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Only tangential to the article, but does anyone find risky that absolutely critical services depend on one or two foreign private companies? And other than los

Only tangential to the article, but does anyone find risky that absolutely critical services depend on one or two foreign private companies? And other than losing money, what would be the consequences of Gazprom pulling out of Germany completely? I’m guessing that Russia just doesn’t have enough economic leverage to do so.

laurent92 5y ago
Do you think it is fine for EDF to operate 8 nuclear plants of UK, “outside EU”? Do you think it is fine for Gmail to suppress email accounts of entire companies in Europe? Especially if they already did it for individuals and their work Gmail. I think we live in a dangerously intertwined world, and a bit of email redundancy in each country would be quite important.
gumby 5y ago
The theory is that if the two countries depend on each other deeply they will avoid disputes that would disrupt that relationship. That hasn’t worked out so well in this case, but has worked well IMHO to break the cycle of warfare in Western Europe over the last 70 years or so, the longest stretch of peace in in that region for over a thousand years or longer. Under a rational actor/game theoretic model that is the most likely outcome. Russia decided to use the gas as a weapon and germany decided to use its financial structure (I.e. its ties to many other countries) as a weapon back. In the medium and long term I think Russia needs germany more than the other way around. More broadly: your business is in trouble if it only has a small number of customers or suppliers. That diversity provides resilience. In geopolitical terms, it’s it’s fine to have only overseas suppliers (and even good from a comparative advantage perspective) as long as they aren’t correlated. Germany’s bet (wrong) was that making an oversized commitment on Russia would provide a welcome guarantee to reduce the chance of isolationism, That didn’t work. But Russia made the opposite bet: that the commitment meant they had a stranglehold on Germany. But Germany is too rich and has too many friends for that to be any more than a transient threat.

laurent92 5y ago

Do you think it is fine for EDF to operate 8 nuclear plants of UK, “outside EU”? Do you think it is fine for Gmail to suppress email accounts of entire companies in Europe? Especially if they already did it for individuals and their work Gmail. I think we live in a dangerously intertwined world, and a bit of email redundancy in each country would be quite important.

gumby 5y ago

The theory is that if the two countries depend on each other deeply they will avoid disputes that would disrupt that relationship. That hasn’t worked out so well in this case, but has worked well IMHO to break the cycle of warfare in Western Europe over the last 70 years or so, the longest stretch of peace in in that region for over a thousand years or longer. Under a rational actor/game theoretic model that is the most likely outcome. Russia decided to use the gas as a weapon and germany decided to use its financial structure (I.e. its ties to many other countries) as a weapon back. In the medium and long term I think Russia needs germany more than the other way around. More broadly: your business is in trouble if it only has a small number of customers or suppliers. That diversity provides resilience. In geopolitical terms, it’s it’s fine to have only overseas suppliers (and even good from a comparative advantage perspective) as long as they aren’t correlated. Germany’s bet (wrong) was that making an oversized commitment on Russia would provide a welcome guarantee to reduce the chance of isolationism, That didn’t work. But Russia made the opposite bet: that the commitment meant they had a stranglehold on Germany. But Germany is too rich and has too many friends for that to be any more than a transient threat.