Ukraine I get - do bad things, blame them on Russia, and then use that to get NATO (i.e., American) boots on the ground. It's like robbing a bank; highly objectionable, but the motive is readily comprehensible.
What is _very_ hard to understand is what the Federal Republic of Germany is trying to achieve. There seems to be no thought there at all.
Europeans like being slaves. Even when you get a political class german to admit the obvious, that the United States committed an act of war on germany, their response is to stare at their shoes and mumble something about how bad slaves deserve their beatings.
Like a dog, a european literally cannot imagine life without a Master.
As in my country (Canada), Germany's political class are owned by Washington. The same is true of Britain, France, Italy and others. The political elite do not dare defy the USA, lest they be politically destroyed practically overnight. After all, a country that will blow up its ally's pipeline won't hesitate to do the same to a mere chancellor, prime minister or president. They're all expendable and they know it. And that's why the words that any self-respecting country should say to America will never cross their lips.
The countries that make up the European Union, as well as the European Commission, have developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome towards both the USA and Ukraine. Their prisoners, their slaves... Such behavior can only be justified by the quality of the current leaders... In an interview for DPA, the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin said of Scholz that he behaves like a: "beleidigte Leberwurst". The "great" German Chancellor was silent. How was that possible?!... The great German Chancellor was silent in Washington as well, and all the other great leaders are silent... They probably only speak when they are alone and the room is well soundproofed. Maybe not even then...
You may note that germans went from chest-thumping The World Belongs To The Strong Might Is Right assholes to the biggest meterosexual pacifists on the planet, the moment it became clear that europe's fate was no longer to be decided in westenr europe but in Washington and Moscow.
USA was Johnny come lately. Since the medieval times, Imperialism was invented by the Mongols, then came French, British and Russians, then Austrians and Prussians, and at some point the USA (19th-20th century).
Well there were many empires before the Mongols, who didn't really have an empire.
But raised in England and now with an Irish passport, what I'd find funny if it weren't so pathetic is England, having lost its empire after WW2, fantasizing about still being important because they tag along like some Tonto after the Lone Imperial Ranger with whom they sort of identify because he speaks almost the same language, and sometimes pretends to take his hanger-on seriously.
I now live in Amsterdam, and sadly watch my country of birth drowning slowly in mid-Atlantic, having lost her mooring and bearings among other postcolonial powers on the mainland who mostly understand European empires are over and are trying to adapt.
And I fear the end of the American Empire will be even more messy and destructive than those of Europe.
Germany punishes itself for the slaughter in WW3, and instead of wearing hair shirts or repeated self-flagellation and physical mutilation, they apparently do it by acting foolishly and finding self-defeating policies & inane cultural rules to enforce, so that they suffer, needlessly destroying their more positive cultural traits in the process.
Germany isn't trying to achieve something. They have their foreign policy captured by the US Deep State and Uniparty. Particularly, if there is an alignment between France and Uncle Sam. It wasn't like that all the time - only started after the old dinasaurs like Helmut Kohl were out of power.
Thank you for drawing attention to this major event. The importance of it needed some time to sink in, but at least it did... I wonder when the bells will start to ring in Europe.
Please don't forget that Germany must either fix the damaged Nordstream pipelines this year or they will risk not being able to use them ever again. Obviously nobody in Germany talks about it. Instead they may auction the pipelines this year and a US investor already stated they want to buy them. That will push Germany further into the US arms. Then Germany will become more reliant on the international gas market and overall become more reliant on the US.
It was yet another temper tantrum. Big Serge summarized it quite astutely in his recent piece, "Ukraine’s Strategic Dissipation": "Ukraine’s war continues unabated, but its energies and focus increasingly seem dissipated and unmoored from a particular vision or theory of victory." Aurelien's recent musings on long-term planning ("The Long Run") also come to mind...
The EU seems to be its own worst enemy. The European Commission and powerful governments within the EU seems to find it acceptable to have a poorer Europe that finds it even harder to provide Ukraine with materials to fight its war, as opposed to a robust, re-industrialized and militarizing Europe using the very Russian gas to achieve this.
