraine even faster. That's despite the fact that the U.S. homeland wasn't threatened or encircled by Iran, whereas the U.S. constantly maneuvers around Iranian borders and the tense situation came about because of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S., while on an officially accredited diplomatic mission(!)
I don't agree with arresting the person who posted the video for sure, but neither do I agree with the torture of Chelsea Manning for exposing U.S. war crimes, prosecution of WikiLeaks, Snowden, treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement, violent treatment of Standing Rock protesters etc. We could go on forever.
The point is when you have the leader of a world superpower like the U.S. saying that he'll never apologize for the United States of America, "no matter what the facts are", when none of U.S. presidents have been prosecuted for war crimes, when the indiscriminate use of devastating sanctions, including on medicine, leads to devastating civilian outcomes, when the U.S. uncritically lets Israel carve progressively more and more of the West Bank, when you have the U.S. President threatening Europe and openly admitting to stealing Syrian oil, then maybe the U.S. does not have any moral superiority to lecture others.
And let me be clear, I don't want to see the U.S replaced by say China either, I want it to be counterbalanced, so that no outrageous actions on the international stage can be taken by either party. I'd love to see the EU be its own player as well.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
On the other hand, imagine that you're Canada and the US decides to build a pipeline to China/North Korea. Would you want Germany to back you up against the US? Because that's what's happening with Nord Stream 2. The US got into the whole thing quite late. Other European countries, such as Poland, Denmark, Estonia and others, were already against the pipeline, but Germany pushed it through anyway. Germany and Russia cooperated on dividing up Europe before.
If you think that's a good idea, imagine what happens to an economy when civil law and contracts are not enforced, even without any threat of violence.
To pick just one example: if you're trying to get a loan to build a factory or buy a house, it's good for you that there are laws and trusted courts that would cause you a whole lot of pain if you failed to repay.
It's no different in international politics, only that treaties between states are backed not by some external force, but by each country having a strong interest in remaining within that system that outweighs any short-term benefits from skirting its responsibility.
I guess some of this is mildly counter-intuitive. But really there is game theory far more complex than this regularly understood on primary school schoolyards.
"Each country having a strong interest in remaining within that system that outweighs any short-term benefits from skirting its responsibility" was the theory prior to 1914 as to why the Great War would never actually happen.
You're living in one right now. Anarchy need not be synonymous with chaos, especially if disputes and conflicts are relatively unimportant (due to easy defense making 'rights' self-enforcing). The point of courts is then to arbitrate disputes in a publicly-visible way, enforcement is relatively less important.
> Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
That was Noah Webster, dictionary guy. He’s clear that the second amendment embodies a personal right to bear arms (so the citizens aren’t disarmed, like in Europe) so they can overthrow the government.
If a shooting war broke out between the federal government and private citizens, the National Guard would just steamroll right on through them like they were made of thin air.
I think that the best way to exercise the second amendment is to organize militias at the state level, but even then, there still isnt enough cash for proper defenses against the federal government.
Even assuming that they could do this (which is plausibly quite wrong, as defense tactics can be very effective), what's the incentive? The people who serve in the National Guard are citizens themselves (who have sworn to uphold the Constitution) and every bit of effective defense makes it that much easier for them to defect while keeping plausible deniability. By contrast, if you've confiscated all the guns away (or bought them back) that dynamic just can't happen, at least not nearly as easily.
The presence of an armed citizenry does make for a huge difference in this scenario. No doubt about it.
Just having possession of armed weapons makes absolutely no difference to a modern, well equipped American military force. We’re talking about Armored Personal Carriers and Tanks rolling through cities, all communications being monitored or cut off. The arms may make it hard for the occupying force as there will be more shootouts but retributions will keep most of the populace under control.
The dynamic of Armed militias being a deterrent to a military occupation made sense in the 18th century but don’t make much sense today.
