Look around the world and ask yourself the following questions: Q: The war in Ukraine hangs in the balance. Who ought to be most concerned? Europe. If Putin wins, whose strategic model will be most disrupted? A: Germany. Q: The American election hangs in the balance. Who ought to be most concerned? Europe (see above). And if Trump wins, who, in Europe, will be most disconcerted?
Your question has an easy answer. You are assuming that Germany is a subject. Yet nord stream has clearly shown it is an object. You can pretend otherwise only if you exclude the fact of nordstream from the model. But then it’s a critically incomplete model that will produce wrong results no matter what you ask.
And no, it’s not Ukrainians who did it, if you come back with that.
1. W Ukraine vs E Ukraine (a continuation of the 1940s genocides but against a much stronger Russian rebel faction.
2. Nato vs Russia with Nato totally unprepared for a conventional war in E Europe (this is not the end of Nato - or at least that happened long ago, but might ulitmately lead to a restart of a Nato fit for purpose).
3. And most importantly - US vs China/EU/Germany (choose your name). Cutting off Europe from ever trading with China block come the great trade split. Ukraine as a pit of chaos blocking off the Silk Road to Europe. That and simply US acquiring German industry.
Only in war 3 can we say the US has won anything, but here it has won big.
#3 has barely started and the outcome is far for settled. Reindustrializing US with German industry is not a certainty, since German industry can relocate in many other different places, like Slovakia, Hungary, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, etc... and not necessarily in the US. Also, the Chinese are trailblazing in inovation in many areas, so US might get German industry, but it will still be second rate compared to what are the Chinese making and having - home made IPs etc...
Certainly #3 is an inevitable development of the great China / US trade split that happened 5 or more years ago. The Germany/Europe part is much more recent but can be seen in Russian sanctions from long before 2 years ago.
And yes China wins whatever the US does.
In terms of US locking in Germany to US block, I think that has been won (and blowing up NS2 with no German complaints confirms that). Germany now loses its industry. I agree US might not and might not be able to take advantage of that.
"Q: The war in Ukraine hangs in the balance. Who ought to be most concerned? Europe. If Putin wins, whose strategic model will be most disrupted?"
It has not been "in the balance" for almost 2 years. It has been pretty much one way slaughter all the time, even on the ocasions Russia chose to retreat. US is close to having fought this to the very last Ukrainian. Maybe 100k left, they started with 700k, called up over a million. Half a million is best guess of dead, half a million seriously wounded, half a million runaway. Maybe 50-70k Russian dead but 800k called up reservists or volunteers all with 3-6m minimum training.
This is denialism on a larger scale than Afghanistan.
The problem is that western leaders have already poured so much material and non-material support into the regime in Kiev that they cannot be seen to pull out now.
Moreover, the sociopaths who rule over the West would annihilate us all rather than suffer another reputational loss.
This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
The ratio of dead bodies exchanged btw UKR and RUS. Also, the British Mediazona, monitoring Russian deaths, show that RUS has lost far less than UKR claims to have killed. The ratio of artillery shots (artillery killes the highest proportion of people) is waaaay in the favor of RUS. There are many other sources of information (i.e. one western specialist/analyst - American, advisor to the banking world, and with access to all sorts of imaging info, has looked at the UKR ever expanding cemeteries). All in all, come in ballpark around the numbers reported by RUS DoD.
"RUS has lost far less than UKR claims to have killed..."
Yes, because ALL governments at war lie about how many of the enemy they have killed, even - and brace yourself for a shock here - the Russian government. Remember the Vietnam war Body Count? And what do they say is the first casualty of war?
Specifically with regard to the Russian government, it's good to remember these are the folks who invented the Potemkin Village, and that was all before the Communists came along to teach them even better, more sophisticated methods of lying. Don't believe Brezhnev-era press releases about the size of the wheat harvest, don't believe Putin-era press releases about how many Ukrainians they have killed.
