Gas increased everywhere, Europe had like 120% price increase. At least Turkey is not under sanctions so it will get cheap gas!
Every war has horrible tragedies and innocent lives lost or harmed, but to suggest invading a stable democracy to annex it is even remotely the same as supporting a locally led uprising against a murderous dictator like in Syria is absurd and offensive.
To be clear, I don’t agree we shouldn’t sanction Russia. EU should remove its dependence on Russia since Putin doesn’t seem to be going any where and if he does, we don’t know what that means
But our politicians are fucking up that too... just look at the german fight against nuclear power, while being happy to buy coal-generated power from poland.
We have a nuclear powerplant in slovenia, and we're talking about expanding it for literally 30 years now, and all the arguments against it are "this will take 10years, that is too long, we need power now". ...well, and austrians protesting against it.
From the very beginning the "locally led uprising" was 50% Islamists.
And by the way, Turkey is essentially annexing Syria right now. Unlike Ukrainians, the Syrians can't meaningfully fight back because Turkey is in NATO, so their forces have absolute safe harbor.
Beyond this, there is no reasonable moral argument that an annexation is any worse than installing a puppet dictator.
NATO won't protect Turkey if they are the aggressors. NATO is a defensive alliance.
NATO means that Turkey doesn't have to worry about any retaliation from Syria's allies. That is to say, impunity. On the other hand if Israel invaded Syria and IRGC troops fired a missile onto a base in Israeli territory, the US wouldn't invade Iran, but they would if it was into Turkey. That's a significant chilling effect.
Preventing allies from retaliating
The Serbs are still stirring things up in Bosnia. Stop now and embrace Tito's genius.
You learn something new every day...
Did the US want to annex that country into the US? And convert its citizens into obedient Americans? And murder everyone who resisted?
The benefit the US gets from protecting Poland is that in doing so it helps keep Russia boxed in, it keeps great influence over the EU (Poland is a pivot of US influence on the EU), thereby greatly helping curtail 2 out of 3 threats to the US's position as the most powerful country on Earth. It's not done out of benevolence but it's quite great for Polish people.
That's, by the way, a result of a 12 year period, compared to the list you gave that's over 80 years.
Those aren't great lives by any means, but avoiding Iran-Iraq V2, or Turkish invasion of most of Syria, a complete Azerbaijani victory, or complete subservience to China, is genuinely a positive. On the greater balance, simply existing as a counterbalance to the US is something that's useful for most of the world, which explains indifférence over Ukraine.
So no, it’s not the same at all as NATO intervening in an actual ethnic cleansing campaign.
Somehow we treat those wars and those agressors differently.
We really don't. There's been much acknowledgement that the Iraq war was a mistake and wasn't justified, since no weapons of mass destruction were found.
I think it would have been great for countries to sanction the US over it, but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them. But Russia should have sanctioned US and Europe, they should have cut their supply of oil for example. I'd have been for it.
Just as the US should have been sanctioned then, and the war in Iraq should have not happened or been prevented, so is the war in Ukraine.
Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
Note: The other distinction is that Iraq was a clear and obvious dictatorship, so there was hope that it could improve the lives of the people of Iraq and lift them into more individual rights and prosperity.
Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
So from the angle of picking a side as well, it's easier to side with Ukraine, which appear to support individual rights and democracy, and against Russia, which appears to oppose individual freedoms and seems to be moving towards full on dictatorship.
But we didn't sanction them. We're still friends with them. We even helped them.
> but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them.
I'm pretty sure 'we' (our leaders, who sent our armies there) knew that iraq had no such weapons... Tony Blair even half admited it.
> Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
So, we knew iraq was a mistake, and we stopped? After the first time? Or after the second time? What about syria? Libya? What about somalia? Didn't biden just send more troops there? I won't even mention afghanistan... US basically armed the terrorists for the next few decades with their pull-out.
> Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
Let's be fair... ukraine has areas where a lot of russians live, and they weren't very nice to those russians (and i mean "nice" in the same way as israelis are not "nice" to palestinians...). Somehow many people have forgot about those things (ukraine) or don't care about the others (isreal).
Yes, we didn't sanction them, and you seem to argue we should have, and I agree. That's why I think with Ukraine this time we're doing the right thing, same thing we should have done with Iraq. Do you disagree?
And before you say “Ukraine”, consider that Ukraine and Russia have a common history going back hundreds of years and together with Russia were part of the USSR. The attack on Ukraine is illegitimate, but at least it makes some logical sense.
Russia going after Romania or Poland which are part of EU and NATO and were never part of the USSR, but instead individual countries in the Warsaw Pact makes no sense at all.
