Europe cannot afford to have its foreign and domestic policies dictated by Putin’s blackmail
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
European Union nations want to impose tougher economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine and providing the missiles that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. However, they are worried about biting the hand that feeds them – with the natural gas that fuels much of its economy.
Russia is the world’s second-biggest natural gas producer and third-biggest oil producer, so it can inflict tremendous pressure and damage on its neighbors without firing a shot. The 28 EU nations as a whole depend on Russia for one-third of their oil and gas. However, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania get 100% of their natural gas from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six other European countries get more than half of their gas from the powerful Russian Bear: Czech Republic (57%), Poland (59%), Ukraine (60%), Hungary (80%), Slovakia (84%) and Bulgaria (89%).
That makes the Europeans highly vulnerable to cuts in the fuel supplies they need to power their cars, keep their businesses, factories and economies running smoothly – and heat homes, to literally keep people alive during brutal winters like those they’ve experienced recently. A simple “nyet” from Mr. Putin could reduce or cut off energy exports, leaving the continent hostage to Russia and creating a potential disaster. European officials know this but so far are frozen by their own fears and policies.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) calls Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,” because 60% of its exports are oil and natural gas. Cutting these exports to pressure Europe politically might hurt Russia’s economy. However, it has already done so, is currently squeezing Ukraine over winter gas supplies – supposedly over late payments for past deliveries – and is making export arrangements with China and other countries, to reduce any economic harm it might suffer from engaging in renewed energy blackmail.
Moreover, during one week this September, Russia supplied up to 45% less gas than Poland requested, the Poles’ largest oil and gas company reported. Over the past decade, “Russia has halted the flow of gas through Ukraine three times, directly affecting eastern and southern European countries most reliant on Gazprom, the giant Russian energy monopoly,” the Christian Science Monitor has observed.
Indeed, 16% of Russian natural gas exports flow through Ukraine. In yet another pressure tactic, Russia began tightening the export spigot in June. Russian gas supplies through Ukraine to Slovakia have been cut by 25%, says Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan.
There’s no question that the EU and USA must punish Russia for seizing Crimea, infiltrating troops and military equipment into eastern Ukraine to support secessionists, aiding terrorism, and killing hundreds of innocent jetliner passengers. Since no one wants a shooting war with Russia, economic sanctions are all that’s left. Failure to do even that would give Putin a green light to move more forcefully against Ukraine – or even try to occupy other former Soviet Union nations.
Putin has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.” Before invading Ukraine, Russia invaded the former Soviet territory of Georgia in 2008 to support separatists who had declared independence for the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It’s not at all hard to imagine Putin moving against Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, other former Soviet possessions or even Finland, to bring them into Mother Russia’s suffocating embrace. But how can the EU end the blackmail, enjoy some foreign policy independence and improve its faltering economy with less reliance on Russia?
If European countries faced food shortages due to import restrictions, they would offer their farmers incentives to grow more. EU members need to act the same way on the energy front. Otherwise, they give Russia tremendous sway over their future. European nations certainly have the ability to take action.
For one thing, they could import more natural gas from the United States and other countries besides Russia, until it can produce more domestic energy. Europe is blessed with enormous quantities of oil and natural gas – including enough gas to supply all its needs for at least 28 years, during which it could develop viable alternatives to gas and the dozens of coal-fired generators it is now building. US Energy Information Administration data reveal that Sweden has enough gas to meet its needs for 250 years. Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, France and Spain also have extensive potential, as do Great Britain and other countries. Unfortunately, those deposits aren’t economically recoverable using traditional drilling.
However, they can be captured using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) – which has been used safely and with great economic and employment benefit more than a million times in the United States since 1947. It has made the United States the world’s largest natural gas producer.
Not surprisingly, environmental extremists strenuously oppose fracking – further crippling Europe’s ability to meet its energy needs and chart its economic destiny and foreign policy. Also not surprising, Russia is secretly funding the European anti-fracking movement “to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently revealed.
But if there’s a silver lining to unfolding Middle East events and Russia’s naked aggression, it’s that more sensible Europeans are finally looking more critically at their self-destructive energy and environmental policies. The European Union announced in September that it will combine previously separate energy and climate ministries into one office. The decision infuriates radical greens, but it reflects growing business, worker, consumer and family concerns about reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuels.