As for Ukraine; forethought and retrospective thinking of their hotheaded actions seems to be rare in Kiev. Zelensky has not been targeted by the Russians is because he helps Russia more than the Ukrainians, and to do so might find a replacement who is more a competent opponent. If NATO, as the article seems to suggest, collapses or becomes more disunited over lack of cheap energy then please explain to me how this helps Ukraine?
Sorry: One more thing on this. Russia still has the gas and is free to send it to other customers - for instance to China and India. By the time Europe gets round to mending fences with Russia and asking for cheap gas - they may find that Russia has found more lucrative and stable markets than the perfidious Europeans. Then what will the Europeans do?
I'd be willing to bet that the fingerprints on this one belong to either Blinken or Sullivan. I think they want to make it hard for Trump to bring peace to the conflict. If it's Zelensky, then he probably better start having someone start his car for him - Russia's not the only one that can reach out and touch someone.
Only now, after ignoring all the N*zis, the war crimes, the complete stifling of the Ukrainian opposition, and the consolidation of all of Ukraine's media under government control, are they finally getting to see just what kind of creatures they have willingly climbed into bed with.
Perhaps you should change the question "what is Ukraine trying to achieve" to "what are the British trying to achieve"? Despite all the absurdity that surrounds us, it is the British who are able to understand this "absurdity." Everyone says that too many dogs are being hung on Americans, I think this is a mistake. Their actions are more characterized by "obedient neutrality" than "universal evil" (the explosion of the Nord Stream and the invasion of the Kursk region were the work of other dirty hands and sophisticated minds). I cannot believe that in these 30 years Ukrainians have ever been able to act "at their own risk" in accordance with "their" policies.That would really be completely absurd.As they say in Russia: you can leave the village, but there is no guarantee that the village will not stay with you.Bandera's men have turned Ukraine into a huge village living on someone else's mind.Moreover, at the expense of this MIND.
Good for Ukraine. In case you missed it they are fighting a war against an aggressor. If winning that war means bringing Russia to its economic knees, so be it! And it’s clever in this sense: the US has never been a supporter of Russian natural gas sales to Europe (Regan imposed sanctions on pipeline tech), so this step puts the preferred US policy in place.
It’s not like “Ostpolitik” or a touching belief in Norman Angelesque “peace through trade” theories have worked.
Russia is a terrorist state with a gas station. Sooner they can’t ship any gas the better for us all.
It’s not possible to win a war with defence alone (though as we will see this year, it plays a role), so going on the strategic offensive is both logical and necessary.
The majority of Europe (excluding the self excluded Hungarians and Slovaks) are in favour (finally) or ceasing all Russian gas imports.
Ukraine’s actions assist the implementation of this new policy. Very European of them.
"The majority of Europe... are in favour..." - so stop importing! What is the problem? Or is it actually an official European policy these days to shut things down by blowing things up? Turkey is a member of NATO, it is partially their infrastructure as well. Do they agree with things being blown up? If not, why did not you add them to that list of "self excluded"? :)
Update: Just thought about it a bit more. There is actually an angle where there is no contradiction between your statements and my mostly rhetorical questions. It just requires a little more granular view than just saying "majority of Europe", since this "of Europe" lumps together too many things. One can distinguish between population and the ruling elite. I agree that whatever you said by "are in favour" is probably applicable to the latter. The former, however, might not be as agreeable to be disconnected from the gas. Thus, it is rather hard for the elite to just officially stop importing. Solution? One possibility is to nudge a friend of theirs, unofficially of course, things will get blown up. Then, the elite would blame the war, war is on Putin, so its all Putin's fault. Elite is happy, population has somebody to blame. All is good!
I think you are spot on, but perhaps overlooking one possibility. I have often wondered if Western Europe actually views this war as desirable, since they can use it to forcibly cut off their public from fossil fuels, blaming Russia and avoiding the political penalty they surely would pay for doing it voluntarily themselves.
So maybe they DO want these things to be blown up?
I think you were replying to the shorter version of my comment, while I, not seeing your response, was working on the "update" in there. And I think that we got to essentially the same conclusion :)
@Kevin are you one of those people who believe the war started in 2022? Then you don't understand the conflict. If we lived in a fair world, the people of Donbass were given a chance to vote what they want. But that never happened. So, war was the only way for Russia to stop Ukraine. The bigger problem is that the more Ukraine fights back, the less of it will remain. The more people will die. Only keyboard warriors don't understand that.
