'It’s not as if Japan can’t manage without this. They can. They simply don’t want to,” said James Brown, a professor at Temple University’s Japan campus. Prof. Brown, who studies Russia-Japan relations, said Japan should move to withdraw from the Sakhalin projects eventually “if they’re really serious about supporting Ukraine.”
Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. , two Japanese companies, collectively own a 22.5% stake in Sakhalin-2 and successfully pushed to maintain the stake last year with backing from Tokyo'
At least one middling positive of the invasion has been a litmus test for the levels of integrity of various countries. Russia annexed Crimea almost a decade ago. If you haven't read the writing on the wall and maneuvered independence you're incompetent or immoral.
> At least one middling positive of the invasion has been a litmus test for the levels of integrity of various countries. Russia annexed Crimea almost a decade ago. If you haven't read the writing on the wall and maneuvered independence you're incompetent or immoral.
I can’t really parse this. Why should Japan care about Crimea or Ukraine?
Looking at OSM, the sea borders of Russia and Japan touch. That seems like a good reason for Japan to care about what Russia is doing to another country it shares a border with.
"Any reason" is a bit of a stretch — I doubt Putin has a dice with country names on it — but given how dumb it was to invade Ukraine, it's not unreasonable to assume he's dumb enough to try Japan.
It seems you can't really handle OP being right and have resorted to what-about-ism.
So it seems you have conceded the argument and agree that Russia is mindlessly belligerent and now are saying that's fine because you think x-y-z are also belligerent? (Wrong but eh, not the subject of discussion).
If by "the OP being right" you mean that Russia is pretty much like every other "Great Power" then yeah. Not only can I handle that, but I'm saying the same thing.
But that's not what the OP seems to be saying. He seems to be saying that, history has shown Russia is uniquely a bloodthirsty country that wants to attack its neighbors for no reason, any chance it gets. In a "normal" analysis of countries since, say, 1980s, one would see that countries typically attack as a reaction to something. Even USA invading Iraq was officially in response to Saddam ousting inspectors and maintaining ambiguity about WMDs. And even the secret war of bombing in Laos, which was especially egregious (since Laos presented zero threat, and yet was bombed more than any country in history), was justified by the "domino theory" that we cannot allow communism to spread around the world, because one day it may "challenge our interests".
That's why USA and NATO want to flip Russia's neighbors against Russia, even if it means a CIA-sponsored insurgency war where a million people die. In this kind of geopolitical chess, it is far better that they fight Russia over there, than having to later fight them all over here, economically and militarily, as a geopolitical bloc. Pick them off, divide and conquer. Russia, like a cornered animal, will react, as would any country to whom it is done. That kind of stuff is understandable -- geopolitical chess, action, reaction.
But if one goes to say that Russia is somehow beyond reacting, actually goes out and invades countries to grab their territory for fun and profit, that's saying much more. And in that case, I would push back on that narrative. Even the USA isn't doing that, officially. They are always "reacting" to what they perceive are a threat to their interests and security. But in the USA case it's much harder to justify when a country they're invading is 3000 miles away.
The point of my reply was to say that each country (Russia included) has media that radicalizes their population to think exactly this kind of "cartoon villain" thing about their geopolitical rival, and I wish we would all listen to each other's media and hold our politicians accountable to talk to each other more frequently, as Khrustchev and Kennedy did, so they can avoid killing millions of people as "collateral damage" between the Great Powers. Because watch, if we escalate with China around Taiwan, we'll be saying the same thing about China being a cartoon villain in about 3-4 years from now.
> If by "the OP being right" you mean that Russia is pretty much like every other "Great Power" then yeah. Not only can I handle that, but I'm saying the same thing.
So you agree makes Russia a potential threat that Japan needs to care about?
If Japan doesn’t join an alliance that threatens to eventually station nukes aimed at Russian cities, and doesn’t attack Russia directly, I doubt that Russia would do something to further encroach on Japan. Why would they? The onus is on you to explain. The original comment seemed to say, well, Russia is just uniquely bloodthirsty, maybe has too many weapons lying around etc. I need something more rooted in realistic analysis.
But then again, I can’t say the same for, say, China building artificial islands or USA invading Haiti to restore order. Maybe I am wrong and Russia has a reason to gradually encroach and attack, so I am willing to hear it.
I am certainly suspecting that Russia’s spy agencies are helping foment a revolution against the governments in Moldova and Slovakia, which may in the future lead to a civil war there!
You now feign agreement with the first point only to say it's because of what-about-USA... and then disagree again.
All the while you're polluting the whole argument with needless arguments in the hope that something sticks or at least draws discussion somewhere else.
> it's not unreasonable to assume he's dumb enough to try Japan.
One thing Japan has that Ukraine does not is a whole bunch of US military installations. (And a mutual defense treaty, but you know what they say about three useless forms of North American paper)
That's simply not true. You should learn about conflicts not from CNN news.
1. Russia hasn't stated a wish to reclaim other countries, even former parts of USSR.
2. Both military conflicts with neighbors Russia participated in: Georgia and Ukraine had very serious reasons and it was not Russia, that initiated both.
As I live on the opposite side of the continent, I wanted to be sure they actually shared a border rather than just assume my memory was correct because they're nearby.
What does Japan gain from the idea that one country cannot take another country's territory by force, if it is in fact Russia that is in control of these islands?
If anything, Japan would like them back eventually. All attempts at diplomacy have failed, so force would be the only other option.
That Japan most certainly doesn't want territorial disputes to be resolved by might and current possession status.
> If anything, Japan would like them back eventually.
Yes, and they'd prefer "Russia currently holds them, so they get to keep them" not to be precedent. Russia is attempting to set that precedent in eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova currently.
So Japan can get a win out of the Crimea situation either way?
If Russia „wins“ they could justify using force to free their „historic“ possession.
And if Russia „looses“ they can argue having military control does not imply ownership. And that usage of force to revert military occupation is legal.
Any diplomat that can't spin both a spin and a loss is not a very effective diplomat. That said, "Russia shouldn't be able to force resolutions to territorial conflicts with military might or mere possession" is consistent across both scenarios.
Not really. Southern Kuril islands were negotiated by USSR with USA and UK as a price for USSR joining the war against Japan during WW2 after Germany was defeated. But after WW2 occupied Japan under the pressure of USA refused to sign a peace treaty with USSR and regulate territorial dispute. Russia and Japan were in talks about peaceful resolving Southern Kuril issues for decades, but the main obstacle is that Japan is still an occupied nation with USA military bases stationed there.
After USA pressured Japan to sanction Russia and send military support to Ukraine, all talks about Kurils were terminated.
When Japan decided to join the UN they decided they want to care about other countries. One aspect of that is joining on the sanctions front as defined and decided by said UN - which is a body where also Japan has a say.
Why shouldn't Japan care about Ukraine? If Ukraine can be invaded and the rest of the world does nothing, then why bother having borders or nations or the rule of law? If Ukraine's territory doesn't matter, then why should Japan's territory matter?
When I hear the argument "why should country X care about the war in Y" I imagine those people would be also those neighbors who would let your house burn because hey it's not their yard.
There is a shocking reality of how short-sighted and strategically shallow the opinions of people may be, even very literate ones with unlimited access to information.
There are very long tensions between Japan and Russia about the Kuril Islands, that both countries have a claim on. It is very possible, that the same vague claims used on annexing Crimea today, or Donbas, would be used against Japan, and may not stop there. What is more, Japan is an ally of the United States since WW2, and seems to benefit much both militarily and economically. What is more, another raising power in Asia and growing tensions around Taiwan may have the same consequences for Asia, which may threaten japanese influence in the reqion. We are also seeing proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the threats and blackmail is rising, when deescalation is seen as a sign of weakness.
Usually, being united against common threat is the cheapest strategy, and to pay a few bucks less for oil might turn to be very expensive in the long run. If there would be no punishment for disrespecting international law, the chaos would come.
Could you please list any other war of conquest with that much casualties, armour usage and refugee issue in Europe?
And what punishment are we talking about, voluntary economical sanctions? Those numbers of atrocities, stealing children, mass graves - I still can't understand how the international response is so mild.
