Glad to see Europe waking up, 20 years too late, but something tells me that they won't learn anything and it's just a "venting moment", we'll see
> "The Europeans are discernibly frustrated about the lack of prior information and consultation," said David Kleimann of the Bruegel think tank.
Ukraine-Russia conflict isn't being called a "proxy war" for fun
> "The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying," said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. "The potential impact on the European economy is very big."
> "The U.S. is following a domestic agenda, which is regrettably protectionist and discriminates against U.S. allies," said Tonino Picula, the European Parliament's lead person on the transatlantic relationship.
> “The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything," one EU diplomat said. "Is Washington still our ally or not?”
US policies will force many EU businesses to either delocalize to the US or to shutdown, as if it was all planned, boosting the US economy, what ever it takes, god save the dollar
> US policies will force many EU businesses to either delocalize to the US or to shutdown, as if it was all planned, boosting the US economy, what ever it takes, god save the dollar
Always has been.
There were some tin foil hat types that were saying that the goal of the Ukraine/Russia conflict was 2 fold. 1. To get rid of Putin 2. To make the EU rely on the US instead of Russia.
It appears the second part is working. The more the US escalated the conflict the more power it held over the EU. Some might even say that the bombing of Nord Stream helped this endeavor.
Just for prosperity. The Orange Man was laughed at and ridiculed when bring up reliance on Russian supplies. Didn't age very well.
The Ukraine-Russia conflict was started by Putin lol.
I guess he could have totally foiled America's plans by...not invading Ukraine
Somehow, none of these conversations and theories about US-Russia proxy war and US "escalating" the conflict NEVER give any agency at all the the people of Ukraine. The US "escalated" by helping them (at their request) fight off a violent and genocidal invader??
The Orange Man was laughed at because he called Putin a "very savvy genius" who was "keeping the peace", pretty straightforward.
> The US "escalated" by helping them (at their request) fight off a violent and genocidal invader??
No the “US” kept the Ukrainians away from the negotiation tables. It wasn’t until right before the midterms the US changed it tune swiftly and recommended Ukraine go to the negotiation tables.
> According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-puti...
It's been pretty clear what the terms are: Putin completely leaves Ukraine lol. Why is this so hard for people to understand?? This isn't about America, it's about the people of Ukraine. If this were all true Putin could just "own the libs in America" at anytime by withdrawing from Ukraine.
It is NOT America's job to tell Ukraine what to do and what terms to accept. Get that through your conspiracy-addled head
> It is NOT America's job to tell Ukraine what to do and what terms to accept. Get that through your conspiracy-addled head
I agree with your statement that it is not the US’ place to tell Ukraine what to do. It is also not the US’ place to send Billions of Dollars in “Aid” to Ukraine. It’s a Ukrainian issue, and the US should have left it at that, but it didn’t because the US saw an opportunity, just like they did in 2014. Did we forget how the US upended the regime and placed Zelensky as leader? Why does the US meddle so much in Ukraine?
> It is also not the US’ place to send Billions of Dollars in “Aid” to Ukraine. It’s a Ukrainian issue, and the US should have left it at that, but it didn’t because the US saw an opportunity.
An opportunity to help prevent a genocide by a brutal authoritarian regime, and weaken one of their largest enemies all in one?.
This opportunity America took was clearly beneficial to the world, Ukraine and America.
They'd be stupid not to take it.
> Did we forget how the US upended the regime and placed Zelensky as leader?
Zelensky, was elected in an election in 2019. What are you talking about?.
Well, interestingly considering the current world events in the news, as of 2020 the 3 largest gas exporters in the world were Russia, the USA, and Qatar.
There is no doubt that the USA (and Qatar) are having a great time selling gas to Europe this year.
Putin had a choice on whether to invade Ukraine. He planned this invasion, amassed troops at their border, then initiated the fighting. Even if the US is taking advantage of this what is your claim?
So to be clear, Europe has pursued its own protectionist economic policies for decades, neglected their military funding, and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia, all while poopoo-ing the US, and now that the chickens are coming home to roost they are blaming the US for it?
Taking defensive measures or creating new alliances for protection is not as hostile as invading a country. Especially after Crimea.
You're basically telling countries "If you try to prepare for war, we'll attack you. The best thing to do is be as unprepared as possible with as few allies"
>You're basically telling countries "If you try to prepare for war, we'll attack you. The best thing to do is be as unprepared as possible with as few allies"
Glad to hear you support Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programmes.
>>U.S.-owned nuclear weapons stored in five NATO member states
across six bases: Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel Air Base in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi Air Bases in Italy, Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey.
How did the US interfere in Ukraine? They already lost part of their country in a previous war with Russia and now when they seek alliances with the US you think that's being forced upon them? It's most logical thing to do and has proven correct since Putin invaded again.
Even if US/CIA did push a coup in Ukraine, Russia should have foreseen it and counter acted it. Intelligence operations is a thing and you can't start genociding just because you sucked at basic intelligence work in neighbouring countries.
Assuming that you're asking this in good faith and would like to read more from reliable sources, here are a handful of them from across the political spectrum:
Rather than stalking my comments which is against the rules of this site, you could instead just reply to the content of the sources I provided. They are legitimate and credible. If you dispute any of the actual content, please cite and provide sources and reasons.
There is no point in giving good faith rebuttals in reply to rhetoric that wasn't good faith and seeking understanding in the first place. A different user summed that up earlier, I think in three words.
I respect you for doing the work, and you should definitely keep a copy for next time, but it is pretty much what I expected: the "balanced start" from "across the political spectrum" is expected to impress us into nodding along, and never to hold up to close inspection. Which of course it does not. It's the bullshit asymmetry principle at work: even if you do refute, you have been bogged down wasting time defending on that.
It is a confidence trick, as the idea that a popular uprising against an unpopular government "must be the US's fault" is inherently laughable, even before we saw how hard the Ukrainian people have since fought to keep what they won then.
> "sugar words" to entice you to believe them. George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Q, Pax Americana, deep forces, dark forces 2
Ah. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that it's that basic.
Will you convince the parent poster? Of course not. Here they are 7-8 months ago, banging the same drum:
FYI, the account that you are replying to has a very long track record of pushing this talking point (and other crank opinions), so do not think that you are engaging in a good faith discussion with someone who can be convinced (1) - if they could be, it would have happened long ago. They're here to push that opinion into the public sphere.
That account was even banned from posting for a while (2), thankfully. Why it was allowed back, I do not know.
The word coup, which user "yucky" hasn't introduced in this conversation, is used informally and not in a literal sense. It does not mean that the U.S. installed a military junta.
It means that U.S. officials interfered in the Maidan revolution and picked favorites. How much influence they had is questionable, but they were there.
If you think that is a crank opinion, the BBC is a crank outlet.
> The word coup, which user "yucky" hasn't introduced in this conversation
That account has in fact introduced the word "coup" with reference to Ukraine, many times over in conversations. And you're right, it does carry with it the ugly, false and deceptive connotations of "installed a military junta against the wishes of the people".
Not to imply that they always "introduce" it. In fact, if you say it, they probably pop up like Beetlejuice for the opportunity to launch into the shpiel again. You are again correct that this conversation appears to be one of those times.
The headline should read "Western Europe". A couple of Western European officials don't speak for all Europeans, as much as they might want to or pretend to. Perhaps the Cold War prejudice of drawing the line between Western Europe ("really real" Europe) and Central/Eastern Europe (terra incognita) still persists. But consider Poland[0].
But those officials do speak for the two strongest economies in the EU, from which Eastern Europe also depends.
And Poland’s complaining too about the prices of Norwegian gas. Turns out the government forgot to negotiate long-term contracts and they have to pay market prices.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Poland has only rosy things to say about the US (it doesn't). But we may speak about varying degrees of criticism, especially in context. Polish spending on American military equipment (but not only: see S. Korean purchases) and energy technology (Bechtel/Westinghouse, for example) has been increasing. Even before the war, at least some diplomats were disappointed with the high prices being negotiated for military equipment (I can recall such criticisms as far back as the Kwasniewski presidency), but Poland continues to negotiate and make new US purchases, and intends to increase military spending from 2.4% to 5% (see article linked in my original post). The terms under which American presence in Poland were negotiated are also very favorable for the US. In fact, terms are in general favorable for the US, even if it comes at a significant cost to Poland (I cannot judge how optimal the political/diplomatic calculus is). My point is that I have not seen evidence of any uptick in Polish criticism beyond the usual airing of grievances. Of course, if that has happened, and military contractors are raising prices artificially or ridiculously, I would kindly ask for a reference.
W.r.t. Norwegian gas, yes, I recall several months ago, the Polish prime minister did indeed criticize Norway, but I thought we were talking about new EU criticism of the US? In another comment, I did explicitly refrain from commenting on price gouging surrounding gas as I don't know to what degree that is occurring (my original post was specifically related to defense, which perhaps was not clear except by implication given the link).
France chose to massively invest in nuclear Energy thanks to De Gaulle, he wasn't pro-american
Germany/Poland were all pro-american, so it's wrong to say "and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia, all while poopoo-ing the US", do you know how Poland hates Russia?
"neglected their military funding" is also wrong, that was an american wish, the "Demilitarization of Europe" [1]
Europe is in this mess because of the US, and their multiple global trade sanctions which have prevented the EU from multiplying their source of supply and policies that forced the demilitarization of Europe, we also see the continuation of it nowadays with them sending all of their ammunitions to Ukraine
And it's not just with natural gas but also uranium and lithium, US/AUS companies busy in Spain mining their resources for example [2]
The multiple suspicious NGOs against nuclear energy in Europe are also something interesting ;)
>While Gates never outlined what he actually meant by “demilitarization”, the U.S. Department of Defense and most analysts use the phrase when referring to the European countries’ tendency to reduce the size of their armies, navies and air force personnel and delay updating their military hardware. However, European “demilitarization” also includes the cultural reorientation of most EU nations away from militarization and an overly international activism. Thus European “demilitarization” is also a matter of attitude rather than merely a question of expenditure on military forces and hardware.