Regardless of who we view as the "aggressor" and who we view as blameworthy for the geopolitics that first brought about the war, the strategy of targeting an opponent's economic livelihood or their sustaining infrastructure seems legitimate in and of itself. I'm not sure why it is labeled "a terrorist act" when one side does it, but not when the other side does it.
However, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of it as war fighting, I think it is unwise of Ukraine to take some of the actions it is taking with total disregard for the economic impact it has on its "allies" (and I use the term very loosely here).
Had the Ukrainian attack on TurkStream been successful, over 60% of Europe's imported natural gas supplies would have been cut off.
Please correct this mistake. 60 pct of Europe's import doesn't come via turkstream.
What is Ukraine up to? Pretty easy to answer - the same as Biden. Making a fait accompli for Trump - continue supporting the war.
Hungary have responded - this attack on Hungarian supply of energy, is an attack on Hungary.
We might see an unexpected attack on Ukraine from Hungary, Slovakia, and therefore also Romania and Poland - to protect national interests - like the Greenland spat.
EU member states have also slashed imports of Russian natural gas by two-thirds, from 45% of all gas imports in 2021, to 15% of EU gas imports in 2023.
No, the numbers are not questionable, and you are mixing the issues about gas and oil and oil products. Russia exports oil to India in huge amounts (2 million barrels per day). In India the oil is refined, some of it from rosnefts partners refineries, and some of that refined oil (diesel and gasoline) are shipped to Europe as Indian oil products. Now you know.
Ukraine I get - do bad things, blame them on Russia, and then use that to get NATO (i.e., American) boots on the ground. It's like robbing a bank; highly objectionable, but the motive is readily comprehensible.
What is _very_ hard to understand is what the Federal Republic of Germany is trying to achieve. There seems to be no thought there at all.
Europeans like being slaves. Even when you get a political class german to admit the obvious, that the United States committed an act of war on germany, their response is to stare at their shoes and mumble something about how bad slaves deserve their beatings.
Like a dog, a european literally cannot imagine life without a Master.
As in my country (Canada), Germany's political class are owned by Washington. The same is true of Britain, France, Italy and others. The political elite do not dare defy the USA, lest they be politically destroyed practically overnight. After all, a country that will blow up its ally's pipeline won't hesitate to do the same to a mere chancellor, prime minister or president. They're all expendable and they know it. And that's why the words that any self-respecting country should say to America will never cross their lips.
The countries that make up the European Union, as well as the European Commission, have developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome towards both the USA and Ukraine. Their prisoners, their slaves... Such behavior can only be justified by the quality of the current leaders... In an interview for DPA, the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin said of Scholz that he behaves like a: "beleidigte Leberwurst". The "great" German Chancellor was silent. How was that possible?!... The great German Chancellor was silent in Washington as well, and all the other great leaders are silent... They probably only speak when they are alone and the room is well soundproofed. Maybe not even then...
We invented imperialism...
And postimperailism
You may note that germans went from chest-thumping The World Belongs To The Strong Might Is Right assholes to the biggest meterosexual pacifists on the planet, the moment it became clear that europe's fate was no longer to be decided in westenr europe but in Washington and Moscow.
USA was Johnny come lately. Since the medieval times, Imperialism was invented by the Mongols, then came French, British and Russians, then Austrians and Prussians, and at some point the USA (19th-20th century).
Well there were many empires before the Mongols, who didn't really have an empire.
But raised in England and now with an Irish passport, what I'd find funny if it weren't so pathetic is England, having lost its empire after WW2, fantasizing about still being important because they tag along like some Tonto after the Lone Imperial Ranger with whom they sort of identify because he speaks almost the same language, and sometimes pretends to take his hanger-on seriously.
I now live in Amsterdam, and sadly watch my country of birth drowning slowly in mid-Atlantic, having lost her mooring and bearings among other postcolonial powers on the mainland who mostly understand European empires are over and are trying to adapt.
And I fear the end of the American Empire will be even more messy and destructive than those of Europe.
Germany punishes itself for the slaughter in WW3, and instead of wearing hair shirts or repeated self-flagellation and physical mutilation, they apparently do it by acting foolishly and finding self-defeating policies & inane cultural rules to enforce, so that they suffer, needlessly destroying their more positive cultural traits in the process.
