Comment by de6u99er | Hacker News Reader

Comment by de6u99er | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

[flagged]

Please elaborate on how you think the United States is escalating Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Presumably you mean they are truly escalating it, and not simply helping Ukraine defend themselves. Certainly this has helped prevent a swift Russian victory but I think we can agree self-defense is not escalation.

I suggest to study this Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

So Ukraine trying to defend itself from an imperialistic invader is escalatory now?.

You'll notice that agitprop often assigns or denies agency in a convenient way.

The US is supposed to have agency and bad intent.

Ukraine has no agency.

Russia is just acting reactively to provocations.

See also wife beater logic.

Plenty of NATO interventions, where not a single NATO member was attacked.

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

Russias melting permafrost has made many natural resources available. I bet some political do ors want to get their hands on those resources.

> Plenty of NATO interventions, where not a single NATO member was attacked.

But that’s not the context that Ukraine wants to join NATO in, Ukraine wants to join NATO to permanently kick the Russian imperialistic invaders out of their country and making sure they never come back.

Effectively just holding Russia to the multiple agreements they signed where they promised to respect and not threaten Ukraines borders or sovereignty.

You are trying to reason with russian troll. It futile, they have plenty of scripts to convince you white is black and black is white. Just move on

Pity there wasn't enough port capacity to offload LNG in sufficient quantity to replace the pipelines.

Plus the even larger carbon footprint per unit, which European countries do care about.

True, but those ports exist now.

I'm not surprised. The German plan to liberalise Russia via extensive trade and energy integration with them was definitely demonstrated to be the massively wrong theory without evidence it always was.

So now they've realised what they were often told along the way, it's a strategic weakness. I'd be building port capacity like crazy also.

Turns out, you can't introduce democracy to a country just by buying things from them, China is a very obvious exhibit B.

It's the well-deserved public execution of a strain of ludicrous liberal(as in liberal economics, not the Democrats) pie-in-the-sky faith based thinking.

Best summed up by that dumb quip about "no two countries with McDonalds restaurants have ever gone to war".

All hail the (apparently democracy loving) Invisible Hand!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/15/gas-blackmail-...

> then escalating an ongoing conflict in Ukraine would be highly useful.

But why would a nuclear power fall for such a ruse

It's not a ruse. IMO Russia had two options. Allow NATO membership for Ukraine or invade them. I velieve if Putin would have allowed Ukraine to join NATO he would have had an accident qnd someone else would have ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

False Dichotomy. There were no plans of Ukraine joining NATO before the war. Even if there were diplomatic avenues would have been available to Russia.

> IMO Russia had two options

Sounds like a choice to me

Maybe Germans didn’t want it, but hey I guess coal is always an option. Canada and Mexico have always been happy to buy it and the domestic market is booming. It’s been especially useful for converting coal plants to gas and we’ve cut net emissions as a result. And well… Neue Ostpolitik and that smug German sense of superiority am I right?

Coal doesn't work. Many houses in Europe have one gas heating per apartment.

Germany has restarted many coal power plants in recent years.

So you're saying Putin is a US puppet, who's deliberately crippling Russia for US benefit?

Then I guess the Russians had better vote him out!

I have never said that. But sanctions against Russia have been very good for US gas exports.

Putin had two options. Either allow Ukraine become a NATO member which would have resulted in him being replaced or invading Ukraine.

The sanctions have also impacted Russia's economy, which is probably far more the point.

Also, US isn't the only country that exports LNG, how would they ensure that the US reaped the benefits fully?

American voters don't care what happens in Russia. What they care about is how much money they make and how much they pay for gas. Since the Ukraine conflict Bidenomics has suddenly taken off. At least that's how I here on the old continent see it.

Sure, but was it the USA sanctioning Russia or the EU? EU voters are far more likely to object to a bellicose dictator invading countries nearby.

Who's hurting more, Germany or Russia?

I mean Germany lost 20 people to this war, even if a German life was worth 100 Russian lives, Germany would be hurting less.

Fair question, probably Germany.

They chose to believe in a liberal capitalist just-so story that more commerce with an unfree nation inevitably led to a burgeoning middle class demanding Western style democracy, and well, they fucked up real bad.

Same theory was applied to China, same theory failed.

Hence the European's sudden desire to expand the capacity for LNG offloading in European ports, they chose the faith based thinking of certain economists over cynical realism, and handed Russia a leash around their necks, who, in a move that shocked no-one who wasn't in German government in the last 15 years, used it to try to control them.

The idea that Ukraine was on the way to joining NATO ante-bellum seems exceedingly doubtful to me. I can not see Germany - who was getting a ton of gas from Russia - ever allowing that to happen. Honestly I don't think France or Italy would ever have been for it.

And this after Crimea and all the shenanigans in eastern Ukraine.

> Either allow Ukraine become a NATO member which would have resulted in him being replaced

By why does NATO exist, and why would countries seek to join it of their own accord?

It's so strange how all these former Soviet Bloc countries have wanted to join a mutual defence alliance.

Whatever could've prompted them to do so?

The Soviet Union collapsed over 3 decades ago. Ukraine was going to be admitted any minute now…

Who would exactly replace Putin? He seems to have a pretty strong grasp on his power.

But only until he doesn't, which could happen very quickly.

> If my country had huge amounts of excess fracking gas and the infrastructure to transport it overseas already existed but noone would want to buy it because it's much cheaper buying it from Russia transported through pipelines, then escalating an ongoing conflict in Ukraine would be highly useful.

Surely if this was the case then it would be in Russias interest to just leave Ukraine right.

That would stop this 5d CIA plot from succeeding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com