There's some academic smoke-blowing for you. But let's make it simple: 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. They've agreed to do it, but until Ukraine they just refused. Was there some help from the US that they were missing?
> But let's make it simple: 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. They've agreed to do it, but until Ukraine they just refused. Was there some help from the US that they were missing?
The US wants Europe to fund NATO, not to become a sovereign military super power, and even less an independent economy that commerce with Russia/China
That's what i mean by demilitarization of Europe, you are not militarized if you do not defend your sovereignty, you are a vassal who protects the interest of an Empire that is not yours
What do you mean by "help fund NATO, wich is defending them against Russia", they were commercial partners, cheap gas, France could sell their cars and their big retailer had fun over there, ESA was collaborating with their space agency on interesting missions, and the Silk Road would have helped unite Europe/Eurasia/Asia to become the biggest economy and super power on the planet
The US should have been happy for Europe
Who said buying Russian oil was bad?
Why the US can dictate what the EU should/shouldn't do?
I thought they were sovereign
I can't follow your statements here
> Obviously the US wants a Europe not dominated by Russia. So should you.
Wrong, the US wants a weak Europe that it can dominate, just like they want a weak Russia, a weak China and a weak Middle East
As for me, i wan't nothing but apocalypse, so you are far off in your expectation
Russia has neither the military or the political clout of the USSR. NATO would have probably already been dismantled, if that wouldn't sink the US military-industrial complex.
It was win-win situation, even the protectionist policies. When it changes and one side has to take the lose, they cannot silent anymore.
Btw, it's not simple like the way you talk "bad actor Russia". They all come with bad and good things, depends on the perspective. And they all have their own benefits and intends.
> Europe has pursued its own protectionist economic policies for decades, neglected their military funding, and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia
Technically from the EU27 only Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechia, Slovakia, and Bulgaria are the ones actually dependent on Russian Gas (6 out of 27 nations). It's important to not generalize.
Also most of the EU's protectionism is around making sure we have a Farming sector for food security and Food standards for Food Safety. I don't have any issue with being 'protected' from clorinated chicken.
On military spending all EU countries spend at least half of the target 2% of GDP from Nato, only Luxembourg is below that.
In comparison the US spends about 7% of GDP but let's not be naive that this is very much catalyzed by Military Industrial complex lobbying rather than some deep desire of preserving world order.
> Technically from the EU27 only Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechia, Slovakia, and Bulgaria are the ones actually dependent on Russian Gas (6 out of 27 nations). It's important to not generalize.
And Switzerland. Switzerland is not a member of the EU but is Europe, and its economy (and culture) is strongly interconnected with the EU.
The US wanted to get cheap Russian oil, but that wouldn't have made them reliant on Russia, as the US has plenty of their own. It was simple economics.
I didn't actually read the article. I was responding to parent - that's exactly how I've been feeling about this :-(
> So to be clear, Europe has pursued its own protectionist economic policies for decades, neglected their military funding, and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia, all while poopoo-ing the US, and now that the chickens are coming home to roost they are blaming the US for it?
Don't fall for retrospective bias. I agree, Europe should have acted when it became clear that Putin is no saint (to be euphemistic), but Russian gas was cheap. It was a trade, give us your energy cheap and we shut up. Europe profited, households and industry had real savings, and Russia profited, invaluable money and power (especially the latter should have made Europe think, but again, retrospective bias).
In other words, Europe and Russia both had gains for a long time. Now the dreams have crashed.
> Europe profited, households and industry had real savings (...)
But you see, this is part of my disappointment with European decision makers. Yeah, great, Europe "profited" in a financial and standards of living sense. But what these people seem to miss (but the Americans and Russians know very well) is that there's a harder tier of power above finance, which is military power. Sure, it's great having good GDP, but if your neighbor has more tanks and resents you because 50% of their population wants to be you[1] then your savings and finance don't matter much. Unless big brother America comes to the rescue, as they're doing, at which point parent's comment has a lot of truth in it...
Meh. "Europe" as you know is not a monolith. The paragraph is as meaningless as insisting that "Asia" has a problem with energy policy.
Russia's neighbors like the Baltics + Poland + Finland have been warning Germany and France about all of this for decades, and their domestic energy and military policies have taken all of this into account. The EU center of power is shifting towards these countries as a result.
So, maybe be a little bit embarrassed if you're German or French but only a little :)
Europe actually has a significant defense capability. More trained soldiers than the US or Russia. Arms r&d, lots of aircraft, ship building etc. It doesn't spend as much as the US and only a couple of European countries have projection, namely France and the UK, and not that much at that. But the idea that Europe as a whole would be unable to defend itself against Russia's conventional military is pretty much just hawkish propaganda.
The U.S. acts in its own best interests, as do all countries. If they happen to coincide with UK and EU interests, then great. If not, tough luck. The surprising thing is that politicians on this side of the Atlantic are naive enough to believe otherwise.
That's a symptom of the naiveté. We have a generation of politicians who have utterly failed to plan for local energy resources because they assumed they could rely on external sources and so it was in their economic interests to invest elsewhere. Perhaps I should have said 'all countries act in what their elites believe is their best interest'.
How is the German government responsible for what an ex-Chancellor does? Was this position granted directly by the German government or is it some sort of diplomatic thing?
Schröder was cozy with Russia/Gazprom before he was an "ex-chancellor". This level of corruption was seen as "business savvy" at the time and he was coming in as the leader of an opposition government on the tail end of 16 years of Kohl, who took his corruption secrets to his grave after being fondly remembered for bringing about the reunification while being less remembered for enabling the massive firesale of East Germany to private investors and speculators.
This was of course also helped by the Greens, Schröder's coalition partner, being religiously anti-nuclear but too cowardly/dishonest to also demonize gas, coal and oil to the same degree.
Of course another factor in this is EU liberal market reforms which promoted austerity and cutting public investments, effectively laying the groundwork for the eventual shutdown of solar subsidies at a time when Germany was seeing massive interest and business development in solar technology (and to be clear: coal, oil and gas continue to be heavily subsidized to this day).
The German government has repeatedly shat the bed when it comes to energy independency, green energy and averting the climate crisis. The only thing we accomplished to date was shutting off all nuclear plants (which is nonsensical if the goal is to reduce the impact of the climate crisis while we still run on coal, gas and oil) and despite all their campaigning this was achieved by a conservative-led government without the involvement of the Greens.
This is not to say that the conservatives aren't corrupt. In fact from what we do know about ties to lobbying groups and direct business deals, the conservatives are even more corrupt, if only by the number of corrupt politicians. But either way this is very much on the German government, not an "ex-chancellor". His post-chancellor business ties were set up when he was still in office if not well in advance and the rest of the government played along (and continued to do so well past his term).
You certainly know German politics better than I do, but I have a hard time believing that if Angela had said "Herr Schröder, do not do this!" he would have gone ahead anyway.
I wasn't aware of his other actions. The comment I was responding said "How about becoming dependent on known bad actor Russia for gas, and having an ex-Chancellor on the board of Rozneft?". I felt the person was placing the blame on the government for what a private citizen did and that they put pressure on him once the war started.
However I didn't take the time to look into his background and how that relationship with Russia started (that led him to being on the board). It's also obvious that it wouldn't have happened suddenly and Putin wouldn't give him a position solely for his business advice.
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.
--------------------------------------
Wasn't the green party moving to the center in order to gain power? This required them to hold more moderate positions[1]. I'm not saying "gaining power" is a noble goal but it's different from being cowardly. They also have other goals they want to promote, like LGBT. Correct me if I'm wrong about who they represent in Germany.
As for nuclear power:
So the deathblow for nuclear power that you are talking about is the SPD/green agreement 20 something years ago to shut them off in like 30 years but actually 2022 because of technical reasons. This was extended slightly by the CDU/CSU a few years later [3]. Wasn't that agreement and the position of the Green party in line with popular anti-nuclear opinion at the time? Seems like anti-nuclear has a long history in Germany that picked up steam after Chernobyl. In fact 10 years after that agreement Fukushima[5] which boosted the Green party support.
"Polling done by the newspaper Der Spiegel [in 2022] shows similar trends. According to their survey, 41% of Germans are currently in favor of building new nuclear plants. In a similar poll done 33 years ago [1989] only 3% of Germans thought the country should build new plants." [3].
If sentiment changed with the public post agreement isn't it difficult to reverse course on new reactors or an energy strategy? Again noting that Fukushima is only 11 years old and kind of bumped anti-nuclear support in Germany.
The Greens are more socially progressive than conservatives but it's wrong to think of them as ideological leftists. They arose out of the counter culture movement but they generally stand for a very individualized view of "climate protection".
On a federal level, the Greens are an extremely mixed bag. The Greens in some lands (states) are very progressive and in others they are extremely conservative, especially in the South.
The "moving to the center" narrative mostly goes back to the red-green coalition under Schröder which saw the Greens abandoning their pacifist rhetoric after 9/11 and supporting the SPD in implementing EU liberal market reforms like the massive cuts to the social welfare system. But in principle, this was as much the SPD abandoning its principles as the Greens. Both parties were already in power, so this had nothing to do with appealing to a broader electorate (which is also known to be a false idea: it's not that the electorate won't vote for people too far from the "center", they just prefer voting for candidates they trust to follow through on their promises and most attempts at off-center messaging from so-called left-wing parties tend to be empty promises).
