Russia kicked out of G8 | Hacker News Reader

Russia kicked out of G8

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39 pointsdutchbrit30 comments

This is really nice, but Russia is pretty important to Europe, thus any response is limited to token actions only. Russia supplied 32.6% of oil and 38.7% of gas used by EU in 2007. I would love to see some of more recent data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_s...

This goes to 2010 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....

[edit] this might explain part of the data as far as Canada http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0204...

  Russia supplied 32.6% of oil and 38.7% of gas used by EU in 2007.

Seeing that the Russian state is nearly exclusively financed by selling Russian natural ressources, this also poses a big risk to Russia: they can't just switch to sell their oil and gas to someone else (i.e. China, as the infrastructure to just shift the flow of oil and gas to the East is not present). Both the EU and Russia are tied together.

However the EU can gain independence from Russia fuels easier than Russia can generate a new means to replace those funds.

If they really want to put Putin in a bind they can simply revoke all travel Visas for Russians by means testing it. Bottle the rich oligarchs up in Russia and they won't tolerate it long.

Yawn. This is not a big deal.

There's no China, India or Brazil in the G8 (now G7) so it doesn't exactly represent the biggest economies in the world.

What the G7 does represent however are some of the most debt ridden countries in the world!

China is drowning in debt and is one of the most debt ridden nations. In the last five years since the global recession, their economy has acquired more debt than any other country in world history in such a short span of time. At the rate they're accumulating debt, they're likely to become the most indebted nation, as their fake growth requires ever more credit per dollar of growth they're able to generate. They can either keep faking growth with debt, or they can crash.

Both their muni debt and their corporate debt are the highest in the world on a GDP basis. The two of those together are at least $15 trillion right now (and that's if you believe their numbers, it could be far worse).

Adding China would just drastically increase the amount of debt in the GX group.

China is a creditor nation. It's not drowning in external foreign debt.

Fake growth? Sure, I get it, China should behave more like responsible Western countries who report real figures all the time!

Maybe you've been reading too much Gordon Chang - he's been predicting the collapse of China every year for 15 years now, and he's been wrong every time.

I guess Forbes publishes his garbage because they know their audience, and some of that audience just can't bear to see China or Russia or India or Brazil or South Africa succeed.

China debt(According to CIA): 31.7

US: 72.5

Japan: 214.3

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_de...

The title is somewhat misleading, Russia's membership was suspended and considering Russia never was a full member this is hardly more than symbolic. The G7 were always a club of US friendly 'capitalist' states and are in no way comparable to the UN.

As much as I dislike what Russia is doing removing the pretty much last serious chance for diplomacy looks like an extremely dumb move.

  removing the pretty much last serious chance for diplomacy

I don't think that the G8 framework is/was the last serious chance for diplomacy. There are still multiple channels open for diplomatic negotiations, be it bilateral or within EU/Russia negotiations i.e.

IMO it all comes down to domestic pressure: how much is the Russian economy going to suffer, and how are the major economic figures within Russia are going to act? Are they going to put pressure on the Putin administration not to further pursue the path of direct conflict?

Putin essentially missed to advance the Russian economy aside the natural ressources sector during his long reign. And the loss of foreign investment and efflux of domestic money is already posing a big risk to the Russian economy.

What I'd like to know is whether there's the potential to have their UN security council seat revoked. I don't know if there's even a contingency in place for that (if not, that was a foolish omission), but if there is, Russia is certainly moving in the right direction to hit it based on their current popularity deficit.

Absolutely not, and it's by design, not foolish omission. The point of the permanent Security Council seats isn't to reward states for good behavior, but rather to recognize the reality that when a great power like Russia or the US or China feels that UN institutions are acting against its core interests, it can tear the whole structure down. So yeah, the veto-wielding members can veto any attempt to take that power away.

The set of states with vetos may be a little out of date - it's basically the major powers left standing after WWII - but the principle is still useful.

The set of states with vetos may be a little out of date - it's basically the major powers left standing after WWII - but the principle is still useful.

I'd call that a contradiction. The principle can't possibly be that useful if, a few decades later, the result of its application is deadlock.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting they should. It just crossed my mind as something they might look at after this.

> The principle can't possibly be that useful if, a few decades later, the result of its application is deadlock.

It deadlocked less than a decade in, which is a big part of how we ended up with the current operation where the things in the UN Charter that plainly say they require the approval of all the permanent members of the Security Council are treated as if the permanent members have a veto which they must be present and affirmatively choose to use. (It's also how we ended up with the "Uniting for Peace" [1] framework for an end-run around deadlocked veto powers even if they are present and actively voting.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...

I'm pretty sure the 5 permanent members are 'made men' and can't be revoked, but even if there were a mechanism, you can bet that China would veto it.

The UN isn't NATO -- the whole point of it is to have a common forum for countries that aren't military allies and have conflicting interests.

If the governments with a permanent UNSC seat couldn't lose that seat, the (People's Republic of) China wouldn't have a vote at all.

Ha, fair enough. That slipped my mind, and now I'm going to go read up on the details of how exactly that happened, mechanically.

EDIT: Just a general assembly vote was enough, apparently. That's a weird situation all around though, hard to analogize to kicking a country off (as opposed to deciding who speaks for that country).

> That's a weird situation all around though, hard to analogize to kicking a country off

It takes a 2/3 vote in the GA to expel a country completely from the UN. (See Articles 6 and 18 of the Charter.)

Deleted comment

EDIT: Deleted parent claimed there was no mechanism to remove a permanent member of the UNSC

Sure there is: a 2/3 vote of the General Assembly can expel a member-state of the UN (and the General Assembly can, as it did in the case of China -- a permanent member of the Security Council -- also decide to recognize a different government as the legitimate representative of a member-state, which has much the same effect.)

What the countries allied against Russia's moves into crimea don't seem to realise is that Russia literally doesn't give a shit:

Lavrov added that Russia was "not attached to this format and we don't see a great misfortune if it will not gather. Maybe, for a year or two, it will be an experiment for us to see how we live without it."

Or, at least, Russia says they don't. But, of course they are going to say that.

Okay - Putin plays the long game. Russia is the last standing of the Great Powers of pre WWI and it shows in their thinking.

The noise will be temporary, diamonds and crimea are forever. Putin's bet is that the US-centric world is coming to an end and that the powers that rise are much more like the powers of times past.

> Russia is the last standing of the Great Powers of pre WWI and it shows in their thinking.

Russia now isn't the same except in approximate geography to any pre-WWI great power, whereas both the United Kingdom and the United States (generally regarded as a great power since at least the Spanish-American War) have continuity of regime (though the former has shed much of its pre-WWI empire.)

US was not considered a great power before WWI and UK declined a lot after WWII.

And while Russia may have had changes of regime it have had very consistent pursuing of its interests. After all the Ribbentrop Molotov pack would have been signed no matter if the tzars were in power or Stalin.

The UK's shed all of its empire, aside from a few islands.

Are you not forgetting about fall of USSR?

Nope I didn't. But this as with the chaos after WWI were just temporarily setbacks. Whereas GB, France and Germany geopolitical power is greatly diminished and in no way recovering.

It may be primarily symbolic but its message is clear to Russian officials and foreign investors alike. The Russia brand has been stained (they did it to themselves).

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