It is a fundamental rule of Geopolitics that every country assert itself to the best of its abilities with the strengths they have. One of Russia's biggest strengths is natural resources. It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
George Friedman explains in this book [1] that Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable, but if Russia has the off switch for Germany's economy, NATO's response is drastically weakened.
Whatever scenario may come to pass, European reliance on Russian natural resources disrupts the US's containment strategy which it needs in order to maintain its dominant position in the region. So yes, it will say something if it feels like that is under threat.
Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century/dp/07...
You are completely missing the part where Germany has already been running on Russian gas for decades, from land based pipelines. I think that you might be unaware of how permeable to natural gas the iron curtain had been.
The power Russia gains from Nordstream isn't the power to stop supplying Germany (they could already do that and then go broke), the power they gain is the power to keep supplying Germany while playing with the off-switch for their dearly loved "Slavic brother nations". The geopolitical relevance of Nordstream is not Russia selling more gas, it's about Russia deriving more influence per unit of gas.
Ever wondered why Poland is refusing so hard to switch from dirty lignite to cleaner gas? It's not just money and miners, far from that.
If it is not clear, the US for the last two decades is not moving forward, but backwards in international politics. Trump has exposed this even more.
Trying as a strategy to contain Russia is simply not going to work and the US really needs a massive upgrade in political brains, and not more weapons.
This is in the book that forecasts that Japan will attack the US in 2050 except that it'll be all space-borne battlestars and lasers and hypersonic weapons. Among other preposterous scenarios. Riiiight.
> It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil and natural gas supplies.
Loaded language. Don't you think Western Europe has thought of this? And hey, if Russia turns off the tap they turn off their revenue stream. Besides, Europe, like the US, keeps strategic fossil fuel reserves.
> The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony.
> Not saying this is a good or bad thing. Depends on your perspective and what country you live in.
Seems to me that if the US keeps sanctioning foes and allies alike every country bar the US will consider this a bad thing.
It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.
Anywhere that Russia has "annexed" has had a majority ethnic Russian population and historical ties to Russia. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are not majority ethnic Russian, do not speak Russian, and are part of the EU (and NATO) so they're clearly not aligned geopolitically with Russia and it would cause major regional ramifications, undoubtedly triggering a war with NATO, and/or the EU (both nuclear entities). It would be wholly unprecedented in modern times.
Baltics and Crimea are not comparable. - Crimea has Russia's only warm water port and would never be given up - Russia already has Baltic access (Kaliningrad and StPetersburg) - Crimea has been majority ethnic Russian for centuries and welcomes Russia - Baltics hate Russia
In summary, there is absolutely no logical reason Russia would annex Baltic state.
However, there are plenty reasons why non-Russian interests always repeat this narrative.
Why would Russia need several bankrupt dying states? To feed and develop them like in Soviet times getting nothing but hatred in response? Ditto for Ukraine BTW.
Germany should build some HVDC or regular long-distance transmission lines so they can use their wind electricity without routing through neighbors and build more wind farms.
That would be less inconceivable than what they've already done in Ukraine.
Why? They rolled tanks into a chunk of balkanised land already and nobody lifted a finger. I think anyone that spends some time considering that shudders to imagine how bad it could get with absolutely nothing happening.
I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event.
The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone.
He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of the region.
There was no end to his disappointment when he came to understanding that all that geopolitical BS he learned was for nothing, and he came to station the most boring post-Soviet hillbilly town.
I think most Americans, even the most educated ones tend to greatly overthink "geopolitical conspiracies"
Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.
For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.
The people of Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine would beg to differ.
This is either a typo or some next-level tinfoil hattery...
- Crimea became part of Russia before Texas became part of US
- Crimea became part of Russia before (around the time) US independence
- Kievan Rus' is older than Aztec Empire
- Before the US, the colonies were English, French, Dutch, Swedish, etc.
- Before the colonies, it was of course Native American land.
- Before the Anglosaxons, Britain was Celtic.
- Kievans are much older than Russians. Russia was created by a few Swedes forking the local Slav tribes.
- Before Moscow, there were Poles Bulgarians and Mongols.
Shall we go on?
Should British demand their colonies back?
Should Indians demand their land?
Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we will give Crimea to Russia (and let's have a WW3 and all be dead me give the planet the break it deserves (from human stupidity))
Similar thing can be said about disputed teritorries in the east, around Donbas.