This actually resulted in the split of the SPD with most of its actual left wing leaving the party to later join ranks with the East German PDS (the successor to the East German state party) to form Die Linke ("the left"). But they're their own can of worms so I'll leave it at that.
Regarding Fukushima: while the Greens certainly helped start abandoning nuclear power, Fukushima was the final nail in the coffin and had Merkel (a conservative without involvement from the Greens) cash in on the public reaction to the disaster by publicly stating that all remaining nuclear plants would be shut down on and announcing a timeline. Chernobyl heavily factored into the general anti-nuclear sentiment but it originates with the peace movement (which later tied into the Greens) which frequently conflated nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
I actually think the recent decrease in unpopularity (because calling it "popular" seems misleading) of nuclear energy has more to do with German politics being less haunted by the looming threat of nuclear annihilation that was felt during the Cold War and with more people understanding the climate crisis to be a real prospect and emissions to be a more direct problem than nuclear waste storage. I was a kid in the 1990s but I remember hearing more then about the risks of nuclear power and the dangers of nuclear waste than in the past decade since Fukushima.
That said, if you want a barometer for public opinion it's probably better to look at the headlines of the newspapers BILD and Welt as they shape a lot of the public conversation despite being thinly veiled right-wing outrage bait (BILD being more yellow press and low brow with Welt trying to appear more respectable but ofen recycling the same material). They're both owned by Axel Springer, the German equivalent of Rupert Murdoch.
I don't think nuclear is off the table completely but it's really hard to rekindle because even prior to the exhaustingly slow shutdown of nuclear plants the popularity of anti-nuclear messaging prevented any serious investments in the technology even though this made the few aging reactors increasingly more dangerous while keeping nuclear energy as a whole less efficient than it could have been. We'd basically need to start over. While this isn't in itself a bad thing, it just means any attempt to go back to nuclear would take years before seeing any positive result, allowing for plenty of time to get outraged about nuclear waste storage again.
It could also be that they intended to make Russia dependent on them by becoming a customer too essential to lose. These kinds of relationships go both ways.
That is not the issue.
The issue is the combination of:
- Germany is at best mediocre for solar
- Hydropower is very difficult in Germany
- Germany shutting down coal power plants
- Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants
- Germany is cutting down forrests to find places for wind power
- Germany is destroying its relation to an important partner in terms of natural resources, especially energy
Any one of them would be a non factor. Even multiple ones could be managed. The combination is what lead to Germany becomming the place in the world with the highest energy prices.
How long can this go on? How long can a nation which is entirely reliant on its industrial capacity exist under those conditions?
"best interest" doesn't inherently mean "decision with no difficulties whatsoever". Moving away from Russian energy, even if it's painful in the interim, is in Germany's best interests.
Whatever. Russian energy is just one part of the energy supply.
If it is not Russian gas, what is the alternative? Coal? No. Nuclear? No. Solar? Mediocre at best and very hard to make viable at large scales, especially in Germany. Hydro? Geographically very hard. Wind? Hard to place, lots of space required, invasive to nature.
Even if you believe that Germany should stop all trade relations to Russia, the consequence has to be that you need to choose another option.
A reentry into nuclear under the a partly green government would be some of the greatest loss of face a political party has ever experienced.
Of course a massive reentry into nuclear is needed if you want a long term solution that is neither coal nor gas. But how can a party, which formed itself around anti-nuclear protest, be the one which causes a 180 degree back to nuclear energy?
I've never heard of a single deal breaker to mass expansion of nuclear, and this doesn't seem to be on the topic of refuting my point. Can you explain a bit more clearly?
The solution is what they chose before Schroeder sold out to gazprom and cancelled most of it: maintaining the existing nuclear fleet while building out renewables as fast as possible.
Its politicians politicking. They know, they are just using it to their own advantage either about to sell new policies are trying to soften a US stance.
Not naïve. Just too weak and compromised to do anything about it. And they will eventually pay a price when their populations are fed up. Given the history of how those moments have played out before, not a great outlook.
Shipping gas without a pipeline is expensive and there is limited capacity to do so on both ends. What is Europe expecting? Massive subsidies from the US on its gas exports?
The US is the most likely culprit, though, isn't it? Clear means and motive, and they even publicly theatened to stop NS2 if Germany doesn't.
Russia is the next possibility, but it requires much more complicated conspiracies to explain why they would blow up their own massive infrastructure project.
Either way, perhaps some day the results of Sweden's investigation will be made public, and we won't have to guess.
There's no evidence of who destroyed it and just because it would benefit a country doesn't mean that country blew it up. Motivation, especially one as generic as money, is not a substitute replacement for evidence.
There were some tin foil hat types that were saying that the goal of the Ukraine/Russia conflict was 2 fold. 1. To get rid of Putin 2. To make the EU rely on the US instead of Russia.
It appears the second part is working. The more the US escalated the conflict the more power it held over the EU. Some might even say that the bombing of Nord Stream helped this endeavor.
Just for prosperity. The Orange Man was laughed at and ridiculed when bring up reliance on Russian supplies. Didn't age very well.
Trump wanted an actual pipeline which would have made the natural gas far cheaper for Europe and warned that Russia couldn't be trusted. He also told NATO countries to hit their 2% GDP defense spending goals so that they could defend against Russia. Everybody laughed and said Russia had changed and could be trusted completely
"The importance that Russia places on the Caspian can also help explain, at least in part, its determination to occupy Crimea and fully control the Sea of Azov. One of the two canals connecting the Caspian to the outside world is the Volga–Don Canal, which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov. In the past year Russia has been using the Volga–Don Canal more often to move warships between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azov,41"
Both the U.S. and Russia want influence in a region, so a proxy war ensues.
duh, of course the war in Ukraine is such a good business for the US: both its energy industry and its defense industrial complex.
to me, it is OK that the US acts following its own best interests; but it's much more problematic that EU countries acts against their own interests.
But, long term, that's ok: long term this hardship will make EU economies more independent, we are reducing the use fossil fuels so incredibility fast, making our houses more isolated from heat and cold. So perhaps we might still winning the long game.
Gas isn't actually expensive now, it's just that between now and 2015 it was unusually cheap. We shouldn't have gotten this used to this obviously temporary situation.
What Europe did is plain stupid. Germany cut the gas supply and is trying to catch up. Gas and electricity prices are skyrocketing. Like from 300€ a month to 1000€ a month for an older house. It would be clever to buy bad Russian gas for one more year and use that saved money for installing renewables. Whole world is benefiting selling energy resources for sick prices. It’s not that US is somehow profiting. It’s clear, that Europe simply lost by playing not wise.
Hmm, yes, if you look at it through a prism of EU as a united front, which, well, it is not. EU is a lot of things, but it has been under tremendous pressure to withstand various growing pains. Remember that it started as an economic union that slowly started to evolve into something resembling region umbrella.
Now, once you look at the course of events through the prism of what is benefiting Germany, it is clear that those were set to benefit Germany. It just so happened, that political situation around the globe took a turn ( I am not certain what was the real watershed moment here, but Poland in particular was talking about [Russia and Germany working together in this fasion undermining EU energy policy] way before, say, Trump ; not that Obama was not aware of it either, but he was content considering Russia a 'regional power' ).
Everything I just said is public source.
Europe can still make it work, but it will actually take a real threat for it coalesce and I am surprised that did not happen yet. I am starting to wonder if this is exactly how WW2 started. People not understanding what is going on and betting that it will just dissipate on its own.
Germany did not cut its gas-supply - Russia cut the gas-supply to Germany. Europe did not sanction Russian gas (they sanctioned Russian oil among other things). So this was not really German policy, it's Russian policy to cut gas-supplies to Europe.
There's nothing wrong with it per se, but fact of the matter is, the US has profited from the current situation. So the question becomes at what point the other side realizes it's a bad marriage and wants out. It's as simple as that. And there's nothing wrong with that either. I don't think it was a coincidence that Olaf Scholz went on a visit to China recently.
Bottom line, being an ally means nothing other than mutual support. If the West European allies are not that important then the US should plow ahead, but the consequence will be those countries will look elsewhere for partners.
>If the West European allies are not that important then the US should plow ahead, but the consequence will be those countries will look elsewhere for partners.
This comment brought to you by the year 2008. Europe did look elsewhere for partners, and cozied up with Russia.
I can’t wait to see how Europeans shoot themselves in the foot this time.
"As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America."
Well, that was the plan, really. In late 2021 the industry-business press had more than a few articles bemoaning the US natural gas supply glut, and that was a a theme Russia's energy sector complained about as well, see this from 2020:
Sure Covid had something to do with it, but LNG is not jet fuel. Clearly, there was a battle shaping up over who was going to get to 'light Europe', and that was tied into finances and balance-of-payment concerns - i.e. the USA doesn't care if Gulf Arab states sell gas and oil to Europe, because those are US client states who recycle sales money back into the US banking system. Russia doesn't do that, so it's a competitor, not a collaborator.
Europe could have acted differently - it could have built out renewables to a greater extent starting two decades ago (technologically, that was feasible), or it could have rejected the oil-finance sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war - so they did make their own bed.
What, were they relying on the beneficial warm-heartedness of Wall Street? Did they expect the fossil fuel executives and finance oligarchs to decline a giant surge in profits so poor Europeans wouldn't have to pay more to heat their homes? Greedy sociopaths are not known for such benevolent behavior, even if they pay millions to PR experts in an attempt to convince the public of their altruistic spirits.
I think the headline is a misrepresentation. Even in the article they quickly switch to a completely different topic, increasing protectionist subsidies. Those are the actual issue. The article mixes two different things and generates a headline leaning on the much less important one from this unfortunate mix as far as I can tell.
