It wasn't "naive". Germany could have a functional economy, or it could have NATO expansion. It tried to have both, and when these conflicting agendas came into conflict, they chose poorly.
Now EU will spend $1T to enforce an agenda that consists of NATO expansion, and no federalism for Ukraine.
But hey, NATO was irrelevant 15 years ago and NATO is not irrelevant now. The US sickness for pursuing military solutions to adult problems has a new constituency.
Strategic snare? While definitely not the only source of German economic success, having reliable, cheap source of energy and predictability of prices through longer term contracts made (and still makes) perfect economic sense and immensely benefited German economy. Soviet Union / Russia delivered without missing a beat for 40+ years through all the geopolitical turmoil and numerous provocations that invariably came from the West (ridiculous Skripal and Navalny affairs come to mind).
In the current crisis the EU political class proved itself to be:
(a) pathetic hypocrites because they never sanctioned Saudi Arabian oil no matter how many Yemenis they bombed or starved with their blockades, this way they also exposed their own deep racism as obviously for these beacons of liberal values blond European lives are infinitely more important than brown Arab ones.
(b) compradors, not better than ones in Columbia or Guatemala - working in interest of US but not their home country or EU as a whole. It was entirely predictable that sanctioning / boycotting Russian gas (and other commodities) will cause economic and social hardship, yet none of these geniuses wanted to seriously engage either on Minsk I or II, or in December of 2021 when Russia offered a new European security architecture with NATO which would have prevented the war, they dismissed it and openly mocked it.
(c) plain morons - take for example Ursula Von den Leyen's recent tweet how Ukraine will supply EU with electricity this winter, alleviating the energy crisis in EU while providing much needed funds for bankrupt Ukraine. Well, Russian reply didn't come through twitter but they promptly blew up CHPP-5 (biggest combined coal power and heating plant in Ukraine, finally taking a page from NATO playbook against Serbia, Libya, Iraq) giving the clear message that if soon EU doesn't push Ukraine towards some negotiation, this winter EU will have to supply Ukraine with some power, in addition to provide for even more refugees from frozen lands.
How exactly is it hypocritical to respond to a thread to a direct neighbor differently than to thread to some far-away country? Which country on earth is acting differently?
Only one comes to mind: the US. And they are hated around the world for assuming the role of world police (and applying it very unevenly).
I would have accepted the term "egoistic". But hypocritical?
Not sure the level concept of "proximity" plays in UN charter, maybe it does more in the "rule-based international order". The conflict in Donbas was ongoing for 8 years since the Maidan coup, resulting in over 10000 civilian deaths (mostly due to indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling, which by the way continues), yet much more focus in media was on real (or imaginary) plight of Uyghurs and Rohingya for example. Navalny, Skripals etc. all got much more attention from EU parliament than for example constant IDF killing of civilians in occupied Palestine, razing their homes etc. As far as proximity, EU/NATO member France was the most adamant in cheerleading and executing on destruction of Libya, which put ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalist militias few hundred kilometers away over the sea from the nearest EU capital.
Well, if you have limited resources to spend, will you spend it to help your sons, or will you help some random stranger in Uganda, who will profit from it much more? If it's the later, I commend you; but you surely don't represent the average humans response then ...
UN charter simply state who and how you are allowed to help. It doesn't mandate that help. You probably could save five people from starving every day. So could I without it even making a dent into my finances. We both chose not to ...
I won't go deep into the other stuff, because that's a lot more to unwrap than I'm willing to commit to in this comment section. Let's just say: without Russia stirring up tensions in those regions, there would have never been any shelling in the first place. But, despite this there actually was a lot of discussion about how Ukraine dealt with the situation. There even was extensive documentary about the plight of the people of DNR and LNR. You not having noticed doesn't mean that it wasn't there.
It is not as simple as merely thinking about the industrial end point in Germany that for instance happens to be the BMW Assembly Plant in Regensburg. It is critically important to understand the supply chains to that assembly plant. A good percentage of that supply chain in now rooted in Eastern Europe.
Add to this the metals industry that supplies e.g. aluminium (“electricity in solid form”) to Germany’s autosector, a sector reportedly facing an existential threat.
There is a 13th century German proverb that goes: Diz ſagent uns die wîſen, ein nagel behalt ein îſen, ein îſen ein ros, ein ros ein man, ein man ein burc, der ſtrîten kan. ("The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe a horse, a horse a man, a man a castle, that can fight.")
You probably know its English derivative.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
for want of a horse the knight was lost,
for want of a knight the battle was lost,
for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
So a kingdom was lost—all for want of a nail.
Understanding the economics of Germany’s autosector requires far more analysis than merely understanding Germany’s direct exposure to Russian energy supplies.