The Baltics are more complicated, but once again - NATO and EU.
We are much closer to this.
Also guess who might have joined Russia after Ukraine? You don't think having Russia suddenly as your neighbor doesn't matter?
So they wouldn’t have had Russia as neighbor, but a Russia-friendly country, just like they did for most of the rather brief time Ukraine existed as an independent country. Or another Belarus, which Poland at least is already neighboring.
I get why these countries are nervous but Ukraine’s very very different from Romania or Poland or any other EU country.
Also, who gives a f*ck what Putin says?!?
While true, I think it’s the wrong criticism in this case, as the necessity of hurt has to be at the target of the sanctions rather than at the one imposing them.
Rather:
The sanctions that appeared after the Russian annexation of Crimea were the painless ones. The current situation is so much worse for EU interests that the EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression.
The problem here is... are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil? Russia is just exporting it to eg. India and China, them having cheaper oil is making their economies stronger, russia still gets the money, and europes economy is going down. So, we're hurting our economy to not hurt the russian one while helping china and india.
The EU has about 10x the nominal GDP of Russia. Is a 10% contraction of the EU for one year equivalent to the entire Russian population reverting to subsistence farming for a year?
Also: I should’ve thought of this before, but cost to each party isn’t the right metric — it’s what does the EU gain at what cost to the EU (and likewise for each party), so the question is probably more like:
Q1) does this situation look like a warmongering power trying to rebuilding a lost empire? If so, what’s the cost of sitting back and doing nothing?
A1) let’s say p=0.1, €3T/year
Q2) [insert more hypotheticals, probability estimates, and costs here, a real analysis wouldn’t fit in a comment]
Finally: multiply the chances by the costs, add them all up, that’s what it makes sense for the EU pay.
> If we read between the lines, we're also at the brink of a massive food crisis
We’re not even close to that, despite the breathless headlines and the fact the Russian forces interfered with a significant quantity of food production and are blockading the ports that would normally export it from Ukraine.
Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
They're also friendly with countries like china and india for the rest of the things they need, and have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
I'm more afraid that Janez and Hans and Pierre will have to pick up crops to survive, and not Boris.
> Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
And it's funny, because this is a purely economical issue... pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you. You cannot pay romanian paychecks to british workers.
I’m not asking you to judge the likelihood of two things, nor their consequences, I’m asking you to tell me if you think they are equivalent. Does A=B, where A is a 10% recession, etc.
> Russia produces enough food, that we (=rest of europe) have problems if they don't export
False.
Russia exported €1.8 billion agricultural products to the EU last year:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/7292...
The EU agriculture sector is about 1.5% of its $US 17,000 billion nominal GDP, i.e. $US 255 billion nominal, which at current exchange rates is €237 billion, or to put it another way, what it gets from Russia is 0.75% by value of what it makes itself.
I’m old enough to remember when the EU’s biggest problem was colossal over-production of food, and it’s agricultural policy being called a market-distorting subsidy.
This is also backed up by EU countries having access to more food per person than Russia. Not that it matters because both are about 1000 kcal/day higher than actually needed: https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply (because, in case you skimmed over the bit at the top, hypotheticals about what constitutes “equal harm”).
> they also have enough oil/gas, that again, we have problems, if they don't export it
Yes (hence Hungary realpolitik), but not insurmountable problems, and we should be moving away from those fuels anyway even without this war.
> they also have most of the raw materials available locally plus a lot of companies that produce everything needed for basic infrastructure.
Define “basic infrastructure”.
Then ask yourself why Russian tank production halted.
> have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
Not on the scale they need to keep their economy running.
> pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you.
Vets are licensed. The number required is greater than all of the ones in the UK.
As for crops, the farmers have tried this and get basically no takers. Can they try again for even more money? Only if the supermarket are willing to pay more for the food, which requires the customers to be willing to pay more for the food, which they can’t because too many are already short of money.
Before the UK left the EU, there was technically one such pipeline from Norway, but it was mainly used to supply an oil export terminal located in the UK, rather than for importing oil into the UK for domestic consumption.
Europe expects to rely on sea transport to import oil after foregoing use of oil from the Russian pipelines. This is why the landlocked countries of Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia were concerned during the sanction talks, though Hungary's Orban has exaggerated the concern to obstruct sanctions and/or to score dubious Realpolitik points.