Germany isn't trying to achieve something. They have their foreign policy captured by the US Deep State and Uniparty. Particularly, if there is an alignment between France and Uncle Sam. It wasn't like that all the time - only started after the old dinasaurs like Helmut Kohl were out of power.
Thank you for drawing attention to this major event. The importance of it needed some time to sink in, but at least it did... I wonder when the bells will start to ring in Europe.
I mean, there are still wise persons in the West that believe that Ukraine is doing all of this by its own initiative? 😅😅😅
Maybe are the same that believe that 10 Saudis with cutters did the 9/11😂
Please don't forget that Germany must either fix the damaged Nordstream pipelines this year or they will risk not being able to use them ever again. Obviously nobody in Germany talks about it. Instead they may auction the pipelines this year and a US investor already stated they want to buy them. That will push Germany further into the US arms. Then Germany will become more reliant on the international gas market and overall become more reliant on the US.
It was yet another temper tantrum. Big Serge summarized it quite astutely in his recent piece, "Ukraine’s Strategic Dissipation": "Ukraine’s war continues unabated, but its energies and focus increasingly seem dissipated and unmoored from a particular vision or theory of victory." Aurelien's recent musings on long-term planning ("The Long Run") also come to mind...
Standard Nazi tactics - Scorched Earth.
The EU seems to be its own worst enemy. The European Commission and powerful governments within the EU seems to find it acceptable to have a poorer Europe that finds it even harder to provide Ukraine with materials to fight its war, as opposed to a robust, re-industrialized and militarizing Europe using the very Russian gas to achieve this.
As for Ukraine; forethought and retrospective thinking of their hotheaded actions seems to be rare in Kiev. Zelensky has not been targeted by the Russians is because he helps Russia more than the Ukrainians, and to do so might find a replacement who is more a competent opponent. If NATO, as the article seems to suggest, collapses or becomes more disunited over lack of cheap energy then please explain to me how this helps Ukraine?
Sorry: One more thing on this. Russia still has the gas and is free to send it to other customers - for instance to China and India. By the time Europe gets round to mending fences with Russia and asking for cheap gas - they may find that Russia has found more lucrative and stable markets than the perfidious Europeans. Then what will the Europeans do?
I'd be willing to bet that the fingerprints on this one belong to either Blinken or Sullivan. I think they want to make it hard for Trump to bring peace to the conflict. If it's Zelensky, then he probably better start having someone start his car for him - Russia's not the only one that can reach out and touch someone.
Excellent analysis. Ukraine (the CIA) seems hell bent on destroying Europe should they move 1mm out of alignment. Really very ugly.
Only now, after ignoring all the N*zis, the war crimes, the complete stifling of the Ukrainian opposition, and the consolidation of all of Ukraine's media under government control, are they finally getting to see just what kind of creatures they have willingly climbed into bed with.
Perhaps you should change the question "what is Ukraine trying to achieve" to "what are the British trying to achieve"? Despite all the absurdity that surrounds us, it is the British who are able to understand this "absurdity." Everyone says that too many dogs are being hung on Americans, I think this is a mistake. Their actions are more characterized by "obedient neutrality" than "universal evil" (the explosion of the Nord Stream and the invasion of the Kursk region were the work of other dirty hands and sophisticated minds). I cannot believe that in these 30 years Ukrainians have ever been able to act "at their own risk" in accordance with "their" policies.That would really be completely absurd.As they say in Russia: you can leave the village, but there is no guarantee that the village will not stay with you.Bandera's men have turned Ukraine into a huge village living on someone else's mind.Moreover, at the expense of this MIND.
Good for Ukraine. In case you missed it they are fighting a war against an aggressor. If winning that war means bringing Russia to its economic knees, so be it! And it’s clever in this sense: the US has never been a supporter of Russian natural gas sales to Europe (Regan imposed sanctions on pipeline tech), so this step puts the preferred US policy in place.
It’s not like “Ostpolitik” or a touching belief in Norman Angelesque “peace through trade” theories have worked.
Russia is a terrorist state with a gas station. Sooner they can’t ship any gas the better for us all.
except the aggressor in this case is Ukraine and the victim European countries
It’s not possible to win a war with defence alone (though as we will see this year, it plays a role), so going on the strategic offensive is both logical and necessary.
