[benjaminsuch]

Hindsight is a lazy excuse. Securing your energy and making yourself depend by and on a more than questionable regime isn't just stupid. It's beyond that. You don't need a lot of brain cells to understand that that isn't a great idea.

[number6]

It sounded good: if they trade with us they can't go to war with us without loosing their economy. The EU was build on this idea. And with trade there also follows prosperity and then people will demand democracy.

[lossolo]

This is not true at least from 2008 when Russia attacked Georgia, 2014 when they annexed Crimea. Everyone said to Germany to not go with Nord Stream 2 because Russia will use it politically but they ignored that because social contract depends on cheap energy from Russia, competitiveness of German economy depends on cheap energy too. Germany plan was to sell gas coming from Russia to the rest of EU with margin, one of the reasons gas is considered "green" source of energy by EU legislation.

[DiogenesKynikos]

The 2008 war in Georgia began when Georgia attacked South Ossetia. For those who don't know, South Ossetia is a de facto independent state that is de jure part of Georgia (much like Taiwan and China).

In the Soviet era, South Ossetia was an autonomous oblast within the Georgian SSR. After Georgia declared independence from the USSR, South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia. They fought a war, and Russia eventually backed South Ossetia and brokered a deal. There have been Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia ever since.

South Ossetia never gained international recognition, and in 2008, the Georgian president made an attempt to recapture it. He thought that if he was fast enough, the Russians wouldn't have time to respond and he could present them with a fait accompli. It appears that the Russians knew what was coming, and they immediately sent troops through the tunnel into South Ossetia after the Georgians moved in. Russian forces drove the Georgians back, all the way into Georgian (pre-war) territory.

The Russians then recognized South Ossetia as an independent state, though pretty much no one else does.

[lossolo]

I think it's more nuanced than you are describing it, here is a link from wikipedia showing what happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Prelude

[DiogenesKynikos]

I would not trust Wikipedia for any politically contentious issue - and especially not for anything that pits different nationalities against one another.

There are different political factions (and in particular, nationalist factions) that heavily push their point of view and that will attempt to control articles that they care about. Look at the talk page or edit history of any article related to a contentious historical topic that pits different Eastern European countries against one another, and you'll see what I mean. There's even a long-standing fight over the nationality of Copernicus, a man who lived before the establishment of modern nation-states.

What is clear in the war over South Ossetia is that the Georgian president, Saakashvili, made a decision to retake the territory with a full-scale invasion. Up until that point, there was sporadic fighting over between Georgians and Ossetians, but the EU report on the conflict found that the Georgians were the first to launch a full ground invasion. Saakashvili had long made full reunification of all Georgian territories a major goal, and he had previously brought another region, Adjara, back under the control of the central government.

[misja111]

If this were true then the Middle East would be full of peaceful democracies. But the reality in Europe's oil supplying countries is rather different.

Come on, the whole Energiewende was full of wishful thinking. Nuclear power plants were going to be closed while there was no prospect on another energy source that could fill the gap. So gas was suddenly declared a 'sustainable' energy source, conveniently ignoring the CO2 emissions and the fact that gas is not renewable. And now Germany is reopening coal power plants. How sustainable is that?

[redprince]

> If this were true then the Middle East would be full of peaceful democracies. But the reality in Europe's oil supplying countries is rather different.

Who said anything about democracies? Or that they are peaceful on the inside? They need to be stable and reliable trading partners and that usually works splendid when they get something out of it. In fact that works rather splendid for the countries that aren't on everyone's shit list. The really ugly truth is how much of the moral standards are conveniently forgotten when trading with authoritarian countries sporting despicable human rights records.

> Come on, the whole Energiewende was full of wishful thinking.

Such is the widely accepted view on the internet. And it is completely unimpeded by facts.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

[graeme]

There’s trade and there is supply. US and China have lots of trade, real conflict limit. Not impossible, but a factor.

German industry is supplied by russian gas. Throwing away nuclear power and making oneself dependent on foreign energy suppliers lets them influence your decisions.

[pfortuny]

You’re right but what then was the USSR and now is Russia et al. has so huge borders and neighbors foreign to th Europe concept that thinking that (and knowing who ruled it) was worse than wishful thinking.

