O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks

Mostrando postagens com marcador Europe. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Europe. Mostrar todas as postagens

quarta-feira, 8 de novembro de 2023

Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, and the duty for Americans and Europeans: Would you sell them out?

Would you sell them out?

A question for American lawmakers about Ukraine

Timothy Snyder

November 8, 2023

 

Imagine that freedom was in decline around the world.  Imagine that things had gotten so bad that a dictatorship actually invaded a democracy with the express goal of destroying its freedoms and its people.  And yet... imagine that this people fought back.  Imagine that their leaders stayed in the country.  Imagine that this people got themselves together, supported and joined their armed forces, held back an invasion of what seemed like overwhelming force.  Imagine that their resistance is a bright moment in the history of democracy this whole century.  We don't have to imagine: that attack came from Russia and those people are the Ukrainians.  Would you sell them out?

Americans have an alliance in North America and Europe which has existed for more than seventy years, with the goal of preventing an attack from the Soviet Union and then from Russia.  Imagine that, when the Russian attack came, the hammer fell on a country excluded from that alliance.  Ukraine indeed took the entire brunt of the invasion, resisted, and turned the tide: a task assigned to countries whose economies, taken together, are two hundred fifty times larger than Ukraine's.  In so doing, Ukraine destroyed so much Russian equipment that a Russian attack on NATO became highly improbable.  With the blood of tens of thousands of its soldiers, Ukrainians defended every member of that alliance, making it far less likely that Americans would have to go to war in Europe.  Would you sell them out?   

(If there is anyone out there who still thinks that NATO had anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consider this: invading Ukraine made Russia far more vulnerable. If Russia actually feared NATO, invading Ukraine would be the last thing it would do. Russian leaders are perfectly aware that NATO will not invade Russia, which is why they can pull troops away from the borders of NATO members Norway and Finland and send them to kill Ukrainians.) 

For this whole century, American politicians and strategists of all political orientations have agreed that the greatest threat for a global war comes from China.  The scenario for this dreadful conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers could fight and die, is a Chinese offensive against Taiwan.  And now imagine that this can defused at no cost and with no risk.  The offensive operation the Chinese leadership is watching right now is that of Russia against Ukraine.  Ukrainian resistance has demonstrated how difficult a Chinese offensive operation in the Pacific would be.  The best China policy is a good Ukraine policy.  Will we toss away the tremendous and unanticipated geopolitical gain that has been handed to us by Ukraine?  There is nothing that we could have done on our own to so effectively deter China as what the Ukrainians are doing, and what the Ukrainians are doing is in no way hostile towards China.  Ukrainians are keeping us safe in this as in other ways.  Would you sell them out?

Imagine, because it's true, that the whole world is watching the war in Ukraine.  From everyone else's point of view, whether they like us, hate us, or don't care about us, Ukraine seems like an obvious ally and an easy win for the United States.  Anyone around the world, regardless of their own ideology, knows that Ukraine is a democracy and America is supposed to support democracies.  Anyone around the world, regardless of the state of their own economy, knows that our economy is enormous, far larger than Russia's, and that economic strength wins wars.  Anyone around the world can easily see that Americans are not at risk in Ukraine, and that Americans draw extraordinary moral and geopolitical gains from Ukrainian resistance.  From the point of view of all observers, in other words, defunding Ukraine would demonstrate enormous American weakness.  Is that the face we want to show the world?  Do we want to tell everyone that we are unreliable and unaware of our own interests?  Ukrainians, with American help, make Americans look sensible and strong.  Would you sell them out?

Imagine that this is a winnable war, because it is. Russia's main strategic objective, the seizure of Kyiv, was not achieved.  Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv.  Russia was forced to retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts.  Imagine the Russia's campaign to take Kharkiv failed.  Ukraine won the Battle of Kharkiv.  Imagine that Kherson, the one regional capital Russia has taken in this war, was taken back by Ukraine.  Ukraine won the Battle of Kherson.  Snake Island, lost early in the war, has been taken back by Ukraine.  Ukraine has taken back more than half of the territory seized by Russia in this invasion.  Knowing that all is this is true, imagine that Putin knows it too.  Russia's main offensive instrument, the paramilitary Wagner Group, staged a coup against Putin and that Putin had to kill its leader.  Imagine that Putin knows he cannot really take much more Ukrainian land -- not without American help, anyway.  Ukraine has a theory of victory that involves gains on the battlefield. Putin has a theory of victory that involves votes in the US Congress. Putin thinks that he has a better chance in the Capitol than he has in Kyiv.  Should we prove him right?