It may very well be more morality tale than economic analysis, but which one of those decides the fate of the next German (and likely pan-European) generation that comes from these energy decisions? You have often argued yourself in other contexts (e.g climate change) that the interaction of morality and economics is not one where pure technocratic decisions are value-neutral.
I found the arguments non-convincing and full of holes and at time disingenuous.
The chart with the price of NG (US, Germany, Dutch hub spot prices) are only until 2016.
US market gets all gas internally, and was overflowing in that time period with shale gas, for which an outlet needed to be found. Thus the fierce opposition against Russian NS2 and prodding for the present war. Hungary's president Orban has described recently the staggering profits energy companies in US are making now.
The Poles, in the past, have sued Gazprom to sell them at spot prices. They won in the EU courts and got their wish. But the incomplete chart provided would have shown how the Dutch Hub prices have exploded and far exceed long term Gazprom contracts. And this is before the war. So much the lines have changed, that Poland again has sued Gazprom again, but this time to go for long term contract instead of spot prices and demanding some payback for asking for too much money.
With Russian gas off the market, it is not only Germany, but the entire Western Europe that suffers, with everyone chasing that ever more illusory and more expensive LNG tanker, because there are not enough of them, there are not enough trains for loading and unloading LNG, and there are not spare capacity for producing NG in the rest of the world.
Coal is a problem and wind solar are intermittent while nuclear is hard to build.
Russia was trying to buy peace with cheap gas. Europe gets, hopefully, its much deserved comeuppance. While Germany has not paid enough for the sins of WWII, by bringing the Soviet regime in the heart of Europe and giving a leas in life to the communist dictatorship (the emphasis in dictatorship) to begin with, with attacking Russia.
"I found the arguments non-convincing and full of holes and at time disingenuous."
On the basis of a single graphic? Lol.
Rather than launching into a rant on the basis of whatever shortcomings you think the chart has, there is an alternative course of action: click the link to open the original Twitter post, which has the full range of time right there.
Of course, instead of actually trying to argue with the post's conclusion or supporting material, you instead nitpick one trivial detail based on your own misunderstanding of the medium, in the time-honored tradition of people who lack a better argument. If you have one, please feel free to produce it at any time!
But I'll wager that next we'll see a shuffling and then wholesale movement of goalposts, followed by the standard argument that the "Western infosphere" is state-dominated and unreliable compared to foreign media. I guess I should in fact assume that Ukraine is losing the conventional war, blah blah blah...
The chart shows exactly what I expected and described in my post, that the Dutch Hub overtook all the other prices.
Also, relying on the "cheap" Russian gas (Russians buying peace) was the only economical solution for Europe and Germany, which has the biggest population and is the economic behemoth in Europe. The talk of geostrategic interests is nonsense in this context because it refers to the interests of the US and not of Europe and Germany in particular.
Russians have always been agreement capable and trustworthy - one remembers from history of the trains with raw materials crossing the Soviet/Nazi border in the morning of June 22 1941, while German army launched Operation Barbarossa.
As I also said, including the US prices there was/is a red herring, since that gas was captive to the US market (not enough liquefaction trains, not enough LNG ships, not enough de-liquefaction trains in Europe) and we have found out that the US government will cap the LNG export in order to stop the increase in gas price in the continental US, for political reasons (elections, etc...).
Thus Germany now, for playing the subservient, occupied colony of the US that it is, has an economic war on its hands that it cannot win and an angrier and angrier population that will start looking more lovingly to AfD. And the East Germans do vote too...
Sooo… this doesn’t support an argument that German export strength is sustained by unsustainably favorable pricing of gas from Russia. If you want to have a discussion of how the Euro’s unitary monetary policy and fiscal guiderails sustain German trade surpluses, I’m all ears. But repeated german energy policy failures aren’t a net strength, lol.
So what, pray tell, is your actual argument here?
Let me take a quick stab at it:
1. The US manipulated Ukraine into repeatedly punching Russia’s legitimate interests in the face in the period 2013-21
2. Thereby maneuvering Russia into a position where it had no choice but to invade
3. Then leveraged its control over the various media organizations to shape public opinion in the EU so that even Germany would find itself compelled by public pressure to support Ukraine to the hilt with financial support, sanctions, and arms sales, against its own core interests
4. And is now prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian life to cripple Russia…
5. Primarily as a warning to China to stop bucking American demands regarding Taiwan and trade policy.
Somewhere thereabouts?
The usual “American Empire” claptrap that denies agency of any sort to literally anyone except the State Department and CIA?
Hardly unexpected for someone who accepts whatever unmitigated horseshit Godfree Roberts is churning out this week.
The US pressure on various governments is not claptrap and it is evident for the interested and attentive person. A former US ambassador to Germany was at one point pushing very hard against NS2.