Have you followed western vloggers travelling or living in Russia? Have you seen that Russia in terms of PPP is the forth economy in the world, biggest food exporter, etc. The combined west is not producing as many 155 shells as Russia does it alone. And the US wants to fight China, who can crank up production 10x the level Russia has.
Nations change, some more, some less. Russians have suffered horrendously in the past 150 years. They might have learned something from that. Americans, with their "victories" have learned nothing. Not for that matter the Germans, who are not complicit to another genocide...
I'm not in the business of predicting the outcome of the war. I'm surprised so many people are, is there betting in Vegas on this? On the moral question, I'm clear that the Russians were wrong to invade and that the Ukrainians are right to defend their country, but that doesn't mean the Ukrainians will win, history shows the good guys often lose.
Seems like what a lot of people do is decide which side they identify with, and then comb the internet for evidence to support the claim that "their" side will win. And, the internet being the internet, they usually find the facts to support their case. I'm not doing that.
And I don't know about this business of comparing industrial production or GDP to figure out who will win, seems like if that worked, the US would have won in Vietnam, and the US and Soviets would have both won in Afghanistan.
It poses deep questions about how Europe can make work a multi-cultural, multi-faith democracy that acknowledges both its own deep, layered and traumatic history and its deep connections to the Middle East and the Muslim world - which come with its own weight of historical baggage.
I am sure that many thousand immigrants who come from Muslim countries are deeply interested in making the "multi-faith democracy work" (it would be in deed a sweet irony of history to see French political system become a version of Lebanese) and to explore the intersectionality of lived experiences in Islamic and secular societies and their mutual touchpoints.
One of the reasons why the neoliberal order is rapidly disintegrating is because its stakeholders and apologists are incapable of even describing the problem in real terms, or seeing the root cause which might lead to the actual solution. 30-years US rampage across middle east destroyed and destabilized economies of many countries, and deliberate effort to undermine and destroy somewhat secular regimes (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan was the first of course) and replace them with Islamic fundamentalists additionally led to renewed oppression of women, a result of which is - invariably, everywhere - a demographic explosion. In some rational world, EU countries would have vital interest to ensure peace and stability beyond their borders, and do everything possible to restrain their overseas masters in Washington from wars and to prevent a very predictable influx of economic migrants. But EU political class has been groomed into complete vassalage towards the US, and hired to specifically leverage the huge wealth transfer opportunity such migration provides from the neoliberal perspective ("no crisis should go to waste" - disaster capitalism at its finest). Not only it depresses labor cost but frays the decade long status quo of "social state" that is only possible in homogenous societies with high level of social trust. 1-2 additional millions of Ukrainians will provide another such opportunity once Russia finally decides to retaliate for never ending NATO escalation and shuts down power in Ukraine for good. I can't wait to hear what intellectual giant Van den Leyen will tell us then, last year she assured audiences in the EU that Ukraine can pay some of the military assistance by exporting electricity.
For all this talk of “buckling down and taking action”, I still get the impression that no one quite knows what we should be investing in. No amount of EU billions will help the German/EU tech sector compete with the US. Same goes for solar panels from China.
I’m starting to think that real progress would be achieved by Germany becoming more French, i.e. rebalancing away from massive exports to more domestic consumption à la Pettis and Klein or Andreas Nölke. But this would require a higher minimum wage and stronger collective bargaining, not the flashy European initiatives that Professor Tooze seems to long for.
Would probably also make the average AfD voter less mad, as opposed to wiring another hundred billion to Rome.
And it all boils down to their obstinacy around their failed energy transition. They bet on the wrong technology, dug their heels in, and stuck their head in the sand. They’re embarrassed but too proud to just say that for once the French might have done it better than them.
The mindset of the German politic class regarding the energy transition is / was borderline fanatical.
From around 2010 to 2020, the German plan was to ditch nuclear power, go all in on a Russian tyrant's natural gas, and build intermittent wind and solar. And keep coal plants ready if necessary.