Also note “of conquest”: presumably, if the purpose of Russian invasion was to just hang Zelensky and institute a regime change with government sympathizing with Russia, and not to annex any territory, that would have been OK too.
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I don't think events related to what happened in Iraq has any relevance to Japan's view of international relations, or any other democratic society.
The question was about if Japan has any reasons to feel threatened by what happened in Ukraine. My reason is, any democratic society should be, which is not hard to imagine.
The question of "who is more saint" does not have any strategical significance and is clear reflection of russian propaganda. Obviously, nobody is saint. That doesn't make what happened in Bucha less shocking.
> and strategically shallow the opinions of people may be, even very literate ones with unlimited access to information
The problem with unlimited access to information is that you can find a thousand people arguing for a thousand different opposing things with all that information.
There is nothing wrong about arguing if all the parties are interested in truth. Discourse is a backbone of free people.
In my perspective, there is no doubt about japanese government stance on the matters in Ukraine. And any other non-totalitarian society. I am ready being convinced otherwise.
For the same reason your neighbor should care if someone breaks into your home, points a gun at your family, and says half your house is theirs now. Oh and no police are coming.
There’s a non-zero chance Russia pulls a Crimea and needs to defend Russian speakers in some remote region of Hokkaido, or starts seizing Japanese waters as their own. And that’s ignoring the islands Japan claims but Russia has controlled for decades.
This also sets a precedent for other neighbors. Korea claims random islands and politicians sometimes call for extreme actions to defend them from Japan (Japan does absolutely nothing and Japanese people, for the most part, do not know of the existence of these islands). China claims random islands that Japan controls with some of the more extreme factions saying Okinawa in its entirety isn’t legitimately Japanese, so it should be independent. But also Okinawa used to be somewhat subservient to China, so eventually independence would mean being a province of China, just like Russia is claiming with eastern Ukraine (or even all of Ukraine, depending on the day).
And there’s also Taiwan, which if China sees people get burnt out with the Ukraine war and go back to normal trade in a year, gives them pretty good odds to rain down missiles then rush in and seize the land with minimum international backfire. And if Taiwan is easily claimed, there’s no reason not to pursue Okinawa and South China Sea territories. And South Sea conflicts would screw over Japan as well, since there’s loads of trade with Vietnam and other countries in the region, and Japan is heavily dependent on food imports from China and elsewhere.
Japan has a lot of reasons to care. If Russia’s strategy pays off (and it’s unfortunately seeming like it will, since people outside of the region are getting burnt out on it and Russian mothers will happily fight until their last son is getting picked apart by dogs), those same methods will be used in East Asia.
>At least one middling positive of the invasion has been a litmus test for the levels of integrity of various countries. Russia annexed Crimea almost a decade ago. If you haven't read the writing on the wall and maneuvered independence you're incompetent or immoral.
After invasion of Iraq over 20 years ago it was clear that there is absolutely zero integrity anywhere in this world.
Australia is the biggest supplier of energy and key minerals to Japan, reflecting Australia’s position as a reliable, safe and competitive producer of raw resources. Australia provides around two-thirds of Japan’s coal, and a third of Japan’s LNG imports. Australia also provides about 60 per cent of Japan’s iron ore imports.
and, just the other day [2]:
The head of Japan's biggest oil and gas producer has warned that Australia risks undermining global security through a decision to "quietly quit" the international gas trade.
In an extraordinary speech delivered at a federal parliamentary event on Thursday, Inpex chief executive Takayuki Ueda suggested Japan had been rattled by government interventions in Australia's gas industry.
I haven't made any claim, I've reported two factoids and backed them with solid references to allow readers to verify and pursue that angle for themselves.
FWiW I was part of a mineral and energy intelligence group started decades ago that was sold onto S&P a decade ago ( mineral arm at [1] ) and the protocol there was to report solid factoids backed by solid references and where applicable create GIS links.
That was the product many paid good money to subscribe to, not our opinions or claims.
> I haven't made any claim, I've reported two factoids and backed them with solid references to allow readers to verify and pursue that angle for themselves.
And for what reason? The world is full of infinite factoids, but you chose to post this? It's not unreasonable for someone to ask what you intend to purport.
In a story about Japan and energy it's reasonable to post a brief summary of where Japan gets a large chunk of energy from and recent energy news.
I'm Australian so I chose snippets relevant to Australia.
Professionally we trawled, linked, and posted everything in minerals (or energy) relavant to exploration and development and put that up for subscribers to helicopter over and dig into as they saw fit.
Unfortuneatly this HN comment is too short to post the entire history of Japans energy imports|exports, companies, boards, shares, etc.
I've been in the intelligence game (gathering data) long enough that I habitually defer connecting dots as long as possible.
What is known is that Japan is facing a future energy shortage, they're addressing (some?) of that with new nuclear reactors (which take time), that Australia is making noise about keeping more of its gas reserves to itself or off the board altogether (fossil fuel aversion), and that energy decisions take timeframes of five to ten years to swing about.
Now we have Japan sourcing Russian oil.
Is this a long tem thing (unknown to me), is this a strategic move signaling that if Japan cannot get cheap enough short term energy from elsewhere then it'll go to Russia (probably).
I know nothing for certain, I'm interested in comment or input from others, and I threw out the little nuggets above as they add to the understanding of the bigger picture in which this is taking place.
> Australia is making noise about keeping more of its gas reserves to itself or off the board altogether (fossil fuel aversion), and that energy decisions take timeframes of five to ten years to swing about.
I don't think this is about not wanting to sell abroad for climatic reasons, I think it's solely down to the east coast of Australia having to buy gas at spot pricing because their entire production is sold into the gas market instead of having a percentage reserved for domestic use at lower rates, like we do out here in WA.
That's a good distinction to make, like yourself I'm from WA and as native Aussies we're a bit more across the details than most of HN.
For the East coast it's all about having a cap on gas prices and a local set aside.
For outside capital companies like the Japanese gas investors, from their PoV, it's about uncertainity and reduced profits.
They want to buy in at fixed capital costs and in return have a product they can take home (home ground security) and ship about to maximise profits (especially during a war fueled energy hungry period).
With our selfish demands of local resources for local markets at local shop prices coupled with political rumblings that come wih a change of Federal party that (however feasibly) foreshadow a possible greener Australia (hmmm, right?) ... well.
That's enough to have others in the energy pool hedge their bets a little and seek diversity in sourcing, it takes a long time to get new sources and it's no fun running low on energy.
Japan really doesn't like that out media and politics have been recently and loudly complaining that australians dont get to buy our own gas as cheaply as we sell it to Japan.
They're expecting our newish Labor Gov to tear up agreements to fix this.
They're not directly related as Australia sells LNG to Japan and Japan is buying oil from Russia, but it you have a read of the ABC article linked you see the following:
>"The consequence of these well-intentioned policies will be that the increasing energy demand in our region will be met by coal and not by natural gas," Mr Ueda told MPs at private parliamentary function.
>"The result will be much higher global greenhouse gas emissions and will make net zero by 2050 an impossible task.
>"On the geopolitical front, Australia's 'quiet quitting' of the LNG business has potentially very sinister consequences.
>He said the question of who would replace Australian supply into the market was front and centre.
>"Alarmingly, the 'inconvenient truth' is most likely that Russia, China and Iran fill the void," he said.
I don't think this is coincidence, and I do believe Japan has a lot to lose from the often talked about 'energy wars' given they have no resources to rely on domestically to fill these requirements.
Takayuki Ueda is just trying to bully the ALP into making sure nothing rocks the boat for the LNG companies. It's worked in the past with the mining sector and the carbon tax. But after the 2020 bushfires and then the flooding. Most people in Australia are pretty happy to see movement on CC.
It's just bluster from him, but it's bad that japanese resolve is breaking away from Ukraine.
I recognise the bluster tactic and have seen it before, I'm surprised that Japan broke from the general resolve to not trade in oil with Russia and I'm wondering how much that is bargaining strategy also.
Japan is oil and resource poor and is looking to have a more stable energy future pushing for more "next gen" nuclear reactors, etc.
In the meantime they have high energy demands that need to be met somehow.
