[ChuckNorris89]

>Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length off an academic paper and engage its contents.

You don't need to read academic papers to know that Russia = evil. Eastern Europe has been parroting this for decades but Germany stuck its fingers in its ears and went "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you over the sound of my cheap gas brokered by our lord and savior, Gerhard Schröder, who's on the Kremlin's payroll".

Even after Russia's invasion of Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, and Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008, and Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, nobody could have seen Russia invading another neighboring country again in 2022, it was a total shock for European politicians. /s

[bnhjt]

Why single out Germany? War hawk Tony Blair condoned a BP deal after the invasion of Chechnya:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1046295978238979863

There is a pipeline from the Nord Stream terminal in Germany to the UK. Nord Stream is owned by Russia, Germany, France, and The Netherlands. Gas was resold to plenty of EU countries, including Eastern European ones.

Poland and Ukraine collected transit fees for Russian oil/gas long after Nord stream was blown up.

[Mlller]

“Eastern Europe has been parroting […] Germany stuck its fingers in its ears”

Or perhaps Germany couldnʼt hear them, because their actions spoke louder than their words – a majority of Eastern European countries had made themselves more dependent on Russian gas than Germany:

  - Hungary: 110.4 percent 
  - Latvia: 100.1 percent 
  - Finland: 92.4 percent 
  - Estonia: 86.5 percent 
  - Czechia: 86.0 percent 
  - Slovenia: 81.0 percent 
  - Slovakia: 75.2 percent 
  - Bulgaria: 72.8 percent 
  - Germany: 58.9 percent

“Some of the countries have a figure above 100 because they import more than required for domestic consumption and export other energy products.” per https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/326055...

[tuukkah]

Your list does not illustrate what you claim. E.g. Finland was not at all dependent on Russian gas, because Finland does not use much gas, so 92.4 percent of nothing.

Meanwhile, Germany's gas imports were huge and you cannot leave 58.9 percent of your population to freeze in the winter anyway.

EDIT: Also, Finland has this in the laws:

> There is an alternative fuel obligation, so that in the event of a gas supply disturbance, other fuels can be immediately substituted.

It's as if they prepared for an event like this ;-)

[Mlller]

Sorry for my unclarity, but I understand the point at issue (of GP and this thread) to be how a prolongation of mutual economic relations with Russia was not justifiable morally, not how well a country could cope with an abrupt end of these relations economically or in terms of the well-being of their own population. You seem to argue with regard to the latter, and I would concur, although the linked article shows that after Germanyʼs 58.9 percent went down to zero, they either, in fact, could let their population freeze (household consumption went down) or got over it in other ways (a considerable part of the 58.9 percent was industrial consumption).

[chrysler]

The point is whether Russia could extort countries (eg: prevent from sending military aid to Ukraine) or not. While a little over half of all gas in Germany came from Russia, Germany was among countries with the highest proportion of gas in total fuel consumption.

In comparison, countries like Finland indeed got virtually all their gas from Russia, but that was only a few percent of total fuel consumption and couldn't be used to extort them.

[Mlller]

If that is the point (which is not clear to me from the start of this subthread), it is rather settled: The linked article shows that Germany could get over not buying Russian gas anymore well; and it sends vastly more military aid to Ukraine than Finland – Zelenskyy “noted that Germany was now Ukraine’s second-largest backer after the United States” (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/world/europe/ukraine-zele...). (That this took sometimes painfully long has a sufficient reason in senses of guilt regarding war – in fact, both sides still draw arguments from the same history for violently contradicting claims on Germany.)

[tuukkah]

> [Germany] sends vastly more military aid to Ukraine than Finland

The statistics disagree if you remember to compare per capita or per GDP. (Finland looks bad only if you include the refugee costs in a per GDP calculation - not many Ukrainians wanted to travel to Finland so far.) https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

Also, one should take into account that the amount of unnecessary military hardware lying around is not the same in a country that is surrounded by Nato members vs a country that shares over thousand kilometers of border with the unhinged neighbour. Further, you might not be strategically able to reveal in public how much of your stock that acts as a deterrent you have given away while the war is going on.

[it_citizen]

This is very simplified.

A lot of western countries, Germany first, believed that if we traded and opened up to those countries, they would naturally tend to adopt western values.

It turned out to be incorrect. China being an even better example. But it was not a crazy assumption at the time, and coming after the fact is hindsight 20/20.

Honestly, even knowing how things turned out, I am proud that the west tried.

[ChuckNorris89]

>if we traded and opened up to those countries, they would naturally tend to adopt western values.

You can't possibly tell me with a straight face that your argument is "Germany didn't know that Russia invading 3 countries was bad and it hoped Russia would come around if it just kept buying gas from them and pumping trillions in their economy which Russia spent on its military would make them more peaceful".

It's safe to assume that either Germany doesn't know when to take a hint that after 3 invasions, your trading partner is not gonna come around, or Germany was actively ignoring Russia's warmongering for it's own benefit.

Either way it looks bad on Germany and no made up excuses are gonna cut it.