The other part of the article is what's making headlines here: The protectionist subsidies that the US plans to set up and increase. That is the key.
The Ukraine and energy part does not create any significant amount of headlines here, if any. It's been mentioned but as an aside and without much emotion or blame, usually always followed by the comment section siding with UK and America for actually helping Ukraine.
Gas prices are part of the industry issues but I have yet to see a single article, except the one linked here, that would blame the US for those price increases. Also, our recent headlines have all been "German economy doing much better than expected", "gas reserves full", "LNG tankers line up in front of Europe", replacing a lot of previous more alarmist headlines.
I am unaware of any significant opinions against US profits from this war, it's taken as incidental. Russia started the war and Russia is acting FAR outside of an acceptable range with their extreme brutality. None of that is the US's fault - and arming Ukraine is mostly seen as good and justified, with no regard to any profits US might make accept from some few comments, usually heavily downvoted in the majority of our German mass media websites.
My perspective comes from following at the very least Die zeit and Der Spiegel, and occasionally Die Welt and FAZ, all of this year, at least noticing most headlines if they are Ukraine related. I think that's most of the big German sites, only "Bild" missing as a major player.
The article is baseless and at odds with what I see as publicly stated political opinion and, more importantly, public (EU population) opinion. The article is baseless because it echoes unnamed sources. "Top EU officials", but not one name underwrites the citations about bickering, with the notable exception about gas price negotiation discourse, which is natural and expected.
Now, let's assume the article is true: Europe is suffering because of the Russia-Ukraine war, and top officials resent US profiteering. The solution is obvious: arm Ukraine. The stronger Ukraine is, the quicker this war ends. The whole narrative around USA creating this war, and USA prolonging this war makes no sense. Russia created this war, and the EU can end the war this winter: just provide as many weapons as USA does.
Not saying that it should be done, let me state it before.
But the obvious solution to the current crisis would be actually to stop arming Ukraine...
It might just cause a larger more serious crisis later though
It's stupid because the justifications Russia has named for its "special military operation" could easily apply to many other neighboring countries, including NATO members.
The best course of action would probably have been trying to bring Russia into NATO in the 1990s or very early 2000s, but that ship has long sailed. In order to stop Russian expansionism we either need Russia to wear itself out to the point of declaring the war in Ukraine over in order to cut their losses, or to directly attack Russia and force it to surrender. Given the existence of nuclear weapons, I'm sure you agree the latter option is off the table.
I'm not a fan of NATO and I don't like the US military. My country has historically been an economic ally to Russia and is not at direct risk of invasion if Russia were to take Ukraine and insist on expanding beyond that. But in this conflict, we need to have Ukraine's back. You can say this is a proxy war between Russia and NATO or the EU, but then it has always been one and a Russian victory would mean a defeat for all of NATO and the EU.
That is an option that regularly pops up but, as you say, it will cause a more serious crisis later on. Russia is very clearly an expansionist state. If allowed to expand to Ukraine, it will expand further. The Baltic states would be next on the slate, and on a two-decade horizon consolidation over the Black Sea (Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria). Much much better to avoid that timeline altogether and stop Russia now.
Unchecked aggression tends to lead to more aggression if you just glance at history.
Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Spanish invading the Americas, US pushing out the Natives, Roman Empire into Europe, Genghis Khan.
It stands to reason that if there was an equal or greater opposing force for the acts of aggression and expansion all throughout history, the rate of expansion would be severely limited.
I don’t know much about the Crusades but that seems like a candidate for a stronger force stopping a weaker force from invading parts of the Middle East.
Well, so far it's rather obvious that the war in Ukraine has been rather bad for Europe and rather good for the US.
In many ways, it's been bad for Europe because of Europe's own decisions and policies over the past years and decades, and it's been good for the US for the same reasons. Additionally it's always 'better' to be far away than next door to an active war. Of course the US have used the situation to further their interests, as any country would.
I don't see anything baseless or at odds with public opinion. I think any European can see that this is the case. The article does not claim or imply that the US created the war, by the way.
The key is that Europe should stop whining or see the US as a 'friend' here to subsidise them, and start looking after itself by itself.
It's almost like war in Europe is always bad for Europe and good for the US. The US owes its status as a superpower primarily to most of Europe wearing itself out in the two world wars. This time the damage of the war is mostly economic because it's largely a war by proxy, but by geography alone Europe is naturally more impacted than the US.
I think it's baseless to say to the US "you did this, so pay up" but it seems that the main accusation is "you're our ally, so stop trying to profit from this to our detriment". The US has always been more of an abusive spouse than an "ally" by virtue of being powerful enough to bully everyone else around with implied threats alone. You can argue this is just politics but then we Europeans should stop allowing ourselves to be deluded about any pretense of being in the same boat just because we're on the same side in a given conflict or on a given issue. You say Europe should start "looking after itself by itself" and stop seeing the US as a "friend" but this is exactly how the US has been portrayed in Europe for over a century and this hardly went against the US's interests.
FWIW this is another manifestation of the same problem I see within the EU. The EU is largely a trade organization and its politics are primarily shaped by the business interests of its member nations. But because that sounds boring and evil, we've come up with glorifying narratives about a shared European identity and common history and culture and whatnot and always bring up "European values" whenever we feel like it. But while e.g. Germany and France may have a shared history and culture, this doesn't manifest throughout all regions of both countries the same way (e.g. the Rhineland or Alsace naturally link both countries due to their histories but the same isn't true for Brittany or Schleswig-Holstein), and it certainly doesn't transfer to relationships between e.g. Portugal and Bulgaria.
I think Brexit should have been the wake-up call that ultimately we're all isolated countries and any appeal to "friendship" or "allyship" is primarily performative, not material. The EU is fine to the extent that it serves "our" (i.e. whatever country we live in) economic interests but it's not a "shared heritage" or even a precursor to a federal body like the US federal government (which evolved very differently and carries its own undesirable flaws). Given the nature of the EU it would make sense to formalize a similar body to the NATO as an EU member alliance (alongside the many other mostly overlapping organizations the EU consists of) and re-evaluate our place in NATO from then on, but again that would require moving away from the kind of talk where this is portrayed as a "United State of Europe" military and rather a "European Treaty Organization".
>The US owes its status as a superpower primarily to most of Europe wearing itself out in the two world wars.
Sure, but US did not start WW1 or WW2, but European powers did. In fact, US were mostly neutral for a long time in both wars, only entering last minute. Don't forget that European powers also tried to capitalize on the US civil war way back when. It's just business, nothing personal.
The EU cold have also been better prepared for this by investing more into local defense and energy sector starving Russia of any leverage.
But EU chose instead to rely on idealistic hippie dreams by halting nuclear development, lowering defense spending and suckling on the sweet Russian gas teat, letting its former leaders become highly paid lobbyists for Russian oil and gas companies when their terms were over. The situation the EU finds itself in is entirely of its own making, like that meme with the cyclist who shoves a stick in the front wheel of his bicycle while he rides it and then blames someone else for his fall. The US is not at fault here, in fact, they even warned the EU several times of over reliance on Russia for energy and Germany scoffed it off. And I say this as an European.
EU needs to snap back to reality and get its act together tackling pressing issues (Russia, China, energy, debt, housing, tech, environment, illegal migration) based on what's happening in the real world around them, not based on some hippie ideologies of the far left who live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
We would have done Ukraine a huge favor if we hadn’t involved ourselves in their internal politics at all. No funding of NGOs, no attempts to integrate them in EU or NATO. It is too late now, but the way that this had become a literal cottage industry of Ukraine think tanks even before this year, all the way back to the “Orange revolution”, did never correspond to the enthusiasm the average European have for Ukraine.
Ukraine wanted to join the EU for quite a long time. There's a quote from Putin from years ago saying it's their choice if they do, guess he changed his mind.
People in eastern Europe have been generally keen to join the EU. It's not meddling if a country wants to join your club, I mean are you suggesting the EU just ignores the request?
The US was the one that doing the meddling primarily, they used the EU as one of the carrots. Victoria Newland famously was recorded saying “fuck the EU”. Germany for example deliberately moved to cut out Ukraine as a transfer country for their gas supply by going for Nordstream 1&2. One reason was that Ukraine tried to use that dependence as leverage on multiple occasions. It is a long and complicated story starting sometime after the collapse of the Soviet Union but in many ways even connected to WW1. I feel sympathy for the Russian and Ukrainian people, that they had consistently some of the worst politicians and rulers imaginable.
Isn’t it amazing how you get down voted for pointing out simple facts? I even had an article submission flagged the other day because the Russiagate crowd can’t handle information that threatens their fragile worldview.
I'm European as well and the article is not far off. On the Internet the U.S. opinion is always amplified. Perhaps 50% of the population accepts it, but not more.
I wish that the U.S. and the U.K. would now take the millions of refugees from Poland and Germany in order to demonstrate their unwavering solidarity. Refugees cost money, as opposed to the MIC getting rich.
Indeed. I can't comment on gas prices (it would be immoral to raise prices artificially to exploit those in need, if that were the case), but where weapons are concerned, all things remaining the same, it is cheaper for everyone to give Ukraine weapons for free than having NATO enter the war, which would, by all reasonable accounts, be catastrophic. The notion that US corporations are profiting from selling weapons is so preposterously boneheaded. OBVIOUSLY, if there's a war, governments will buy weapons from defense companies, and therefore OBVIOUSLY, these corporations will make profits. The US didn't start this war, much less to profit from it, even if it shares in the responsibility of giving Russia all sorts of incentives to do so.