US was against a rapprochement between Germany and Russia since the 70s, when Drujba pipeline was opposed and when NS1 was mightily opposed. Germany buying reliable and cheap Russian raw materials (oil, gas, coal, metals, etc) is not an irresponsible energy and economic policy, but is definitely damaging the US interest which is hanging on the idea of hegemony (rule based international order = one rule for me and another rule for thee).
Your #1 is only one part of the big military push towards / against Russia, push that was driven by the intention of keeping Russia (the 1990s Russia, expansion started in 1998) cowed and prostrated and easy to despoliate.
While you appear very sarcastic about your #1-#5, everything points to the truth of those statements.
But the point is the importance of CHEAP AND RELIABLE energy sources for Germany. Energy is the primary factor allowing things to happen. Japan is not renouncing its long term contracts for purchasing Russian cheap gas, or coal. Why do you think that is? Germany and Japan share a bit of similarities in their industrial make-up. And while they make high end products, the technical genie is out of the bottle for quite some time, and any extra advantage helps. Access to raw materials, at a "discount" (peace "discount") helps a lot. It is not only the price, but the access as well, which Mr. Tooze doesn't even consider in his analysis.
So yeah, the fiscal and monetary policies of EU put Germany in an advantageous position, but the real economy, when push comes to shove, relies first and foremost on natural inputs. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food... and 3 months without gas and oil...?
As for US pushing for Ukraine in NATO, here from the horse's mouth:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
Oh good, you’ve made the decision to recall the Twain quote and abide by it very easy.
Which deity Tooze, who is an insightful and empirically-driven observer, offended to cause him to be saddled with this comment section, I will never know.
Mr. Tooze should be happy that there is a debate on his positions and should learn to improve on his opinions and more than that, to refocus some of his points and tune them to the reality of the world as it is, not as it is presented by the Ministry of Truth...
One would be hard-pressed to find any evidence of agency in EU for a very long time. It is all about groupthink that is supposed to compensate for any real leadership (before Von der Leyen which failed as German defense minister, they had Juncker who was a functioning alcoholic and overseer of tax evasion schemes in Luxembourg).
You missed his point. This line of thinking not only denies agency to the EU, it also denies agency to Ukraine, Russia (!), Putin himself (!) and literally anyone else on the world stage!
If we look at world natural gas production and consumption for the period, say, 2000-2022, the surprising thing is the smooth growth of both, from about 2 trillion cubic meters to 4 trillion cu.m.
In the first decade, prices were consistently above $6, and in the second decade consistently below $6.
Currently it's about $8.50. Just as interesting is the speed at which prices spike and fall, usually within one year.
It's hard not to come to the conclusion that price variations have little to do with supply or demand, and a lot to do with pure politics. But overall, it's like the weather in a lot of places: if you don't like it just wait a bit.
Diz ſagent uns die wîſen, ein nagel behalt ein îſen, ein îſen ein ros, ein ros ein man, ein man ein burc, der ſtrîten kan. ("The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe a horse, a horse a man, a man a castle, that can fight.")
An interesting collection of circular arguments against cheap Russian gas being a factor in German exports.
1) If the gas is cheap, then by definition it is a small factor in end value.
2) Just because other nations didn't take advantage of cheap gas to be able to succeed in exports, doesn't mean that the cheap gas isn't a significant or major factor. There is nothing which says that only 1 factor drives success - the real world of business competition almost always involves many factors.
3) Pointing at pre-2022 or even pre-late 2021 studies is utterly ludicrous. What we are witnessing in real time is just how important cheap energy was for Germany competing in the world export market.
4) Accelerating the energy transition - good lord, just how much more should Germany have accelerated its energy transition after Energiewende and ongoing massive subsidies for alternative energy? It is highly problematic that this blithe assumption of more money for alternative energy would have prevented this dependence on cheap Russian gas problem.
Guilty as charged! But I'm definitely happy and glad to be corrected by your intellectual and academic rigor professor. Cheers to you and your exceptional brain!
The same era also gave us near-stringless Chinese accession to the WTO; it was widely believed, on the backs of what was perceived as a successful reintegration of East Germany and the other Warsaw Pact nations, that bringing Russia and China into the global trading system and giving them a stake would cause domestic liberalization and force them to defend the global order now that they had their piece of the pie.
Obviously didn't work out, but we shouldn't be blaming Schröder or Clinton for that when it was a near-universal belief at the time.
No, Merkel and Obama were the ones who were in office at and long after the point where it should have been obvious that this was not occurring as hoped and the "West" needed to find a different mode of engagement and even limited disengagement.
Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly committed to dealing effectively with either Russia or China, though the US and parts of the EU have at least come to the necessity of dealing more firmly with China now that Russia has forced their hand.
FFS, who would have bet five years ago that it'd be the *Greens* in Germany who are most prescient in realizing the fundamental threat the Party-State poses to liberalism globally?
