How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is

Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by qznc on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:41AM (#32663679)

Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace. Especially after the Cold War I can understand this incentive to strengthen the relations with Russia. The mistake was to continue to believe in it after Putin took Crimea in 2014.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by ChuckNorris89 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:43AM (#32663729)

>Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace.

False. Even before Ww2, European countries were still economically interdependent and yet still WW2 happened. What maintains peace is democratically elected leaders and separation of powers so that no single mad-man can ever singlehandedly turn a nation to war. That's why we had peace since WW2, democracy. Which Russia rever really had. So being dependent on countries with corrupt undemocratic governments where one leader can do whatever he feels like with no real opposition to stop him, was the real issue.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by hef19898 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:09PM (#32664238)

All the time during the cold war the rather close economic ties between the west and the USSR (grain, gas...) helped to keep communication channels open and reduce the risk of the cold war turning into a hot one in Europe. Not seeing this is quite, well, short sighted.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by ChuckNorris89 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:18PM (#32664410)

Grain and gas trade didn't prevent WW3, but fear of mutual annihilation from nuclear weapons did. Same how current grain and gas trade between Russian and the west didn't stop it invading Ukraine.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by hef19898 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:27PM (#32664549)

Sure, MAD helped. As did all those wars in Korea, Vieynam and Afghanistan (there was one involving Russia way beforw the US went there, based on the ignorance of history in this thread I thought it makes sense to add). More than one thing can be true at the same time, especially in a complex world

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by landemva on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:30PM (#32664611)

> What maintains peace is democratically elected leaders

It depends, and it is often cultural. Iraq was peaceful for many years without real elections.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by dwheeler on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:59PM (#32665059)

> Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace.

I think history has plenty of counter-examples. Interdependence also provides incentives for one to either take over or extort the other. Taiwan and mainland China are interdependent, and that situation is tense.

I think it's the other way around. If the relationships are already peaceful, then it's much safer to have interdependence. Think Canada/US, or the various countries within the EU.

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Re:How Bad Europe’s Energy Crisis Is by qznc on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @04:51PM (#32668186)

Hmm, assuming your inverted causation has an interesting implication: The press currently likes to chastise european politicians for the gas interdependence with Russia. This is just an result of peace though. It does not make sense to punish them for maintaining peace. Thus, we should rather congratulate european politicians for what they achieved until now.

I don’t claim that interdependence is sufficient for peace. It is much more complicated. So counter examples are to be expected. What I still believe though: Intentionally increasing interdependence makes war less likely not more.

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