Anyone who's been paying attention I believe would agree that our foreign policy around Ukraine has come at a huge cost not only to us financially and economically, but also to our foreign relations. Under this conflict our relations with China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia -- these are important partners -- have degraded. Having watched that unfold, this isn't a surprise to me.
China relationship is strained for many reasons, Ukraine and their general support for Russia conducting the war is just icing on the cake. This has strained Chinese relations with multiple countries though (UK, EU members, etc.).
India I’m not seeing much in the way of change. The US at least didn’t really do anything different with India buying Russian oil.
US relations with South American companies are variable and generally slightly negative based on what I’ve seen, but I’m not really sure how they have gotten worse. What is leading you to believe that they are?
Saudi Arabia I somewhat agree with but think Middle East politics are extremely complex. Wouldn’t read much into Chinese efforts there.
On the other hand, the US has shored up massive support from all of Europe ex Belarus, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Australia at a minimum. Finland joins NATO tomorrow.
Overall I’d say the war has been a large boost to American foreign relations on the whole. Can’t please everyone anyway.
W.r.t cost -> everybody is spending money. Russia especially.
On the contrary this looks like the beginning of the end of USA global hegemony. The dollar relevance is degrading and while the west is siding closer with the USA, the rest of the world is distancing itself from them.
> On the other hand, the US has shored up massive support from all of Europe ex Belarus, Japan
Regarding Japan this very news article contradicts you somehow.
> Finland joins NATO tomorrow.
Finland is insignificant from a geopolitical point of view. Its joining NATO only makes NATO less secure as a whole, rather than strenghtening it.
Demand for American currency abroad brought stability to the currency. If that demand should diminish significantly, future American financial excesses will become a lot more dangerous. This might speed along decline or motivate a return to more disciplined economic policies. Time will tell.
no I'm talking about the part where poor Americans who join the armed forces go to foreign countries, are asked to kill people and sometimes die themselves
It doesn't bring additional strength to the table, rather it's a country in need of protection. This means now every other NATO country has a higher chance of being forced in a defensive war if something happens to Finland. On the other hand Finland won't be able to contribute much to protect other NATO countries. Hence, NATO countries are a bit less safe now.
> It doesn't bring additional strength to the table
Strong disagree. With Finland, NATO's control of the Baltic sea is insurmountable. Together with Turkey's control on the Black Sea, this completely cripples any Russian maritime capabilities.
> rather it's a country in need of protection
Also unlikely. The geography of the Finish border is such that an invasion via land is incredibly difficult. Dense forest and mountainous terrain create many easily defended bottlenecks, and the Finns with their outsized artillery are in a perfect position to defend those.
Even without NATO protection, the Finish gave the Russians a very bloody nose the last time they tried to invade. Since then, the Finish military has been re-structured with the single purpose to defend against another Russian invasion, whereas the Russian military is constrained by many other factors. Any Russian advance against the EU now has to come via the Ukrainian and Polish plains.
Lets keep thing simple : NATO ensures support from other members if your sovereignty is attacked.
Meaning you don't need to only depend on your own Military capabilities in order to protect your borders.
Finland joining makes Finland's borders a FAR more expensive attack than was previously.
> joining NATO only makes NATO less secure as a whole
NATO is not an offensive/invading force. It's a defensive force. If NATO had what you're referring to as a level of security, it has only increased due to more forces available to respond.
There's no massive support for the US interventionism.
There's massive solidarity towards ukrainian refugees. Other than that we want the conflict to end asap and we don't see the US as a peacemaking side
I didn't have high hopes based on the domain name but the opening is something else!
> The US is working very hard, in full force to change Modi regime; its the top agenda item for the Hillary-Obama Cabal that is the real power behind Biden.
US-NATO/EU relations, in contrast, have rarely been stronger, and a long-standing US goal of increasing European defense spending has now become feasible.
China and the Saudis are unlikely to somehow turn into genuine friends, and in China's case specifically the unified stance in Ukraine (as well as the "it's harder to invade than you might think" message) sends a bit of a message in the case of Taiwan.
> China and the Saudis are unlikely to somehow turn into genuine friends
China and the Saudis are the perfect match. Both are authoritarian regimes that do business. China needs liquid energy and the Saudi needs access to stuff and capital markets. The Chinese can now provide an alternative.
For clarity, I'm saying they're unlikely to turn into genuine friends of the US and US foreign policy. Wasn't talking about relations between China and Saudi. Ukraine hasn't really changed anything in that calculus.
I wonder where is the money to increase the spending? Even more insane level of debt? Even more suffering with inflation and lessening of public services?
Sometimes it's okay to assume that cost, if it means standing on the right side morally.
As an Indian, I detest the Russian invasion. In fact, a number of Indians do, and it's only a few vocal fanatics who seem to support Russia's invasion. None of us thought Russia would be stupid enough to invade Ukraine, and we all thought it was a ploy to raise oilprices by making up "tensions at the border". And trust me, the West's relationship with India hasn't changed. Rather India's relationship with Russia has degraded slightly, since India has begun programmes in every front to dispose of Russian military tech.
India continues to buy oil from Russia, as does Japan, China, etc, only because it's the rational thing to do - you're getting dirt cheap prices and you're an oil-starved nation, why wouldn't you be an opportunist? And if I remember correctly, the West leadership tacitly supports this arrangement as that helps stabilize oil prices for the West buying from the rest of the suppliers.
US relations with the other countries in the list have degraded but that's largely because of the Trump and Biden governments policies towards them, and less because of Ukraine.
> India has begun programmes in every front to dispose of Russian military tech
I've been wondering about that. I imagined that countries buying weapons from Russia would be worried and considering to pivot to another seller. Maybe this not because of the poor display of those weapons in combat, after all they just must be not worse than the weapons of the neighbors or of the other internal factions, but because they could run out of spare parts and new items. If Russia doesn't have enough weapons to refill its own losses, it can sell some to get money, but not as much as one year ago.
I don't think that China is an option for India, so maybe the USA, something from Europe or internal production. The latter would be best because of no strings attached, but is it feasible in the short / medium term?
I can see the mutual partnerships are on the rise. There is a brand new polish-korean cooperation for producing various weapons. India may produce its own equipment by finding a reliable partner that would help with know-how.
It seems quite obvious that a major global conflict comes with a cost. The main question becomes, is the cost worth it? Inaction also has a cost, possibly less cost in the short term while the profits keep rolling in and more cost in the long term when the tanks start rolling in.
The fact that there's a major land war in Ukraine, which the US did not start and had no power to prevent, has come at a huge cost. This is true. Given that Ukraine patently was not just going to roll over, and even if the US hadn't supported them, much of Europe absolutely would. I think it's petty plain the war would still be raging fiercely anyway. Most likely Russia would be on the skirts of or in Kyiv and Odessa by now, with a horrible bloody partisan conflict reminiscent of Vietnam or Afghanistan, or a massively scaled up version of the Chechnya war raging throughout the country.
Do you relish the prospect of Russian troops on the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania? I don't.
Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. America's allies across the world would know for a fact the US could not be relied upon to support them. Russia would know this. Taiwan would know this. China and North Korea would know this.
They would also realise that this situation might only last as long as the current administration. There are some in the world that would see this as a golden opportunity.
They were shaken so much they decided to bomb and shell the living crap out over every square inch of Chechnya to get it out of their system. I'm sure blowing up some of their own apartment buildings that September helped them de-stress. I'm sorry, but the Russian government isn't a bunch of children. They're not that easily rattled.
That was long after the whole mess in Bosnia, so it's not like we hadn't seen a horrible bloody genocidal conflict that the US and European countries intervened in before.
NATO never made any formal commitment not to expand eastward, and Russian presidents from Yeltsin onwards were completely relaxed about eastern European countries choosing freely to join NATO. Gorbachev is on record saying he was never even aware any such statements had been given.
In May 2002 Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was entitled to decide on its own whether to join NATO and that he did not see such a decision as one that would “cloud” Russian-Ukrainian relations.
I think it's highly loaded to phrase this as NATO expansion. It sounds like NATO somehow coerced these countries into joining, or annexed them somehow. These countries came beating on NATO's door desperate to be let in. The instigating trigger for Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea wasn't anything anyone in NATO said or did, it was the newly elected Ukrainian government's signalling that they wanted to join NATO.
