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European natural gas imports and storage reserves

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Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#261

Post by js8 »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #249
js8 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? I don't think there is a meaningful distinction. I also think it's immoral to intentionally keep any country poor, whether authoritarian or not. I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego…

>How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? He bombed his own people to come to power. If not then, then in 2008, when he invaded Georgia. Even if not then, then surely 2014 would be the final whistle, right? No. Nord stream 2 was started to be build 4 years later. >I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during co…

> I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy

I think this is bordering on masochism. To me, hurting people (even economically) in order to make them "free" (which Reagan didn't, in fact) is just morally reprehensible, patronizing and authoritarian.

I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.

That's the thing with authoritarians - they have many faces. They can be perceived very differently by different groups. That's why you cannot just to simplify it as you did.

I am very skeptical when somebody says, we need to sacrifice lives of X people today in order for Y people (Y>X) have better lives in the future. I don't know of an example where there isn't a solution (although possibly slower) without the sacrifice, and often you can have both. Human live is precious and therefore we should value human lives now more than some kind of vague improvement in the future. We can always change society, but we cannot resurrect a dead person.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#262

Post by blub »

makomk wrote: post #113
blub wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries, Which was horrendously destructive, and the two World Wars fought using more modern weaponry were particularly awful. In fact, avoiding similar wars in Europe was part of the original justification for creating the EU, Europe has benefited tremenously from the almost a century of near-peace it's experienced, and this makes Russia's recent…

If the goal was to avoid war in Europe, then keeping a buffer of neutral countries between Russia and the EU/NATO would have been the logical course of action, when failing to integrate Russia in the European family.

It seems to me that the EU and US didn’t know when to stop and only looked at the potential economical and respectively geopolitical gains, while not giving enough weight to the risk of conflict when it was known what Russia’s red lines were.

This was a policy blunder. Looking at it from a moral or international law perspective is a dead end when the primary driver of the chain of events leading to today was geopolitics.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#263

Post by trasz »

dnh44 wrote: post #257
trasz wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world. Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.

I dunno maybe? I don’t think the outcome is obvious. It’s easy to imagine Ukraine coming out just as big a loser as Russia even if they “win”. The EU is in for a tough time too. I do wonder where we’ll be in 12 months time.

Well, Azerbaijan seems pretty convinced, they wouldn’t risk fighting them otherwise. Georgia sounds interested too. And those are small countries, they are making a colossal bet here.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#264

Post by blub »

stoltzmann wrote: post #89
blub wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 playin…

Now you’ve scaled back from hundreds of years to a just as arbitrary 100 years.

I assume you’ve led with Germany to address the very obvious WW2, when Germany turned the entire continent into a bloodbath. Ok, let’s skip that one :-)

There were the Cod Wars, which were mostly boat ramming affairs, if it weren’t for the fact that Iceland threatened to leave NATO, expel US forces and broke diplomatic relations with the UK at some point.

There was the Turkish Cypriot conflict, which continues to smolder until the present day.

Quite a few civil wars and uprisings.

Then the big Yugoslav war, where a defensive alliance oddly decided to go on the offensive.

The next big war was the current one in Ukraine.

Rather quiet given Europe’s bloody past. But if we look outside Europe, we see that the warfare just moved to other places. Falklands, Iraq twice, Syria, Libya. Not to mention the French and British colonial empires.

Core NATO are no slouches at invading and making war. So what’s the point in trying to make Russia seem irredeemable? We measure with very different standards what we do vs. what they do. Makes it easier to justify militarization, spending enormous amounts on weapons, reducing civil liberties, etc if you have an evil enemy.

Edit: forgot to answer your question about expansion. Because the likely outcome of not expanding would have been Belarus, Georgia or Ukraine in the 00’s, not invasions and war. This is not some far-fetched theory, Russian and ex-USSR leaders were repeatedly advocating for it and US and German/French politicians were obviously aware of it and in agreement. Post Bush the 1st the US changed its policy and went on a NATO expansion quest.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#265

Post by KptMarchewa »

js8 wrote: post #261
KptMarchewa wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? He bombed his own people to come to power. If not then, then in 2008, when he invaded Georgia. Even if not then, then surely 2014 would be the final whistle, right? No. Nord stream 2 was started to be build 4 years later. >I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during co…

> I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy I think this is bordering on masochism. To me, hurting people (even economically) in order to make them "free" (which Reagan didn't, in fact) is just morally reprehensible, patronizing and authoritarian. I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported pol…

>hurting people

>sacrifice

There is no sacrifice. People in Poland still had food and shelter. Even North Korea gets humanitarian help, if their tyrant allows it to. I'm not against that. I'm against making them more powerful. Food does not change that, but transfer of technologies or means of production - which happened with Russia and China, and even Poland [1] in the 70s strengthened the regime, making the fall longer and more painful.