Post Covid and (especially) post Ukraine, the tyrant goes tyrant on the natural gas supply, but nuclear is still Verboten (cuz greens), more wind and solar is built, and coal plants and mines are fired up . And German coal is lignite! The dirtiest, most polluting type of coal. WTF!?!
Oh, yeah, the Germans, with their big line of ECB credit, go hard for liquified natural gas (LNG). And things kinda work out. No one freezes in the 2022-23 winter, although electric rates are 2.5x the US and vast swaths of German industry are now uncompetitive.
Of course, the German LNG buildout and buying spree spiked the world market price. Who suffered? Poorer nations like Pakistan and India with spot contacts for LNG. And critical developing nations' fertilizer producers like Indonesia.
Guess what? Developing world transition to natural gas is done. Coal is king. They see the German hypocrisy, so they are all going hard to coal. Just like the fuckin Germans.
It's funny, isn't it? AT writes on the driest of economic issues, but his comment section is a Mos Eisley dive-bar full of Putin-lovers, climate deniers, antivaxxers, proud antisemites and even out-and-out Nazis. Plus some nice people thrown in for variety.
Just the craziest comment section of any SubStack I subscribe to, by far.
For me is even ore interesting and reveling that your comment is full of adjectives and name callings but completly devoid of reasoned argumentations, as is usual when mainstreamers, so called politically correct people try to put down thinkers who don't agree with them.
Sorry, who's got the time, really? Here's an idea: I'll wait for you to be wrong about something specific, and then I'll post a specific comment about that specific piece of wrongness, OK?
Well, it's tricky, isn't it, because deniers keep changing their tune. You don't see "It's all a hoax!" that much any more, because the evidence has become undeniable, so then the deniers have retreated to "Oh, maybe it is happening, but we can't be SURE, and anyway no reason to do anything drastic like build a bunch of wind farms til we're ABSOLUTELY sure" like we've got another 20 years to wait for more data to come in. Plus a lot of these people just aren't arguing in good faith, we could wait 20 years and find that they STILL aren't "sure", and still don't think we should do very much.
It's the internet, there's a lot of dishonesty out there.
But to answer your question, no, I don't think they should be firebombed to death like the people of Dresden.
Okay. I live on 3 GBP per day in Poland. What I have done in the last 35 minutes, since my jobs started?
I read as much Tooze as I could handle. Thought about it. Said this shit is not worth the subscription. Thought of comment. Thought of my parish priests. Thought about tithing my revenue. Wrote to my English client, Mr. Smith. Thought of the tax office, thought of the woman who denies me pleasure, because it's raining. placed an order for 71 shares of EKOBOX S.A. which will pay out a dividend of 0,07 grosz on one share of 0.565 per share, the quarry three bus stops away, thought of writing the priests to demand money from the quarry to fund the restoration of the two parish churches in the places of Kajetanów and Zagnańsk. I don't want to write anymore, so my priest-confessor is telling me to stop.
back to legal work - my shift ends at 12:45 P.M. Polish time.
What have you done in the last 39 minutes in London? I never lie. Do you?
Your question has an easy answer. You are assuming that Germany is a subject. Yet nord stream has clearly shown it is an object. You can pretend otherwise only if you exclude the fact of nordstream from the model. But then it’s a critically incomplete model that will produce wrong results no matter what you ask.
And no, it’s not Ukrainians who did it, if you come back with that.
Exactly. 3 wars.
1. W Ukraine vs E Ukraine (a continuation of the 1940s genocides but against a much stronger Russian rebel faction.
2. Nato vs Russia with Nato totally unprepared for a conventional war in E Europe (this is not the end of Nato - or at least that happened long ago, but might ulitmately lead to a restart of a Nato fit for purpose).
3. And most importantly - US vs China/EU/Germany (choose your name). Cutting off Europe from ever trading with China block come the great trade split. Ukraine as a pit of chaos blocking off the Silk Road to Europe. That and simply US acquiring German industry.
Only in war 3 can we say the US has won anything, but here it has won big.