>I think it's highly loaded to phrase this as NATO expansion. It sounds like NATO somehow coerced these countries into joining, or annexed them somehow.
That's not where I would put the emphasis. Though there was some courting, the anti-Russian sentiment in these countries was genuine.
Russia shares its borders with 14 other nations. What happened is that, one by one, many of these joined, or became partner to, an alliance which views Russia as something to be contained. Russian leaders may not have been worried at first, but that changed later.
Contained within it's borders. You mean like constrained from territorial expansion and annexation of neighbouring territory? Yes. Just as all the European countries are contained within their borders.
Being constrained within your borders should be the default for everyone. The fact that Moscow has a president that doesn't think that way is exactly the problem NATO was created to deal with.
I'm a realist, I know there are cases when military interventions are necessary. Preventing genocide in Kosovo, kicking the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. There can be messy situations where the right course of action isn't clear, but Ukraine is not one of those. Flat out annexing large swathes of neighbouring countries is precisely the problem NATO was created to counter. It turns out for very, very good reason.
Well, the victory in Ukraine is low cost high profit business for the US.
There is unprecedented growth of oil and natural gas sales to Europe, which completely displaced Russia as the biggest supplier. The arms contracts are rising heavily, making at least half of the world's armies interested in replacing old equipment. Prices are rising as well as profits.
Secondly, securing Ukraine would add up to the capitalistic market huge amounts of resources like grains and metals. This is a huge area of future investments that would provide gains for capital markets for years. Not to mention educated, hard-working populace.
There is also a matter of prestige. It is hard not to see the military advantage that western weapons have over the soviet ones. The risk of any other conflict is lower elsewhere. Still, the US is considered a worthy ally, whose guarantees are reliable.
Those are the advantages. Costs? Old military equipment that should be replaced anyway. Some money as well, but hey, banks are being given free cash as well. No boots on the ground, NATO expansion, many of the help come from allies. You can't make it cheaper.
And above all, morally you are still on the right side. Incredible.
In wars factories making guns make money selling guns. You could as well say Iran or Turku engineered the conflict to sell drones. Maybe the North Korean 152mm shell manufacturers are behind it all.
Raytheon didn’t invade Ukraine. Boeing didn’t invade Ukraine. There’s one country with one leader that invaded Ukraine, and that is where the sole responsibility lies for that decision.
He did so solely and specifically in response to the expressed democratic wishes of the Ukrainian people. That is what this war is about. You know it, I know it, the rest is just distraction.
>we just backed a coup to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government in 2014
You have been misinformed. The sovereign institution in Ukraine is the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, which overwhelmingly approved an association agreement with the European Union. Yanukovych refused to sign it, and after extensive popular protests in favour of the association agreement, on 22 February 2010 the parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove Yanukovych from office. Crucially he then issued an official statement of resignation.
The constitutional situation is messy, for sure, but the guy resigned. He didn't have to do that, but he did. The fact he went crying to mommy in Moscow and then tried to un-resign himself is rather sad, but doesn't change the facts.
>The reality is, the military industrial complex, which is in complete control of foreign policy, has been pushing for this for years
So the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
The US had a preferred candidate and used their influence? Absolutely shocking, ground-shattering news. I sure hope no one else does that sort of thing in Ukraine.
It goes beyond "preference" we have State Dept officials on tape having a conversation where they're hand picking the Ukrainian cabinet. Again, imagine what the US would do if we had a tape of Chinese officials picking out the top officials of Mexico. There is no way to paint the US as innocent here.
They're expressing a preference for who winds up in the Cabinet, yes. There's no indication in that transcript they have anything other than diplomatic pressure and persuasion to make that preference a reality. Note phrashing like "I think your argument to him, which you'll need to make".
The Russians will have had their corresponding preferences and influence campaigns, just as they did in US elections. (They may have even expressed them via dioxin, in Yushchenko's case.)
Well, large parts of our diplomatic corps tend to foment and finance coup's around the world. We're pretty smart about it though, first we bring in the NGO's like The National Endowment for Democracy (and many others) which act as an outsourced part of our CIA, then we apply pressure from within. Our playbook is pretty well known by now.
Or wait, how many coups do you think the US has actually been involved in since WWII?
Then again, the fact that you claim the US uses no coercion means you're probably trolling and I fell for it, so well played.
Of course the US uses coercion. There have been numerous appalling cases that are utterly deplorable, mostly during the Cold War, but we’re talking about Ukraine. They didn’t use any in Ukraine, they didn’t need to. As the overwhelming vote in the Ukrainian parliament in favour of the EU accords, and numerous elections and polls in Ukraine since demonstrated clearly.
Do you think a government donating a billion dollars in aid money to a country has a legitimate interest in fighting corruption in that country, and a responsibility to their tax payers to ensure that money is well managed?
You didn't answer the question. We promised to give a billion dollars, then threatened to withhold it if they didn't do what we wanted. That is not a gift or a donation, that makes it a bribe. That was also a clear example of coercion - and it was done by our current President who was VP at the time.
I'm sure you were well aware of this and many other examples and yet you are on here pretending we don't use those tactics in Ukraine. Why?
It was a donation with conditions. International aid always comes with conditions as to how the money is used and managed, and donations to third world countries often include conditions relating to tackling corruption. There was nothing nefarious in that case. That prosecutor was obstructing corruption investigations, it would have been irresponsible to allow the money to go into Ukraine without ensuring the Ukrainian government was serious in tackling corruption.
Here's a UN report on aid agencies using their influence on recipient countries to demand better governance and fight corruption. So the answer to your question is, it was responsible aid management in line with international norms.
On the Hunter Biden thing, since someone inevitably brought that up. According to the Ukrainians there never was any plan to investigate him, there was no evidence or reason they were aware of to bring a case, under that prosecutor or any other. Zelensky even refused to open such an investigation as spurious when directly threatened with withholding US aid as explicit coercion to do so.
Since you're so deeply concerned about US coercion of Ukraine for the personal political advantage of US politicians, I'm sure Trump's blatant attempts to do so as confirmed by several members of his own administration are particularly outrageous to you. Strange that you didn't mention it.
> I'm sure Trump's blatant attempts to do so as confirmed by several members of his own administration are particularly outrageous to you. Strange that you didn't mention it.
Yes, a bunch of Trump's dealings are outrageous to me. One of the many reasons I didn't vote for him, he's a con artist. That doesn't change anything with the shady dealings, coercion and outright bribery that Biden has been involved in as VP and now as President.
> You have been misinformed
> popular protests in favour of the association agreement, on 22 February 2010 the parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove Yanukovych
These "popular protests" were violent. The vote was at gunpoint, that's what makes it a coup.
> the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
Sure. They lobby the legislative and executive branch to aggressively expand NATO, to send NATO trainers into a military on Russia's border, they lobby to have the US sabotage the Minsk accords, so that anti-Russian forces in Ukraine spend 8 years killing thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
It's like everyone taking the State Dept/arms industry bait on this conflict hasn't heard of the Monroe Doctrine. If another country did in Mexico 1/5th of what we've been doing in Ukraine for the past 15 years we would have turned Mexico into ashes.
As I’ve already pointed out all the countries that joined NATO did so with overwhelming popular support. The vote in the Ukrainian parliament was entirely free. Bear in mind until then Yanukovych was party to the negotiations with the EU. His decision to refuse to ratify it came as a total shock, hence the protests in support of the parliament.
The idea the parliament voted for the EU accord at gun point is absurd to the point of fantastical. Whose guns? The president was in charge of the army and police and he was pro Moscow. If there were any guns pointed, and there were, it was to try to prevent the pro western tide.
Lots of countries aren’t being affected by the land war, but are being affected by the US/EU sanctions on Russia. For example it’s exacerbating a major foreign currency shortage in Bangladesh: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/02/bangladesh-foreign-minister-...
> Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine
If you’re referring to the Budapest agreement, it’s not a treaty. And other countries should educate themselves and understand that unilateral commitments by the President that aren’t ratified by Congress aren’t worth anything.