Imagine a world food system with Ukraine as a major node.  In normal times Ukraine can feed four hundred million people, and usually the UN World Food Program depends upon Ukraine.  Ukrainian exports feed some of the most sensitive parts of the Middle East and Africa.  Much of the instability in those regions is related to shortages of food.  Russia has destroyed a major dam to destroy Ukrainian farmland.  And mined Ukrainian farms on a huge scale.  Russia targets ports and grain storage facilities with its missiles, and claims the piratical right to stop all shipping on the Black Sea with its navy.  And yet...  Imagine that Ukrainians resist here as well.  Ukrainians farmers are hard at work.  Ukraine still supplies food to the World Food Program.  Ukrainians, through their own innovative weapons and clever tactics, managed to intimidate the Black Sea Fleet and open a lane for commercial shipping.  That they are feeding the people who needed to be fed.  Would you sell them out?

Imagine that we were a country that cared about war crimes.  And imagine that there was a law, an international genocide convention, that defined five actions that constitute genocide, and that Russians have committed every one of these crimes in Ukraine.  I cannot keep on writing about "imagining" when I have seen some of the death pits myself.  I cannot say "imagine" when writers I know have been murdered because they represent Ukrainian culture.  I cannot stay with my device when I read that the Russian state boasts of having taken 700,000 Ukrainian children to be russified, when every day Russian propagandists make clear that Russian war aims are exterminationist.  And yet Ukrainians resist and persist.  This is a genocide that can be stopped, that is being stopped.  We are living within the scenario, the one we say that we have been waiting for, when American actions can stop a genocide, simply by helping the people who have been targeted, simply by paying their taxes.  Whenever the Ukrainians take back land, they rescue people.  This is how they think of their liberated territories: as places where no more children will be kidnaped, no more civilians will tortured, no more local leaders will be murdered.  Would you sell out a people to a genocidal occupation?  A people that has done nothing but good for you?

I have heard the excuse that Americans are "fatigued."  I have been in Ukraine three times since the war began.  I have been in the capital and in the provinces.  I have seen almost no Americans, fatigued or otherwise, in the country.  And that is for the simple reason that we are not in Ukraine.  How can we be fatigued by a war we are not fighting?  When we are not even present?  This makes no sense.  It causes no fatigue to give money to the right cause, which is all that we are doing.  It feels good to help other people help themselves in a good cause.  

If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?

If you happened to know lots of Ukrainians, as I do, you would know people who have been wounded or who have been killed.  You would know people who get through their days with dark circles around their eyes, because everyone has dark circles around their eyes.  You would know people who have lost someone, because everyone has lost someone.  You would know people who are grieving and yet who are nevertheless doing what they can do.  You would not know anyone in Ukraine who believes that fatigue is a reason to give up.  Would you sell such people out?

I have heard the other excuse: that we need to audit the weapons we send to Ukraine.  The expenses are minimal and the gains are great: a nickel on our defense dollar, achieving what we cannot ourselves do with all the rest.  And here's the thing: the weapons we send to Ukraine are the only ones in our stockpiles that are being audited.  They are being audited not by accountants in suits and ties but by men and women in camouflage.  They are being used and used well by people whose lives are at stake and whose country's future is at stake.  Ukrainians have used American air defense more effectively than anyone knew that it could be used.  

Ukrainians are using American missiles that we consider outdated to destroy the most advanced Russian assets.  Ukrainians are taking American weapons built in the last century and using them to defend themselves and the rest of us in this one.  In large measure they are literally using arms that we would otherwise be paying to disassemble because we regard them as obsolete.  

If that battlefield audit done by the Ukrainian army is not good enough: well, then, by all means, American lawmakers, come and visit Ukraine and see for yourself.  You and your staffers would be very welcome.  Ukrainians want you to come. It would be a very good thing if more of us visited Ukraine.