Next, Europe needs to allow fracking. Right now, virtually every EU nation except Poland and Britain bans fracking. Besides making Europe more energy independent, fracking would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by enabling European nations to rely more on natural gas and less on coal. Fracking would also reduce EU natural gas, electricity and even oil prices, as it has in the USA. It would also create or save millions of jobs that are endangered (or gone) because of Europe’s outrageously high energy costs. In fact, many EU companies and families pay three to eight times more than Americans do for electricity.
Another problem in Europe is that people living above the shale deposits have no ownership or economic interests in developing them. They are inconvenienced, but the state and drilling companies get all the money. The EU needs to devise incentives that give landowners and residents a positive stake in development – such as a royalty or percentage of every Euro of oil and gas produced and sold.
On this side of the pond, US petroleum production must be further increased. The huge gains in American oil and gas output since 2009 were all on private and state lands, while the Obama administration has presided over a nearly 40% decline in production from onshore and offshore federal lands. The President and congressional Democrats need to stop being energy obstructionists, and let American companies tap these energy treasure troves. That would create jobs, generate billions in government revenues, make more gas available for European purchase, and strengthen our economy and balance of trade. Congress should also consider prohibiting state and local fracking bans as unconstitutional constraints on trade.
Congress and the President should also fast-track US natural gas exports to Europe, by speeding permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. These actions would encourage further drilling, technology improvements and job creation. As Europeans adapt and improve America’s rapidly advancing fracking technologies and develop their own gas, these exports will be less vital. But they are essential now.
The world is not going find safe, efficient, affordable, environment-friendly alternatives to oil, natural gas and coal in the next decade or so. (Right now, Europe gets just 1.3% of its energy from wind and solar, but 75% from fossil fuels – and both wind and solar exact significant environmental costs.) In the meantime, we need to rely more on realistic opportunities and initiatives, and on our oil supplier friends in Canada and Mexico. If we don’t, we’ll have to continue importing from increasingly unstable and unfriendly parts of the world – and being constantly at their tender mercies, just like the Europeans.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author or Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And the EUSSR and US are totally innocent? Ukraine is Russia’s front yard. You don’t trample over their lawn.
Another thing is the people in the EUSSR are increasingly negative towards the Blitzkrieg-style EUSSR expansion to the east. It’s hideously expensive and the results are non existent. The Ukraine will only do one thing: soak up money from the EUSSR, just like all those countries. They’ve been “free” for 20 years and have achieved nothing worth mentioning. The only thing they do is elect thieves and then have a little revolution every 10 years.
We don’t need them. We don’t want them.
“There’s no question that the EU and USA must punish Russia for seizing Crimea, infiltrating troops and military equipment into eastern Ukraine to support secessionists, aiding terrorism, and killing hundreds of innocent jetliner passengers.”
This is laughable.
The jetliner was an accident. You know, like when that US ship shot down that Iranian airliner couple of years back.
You also realize that the Russian minority in the Ukraine has a right of self determination, right? If they chose to leave the Ukraine, they have the right to do so. It’s funny how the EUSSR and the US only accept this right and support it when the minority in question is not Russian. Want proof? Kosovo. Yes! So great! South Ossetia? No! Those evil Russians! That evil Putin!
The Russians in the Ukraine don’t want to snuggle up to the EUSSR, and they’re smart to do so!
The warmongering doesn’t come from Putin. It comes from the EUSSR and primarily from the US.
“But that’s all just Russian propaganda!”
And European media, especially in Germany and Austria, aren’t full of it? Do you guys even know that German and Austrian media is just a few inches away from the “Jeder Schuss ein Russ” propaganda of WW1?
The US media is known to lie about everything. Why would they tell the truth here? The truth doesn’t fit their agenda. And least the Russian news media doesn’t put Hong Kong into South America.
Do you know what the people in the streets say about it? They say that Putin can have back the entire Eastern block. The people are THAT fed up with the EUSSR’s insane politics and Obama’s constant warmongering on our doorstep.
Yeah, yeah, we’re spouting the latest line from the Kermlin. And you’re spouting the latest line from the biggest warmonger, aggressor and imperialist on the planet, supported by the biggest anti-democratic organization in Europe since the Iron Curtain fell (the EUSSR.)