> Lots of countries aren’t being affected by the land war, but are being affected by the US/EU sanctions on Russia.
That is being affected by the land war. As soon as the first tank went over the line into Ukraine there were going to be harmful global consequences whatever any other country did.
As for presidential commitments. Taiwans existential security is based entirely on verbal presidential commitments going back to George W.
No it has not. We're looking at two new members to NATO, a rise in European unity coupled with an increase in defense spending, and the destruction of Russia's army.
Relations with China were already decaying, things seem normal with India, and Saudi Arabia is the result of Trump and Co kissing MBSs butt while in power. The Saudis are much more reliant on the US than the other way around
The next few weeks/months are going to be very interesting. Saudi Arabia has doubled down on its new direction. Japan/EU seems at edge with the war in Ukraine. China is making new moves in the global financial scene.
The US has accumulated significant political debt in the recent years. They have significantly abused their position with the US dollars hegemony. In this recent conflict, the cost burdened Europe and the allies more than the US. Europe, except for Poland and the Baltics, does not seem to be too enthusiastic for this war.
I wonder if the US has a joker card or the downfall risk being a spectacular one.
The US has significant military presence in the whole middle-east. I think the Saudis know that, now, the US does really not want to open a new front. Especially with the Taiwan/China situation.
Invading Saudi Arabia is really complex because there is more oil coming from there than Saudi Arabia itself. Expect oil prices over $500 overnight.
FATCA, protectionism hidden behind AML/KYC, money printing at the expense of the other countries' reserves, sanctions or the threat of sanctions, political requests for IMF/WB funding, etc... Really, it's a shitshow and the US is rarely the good guy here.
I mean you are just throwing everything that the US does into one bucket called "US dollar hegemony" without discrimination. I'm not saying they don't leverage their dollar power I disagree that it "significantly abused their position" via the alphabet soup of complaints above.
I think the US sanctions regime, based on the supremacy of the US dollar, is nakedly abused. For instance, sanctioning ICC prosecutors who investigated US service members for warcrimes.
For good or bad, it's still the legitimately elected US government. The Trump government represented the population of the USA, and was elected in accordance with its own rules.
The consequences or fruits thereof belong to the citizens of the nation.
Yes, that's why US does everything they can to prevent investigating who caused it, same with UN and US allies when it come to investigation who sabtaged NS.
But of course it's conspiracy theory, let's just label it and ignore smoking gun.
The other possibility is EU member states and investigating it would further inflame internal tensions in an already tense time and erode support for the war effort. There are many many possibilities - which is why the version you are putting forward is labelled a conspiracy theory until otherwise proven.
Hersh thinks, as of Feb 23 2023, that "the Russians have yet to put any of their main forces in". (https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1628898816953909251) I dunno what happened to him, but you should probably read his allegations with that context in mind.
The US is the largest oil producer in the world, one of the largest producers of food, one of the top innovators, has relatively healthy demographics, is surround by allies (one of which produces oil and fertilizer), and has the most dominant military on the planet.
Your outlook is significantly more gloomy than reality
While this is all true, "cashing in" on any of those advantages is not something that can be done peacefully, so perhaps a gloomy outlook is warranted.
I don't understand? The US can disrupt food/oil/financial markets/innovation more than any other planet on earth. All of these can be flexed peacefully
Disruption of financial markets is not a precision weapon, and it frequently backfires. Currency wars aligning with multipolar powers makes them even more disruptive. Once the US defense of the dollar turns from theoretical to reality, it necessitates violence. You can say "the USD has all this power as a reserve currency because of US military power projection," and it may be true, but once other powers start to align and actively compete with the dollar as the reserve currency, the US needs to actively respond. And that means making good on their threats, not just projecting them. Thus, global financial instability leads to violence.
And the US military is having a recruitment issue. Not to mention new recruits tend not to be up to fitness standards. The two wars at once standard is questionable at best.
Modern food and energy rely upon countless items manufactured in China. John Deere would not be able to continue making the tractors they currently make without Chinese components. Same goes for everything from oil tankers to highway pavers. Even the logistics side would become difficult without being able to replace cell phones and computers.
Yeah, but the popular narrative now is that China is the real super power because they have a strong autocratic leader and aren't bogged down by democracy, and don't have to deal with other people's uneducated opinions.
Not that they have a mountain of shadow debt built upon the biggest housing bubble the world has ever seen (by far) and an absolute demographic time bomb about to blow up their future...
Very likely; US public opinion puts massive constraints on what's considered acceptable troop losses and deliberate infliction of civilian casualties. Given how China's treated the Uyghurs, I suspect a Chinese invasion of Iraq would've looked... different.
Before the war, a solid majority (66%) favored using military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Once the war started, a similarly large fraction of the American people thought it was the right decision. Public opinion didn't shift into the negative until quite a bit later, a while after Abu Ghraib.
It's ridiculous to consider Canada or Mexico (or if we extend this farther, the EU and Japan) "vassal states". All of these countries participate in the US Capitalist regime willingly because they get rich too.
By your standard, do any of the considered "major alternative powers" (China or Russia) have allies?
All true! It's too easy to focus on the downsides, but there are significant upsides as this comment points out. There's an excellent discussion by Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan here [1]; he talks about China vis a vis the US with respect the geographic, demographic, and economic advantages/disadvantages. Worth a watch in this context.
It all depends on the willingness to extract that oil. Alternative energy has its merits, but there is a wing of the environmentalists that have convinced a segment of the population that "keep it in the ground" is a viable short term strategy. If this transition to green energy is not extended to more like 100 or 150 years, we are screwed.
As long as China and Russia remain peaceful and don’t threaten their neighbors with aggression, they can absolutely win the war for hearts and minds and thus assemble a broad coalition to buck the US’s interests. The problem here is that Russia has already invaded its neighbors and proven to be a security risk for Europe, while China is doing everything it can to signal to its own population that war with Taiwan is imminent and to its neighbors that it’s a major threat. Maybe they’re all joking (well, except for Russia) but the very real security threat posed by China and Russia to their neighbors puts an upper “cap” on the effectiveness of a broad anti-US alliance. The backstop of US dominance isn’t feelings, it’s the global desire for survival.
Russia is heavily involved in Syria, so I don't see any principled reason to believe that "not getting involved in others' conflicts" is a red line for that alliance.
Agreed. Russia and China have alienated every one of their neighbors by invading them, trying to take them over economically, and other bs. The US is the global hegemon mainly because of fear of Russia/China, which is not going to go away short of regime change imo.
So what you're saying is that it is not in their enemies' best interests to allow them to remain peaceful.
> China is doing everything it can to signal to its own population that war with Taiwan is imminent
I haven't seen this at all, though it may well be true. What I have seen, however, is a sudden regularity in articles over the last few months on how China is a threat to Taiwan, how everyone including somehow China really seems to admit it's very much not a part of China, and how its allies need to be prepared and proactive about "defending" it from China.
Not saying Chucky isn't a bully, but I can't shake the feeling that going round telling people how you're rounding up the gang and are preparing to give him and his chums a lesson, isn't exactly the peace-maintaining de-escalation people think it is. Especially in the absence of an "if he tries something" clause.
Not really sure what to make of this comment. You start by admitting you're not really sure if China has been threatening Taiwan, but then conclude that the US is probably at fault for it anyway.
Also not sure what "rounding up the gang and preparing to give China a lesson" means here.
Nobody is enthusiastic for war. But since Russia has failed in their winter offensive and is experiencing unsustainable losses, it would be shortsighted to force Ukraine to negotiate for peace unless it involves a complete withdrawal of Russian troops to pre-2014 borders.
Agree, I'm always doing CTRL+F "archiv". Whoever shares these, can they start providing only the archived version? Is there some copyright issue with that?
We're watching history unfold slowly, in real time, as the unipolar world run by the US over the last 30 years is turning into a multipolar world. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, and this was both entirely predictable and widely predicted.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] thread'It’s not as if Japan can’t manage without this. They can. They simply don’t want to,” said James Brown, a professor at Temple University’s Japan campus. Prof. Brown, who studies Russia-Japan relations, said Japan should move to withdraw from the Sakhalin projects eventually “if they’re really serious about supporting Ukraine.”
Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. , two Japanese companies, collectively own a 22.5% stake in Sakhalin-2 and successfully pushed to maintain the stake last year with backing from Tokyo'
At least one middling positive of the invasion has been a litmus test for the levels of integrity of various countries. Russia annexed Crimea almost a decade ago. If you haven't read the writing on the wall and maneuvered independence you're incompetent or immoral.
I can’t really parse this. Why should Japan care about Crimea or Ukraine?
"Any reason" is a bit of a stretch — I doubt Putin has a dice with country names on it — but given how dumb it was to invade Ukraine, it's not unreasonable to assume he's dumb enough to try Japan.
So it seems you have conceded the argument and agree that Russia is mindlessly belligerent and now are saying that's fine because you think x-y-z are also belligerent? (Wrong but eh, not the subject of discussion).
But that's not what the OP seems to be saying. He seems to be saying that, history has shown Russia is uniquely a bloodthirsty country that wants to attack its neighbors for no reason, any chance it gets. In a "normal" analysis of countries since, say, 1980s, one would see that countries typically attack as a reaction to something. Even USA invading Iraq was officially in response to Saddam ousting inspectors and maintaining ambiguity about WMDs. And even the secret war of bombing in Laos, which was especially egregious (since Laos presented zero threat, and yet was bombed more than any country in history), was justified by the "domino theory" that we cannot allow communism to spread around the world, because one day it may "challenge our interests".
That's why USA and NATO want to flip Russia's neighbors against Russia, even if it means a CIA-sponsored insurgency war where a million people die. In this kind of geopolitical chess, it is far better that they fight Russia over there, than having to later fight them all over here, economically and militarily, as a geopolitical bloc. Pick them off, divide and conquer. Russia, like a cornered animal, will react, as would any country to whom it is done. That kind of stuff is understandable -- geopolitical chess, action, reaction.
But if one goes to say that Russia is somehow beyond reacting, actually goes out and invades countries to grab their territory for fun and profit, that's saying much more. And in that case, I would push back on that narrative. Even the USA isn't doing that, officially. They are always "reacting" to what they perceive are a threat to their interests and security. But in the USA case it's much harder to justify when a country they're invading is 3000 miles away.
The point of my reply was to say that each country (Russia included) has media that radicalizes their population to think exactly this kind of "cartoon villain" thing about their geopolitical rival, and I wish we would all listen to each other's media and hold our politicians accountable to talk to each other more frequently, as Khrustchev and Kennedy did, so they can avoid killing millions of people as "collateral damage" between the Great Powers. Because watch, if we escalate with China around Taiwan, we'll be saying the same thing about China being a cartoon villain in about 3-4 years from now.
Oh, and avoiding nuclear war: https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15250.doc.htm
So you agree makes Russia a potential threat that Japan needs to care about?
Because your response didn't read like that.
But then again, I can’t say the same for, say, China building artificial islands or USA invading Haiti to restore order. Maybe I am wrong and Russia has a reason to gradually encroach and attack, so I am willing to hear it.
I am certainly suspecting that Russia’s spy agencies are helping foment a revolution against the governments in Moldova and Slovakia, which may in the future lead to a civil war there!
You now feign agreement with the first point only to say it's because of what-about-USA... and then disagree again.
All the while you're polluting the whole argument with needless arguments in the hope that something sticks or at least draws discussion somewhere else.
One thing Japan has that Ukraine does not is a whole bunch of US military installations. (And a mutual defense treaty, but you know what they say about three useless forms of North American paper)
I don't, but I can guess where you're going from the context.
they have attacked several neighbours for no reason and have stated they wish to "reclaim" others
1. Russia hasn't stated a wish to reclaim other countries, even former parts of USSR. 2. Both military conflicts with neighbors Russia participated in: Georgia and Ukraine had very serious reasons and it was not Russia, that initiated both.
what would be better then?
RT I suppose?
Actions count more than words.
20 Feb 2022: "Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov denied Sunday that the Kremlin is preparing for an invasion of neighboring Ukraine..." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-ambassador-anato...
21 Feb 2022: Invasion!
I would have thought this kind of knowledge was in the table stakes for anybody with any kind of interest in the matter.
It's probably in their best interest not to signal "it's fine to forcibly annex someone else's lands".
What does Japan gain from the idea that one country cannot take another country's territory by force, if it is in fact Russia that is in control of these islands?
If anything, Japan would like them back eventually. All attempts at diplomacy have failed, so force would be the only other option.
That Japan most certainly doesn't want territorial disputes to be resolved by might and current possession status.
> If anything, Japan would like them back eventually.
Yes, and they'd prefer "Russia currently holds them, so they get to keep them" not to be precedent. Russia is attempting to set that precedent in eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova currently.
If Russia „wins“ they could justify using force to free their „historic“ possession.
And if Russia „looses“ they can argue having military control does not imply ownership. And that usage of force to revert military occupation is legal.
After USA pressured Japan to sanction Russia and send military support to Ukraine, all talks about Kurils were terminated.
The countries that invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. decided to sanction Russia, but it's their own thing.
Russia holds veto power. I guess it'll be pretty hard for UN to ignore it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus
Japan was one of 15 votes on the UN Security Council to pass it.
Why should Japan care about it? For obvious reasons.
There are very long tensions between Japan and Russia about the Kuril Islands, that both countries have a claim on. It is very possible, that the same vague claims used on annexing Crimea today, or Donbas, would be used against Japan, and may not stop there. What is more, Japan is an ally of the United States since WW2, and seems to benefit much both militarily and economically. What is more, another raising power in Asia and growing tensions around Taiwan may have the same consequences for Asia, which may threaten japanese influence in the reqion. We are also seeing proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the threats and blackmail is rising, when deescalation is seen as a sign of weakness.
Usually, being united against common threat is the cheapest strategy, and to pay a few bucks less for oil might turn to be very expensive in the long run. If there would be no punishment for disrespecting international law, the chaos would come.
The list of "disrespecting international law" is pretty big. The list of punishment is way shorter and highly selective.
And what punishment are we talking about, voluntary economical sanctions? Those numbers of atrocities, stealing children, mass graves - I still can't understand how the international response is so mild.
This is an interesting little bit on the end of that question.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow them in the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The question was about if Japan has any reasons to feel threatened by what happened in Ukraine. My reason is, any democratic society should be, which is not hard to imagine.
The question of "who is more saint" does not have any strategical significance and is clear reflection of russian propaganda. Obviously, nobody is saint. That doesn't make what happened in Bucha less shocking.
The problem with unlimited access to information is that you can find a thousand people arguing for a thousand different opposing things with all that information.
In my perspective, there is no doubt about japanese government stance on the matters in Ukraine. And any other non-totalitarian society. I am ready being convinced otherwise.
For the same reason your neighbor should care if someone breaks into your home, points a gun at your family, and says half your house is theirs now. Oh and no police are coming.
This also sets a precedent for other neighbors. Korea claims random islands and politicians sometimes call for extreme actions to defend them from Japan (Japan does absolutely nothing and Japanese people, for the most part, do not know of the existence of these islands). China claims random islands that Japan controls with some of the more extreme factions saying Okinawa in its entirety isn’t legitimately Japanese, so it should be independent. But also Okinawa used to be somewhat subservient to China, so eventually independence would mean being a province of China, just like Russia is claiming with eastern Ukraine (or even all of Ukraine, depending on the day).
And there’s also Taiwan, which if China sees people get burnt out with the Ukraine war and go back to normal trade in a year, gives them pretty good odds to rain down missiles then rush in and seize the land with minimum international backfire. And if Taiwan is easily claimed, there’s no reason not to pursue Okinawa and South China Sea territories. And South Sea conflicts would screw over Japan as well, since there’s loads of trade with Vietnam and other countries in the region, and Japan is heavily dependent on food imports from China and elsewhere.
Japan has a lot of reasons to care. If Russia’s strategy pays off (and it’s unfortunately seeming like it will, since people outside of the region are getting burnt out on it and Russian mothers will happily fight until their last son is getting picked apart by dogs), those same methods will be used in East Asia.