Of course that's still not the excuse for what Russia did, taking both places by force, however, this makes fixing this more complicated.
Let's stick to the borders we got, and in the future let's rener them useless (e.g. European Union).
I believe in a Star Trek society. Not "we kicked butts back then so let's get back those lands".
There is no bigger "grand plan" to them than to an 8th century Viking raid: more subjects, loot, and territories to use to stage further invasions.
Danes cared more for how tasty the British were, before they started to care about the British throne and court politics in the bigger Post-Roman world.
And now Russia spend enormous amount of money to develop Crimea. Where's the looting?
That sounds like a geopolitical ambition to me.
(to be even more specic, Crimean events were mostly about regaining the control of the Black Sea Fleet naval base, while Donbass events were about reacting to a hostile coup, but the two things are closely related)
It was also an object lesson to all the minor powers in the region: you cannot take US money to have a small victorious colour revolution anymore. Not in Russia's backyard.
edit: oh wow downvotes, I am so surprised /s
Which is in stark contradiction to the sophisticated goals of the West to control as much of the world's market as possible in order for mega multinationals to be able to exploit cheap labor and maintain their insane margins, so that they're able to pay their executives an ex-politicians millions of dollars per year.
Very unlike the goals of Russian oligarchs indeed and much more sophisticated.
This is not just faux news either, the experts are on all channels. No wonder the public has low trust of news these days.
Sucks to know that even a person who is such a high ranking official like an ambassador gets such shitty advice.
As a counter-example (one of many), Russia has been for a long time losing money by subsidizing Belarusian economy with cheap oil.
Today's Russia seems more assertive again with their geopolitical interests.
Are you sure about that?
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlini...
If readers are ok cherry picking from his work, and go on, they should also argue his points that there be a stealthy Russian amphibious landing on US soil, and Russian agents flooding US with "psychotronic agent" to steer US elections...
The guy just puts a shopping list of all obvious nasty things that could happen to the West, and call it a strategy. Few things from that coming true, does not mean them acting on this as a guiding policy.
Continuing the parallel with Danish: yes, Vikings main interest with British Islands was loot and plunder, but they were not dumb to the level where they make invading the British harder for themselves. When given a chance, they would thoroughly mess up British political arrangements with all means available to them.
Not sure how this benefits Russia. Each country has stategic reserves. Gas / oil is the only thing Russia can sell to the Western Europe in order to finance their own system. Russians have to sell it. Blackmailing countries is not in their business.
Russian doctrine is that the satellite countries are buffers to be used as needed, like Kleenex.
It's 100% certain Russia will annex Baltic countries whenever it pleases. To say otherwise just makes you "a useful idiot", as Lenin is credited with saying.
Neither side with nukes would be fighting for survival and would not jump to nuclear threats or exchange until or unless their own existing territory was at risk of annexation / loss.
Russia would shift to a nuclear warning posture if pushed back to their borders. If NATO pursued and threatened territory taking, Russia would threaten nuclear response at that point, especially if it was in a particularly weakened condition or believed it couldn't hold its ground.
On the NATO side, there's practically no threat of the US, France or the UK losing territory to Russia in a Baltic-focused conflict (or in Eastern Europe for that matter). To draw a nuclear threat from NATO would similarly require the nuclear powers to be under threat of losing their own territory (and they'd probably have to believe they can't hold their ground). The UK isn't killing ten plus million of its people in a nuclear exchange with Russia for the sake of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania's territorial integrity as nation-states.
I think the only way that gets nuclear is if Russia plays the crazy card and proclaims that it now regards the annexed Baltic territory as its own and puts up the nuclear warning then and there (move in, take territory, immediately raise the crazy nuclear flag, test the resolve & risk aversion of the other side to respond militarily once the nuclear flag is out of the box). Then NATO has to decide if it believes Russia will actually act crazy.
The baltic states can not be defended militarily. If Ukraine were in the EU, would be a different thing.
"No way the EU would let that slide." They EU has no ability in military things if the UK is out. The Nato would not let it slide but they also would not fight back to win it back. It would be cold war II.
The entire thing reminds of this[1] Futurama bit. "You won't be needing Harriers anymore, will you? I take Harriers now, F35 come next decade".
One of the signatories was the invader, the rest found obtuse reasons why they didn't have to defend Ukraine.
The next annexation will be the same.