I will tell you what I witnessed in Ukraine: when Ukrainians see American weapons systems, they applaud.  Would you sell them out?


segunda-feira, 24 de abril de 2023

China Embarrasses Macron on Europe - Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine (Editorial WSJ)

 Macron já tinha sido humilhado por Putin, ao tentar desesperadamente reter a invasão russa, anunciada diversas vezes por Biden. Agora está tentando convencer a China a parar com a guerra de agressão. Não conseguirá!

Mas, o embaixador chinês em Paris é um trapalhão: ignora os acordos feitos ao abrigo da Conferencia sobre Segurança e Cooperação na Europa (CSCE), com sede em Viena, e que cobriram inclusive as ex-repúblicas federadas da Ásia central. Ignora que os Estados bálticos foram perfeitamente independentes entre 1919 e 1940. Ignora a História e o Direito Internacional. Deveria ser chamado de volta a Beijing!

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 


China Embarrasses Macron on Europe

Beijing’s ambassador reveals China’s real views on sovereignty.

WSJ Opinio

By The Editorial Board

April 23, 2023 4:42 pm ET

Emmanuel Macron has been trying to triangulate between the U.S. and China, and it isn’t going well. China’s ambassador to Paris has now embarrassed the French President by declaring that the former nations of the Soviet Union aren’t really sovereign under international law.

China’s Ambassador Lu Shaye was asked on Friday on French TV whether he considered Crimea to be part of Ukraine under international law. In 2014 Russia occupied and annexed Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

Mr. Lu didn’t stop at Crimea. “Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretize their status as a sovereign country,” Mr. Lu said. The “as we say” is a nice diplomatic touch since the only international law that Beijing recognizes is what serves its increasingly imperial interests.

The diplomat is saying that the many countries that declared their independence when the Soviet Union dissolved aren’t independent at all. That would include Ukraine, but also the three Baltic states, Moldova, and the countries of central Asia like Georgia and Kazakhstan. The clear implication is that Russia is justified in its attempt to conquer Ukraine, and perhaps the other countries too.

The Baltic states are furious and said they’d summon the Chinese ambassadors to their countries on Monday. The French Foreign Ministry responded with what it called “consternation” at Mr. Lu’s remarks and said Beijing should “say if these comments reflect its position, which we hope not to be the case.”

What did the French expect? Mr. Macron kowtowed to China’s Xi Jinping on his recent trip to Beijing, saying that Europe shouldn’t take a side over Taiwan. He also beseeched Mr. Xi to use his influence to mediate a settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war. China spotted weakness, as it always does, and has now spat on the French President’s entreaties. Any diplomatic clarification will be a ruse.

China wants the right to snatch any territory it wants to take, including Taiwan, disputed islands off Japan and in the Western Pacific, and border lands with India and others. Maybe Mr. Macron will figure out he’s being played.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-embarrasses-macron-on-europe-sovereignty-soviet-union-baltics-ambassador-lu-de45b8ed


domingo, 5 de fevereiro de 2023

Lies and corruption: Sailor of the Black Sea flagship “Moskva” Alexander gives new revealing insights that contributed to seal the Moskva’s fate - Chris Snow (Medium)

 Uma história inacreditável, real e surpreendente, sobre o despreparo, corrupção e total inoperância no comando nas Forças Armadas da Rússia. Um trecho do relato do "marinheiro Alexander": 

"At one point, two loud explosions sounded, and the lights went out abruptly. Currently, I was in the cockpit and resting after the watch. Panic began, there were no commands or alarm on the broadcast for ten minutes, and then the senior assistant commander, Captain 2nd rank Gudkov, announced the gathering of personnel in the ship’s dining room, the appointment of emergency groups and the beginning of the struggle for survivability. There was darkness and smoke all around. As it turned out, the first missile hit between the galley and the dining room, and the second between the post of the Osa-MA air defense system and the torpedo tube, by the way, it is still not clear why it did not detonate."

Cabe ler por inteiro...

Medium, Jan 4, 2023

More than six months have passed since the inglorious death of the flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. Putin could not admit the fact of the loss of “Moscow” on the Kremlin TV, so the multi-layered lies hid any reliable information in its abyss. Lies accompanied the cruiser from the very beginning to the very end.

The Russian Volunteer Corps posted a unique interview with a survivor of the Moskva flagship Cruiser.