What I think is that this "moralizing" reflects a general fear of Western Europe's plummeting position in Europe and the loss of American favor. Their true colors and interests (including those involving Russia) have been exposed, and they don't like the geopolitical shift of power eastward toward the center (one which will, as it had historically for centuries, act to stabilize Europe). The war is merely hastening their decline, so they're grasping at straws and whining.
Loss of American favor? Since the cold war Eastern European immigrants have had an outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy.
Th U.S. has been playing off the Eastern European countries against the Western since the fall of the Soviet Union.
This is not exactly new. If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.
> Loss of American favor? Since the cold war Eastern European immigrants have had an outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy.
Who are these immigrants? Jewish immigrants from EE? That would sooner mean negotiating favorable terms for Israel and US-Israel relations. Aside from Zbigniew Brzezinski, I don't see any of this "outsized" Eastern European influence on Cold War US foreign policy that you seem to be insinuating. Indeed, the insufficiency of influence has historically been a conspicuous concern in Polish foreign policy and diplomatic circles (recall how Radek Sikorski was caught on tape complaining about Poland giving the US proverbial blowjobs like some third rate vassal). At best, during the Cold War, the oppressed people of Central/Eastern Europe had a common foe in the Soviets. It was W. Europe that received a massive influx of US capital and investment for reconstruction and defense because it had an interest in doing so (feel free to call this sort of "favor" an imperialist power move; the fact remains).
> If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.
What a strange evasive maneuver. Crying out in pain as you beat down someone else? Who is getting bashed here? It's one thing to criticize political developments in a fellow member EU country, it is another to misrepresent what's actually happening to justify coercive policies. I can smell the patronizing presuppositions already. "Why, those ungrateful, uppity C/E Europeans!"
If those countries want to form a new EU instead of doing a little bit of reflection or self-criticism, so be it (I wouldn't bet too much on the common unity of that motley crew of countries, though: Austria has signaled a greater, and I would say historical interest in the East with its membership in the TSI, and Italy isn't exactly in love with Germany, either).
> it is cheaper for everyone to give Ukraine weapons for free than having NATO enter the war, which would, by all reasonable accounts, be catastrophic. The notion that US corporations are profiting from selling weapons is so preposterously boneheaded.
I don't think the US as a country is profiting. Yes, the defense companies are...but at the same time...how many people in Congress or in decision making positions are shareholders of defense companies? And what about the defense company's lobbying efforts and campaign contributions?
I'm not quite sure how catastrophic it would have been for NATO to enter the war. Catastrophic for Russia. Not catastrophic for civilians in Ukraine who were mass murdered.
I don't believe it would start ww3, Russia's military isn't capable enough for that. And I do not believe they would use a nuke, especial against NATO troops on the ground. If you believe Russian doctrine, which they've quoted several times, they would only use nukes if Russia itself is under existential threat. Not that I do believe that, but do you think those who can authorise a nuke really want to end the world and die over not getting to change the government of Ukraine?
So, a US-Russian proxy war over control of Caspian Sea trade routes decimates Ukraine, and Europe is in collective agreement on who it would rather (not) have to do business with.
In light of more than €52B in aid being supplied to Ukraine by the US this FY, do you still stand by your assessment that increasing armament supply will lead to a swifter and less costly resolution?
> The article is baseless and at odds with what I see as publicly stated political opinion and, more importantly, public (EU population) opinion.
Interesting bubble you must live in. Most Europeans I know are livid with the US proxy war and there have been massive demonstrations in the streets in several countries.
You can’t light yourself on fire just to keep others warm. Additionally, there is a reason why during the flight safety brief they ask that you put your own mask on before helping others. If you are incapacitated, you cannot provide any meaningful support sans perhaps your body being eaten or actually lit on fire, but that’s getting kind of dark.
Not saying that everything what the US is doing is great for everyone but it’s important to acknowledge that there are economic problems latent and otherwise, that the US must address locally in order to even engage in external affairs. We are using monetary, legislative, and executive tools to do this because those are the levers we can pull. It is not going to be “optimal” but is probably the best we got right now.
I don’t think [western] Europe is taking the care it needs for itself, but this difference in opinion can be attributed to differences in culture, e.g. Americans tends to be more individually-minded and European societies tend to focus on the collective.
Americans do, by and large, support efforts to support Ukraine and the Europe, even some of the most conservative people I know, ones who vehemently disagree with European governance/values, still very strongly support the cause of assisting our friends across the pond. It sucks that we’re having to deal with artificially induced inflation and grifters profiting off of this, but refinement of policy to prevent that takes years that Ukraine and the EU do not have to wait.
In my mind, people’s lives, freedoms, and their country they love are at stake and Americans who otherwise would not have given Ukraine a second thought before have found a deep respect and kinship for their resolve, determination, military ability, and bravery being faced with what was (at least at one time) one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Money can be replaced, refunded, sent as relief, but lives cannot.
> "The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying," said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. "The potential impact on the European economy is very big."
Which parts specifically?
> As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America.
Ok...? The US supplies less than 25% of the EU's energy, it's not America's fault that the EU made shitty energy policy decisions. This sentence makes it sound like America's fault.
> Then there’s the likely surge in orders for American-made military kit as European armies run short after sending weapons to Ukraine.
A 'surge'? EU countries have been far short of their commitment to spend 2% of GDP on their military for decades. So now they're complaining about needing to replace whatever aging junk they offloaded to Ukraine instead of freeloading off of Article 5.
One could start with the exclusion of electric vehicles and batteries that aren’t produced in the US from the tax credit. Effective immediately as of mid-August. Really great for VW, don’t you think?
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[ 310 ms ] story [ 4457 ms ] thread> "The Europeans are discernibly frustrated about the lack of prior information and consultation," said David Kleimann of the Bruegel think tank.
Ukraine-Russia conflict isn't being called a "proxy war" for fun
> "The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying," said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. "The potential impact on the European economy is very big."
> "The U.S. is following a domestic agenda, which is regrettably protectionist and discriminates against U.S. allies," said Tonino Picula, the European Parliament's lead person on the transatlantic relationship.
> “The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything," one EU diplomat said. "Is Washington still our ally or not?”
US policies will force many EU businesses to either delocalize to the US or to shutdown, as if it was all planned, boosting the US economy, what ever it takes, god save the dollar
Always has been.
There were some tin foil hat types that were saying that the goal of the Ukraine/Russia conflict was 2 fold. 1. To get rid of Putin 2. To make the EU rely on the US instead of Russia.
It appears the second part is working. The more the US escalated the conflict the more power it held over the EU. Some might even say that the bombing of Nord Stream helped this endeavor.
Just for prosperity. The Orange Man was laughed at and ridiculed when bring up reliance on Russian supplies. Didn't age very well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEycjREgPE
Somehow, none of these conversations and theories about US-Russia proxy war and US "escalating" the conflict NEVER give any agency at all the the people of Ukraine. The US "escalated" by helping them (at their request) fight off a violent and genocidal invader??
The Orange Man was laughed at because he called Putin a "very savvy genius" who was "keeping the peace", pretty straightforward.
No the “US” kept the Ukrainians away from the negotiation tables. It wasn’t until right before the midterms the US changed it tune swiftly and recommended Ukraine go to the negotiation tables.
> According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-puti...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/world/europe/us-will-not-...
https://progressives.house.gov/2022/10/members-of-congress-u... https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/05/... https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/politics/us-ukraine-diplomacy
It is NOT America's job to tell Ukraine what to do and what terms to accept. Get that through your conspiracy-addled head
I agree with your statement that it is not the US’ place to tell Ukraine what to do. It is also not the US’ place to send Billions of Dollars in “Aid” to Ukraine. It’s a Ukrainian issue, and the US should have left it at that, but it didn’t because the US saw an opportunity, just like they did in 2014. Did we forget how the US upended the regime and placed Zelensky as leader? Why does the US meddle so much in Ukraine?
An opportunity to help prevent a genocide by a brutal authoritarian regime, and weaken one of their largest enemies all in one?.
This opportunity America took was clearly beneficial to the world, Ukraine and America.
They'd be stupid not to take it.
> Did we forget how the US upended the regime and placed Zelensky as leader?
Zelensky, was elected in an election in 2019. What are you talking about?.
There is no doubt that the USA (and Qatar) are having a great time selling gas to Europe this year.
From the US perspective, the war and the nukes are far away but that's not the case in Europe...
You're basically telling countries "If you try to prepare for war, we'll attack you. The best thing to do is be as unprepared as possible with as few allies"
https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/NAT...
And i don't even talk about "shields" that fire the nuclear competition until today.
>modern missiles are intercontinental.
No those are the old missiles, easy detectable starts and "lot's" of time for countermeasures.
"Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call" - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
"The CIA And FBI Are Reportedly Advising Ukraine As Pro-Russia Separatists Spread Across The Country" - https://www.businessinsider.com/cia-and-fbi-reportedly-advis...
"Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show" - https://pandodaily.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-u...
Our use of CIA/State Dept Tech Camp to help foment revolution, video posted by US embassy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpIoBUDuL3U (also see this for background on how we use the program elsewhere: https://www.fastcompany.com/1744389/hillary-clintons-senior-...
"Washington Was Behind Ukraine Coup: Obama admits that US “Brokered a Deal” in Support of “Regime Change”" - https://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-was-behind-ukraine-...
"How and why the U.S. Government Perpetrated the 2014 Coup in Ukraine" - https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-go...
"In the rapidly worsening Ukraine fiasco, the U.S. is reaping exactly what it sowed" - https://www.salon.com/2022/02/02/in-the-rapidly-worsening-uk...
"A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War" - https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia...