I bet $30 you get per week that in 2 years you’ll serve a different master and say different things, while feeling as indignant and as righteous as you feel now, reptile.
I disagree with Driesen on his advocation of a policy to export our natural gas. We should reserve this important energy source for ourselves. Exporting it for profit is sort sighted and counter to our national interests.
Has Russia had even one day of decent governance in it’s entire existence? I mean, really. What waste of potential.
MarkW – personally I state my own view and have never been told what to say by the Kremlin or any other Russian agency. The fact that it would seem that you do not agree with me and others on this blog does not make us trolls but simply means that we are people with a different point of view; perhaps if you took the trouble to be better informed you could defend your opinions with rational arguments, not simply resort to name calling. I think that there are parallels here with the climate debate where it is better to make an effort to understand the arguments of those with whom you disagree so that you might better refute their position.
The US is behind the coup in Kiev, USAID and National Endowment for Democracy financed and organized the Petrol bomb throwing Maidan activist, to overthrow a democratic chosen president.
The US is destabilizing Europe, Victoria Nuland Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of Ukrainian, “Democratic Institutions”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm
West Europeans have no problem with the Russians, we have ties with the Russian that are older than the US, we are getting tired from the US propaganda,
We don’t need expensive US liquid Shale gas.
“West Europeans have no problem with the Russians, we have ties with the Russian that are older than the US” Exactly, my country has been at war with Russia for over 200 years. We know exactly what to expect from them, so they pose no problem. Sweden said NO when the Northstream gas pipe line was offered to us. Guess why? The whole archipelago outside Stockholm is full of submarine bases and hidden guns. To protect us from a Tsunami? During the beginning of the cold war Sweden had the fourth largest airforce in the world in ABSOLUTE terms. Why? Russia has historically always been a pain in the @ur momisugly$$ for its neighbors and continues to be so. A whole country behaving lika a drunken bully? I am afraid sanctions are not enough.
“European Union nations want to impose tougher economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine”.
You start off with a wrong statement. Russia did not invade Ukraine. They had 16,000 troops legally in the Crimea (they were allowed to have up to 25,000).
The democratic and legally elected government of Ukraine decided to take Russia up on a deal instead of the EU because it was a much better deal. The USA didn’t like that as it has been tightening the noose around Russia by expanding NATO eastwards.
The USA provoked and backed the overthrow of that government. The people in various regions decided they didn’t want to be part of that so they voted democratically to leave. Crimea was the first. It had been part of Russia since 1783 and was given to the Ukraine in a vodka fueled moment by Khrushchev.
If you really think that Russia would stand by idly and be encircled then your naivete is on display.
So rather than collect $90 million a year for base rental the Ukraine will now get zero. Instead of a discount on gas they will pay full price. Instead of credit they will pay in advance.
Propaganda in politics and often elsewhere (eg climate science) is a skilful mixture of fact and falsehood, so only those with a detailed knowledge of the matter could distinguish between two.
Here as a simple neutral test:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Lion.jpg
The above image is of an object recently discovered in Central Africa, it represents carved statuette of a native lion with what appears to be an early human(oid) baby.
Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself.
There are two sentences there, one is fact one pure fabrication. Simple.
Wow, thanks Vuk; glad I read the piece and didn’t just look at the picture. You’ve shown clear evidence that Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, instead of just another Elvis playing Pacman on a pizza crust.
/s
Hi Alan
We often choose to believe to be true what appears to be logical according to our knowledge and experience, but occasionally that may not the case. Your comment makes me think you already knew, but for anyone else:
the image was recorded only 11 days ago and the unexpected answer is on the ESA’s webpage
Actually, I regret making such a flippant attempt at humor, as it may detract somewhat from the excellent point made in vukcevic‘s post.
Yes, the fabrication starts with “Scientists say..” Always does.
Do you mind ? Lot of scientists read comments on this blog.
Come, come Vuk. You should know that I was referring to reports in the media that start out “Scientists say.. and then cite junk science of the warmers.
I was trained both as an engineer to make things that work and as a scientist to speculate about things that don’t. Fortunately, I was able to earn solid living out of the first rather than the second.
It was said that Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance.