Peace with a prickly neighbor - one they have been at total war with (with massively disastrous results) in the past century ?
Russia is currently behaving totally irrationally and destroying the future. This is not behavior you bet on (even if Germany could and should have avoided the level of dependency on a single suppler of a critical commodity)
Poland has always bet on such behaviour from Russia. And it’s not just the Eastern Europeans, many in the Anglo-sphere have always bet on it too.
Perhaps people are trying to wriggle out from having neglected to really study history and draw conclusions from it. And, perhaps, people have especially rejected hearing from those that do find history to be a decent guide. “They are not being rational” is not an uncommon thing to run across in human endeavours.
What bad behavior? Facing an ultranationalist government in Kiev backed by US and sworn to be the enemy of Russia - it renounced neutrality in 2019? Government hell bent in persecuting the big Russian minority in Ukraine? Government that in 2019 promised peace and a settlement with Russian minority? But then did the opposite??
I did not mention bad behavior - actually I was saying that it was rational for Germany to bet on Russia behaving rationally. The invasion of Ukraine is not Russia behaving rationally, however many provocations you find yourself the mind to "credit" the West or the Ukrainians.
For years, Ukraine and Germany/France (with US backing this) have refused to implement the Minsk II accord, which recognized the rights of Russian minority in Donbas and provided autonomy to the area. There isn't even local autonomy in Ukraine, and the Venice conference in their report on the rights of minorities in Ukraine found that Ukraine legislation is abusive. And there is more than Russian minority in Ukraine.
In March 2021, a law was passed and signed by Zelensky demanding the imposition of Ukrainian rule/control on all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, by all means necessary. Big mobilization ensued. Russian mobilized as well. And that situation simmered until the beginning of February 2022, when Ukraine started a massive artillery bombardment on Donbas (as confirmed by the OSCE mission there, monitoring the ceasefire).
This is when Donbas republics requested Russian support and Russia answered. Prior to this, Russia has pursued a diplomatic exercise on trying to resolve the overall security architecture in Europe, receiving a loud NO from USNATO.
Serbia, Iraq were attacked, occupied, and in case of Serbia, dismembered, for far less issues by the US, against all UN articles of law. Russia, by invading Ukraine, has invoqued articles of UN Charter and the facts presented by Russia would stand in the court of law (an unbiased one) for its action. In fact, as it goes, the overwhelming majority of world's countries side with Russia.
Thus, when I will see US / EU punished the same way for the Iraq invasion and for the war on Serbia, I will listen to arguments as yours. Until then, I don't see people like you having any legal, moral, and ethical right to speak about Russian actions.
I'm not discussing the rights and wrongs of the action. I'm just saying that, irrespective of these, and even irrespective of the outcome in Ukraine, it's a strategic failure for Russia - NATO is reinforced, Ukraine is now hostile, Russia is isolated from a significant chunk of the world economy, and its most important customers for key commodities have lost all trust and will try to diversify away from Russia as a supplier.
On the face of it, even if it was justified (which I don't discuss here), Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its use of the gas deliveries as a weapon are irrational acts, and their consequences are (logically) highly negative for Russia.
Ukraine has been hostile before 2014, and the continuous NATO expansion since 1998, with Russia continuously backpedaling on the situation ended up with Russia with its back to the wall. US/NATO thought that they could forever push Russia on the cheap and accomplish their neo-colonialism dreams without much expense (dollars and euros are very easy to print out of thin air).
Russia is not isolated and in fact is strengthening partnerships with China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Africa at large, etc. Russia has many willing to purchase its natural resources as well as weapons. It is the west that is being isolated from accessing Russian resources as well as the Russian markets.
By this time, Russia has not used its gas and oil as weapons. You are very, very, very badly misinformed. Poland and Ukraine have cut two main pipelines to Europe. NS1 cannot be properly serviced because of the sanctions. NS2 was put by Germany under lock and key. The only thing that is working is Southstream from Turkey.
Also, a few countries have refused to pay rubles and follow the mechanism set up by Russia for payment (you likely never read anywhere that Europeans wanted to receive gas and oil, and pretend to pay in euros, but with all that money being sequestered in European banks, because Russian banks have been sanctioned.
So get your facts straight before starting to argue this or that. Get out of the make believe world created by the western media. Here is a very broad overview:
It wasn't "naive". Germany could have a functional economy, or it could have NATO expansion. It tried to have both, and when these conflicting agendas came into conflict, they chose poorly.
Now EU will spend $1T to enforce an agenda that consists of NATO expansion, and no federalism for Ukraine.
But hey, NATO was irrelevant 15 years ago and NATO is not irrelevant now. The US sickness for pursuing military solutions to adult problems has a new constituency.