Assad literally used tanks against the civil uprising, and wasn’t able to stop it. (And doing so caused part of the army to defect.) Gaddafi was killed by the National Liberation Army, which initially armed itself by capturing tanks and weapons from military stockpiles.
Comparing Syrian and Libyan military forces to American ones is also a stretch. We’re talking about orders of magnitudes of difference in armaments and intelligence.
The main difference in the US would be that militias are even better equipped and better trained. Your tanks and APCs are completely irrelevant; they're useful to capture land, but by definition the US government has no land to capture in the US.
I expect the federal government to invent one. If it worked for Iraqi Freedom, the Spanish American War, Vietnam, maybe it'll work in Wyoming. Otherwise, we already condition our kids to solve conflict through violence, first by beating them when they do things we don't appreciate, and then by sitting them down in front of the TV where they can watch and learn as their only adult role model saves the day by inflicting grievous bodily harm onto other people (superheroes, star wars, fortnite).
Also, war is a lot less personal these days. There are a dozen or so Air National Guard units with access to weaponized drones in the united states. The public didn't even flinch at the onboard camera movies coming back from iraq and afghanistan showing people being blown up in their pickup trucks and SUVs.
Unless you’re willing to level your own country (which for practical reasons even tyrannical dictators are not), fighting armed citizens is nothing like fighting a foreign war. (Also, the track record for advanced nations losing wars in places like Afghanistan with vastly inferior weapons is significant). The Syrian civil war also started with a civil uprising, with armed civilian guerrillas fighting government security forces. Again, there were defections when soldiers refused to fire on citizens, and that led to establishment of the Free Syrian Army, comprised of defectors from Assad’s regime.
Here is how it played out when Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The Pakistani military was armed with modern US made aircraft and weapons, launched Operation Searchlight, which killed at least 300,000 Bangladeshis. Civilians took control of arms depots and started shooting back. That precipitated Bangali units of Pakistan’s military to mutiny and start fighting for independence. Military assistance from India helped win the war, but that started many months later. Without being able to take control of those arms depots to begin with, Bangladesh never would have been able to start the war that led to independence. (The American Revolution, by the way, played out more or less the same way. Guerrilla attacks at first, seizing weapons and supplies, creating a more formal militia, and then getting assistance of a foreign power.)
It’s not some crazy NRA fantasy. We have numerous examples of despotic regimes with modern weapons and aircraft being overthrown in civilian uprisings. I come from a country that exists because of such events. The Second Amendment is there to preserve that option. Had Bangladeshis been armed like NRA wingnuts in 1970, hundreds of thousands of innocent people might have been alive today, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women may not have gotten raped by the Pakistani military, etc.
That's what separates Bangladeshi force from 99% of NRA wingnuts: training, organization, support from foreign allies. Because of these differences, I do not expect a similar international response to occur in the event of a civil war in the U.S. And I think such is ultimately what will make or break an insurgency.
Without armed resistance from the people, there would have been nothing to support.
the strife of the great depression and it's results on politics was probably it's biggest factor.
examples of domination are NATO, WTO, WHO, UN, ... while those that get boycotted are things like ICC, or climate summits (Paris etc). There is no middle-ground for them. It's either "their way or the highway" as they like to say.
The reason these organizations aren't successful is because of the power imbalance in them. They aren't a neutral territory or in any way an inclusive and neutral platform. It is a lie.
To get an idea of how yanks really feel about the rest of the world just look at Trump. He very openly treats foreign leaders literally shoving them out of the way. If you think Trump is alone in his arrogance - he is not. Just look at the wikileaks cables or look at the files that got leaked into archive.org by a misconfigured .htaccess from State Department. These US politicians don't think we are peers. That much is clear of how they speak in their internal comms at embassies and consulates. Most of them don't even know how to read a feckin map.
