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It has been baffling to me since long before the Russian invasion that Europe would allow itself to be at the mercy of a single man like this. I just don’t unde
by throwaway894345 5y ago
It has been baffling to me since long before the Russian invasion that Europe would allow itself to be at the mercy of a single man like this. I just don’t understand how this could have been allowed to happen. Now Europe finds itself a party to genocide.
- abalashov 5y agoIt's not such a mystery. A lot of the policies were decided from a combination of shorter-term political calculus and a rather optimistic view about the harmonising effects of the liberal economic order, globalism, free trade, democracy, interdependence, peace dividends, and other Thomas Friedman things. It's easy to forget now after a few years of erratic Trump and populist protectionism talk, but it was not long ago at all that was basically conventional wisdom in the US, too.
- zdragnar 5y agoTrump warned them, and the German delegation laughed in his face. He claims he gave a gift of a white flag to Merkel to waive in surrender to the Russians after negotiations to block the Nord pipeline fell through. But, Trump wasn't alone in thinking this way. In the 2012 election, Romney called Russia the USA's number 1 geopolitical foe, and Obama laughed it off. Meanwhile, several high profile poisonings, siding with Assad in Syria, behind the scenes antagonising in Iran, etc. all made one thing abundantly clear: Putin is no friend of "Western liberal economic order", and the uneasy truce was not in any way guaranteed to last. If nothing else, putting all of your eggs in one basket and hoping he played nicely with your natural gas supply was the sort of foolishness that shouldn't be given positions of power.
- throwaway894345 5y agoI’m can buy a certain amount of “liberal economic order” for things like household goods or perhaps putting your energy supply in the hands of a democratic nation, but putting your oil supply in the hands of a dictatorship seemed foolish well before Putin invaded Ukraine.
- dzhiurgis 5y agoEastern Europe already knew about this - hence one of the first LNG terminals in the world, conversion from burning oil to biomass for heating, power links to nordics. So much resistance and criticism back then, quiet now.
- NickNameNick 5y agoThey thought they could make Russia dependent on their money, and thus encourage russia to integrate with the EU.
- throwaway894345 5y agoThat’s a wild gamble with the lives of your populace. It’s one thing to build an interdependence on a democratic country and quite another to put the fate of a continent in the hands of a single dictator.
- abalashov 5y agoHow about an "emerging democracy"? /s
- tarsinge 5y agoIsn't that similar to what the US did with China? The interdependence is maybe not at the same strategic level but it is still significant, wouldn't overnight interruption of any import from China be very painful both to US consumers and industries?
- abalashov 5y agoIt's very similar, and I think the pandemic supply chain situation--which persists--laid that bare.
- throwaway894345 5y agoThe supply chain situation was global and for Americans it largely amounted to an inconvenience. People weren’t freezing for lack of energy to heat their homes. America should do more to decouple itself from China, but it isn’t the same as Europe’s dependence on Russia.
- throwaway894345 5y agoThe “strategic” bit is key. The US doesn’t get food or energy from China (although our economy is deeply intertwined at this point), but it does provide a lot of food to China. Even still, I wish the US did less to aid and abet China.