US, and any other country, has no obligation to prop up failing dictatorships technologically or economically - which they and also famously Germany - did.

>I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.

Internal policies of Reagan, and a lot of external ones were bad. Still, he was right on that one, compared to failed policies of Nixon and Brandt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polski_Fiat

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#266

Post by gdy »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #260
gdy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Russia has been invaded by most of the European countries in the same time period. Starting from the Intervention and Poland's invasion to the invasion by Germany and its allies.

I’m puzzled by this statement. Russia has been invaded by Germany several times. Has it been invaded by France, Spain, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, or The UK in the past 100 years? As a parochial American, what have I missed?

Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War

Czechoslovaks, United Kingdom, France, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Italy, Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

Germany, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#267

Post by gdy »

The_Colonel wrote: post #236
gdy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Russia has been invaded by most of the European countries in the same time period. Starting from the Intervention and Poland's invasion to the invasion by Germany and its allies.

You're deflecting. The point is that CEE countries had a valid reason to fear Russian imperialism and acted accordingly.

You're deflecting.

I remind you that I asked 'Why?' in response to your bold statement "Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized."

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#268

Post by pydry »

distances wrote: post #196
pydry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>thus I wholeheartedly support Ukraine's right to choose their own alignment. I would agree but I would also argue that unless you also wholeheartedly support Crimea and the Donbass's right to choose their alignment (something Kiev and the west both publicly reject), you are probably somewhat half hearted in your belief in people's right to self determination. This is the litmus test of whether you are just flashing…

I'm no expert in Ukrainian demographics so I won't weigh in too much on that. I will however say this much: what makes the situation of any Russian neighbour difficult is the Russian history of forced relocations and genocide, Russian imperialism and irredentism, and their lack of any resemblance of fair elections and referendums. Russian modus operandi is forced russification. So if you move enough ethnic Russians t…

>So if you move enough ethnic Russians to Crimea so that they have majority over native Tatars, you can simply annex it at will?

If it happened in the 19th century I think so. At some point you have to simply accept that the democraphics changed and the sins of the ancestors arent the sins of the descendants and the descendants are just as deserving of democracy as anyone else.

A group of Serbs rather famously didnt subscribe to this view and committed genocide on Bosnians in the 90s to avenge what the ottomans "did to them" in, like, the 1700s.

To be consistent with the notion that historical lands belong to historical residents you'd have to cancel democracy and give back the United States to the native americans (or mexicans, even).

Do you believe in just handing back the United States to the people whom they genocided when they took it over and letting them rule? I suspect not. I dont. Most people dont.

The awkwardness of this double standard on closer inspection underscores the fact that what you espouse here is less of a moral principle and more of a geopolitical gang sign, even though you might not realize it.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#269

Post by [deleted] »

lostapathy wrote: post #181
pydry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not OK to suggest that countries can have a sphere of influence in 21st century Ask your Congressman about pulling out of Guam and closing all overseas military bases. >That kind of world order does not exist any more. This is, ironically, enough, something that Putin started saying to us since he came into power. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. He lobbied the west to adhere to a rules based international order…

> Ask your Congressman about pulling out of Guam and closing all overseas military bases. Guam is a US territory - not a foreign base.

[deleted]

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#270

Post by gdy »

iSnow wrote: post #108
gdy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like Cuba wanted to host Soviet missiles in 1962. Oddly, the US didn't think 'there is nothing we can do' and was about to start WW3 over it.

So, uhm, which country in central/eastern Europe hosts NATO nuclear missiles again? That's just whataboutism.

And Russia isn't about to sink American ships. Yet.

Here is NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talking about moving American nukes to Eastern Europe. [0]

"The alternative to NATO nuclear sharing is different kinds of bilateral arrangements and also the risk of having, you know, nuclear weapons also . . . so, of course, Germany can, of course, decide whether there will be nuclear weapons in your country, but the alternative is that we easily end up with nuclear weapons in other countries in Europe, also to the east of Germany."

And please don't use the word 'whataboutism' unless you want to say "I have double standards."

[0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_188772.htm

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