The Geneva Conventions are an admirable code of conduct, but they don't in any meaningful way define international relations, since at least one belligerent in virtually every armed conflict since and including the Second World War has flagrantly flouted them. Countries that are decent enough to follow the Geneva Conventions don't get into wars with each other anyway. The Berne Convention similarly doesn't deter developing countries that pirate IP and shrug it off.
How did the UN work out in Rwanda? Why is it that the UN Human Rights Council typically contains most of the worst human rights abusers in the world? The UN can be a useful tool for addressing certain situations, but that typically only happens when someone--usually the US--makes a concerted effort of forcing the issue, as one of our most underrated presidents did in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Left on its own devices, it doesn't work.
The rest of the stuff likewise relies upon the US to make it work. The Paris Agreement is fundamentally untenable now that the US has withdrawn; not only does the US produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, but they also provide the needed economic counterweight to push other non-compliant countries like China into compliance. And I don't think the Paris Agreement is the only instance of this.
You can’t endanger something that doesn’t exist. Sovereign countries exist amongst themselves in the state of nature.
I think the dollar has a lot of inertia so it might reign for a long while longer as reserve currency, but then I also think about how much debt we have. Our treasury can not account for $21 trillion (ref: Catherine Austin Fitts http://solari.com) and the amount of consumer, educational, real estate, etc. of debt worries me, but: I expect a slow burn of our economy, not falling off of a cliff, economically speaking.
We can adjust to a decade long slow downward economic trajectory, people are resilient.
What is the conceptual difference between a currency that is 100% backed by gold and one that is 20% backed by gold? Or rather, what is the difference between a currency that is 20% backed by gold, and another currency that is (a) 100% backed by gold; and (b) worth five times as much as the first currency?
(alt s/dollars/bitcoin/)
1. The currency is 100% backed by gold.
2. The currency is 20% backed by gold.
How much gold does it take to purchase 200 apples? You are saying that it will take more gold in the second case, right? Why?
1 gold = 200 apples 1 gold * 1 currency = 200 apples 0.2 gold * 5 = 200 apples
I don’t invest in gold, I have always thought that income property is the best investment for common people like myself. Rikard has a different opinion and thinks people should own gold in their portfolio (like 5% gold). I don’t understand the gold market, while income property is easier to understand.
So paid in gold or the currency, you'd get the same number of apples in each case. But if you'd convert the currency to gold via the central bank (rather than on the open market) you'd get 1/5 as many apples in the second case.
In normal operations this won't make any difference, no one in their right mind would use the central bank rather than the open market to buy gold. But it means that the central bank can't just print money as they see fit, reducing the risk of runaway inflation. It also acts as insurance in the case of runaway inflation, you'll lose at most 80% of the value.
They’ll certainly exchange some amount of gold for something but I doubt it would be the face value of the notes.
After that, they are the same (but keep in mind, the value of a currency is dependent on a lot of factors, and not just the gold that is backing it. Otherwise currencies backed by nothing would all be worth nothing, which we know isn't true).
True, but once you've pegged the currency to gold, it can't fluctuate very far from the price of gold. A change in one is necessarily an equal change in the other. Currency that isn't backed by gold is free to fluctuate independently of the gold price, but gold-backed currency isn't.
You could have a currency backed by a weighted basket of commodities, but that would be "backed by a weighted basket of commodities", not "backed by gold, but the backing is metaphysically different than you might expect".
I think this depends on what your definition of backed means. If you include the government not just buying the currency for a given amount of gold, but also selling the currency for the same amount of gold, I agree.
But, otherwise, if the government guarantees it will only buy the currency for gold and not vice versa, then I disagree. For example, I could state tomorrow that I will guarantee to give anyone 1 oz. of gold is they give me $100 trillion in USD, and then technically USD would be backed by gold (by me), but such an offer would have no real effect on the how the market would value USD.
I might be wrong about what backed means, but if so, then I also don't understand what is meant by partially backed.
When people argue against bitcoin, they say that limiting the supply is a source of deflation and that deflation is risky for a currency.