[josefx]

> they can't go to war with us without loosing their economy

Have those people ever looked at how much wars cost? We are talking about creating cities from scratch to support the war effort amounts of cash. Hundreds of thousands of able bodied workers, stuck walking the countryside instead of working impact. We are talking about entire industries repurposed to produce war time supplies. Countries have been willing to fuck over their economies a lot harder to support their war machines than anything the EU could ever hope to do to the Russian economy.

[ibeckermayer]

That never sounded good to anybody with good judgement. Russia is largely self sufficient for basic goods (food, energy), meaning that while their economy takes a hit, it’s a financial problem more than an existential crisis. The same can’t be said for Germany, who have systematically destroyed domestic energy production and now are facing an unprecedented economic catastrophe. Not just a financial problem, but a real economic problem of being able to acquire sufficient quantities of the basic inputs to a contemporary first world economy.

Trump famously pointed out the folly of this strategy to a chorus of arrogant snickering from the contingent of German bureaucrats. Not so funny now…

https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg

[bryanlarsen]

A predicted drop of 1.4% of GDP is an economic catastrophe?

[cpleppert]

That wasn't the reason, Russia was simply the lowest cost supplier by far. They have an entire network of pipes developed over decades to deliver gas to Europe and Germany.

In fact, If Germany diversified LNG supplies it would make war less likely because Russia would have less leverage. Every geopolitical commentator for a decade has pointed out that Russian gas supplies were a weapon that could be used to deter Europe.

[msie]

Well, they learned a painful lesson there.

[somenameforme]

It's easy to say it's an excuse without considering the world today. Saudi Arabia could easily grind the entire world's economy to a halt if they so desired. China could do even worse. And Russia is already demonstrating what they can do. And these are just the well known examples. Look to essentially any field (perhaps rare Earth metals, especially those involved in electric components) and it's the same story.

The entire idea of an advanced or post-industrial economy is largely a facade. Absolutely everything we ultimately consume and use is dependent upon the most basic of skills, labor, and resources - the sort that 'advanced' economies strive to outsource as much as possible to 'developing' economies. But of course this doesn't change the fact that said skills/labor/resources are still the true backbone of your economy. Instead you've simply inverted a power relationship and become completely dependent upon those nations with said 'developing' economies.

[hackerlight]

Democracy and long-term thinking don't go well together.

People say this about shareholder owned companies with profit driven quarters but it's far more true for elected politicians who are judged myopically -- or, judged with superstition, as with nuclear energy in Germany -- on things like the current gas price. You see this manifest everywhere in politics. Why do you think federal debts are growing so much? Because voters create incentives for politicians to act myopically and kick the can down the road.

I also suspect part of it is deliberate malevolence. Stealing the upside for ourselves, while our children (federal debt) or foreigners (global warming) pay the downside.

Another part is that liberals have been sleepwalking. We bought into Fukuyama's End of History narrative. Fascism and war was a relic of the 20th century. In reality we were resting in the shade of America's unipolar hegemony. That's an American export that Europe had been free riding off. If America's relative standing weakens further, expect more conflict.

[redprince]

This is still arguing from hindsight and conveniently neglects the dependence of Russia on the EU: The EU was Russia's single largest customer of natural gas and an important purveyor of machines and technology. A valid reasoning at that time was that Putin would not risk this income / trade and furthermore Russia could be pacified or kept in check by ever increasing economic ties to the EU. Unfortunately Putin decided that tanking Russia's economy was totally worth it and/or speculated the EU confronted with the specter of an energy crisis would quickly falter and let him annex Ukraine without much fuss.

Furthermore Russian gas was cheap which made the development of alternatives a rather unpopular proposition. Try to explain to the people and the industry that gas will be more expensive because Russia might pose a problem and alternative sources need to be put in place. In hindsight it was stupid to not address the dependence on Russian energy but that is precisely the clarity hindsight provides. While the actions leading up to the current situations were taken, it wasn't all that clear that the problem could become very real.

We could all have continued living in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity in Europe, but instead Putin choose a course of action in which everyone is losing big time. What a colossal waste.

[miguelazo]

Interesting observation there! What country do you live in?

[benjaminsuch]

Germany