He’s right about 9/11 and the “World-domination advocates” exploiting the event to expand the scope of the US response from self-defense (neutralizing Al Quaeda) to hegemony-expansion (invading Iraq, and subsequent regime-change efforts).
It’s unpleasant at best to see them again crawling out of the woodwork, after causing so much damage to the US, Iraq, and the world, not to mention fomenting both Putin and the CCP's current aggressive expansionary posture. They defined the "New World Order" for the next half-century at least, as less about order and more about power. And now US appeals to a "rules-based international order" is falling on deaf ears because of the neocons.
And the media propaganda machine ramping up war justification, where have I seen this before.
On the other hand, Ukraine is, unlike Iraq, already a democracy, being invaded by an autocracy. Russia’s real objective is most likely to control Ukraine’s newly discovered natural gas reserves and maintain Russia’s energy leverage over the democratic EU [1]. Allowing an autocracy to do both of those things is equally distasteful.
Kinzinger isn’t entirely wrong in his assessment that allowing Russian nuclear saber rattling to deter the West may encourage every other 2-bit autocracy to pursue nukes, but unfortunately that cat’s already out of the bag.
When Gadhafi gave up his nuke program and later was regime-changed and assassinated anyway, and when Trump unilaterally backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, that showed the world that the US won’t honor such agreements, and that acquiring nukes is the only effective measure of regime security.
Still, allowing Putin’s nuclear saber rattling to deter the West from defending 1) a fellow democracy from invasion, and 2) the EU’s independence from energy leverage/blackmail/extortion by an autocracy, will only embolden autocracies to do more of the same. Appeasement of strongmen has historically not worked out too well. They invariably interpret it as weakness, and double down.
I don't think the EU is being extorted, exactly. It's simply that, for the countries that have done harsh sanctions on Russian gas, it's basically free for them: they weren't importing any anyway.
Germany has a real and significant dependence on Russian gas. It would actually have an economic effect if they sanctioned it tomorrow - companies would go bust. It would, however, be totally doable. It's not the case that it's a unbearable cost to pay, it's simply that it is a cost.
People make out that Russia has the EU over a barrel, but it's more the other way around them: energy is literally the most fungible input. Having higher energy costs is bad for your economy, but it's not nearly as bad as having your major export (gas) embargoed. It's not like they can just pick up all their pipelines and point them at China.
Just to revisit this 2 weeks later, even the European Commission President is now saying Russia is trying to blackmail the EU by cutting off energy supplies:
But you’re right this will ultimately hurt Russia more than the EU. EU will find other sources of energy, and Russia will lose a major revenue stream that they really can’t afford to lose.
It’s unpleasant at best to see them again crawling out of the woodwork, after causing so much damage to the US, Iraq, and the world, not to mention fomenting both Putin and the CCP's current aggressive expansionary posture. They defined the "New World Order" for the next half-century at least, as less about order and more about power. And now US appeals to a "rules-based international order" is falling on deaf ears because of the neocons.
And the media propaganda machine ramping up war justification, where have I seen this before.
On the other hand, Ukraine is, unlike Iraq, already a democracy, being invaded by an autocracy. Russia’s real objective is most likely to control Ukraine’s newly discovered natural gas reserves and maintain Russia’s energy leverage over the democratic EU [1]. Allowing an autocracy to do both of those things is equally distasteful.
Kinzinger isn’t entirely wrong in his assessment that allowing Russian nuclear saber rattling to deter the West may encourage every other 2-bit autocracy to pursue nukes, but unfortunately that cat’s already out of the bag.
When Gadhafi gave up his nuke program and later was regime-changed and assassinated anyway, and when Trump unilaterally backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, that showed the world that the US won’t honor such agreements, and that acquiring nukes is the only effective measure of regime security.
Still, allowing Putin’s nuclear saber rattling to deter the West from defending 1) a fellow democracy from invasion, and 2) the EU’s independence from energy leverage/blackmail/extortion by an autocracy, will only embolden autocracies to do more of the same. Appeasement of strongmen has historically not worked out too well. They invariably interpret it as weakness, and double down.
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE&t=9m