Money can be used to store value but first of all, it is meant to exchange value. Don't you kill your economy with such a supply-limited currency since your economy cannot grow beyond your ability of acquiring gold?
I never liked the idea of a 100% gold backed currency, but 20% sounds OK.
If new money is not printed out of thin air, it seems like prices for things would adjust. Slowly increasing money supply, faster growing productivity/goods/services would mean that prices would go up to keep things balanced. I am not an expert in this subject but it interests me.
But all the gold isn't being used to support currencies. So here's a different scenario: A currency is 20% supported by gold. We need, because reasons, to increase the currency supply. 2000 tons of gold is 4 million pounds, which is 48 million (troy) ounces. Gold is $1500/ounce at the moment, which gives us $72 billion of gold mined in a year. That lets one country use the whole world's mining to create $360 billion of currency in a year. Well, in 2008, the US created $4 trillion to keep the economy from collapsing. So mining isn't going to let you prevent deflationary collapse when you need to.
Without a doubt short term, it is good to be able to inflate the currency when there is a 2007/2008 event. But the counter argument is that making many ‘best for the short term decisions’ can cause more damage in the long run. Do we want the best world for our lifetime, or plan for something that is sustainable so our grandchildren’s children will have a great life.
Native American Indians believe that major decisions should be made for what is best for the seventh generation after them.
On the other hand, the USA provides stability, so everyone who is rational in the world should want any transition to be slow. The whole world is in this together, I think we prosper together, or suffer together. Let’s hope for the first option.
Have you ever been to third world countries and wondered why their shopkeepers, barbers, regular service people don't live in houses with good materials?
Because its too expensive for them. That expensiveness will come here to the US
More indirect results would be things like making American companies less competitive than they are worldwide. For one thing, most American companies have little to no experience dealing with multi currency issues, while companies in other countries deal with these every day and do have experience. This will give those other countries and people a slight advantage against American competitors.
Also, America gets a decent chunk of stuff for free or cheaper than it would otherwise, because countries are paying Americans goods and services in return for pieces of paper. Those benefits will gradually reduce and disappear.
That alternative won't exactly announce itself so that US policymakers can rationally decide to change course about the weaponization of money.
It will instead, sneak up on the country in the form of weird little experiments that don't seem worth the time and effort to track or regulate. By the time one of them becomes the obvious marketplace disruptor, the die will have been cast.
I seem to remember the EU agreeing to setup a psudo bank to deal direct with Iran so they can bypass restrictions on trade?
Edit: here it is! https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/eu-mechanism-for-...
It seems like your betting on 5-10 countries not failing, when with most currencies you just have to deal with 1.
Which is probably why it's not currently the reserve currency, one would assume.
It's a lesson learned now, and ECB will hold binge spenders on a leash.
UK can leave EU, Greece or Eastern Europe can not.
The only way around that (apart from going to separate currencies with floating exchange rates) is to have some kind of fiscal balancing method. In the US, for example, federal taxing and spending tends to do this between the states. But that is probably politically impossible in the EU (redistribution from richer countries to poorer is pretty unpopular).
They now enforce the limit of how much debt a country can sell, and at what terms much more rigorously
Only 19 out of the 28 european union members use the euro. So I don't think the euro (a 19 year old currency ) is the answer. Unless something changes, then in the future it might be one of the answers.
> you won't even have to worry about the brits messing with it...
The brits never adopted the euro as their currency, so they never messed with it to begin with.
> Stable, inflation proof, light or no sanctions. As brexit proceeds a
Stable... brexit. The problem with the euro is that its political foundation ( european union ) seems weak. With britain leaving the european union, with the EU sovereign debt crisis and potential for further problems in the near term, it's more likely the EU will break apart and the euro discarded than the euro will replace the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Being the reserve currency of the world requires the political and military backing of a stable superpower. For all our problems, the US isn't losing states like the EU is losing countries.
