Thanks, I was afraid I might have come across that way. Was aiming more for “we have to show we’re tough and not just talk it”.
Id be more willing to suffer discomfort if diplomatic options were exhausted before this war.
As it is we are made to suffer ultimately, because NATO and Russia are spoiling for a proxy war and because the US has been itching to sell us some overpriced LNG.
The US should be giving us LNG at a discount on prewar levels. This is largely their proxy war, not ours.
If you did, the USA involvement in Vietnam would be a proxy war for the USA, and the American war of independence would be a proxy war for the British — in both cases some other power also had some interest, but I would never call either a proxy war for the USA and British respectively.
The US has a long history of demanding others to sacrifice themselves at the altar of its imperialist struggles, whether it's Australians being sent to die in vietnam or European pensioners being asked to die of cold in dec 2022.
This seems wrong. 1) Russia cannot be penalized to any great degree with it producing negative consequences. Though I'm open to being wrong in this, and would entertain ideas about alternative sanctions that would penalize Russia equally without being uncomfortable. And 2) The discomfort is a function of EU tying itself too closely to Russia, something about which it was warned repeatedly over the decades even by some of its own members. The discomfort here is not merely necessary to penalize Russia, but also to remedy reliance on a Russian government wielding that clout as a license to act just as it is acting now in the Ukraine.
The EU must be willing to experience discomfort, but they are not doing so right now merely as a hollow signal.