This interview also mentions pre-war events as well as the exact time of its sinking. This is an eyewitness report of one of the former crew members who is now fighting for Ukraine.

Purported image of Moskva on her final day afloat. Analysts suggest that the image is consistent with the vessel’s configuration and Ukrainian accounts of the strike (Unknown source)

The sailor’s name is Alexander, and he got on the cruiser Moskva long before Putin’s Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Here is the translation of the report in which he gives extensive background information about the incident from April last year. (Personal comments in brackets)

The story begins in June 2021, the Moskva sailed to the Mediterranean Sea, where it participated in the tracking of the British aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, during which we had a fire in a barbette with AAU (automatic artillery installation) AK-630 ammunition, back then the automatic fire extinguishing system worked, and the explosion was avoided.

There were a lot of problems. For example, we had the main complex of the flag radar, which should illuminate the airspace at up to 480 km, but in fact, every 30 minutes, there was an overheating with its subsequent shutdown. In addition to the flag radar, the cruiser had Nadir radar complexes located in the bow and stern, as well as Vympel complexes on the starboard and port sides.

Absolutely all radar complexes of the ship overheated due to improper maintenance and control.

The same "flag" saw nothing but highway civilian aircraft as it couldn’t even give out a non-existent target. The rest of the radars cover a 15 to 45 km radius. For all these reasons, until the sinking of the ship, it was necessary to monitor the airspace with the help of civilian programs on a laptop.

Subsequent deployments out to sea ended almost identically - failure after failure. In the fall of 2021, we went to the sea to monitor NATO and Ukrainian ships participating in exercises in the Black Sea.

The ship's gunners were tasked with hitting an artificial surface target with an AK-130 and AK-630 AU artillery piece. By the way, the first ended with a blackout on the entire ship during the rotation of the gun, and the second - ended in an unsuccessful firing and desynchronization of two AK-630 complexes (they were supposed to work in pairs but decided to turn in opposite directions of each other).

In addition to the terrible technical condition, there were simply inhumane conditions for the life of the crew on board.

During a twenty-day deployment in the Mediterranean, "one and a half" liter of fresh water were given out per person for three days. In addition, there were meals of poor quality. Fresh water was supplied twice a day - in the morning and before the break. Even then, only for 20 minutes. For a crew of more than 400 people.

Since the water reserves in the tanks are limited, and the desalination machines for seawater simply did not work (they worked only in documents and reports).

The food on bord was generally tolerable if you didn’t notice the cockroaches in the rice and compote. There was an incident on the tenth day after the ship left for the Mediterranean sea, namely the disappearance of mugs from the dining room, because of which the deputy commander of the ship for educational work, Captain 2nd rank Vakula ordered to remove all mugs from the dining room before arriving at the base.

An extensive report on with a lot of facts and figures about the ship and the Russian Navy in general

Since I touched on the topic of army idiocy, it is worth talking about constant training, anxiety, and performing tasks that are in no way connected with reality.

All the drills done on the cruiser were fiction. Everything was done to ensure that photo reports on the "work" done lay on the table of Kuprin (the commander of the ship) and to those higher up.

Photo reports, photo reports, and once again photo reports... this is the essence of the entire army of the Russian Federation, it does not matter whether you are able to professionally perform your work or not, here only a beautiful picture and what your’re painting in the journal of combat training is important.

For example, the Osa-MA air defense system. These systems have been repaired since 2014, and according to the documents, they were fully operational according to the reports provided.

One of the few manifestations of a sober assessment of the situation was the recognition by the command of the “Moscow” of the non-combat capability of the PU Sam system S-300F “Fort”, because, as it turned out, there are no missiles for it in the Black Sea Fleet.

The main missile system is PU PRKR P-1000 "Vulcan" in the amount of 16 pieces. It was almost impossible to launch due to an insufficient supply of electricity and compressed air. I am generally silent about anti-submarine weapons.

The war started while we were out at sea on a routine patrol mission

Or at least it was supposed to be a routine mission to patrol the oil rigs near Snake Island, but when we woke up on the morning of February 24, we were informed of the beginning of a "special military operation." Many that morning could not even imagine that Russia would start a real war.

How lies destroy armies

My thoughts were only about what is happening now in Ukraine - the country in which my relatives live.