If the dollar's stranglehold in the world break, we'll probably get regionally dominant currencies. The dollar will still dominate the western hemisphere. The eastern hemisphere will be dominated by regional economic powers and their currencies.
That's not likely at all.
(whether or not it will stop there is a separate question)
France never wanted the UK in the EU in the first place. Maybe they were right? The UK was boykotting deeper EU integration on political, economical and defense levels, so after the UK leaving we may expect to see some progress.
Boykotting Russia everywhere leads us nowhere. Cooperation does. Russia is not even a candidate joining the EU. We have Turkey in the line of countries - which is not liked by many EU countries, but PROMOTED by the current UK prime minister. Even the US has requested in the past the EU to take Turkey as a member.
The US foreign policy is the current horror. Last time the US lawlessly invaded Iraq with a coalition of the willing. Now the US has many more countries unwilling to follow the foreign policy adventures of the least qualified administration since decades.
A country like Poland sees with horror, that the US is no longer clearly committed to NATO.
the EU is expecting another round of new participants in 2025. and the countries are the likes of Macedonia and Serbia. of course the EU politicians are already arguing about this, since the last expansion was a small disaster: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/eu-en...
personally i don't see how the EU can expand without major reform.
countries like Poland and Romania are strong Nato allies looking in horror at Germany and France cozying up to Putin. the US simply expected the two western countries to pay up. they preferred to pay Russia instead.
Good relations with Russia is in the interest of the EU countries.
For example the views of the Russian population.
Example : https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/08/21/russians-say-t...
The view of Russia about the NATO expansion towards their border is widely reported. We can ignore that or think it is unfounded, the reality is that these views influence the Russian politics.
just days ago...
It isn't some kind of authoritarian aberration either. The point is that the US has most to lose from a system of free trade so is the one who shoulders most of the burden for securing it. You don't secure something by sitting back and letting people ride all over it.
And yes, some people who don't want to play by those rules will grouse. But the system will always lean towards one dominant currency, it is just easier that way (the UK losing control was was unexpected and took nearly six decades to play out after the point of obvious decline). The world is awash in dollars, no need to worry (if anything, the issue is that some are too reliant on too much dollar funding...not that the world is moving away).
It is kind of unfortunate that the Economist keeps getting worse. The election of Mango Man and Brexit has truly addled the minds of some generally smart people (or made clear that their smartness wasn't actual intelligence but an ability to just parrot whatever they were told was "right").
Sad to agree. It really is eye opening to see how many of “the smart people” get is so damn wrong over and over because of narrative or hope or just some weird political blindness.
About 90% is still good, especially when they focus of international news.
But they're willing to publish lower quality articles when defending their official liberal position.
Sadly, the occasional low-quality article is seeping into other areas.
I actually wouldn't say it is about having an official position either. The OP really isn't about liberalism vs illiberalism...politics/finance are inseparable and the US is the guarantor for an open financial system. The article ends up arguing for the position of Iran/Russia/China (and the illiberal voices within the EU like Juncker) who extract from the system without paying in. You can't respond to illiberalism with liberalism. Imo, this is a fairly obvious aspect of international relations that, in the past, the Economist rarely missed. But since the switch in editor, it has become: our goal is Trump bad, let's write an article that shows this so we will get there any way we can.
It isn't only Trump though. In other areas, writers dispense with liberal values whenever it suits (which is increasingly common these days).
Their claim is that the recent increased costs, and more relevantly their almost arbitrary nature, hasn’t just led to the usual suspects grousing, but has also started causing allies who didn’t grouse in the past, to actively seek and build alternatives.
As a result, the USD may potentially lose its status as the dominant currency much sooner that it may have otherwise.
I think you are taking a slightly expansive definition of ally. You are referring to the EU? A significant grouping within the EU does not regard the US as an ally (particularly economically, ref France bringing down Bretton Woods...the US is the giving tree here, the more you give, the more the EU takes)...and all of the people grousing are the usual suspects (China, Juncker, etc.).