It was a conflict initiated by Georgia but actually they were asked by US to start it.
Without big bully to prevent countries doing deals that decrease stability in other countries we have no recourse. Sadly it's too late for that particular project to be stopped. Previous administration missed it or didn't intervene on purpose. It doesn't make any sense to put sanctions on Russia because of their land grab in Ukraine while allowing them to build a pipeline that destabilizes the region even further.
For example, it is easy to see how the U.S. would not tolerate the sort of of military exercises done near the borders of Iran off the coast of Mexico. But somehow when U.S. does it, it's fine. Same with the recent airliner disaster, which took Iran 3 days to admit to, longer than it should have, but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster.
Hard to argue the Iraq War was any good, same for Libya, or the sponsoring of fundamentalists in Syria, in fact the American relationship with gulf monarchies, or even Israel, is hardly based on any moral principles.
The record in Latin America is too long to even get into etc. etc.
There's also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qatUWwIeg
It is true that some U.S. officials admitted the mistake quickly, however the official position of the U.S. government was defiant for 7 years. The official position of the Iranian government was apologetic within 72 hours and cooperative with Ukraine even faster. That's despite the fact that the U.S. homeland wasn't threatened or encircled by Iran, whereas the U.S. constantly maneuvers around Iranian borders and the tense situation came about because of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S., while on an officially accredited diplomatic mission(!)
I don't agree with arresting the person who posted the video for sure, but neither do I agree with the torture of Chelsea Manning for exposing U.S. war crimes, prosecution of WikiLeaks, Snowden, treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement, violent treatment of Standing Rock protesters etc. We could go on forever.
The point is when you have the leader of a world superpower like the U.S. saying that he'll never apologize for the United States of America, "no matter what the facts are", when none of U.S. presidents have been prosecuted for war crimes, when the indiscriminate use of devastating sanctions, including on medicine, leads to devastating civilian outcomes, when the U.S. uncritically lets Israel carve progressively more and more of the West Bank, when you have the U.S. President threatening Europe and openly admitting to stealing Syrian oil, then maybe the U.S. does not have any moral superiority to lecture others.
And let me be clear, I don't want to see the U.S replaced by say China either, I want it to be counterbalanced, so that no outrageous actions on the international stage can be taken by either party. I'd love to see the EU be its own player as well.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.
The problem here is that many do argue right now that the US is doing this themselves and is a large factor in lots of instability in say the middle East.
Because America provides defence for Germany, and Russia has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at Germany, the US and others, and they are an antagonising state, actively trying to disrupt the governments in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, etc.
All these issues are quite fundamentally related, so it matters.
That said, I don't think a pipeline will matter that much.
The premise of the article is problematic because there are almost no alternatives for the USD outside the Euro, and possibly the Pound for a few things. The RMB can't effectively be a global currency until it becomes transparent, which means the CCP would have to give up control, which they won't do.
There is really nothing on the horizon - no digital/fintech/blockchain anything that will change the playing field.
If anything - as 5B people on planet earth go from $1/day to $20/day and come into the global economy, the USD will have even greater seigneuriage power.
It's entirely reasonable to believe that France is not going to commit national nuclear suicide merely to defend Czech or Poland from a Russian invasion. MAD - mutual assured suicide - would only be utilized in a case where their own existence were threatened.
That's where a very powerful traditional military comes into play.
That's why NATO exists instead of merely relying on having a stockpile of nukes to point at Russia. You might actually have to stand off Russia in a real military confrontation or at a minimium give the strong impression that you can if necessary. Russia can gamble that France isn't going to commit suicide via nuclear weapons to save Lithuania, and it would be a correct bet, at which point it's down to traditional military vs military.
NATO isn’t just there to defend against Russia, it is effectively an unbroken continuous occupation of Europe by the US.
In response to Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO, Germany’s reaction was not “oh, good, those useless Americans will leave.” It was: https://www.dw.com/en/merkel-vows-to-hit-2-nato-spending-tar...
> Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday underscored her commitment to NATO, pledging to raise Germany's defense spending to the alliance's 2% target "by the early 2030s."
> "The preservation of NATO is in our own interest, more than during the Cold War," Merkel said while addressing lawmakers in German parliament.
> "At the moment, Europe is unable to defend itself," she added, urging the bloc to stay together.
