911–920 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poverty has declined by more than 50% in the last 20 years in Russia. How does this jive with a "constant state of poverty"? When people use anecdotes like this despite the data, it often just looks to me like bashing of developing economies.
Sure. Where are you stats coming from. ?
The World Bank also has similar figures.
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> member states like Germany would have vetoed [Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership] Why is this often mentioned? What is Germany’s rationale and is this still a certainty? Perhaps these comments were more closely related to Schröder (because gas pipeline) but certainly a different generation now. edit: France and Germany were the two opposed countries.
Would also like to know this, because Germany being on Russia's side feels a bit... out of nowhere? A bit odd? Not something you'd expect. I mean, i can understand some controversy around the actions of Turkey because of a variety of reasons, but Germany?
First of all is the close history that the Social Democrats have with Russia, dating back to former Chancellor Willy Brandt and the Neue Ostpolitik, and renewed by the 1998-2006 former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who initiated the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline and infamously worked as a high-profile lobbyist for Gazprom after his period and is rumored to be a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin for years now.
Then we have the history of the 1968-era hippies, the peace movement and large parts of the radical left, which has to this day strong ties to the Green Party, the Left Party (which is the successor of the former GDR's ruling SED) and partially also to the Social Democrat Party. Many of my comrades are still stuck in the Cold War anti-imperialist mindset (where only the Western / NATO sphere is seen as an aggressor) and fail to see that both modern China and Russia are imperialist agents on their own. Hopefully the events of the last few days will wake up some of them, though.
And finally, the entire gas clusterfuck.
1) A lot of residential heating - not just in Germany by the way, but also across wide parts of Eastern Europe and Italy - depends on either gas or oil, as electric heating is ridiculously expensive (at >30 ct/kWh!).
2) electricity. The Conservative/Christian Democrat CDU, whose Chancellor Merkel ruled for the last 16 years before finally getting booted out of office last year, took pride in demolishing the domestic solar and wind turbine industry (the former by cutting subsidies which was followed by Chinese dumping taking over the market, the latter by imposing ridiculous zoning requirements [1]) and was happily accepting "donations" (aka legal bribery) from the fossil fuel industry, and their Bavarian sister party CSU (as well as a number of various local NIMBY movements, called "Bürgerinitiativen") keeps throwing impediments against high-power electric lines to expand the electric grid so that it can distribute Nothern German-generated wind power to the South (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg). Combined with the phase-out of coal-fired plants and nuclear plants, gas peakers have risen in importance [2].
3) We don't have many alternatives as a continent to source gas from, other than pipelines. There are no LNG import terminals in Germany [3], we have to rely on the import capacity of the Netherlands, France and Belgium [4]. At the same time, the Dutch gas field at Groningen is suffering from earthquakes following the gas extraction [5], Norway doesn't have much spare capacity [6] and the UK only has enough gas reserves to make 42% of their own demand [7], not to mention the Brexit aftermath which included the UK getting booted off the EU energy market.
4) We have a lot of industry (especially petro-chemical and metal) relying on gas for energy and as a raw material. About a third of industrial energy consumption is gas-based [8].
We are in a "perfect storm" situation, and now over 40 years of lackluster politics across the board are crashing down on our head.
[1]: https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/windraeder-abs...
[2]: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/deutschland-braucht-neu...
[3]: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/knappe-gaslieferungen...
[4]: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/lng-termina...
[5]: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gasfoerderung-in-den-niederla...
[6]: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/norwegen-regierungsch...
[7]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2021-09/gaspreis-grossbritann...
[8]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/12...
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> Moreover, the last decade of shenanigans from Turkey and then Hungary have soured even the U.S.'s appetite for future NATO admissions of any country outside Western and Central Europe. This was always the case. Turkey needed to help in Korea (1950) to get into NATO (1952). With annexation of half the Cyprus, and the tensions with Greece and buying NATO-incompatible S400 defense missiles from Russia, it kept being a…
> This was always the case. Turkey needed to help in Korea (1950) to get into NATO (1952). With annexation of half the Cyprus, and the tensions with Greece and buying NATO-incompatible S400 defense missiles from Russia, it kept being a problem-child. It weirdly remains also the only member which recently had armed conflict against Russia. Turkey was completely blackhanded as a military ally by NATO, long before Erdog…
Are you sure you are being neutral here? I'm pretty sure the Turkish army was the oppressor, at least in this case... and what Greek junta?
> Turkey has NATO's most powerful conventional military on this side of the Atlantic
Conventional military means nothing. Turkey can't even close the Bosporus in these times of war because of Russian pressure. Just read the news.
By the way I sound like a typical "reformed former citizen who hates their roots", I know. But I actually love the country, just not the politics.
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They were soviet nukes. Ukraine was soviet land and soviet people too. Breakaways by definition take stuff with them. To claim Russia had a right to the nukes is no different then saying they had a right to the land and people. They had a choice, they just chose the one that didn't lead to war.
They didn't have the codes to use the nukes though so it changes the balance of power somewhat.
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...the Sino-British Joint Declaration is still in effect, until 2047. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
Doesn't change the fact that HK was not "annexed," nor was/is it majority "unwilling."
(Although now too late)
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> This was always the case. Turkey needed to help in Korea (1950) to get into NATO (1952). With annexation of half the Cyprus, and the tensions with Greece and buying NATO-incompatible S400 defense missiles from Russia, it kept being a problem-child. It weirdly remains also the only member which recently had armed conflict against Russia. Turkey was completely blackhanded as a military ally by NATO, long before Erdog…
> NATO made an extremely costly error of accommodating the Greek junta Are you sure you are being neutral here? I'm pretty sure the Turkish army was the oppressor, at least in this case... and what Greek junta? > Turkey has NATO's most powerful conventional military on this side of the Atlantic Conventional military means nothing. Turkey can't even close the Bosporus in these times of war because of Russian pressure.…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_junta
It collapsed just 3 months after the Cyprus events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Greek_legislative_electio...
The junta was gone, but NATO countries, and Turkish state had to live together ever since.
I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…
Ukraine is not a NATO member, but Poland is. If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily . Russia can attack non-NATO countries and intimidate NATO into doing nothing, but to attack a NATO member would automatically bring the whole alliance into the war. The whole point of alliances like NATO is to prevent countries from being picked off by a bully the way U…
The Russian forces in Chernobyl came from Belarus...
Russia never ceases to amaze me even after spending half of my life living there. Its massive territory extends over 8 times zones stretching over 2 continents and it has historically been incapable of governing most of it. Everything outside of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (and a few other bigger cities) is often neglected and in constant state of poverty. Geopolitical stuff aside, this incessant need to have more la…
Poverty has declined by more than 50% in the last 20 years in Russia. How does this jive with a "constant state of poverty"? When people use anecdotes like this despite the data, it often just looks to me like bashing of developing economies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There was zero chance Ukraine would have ever been admitted to NATO. "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO." https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
... which, as the OP points out, were hollow words and the Membership Action Plan that would have been the first step to joining NATO never got off the ground. Two minutes on Wikipedia!
Assuming Russia did nothing it would have happened eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ukraine is not a NATO member, but Poland is. If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily . Russia can attack non-NATO countries and intimidate NATO into doing nothing, but to attack a NATO member would automatically bring the whole alliance into the war. The whole point of alliances like NATO is to prevent countries from being picked off by a bully the way U…
> Belarus, Finland, or any of Russia's other non-NATO neighbours are probably pretty nervous right now The Russian forces in Chernobyl came from Belarus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State