And no, you need to justify an extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence. None of this is even remotely extraordinary (and counter to the fairly obvious evidence of the dollar's position growing...not receding).
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/economy/global-debt-record/in...
Its like the world is playing musical chairs and at some point the music will stop and not everyone will have a seat
This is how nations have been looking at debt for some time. Yeah, you can make a margin call on the US (directly or via a partner), but what are you going to replace that resource pipeline with?
Don't we have enough of the endless wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. from the last 2 administrations?
"Starvation sanctions kill people. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly already died as a result of this administration’s relentless assault on their economy; those human beings are no less dead than they would have been if the US had killed them by dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily, have had very little to say about Trump’s attacks on the nation’s economy. The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their sick.
I’m titling this essay “Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare”, and I mean it. I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.
If the US were to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there’d be international outrage and the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major hit. Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime. Yet America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer essentially no consequences at all. There’s no public or international pressure holding that form of violence at bay, because it’s invisible and poorly understood."
[1] https://twitter.com/bbcthisweek/status/1091126998364184576?l...
The thing that scares me more is that we don't hear any politicians talking about this stuff. In particular presidential candidates. The only one that seems to actually understand technology and the economy (Yang) is proposing an increase in entitlements, although hopefully the VAT can improve revenue somewhat. I know he knows who Ray Dalio is since he mentioned his name.
I think there needs to be a plan for an international system that is not dominated by one country like the US dollar and is technologically sophisticated. Some kind of multi-government backed cryptocurrency, possibly paired with a decentralized resource tracking system.
I feel like there are a bunch of people who think there is no problem and a bunch on the other side who think the situation is dire. My guess is that there is a real situation that we have to plan for and it seems like a very bad idea to put off that planning.
Iraq and many other countries have been subject to crippling US sanctions many times in the past. In the 1990s, sanctions were issued by the Clinton administration that were so severe that hospitals were scrubbing the floors with gasoline (https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/us-war-iraq-legacy-of-bl...).
https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-study-baghdad-hospita...
"In June, 1991, Medicine For Peace medical teams began working in Baghdad pediatric hospitals. The following is a description of what they found:
"The hospital was in darkness. Ventilators, incubators, dialysis machines were not functioning and any patients dependent on these support systems had died. We made ward rounds with Iraqi physicians, many trained in the US and Great Britain, who were despondent and demoralized. No x-rays, lab tests, or possibility of surgery. Worse of all, intravenous fluids and supplemental feedings for the scores of malnourished children were in short supply, the pharmacy had exhausted its store of antibiotics for treatable infections, and there was not one vial of morphine to relieve the pain of children suffering with tumors on the cancer ward."
Outside of the US, economic sanctions of this magnitude are often regarded as war crimes. They are routinely deployed against the populations of official US enemies and have been for some time under the theory that if we make life as bad as possible for the people, maybe they'll overthrow the regime. Hint: It usually doesn't work and the regime uses the sanctions to (correctly) characterize itself as under attack by foreign enemies.
In the modern instance, the case for sanctions in Iraq can only be described as barbarous bullying. The Iraqi government voted to remove US troops in response to an unprovoked assasination on an Iranian top general on their soil while performing what is claimed to be a diplomatic peace mission (another war crime). In response, the US employs sanctions to bully the Iraqis into acquiescing to an unending occupation that they have judged does not serve their interests.
Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister (paraphrased, talking about austerity in Greece) said that where they used to use tanks, they now use banks. In the case of Iraq, sadly, tanks, banks, and aerial bombing have all been used in various combinations at various times.
It appears that most of the government, even most Republicans in Congress, disagree with the idea. Though Republicans are currently in a vulnerable state with regards to political pressure from the President, I find it unlikely that a bill imposing sanctions will be enacted without a significant change after the 2020 elections.