Strategic snare? While definitely not the only source of German economic success, having reliable, cheap source of energy and predictability of prices through longer term contracts made (and still makes) perfect economic sense and immensely benefited German economy. Soviet Union / Russia delivered without missing a beat for 40+ years through all the geopolitical turmoil and numerous provocations that invariably came from the West (ridiculous Skripal and Navalny affairs come to mind).
In the current crisis the EU political class proved itself to be:
(a) pathetic hypocrites because they never sanctioned Saudi Arabian oil no matter how many Yemenis they bombed or starved with their blockades, this way they also exposed their own deep racism as obviously for these beacons of liberal values blond European lives are infinitely more important than brown Arab ones.
(b) compradors, not better than ones in Columbia or Guatemala - working in interest of US but not their home country or EU as a whole. It was entirely predictable that sanctioning / boycotting Russian gas (and other commodities) will cause economic and social hardship, yet none of these geniuses wanted to seriously engage either on Minsk I or II, or in December of 2021 when Russia offered a new European security architecture with NATO which would have prevented the war, they dismissed it and openly mocked it.
(c) plain morons - take for example Ursula Von den Leyen's recent tweet how Ukraine will supply EU with electricity this winter, alleviating the energy crisis in EU while providing much needed funds for bankrupt Ukraine. Well, Russian reply didn't come through twitter but they promptly blew up CHPP-5 (biggest combined coal power and heating plant in Ukraine, finally taking a page from NATO playbook against Serbia, Libya, Iraq) giving the clear message that if soon EU doesn't push Ukraine towards some negotiation, this winter EU will have to supply Ukraine with some power, in addition to provide for even more refugees from frozen lands.
How exactly is it hypocritical to respond to a thread to a direct neighbor differently than to thread to some far-away country? Which country on earth is acting differently?
Only one comes to mind: the US. And they are hated around the world for assuming the role of world police (and applying it very unevenly).
I would have accepted the term "egoistic". But hypocritical?
Not sure the level concept of "proximity" plays in UN charter, maybe it does more in the "rule-based international order". The conflict in Donbas was ongoing for 8 years since the Maidan coup, resulting in over 10000 civilian deaths (mostly due to indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling, which by the way continues), yet much more focus in media was on real (or imaginary) plight of Uyghurs and Rohingya for example. Navalny, Skripals etc. all got much more attention from EU parliament than for example constant IDF killing of civilians in occupied Palestine, razing their homes etc. As far as proximity, EU/NATO member France was the most adamant in cheerleading and executing on destruction of Libya, which put ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalist militias few hundred kilometers away over the sea from the nearest EU capital.
Well, if you have limited resources to spend, will you spend it to help your sons, or will you help some random stranger in Uganda, who will profit from it much more? If it's the later, I commend you; but you surely don't represent the average humans response then ...
UN charter simply state who and how you are allowed to help. It doesn't mandate that help. You probably could save five people from starving every day. So could I without it even making a dent into my finances. We both chose not to ...
I won't go deep into the other stuff, because that's a lot more to unwrap than I'm willing to commit to in this comment section. Let's just say: without Russia stirring up tensions in those regions, there would have never been any shelling in the first place. But, despite this there actually was a lot of discussion about how Ukraine dealt with the situation. There even was extensive documentary about the plight of the people of DNR and LNR. You not having noticed doesn't mean that it wasn't there.
It is not as simple as merely thinking about the industrial end point in Germany that for instance happens to be the BMW Assembly Plant in Regensburg. It is critically important to understand the supply chains to that assembly plant. A good percentage of that supply chain in now rooted in Eastern Europe.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115534/cee-car-components-and-parts-export/
Add to this the metals industry that supplies e.g. aluminium (“electricity in solid form”) to Germany’s autosector, a sector reportedly facing an existential threat.
https://www.ft.com/content/46d3c3fb-e79a-464c-afe1-7079d3e4f23c
There is a 13th century German proverb that goes: Diz ſagent uns die wîſen, ein nagel behalt ein îſen, ein îſen ein ros, ein ros ein man, ein man ein burc, der ſtrîten kan. ("The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe a horse, a horse a man, a man a castle, that can fight.")
You probably know its English derivative.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
for want of a horse the knight was lost,
for want of a knight the battle was lost,
for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
So a kingdom was lost—all for want of a nail.
Understanding the economics of Germany’s autosector requires far more analysis than merely understanding Germany’s direct exposure to Russian energy supplies.
It may very well be more morality tale than economic analysis, but which one of those decides the fate of the next German (and likely pan-European) generation that comes from these energy decisions? You have often argued yourself in other contexts (e.g climate change) that the interaction of morality and economics is not one where pure technocratic decisions are value-neutral.
I found the arguments non-convincing and full of holes and at time disingenuous.
The chart with the price of NG (US, Germany, Dutch hub spot prices) are only until 2016.