Hungary's only alternative is the Adria pipeline that starts at a port in Croatia; it can be used in either direction and has sufficient capacity to meet current demands. Czechia's only alternative is the IKL pipeline that starts at a pipeline junction and tank farm in Vohburg (near Ingolstadt) in Germany. Slovakia's only alternative (if my research is accurate) is to be supplied through Hungary, using the Adria pipeline and a soviet-era connection between Hrkovce and Százhalombatta to be run in reverse mode.
See e.g. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-turns-to-Russi...
I don’t think sanctions will make Russia stop the war, the only thing that will is a large enough flow of dead soldiers coming back home. But it will impact its ability to finance this war, its military capabilities (replace hardware), and potentially (though not clear to me), create opinion backlash in Russia.
I wouldn’t know.
But I can say the fungibility (or not) of oil is necessarily equivalent for both importers and exporters.
Consider the implications if it were trivial to change markets: Russia losing X units of exports per year to the EU and increasing exports to China and India by a total of X, means China and India are buying X fewer units from not-Russia, which means the EU could buy X more units on the everyone-else marketplace.
Realistically, Turkey China and India are mostly exporters. When Europe and the US go into recession, they won't need as much oil because they won't be exporting as much (they are the dominant importers)... and that likely means that Russia turns off wells when their storage fills up (soon). Those wells are slow to restart. The rest of OPEC replaces their oil (at somewhat higher prices) for the next few years.
What is an immediate concern is food, oil, and fertilizer not being exported from Ukraine (can't plant/harvest or ship) for much of the developing world. Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka... Sudan are all very dependent on wheat, sunflower oil, and fertilizer from eastern Ukraine. Even India will be quite affected. See how evil EU starves the poor! Only beautiful Russia can save them!
This seems wrong. 1) Russia cannot be penalized to any great degree with it producing negative consequences. Though I'm open to being wrong in this, and would entertain ideas about alternative sanctions that would penalize Russia equally without being uncomfortable. And 2) The discomfort is a function of EU tying itself too closely to Russia, something about which it was warned repeatedly over the decades even by some of its own members. The discomfort here is not merely necessary to penalize Russia, but also to remedy reliance on a Russian government wielding that clout as a license to act just as it is acting now in the Ukraine.
The EU must be willing to experience discomfort, but they are not doing so right now merely as a hollow signal.
Thanks, I was afraid I might have come across that way. Was aiming more for “we have to show we’re tough and not just talk it”.
Id be more willing to suffer discomfort if diplomatic options were exhausted before this war.
As it is we are made to suffer ultimately, because NATO and Russia are spoiling for a proxy war and because the US has been itching to sell us some overpriced LNG.
The US should be giving us LNG at a discount on prewar levels. This is largely their proxy war, not ours.
If you did, the USA involvement in Vietnam would be a proxy war for the USA, and the American war of independence would be a proxy war for the British — in both cases some other power also had some interest, but I would never call either a proxy war for the USA and British respectively.
The US has a long history of demanding others to sacrifice themselves at the altar of its imperialist struggles, whether it's Australians being sent to die in vietnam or European pensioners being asked to die of cold in dec 2022.
Europe and the US also "foolishly" integrated with China and whole lot of other countries who are not exactly shining beacons of freedom. Either crawl to your own hole and do not deal with anyone or admit that there is a world around us and it sometimes does not conform.
Besides Europe did not become rich just by being nice. It and UK in particular had raped the rest of the world in the process. It does not seem to mind "mass murder" either when it is done by "right" countries to a "bad" ones.
Edit: locals have been at it for yemen in particular.
EDIT: Ok I see now what you took offensively. Most of us Westeners I should have wrote. Most regulars peoples' attention as example diverted much more to the case of Johny Depps' Trial than to the war in Ukraine.
Age of information, not communication and all that
If your country is a member of NATO, i'm pretty sure there are a few countries right this moment, that consider your soldiers on their land as an occupation.
I live in slovenia, and even we have soldiers in places like syria , and I'm pretty sure none of the locals want us there... now we, the occupying force of country X, complain about someone else doing the same to country Y.
But native syrians have had their country basically destroyed by nato (too). So did afghanis, etc., and they're not happy for being occupied (as we saw after the pullout from afghanistan).
Considering turkey is a part of nato, it's interesting that we let them attack the kurds without any sanctions... maybe we have to wait until they annex a part of syria to make it "bad".... but in reality, noone will care.
Europe spent decades of cooperation with Russia instead of working toward complete independence from Russian energy.
Thanks to sanctions, Russia is becoming independent (less/no ties to outside economies)--do not recommend.
A democratic country is expected to be more rational than an autocratic one. The EU was naive in trusting Russia.
America did the same in the 2000's and ramped-up domestic supply of oil.