At that time, we did not know about the missile strikes and thought that everything was happening within the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

After some time, the Moskva approached the island of Zmeiny, and the ZKK on the VPR, Captain 2nd rank Vakula, picked up a radio and began his shameful speech, in response to which he was sent along with the ship by a Ukrainian border guard.

Au AK-130 barely worked on the island, and on its last legs, the ship went to the raid along the patrol line.

The famous clip

After the events near the island of Zmeiny, "Moskva" came to the port of Sevastopol back to its base. Afterward, we were interviewed by "plainclothes men," and non-disclosure documents were signed by some crew members.

The crew was then released on leave, but the lion’s share remained, as some of the sailors were sent on deployment to the 810th Marine Brigade, where they were assembled in January for exercises as part of infantry rifle units. Soon, those who were there on deployment were sent to the Kherson direction.

Corruption has been rampant ever since in the Russian army and the Navy which is normally among the absolute elite of every army seems to be heavily compromised

In April 2022, the cruiser was sent to Odessa to patrol the water area. At least this information was given to the crew.

We had lunch on the ship. It was 14:15 Moscow time on the clock. Half of the personnel rested in their crew cabins, and the other was assigned to watches and outfits. There was no alarm or targets on the radar.

At one point, two loud explosions sounded, and the lights went out abruptly. Currently, I was in the cockpit and resting after the watch. Panic began, there were no commands or alarm on the broadcast for ten minutes, and then the senior assistant commander, Captain 2nd rank Gudkov, announced the gathering of personnel in the ship’s dining room, the appointment of emergency groups and the beginning of the struggle for survivability. There was darkness and smoke all around. As it turned out, the first missile hit between the galley and the dining room, and the second between the post of the Osa-MA air defense system and the torpedo tube, by the way, it is still not clear why it did not detonate.

Starpom was informed that it was impossible to collect the wounded in the dining room because the blast wave had cut through the corridors and doors, and a hole appeared on the side of the ship. It is not entirely clear what exactly the commander of the ship was doing at this time, but the only one who made decisions and did something at that moment was the Starpom. (a naval rank in Russia)

Then the next order came - contract soldiers and midshipmen were to drop life rafts from the upper tiers, and officers and remaining midshipmen were to evacuate conscripts to the stern of the ship to transfer them to the frigate "Admiral Essen", on board of which was the commander of the 30th division of surface ships, Captain 1st rank Tronev.

In total, the struggle for survivability lasted until 20:00 and stopped when the fire spread to the commander’s bridge and Vulcan missile systems. By that time, the division commander was on board the cruiser and ordered to end the struggle for survivability and evacuation.

During the evacuation, the body of senior midshipman Vakhrushev was found in a helicopter hangar. He took conscripts out of the holds until the last moment, but he himself did not have enough time to escape. Vakhrushev was according to the Kremlin, the only one who died because of the "fire."

In fact, at least 30 crew members died (according to tame estimates), these were mainly conscripts who were in the holds, the entire galley outfit along with the deputy of my unit and, possibly, those who could not get out of their posts. (Link to conscripts and training here for those interested in learning more about this topic)

After these events I have just described, we were told the official version: There was a fire. That’s it.

I can’t fathom how cynical these people are to stand there and blatantly lie to those who have seen everything with their own eyes. Who lost their friends and acquaintances.

Again, everyone signed a non-disclosure agreement, and maybe you are wondering what the former crew members of the cruiser "Moskva" think about this? They don’t think anything at all about it!

A guy from my unit in the first days after the sinking of the cruiser told relatives and friends in social networks about what had happened, and, as a result, he withdrew from wherever he could.

He then had to report to special security forces with IDs (korochka), after which he simply stopped communicating and disappeared from the social network.

To my great regret, this tragedy did not free the guys from the morass of propaganda, but on the contrary. The topic of the death of the "Moskva" has become almost taboo among the former crew.

As the cruiser’s last exit was not a combat exit, but only a patrol one, and therefore, none of those on the Moskva received any bonuses or compensations.

The Kremlin does not recognize the dead sailors for two reasons:

  • The first is legal - in the so-called SVO, according to the regime, conscripts do not participate.

Let the enemy know that there are many of us, and we have long been in his rear.