Much is for the US and their military adventures, not for NATO or NATO-related things. It supports the US war machine. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Africa, ... Much of that has nothing to do with defending Germany, defending the US or defending NATO...
The US and its allies/friendly countries currently outspend Russia approximitely fifteen times.
If Germany would spend 2% of its GPP on military, then it would approach Russia in absolute numbers, That would be crazy.
What we really need is LESS military spending and less military adventures of the US (Iraq, Syrian, Libya, ...). The US has destabilized the whole middle east and north africa. The refugees are going to Europe, not the US...
The US will stay in south germany for the near future, because it provides excellent logistics for US wars in middle east, asia and africa.
Recent events have convinced me that I was at least partly wrong about my previous view of the United States having bases all around the world. Europeans love to complain about America, but when Trump threatened to pull out of NATO, in the face of an ascendant Russia, the European reaction certainly wasn’t “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Likewise in Asia, while the Taiwanese and Japanese have always been warm to American military support, the growing power of China has definitely sparked discussions about America’s continued commitment to obligations in that region.
Germany is also no longer the front to the communist block - which no longer exists and only Russia is left as direct opponent. So it may make sense to have NATO defense moving east. Many Germans think that the US politics against Russia leads to nothing good.
What Trump does/says is fully inconsistent. NATo is obsolete. Then it is great. He wants to reduce military. Then record money flows into the military. He wants to get out of Iraq, then he blackmails Iraq to let the US stay. He uses kurds to fight against ISIS and then he hands them over to Assad...
The main political reaction in Germany to him is to have not too much changed and hope for a more rational US government.
It is her contractual obligation. Currently Germany does not have an Army anymore but a museum. How many tanks are operational? 100? Russia has 10.000...
Tanks? Not sure that this is our biggest concern right now.
You are disingenuously arguing against the wind.
Yes, there is, a kind of contract.
When nations agree to targets, and they did a long time ago, its material. That it's not technically part of the treaty is relevant, but not so important.
The 2% target was established long ago, there's a renewed 'agreement' since Trump took office, but it's along the same lines: European states will wait for Trump to be out of office and then ignore it.
The fact remains America provides defence for Europe, and Europe is willing to let that happen because, well, it's very expensive, among other things.
Which are in the future. The target is for 2025.
> remains America provides defence for Europe
The fact remains that NATO is not an US security organization where other Nations buy protection. Trump may think that, since he knows the Mafia from his real-estate business.
Nobody has asked German citizens yet, if we want to invest 2% of the GDP into defense and where it should be invested.
Basically a military & governments have decided that for us, which is entirely undemocratic and a fully un-controlled process.
It's great that the military-industrial complex can on its own decide how much to spend, without any outside interference. This leads to a situation, like in the US where roughly a trillion USD is spend on military, which is an insane amount of money.
Yes, Indeed. tanks are not the biggest problem. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/21/pepe-escobar-you-say-y...
PS: "Germany is only one of 19 NATO members that have not met the 2% GDP spending goal set at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales."
PS. : the spending goal is in the future: 2025. It‘s also a political goal, not a contract.
And the current data can be seen here:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_...
Look at the numbers, they are vastly different from what you claim.
They are "vastly different" because most countries don't share their fair burden. Trump may be wrong in many things, here he is right.
In the PDF you provided "NATO guideline 2%" But hey, why spent it on the military? Let the US spent/fight for us.
Everything of that is wrong, There is no contract. The goal of 2% is set for 2025, not now. Currently a bunch of countries spend less than 2%.
And: large parts of the US military spending is completely unrelated to NATO.
Next you need to ask yourself if these approximate numbers make sense:
Europe minus Russia, without the US: defense spending of 350 billion USD. NATO has defense spending of 950 billion dollar. Russia: defense spending: 65 billion USD.
Europe is already outspending Russia five times. NATO is outspending Russia by 15 times.
This looks like lack of money is not the actual problem NATO has.
The same is true for Military spending. The military is labor heavy, and production is mostly domestic. If you don’t adjust for purchasing power, you’re comparing apples and oranges: https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/why-russian-military-expen...
> Perhaps most importantly, the more methodologically sound approach to comparing defense spending based on PPP illustrates that the gap between U.S. expenditure on the one hand and that of Russia and China on the other has closed dramatically over the past 15 years. Today, when taken together, spending by Russia and China is roughly equal to U.S. defense expenditure, with Russia representing a much larger share than previously recognized.