US market gets all gas internally, and was overflowing in that time period with shale gas, for which an outlet needed to be found. Thus the fierce opposition against Russian NS2 and prodding for the present war. Hungary's president Orban has described recently the staggering profits energy companies in US are making now.
The Poles, in the past, have sued Gazprom to sell them at spot prices. They won in the EU courts and got their wish. But the incomplete chart provided would have shown how the Dutch Hub prices have exploded and far exceed long term Gazprom contracts. And this is before the war. So much the lines have changed, that Poland again has sued Gazprom again, but this time to go for long term contract instead of spot prices and demanding some payback for asking for too much money.
With Russian gas off the market, it is not only Germany, but the entire Western Europe that suffers, with everyone chasing that ever more illusory and more expensive LNG tanker, because there are not enough of them, there are not enough trains for loading and unloading LNG, and there are not spare capacity for producing NG in the rest of the world.
Coal is a problem and wind solar are intermittent while nuclear is hard to build.
Russia was trying to buy peace with cheap gas. Europe gets, hopefully, its much deserved comeuppance. While Germany has not paid enough for the sins of WWII, by bringing the Soviet regime in the heart of Europe and giving a leas in life to the communist dictatorship (the emphasis in dictatorship) to begin with, with attacking Russia.
"I found the arguments non-convincing and full of holes and at time disingenuous."
On the basis of a single graphic? Lol.
Rather than launching into a rant on the basis of whatever shortcomings you think the chart has, there is an alternative course of action: click the link to open the original Twitter post, which has the full range of time right there.
Of course, instead of actually trying to argue with the post's conclusion or supporting material, you instead nitpick one trivial detail based on your own misunderstanding of the medium, in the time-honored tradition of people who lack a better argument. If you have one, please feel free to produce it at any time!
But I'll wager that next we'll see a shuffling and then wholesale movement of goalposts, followed by the standard argument that the "Western infosphere" is state-dominated and unreliable compared to foreign media. I guess I should in fact assume that Ukraine is losing the conventional war, blah blah blah...
The chart shows exactly what I expected and described in my post, that the Dutch Hub overtook all the other prices.
Also, relying on the "cheap" Russian gas (Russians buying peace) was the only economical solution for Europe and Germany, which has the biggest population and is the economic behemoth in Europe. The talk of geostrategic interests is nonsense in this context because it refers to the interests of the US and not of Europe and Germany in particular.
Russians have always been agreement capable and trustworthy - one remembers from history of the trains with raw materials crossing the Soviet/Nazi border in the morning of June 22 1941, while German army launched Operation Barbarossa.
As I also said, including the US prices there was/is a red herring, since that gas was captive to the US market (not enough liquefaction trains, not enough LNG ships, not enough de-liquefaction trains in Europe) and we have found out that the US government will cap the LNG export in order to stop the increase in gas price in the continental US, for political reasons (elections, etc...).
Thus Germany now, for playing the subservient, occupied colony of the US that it is, has an economic war on its hands that it cannot win and an angrier and angrier population that will start looking more lovingly to AfD. And the East Germans do vote too...
Sooo… this doesn’t support an argument that German export strength is sustained by unsustainably favorable pricing of gas from Russia. If you want to have a discussion of how the Euro’s unitary monetary policy and fiscal guiderails sustain German trade surpluses, I’m all ears. But repeated german energy policy failures aren’t a net strength, lol.
So what, pray tell, is your actual argument here?
Let me take a quick stab at it:
1. The US manipulated Ukraine into repeatedly punching Russia’s legitimate interests in the face in the period 2013-21
2. Thereby maneuvering Russia into a position where it had no choice but to invade
3. Then leveraged its control over the various media organizations to shape public opinion in the EU so that even Germany would find itself compelled by public pressure to support Ukraine to the hilt with financial support, sanctions, and arms sales, against its own core interests
4. And is now prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian life to cripple Russia…
5. Primarily as a warning to China to stop bucking American demands regarding Taiwan and trade policy.
Somewhere thereabouts?
The usual “American Empire” claptrap that denies agency of any sort to literally anyone except the State Department and CIA?
Hardly unexpected for someone who accepts whatever unmitigated horseshit Godfree Roberts is churning out this week.
The US pressure on various governments is not claptrap and it is evident for the interested and attentive person. A former US ambassador to Germany was at one point pushing very hard against NS2.
US was against a rapprochement between Germany and Russia since the 70s, when Drujba pipeline was opposed and when NS1 was mightily opposed. Germany buying reliable and cheap Russian raw materials (oil, gas, coal, metals, etc) is not an irresponsible energy and economic policy, but is definitely damaging the US interest which is hanging on the idea of hegemony (rule based international order = one rule for me and another rule for thee).