With respect to #2 see https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/natos-phantom-armies
#3 has barely started and the outcome is far for settled. Reindustrializing US with German industry is not a certainty, since German industry can relocate in many other different places, like Slovakia, Hungary, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, etc... and not necessarily in the US. Also, the Chinese are trailblazing in inovation in many areas, so US might get German industry, but it will still be second rate compared to what are the Chinese making and having - home made IPs etc...
Certainly #3 is an inevitable development of the great China / US trade split that happened 5 or more years ago. The Germany/Europe part is much more recent but can be seen in Russian sanctions from long before 2 years ago.
And yes China wins whatever the US does.
In terms of US locking in Germany to US block, I think that has been won (and blowing up NS2 with no German complaints confirms that). Germany now loses its industry. I agree US might not and might not be able to take advantage of that.
"Q: The war in Ukraine hangs in the balance. Who ought to be most concerned? Europe. If Putin wins, whose strategic model will be most disrupted?"
It has not been "in the balance" for almost 2 years. It has been pretty much one way slaughter all the time, even on the ocasions Russia chose to retreat. US is close to having fought this to the very last Ukrainian. Maybe 100k left, they started with 700k, called up over a million. Half a million is best guess of dead, half a million seriously wounded, half a million runaway. Maybe 50-70k Russian dead but 800k called up reservists or volunteers all with 3-6m minimum training.
This is denialism on a larger scale than Afghanistan.
The problem is that western leaders have already poured so much material and non-material support into the regime in Kiev that they cannot be seen to pull out now.
Moreover, the sociopaths who rule over the West would annihilate us all rather than suffer another reputational loss.
This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
I think this should be called the Sunk Ship Fallacy.
Send more Ukrainians down below to pump faster while we rearrange the deckchairs above. Life boats only for the "mercenaries".
I think Big Serge called it The Blood Pump (UKR blood that it is...)
The movie "Don't Look Up!" is funny because it is most instructive.
You're not quoting numbers of Ukrainian dead that you got from the Russian Defense Ministry again, are you?
Or is that someone else here who does that? Sometimes it's hard to keep you guys straight.
The ratio of dead bodies exchanged btw UKR and RUS. Also, the British Mediazona, monitoring Russian deaths, show that RUS has lost far less than UKR claims to have killed. The ratio of artillery shots (artillery killes the highest proportion of people) is waaaay in the favor of RUS. There are many other sources of information (i.e. one western specialist/analyst - American, advisor to the banking world, and with access to all sorts of imaging info, has looked at the UKR ever expanding cemeteries). All in all, come in ballpark around the numbers reported by RUS DoD.
"RUS has lost far less than UKR claims to have killed..."
Yes, because ALL governments at war lie about how many of the enemy they have killed, even - and brace yourself for a shock here - the Russian government. Remember the Vietnam war Body Count? And what do they say is the first casualty of war?
Specifically with regard to the Russian government, it's good to remember these are the folks who invented the Potemkin Village, and that was all before the Communists came along to teach them even better, more sophisticated methods of lying. Don't believe Brezhnev-era press releases about the size of the wheat harvest, don't believe Putin-era press releases about how many Ukrainians they have killed.
Have you followed western vloggers travelling or living in Russia? Have you seen that Russia in terms of PPP is the forth economy in the world, biggest food exporter, etc. The combined west is not producing as many 155 shells as Russia does it alone. And the US wants to fight China, who can crank up production 10x the level Russia has.
Nations change, some more, some less. Russians have suffered horrendously in the past 150 years. They might have learned something from that. Americans, with their "victories" have learned nothing. Not for that matter the Germans, who are not complicit to another genocide...
I'm not in the business of predicting the outcome of the war. I'm surprised so many people are, is there betting in Vegas on this? On the moral question, I'm clear that the Russians were wrong to invade and that the Ukrainians are right to defend their country, but that doesn't mean the Ukrainians will win, history shows the good guys often lose.