"The 2014 coup in Ukraine" - https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/2014-coup-ukraine
"The United States Is Reaping What It Sowed in Ukraine" - https://progressive.org/latest/us-reaping-sowed-in-ukraine-b...
"Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault" - https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
It is a confidence trick, as the idea that a popular uprising against an unpopular government "must be the US's fault" is inherently laughable, even before we saw how hard the Ukrainian people have since fought to keep what they won then.
> "sugar words" to entice you to believe them. George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Q, Pax Americana, deep forces, dark forces 2
Ah. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that it's that basic.
Will you convince the parent poster? Of course not. Here they are 7-8 months ago, banging the same drum:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30880343
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30651712
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624560
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30677945
This is why debating this account is a waste of time. When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
1)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33679821
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32314627
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32990026
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32314574
2)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32323579
It means that U.S. officials interfered in the Maidan revolution and picked favorites. How much influence they had is questionable, but they were there.
If you think that is a crank opinion, the BBC is a crank outlet.
That account has in fact introduced the word "coup" with reference to Ukraine, many times over in conversations. And you're right, it does carry with it the ugly, false and deceptive connotations of "installed a military junta against the wishes of the people".
Not to imply that they always "introduce" it. In fact, if you say it, they probably pop up like Beetlejuice for the opportunity to launch into the shpiel again. You are again correct that this conversation appears to be one of those times.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-military-superpower-p...
And Poland’s complaining too about the prices of Norwegian gas. Turns out the government forgot to negotiate long-term contracts and they have to pay market prices.
W.r.t. Norwegian gas, yes, I recall several months ago, the Polish prime minister did indeed criticize Norway, but I thought we were talking about new EU criticism of the US? In another comment, I did explicitly refrain from commenting on price gouging surrounding gas as I don't know to what degree that is occurring (my original post was specifically related to defense, which perhaps was not clear except by implication given the link).
Germany/Poland were all pro-american, so it's wrong to say "and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia, all while poopoo-ing the US", do you know how Poland hates Russia?
"neglected their military funding" is also wrong, that was an american wish, the "Demilitarization of Europe" [1]
Europe is in this mess because of the US, and their multiple global trade sanctions which have prevented the EU from multiplying their source of supply and policies that forced the demilitarization of Europe, we also see the continuation of it nowadays with them sending all of their ammunitions to Ukraine
And it's not just with natural gas but also uranium and lithium, US/AUS companies busy in Spain mining their resources for example [2]
The multiple suspicious NGOs against nuclear energy in Europe are also something interesting ;)
[1] - http://www.klauslarres.org/articles-1991-2015.html
[2] - https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...
>While Gates never outlined what he actually meant by “demilitarization”, the U.S. Department of Defense and most analysts use the phrase when referring to the European countries’ tendency to reduce the size of their armies, navies and air force personnel and delay updating their military hardware. However, European “demilitarization” also includes the cultural reorientation of most EU nations away from militarization and an overly international activism. Thus European “demilitarization” is also a matter of attitude rather than merely a question of expenditure on military forces and hardware.
There's some academic smoke-blowing for you. But let's make it simple: 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. They've agreed to do it, but until Ukraine they just refused. Was there some help from the US that they were missing?
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/07/20/how-european-c...
Oh look, here's Germany coming in at 1%:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293562/expenditure-on-m...
What do you mean? please go straight to the point
> But let's make it simple: 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. They've agreed to do it, but until Ukraine they just refused. Was there some help from the US that they were missing?
The US wants Europe to fund NATO, not to become a sovereign military super power, and even less an independent economy that commerce with Russia/China
That's what i mean by demilitarization of Europe, you are not militarized if you do not defend your sovereignty, you are a vassal who protects the interest of an Empire that is not yours
https://i.imgur.com/FBysSrf.png you see right, that's the US
They agreed to help fund NATO, which is defending them against Russia. Then they reneged. What is this analysis missing?
Obviously the US wants a Europe not dominated by Russia. So should you.
The US should have been happy for Europe
Who said buying Russian oil was bad?
Why the US can dictate what the EU should/shouldn't do?
I thought they were sovereign
I can't follow your statements here
> Obviously the US wants a Europe not dominated by Russia. So should you.
Wrong, the US wants a weak Europe that it can dominate, just like they want a weak Russia, a weak China and a weak Middle East
As for me, i wan't nothing but apocalypse, so you are far off in your expectation
Maybe you would have been (or actually were) happier in the old East Germany.
Whether i live on mars or not doesn't change the facts on the planet earth
Russia has neither the military or the political clout of the USSR. NATO would have probably already been dismantled, if that wouldn't sink the US military-industrial complex.
If not for its post-Soviet utility in the Balkans and elsewhere; its been more active in the post-Soviet period than during the Cold War.
Btw, it's not simple like the way you talk "bad actor Russia". They all come with bad and good things, depends on the perspective. And they all have their own benefits and intends.
Politics is very complicated, isn't it?
Technically from the EU27 only Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechia, Slovakia, and Bulgaria are the ones actually dependent on Russian Gas (6 out of 27 nations). It's important to not generalize.
Also most of the EU's protectionism is around making sure we have a Farming sector for food security and Food standards for Food Safety. I don't have any issue with being 'protected' from clorinated chicken.
On military spending all EU countries spend at least half of the target 2% of GDP from Nato, only Luxembourg is below that.
In comparison the US spends about 7% of GDP but let's not be naive that this is very much catalyzed by Military Industrial complex lobbying rather than some deep desire of preserving world order.
How does this sound: "Of our 12 year-olds tested, at least half are reading at grade level!"
One percent of GDP is a lot.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293562/expenditure-on-m...
I think this wins the Copium Award for the month.
And Switzerland. Switzerland is not a member of the EU but is Europe, and its economy (and culture) is strongly interconnected with the EU.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/10/03/russia.yukos/
It seems to me that the U.S. wanted to be "extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia". Is Nord Stream perhaps sour grapes for the U.S.?
Certainly it would be worse if that deal (and other deals following) had gone through.
It would not have been a 100% dependency, but neither is Nord Stream for Germany.
> So to be clear, Europe has pursued its own protectionist economic policies for decades, neglected their military funding, and pursued energy policy that made them extremely reliant on known bad actor Russia, all while poopoo-ing the US, and now that the chickens are coming home to roost they are blaming the US for it?
In other words, Europe and Russia both had gains for a long time. Now the dreams have crashed.
But you see, this is part of my disappointment with European decision makers. Yeah, great, Europe "profited" in a financial and standards of living sense. But what these people seem to miss (but the Americans and Russians know very well) is that there's a harder tier of power above finance, which is military power. Sure, it's great having good GDP, but if your neighbor has more tanks and resents you because 50% of their population wants to be you[1] then your savings and finance don't matter much. Unless big brother America comes to the rescue, as they're doing, at which point parent's comment has a lot of truth in it...
[1] 50% is made up, but it's a lot.
Russia's neighbors like the Baltics + Poland + Finland have been warning Germany and France about all of this for decades, and their domestic energy and military policies have taken all of this into account. The EU center of power is shifting towards these countries as a result.
So, maybe be a little bit embarrassed if you're German or French but only a little :)
Europe has historically been relying on North Africa for gas since a long time.
Please inform me how Germany is acting in its best interest in terms of its energy policy.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/20/ex-german-chancell...
The three stages of spin:
1. It's not true.
2. It's true, but it's not important.
3. It's true, and it's important, but we weren't responsible.
This was of course also helped by the Greens, Schröder's coalition partner, being religiously anti-nuclear but too cowardly/dishonest to also demonize gas, coal and oil to the same degree.
Of course another factor in this is EU liberal market reforms which promoted austerity and cutting public investments, effectively laying the groundwork for the eventual shutdown of solar subsidies at a time when Germany was seeing massive interest and business development in solar technology (and to be clear: coal, oil and gas continue to be heavily subsidized to this day).
The German government has repeatedly shat the bed when it comes to energy independency, green energy and averting the climate crisis. The only thing we accomplished to date was shutting off all nuclear plants (which is nonsensical if the goal is to reduce the impact of the climate crisis while we still run on coal, gas and oil) and despite all their campaigning this was achieved by a conservative-led government without the involvement of the Greens.
This is not to say that the conservatives aren't corrupt. In fact from what we do know about ties to lobbying groups and direct business deals, the conservatives are even more corrupt, if only by the number of corrupt politicians. But either way this is very much on the German government, not an "ex-chancellor". His post-chancellor business ties were set up when he was still in office if not well in advance and the rest of the government played along (and continued to do so well past his term).
You certainly know German politics better than I do, but I have a hard time believing that if Angela had said "Herr Schröder, do not do this!" he would have gone ahead anyway.
However I didn't take the time to look into his background and how that relationship with Russia started (that led him to being on the board). It's also obvious that it wouldn't have happened suddenly and Putin wouldn't give him a position solely for his business advice.
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.
--------------------------------------
Wasn't the green party moving to the center in order to gain power? This required them to hold more moderate positions[1]. I'm not saying "gaining power" is a noble goal but it's different from being cowardly. They also have other goals they want to promote, like LGBT. Correct me if I'm wrong about who they represent in Germany.
As for nuclear power:
So the deathblow for nuclear power that you are talking about is the SPD/green agreement 20 something years ago to shut them off in like 30 years but actually 2022 because of technical reasons. This was extended slightly by the CDU/CSU a few years later [3]. Wasn't that agreement and the position of the Green party in line with popular anti-nuclear opinion at the time? Seems like anti-nuclear has a long history in Germany that picked up steam after Chernobyl. In fact 10 years after that agreement Fukushima[5] which boosted the Green party support.