I really hope that I was able to somehow help in the fight against the lies pouring into the ears of Russians and, despite the fear of being caught or killed, we will fight for the freedom of Ukraine and the liberation of Russia! (Alexander, former member of the Russian navy)

Summary and Conclusion:

I consider this a most fascinating bit of information and very revealing. A few things really stood out in my opinion:

1. The lack of training, maintenance, and combat readiness. "Photo reports - the essence of the entire army of the Russian Federation. "
2. How they lie and cheat their own kind. Just to avoid paying reparations to relatives by calling this “a non-combat exit”
3. "The huge blow to the image of the dictator "

It is reasonable to presume that the entire Russian navy is as rotten to the core as the rest of the Russian army eaten up from the inside by corruption and “Vranjo” a culture of lies and deception from the lowest to the highest ranks.

I cannot help but wonder, perhaps dangerously, how good any of their strategic rocket forces are. There have been credible reports that none of the ICBM silos are loaded as they fill with water. Also, there have been reports of batches by soldiers who are part of the missile forces surfacing in Ukraine.

It is definitely most revealing that most of their training drills are purely fabricated for propaganda purposes. That should give you a hint on why an army this big and with so much on paper advantage can lose in such a decisive way against its much smaller neighbor.

Dear reader, thank you for reading my article, be sure to leave a clap or a comment and if you wish to join medium, I would be very happy if you would consider using my referral link to support me and my writing or leave a small tip.

Also, please consider following me on medium if you want to read more of my work in the future.

Press the clap button for 15 seconds you can clap 50 times at once.

Take care and be well.

Post scriptum

A suicide note was found on a dead soldier in Luhansk, making it apparent how awful the Russian forces must treat their own. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the article, so I attached it here, but beware it is gruesome and bleak.

"Goodbye. darling, in the time that I’m here, I have seen hell. There were not so many deaths in Chechnya or even Afghanistan. Seas of human meat. But that’s not why I depart. We here, Russian people, are nobody, and Chechens rule. They drink, they are unhinged, and they rape, they give beatings to everyone and noone is going to do anything about it. Kitty, they took all the money you sent, and they did a thing to me. This is to let you know that I resisted. Remember that you and I owe nothing to anyone. This is the only way out. Love, see you after death”

Additional sources

Strength of the Russian navy

quarta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2022

A próxima recessão europeia será russo-energética - Robert Romano (Limited Government Foundation)

 Os conservadores americanos aproveitam a crise energética na Europa para atacar as políticas setoriais do governo Biden.

Mas a matéria contém elementos informativos quantitativos, úteis para avaliar a dimensão do desafio energético europeu, sobretudo para a Alemanha.

Nord Stream natural gas pipeline sabotage brings Europe to point of no return 

 

6

By Robert Romano

Americans for Limited Government Foundation, September 27, 2022


The Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, which until the war in Ukraine had supplied 1.9 trillion cubic feet a year to Europe, and 55 percent of Germany’s gas alone, appears to have been sabotaged after two recorded blasts resulted in massive gas leaks into the Baltic sea.

Owned and operated by Nord Stream AG, a subsidiary of Russia state-owned energy giant Gazprom, in 2005, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder approved construction of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which was finished and went online in 2012. Nord Stream 2 was built from 2018 and finished construction in Sept. 2021 at a cost of $11 billion, and would have doubled the current pipelines’ distribution of 1.9 trillion cubic feet a year to 3.9 trillion cubic feet a year.

In Nov. 2021, Germany delayed final regulatory approval of the pipeline project to about March 2022, right as Russia began moving its forces to its border with Ukraine throughout 2021. After the war began in Feb. 2022, Germany cancelled Nord Stream 2 and by the end of 2022 Russia had completely shut off Nord Stream 1, restricting supplies to Europe as prices went to the moon.

When the wider war in Ukraine began in February, Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in the Netherlands were already up to $25.72 per 1,000 cubic feet, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Prices had peaked in early September at $83.62 before beginning to settle back down as the U.S. and other nations sought to boost production as an offset, down to $56.63 per 1,000 cubic feet before the explosions on Nord Stream.

For comparison, the U.S.-based Henry Hub natural gas is currently trading at $6.79 per 1,000 cubic feet. Even with prices somewhat down, they're still almost 10 times as expensive in Europe compared to here. 