Seems like what a lot of people do is decide which side they identify with, and then comb the internet for evidence to support the claim that "their" side will win. And, the internet being the internet, they usually find the facts to support their case. I'm not doing that.
And I don't know about this business of comparing industrial production or GDP to figure out who will win, seems like if that worked, the US would have won in Vietnam, and the US and Soviets would have both won in Afghanistan.
why would I need to. 700k to start with, over a million called up, less than 200k left.
You explain it yourself.
Try to guess https://substack.com/profile/21198991-m-droy/note/c-56072057
Well, I have to give them points for consistency.
agree: I liked : "as Ukraine was poised to launch its dashing counteroffensive"
It poses deep questions about how Europe can make work a multi-cultural, multi-faith democracy that acknowledges both its own deep, layered and traumatic history and its deep connections to the Middle East and the Muslim world - which come with its own weight of historical baggage.
I am sure that many thousand immigrants who come from Muslim countries are deeply interested in making the "multi-faith democracy work" (it would be in deed a sweet irony of history to see French political system become a version of Lebanese) and to explore the intersectionality of lived experiences in Islamic and secular societies and their mutual touchpoints.
One of the reasons why the neoliberal order is rapidly disintegrating is because its stakeholders and apologists are incapable of even describing the problem in real terms, or seeing the root cause which might lead to the actual solution. 30-years US rampage across middle east destroyed and destabilized economies of many countries, and deliberate effort to undermine and destroy somewhat secular regimes (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan was the first of course) and replace them with Islamic fundamentalists additionally led to renewed oppression of women, a result of which is - invariably, everywhere - a demographic explosion. In some rational world, EU countries would have vital interest to ensure peace and stability beyond their borders, and do everything possible to restrain their overseas masters in Washington from wars and to prevent a very predictable influx of economic migrants. But EU political class has been groomed into complete vassalage towards the US, and hired to specifically leverage the huge wealth transfer opportunity such migration provides from the neoliberal perspective ("no crisis should go to waste" - disaster capitalism at its finest). Not only it depresses labor cost but frays the decade long status quo of "social state" that is only possible in homogenous societies with high level of social trust. 1-2 additional millions of Ukrainians will provide another such opportunity once Russia finally decides to retaliate for never ending NATO escalation and shuts down power in Ukraine for good. I can't wait to hear what intellectual giant Van den Leyen will tell us then, last year she assured audiences in the EU that Ukraine can pay some of the military assistance by exporting electricity.
"social state" that is only possible in homogenous societies...
Seems like the "homogeneous" thing wouldn't be so important if it weren't for the fucking racists.
For all this talk of “buckling down and taking action”, I still get the impression that no one quite knows what we should be investing in. No amount of EU billions will help the German/EU tech sector compete with the US. Same goes for solar panels from China.
I’m starting to think that real progress would be achieved by Germany becoming more French, i.e. rebalancing away from massive exports to more domestic consumption à la Pettis and Klein or Andreas Nölke. But this would require a higher minimum wage and stronger collective bargaining, not the flashy European initiatives that Professor Tooze seems to long for.
Would probably also make the average AfD voter less mad, as opposed to wiring another hundred billion to Rome.
It also means copying the French on energy policies.
And it all boils down to their obstinacy around their failed energy transition. They bet on the wrong technology, dug their heels in, and stuck their head in the sand. They’re embarrassed but too proud to just say that for once the French might have done it better than them.
The mindset of the German politic class regarding the energy transition is / was borderline fanatical.
From around 2010 to 2020, the German plan was to ditch nuclear power, go all in on a Russian tyrant's natural gas, and build intermittent wind and solar. And keep coal plants ready if necessary.
Post Covid and (especially) post Ukraine, the tyrant goes tyrant on the natural gas supply, but nuclear is still Verboten (cuz greens), more wind and solar is built, and coal plants and mines are fired up . And German coal is lignite! The dirtiest, most polluting type of coal. WTF!?!