That’s the major change the article is talking about, without being fully explicit about it. Russia and China have been wanting to move away from the dollar for over a decade.
It’s the fact that the EU now also wants to do so that has changed.
The greatest long term impact of Teump’s Iran policy will likely be the creation of Instex (or more relevant, whatever follows it) that will help the EU and Asian countries move away from the US as the center of the financial world.
I’m not sure if this is satire. The Iranian General was coordinating attacks against American forces with the Iranian-backed militia forces in Iraq.
It’s true that lame-duck Iranian-backed Shiite politicians passed the non-binding resolution on US troop withdrawal, supported by an Iranian-backed lame duck Prime Minister, which many outlets fail to report was incidentally boycotted by the Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers which will have a much larger share of the vote after the next election.
(1) The geopolitical shift away from a unipolar world, with the rise of states such as China.
(2) The upcoming end of the petrodollar, as nations shift to renewable energy.
If you believe the reign of the dollar will come to an end anyways, you might as well use its power while you have it and throw sanctions around to weaken your rivals.
That will play well in an economic crisis. I don’t think the brandmakers for liberalism in America are prepared for that fight. Right now the brand on the left is something like “we can and should demand a better wage and better benefits from Daddy!” but that falls flat in a crisis.
That all said, we’re not in that crisis yet. So perhaps it’s fine to focus on the present, where we certainly have the money to increase workers benefits.
A decade ago, a freely convertible yuan was seen as likely. But China has backed off from that. Xi Jinping's "China 2025" is about autarky - reducing China's dependency on the rest of the world.
So, the yuan as a world currency isn't really happening yet.
Euros, though...
A currency without an army is nothing.
You can pretend whatever exchange rate you want between the Euro and the USD, but the USD is the real currency.
As for the army, EU is in the process of considering/designing an EU army, since the "US hegemony" seems to be in deep .... with USA's latest leadership. And thank you for speeding up this process.
The Swiss beg to differ.
Can you expand on this? What's the financial function of an army? What's the military function of a currency? I can imagine what you might say but I'd like to read it to know for sure.
Also, countries with US military bases aren't really sovereign. They can't for example refuse to invest significant portion of their GDP in US treasuries.
the euro has other issues, including dismal growth rates of the Euro area, an ineffective ECB, multiple diverging national financial strategies, and very long term, the massive ageing and shrinking of the european population. i don't see the Euro as anything but a very short term panacea. it needs to solve its structural issues before it can become more than it is.
Fundamentally speaking, I think non CB backed cryptos (combined with hedging tools via futures/options/swaps/ndfs/etc) have a better chance because they can be used to lower the costs intl of payments/settlements/etc, esp in these times when the trust in central banking becomes more and more contested. But I only see this happening slowly until there's a catalyst to push this to the next level.
1 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-12/after-a-d...
2 - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/c...
Speaking as an Australian; about 3-4% of our trading by value is with the United States. I shouldn't ever have to see a value priced in US dollars. I really don't care what the price of anything is in US dollars. The only reason the US dollar impacts me as far as I can tell is because it is embedded deeply into SWIFT and is required internationally to trade in oil. Important in practice but not in theory.
Imagine if you as an Australian wanted to trade with venezuela. You go and make a deal selling something for some bolivars. But by the time you get the money the bolivars are not the worth the same in AUD as when you started the deal. Now you might say that the Venezualans should just hold some AUD in order to trade with australia. but they want to trade with the rest of the world as well so they would have to hold some of everyones currencies based on how much they plan to trade with them. This is infeasible so instead they use USD as the middle man to trade with everyone else, and everyone else agrees that they will accept USD for their trades. this removes the currency risk between countries assuming the USD is liquid and remains somewhat steady, which it has for the purpose of world trade.
Edit:
https://archive.md/gbAv6
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Maybe this will finally push towards crypto-currencies. Bitcoin doesn't seem to be a candidate though. 10 minutes for a transaction is too slow.