Now, prices are rising once again, as should be expected, as markets contemplate the new chessboard that just lost 3.9 trillion cubic feet a year of potential production from the equation, perhaps permanently. 

Russia has played a major role in supplying European energy for years. In 2020, the European Union imported 9.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gasaccording to Eurostat. And about 41 percent Europe’s imports come from Russia, or about 3.73 trillion cubic feet a year, 24 percent from Norway at 2.2 trillion cubic feet and 11 percent from Algeria at 1 trillion.

Thus, the loss of Nord Stream as a potential source of energy only appears to deepen Europe’s ongoing energy crisis that, combined with the war in Ukraine, grain shortages, and the post-Covid global supply crisis, is plunging the continent into recession.

A good question appears to be who blew up the pipelines. If Nord Stream is permanently damaged, that increases the importance of Russia’s pipelines that currently run through both Belarus and Ukraine, and then from there, through Slovakia and Poland.

Here, Russia seemingly lost a piece of leverage. If the Nord Stream pipelines were the carrot for Germany — i.e. “do what we want and we’ll turn on Nord Stream” — then the pipelines through Belarus and Ukraine are the stick — i.e. “do what we want or we’ll turn off the other pipelines, too”. Now, all Moscow has left is the stick.

The impact, therefore, is to close off Germany from Russian natural gas, perhaps for its own “good,” if, say, the West, or the U.S. or just Ukraine, or some other third party, were responsible for the attack. Germany’s stake in the conflict has dramatically changed without the possibility of further imports from Russia.

Bizarrely, if Russia blew up its own pipeline that it had already turned off, the message could be “the other pipelines are next” and are moving to cut off all European access before the winter.

Or, if it was not Russia, Moscow could still move to now shut off the other pipelines in response, thus further escalating the conflict.

Either way, the implication is that the war in Ukraine is now reaching the rest of Europe in a major escalation. It's the point of no return. Sadly, there are just about two things for nation-states to do with one another in the world: commerce or war. Unfortunately for Europe, as can be seen in the Baltic Sea with the gas rushing to the surface, they are mutually exclusive.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation. 


sábado, 26 de fevereiro de 2022

O novo Hitler europeu: Putin, o psicopata russo - Uwe Bott, Stephan Richter (The Globalist)

Europe’s New Hitler: Another Psychopath at Work


 Vladimir Putin is a murderous despot: Why the West’s response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine matters. And why we must deal firmly with his European enablers.

By  and  

The Globalist, February 24, 2022 

https://www.theglobalist.com/europes-new-hitler-putin-invades-ukraine/

Let there be no doubt, Putin is cunning and brutal. He is an abuser, a killer, an assassin. He completely lacks any shred of human decency. He is Europe’s new Hitler.

A bad leader, even by Soviet standards

Under his reign, the fatal Dutch disease has only spread further, piling hardship over hardship on the Russian people. Putin’s only skill has been consolidating power by eliminating all those opposed, all the while offering a steady diet of making empty promises population at large.

There is a darkness to Putin’s personality that is unsettling even to many Russians who certainly had their share of leaders with dark souls.

A sociopath in a clinical sense

Now, it is critical to understand the underlying pathology of Vladimir Putin. Putin is a sociopath in a clinical sense, with strong tendencies towards paranoia and narcissism.

His actions are driven by the deep insecurities of his own personality, by his constant need for external affirmation.

Putin constantly has to publicly prove his own virility, which – in his mind – is done by displaying violence and cruelty (and getting away with it).

In this vein, Putin is a very simple man. He is also, if one is willing to understand his personal profile, a very predictable man.

Of course, he craves the opposite. He craves to be admired for his smarts and for his vision, but deep inside he knows that he possesses neither.

Enter Western enablers

For more than ten years after the “end” of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, the American part of the Western world was inebriated by its sense of complete and utter superiority.

And the European – especially German – part of the Western world deluded itself that there was no more reason to have an army.

Germany’s pro-Russian fifth brigade

Initially, all the rage was talk about a “peace dividend.” Subsequently, Germany’s pro-Russian fifth brigade (including a significant segment of the SPD, now the majority party in the German government) shifted its empty-headed rhetoric.