Oh, yeah, the Germans, with their big line of ECB credit, go hard for liquified natural gas (LNG). And things kinda work out. No one freezes in the 2022-23 winter, although electric rates are 2.5x the US and vast swaths of German industry are now uncompetitive.
Of course, the German LNG buildout and buying spree spiked the world market price. Who suffered? Poorer nations like Pakistan and India with spot contacts for LNG. And critical developing nations' fertilizer producers like Indonesia.
Guess what? Developing world transition to natural gas is done. Coal is king. They see the German hypocrisy, so they are all going hard to coal. Just like the fuckin Germans.
Adam, hope you don’t mind me saying it some of your followers have interesting view’s
It's funny, isn't it? AT writes on the driest of economic issues, but his comment section is a Mos Eisley dive-bar full of Putin-lovers, climate deniers, antivaxxers, proud antisemites and even out-and-out Nazis. Plus some nice people thrown in for variety.
Just the craziest comment section of any SubStack I subscribe to, by far.
For me is even ore interesting and reveling that your comment is full of adjectives and name callings but completly devoid of reasoned argumentations, as is usual when mainstreamers, so called politically correct people try to put down thinkers who don't agree with them.
Sorry, who's got the time, really? Here's an idea: I'll wait for you to be wrong about something specific, and then I'll post a specific comment about that specific piece of wrongness, OK?
Ok.
It is, quite amazingly Almost like the tw at its worst
I don't know what tw is, but I'm also thinking maybe I don't want to know.
Is the phrase "climate denier" a reasonable term in your social circles?
My take: If climate is a crisis, and it probably is, the west should be commissioning 1-3 nuclear power plants annually.
Name checks out.
Ok. That's a tell.
I find those using the language of "... denier" (instead of "... skeptic" or "... moderate") equate their pet cause with "holocaust denial".
Of course, that cheapens the severity of the holocaust.
History refresher: The allies fire-bombed vast civilian areas to stop holocaust ideology.
So I'm curious. For "climate deniers", what's YOUR limiting principal?
Are there moderates? Are employees of Exxon Mobile or Saudi Aramco rotten?
Well, it's tricky, isn't it, because deniers keep changing their tune. You don't see "It's all a hoax!" that much any more, because the evidence has become undeniable, so then the deniers have retreated to "Oh, maybe it is happening, but we can't be SURE, and anyway no reason to do anything drastic like build a bunch of wind farms til we're ABSOLUTELY sure" like we've got another 20 years to wait for more data to come in. Plus a lot of these people just aren't arguing in good faith, we could wait 20 years and find that they STILL aren't "sure", and still don't think we should do very much.
It's the internet, there's a lot of dishonesty out there.
But to answer your question, no, I don't think they should be firebombed to death like the people of Dresden.
You are probably one of those mainstream infested hypocrites totally divorced from reality if you do not mind me saying so…
sterben fuer kiev?nein,danke.
Okay. I live on 3 GBP per day in Poland. What I have done in the last 35 minutes, since my jobs started?
I read as much Tooze as I could handle. Thought about it. Said this shit is not worth the subscription. Thought of comment. Thought of my parish priests. Thought about tithing my revenue. Wrote to my English client, Mr. Smith. Thought of the tax office, thought of the woman who denies me pleasure, because it's raining. placed an order for 71 shares of EKOBOX S.A. which will pay out a dividend of 0,07 grosz on one share of 0.565 per share, the quarry three bus stops away, thought of writing the priests to demand money from the quarry to fund the restoration of the two parish churches in the places of Kajetanów and Zagnańsk. I don't want to write anymore, so my priest-confessor is telling me to stop.
back to legal work - my shift ends at 12:45 P.M. Polish time.
What have you done in the last 39 minutes in London? I never lie. Do you?
If you give Germans enough rope, they will never fail and will end up hanging themselves rather than building a bridge over the chasm...
“As is often the case, the prospects for a “grand bargain” my hang on politics that are far from grand.”
Shouldn’t my be may here? Slight typo.