Your #1 is only one part of the big military push towards / against Russia, push that was driven by the intention of keeping Russia (the 1990s Russia, expansion started in 1998) cowed and prostrated and easy to despoliate.
While you appear very sarcastic about your #1-#5, everything points to the truth of those statements.
But the point is the importance of CHEAP AND RELIABLE energy sources for Germany. Energy is the primary factor allowing things to happen. Japan is not renouncing its long term contracts for purchasing Russian cheap gas, or coal. Why do you think that is? Germany and Japan share a bit of similarities in their industrial make-up. And while they make high end products, the technical genie is out of the bottle for quite some time, and any extra advantage helps. Access to raw materials, at a "discount" (peace "discount") helps a lot. It is not only the price, but the access as well, which Mr. Tooze doesn't even consider in his analysis.
So yeah, the fiscal and monetary policies of EU put Germany in an advantageous position, but the real economy, when push comes to shove, relies first and foremost on natural inputs. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food... and 3 months without gas and oil...?
As for US pushing for Ukraine in NATO, here from the horse's mouth:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831
Dick Cheney is famous for having as final objective the dismemberment of the Russian Federation in several hapless political entities...
Oh good, you’ve made the decision to recall the Twain quote and abide by it very easy.
Which deity Tooze, who is an insightful and empirically-driven observer, offended to cause him to be saddled with this comment section, I will never know.
Have fun.
Mr. Tooze should be happy that there is a debate on his positions and should learn to improve on his opinions and more than that, to refocus some of his points and tune them to the reality of the world as it is, not as it is presented by the Ministry of Truth...
One would be hard-pressed to find any evidence of agency in EU for a very long time. It is all about groupthink that is supposed to compensate for any real leadership (before Von der Leyen which failed as German defense minister, they had Juncker who was a functioning alcoholic and overseer of tax evasion schemes in Luxembourg).
You missed his point. This line of thinking not only denies agency to the EU, it also denies agency to Ukraine, Russia (!), Putin himself (!) and literally anyone else on the world stage!
If we look at world natural gas production and consumption for the period, say, 2000-2022, the surprising thing is the smooth growth of both, from about 2 trillion cubic meters to 4 trillion cu.m.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-natural-gas-production-by-region-1973-2020
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282717/global-natural-gas-consumption/
But if we look at the world price over the same time, it's literally all over the place, from US$2.00 to $20.00.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2478/natural-gas-prices-historical-chart
In the first decade, prices were consistently above $6, and in the second decade consistently below $6.
Currently it's about $8.50. Just as interesting is the speed at which prices spike and fall, usually within one year.
It's hard not to come to the conclusion that price variations have little to do with supply or demand, and a lot to do with pure politics. But overall, it's like the weather in a lot of places: if you don't like it just wait a bit.
For those interested youtube will auto translate to English
Diz ſagent uns die wîſen, ein nagel behalt ein îſen, ein îſen ein ros, ein ros ein man, ein man ein burc, der ſtrîten kan. ("The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe a horse, a horse a man, a man a castle, that can fight.")
An interesting collection of circular arguments against cheap Russian gas being a factor in German exports.
1) If the gas is cheap, then by definition it is a small factor in end value.
2) Just because other nations didn't take advantage of cheap gas to be able to succeed in exports, doesn't mean that the cheap gas isn't a significant or major factor. There is nothing which says that only 1 factor drives success - the real world of business competition almost always involves many factors.
3) Pointing at pre-2022 or even pre-late 2021 studies is utterly ludicrous. What we are witnessing in real time is just how important cheap energy was for Germany competing in the world export market.
4) Accelerating the energy transition - good lord, just how much more should Germany have accelerated its energy transition after Energiewende and ongoing massive subsidies for alternative energy? It is highly problematic that this blithe assumption of more money for alternative energy would have prevented this dependence on cheap Russian gas problem.
Who cares how much the gas cost? The point is they’re entirely reliant on it and now they’re fucked.
Adam is there a good book in English that looks at the Germany-Russia relationship since WW1?
Thanks. Good to know.
Guilty as charged! But I'm definitely happy and glad to be corrected by your intellectual and academic rigor professor. Cheers to you and your exceptional brain!
Thoughtful. Enjoyed the video of your speech too, in my every other sixth word fluency.
What would the other economic reasons for ostpolitik be? Markets for German exports and mineral imports?
The same era also gave us near-stringless Chinese accession to the WTO; it was widely believed, on the backs of what was perceived as a successful reintegration of East Germany and the other Warsaw Pact nations, that bringing Russia and China into the global trading system and giving them a stake would cause domestic liberalization and force them to defend the global order now that they had their piece of the pie.
Obviously didn't work out, but we shouldn't be blaming Schröder or Clinton for that when it was a near-universal belief at the time.
