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European natural gas imports and storage reserves

bruegel.org

81–90 of 296 posts

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#81
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What you're describing is basically why Kissinger et al lobbied to kick out Taiwan from the UN, lobbied to shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program at the UN and worked so hard to intertwine US and Chinese economies. Which turned out to be worst of possible policies.

I don’t really think so. At the time Taipei was saying to not take them seriously and hopefully they would support dual representation seats in the UN soon. [1] Instead of having a Cold War with China and proxy wars, we intertwined our economies much like MAD except with mutually assured economy destruction. [1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/2001/09/12/0...

[deleted]

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#82
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What you're describing is basically why Kissinger et al lobbied to kick out Taiwan from the UN, lobbied to shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program at the UN and worked so hard to intertwine US and Chinese economies. Which turned out to be worst of possible policies.

I don’t really think so. At the time Taipei was saying to not take them seriously and hopefully they would support dual representation seats in the UN soon. [1] Instead of having a Cold War with China and proxy wars, we intertwined our economies much like MAD except with mutually assured economy destruction. [1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/2001/09/12/0...

The scenario with China is the same as Soviet Union in 20-30s, 60-70s and Russia in 00s-now, just not fully resolved yet.

You prop up hard authoritarian or totalitarian government with trade. They get strong, and instead of "democratizing" they take a hard line and endanger democracies.

Europe also had economic MAD with Russia, yet they did not care. Now they flare gas and destroy Ukrainian cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kahn_(architect)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaz#History

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#83
post #64
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, I wonder why Eastern Europe wants to join NATO. Hmmm, I wonder why countries who were on the fence about joining NATO have suddenly fast tracked applications in 2022?

Russia used to be more on the fence about NATO too when it acted defensively - before Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The war crimes committed during the NATO Libyan intervention - with a deliberate emphasis on regime change and creating a failed state - sparked the same fear in Russia that the Ukraine invasion sparked in Finland. Russia already went through a period of internal collapse and being ruled by an American p…

Afaik the NATO mission in Yugoslavia and Libya were the two big ones. Both misused NATO and were not defensive in nature.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#84
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future will show large nuclear arsenals are the worst policy. It is not the 1930s and Russia is not Germany. The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily. If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime, I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border agai…

>The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily. The problem is you think they "own" them. >If the US can invade the middle east One nation they invaded was Iraq, and while catastrophic, they've created a democracy that later told US to fuck off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Fo.…

No post body was provided.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#85
post #63
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Ukraine 2014. The West should have stopped Russia back then and there.

How do you show that such action would lead to fewer deaths and less suffering?

That isn't a relevant question. The goal is to contain Russian expansionism, not to minimize deaths.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#86
post #41

With a couple of FSRU terminals coming online during the next year, Europe might be OK, but it's going to be a problem. Storage is high for the season, and growing, but total gas delivered is very low. When the winter cold comes, storage will be depleted much faster than in the last years, and even if no gas shortages occur, storage will be very empty in spring - maybe too low to refill them till next winter.

So, once of a sudden, Europe is fine with shale gas as long as it's from another country. Europe seems fine with gas from Qatar as well, which also is waging a cruel war in Yemen with tons of deliberate civilian casulties!

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#87
post #47
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it ? What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Because History has shown repeatedly and consistently that escalation is reckless and extremely costly.

I agree, and even Hitler is dubious. I am Czech, and the Munich Agreement is very emotionally painful for us. However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives. (Nor would fighting against Russian invasion in 1968, btw.) And arguably in the case of Ukraine the appeasement already happened after 2014 Donetsk war. I also heard that appeasement was backreaction…

That's also ignoring few earlier opportunities to strike against Hitler.

>https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/first-strike-how-the-po...

Additionally, after remilitarization, there were more opportunities to Strike. Rhineland, Anschluss of Austria... the longer you wait it's worse.

>I also heard that appeasement was backreaction to WW1, where everybody was eager to go to war and it ended in bloodshed.

Wehrmacht was not close to being combat ready yet, and would get crushed by combined Polish-Czechoslovakian-Western Allies troops. Without Czechoslovakia opposing them, and Czech industry fully contributing to Hitler's war machine odds were drastically better for Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_38(t)

>However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives.

And Ukraine is winning the war, saving 40 million Ukrainians from genocide.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#88
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation. History has shown us that appeasement is the worst possible policy.

The future will show large nuclear arsenals are the worst policy. It is not the 1930s and Russia is not Germany. The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily. If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime, I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border agai…

Who is the "we" that should be negotiating? The US, EU, and NATO aren't parties to the conflict. Russia and Ukraine are free to negotiate at any time, and in fact have already held talks at several points during the conflict.

I assume thought, that you favor some sort of negotiated settlement. How much territory should Ukraine cede to Russia in exchange for peace? And what would prevent Russia from coming back and taking another slice in a few years? Remember they already did this once before in 2014.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#89
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has been invading it's neighbors for centuries. Eastern Europeans do remember that. Joining NATO is not only about the conflict today, it's due to pretty much all generations in the area suffering due to their aggressive neighbor further to the east.

Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries, that’s what normal looks like in Europe. In fact some countries liked invasions so much, that they invaded countries all over the world. Joining NATO is not at all only up to the countries which apply. The US is more or less the game maker, with big countries like Germany, France, the UK etc. also having an important voice. It’s not unexpec…

And that's why countries have to consider all of their neighbors when deciding on their foreign policy. There was a lot of bad blood for example against Germany, but since we have a very good economic partnership with them, there is no reason for being overly prepared for war with them. They haven't done anything to consider them hostile.

Russia has consistently been a bad neighbor that keeps on threatening or playing weird tricks against other countries. They have invaded multiple neighbors in the last 100 years, where the rest of Europe has become more peaceful.

There is a clear danger to peace in Europe, and that's why countries want to join NATO.

Why do you think that letting Eastern European countries join NATO is misguided? So far, it has been the number one reason that Russia hasn't invaded any other countries in the region.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#90
post #86
post #41

With a couple of FSRU terminals coming online during the next year, Europe might be OK, but it's going to be a problem. Storage is high for the season, and growing, but total gas delivered is very low. When the winter cold comes, storage will be depleted much faster than in the last years, and even if no gas shortages occur, storage will be very empty in spring - maybe too low to refill them till next winter.

So, once of a sudden, Europe is fine with shale gas as long as it's from another country. Europe seems fine with gas from Qatar as well, which also is waging a cruel war in Yemen with tons of deliberate civilian casulties!

1) in the short term Europe is not cutting gas from Russia, it's the other way round

2) in the long term, Europe is trying to get independent from Russian gas so that 1) will not happen again

Europe is trying to get away from being dependent from Russian gas for strategic, not humanistic reasons.

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