"Polling done by the newspaper Der Spiegel [in 2022] shows similar trends. According to their survey, 41% of Germans are currently in favor of building new nuclear plants. In a similar poll done 33 years ago [1989] only 3% of Germans thought the country should build new plants." [3].
If sentiment changed with the public post agreement isn't it difficult to reverse course on new reactors or an energy strategy? Again noting that Fukushima is only 11 years old and kind of bumped anti-nuclear support in Germany.
[1] https://arnejj.org/centrist-progressive-force-the-german-gre... [2]https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge... [3]https://www.energymonitor.ai/policy/weekly-data-shift-in-ger... [4] https://www.dw.com/en/german-greens-make-same-sex-marriage-g... [5]https://www.dw.com/en/why-the-german-green-party-is-wilting/...
On a federal level, the Greens are an extremely mixed bag. The Greens in some lands (states) are very progressive and in others they are extremely conservative, especially in the South.
The "moving to the center" narrative mostly goes back to the red-green coalition under Schröder which saw the Greens abandoning their pacifist rhetoric after 9/11 and supporting the SPD in implementing EU liberal market reforms like the massive cuts to the social welfare system. But in principle, this was as much the SPD abandoning its principles as the Greens. Both parties were already in power, so this had nothing to do with appealing to a broader electorate (which is also known to be a false idea: it's not that the electorate won't vote for people too far from the "center", they just prefer voting for candidates they trust to follow through on their promises and most attempts at off-center messaging from so-called left-wing parties tend to be empty promises).
This actually resulted in the split of the SPD with most of its actual left wing leaving the party to later join ranks with the East German PDS (the successor to the East German state party) to form Die Linke ("the left"). But they're their own can of worms so I'll leave it at that.
Regarding Fukushima: while the Greens certainly helped start abandoning nuclear power, Fukushima was the final nail in the coffin and had Merkel (a conservative without involvement from the Greens) cash in on the public reaction to the disaster by publicly stating that all remaining nuclear plants would be shut down on and announcing a timeline. Chernobyl heavily factored into the general anti-nuclear sentiment but it originates with the peace movement (which later tied into the Greens) which frequently conflated nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
I actually think the recent decrease in unpopularity (because calling it "popular" seems misleading) of nuclear energy has more to do with German politics being less haunted by the looming threat of nuclear annihilation that was felt during the Cold War and with more people understanding the climate crisis to be a real prospect and emissions to be a more direct problem than nuclear waste storage. I was a kid in the 1990s but I remember hearing more then about the risks of nuclear power and the dangers of nuclear waste than in the past decade since Fukushima.
That said, if you want a barometer for public opinion it's probably better to look at the headlines of the newspapers BILD and Welt as they shape a lot of the public conversation despite being thinly veiled right-wing outrage bait (BILD being more yellow press and low brow with Welt trying to appear more respectable but ofen recycling the same material). They're both owned by Axel Springer, the German equivalent of Rupert Murdoch.
I don't think nuclear is off the table completely but it's really hard to rekindle because even prior to the exhaustingly slow shutdown of nuclear plants the popularity of anti-nuclear messaging prevented any serious investments in the technology even though this made the few aging reactors increasingly more dangerous while keeping nuclear energy as a whole less efficient than it could have been. We'd basically need to start over. While this isn't in itself a bad thing, it just means any attempt to go back to nuclear would take years before seeing any positive result, allowing for plenty of time to get outraged about nuclear waste storage again.
It could also be that they intended to make Russia dependent on them by becoming a customer too essential to lose. These kinds of relationships go both ways.
Either way, this made Uncle Sam mad.
- Germany is at best mediocre for solar
- Hydropower is very difficult in Germany
- Germany shutting down coal power plants
- Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants
- Germany is cutting down forrests to find places for wind power
- Germany is destroying its relation to an important partner in terms of natural resources, especially energy
Any one of them would be a non factor. Even multiple ones could be managed. The combination is what lead to Germany becomming the place in the world with the highest energy prices. How long can this go on? How long can a nation which is entirely reliant on its industrial capacity exist under those conditions?
Whatever. Russian energy is just one part of the energy supply. If it is not Russian gas, what is the alternative? Coal? No. Nuclear? No. Solar? Mediocre at best and very hard to make viable at large scales, especially in Germany. Hydro? Geographically very hard. Wind? Hard to place, lots of space required, invasive to nature.
Even if you believe that Germany should stop all trade relations to Russia, the consequence has to be that you need to choose another option.
Of course a massive reentry into nuclear is needed if you want a long term solution that is neither coal nor gas. But how can a party, which formed itself around anti-nuclear protest, be the one which causes a 180 degree back to nuclear energy?
With allies like that...
Nothing new though: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/global-battle-...
Russia is the next possibility, but it requires much more complicated conspiracies to explain why they would blow up their own massive infrastructure project.
Either way, perhaps some day the results of Sweden's investigation will be made public, and we won't have to guess.
Sweden is currently investigating it https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/sweden-says-nord-stream-p...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEycjREgPE
https://www.heritage.org/europe/report/time-us-strategy-the-...
"The importance that Russia places on the Caspian can also help explain, at least in part, its determination to occupy Crimea and fully control the Sea of Azov. One of the two canals connecting the Caspian to the outside world is the Volga–Don Canal, which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov. In the past year Russia has been using the Volga–Don Canal more often to move warships between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azov,41"
Both the U.S. and Russia want influence in a region, so a proxy war ensues.
to me, it is OK that the US acts following its own best interests; but it's much more problematic that EU countries acts against their own interests.
But, long term, that's ok: long term this hardship will make EU economies more independent, we are reducing the use fossil fuels so incredibility fast, making our houses more isolated from heat and cold. So perhaps we might still winning the long game.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2478/natural-gas-prices-historic...
Gas isn't actually expensive now, it's just that between now and 2015 it was unusually cheap. We shouldn't have gotten this used to this obviously temporary situation.
Now, once you look at the course of events through the prism of what is benefiting Germany, it is clear that those were set to benefit Germany. It just so happened, that political situation around the globe took a turn ( I am not certain what was the real watershed moment here, but Poland in particular was talking about [Russia and Germany working together in this fasion undermining EU energy policy] way before, say, Trump ; not that Obama was not aware of it either, but he was content considering Russia a 'regional power' ).
Everything I just said is public source.
Europe can still make it work, but it will actually take a real threat for it coalesce and I am surprised that did not happen yet. I am starting to wonder if this is exactly how WW2 started. People not understanding what is going on and betting that it will just dissipate on its own.
Bottom line, being an ally means nothing other than mutual support. If the West European allies are not that important then the US should plow ahead, but the consequence will be those countries will look elsewhere for partners.
This comment brought to you by the year 2008. Europe did look elsewhere for partners, and cozied up with Russia.
I can’t wait to see how Europeans shoot themselves in the foot this time.
Well, that was the plan, really. In late 2021 the industry-business press had more than a few articles bemoaning the US natural gas supply glut, and that was a a theme Russia's energy sector complained about as well, see this from 2020:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gazprom-europe-idUKKBN26X...
Sure Covid had something to do with it, but LNG is not jet fuel. Clearly, there was a battle shaping up over who was going to get to 'light Europe', and that was tied into finances and balance-of-payment concerns - i.e. the USA doesn't care if Gulf Arab states sell gas and oil to Europe, because those are US client states who recycle sales money back into the US banking system. Russia doesn't do that, so it's a competitor, not a collaborator.
Europe could have acted differently - it could have built out renewables to a greater extent starting two decades ago (technologically, that was feasible), or it could have rejected the oil-finance sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war - so they did make their own bed.
What, were they relying on the beneficial warm-heartedness of Wall Street? Did they expect the fossil fuel executives and finance oligarchs to decline a giant surge in profits so poor Europeans wouldn't have to pay more to heat their homes? Greedy sociopaths are not known for such benevolent behavior, even if they pay millions to PR experts in an attempt to convince the public of their altruistic spirits.
The other part of the article is what's making headlines here: The protectionist subsidies that the US plans to set up and increase. That is the key.
Example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-05/eu-warns-... - but also subsidies for various industries, e.g. chip makers, or batteries: https://www.ft.com/content/59a8d135-3477-4d0a-8d12-20c7ef94b...
The Ukraine and energy part does not create any significant amount of headlines here, if any. It's been mentioned but as an aside and without much emotion or blame, usually always followed by the comment section siding with UK and America for actually helping Ukraine.
Gas prices are part of the industry issues but I have yet to see a single article, except the one linked here, that would blame the US for those price increases. Also, our recent headlines have all been "German economy doing much better than expected", "gas reserves full", "LNG tankers line up in front of Europe", replacing a lot of previous more alarmist headlines.
I am unaware of any significant opinions against US profits from this war, it's taken as incidental. Russia started the war and Russia is acting FAR outside of an acceptable range with their extreme brutality. None of that is the US's fault - and arming Ukraine is mostly seen as good and justified, with no regard to any profits US might make accept from some few comments, usually heavily downvoted in the majority of our German mass media websites.
My perspective comes from following at the very least Die zeit and Der Spiegel, and occasionally Die Welt and FAZ, all of this year, at least noticing most headlines if they are Ukraine related. I think that's most of the big German sites, only "Bild" missing as a major player.
Now, let's assume the article is true: Europe is suffering because of the Russia-Ukraine war, and top officials resent US profiteering. The solution is obvious: arm Ukraine. The stronger Ukraine is, the quicker this war ends. The whole narrative around USA creating this war, and USA prolonging this war makes no sense. Russia created this war, and the EU can end the war this winter: just provide as many weapons as USA does.
Note: I'm European and living in Europe.
Also european living in Europe
Russia doesn't give gas to Europe as retaliation for arming Ukraine, stop arming Ukraine and they will give gas to Europe.