What an irony. Japan has to buy its own oil from Russia, from the island Russia seized from Japan.
also they murdered millions of people in very sadistic ways
After invasion of Iraq over 20 years ago it was clear that there is absolutely zero integrity anywhere in this world.
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-30/japan-warns-world-pea...
FWiW I was part of a mineral and energy intelligence group started decades ago that was sold onto S&P a decade ago ( mineral arm at [1] ) and the protocol there was to report solid factoids backed by solid references and where applicable create GIS links.
That was the product many paid good money to subscribe to, not our opinions or claims.
[1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
And for what reason? The world is full of infinite factoids, but you chose to post this? It's not unreasonable for someone to ask what you intend to purport.
I'm Australian so I chose snippets relevant to Australia.
Professionally we trawled, linked, and posted everything in minerals (or energy) relavant to exploration and development and put that up for subscribers to helicopter over and dig into as they saw fit.
Unfortuneatly this HN comment is too short to post the entire history of Japans energy imports|exports, companies, boards, shares, etc.
I've been in the intelligence game (gathering data) long enough that I habitually defer connecting dots as long as possible.
What is known is that Japan is facing a future energy shortage, they're addressing (some?) of that with new nuclear reactors (which take time), that Australia is making noise about keeping more of its gas reserves to itself or off the board altogether (fossil fuel aversion), and that energy decisions take timeframes of five to ten years to swing about.
Now we have Japan sourcing Russian oil.
Is this a long tem thing (unknown to me), is this a strategic move signaling that if Japan cannot get cheap enough short term energy from elsewhere then it'll go to Russia (probably).
I know nothing for certain, I'm interested in comment or input from others, and I threw out the little nuggets above as they add to the understanding of the bigger picture in which this is taking place.
I don't think this is about not wanting to sell abroad for climatic reasons, I think it's solely down to the east coast of Australia having to buy gas at spot pricing because their entire production is sold into the gas market instead of having a percentage reserved for domestic use at lower rates, like we do out here in WA.
For the East coast it's all about having a cap on gas prices and a local set aside.
For outside capital companies like the Japanese gas investors, from their PoV, it's about uncertainity and reduced profits.
They want to buy in at fixed capital costs and in return have a product they can take home (home ground security) and ship about to maximise profits (especially during a war fueled energy hungry period).
With our selfish demands of local resources for local markets at local shop prices coupled with political rumblings that come wih a change of Federal party that (however feasibly) foreshadow a possible greener Australia (hmmm, right?) ... well.
That's enough to have others in the energy pool hedge their bets a little and seek diversity in sourcing, it takes a long time to get new sources and it's no fun running low on energy.
They're expecting our newish Labor Gov to tear up agreements to fix this.
>"The consequence of these well-intentioned policies will be that the increasing energy demand in our region will be met by coal and not by natural gas," Mr Ueda told MPs at private parliamentary function.
>"The result will be much higher global greenhouse gas emissions and will make net zero by 2050 an impossible task.
>"On the geopolitical front, Australia's 'quiet quitting' of the LNG business has potentially very sinister consequences.
>He said the question of who would replace Australian supply into the market was front and centre.
>"Alarmingly, the 'inconvenient truth' is most likely that Russia, China and Iran fill the void," he said.
I don't think this is coincidence, and I do believe Japan has a lot to lose from the often talked about 'energy wars' given they have no resources to rely on domestically to fill these requirements.
It's just bluster from him, but it's bad that japanese resolve is breaking away from Ukraine.
Japan is oil and resource poor and is looking to have a more stable energy future pushing for more "next gen" nuclear reactors, etc.
In the meantime they have high energy demands that need to be met somehow.
[0] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/67
China relationship is strained for many reasons, Ukraine and their general support for Russia conducting the war is just icing on the cake. This has strained Chinese relations with multiple countries though (UK, EU members, etc.).
India I’m not seeing much in the way of change. The US at least didn’t really do anything different with India buying Russian oil.
US relations with South American companies are variable and generally slightly negative based on what I’ve seen, but I’m not really sure how they have gotten worse. What is leading you to believe that they are?
Saudi Arabia I somewhat agree with but think Middle East politics are extremely complex. Wouldn’t read much into Chinese efforts there.
On the other hand, the US has shored up massive support from all of Europe ex Belarus, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Australia at a minimum. Finland joins NATO tomorrow.
Overall I’d say the war has been a large boost to American foreign relations on the whole. Can’t please everyone anyway.
W.r.t cost -> everybody is spending money. Russia especially.
> On the other hand, the US has shored up massive support from all of Europe ex Belarus, Japan
Regarding Japan this very news article contradicts you somehow.
> Finland joins NATO tomorrow.
Finland is insignificant from a geopolitical point of view. Its joining NATO only makes NATO less secure as a whole, rather than strenghtening it.
Why is that?
Strong disagree. With Finland, NATO's control of the Baltic sea is insurmountable. Together with Turkey's control on the Black Sea, this completely cripples any Russian maritime capabilities.
> rather it's a country in need of protection
Also unlikely. The geography of the Finish border is such that an invasion via land is incredibly difficult. Dense forest and mountainous terrain create many easily defended bottlenecks, and the Finns with their outsized artillery are in a perfect position to defend those.
Even without NATO protection, the Finish gave the Russians a very bloody nose the last time they tried to invade. Since then, the Finish military has been re-structured with the single purpose to defend against another Russian invasion, whereas the Russian military is constrained by many other factors. Any Russian advance against the EU now has to come via the Ukrainian and Polish plains.
This makes zero sense. Please elaborate.
> The dollar relevance is degrading
Can you give some facts and figures to support this ? Because as I understand then the world would be tradin in multiple currencies for Oil&Gas.
I did in another comment under this one. Would you elaborate on why the opposite would be true?
Meaning you don't need to only depend on your own Military capabilities in order to protect your borders.
Finland joining makes Finland's borders a FAR more expensive attack than was previously.
> joining NATO only makes NATO less secure as a whole
NATO is not an offensive/invading force. It's a defensive force. If NATO had what you're referring to as a level of security, it has only increased due to more forces available to respond.
It's that simple.
On the contrary, perhaps relations are not that good.
https://hindupost.in/world/target-modi-us-regime-change-mach...
> The US is working very hard, in full force to change Modi regime; its the top agenda item for the Hillary-Obama Cabal that is the real power behind Biden.
China and the Saudis are unlikely to somehow turn into genuine friends, and in China's case specifically the unified stance in Ukraine (as well as the "it's harder to invade than you might think" message) sends a bit of a message in the case of Taiwan.
The trade-off seems pretty acceptable.
China and the Saudis are the perfect match. Both are authoritarian regimes that do business. China needs liquid energy and the Saudi needs access to stuff and capital markets. The Chinese can now provide an alternative.
Call me when every European nation actually hits their required NATO spending amount. Until then, talk is cheap.
As an Indian, I detest the Russian invasion. In fact, a number of Indians do, and it's only a few vocal fanatics who seem to support Russia's invasion. None of us thought Russia would be stupid enough to invade Ukraine, and we all thought it was a ploy to raise oilprices by making up "tensions at the border". And trust me, the West's relationship with India hasn't changed. Rather India's relationship with Russia has degraded slightly, since India has begun programmes in every front to dispose of Russian military tech.
India continues to buy oil from Russia, as does Japan, China, etc, only because it's the rational thing to do - you're getting dirt cheap prices and you're an oil-starved nation, why wouldn't you be an opportunist? And if I remember correctly, the West leadership tacitly supports this arrangement as that helps stabilize oil prices for the West buying from the rest of the suppliers.
US relations with the other countries in the list have degraded but that's largely because of the Trump and Biden governments policies towards them, and less because of Ukraine.
I've been wondering about that. I imagined that countries buying weapons from Russia would be worried and considering to pivot to another seller. Maybe this not because of the poor display of those weapons in combat, after all they just must be not worse than the weapons of the neighbors or of the other internal factions, but because they could run out of spare parts and new items. If Russia doesn't have enough weapons to refill its own losses, it can sell some to get money, but not as much as one year ago.