Moreover, even PPP probably doesn’t accurately depict the difference. Beijing spends about a billion dollars a year to operate a subway serving a city of 20 million people. New York spends ten times as much for a system half the length and half the ridership. Moscow spends 1/7 as much as New York to operate a larger system with more ridership.
Military expenditures probably scale much closer to something like a subway system than the overall PPP basket of goods. In that case, we are probably looking at less than a factor of two advantage in what that spending actually buys.
Russia is decades behind in high-tech and has only limited access to western technology in many areas. The country largely lives of selling natural resources. There is a many years ongoing embargo on high-tech in many areas - also from the EU. There is basically limited technological cooperation with Russia in many high-tech sectors right now.
The result is that Russia has only a few somewhat competitive areas in military technology and needs to invest a lot of money into those: Nuclear weapons, rockets, space technology, etc. Selling those weapons helps their industry a bit.
This affects for example how much money they have to deploy even tanks:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22600/russia-cant-affo...
For example they have only a single old aircraft carrier:
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-admiral-kuznetsov-murmansk-f...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUpZDb3W0Q
The US OTOH has none or ten whole carrier fleets...
Russia has submarines and a lot of nuclear technology. From time to time an old one sinks. The older ones are rotting somewhere...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48897468
That Russia has cheap clothes for their soldiers, or can mass produce tanks for their soldiers does not help them, if they don't have a competitive high-tech industry. Keeping the nuclear weapons (rockets, submarines, launchers, spy satellites, ...) is extremely expensive and where the money goes.
For the West it's much easier to cooperate on technology and weapons.
See the list of carriers: most of them are from US, NATO or allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...
It's clear that 65 billions USD doesn't buy much on the world market, even though the costs at home are low. The rest of the economy does not support their high-tech needs...
It's not that Russia has no competitive weapons, but the breadth and depth is simply not there. Russia selectively chooses areas where they develop competitive weapons with their more limited resources.
True, the Russians don't reveal the full scale of military costs. But the US does the same:
https://www.thenation.com/article/tom-dispatch-america-defen...
The US has bases all over Europe, they spend a fortune on their own defensive tech, capabilities and leadership which Germany et. al. depend on, which acts as a massive deterrent, but also provides security partners with 'almost free R&D'. Also, the US specialises and practices so many things that are just far beyond the reach of pretty much all European forces.
The ability to put bases, air support of all kinds, intelligence, drones, etc. pretty much anywhere is basically beyond most of Europe. When a war broke out on their border (Libya), for better or worse there was an intervention. Obama reluctantly agreed and didn't want to play a lead role, but without US drones, AWACS, and electronic warfare, special forces on the ground, the UK and French fighters wouldn't have been able to do anything at all. This is actually quite a good demonstration of how specific capabilities are huge enablers of others.
Trump's NATO talking point about partners not spending enough is very fair, and most European nations are in violation of the treaty, which is doubly problematic because while NATO is strategically beneficial to the US, it's basically vital to European integrity -> they need it more than the US and spend only 1/2 of what was agreed upon.
If the US simply 'did not exist' - Russian Imperialism would reach just about as far as in the Soviet era. Basically, Poland would be back to being the 'buffer' between Germany and Russia.
Everyone in the 1990's thought all of that would melt with the cold war, unfortunately, neither China nor Russia moved along the expected path, so here we are.
American sanctions of Iran are not remotely big enough to make a dent in currency issues.
I do however think that as finance spreads into different areas, Americans will have more difficulty with said sanctions. Dubai exists as a financial centre basically because it's outside the direct influence or insight of American or European agencies. It's basically an entire micro-economy of dirty money.
We can speculate a lot, but that's a this is, speculation. This comment and a lot of others smell of American exceptionalism to me as a non US citizen.
I'm not sure this can really be considered an instance of "protection" provided by the US. As far as I remember, the Libyan war was more of an instance of civilian unrest that the government was equipped to and on the verge of dealing with when American intervention toppled it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...), thus causing the present state where no one faction is strong enough to control the whole country. In fact, it is hard to think of any protracted armed conflict on Europe's periphery in the past two decades that was not either directly instigated or least comes with a strong case of having been surreptitiously promoted by the US.
