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> but if Russia has the off switch for Germany's economy

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.

The Nordstream II project is curious, because it is just a project to double capacity of the existing Nordstream pipelines. It comes in addition to other pipelines which already supply Europe from Russia. If this pipeline has any political relevance it is making Germany less dependent on Poland's and Ukraine's relationship with Russia. The Russian influence on Germany stays the same.

Dependence goes both ways. Russia was reduced to (or built from the ashes as) a resource extraction economy; it's extremely dependent on Europe paying for its gas.

What are you talking about? Every country isn't trying to assert itself. Most are trying to stay our of the way and not get noticed.

Does the Trump administration and the rest of the US have a policy? To me it looks like chaos. US government is directed by a real-estate and tv guy. He would have difficulties locating Russia on a map and at the same time claims to be the best expert in military, strategy, trade, health care, basically everything.

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.

> 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.

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's really not so far-fetched to think Russia would annex a Baltic state sometime in the future. They've shown they have the capability and political will to annex similarly prepared countries' territories.

It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.

For a start Russia already has a Baltic state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast and, not only that, has access to the Baltic itself. So there's zero geopolitical strategic advantage.

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.

> think Russia would annex a Baltic state

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.

Russia doesn't need Baltic states. Their ports lost their value and the population is dying from poverty, drug addiction and alcoholism (fertility rate in Baltic states under EU is significantly lower compared to soviet times).

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.

You make it sound like it would genuinely be in Germany's interest to not have a pipeline with Russia. Americans are no more rational than Germans, so if what you say is true, where is the harm in letting Germans make their own decisions rather than having Americans make those decisions for them?

The word “sanctions” just describes a set of decisions that a sanctioning country can make. Any country is free to make any decision it wants to. If one country doesn’t like the decisions that another country makes, they can sanction them whereby the sanctioning country makes decisions about how it’s going to interact with the sanctioned country and typically how it will interact with other countries that also interact with the sanctioned country. The effectiveness of any sanction is determined exclusively by how much other countries want whatever it is that the sanctioning country has to offer. Liechtenstein has every right to start sanctioning the USA if it wants to, but it would have to first assess what would happen if it forced the world to choose between it and the USA.

Not saying Americans are right to impose, but as a neighbor European and an Earth citizen I do believe it would be in our collective interest not to create additional pipelines to Russia, or anywhere else for that matter.

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.

> 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

That would be less inconceivable than what they've already done in Ukraine.

Is it not also advantageous to Western Europe to have Russia dependent on WE’s oil and gas revenue?

> Today this would be inconceivable

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.

There's also an economic reason: if not for Russian gas, Germany will have to buy several times more expensive US gas. One more way to rule Germany (another is military bases).

"United States have no geopolitical strategy, but a lot of self proclaimed geopolitical strategists."

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.

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.

The people of Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine would beg to differ.

Go back another 60 to 70 years and a few more would too.

Russia feels that Crimea and eastern Ukraine is actually part of Russia. It was separated at paper, but it wasn't separated in souls. So you can expect further conquests of Ukraine parts, until there's no more people in the remaining Ukraine parts who identify themselves as part of Russian culture. And probably those who remain will just be conquered by Poland and that's about it.

Actually, people of Crimea are happy to be part of the US. But I guess you will never learn this from Western mass media.

Actually, people of Crimea are happy to be part of the US.

This is either a typo or some next-level tinfoil hattery...

Yes, it was a typo. I meant to say Russia.

Which of the following statements are true:

- 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

Ah, I like this game!

- 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?

that is the point.

Should British demand their colonies back?

Should Indians demand their land?

Heh, I cannot Reply to brnt's post so I am using 1 lvl higher. My favourite examples are ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Mongolia, etc. Cherry picking moments in time to redefine borders is dangerous to say the least. Give the Italians half Europe and Near East? Give Greece everything from South Italy (Magna Grecian) all the way to Afghanistan?

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))

How many people speak Greek in Crimea? How many are native Russian speakers?

People speaking a language is not a useful way of choosing your borders. Otherwise most of Latin America can revert to Spanish control, the US can be annexed by the UK, countries like Morocco can be colonies of the French again. The fact is that spreading your language is a basic element of empire building. The fact that Crimea, Ukraine etc have so many Russian speakers reflects their past.

I think what GP meant is that majority of people in Crimea self-identify as Russians, not Ukrainians - 68%, according to Wikipedia [1]

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics

Ethically identifying as Russian is certainly not equivalent to identifying as a Russian.

So, people speak English many places and the UK doesn't have any right to control those areas.

Look at the context (Crimea, 2020). If we are choosing between ancient greeks and russians then the language/culture/identity of the people should matter.

This is not about Ancient Greece/Rome/Russia/etc. My comment was: you cannot cherry pick which moment in History, a country's borders are convenient to you. I remember talking to a colleague from Poland that was proud that X centuries ago, Poland (or whatever the country/nation was called at the time had conquered big parts of then-Russia, even conquered Moscow. If we all think like that then a WW3 (Romans, Nazis, Mongols, etc.) is certain.

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".

According to you, the East and West Germany shouldn't have merged to "stick to the borders we got"

How to say... Russians invasions are acts of war, squarely and simple, but they do so without any tinfoil "geopolitical conspiracy" in mind.

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.

LOL, please, show any country looted by Russia. Even during Soviet times most of Russia GDP was spent to raise quality of life in republics, especially Baltic republics.

