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> Russian gas accounted for 55% of Germany's gas imports in 2021 and 40% of its gas imports in the first quarter of 2022, Reuters reported. The country has pledged to end the use of Russian gas by 2024, the Habeck said in a March 25 press release. Some in this thread have asked how Germany could be so foolish to tie its economic destiny to such a problematic country as Russia. The answer seems to be "one step at a ti…
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It's tempting to think that the governments of these states have been infiltrated by their enemies.
Hanlon's razor applies here I think. Don't attribute to "the enemy" what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
More to the point, Hanlon's Razor is usually an excuse to do nothing, which is a mistake.
It's better to assume that people intend the likely outcome of their actions. If they want to claim stupidity/incompetence as a defene, that's on them.
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If this insane idea that the sovereign nations of Europe have no agency of their own comes from American "news"-branded edutainment, I dearly suggest you defenestrate your television set. It is clearly rotting minds.
Hardly any euro state has real power when it comes to real decisions. Most of the euro states are politically heavily influenced by financial injections from the US. Military bases everywhere. US companies everywhere. All tech is dominated by the US. Of course Russia sees the US as the master country and euro countries as their puppets.
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I think that https://ceres.georgetown.edu/research/student-projects/geopo... is a fair assessment. I would add https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany , also. It is plainly clear that the current Russian leadership is expansionist in nature, because they are killing thousands of people in a former satellite state to reestablish prior borders. This is definitely a less than zero-sum environment. R…
The US doesn't want to have a strong Europe Russia relationship. That's the whole reason behind this conflict. The US started to bribe everyone in Ukraine and even forced a coup in 2014. History of the US destabilising regions is very evident. They are good at it.
Perhaps Russia shouldn't invade their neighbors. It seems to make their neighbors not like them.
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Pipelines (which I would not underestimate) and storage?
Great pipelines; only problem is that they go to Russia ...
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Suppose everyone was simple and conspiracies didn't exist. Where might Germany get its fossil fuels? Perhaps shipped across the entire Atlantic Ocean? Perhaps from Mars? Or perhaps from the major producer on its same continent? The bottom line is that European integration is a natural phenomenon. It is natural to have strong economic ties within one's neighborhood. You don't need a decades long conspiracy to explain…
Germany does need energy, and I actually give German leadership the benefit of the doubt, that they sincerely believed rapproachment with Russia was possible and Nord Stream 2 was a good faith endeavor. Sadly Russia ruined that impression, it required no work on the part of the United States to do so.
The State Department would strongly disagree with you. Victoria Nuland recently gloated that they have spent over $5,000,000,000 supporting anti-Russian movements in Ukraine in the post-Soviet era.
Plenty of LNG ships and suppliers. Cheap gas is not worth an immense cost of human life. I think this timetable could be moved forward far quicker.
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Germany does need energy, and I actually give German leadership the benefit of the doubt, that they sincerely believed rapproachment with Russia was possible and Nord Stream 2 was a good faith endeavor. Sadly Russia ruined that impression, it required no work on the part of the United States to do so.
> Sadly Russia ruined that impression, it required no work on the part of the United States to do so. The State Department would strongly disagree with you. Victoria Nuland recently gloated that they have spent over $5,000,000,000 supporting anti-Russian movements in Ukraine in the post-Soviet era.