Second, I don't think it's fair to say the conflicts in Europe's periphery are surreptitiously promoted by the us: the war in Crimea, Russia invasion of Georgia, conflict in Yugoslavia, 'Troubles' in Ireland etc. - these were not 'made in the USA'. Neither was the Arab Spring.
I would not be surprised to hear there is some qualitative difference, but I think it should be explained before we accept either “Dubai is dirtier” or “everywhere is equally dirty” premise.
We’re there to prevent them from killing each other more than we are there to prevent The One True Enemy (whoever it might be today) from invading wily nilly. We don’t want them killing each other, because when they do, it is bad for business and diplomatic relations. More importantly, if we allow their natural tendencies towards hot European on European action to occur today, there really is a global threat because these are advanced economies that could easily pump out nukes and lob them at each other which is generally not great for the health of anyone on the planet.
In short, by serving European interests, we actually are serving our own interests because in some very important ways, our interests are in complete alignment. Germany is generally more at peace with the world than Japan at any given moment, but give them cause to build up their military and the time to do it and they could easily be a bigger threat to the United States than Russia, but they have no inclination towards treating us as an enemy so long as they’re under a system that protects them equally from France as it does from Russia or Costa Rica or Sealand.
EDIT: I don't prefer autocracies, live in EU, and I do appreciate the need for counterbalance. Yes, in many important ways you are (more) free.
Yet, while USA has 2 parties instead of 1, both are beholden to capital interests, including their healthcare, monopolized internet, schools, and even their military has vast ties with capital interests. Citizens are significantly dependent on their "credit scores" while banks easily give loans in their names to other people (so called identity theft). People start saving for their children's education even before they are born and still end up with college debt. 0.7% of the population is in prison, and cops can legally rob you (asset forfeiture).
Let's not forget overthrowing the first democratically elected government when they nationalize their oil sector, instating a dictator, and then invading the country. That's what sharing free¹dom means.
It's never so simple.
First, does France have the ability to deliver them? Under what conditions? With what warning, etc. etc.
Second, is the fact that nukes are the biggest hammer in retaliation, and most things need to be proportional.
Would France use nukes on Russia if Poland was invaded?
What if Russia tried to 'pull a Crimea' in E. Germany i.e. small forces without uniforms, supporting insurgencies, disrupting communications. Tons of money pouring in changing elections, disrupting governance. Would that be a case for nukes?
It's far more complicated, and Europe cannot defend itself - this is the tacit admission of their own leaders. So America still provides baseline defence capabilities.
The unfortunate reality is that Europe actually could defend itself, but it's not willing to either spend what's necessary, or to coordinate along those lines, which might be even harder as the EU doesn't provide for that and it's a really big existential deal. The reason there isn't material progress on it is because it's really, really expensive and nobody wants to pay bills if America will continue to pay it form them.
Trump is a loathsome figure, but he's exactly right on this issue. European leaders will make some happy talk, public statements, but really they're just waiting for Trump to be gone so they can go back to what they hope will be the status quo.
Those have been there for a long time, even before the "disruption". Besides France has nukes too, so not much win there.
Because the US is the sole guarantor of German sovereignty. It's why the US has tens of thousands of troops in germany. It's why US decides if and how much oil/gas Japan or South Korea gets from Russia. It's why the US decides if the Dutch get to sell ASML semiconductor equipment to China. It's why the US dictates whether Canada arrests a chinese executive. Pax Americana. Protection doesn't come cheap. It certainly isn't free.
> Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?
Of course not, but germany is in no position to dictate anything to the US. That's the point. If germany had tens of thousands of troops stationed in the US and provided safety to the US and mexico was germany's enemy, then germany would prevent the US from doing business with mexico.
I'm not saying it's right or moral. It's just basic geopolitics. If you depend on another nation for your safety and host tens of thousands of their troops in your country, you are really not a sovereign nation and hence don't have the luxury of making all the decisions on your own.
Sole? So the German armed forces are for what exactly?
https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-germany-armed-forces-201...
That's the difference between the paranoid and the rational.
Mind you, failing at this gamble would have devastating effects, as was evidenced by many occupied nations during the last major conflict in Europe.
Note that Costa Rica has no defence force at all.
> failing at this gamble
Yes, all adult decisions are based on uncertainty. Especially when resources are limited.
For example, it takes the US Army almost 2 years to train helicopter pilots. Similar for Air Force or Navy pilots.