And now Russia spend enormous amount of money to develop Crimea. Where's the looting?

> more subjects, loot, and territories to use to stage further invasions.

That sounds like a geopolitical ambition to me.

The conquest of Crimea was probably more about providing a distraction for domestic audiences than anything else?

The "conquest" of Crimea was a response to an implied threat to a natural gas trade with Europe in the followup of a western-sponsored coup.

(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

Please don't go on about downvotes. It's against the site guidelines, is tedious, and usually turns out to be wrong. In the end your post got almost no downvotes relative to upvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it was the approach that a former ally (Ukraine) would open up the door to NATO/USA and Russia didn't like having a USA naval base right on its doorstep, and losing control of the Black Sea. There may already be USA'S military bases nearby (Romania, Bulgaria, etc) but not THAT close.

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.

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.

I have no idea whether this comment is meant sarcastically or not.

It’s probably not sarcasm. In many places this sentiment is prevalent. Introduce „freedom” and „democracy” to create „free market” and seed „capitalism”.

Every time I watch some "expert" on TV taking about some country, I think one thing - does this person have any real experience with the topic he/she is taking about? Have they visited the country they are dissing on TV, even once? Most of these so called experts are paid too.

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.

Brings back memories of U.S. soldiers being handed books about Arabs that were clearly orientalist and did not at all contribute to a real, unbiased understanding of Iraq, their culture etc.

It’s worse that that even. Lots of people who have experience and “know” are selling their opinion (trying to influence) to the audience. So often it’s their half of s story.

We would be better served by analysing ourselves than following the pack leader like unevolved wolves.

> 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

As a counter-example (one of many), Russia has been for a long time losing money by subsidizing Belarusian economy with cheap oil.

To what ends?

Didn't we go through the whole Cold War because of the conflicts in geopolitical interests between the West and the USSR states?

Today's Russia seems more assertive again with their geopolitical interests.

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.

Are you sure about that?

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlini...

I heard and read the text, that's an "elders of zion" level tinfoil.

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.

> 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.

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.

> possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. Today this would be inconceivable

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

I wish people wouldn't invoke useful idiot that often. It degrades the message to "everyone with a different point of view is an idiot, who doesn't realise they're being used". That's not a great message on a discussion board and rarely will lead to something constructive. And if you really hold that opinion and can put some irrefutable reasoning behind it... why not do that instead?

If Russia annexes any Baltic states it's liable to trigger nuclear war. All the Baltic states are NATO members.

It won't likely trigger a nuclear war. It would trigger a conventional war that would see NATO forces directly confront the Russian military and attempt to push it back out of the Baltics (and try to inflict severe damage if Russia refuses).

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.

Doubt it. It would trigger a cold war II but not a nuclear war.

The baltic states can not be defended militarily. If Ukraine were in the EU, would be a different thing.

Ukraine is not a Baltic state, the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are all in the EU and NATO members. No way the EU would let that slide.

I never said Ukraine is a Baltic state. Take out a map. Think about why the Baltic states can hardly be defended militarily. Think about what would be different if Ukraine were in the Nato (and a decent amount of Nato troops on the UA/RU border).

"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.

Sorry to be a pedant, but the UK's military capability is at an all time low. We have made awful purchasing decisions across the army, navy and air force, as well as failing to recruit enough people. There isn't a part of the UK military which isn't in crisis. We are not the force your post suggests we are.

Awful purchasing decisions from the US, uniformly. The deeper into this rabbit hole one goes, the stronger the smell of rats. One truly wonders who was persuaded to give away the entire fleet of carrier-borne aircraft to the US Marines - and how...

I read it as political stupidity rather than malice. Maybe not though. The requirement to have VTOL craft for our new carriers was an unforced error though, that necessitated the much more expensive model of the F35 that even the US doesn't generally use. We could've just opted for a better carrier design, or retrofitted.

Or just... kept the perfectly serviceable (indeed, newly refitted) fleet of Harrier VTOL carrier aircraft? Instead of practically giving them to the US? Who were mysteriously happy to have them, despite the ostensible F35 replacement being an American product?

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".

[1]https://youtu.be/kNyETSyc4qo?t=98

No disagreement here. I somewhat assumed there was a reason for the F35 at all..

France has a more capable and experienced force than Russia. Also, while small individually, the combined forces of the EU far exceed that of Russia. And the US has troops stationed in Estonia, they would most certainly not let that slide. Russia can't defend its population centres either, the whole discussion is quite absurd.

That was probably true 4 years ago. It's not at all obviously true today.

Er no, Ukraine was supposedly protected by the Budapest Declaration.

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.

Russia could have annexed the Baltic states when they secceded in 91, but chose not to. From their perspective, they had enough of empire and grew tired of propping the periphery. There was no need for these states to join Nato, and they could have remained as independant partners benefitting from trade with 2 blocks. The fact they chose to move away from Russia has more to do with corruption than logic.

Russia's war with Georgia and annexation of Crimea rather vindicates the Baltic states' decision to join NATO. Russia has made it manifestly clear that it wants the right to interfere in any country's politics that hosts a sizable Russian minority, and that it is willing to bring in the tanks should the host country refuse.

Russia-Georgia conflict started by Georgian invasion. It's a fact acknowledged even by EU. I guess that just "forgot" to publish it in the media and continue to confuse people saying that Russia started it.

It was a conflict initiated by Georgia but actually they were asked by US to start it.