Ever eager to please Putin, the SPD’s demand was that, any time Putin’s Russia acted in a despotic fashion, the West should not engage in “escalation”.

The big error

Falsely assuming that the Russian Bear had been put to sleep at the burial of communism, Western leaders took their eyes of the growing, incrementally mounting threat that Vladimir Putin built.

Western leaders closed their eyes to Russian attempts to intimidate Georgia and the Baltic states and other former states of the Soviet Union.

Western money hustlers

Instead of keeping the eye on the ball, the Western world got all enamored by the – almost always illicitly gained – riches of Russian oligarchs.

London, in particular, became a major money laundering center for their dirty profits, with Germany being a close second aider and abetter.

Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schröder top aide-de-camp

That Angela Merkel ever dared to claim that the North Stream 2 pipeline was strictly a “private sector project” is the height of conceit.

It leads one to wonder which side, the Russian or the Western one, the long-time German Chancellor was actually working on.

After the beginning of the (continued, now massive) invasion of Ukraine, her legacy is forever tarnished.

Self-prostituting sports teams

Sports teams got lucrative sponsorships especially from Russian fossil fuel giants to cement their own legacies, particularly on the European soccer stage.

European soccer stadiums are soiled by Russian oligarchs who occupy the owners’ suites. Europe’s soccer pitches are soiled by players running around in Gazprom jerseys, all in pursuit of grabbing a piece of that deeply human-despising Russian cake of criminal wealth.

Mere spinelessness – or active collaboration?

All of this normalized continuous Russian abuses to such extent that the reactions to Russian “overreach” such as Putin’s annexation of the Crimea region or murders or attempted murders of dissidents on foreign soil received little more than a shrug of the shoulders.

This stance was so engraved in the lazy heads of Western electorates that they voted or kept in power the forces that idly stood by the mounting atrocities of the serial killer, Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump, Russia’s very active, ex-sleeper agent

Putin-puppet, Donald Trump, was even elected President of the United States with the help of Russian intelligence.

While none of this has gone unnoticed and some of it has been – at least temporarily – reversed through the “unelection” of Donald Trump, who just a couple of days ago praised Putin as a “genius” for his Ukraine actions, it is mystifying, to a degree, how it was and is possible.

But is it too late now?

The invasion of Ukraine is in full effect. It is difficult to imagine that it will be reversed or stopped because only a NATO military response could bring that about. The risks of a nuclear war would seem too great for that to happen.

But by understanding the key takeaways from how we got here and why, we ought to be able to design the kind of actions that would contain Putin’s westward drive.

Four main principles

Without delving into a detailed list of sanctions/actions that the West must take (the list is long), these sanctions/actions should be guided by a set of four main principles.

1. The long-term goal of these actions must be to contain Russia beyond Putin. This implies, for example, that Europe must develop a detailed long-term plan to completely and permanently end energy dependence on Russia.

Obviously, an aggressive (and credible, meaning executable) move towards renewable, clean energy sources would not only meet that goal but also help saving the planet.

2. Europe must understand that self-defense, credible self-defense is the most effective weapon in preventing war.

To discard ill-advised pacifism or to overcome reasonable historic guilt does not equate imperialism. Rather, it is in full recognition of all historical lessons ever learned. It’s the best guarantee for peace, we have.

3. While fully aware of the unlikelihood of Russian adoption of democratic values anytime soon, Europeans and Americans must launch a full-fledged effort to highlight that Putin’s aggression, or the aggression of future Russian leaders will only further impoverish the Russian people.

And they must directly address the Russian people to drive this point home. Social media are an excellent medium to promote such campaign. Radio Free Europe played a role during the Cold War, but it was a bit player when compared to today’s social media.

4. Everything has a price. Nothing comes for free. These are not catch-phrases. These are “unconventional truths”.

Conclusion

We are all creatures of comfort. The recent pandemic should have steeled us though, teaching us that the unexpected does happen and that we must take sometimes controversial and always painful actions in order to protect the greater good.

In following these principles, the actions/sanctions against Putin and – yes, Russia itself – become fairly self-evident.

Our response will determine not only how Russia’s flappy wings will effectively be clipped, but also how we are going to address the looming threat of China.

About Stephan Richter

Director of the Global Ideas Center, a global network of authors and analysts, and Editor-in-Chief of The Globalist.