Furthermore, Germany isn't militarily threatened by any country with capabilities to invade it. France and Britain are close allies, the US kinda still is, Russia's economy is extremely reliant on Germany and the other countries around it are to small to pose a serious threat.
I'd be okay with any number of countries using sanctions to "punish" the US for any number of things. It's their right as sovereign nations. The irony here is that it's a double edged sword.
But what I'd really prefer would be a more direct say over who my country is sanctioning and why.
This doesn't really treat with the dollar-denominated world economy but I wanted to point this out to differentiate the current irrational foreign policy of the US government from the subject at hand.
Current US policy, to the extent that we have policy today, is a whole other matter.
About 25% of Germany’s primary energy are produced from gas, of which about 40% come from Russia (down from about 50% in 1995).[1]
The US sanctions against the Nord Stream project are seen by a number of Germans as a rather clumsy attempt to push the sale of their expensive liquified natural gas, which to a high degree is produced by hydraulic fracking.[2]
1) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
2) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
They were in favor of sanctions against lots of countries, usually because of human rights abuses. I currently can't access their archives, but I am quite sure they were calling for sanctions on Germany as early as 1933.
Doubly so if you own the ships too.
They can't directly confront Germany, but the US can, and it is doing so rightly. The project comprises the long term security of the Nato block, and the said countries have a major distrust towards Russia as it has they have suffered a lot under thier imposed communist regimes.
For a bunch of smart people, HN veers too much into hands off 'libertarian' side of things. US lets its hands off in the region, it will slowly be transformed again into a basket case of 'kleptocratic' countries in the way Russia is today.
---- The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia––all highly dependent on Russian gas––signed a petition against Nord Stream 2 in March 2016, highlighting the risks for energy security in Central and Eastern Europe.
Italy is in a similar bind. In 2015, Italy accused the EU Commission of applying double-standards when the Commission did not reject the Nord Stream 2 project, as it did with the South Stream––a project which would have benefited Italy’s role as energy hub in the Mediterranean. For this reason, Italy complained about Germany’s influence in the EU Commission and called for equal treatment.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/04/22/n...
but if you can pick up the penny(-wise) now, and let somebody else pick up the pound(-foolish), you make bank and leave before the going gets tough.
That has nothing to do with their objections to the pipeline, to the contrary.
Can you give actual examples of this friendliness? I see it cited very often but I don't know any concrete example. I know Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia last September, that is sanctioning European companies for the Russia pipeline, and that he's doing anything that he can to destabilise Iran, which is supported by Russia. So it doesn't seem that friendly to me.
Maybe you should have asked for 100, or 1000. I can probably come close to 100 though.
PolitiFact explains well the context in this article:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jan...
"most experts we spoke to said this is a case of the Trump administration’s clumsiness, not coziness.
Back in April, when the sanctions hit the aluminum giant Rusal, it sent shockwaves through the global aluminum markets. The price of aluminum soared over the following weeks. Europe, which relies heavily on Russia’s metals market, faced the prospect of plant closures and lost jobs. Even now, the European Union strongly supports the lifting of sanctions."
"according to experts, the Treasury discovered it had bitten off more than it could chew.
"They were done clumsily," Alina Polyakova, of the Brookings Institution, said of the sanctions. "It seems clear that the administration did not plan for the dramatic effects on aluminum markets and the knock-on effects on European businesses.""
So the only example you came up with in fact says nothing of the presumed friendliness of Trump towards Russia. Next one.
This "friendly" policy is basically not considering what Russia does within its borders justification for military action. This was always the unofficial policy, with the new bit being the Trump administration doesn't pass moral judgement on what Russia does within its borders.
A pipeline between germany and Russia strengthens Russia (increased GDP, increased control over the EU) and weakens the EU (which is full of countries that have proven they cannot defend themselves). Increasing the chance of war with Russia, and creating another mess for the US to clean up.
Seems pretty consistent foreign policy to me.
On the other hand, imagine that you're Canada and the US decides to build a pipeline to China/North Korea. Would you want Germany to back you up against the US? Because that's what's happening with Nord Stream 2. The US got into the whole thing quite late. Other European countries, such as Poland, Denmark, Estonia and others, were already against the pipeline, but Germany pushed it through anyway. Germany and Russia cooperated on dividing up Europe before.
Why would the United States be the one to decide if Germany is allowed to build a pipeline to Russia or not?
Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?