I also said that this is not what I would do, because I think you should stand up to bullies.
Now, please enlighten me with all your wisdom, why what I said is stupid? And what does it have to do with climate change? That comparison IS stupid
The best course of action would probably have been trying to bring Russia into NATO in the 1990s or very early 2000s, but that ship has long sailed. In order to stop Russian expansionism we either need Russia to wear itself out to the point of declaring the war in Ukraine over in order to cut their losses, or to directly attack Russia and force it to surrender. Given the existence of nuclear weapons, I'm sure you agree the latter option is off the table.
I'm not a fan of NATO and I don't like the US military. My country has historically been an economic ally to Russia and is not at direct risk of invasion if Russia were to take Ukraine and insist on expanding beyond that. But in this conflict, we need to have Ukraine's back. You can say this is a proxy war between Russia and NATO or the EU, but then it has always been one and a Russian victory would mean a defeat for all of NATO and the EU.
What I cannot stand is that from given premises, one goes to the completely opposite implication. I was just pointing that out.
Let me state it again, I am in favor of trying to support Ukraine in current conflict in any possible way (I hope I said it clearly enough now)
In many ways, it's been bad for Europe because of Europe's own decisions and policies over the past years and decades, and it's been good for the US for the same reasons. Additionally it's always 'better' to be far away than next door to an active war. Of course the US have used the situation to further their interests, as any country would.
I don't see anything baseless or at odds with public opinion. I think any European can see that this is the case. The article does not claim or imply that the US created the war, by the way.
The key is that Europe should stop whining or see the US as a 'friend' here to subsidise them, and start looking after itself by itself.
"Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West."
This is baseless and at odds with public opinion. It is also the lede of the article.
Now that you’ve learned that top German and French politicians have complained about this very thing you’re moving goalposts.
I think it's baseless to say to the US "you did this, so pay up" but it seems that the main accusation is "you're our ally, so stop trying to profit from this to our detriment". The US has always been more of an abusive spouse than an "ally" by virtue of being powerful enough to bully everyone else around with implied threats alone. You can argue this is just politics but then we Europeans should stop allowing ourselves to be deluded about any pretense of being in the same boat just because we're on the same side in a given conflict or on a given issue. You say Europe should start "looking after itself by itself" and stop seeing the US as a "friend" but this is exactly how the US has been portrayed in Europe for over a century and this hardly went against the US's interests.
FWIW this is another manifestation of the same problem I see within the EU. The EU is largely a trade organization and its politics are primarily shaped by the business interests of its member nations. But because that sounds boring and evil, we've come up with glorifying narratives about a shared European identity and common history and culture and whatnot and always bring up "European values" whenever we feel like it. But while e.g. Germany and France may have a shared history and culture, this doesn't manifest throughout all regions of both countries the same way (e.g. the Rhineland or Alsace naturally link both countries due to their histories but the same isn't true for Brittany or Schleswig-Holstein), and it certainly doesn't transfer to relationships between e.g. Portugal and Bulgaria.
I think Brexit should have been the wake-up call that ultimately we're all isolated countries and any appeal to "friendship" or "allyship" is primarily performative, not material. The EU is fine to the extent that it serves "our" (i.e. whatever country we live in) economic interests but it's not a "shared heritage" or even a precursor to a federal body like the US federal government (which evolved very differently and carries its own undesirable flaws). Given the nature of the EU it would make sense to formalize a similar body to the NATO as an EU member alliance (alongside the many other mostly overlapping organizations the EU consists of) and re-evaluate our place in NATO from then on, but again that would require moving away from the kind of talk where this is portrayed as a "United State of Europe" military and rather a "European Treaty Organization".
Sure, but US did not start WW1 or WW2, but European powers did. In fact, US were mostly neutral for a long time in both wars, only entering last minute. Don't forget that European powers also tried to capitalize on the US civil war way back when. It's just business, nothing personal.
The EU cold have also been better prepared for this by investing more into local defense and energy sector starving Russia of any leverage.
But EU chose instead to rely on idealistic hippie dreams by halting nuclear development, lowering defense spending and suckling on the sweet Russian gas teat, letting its former leaders become highly paid lobbyists for Russian oil and gas companies when their terms were over. The situation the EU finds itself in is entirely of its own making, like that meme with the cyclist who shoves a stick in the front wheel of his bicycle while he rides it and then blames someone else for his fall. The US is not at fault here, in fact, they even warned the EU several times of over reliance on Russia for energy and Germany scoffed it off. And I say this as an European.
EU needs to snap back to reality and get its act together tackling pressing issues (Russia, China, energy, debt, housing, tech, environment, illegal migration) based on what's happening in the real world around them, not based on some hippie ideologies of the far left who live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
People in eastern Europe have been generally keen to join the EU. It's not meddling if a country wants to join your club, I mean are you suggesting the EU just ignores the request?
The opinion has been there for a long time (e.g., https://www.ft.com/content/cd7270a6-f72b-4b40-8195-1a796f748...).
It seems to me that Europe is doing quite well in providing arms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine...
I wish that the U.S. and the U.K. would now take the millions of refugees from Poland and Germany in order to demonstrate their unwavering solidarity. Refugees cost money, as opposed to the MIC getting rich.
What I think is that this "moralizing" reflects a general fear of Western Europe's plummeting position in Europe and the loss of American favor. Their true colors and interests (including those involving Russia) have been exposed, and they don't like the geopolitical shift of power eastward toward the center (one which will, as it had historically for centuries, act to stabilize Europe). The war is merely hastening their decline, so they're grasping at straws and whining.
Th U.S. has been playing off the Eastern European countries against the Western since the fall of the Soviet Union.
This is not exactly new. If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.
Who are these immigrants? Jewish immigrants from EE? That would sooner mean negotiating favorable terms for Israel and US-Israel relations. Aside from Zbigniew Brzezinski, I don't see any of this "outsized" Eastern European influence on Cold War US foreign policy that you seem to be insinuating. Indeed, the insufficiency of influence has historically been a conspicuous concern in Polish foreign policy and diplomatic circles (recall how Radek Sikorski was caught on tape complaining about Poland giving the US proverbial blowjobs like some third rate vassal). At best, during the Cold War, the oppressed people of Central/Eastern Europe had a common foe in the Soviets. It was W. Europe that received a massive influx of US capital and investment for reconstruction and defense because it had an interest in doing so (feel free to call this sort of "favor" an imperialist power move; the fact remains).
> If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.
What a strange evasive maneuver. Crying out in pain as you beat down someone else? Who is getting bashed here? It's one thing to criticize political developments in a fellow member EU country, it is another to misrepresent what's actually happening to justify coercive policies. I can smell the patronizing presuppositions already. "Why, those ungrateful, uppity C/E Europeans!"
If those countries want to form a new EU instead of doing a little bit of reflection or self-criticism, so be it (I wouldn't bet too much on the common unity of that motley crew of countries, though: Austria has signaled a greater, and I would say historical interest in the East with its membership in the TSI, and Italy isn't exactly in love with Germany, either).
I don't think the US as a country is profiting. Yes, the defense companies are...but at the same time...how many people in Congress or in decision making positions are shareholders of defense companies? And what about the defense company's lobbying efforts and campaign contributions?
If NATO starts openly fighting Russia, do you imagine there is even one shred of a chance that Ukraine doesn't get nuked?
In light of more than €52B in aid being supplied to Ukraine by the US this FY, do you still stand by your assessment that increasing armament supply will lead to a swifter and less costly resolution?
Interesting bubble you must live in. Most Europeans I know are livid with the US proxy war and there have been massive demonstrations in the streets in several countries.
even Trump understood this was a stupid idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu57D9YcIk0
Not saying that everything what the US is doing is great for everyone but it’s important to acknowledge that there are economic problems latent and otherwise, that the US must address locally in order to even engage in external affairs. We are using monetary, legislative, and executive tools to do this because those are the levers we can pull. It is not going to be “optimal” but is probably the best we got right now.
I don’t think [western] Europe is taking the care it needs for itself, but this difference in opinion can be attributed to differences in culture, e.g. Americans tends to be more individually-minded and European societies tend to focus on the collective.
Americans do, by and large, support efforts to support Ukraine and the Europe, even some of the most conservative people I know, ones who vehemently disagree with European governance/values, still very strongly support the cause of assisting our friends across the pond. It sucks that we’re having to deal with artificially induced inflation and grifters profiting off of this, but refinement of policy to prevent that takes years that Ukraine and the EU do not have to wait.
In my mind, people’s lives, freedoms, and their country they love are at stake and Americans who otherwise would not have given Ukraine a second thought before have found a deep respect and kinship for their resolve, determination, military ability, and bravery being faced with what was (at least at one time) one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Money can be replaced, refunded, sent as relief, but lives cannot.
> "The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying," said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. "The potential impact on the European economy is very big."
Which parts specifically?
> As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America.
Ok...? The US supplies less than 25% of the EU's energy, it's not America's fault that the EU made shitty energy policy decisions. This sentence makes it sound like America's fault.
> Then there’s the likely surge in orders for American-made military kit as European armies run short after sending weapons to Ukraine.
A 'surge'? EU countries have been far short of their commitment to spend 2% of GDP on their military for decades. So now they're complaining about needing to replace whatever aging junk they offloaded to Ukraine instead of freeloading off of Article 5.
One could start with the exclusion of electric vehicles and batteries that aren’t produced in the US from the tax credit. Effective immediately as of mid-August. Really great for VW, don’t you think?
But I imagine there are many other examples.
"From American sources, they deduce that the Russian-Ukrainian war is a long-prepared American proxy war."
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endspiel_Europa