With war at its doors, Europe discovers a capacity for action | Hacker News Reader

With war at its doors, Europe discovers a capacity for action

economist.com

40 pointsjcfrei39 comments

Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/JKwMw

With NATO unable to intervene militarily due to the threat of nuclear war, it initially looked like Ukraine was on its own. Once again, the Russian bear would do as it wills.

However, coordinated sanctions backed by the crucial will to take an economic hit if necessary have made it possible that, if it the bear cannot be fought, it might instead be fenced in and driven back with starvation.

Germany is still importing Russian oil, but less of it. Do they and the EU have the will and the coordination to turn off Russia's last pipelines of money for munitions?

If the West can tame the bear without fighting it, that will be a huge win for Western diplomacy. It will prove that the post WWII world order can do what it was designed to do. It will prove that its possible to tamp down the aggression of bad actors without threatening the world with nuclear war.

If the West fails in this and either lets Ukraine fall or decides to roll the dice and intervene militarily, then the future security of the world is going to take a big hit. The bear must be tamed, but without war.

If you're in Germany, tell your government to ban Russian oil. This will hurt Germany, but could be the key difference that keeps nuclear conflict off the table.

>Germany is still importing Russian oil

Like the USA

> you're in Germany, tell your government to ban Russian oil. This will hurt Germany.

And Russia would sell to China. So Germany hurts itself and Russia doesn't care

The U.S. produces more oil than they consume and are sitting next to massive export capacity in Canada too. Biden has no excuses here. Build some damned infrastructure and get off Russian oil.

Russia does vastly more trade with the EU than China. Even if China continues to do nothing, that doesn't mean demand for Russian goods will suddenly undergo a massive increase in China. Supply will exceed demand, prices will fall, and Russia will have less money for bombs.

You do know that Russia isn't buying arms and ammunitions, it's producing them, domestically. Throwing the economy at that can make a lot or arms before the lack of hard currency from oil and gas sales slows that down.

That's even worse. The US doesn't need the oil from russia but still buys it. Europe is more dependent.

So everybody wants from Europe to hurt itself but at the same time the US is allowed to needlessly buy oil from Russia.

Bruh we import 3% from Russia and we can turn it off instantly

That's even worse. So they buy even if they didn't need to.

It's not worse, it's slightly better because if it was larger we wouldn't be able to easily turn it off and the amount of money going to Russia would be greater.

I think they mean it's worse morally.

Well, it wasn't worse morally because we cut our purchase of Russian petroleum yesterday. Who was worse? The British, who will need until the end of 2022 to end their contracts with Russia.

So Germany hurts itself in the short term so they can't be hurt worse by Russia at a later stage

Yes, let them sell to China. Let them get paid in Chinese currency.

> And Russia would sell to China. So Germany hurts itself and Russia doesn't care

Russia would probably sell to China (not sure about the added complexity involving currencies => probably depends on the goods that Russia could buy from China), the question is probably how much of it China would buy & when (e.g. existing contracts with other parties, potential negative impact on foreign public relations, not sure if oil quality plays a role for certain types of consumptions, etc...).

Currently it looks like that Germans and probably all other european countries (why do we always end up talking only about Germany? Are other EU countries that much less relevant?) would be willing to be "hurt themselves" by paying more in/directly (I guess something similar to the whole blood-diamonds theme, but in this case it's more direct), I guess that the question is "how much more".

Maybe if most of the countries are impacted the same way and therefore there aren't major "hotspots" that would have access to a low price (and therefore boosting their lower-cost production) then the only impact would be a little bit of spread inflation?

EDIT:

forgot to mention that the price of oil from Russia "urals" is currently as well increasing, but less, as it's detaching itself from the reference "brent" ( https://ibb.co/mXGf5XX ) because of less people/companies/countries willing to buy it (because of inability to pay for it because of the various sanctions, and/or because of bad public relations that that would generate).

Russia cannot export to China so easily. That over-land route east does not have sufficient pipeline and is not nearly as profitable.

Selling to China is a huge profit reduction for Russia.

If Putin can be tamed without a war between Russia and NATO depends to a large degree on Putin now.

EDIT: I had this discusion a couple of times now, consensus: As long as invoices are paid, transportation is avaialable, neither party (customer, supplier, banks,...) nor product are on a sanctions list or under embargo you continue to respect your existing contracts and obligations and continue business. Things like oil and gas have been excluded from any snactions (last I know, things are changing incredibly fast...).

Europe have the advantage of time. A few weeks in it’s gonna get warm and the need for Russian gas will drop dramatically. Especially at the consumer/voting public level.

That will give Europe another 8-9 months to find alternatives. The only alternatives that are available in that timeline are gonna be a massive ramp up of wind/solar and possibly restarting expensive coal operations. And energy efficiency, which I suspect governments in Europe are gonna bring in a raft of policies to emphasize.

I suspect they will go in big for renewables and then try and fill in any gaps with coal.

Those 9 months also give the US time to ramp up their gas exports to Europe.

