If so, then the trans-Atlantic unity will come under serious strain as well. This is happening just as Europe began to climb into a bigger suit, that of an independent economic and military bloc to be reckoned with (not that it was at any moment a realistic ambition). Instead Europe will be forced to take a back seat again, have thousands of US troops on the ground for protection, while the US escapes unscathed if not considerably strengthened.
It's going to be a bitter pill to swallow.
For military it's not a reality today, but pre-pandemic it was absolutely a realistic goal many were working towards. Economically, it rivals the US in GDP terms and has some extremely strong sectors. Politically it's the main leader in human rights and regulation of new stuff that needs it (GDPR, Digital Markets and Services acts).
With the US in the process of imploding politically, the EU needs to maintain all of those and go even further.
What is new now is that the parties are forced to compromise given that the ideal scenario became dead past (and yet not fully).
I don't think renewables will be the full solution, but perfect is the enemy of good. If europe can reduce its gas dependence to the point where it can obtain the necessary supplies outside of Russia, that will be a win.
Sure, but that's always the case. The question is, how much more expensive. And that's going to vary a lot depending on how much the natural gas and electricity required is part of the overall price.
No doubt we're in for a rough transition, which we should have avoided by embarking on it twenty years ago, but I see any evidence for long term ruin. Not due to loss of energy imports from Russia, anyway.
German and Italian.
But at least we got something something demoncrency to some random country 90% of us have not been able to identify on a map before the war. I mean.. come on, it is not some brown-people shithole like Syria, Iraq, Yemen that it was totally OK to bomb. This is the evil Russia who we are talking here about!
And we are the good guys.
Better to live poor in a recession than having some random corrupt country where people anyway dont care who robs them being part of Russia.
NOT MY WAR.
You're quite a moron, or willfully ignorant, if you can't identify the second biggest country on the European continent.
> Better to live poor in a recession than having some random corrupt country where people anyway dont care who robs them being part of Russia.
No, if 'some random corrupt country' becomes part of Russia, you're next. You have a choice to live in recession, or to live under the Russian yoke. And these days, the first time you speak out against being under the Russian yoke, you're going to find yourself in a gulag deep in siberia. You may want to get yourself sized for your coffin in that case, you won't make it out alive.
I could post links to video clips of quiz shows where privileged citizens (public figures) of countries which owned very large parts of the world literally could not (exactly the case you point to, and much more - not even their own former and present colonies, not even after wars...).
So, while I agree with your statement (which I would not have written in those terms), do not underestimate the dire situation of societies.
Any widget made in Europe - already losing in cost competition with East Asia - will now become even more expensive to make. It takes circa 10 years for nuclear reactor from plan-to-grid, and that is on the basis *with& the available workforce to do it, which of course Europe doesn't have any more.
Mass purchase of the Hualong One reactor might be a solution if the Chinese can make them fast enough. Either that, or dig up some more coal and burn that for the next decade or two, so goodbye climate change goals. It's an absolute mess, pain has started to percolate now, but will reverberate for years