The majority of Europe (excluding the self excluded Hungarians and Slovaks) are in favour (finally) or ceasing all Russian gas imports.
Ukraine’s actions assist the implementation of this new policy. Very European of them.
"The majority of Europe... are in favour..." - so stop importing! What is the problem? Or is it actually an official European policy these days to shut things down by blowing things up? Turkey is a member of NATO, it is partially their infrastructure as well. Do they agree with things being blown up? If not, why did not you add them to that list of "self excluded"? :)
Update: Just thought about it a bit more. There is actually an angle where there is no contradiction between your statements and my mostly rhetorical questions. It just requires a little more granular view than just saying "majority of Europe", since this "of Europe" lumps together too many things. One can distinguish between population and the ruling elite. I agree that whatever you said by "are in favour" is probably applicable to the latter. The former, however, might not be as agreeable to be disconnected from the gas. Thus, it is rather hard for the elite to just officially stop importing. Solution? One possibility is to nudge a friend of theirs, unofficially of course, things will get blown up. Then, the elite would blame the war, war is on Putin, so its all Putin's fault. Elite is happy, population has somebody to blame. All is good!
I think you are spot on, but perhaps overlooking one possibility. I have often wondered if Western Europe actually views this war as desirable, since they can use it to forcibly cut off their public from fossil fuels, blaming Russia and avoiding the political penalty they surely would pay for doing it voluntarily themselves.
So maybe they DO want these things to be blown up?
I think you were replying to the shorter version of my comment, while I, not seeing your response, was working on the "update" in there. And I think that we got to essentially the same conclusion :)
Aren't you tired of repeating this mantra about the "aggressor"? Change the record... After all, it's no longer fashionable.
@Kevin are you one of those people who believe the war started in 2022? Then you don't understand the conflict. If we lived in a fair world, the people of Donbass were given a chance to vote what they want. But that never happened. So, war was the only way for Russia to stop Ukraine. The bigger problem is that the more Ukraine fights back, the less of it will remain. The more people will die. Only keyboard warriors don't understand that.
Regardless of who we view as the "aggressor" and who we view as blameworthy for the geopolitics that first brought about the war, the strategy of targeting an opponent's economic livelihood or their sustaining infrastructure seems legitimate in and of itself. I'm not sure why it is labeled "a terrorist act" when one side does it, but not when the other side does it.
However, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of it as war fighting, I think it is unwise of Ukraine to take some of the actions it is taking with total disregard for the economic impact it has on its "allies" (and I use the term very loosely here).
Had the Ukrainian attack on TurkStream been successful, over 60% of Europe's imported natural gas supplies would have been cut off.
Please correct this mistake. 60 pct of Europe's import doesn't come via turkstream.
What is Ukraine up to? Pretty easy to answer - the same as Biden. Making a fait accompli for Trump - continue supporting the war.
Hungary have responded - this attack on Hungarian supply of energy, is an attack on Hungary.
We might see an unexpected attack on Ukraine from Hungary, Slovakia, and therefore also Romania and Poland - to protect national interests - like the Greenland spat.
you will not this added the deliveries from TurkStream PLUS the Ukrainian cut off which amounts to 60 percent plus a little more.
EU member states have also slashed imports of Russian natural gas by two-thirds, from 45% of all gas imports in 2021, to 15% of EU gas imports in 2023.
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/closing-tap-russian-gas-re-exports_en
The buy Russian gas through India now and call it Indian gas. Those numbers are questionable.
No, the numbers are not questionable, and you are mixing the issues about gas and oil and oil products. Russia exports oil to India in huge amounts (2 million barrels per day). In India the oil is refined, some of it from rosnefts partners refineries, and some of that refined oil (diesel and gasoline) are shipped to Europe as Indian oil products. Now you know.
Zelensky (and Yermak and Budanov) is turning into Frankenstein's mistake.
How does that feel, Uncle Frank, across the Atlantic?
You ask good questions. In 2016 as I recall we reinforced the guard over the bunkers that store these weapons as a precaution. In 2019 I wrote an article about this problem for Asia Times. The link is https://asiatimes.com/2019/10/how-risky-are-us-nuclear-bombs-in-turkey/