Cutting off energy imports from Russia right now wouldn’t just be shooting them selves in the foot, it will remove the last piece of leverage the Europeans have against Putin. The Ukraine invasion isn’t likely to involve NATO troops and so needs to end at the negotiating table, at which time Europe needs the stick of imposing further pain by ending energy imports.

You can say anything about Putin, but at least he knows plenty about taming bears. Maybe we should ask him for help!

> ... Yet a Wende—a watershed, a turning-point, the crossing of a Rubicon—is a big, important, intimidating thing. ...

The author might want to review things that happened in the US immediately after 9/11. Action, yes, but in almost every case exactly the wrong actions were agreed to in short order and executed. Both parties, united as one. Just look at all the unity! Maybe out of this tragedy will emerge a new sense of cooperation.

We're still paying the price for that fever-induced debacle.

> This is heart-warming stuff.

For me it's spine-tingling.

European politics is a textbook example of the Shock Doctrine [1]: they will not do anything unless they're forced to do so. Which unfortunately often means too little, too late.

[1] https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html

Interesting take, especially if you factor in action on climate change. The US is unable to get anything done, while the EU has a track record of getting results.

The most interesting part is that Switzerland gave up its neutrality, something they didn't even do in World War II.

Even Switzerland does more business with the rest of the world than with Russia.

Neutral doesn’t mean taking no action though. It just means they’re not part of a broader alliance. Switzerland can take any action they wish

Now they are part. And neutrality has a lot do with perception by others

https://weltwoche-ch.translate.goog/daily/fuer-das-ausland-h...

It's not particularly European.

The whole planet is pretty much aligned on the sanctions. South Korea is not part of the EU. Nor is Switzerland.

> The eu, at its heart a “peace project”, now dabbles in the vocabulary of war.

What garbage! It's a political entity. Von Clausewitz had something to say about war and politics . . .

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/67848.Carl_von_Claus...

It started as an economic project after WWII explicitly to foster peace between France and Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Comm...

Europe seems to turn a blind eye to the former Soviet bloc states, but perhaps Ukraine has showed them that they could be next. I’ve always found it extremely frustrating by how little Europe seems to do to support its neighbors instead pushing the US to intervene.

Some point the European Union has to grow a spine and stop thinking America’s going to bail them out of every conflict.

The other way to look at that is that the US needed NATO and the Coaltion of the Willing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The EU is a economic and political thing, not a military one.

I come to a different conclusion. As this situation has unfolded, we’ve seen waffling on important issues, such as Germany helping the Ukraine at all, blown promises, such as the planes that never got to the Ukraine, and weapons support that is too little too late.

I see the same Europe as always. Conflicted in direction, visionless in strategy, and slow in implementation.

Well, the war is merely a week old. The changes that happened aince are profound. And the EU did deliver thousands of AA and Anti-tank missiles. Sure, loads of those are basically Cold War surplus. But deliver they did, figuring out deliveries of weapons that cannot be packed on a truck is different, just look at the length the US had to ge before lend lease was passed to get planes cross the Canadian border.

I don't think I can remember such a unified Europe in my adult life.

EDIT: NATO dod sends tons of help before, mostly money. It's fair to assume that money wasn't spend on new smartphones for everyone.

President Biden has been sounding the alarm for a month, "Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine". Literally none of the EU nor NATO members did much until they literally started driving the tanks in. Russia was trying to convince the world they were simply doing military exercises near the Russia/Ukraine border and most of the EU actually believed it!

You really think that? Not even in the background, while readying for the inevitable? It wasn't public or covered by the news, sure. But NATO and the EU did prepare. Just just not openly, because that could have pissed of Putin, and there might still have been the chance to prevent this war.

> President Biden has been sounding the alarm for a month

The White House has been doing that for, at least, approximately 3 months; it's been since early December (maybe even earlier). Here’s the Dec. 7 Press Briefing where it is the main issue:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

> Literally none of the EU nor NATO members did much until they literally started driving the tanks in.

That's very much not true, which is why they were able to do quite a lot right away when the invasion happened despite all the diplomatic efforts to dissuade it.

> NATO dod sends tons of help before, mostly money. It's fair to assume that money wasn't spend on new smartphones for everyone.

With a lot of Western (mostly NATO/EU members, not all via NATO or EU) money and training, Ukraine has, IIRC, doubled the size of and significantly modernized it's military since the Russian invasion began in 2014.

While we also, additionally use the media frenzy to quietly either bury other topics or do implement laws that would otherwise create a big outcry.

Like throwing money at energy companies to keep nuclear power plants running longer while already having thrown money at them for over a decade for closing down these plants.

I am all for becoming more energy independent. But this is just something I can't wrap my mind around.

Although I agree that weapons support could have been done earlier, you must concede that the western response has been an order of magnitude larger than what happened in 2014. A simple look at the value of the Ruble can confirm this.

As opposed to US and especially UK sanctions which were mild at best?

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