[it_citizen]

I am glad Germany didn't stop trading with the US after they invaded Irak by producing fake witnesses, or the second time by fabricating proofs, or Afghanistan.

Diplomacy is not black and white.

[spamizbad]

As an American: It should’ve. If a firmer hand was taken it could’ve saved thousands of lives. France and Germany wagged its finger but basically waved us through.

[this_user]

There was nothing that could have been done from the outside to stop that. The only people who could have made a difference were the citizens of the United States, but about 80% of them thought the invasion was a good idea.

[ivan_gammel]

Germany did not ignore Russian military invasions, which can be easily demonstrated by specific actions that German government took at that time. Notably those actions were not much different from what USA or other European countries except a few with anti-Russian paranoia did. Besides, there were two, not three invasions. Chechnya is not a country.

[practice9]

> Chechnya is not a country.

There was a Chechen Republic of Ichkeria that existed until getting slaughtered, occupied, and retrospectively written out of the books by Russia.

Yeltsin (and later Putin) was a baddie that West hoped to trade with, so they were willing to push aside the issue of Chechnya calling it an internal conflict.

But in reality the level of Russian war crimes was unparalleled, sometimes even worse than what's happening in Ukraine.

Internationally no high-ranking Russian officials or military officers were ever prosecuted or actually condemned for these war crimes.

Most countries have turned a blind eye and didn't act with urgency: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2020...

[ivan_gammel]

Chechnya as independent country did not exist in 1990s. There was no legal mechanism for it to leave Russia, no democratic process to leave, no recognition by other countries etc. Separatists committed numerous crimes against civil population in Chechnya and outside it and eventually switched to terrorist methods, attacking schools, hospitals and cultural events (e.g. Budennovsk, Beslan, Nord-Ost). Basically, they were Russian version of Hamas or other radical organizations in Middle East. Not the type you would ever negotiate any independence with.

[nr2x]

And yet the USA and Poland were screaming at the top of their lungs to not do nord stream and the German public didn’t care. At all.

[pydry]

Of course they didn't care. The USA were screaming because they wanted to flog more expensive LNG to Germany and Poland was screaming because they wanted their transit fees.

The US screamed so loudly that Nord Stream exploded.

[throw0101b]

> The USA were screaming because they wanted to flog more expensive LNG […]

The US has been screaming at DE since the 1980s, decades before fracking and LNG was a thing:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod_pipeli...

* https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/03/blinken-secretary-state...

[nr2x]

No, no, no - that would mean there wasn’t a deep strand of sympathy for Russian ethnic-totalitarianism at play at the highest levels of the German establishment.

And of course it’s not like AfD actually, exists, or that the German security apparatus is riddled with Russian spies and Nazis.

[permo-w]

did we really think that or was it just a rationalisation of the desire for profit?

[it_citizen]

Good point. I think both?

Nations are not single minded. Political parties, individuals, companies, diplomats, each might have their own particular interest.

But I remember not long ago, "trade and free market will bring democratic institutions" being a pretty popular opinion.

[tuukkah]

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

[marcod]

Yes, to me it's much more about politicians wanting a short-term win, over long-term stability at a cost.

[jltsiren]

Chechnya was a civil war within the internationally recognized borders of Russia, not an invasion. The only foreign power that had recognized independent Chechnya was Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

There was a general feeling in the early and mid-2000s that Russia was finally changing for the better. The economy was growing and the quality of life was improving for many Russians. While no one mistook Putin for a democratic leader, he wasn't particularly bad as far as semi-authoritarian leaders go.

The invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a turning point, because people didn't believe Putin would go to war to prevent the expansion of NATO. But it wasn't a particularly big shock, because military interventions as an extension of foreign policy were quite common in the 1990s and 2000s. It was more unpleasant with "their side" doing it, but as long as "our side" was also doing it, military interventions were a legitimate policy tool. International politics is pretty childish in this respect.

After the invasion, politicians had much less favorable views of Putin. But they continued dealing with him, assuming that he would act based on rational self-interest. The real shock in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was not the invasion itself but the irrationality of it. If Putin could miscalculate his actions so badly, it made no sense to treat him as a rational actor anymore.

[redeeman]

but what is rational? a great great many people in Denmark obliterated the savings they spent a few decades making just to make it through this mild winter only freezing moderately, some even having to sell their homes and a large number (small percentage, but still large number) looking into retiring on the public pension that is not much. Would they be better off if the west had not gone all in on the anti-russia sanctions and funding ukraine?

the people in the US/EU that were crying snot because russians were streaming gas burners running 24/7 while some Europeans had to equip their winter jackets in their homes.

the extreme amount of wet firewood being burned smoking up entire neighborhoods so that people would not freeze to death. Are the people inhaling that smoke better off? is it rational for them to cheer "putin man bad" (asserting that they did, i do not know if they did)

[nr2x]

I literally cannot fathom how Germans still don’t see this. It’s a certain flavor of arrogance and greed to watch your neighbors be slaughtered and think “hey, we are getting cheap gas - surely this isn’t a problem”.

Germans like to say how much they learned from their history, but when shit got real they funded the aggressor and benefited from Putins corruption.