Angela Merkel defends ties with Russia and blocking Ukraine from NATO | Hacker News Reader

Angela Merkel defends ties with Russia and blocking Ukraine from NATO

bbc.com

5 pointsbelter5 comments

Disclosure: I haven’t read the article. Just checked title match.

I remember someone quoting Germany’s former Chancellor telling “the US just want to sell their dirty gas” obtained via fracking. After she left, R invasion triggered the US receiving substantial orders for LNG. And of military equipment. I am still awaiting for someone to calculate how much it tilted trade balance. And how farther it pushed the possibility for a sustainable development.

Realpolitik is a german word.

Realpolitik is very German. The current phrase is "Wandel durch Handel", sounds more polite, but don't misunderstand. Germany will pay nice money and later Germany will call shots. 25 out of 27 EU members are subsidised by Germany and the Netherlands, guess how many of those 25 run a trade surplus against Germany. Same thing with gas: Putin wanted to diversify the gas distribution and at the end he had two pipelines to Germany.

AFAIK Germany's never ever backed down in one of those confrontations. Handel fine, good money for everyone, but the Wandel absolutely has to come on the other side.

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

And I was wrong. By EU’s own statistics trade in goods with the US is in the black (1).

In particular figure 7 (2) shows imports of energy goods jump from roughly 30 Bn Euro to around 100 Bn of from 2021 to 2022. Falling to around 80 Bn in 2023. Compensated by other exports.

Figure 8 (3) shows natural gas imports falling by almost half in 2023.

Those are the facts. Stats are most certainly nuanced, as example haven’t checked which goods are excluded, but I have to adjust my layman level understanding of it.

1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

2. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

3. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It's quite odd not to even give an inch of admission that she fucked up somewhere.

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