No, Merkel and Obama were the ones who were in office at and long after the point where it should have been obvious that this was not occurring as hoped and the "West" needed to find a different mode of engagement and even limited disengagement.
Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly committed to dealing effectively with either Russia or China, though the US and parts of the EU have at least come to the necessity of dealing more firmly with China now that Russia has forced their hand.
FFS, who would have bet five years ago that it'd be the *Greens* in Germany who are most prescient in realizing the fundamental threat the Party-State poses to liberalism globally?
Peace with a prickly neighbor - one they have been at total war with (with massively disastrous results) in the past century ?
Russia is currently behaving totally irrationally and destroying the future. This is not behavior you bet on (even if Germany could and should have avoided the level of dependency on a single suppler of a critical commodity)
Poland has always bet on such behaviour from Russia. And it’s not just the Eastern Europeans, many in the Anglo-sphere have always bet on it too.
Perhaps people are trying to wriggle out from having neglected to really study history and draw conclusions from it. And, perhaps, people have especially rejected hearing from those that do find history to be a decent guide. “They are not being rational” is not an uncommon thing to run across in human endeavours.
What bad behavior? Facing an ultranationalist government in Kiev backed by US and sworn to be the enemy of Russia - it renounced neutrality in 2019? Government hell bent in persecuting the big Russian minority in Ukraine? Government that in 2019 promised peace and a settlement with Russian minority? But then did the opposite??
I did not mention bad behavior - actually I was saying that it was rational for Germany to bet on Russia behaving rationally. The invasion of Ukraine is not Russia behaving rationally, however many provocations you find yourself the mind to "credit" the West or the Ukrainians.
For years, Ukraine and Germany/France (with US backing this) have refused to implement the Minsk II accord, which recognized the rights of Russian minority in Donbas and provided autonomy to the area. There isn't even local autonomy in Ukraine, and the Venice conference in their report on the rights of minorities in Ukraine found that Ukraine legislation is abusive. And there is more than Russian minority in Ukraine.
In March 2021, a law was passed and signed by Zelensky demanding the imposition of Ukrainian rule/control on all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, by all means necessary. Big mobilization ensued. Russian mobilized as well. And that situation simmered until the beginning of February 2022, when Ukraine started a massive artillery bombardment on Donbas (as confirmed by the OSCE mission there, monitoring the ceasefire).
This is when Donbas republics requested Russian support and Russia answered. Prior to this, Russia has pursued a diplomatic exercise on trying to resolve the overall security architecture in Europe, receiving a loud NO from USNATO.
Serbia, Iraq were attacked, occupied, and in case of Serbia, dismembered, for far less issues by the US, against all UN articles of law. Russia, by invading Ukraine, has invoqued articles of UN Charter and the facts presented by Russia would stand in the court of law (an unbiased one) for its action. In fact, as it goes, the overwhelming majority of world's countries side with Russia.
Thus, when I will see US / EU punished the same way for the Iraq invasion and for the war on Serbia, I will listen to arguments as yours. Until then, I don't see people like you having any legal, moral, and ethical right to speak about Russian actions.
I'm not discussing the rights and wrongs of the action. I'm just saying that, irrespective of these, and even irrespective of the outcome in Ukraine, it's a strategic failure for Russia - NATO is reinforced, Ukraine is now hostile, Russia is isolated from a significant chunk of the world economy, and its most important customers for key commodities have lost all trust and will try to diversify away from Russia as a supplier.
On the face of it, even if it was justified (which I don't discuss here), Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its use of the gas deliveries as a weapon are irrational acts, and their consequences are (logically) highly negative for Russia.
Ukraine has been hostile before 2014, and the continuous NATO expansion since 1998, with Russia continuously backpedaling on the situation ended up with Russia with its back to the wall. US/NATO thought that they could forever push Russia on the cheap and accomplish their neo-colonialism dreams without much expense (dollars and euros are very easy to print out of thin air).
Russia is not isolated and in fact is strengthening partnerships with China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Africa at large, etc. Russia has many willing to purchase its natural resources as well as weapons. It is the west that is being isolated from accessing Russian resources as well as the Russian markets.
By this time, Russia has not used its gas and oil as weapons. You are very, very, very badly misinformed. Poland and Ukraine have cut two main pipelines to Europe. NS1 cannot be properly serviced because of the sanctions. NS2 was put by Germany under lock and key. The only thing that is working is Southstream from Turkey.
Also, a few countries have refused to pay rubles and follow the mechanism set up by Russia for payment (you likely never read anywhere that Europeans wanted to receive gas and oil, and pretend to pay in euros, but with all that money being sequestered in European banks, because Russian banks have been sanctioned.
So get your facts straight before starting to argue this or that. Get out of the make believe world created by the western media. Here is a very broad overview:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/12/diana-johnstone-the-specter-of-germany-is-rising/