I don't think that China is an option for India, so maybe the USA, something from Europe or internal production. The latter would be best because of no strings attached, but is it feasible in the short / medium term?
We just got 100s of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians killed so we could write a huge check to the US arms industry.
Do you relish the prospect of Russian troops on the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania? I don't.
Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. America's allies across the world would know for a fact the US could not be relied upon to support them. Russia would know this. Taiwan would know this. China and North Korea would know this.
They would also realise that this situation might only last as long as the current administration. There are some in the world that would see this as a golden opportunity.
Are we talking about 1999?
There have been... a lot of momentous geopolitical events since 1999.
That was long after the whole mess in Bosnia, so it's not like we hadn't seen a horrible bloody genocidal conflict that the US and European countries intervened in before.
In May 2002 Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was entitled to decide on its own whether to join NATO and that he did not see such a decision as one that would “cloud” Russian-Ukrainian relations.
I think it's highly loaded to phrase this as NATO expansion. It sounds like NATO somehow coerced these countries into joining, or annexed them somehow. These countries came beating on NATO's door desperate to be let in. The instigating trigger for Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea wasn't anything anyone in NATO said or did, it was the newly elected Ukrainian government's signalling that they wanted to join NATO.
That's not where I would put the emphasis. Though there was some courting, the anti-Russian sentiment in these countries was genuine.
Russia shares its borders with 14 other nations. What happened is that, one by one, many of these joined, or became partner to, an alliance which views Russia as something to be contained. Russian leaders may not have been worried at first, but that changed later.
Contained within it's borders. You mean like constrained from territorial expansion and annexation of neighbouring territory? Yes. Just as all the European countries are contained within their borders.
Being constrained within your borders should be the default for everyone. The fact that Moscow has a president that doesn't think that way is exactly the problem NATO was created to deal with.
I'm a realist, I know there are cases when military interventions are necessary. Preventing genocide in Kosovo, kicking the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. There can be messy situations where the right course of action isn't clear, but Ukraine is not one of those. Flat out annexing large swathes of neighbouring countries is precisely the problem NATO was created to counter. It turns out for very, very good reason.
There is unprecedented growth of oil and natural gas sales to Europe, which completely displaced Russia as the biggest supplier. The arms contracts are rising heavily, making at least half of the world's armies interested in replacing old equipment. Prices are rising as well as profits.
Secondly, securing Ukraine would add up to the capitalistic market huge amounts of resources like grains and metals. This is a huge area of future investments that would provide gains for capital markets for years. Not to mention educated, hard-working populace.
There is also a matter of prestige. It is hard not to see the military advantage that western weapons have over the soviet ones. The risk of any other conflict is lower elsewhere. Still, the US is considered a worthy ally, whose guarantees are reliable.
Those are the advantages. Costs? Old military equipment that should be replaced anyway. Some money as well, but hey, banks are being given free cash as well. No boots on the ground, NATO expansion, many of the help come from allies. You can't make it cheaper.
And above all, morally you are still on the right side. Incredible.
Raytheon didn’t invade Ukraine. Boeing didn’t invade Ukraine. There’s one country with one leader that invaded Ukraine, and that is where the sole responsibility lies for that decision.
He did so solely and specifically in response to the expressed democratic wishes of the Ukrainian people. That is what this war is about. You know it, I know it, the rest is just distraction.
You have been misinformed. The sovereign institution in Ukraine is the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, which overwhelmingly approved an association agreement with the European Union. Yanukovych refused to sign it, and after extensive popular protests in favour of the association agreement, on 22 February 2010 the parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove Yanukovych from office. Crucially he then issued an official statement of resignation.
The constitutional situation is messy, for sure, but the guy resigned. He didn't have to do that, but he did. The fact he went crying to mommy in Moscow and then tried to un-resign himself is rather sad, but doesn't change the facts.
>The reality is, the military industrial complex, which is in complete control of foreign policy, has been pushing for this for years
So the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
The Russians will have had their corresponding preferences and influence campaigns, just as they did in US elections. (They may have even expressed them via dioxin, in Yushchenko's case.)
Or wait, how many coups do you think the US has actually been involved in since WWII?
Then again, the fact that you claim the US uses no coercion means you're probably trolling and I fell for it, so well played.
https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...
I'm sure you were well aware of this and many other examples and yet you are on here pretending we don't use those tactics in Ukraine. Why?
Here's a UN report on aid agencies using their influence on recipient countries to demand better governance and fight corruption. So the answer to your question is, it was responsible aid management in line with international norms.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/publications/aid_ag...
Since you're so deeply concerned about US coercion of Ukraine for the personal political advantage of US politicians, I'm sure Trump's blatant attempts to do so as confirmed by several members of his own administration are particularly outrageous to you. Strange that you didn't mention it.
These "popular protests" were violent. The vote was at gunpoint, that's what makes it a coup.
> the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
Sure. They lobby the legislative and executive branch to aggressively expand NATO, to send NATO trainers into a military on Russia's border, they lobby to have the US sabotage the Minsk accords, so that anti-Russian forces in Ukraine spend 8 years killing thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
It's like everyone taking the State Dept/arms industry bait on this conflict hasn't heard of the Monroe Doctrine. If another country did in Mexico 1/5th of what we've been doing in Ukraine for the past 15 years we would have turned Mexico into ashes.
The idea the parliament voted for the EU accord at gun point is absurd to the point of fantastical. Whose guns? The president was in charge of the army and police and he was pro Moscow. If there were any guns pointed, and there were, it was to try to prevent the pro western tide.
> Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine
If you’re referring to the Budapest agreement, it’s not a treaty. And other countries should educate themselves and understand that unilateral commitments by the President that aren’t ratified by Congress aren’t worth anything.
That is being affected by the land war. As soon as the first tank went over the line into Ukraine there were going to be harmful global consequences whatever any other country did.
As for presidential commitments. Taiwans existential security is based entirely on verbal presidential commitments going back to George W.
Relations with China were already decaying, things seem normal with India, and Saudi Arabia is the result of Trump and Co kissing MBSs butt while in power. The Saudis are much more reliant on the US than the other way around
The US has accumulated significant political debt in the recent years. They have significantly abused their position with the US dollars hegemony. In this recent conflict, the cost burdened Europe and the allies more than the US. Europe, except for Poland and the Baltics, does not seem to be too enthusiastic for this war.
I wonder if the US has a joker card or the downfall risk being a spectacular one.
Edit: Was just making a joke. I’m not a warmonger.
Invading Saudi Arabia is really complex because there is more oil coming from there than Saudi Arabia itself. Expect oil prices over $500 overnight.
Sanctions would be a reasonable argument I personally agree with
But of course it's conspiracy theory, let's just label it and ignore smoking gun.
Your outlook is significantly more gloomy than reality
Take a look at the space around you. How many of the items you see were made in the US?
Not that they have a mountain of shadow debt built upon the biggest housing bubble the world has ever seen (by far) and an absolute demographic time bomb about to blow up their future...
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/03/14/a-look-back-...
By your standard, do any of the considered "major alternative powers" (China or Russia) have allies?
Japan didn't break from US in this news article, it received permission to do so, likely so that it can remain in a defensible position against China.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4Vw6cuW4M
> China is doing everything it can to signal to its own population that war with Taiwan is imminent
I haven't seen this at all, though it may well be true. What I have seen, however, is a sudden regularity in articles over the last few months on how China is a threat to Taiwan, how everyone including somehow China really seems to admit it's very much not a part of China, and how its allies need to be prepared and proactive about "defending" it from China.
Not saying Chucky isn't a bully, but I can't shake the feeling that going round telling people how you're rounding up the gang and are preparing to give him and his chums a lesson, isn't exactly the peace-maintaining de-escalation people think it is. Especially in the absence of an "if he tries something" clause.
Also not sure what "rounding up the gang and preparing to give China a lesson" means here.
Why do blatantly false statements about Europe keep getting upvoted on HN?
The European public overwhelmingly supports Ukraine and military aid to Ukraine:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221205IP...
https://archive.ph/
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.
This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
This also gives Russia a good will gesture.
The agreement to buy Russian oil was Ok'd by the US. This isn't a break, is coordination.