Most of scientists, we hope, are on the right side of that frontier, it is the mass media that it is most often on the other.
“Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself.”
is pure fabrication.
“The above image is of an object recently discovered in Central Africa, it represents carved statuette of a native lion with what appears to be an early human(oid) baby.”
is a lie.
I have no idea how old is the object, ESA scientists say it is of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
ESA scientists: Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the Sun and its planets formed.
Hence fact is that Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself., but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are correct, but hopefully we may find out soon.
I and many others, may have fallen in for the ESA propaganda, as it appears that many commentators in this thread have, on the both sides of the argument on the question of European energy supplies. Mixture of truth, half truths and outright lies is stuff of effective propaganda.
Dirty Snowball
http://youtu.be/ELbEG1xPX9s
or Rock
http://youtu.be/qYIpU0DpZzM
Ah, what a refreshing foreign policy blog-post about current issues…
Ten commandments of propaganda:
1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is the face of the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.
5. The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred. “The ages-old ‘God bless America’ is playing once more.”
10. All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time
Russia is the ally of the West. Europe and America want a strong and growing Russia, to help balance a burgeoning China, India and general Asian juggernaut.
That someone owns an important resource, and is the supplier … well, the physics of economic levers & fulcrums is well known.
It is also in the interest of the West, that Russia generally acts in ways to consolidate and stabilize Eurasian provinces within its sphere. Some basically-legit forms of actions or response could of course also have avaricious or other ulterior components, and at times tactics may draw criticism (from & of all sides) … but the principle stands.
Putin’s response to recent sanctions has been so smooth & purposeful, it looks like a studied & prepared plan. Russia itself gains economic & strategic independence; enhances its domestic economy & (food) production-base … while Euro-leaders get a bogeyman with which to cajole & prod their own (somewhat dangerously) reluctant (or sniveling & whining) membership.
The problem with Putin is, not so much what he’s doing, but that he’s a bit of a ‘cult personality’. Finding a good successor and making a favorable post-Putin transition becomes more challenging, the longer he hangs around & the more dominance he gains. The USA learned this particular lesson well, under FDR.
Russian ‘crudities’, not to put too fine a point on it, help to deflect attention from American crudities … and our own exercise of often multi-dimensional (ie, sly & devious) self-interest. We, the EuroZone and Russia are partners.
And now let’s discuss the energy part of the document rather than the blatant political propaganda.
Why no mention of France and all the nuclear energy they have used for decades SAFELY?
Why ship energy to Europe? Isn’t that just trading one controller for another?
Why no mention of coal? Europe does have a lot of coal in various regions.
I’m all in favor of countries being as self sufficient as possible in food & energy as it makes sense to not be dependent on others.
It’s reasonably-ok to be energy-dependent on your ally, whom you are free to pretend is an ogre. Or a twit, in the case of USA reliance on Canada. Or a mental health case, viz Venezuela.
But it’s less-ok to be reliant on others for food-sources, since in the face of certain kinds of problems, they may not be able to provide the vital supplies, even if they want to. Plus, at-all-serious disturbances of the food-supply in developed countries could readily lead to severe destabilization.
Nuclear power policy went ‘psycho’, back in the ’70s. Globally.
This piece of propaganda has NO reason to be published in WUWT.
Notice, how many of those who attempt to defend Putin — an undeniable aggressor, blackmailer, poisoner, and mass murderer — never posted on this site before. Regardless of what they say, and however convoluted are their “arguments”, all of these “new posters” are Putin’s agents. They are being attracted to key words “Russia, Ukraine” like flies to you know what. How these people live with what they are?
Very large numbers visit WUWT regularly, but don’t usually leave comments.
Others, otoh, try to comment often, simply to ‘participate’.
If indeed a given WUWT post draws wider media notice, and this publicity does bring new visitors, that doesn’t seem nefarious either.
Advocating for a murderer, paid or pro bono, is nefarious in any case.
As a Russian, you have a useful perspective; even a special place in the discussion.
Some of your rhetoric, though, detracts from points that might have merit.
Nuke those with whom you disagree? Rape their daughters?
Come now … Russians are made of sterner stuff.
You don’t know of what you speak.
I find it distressful if someone from a different nation tells us how we should feel or whom we should trade with.
Dependence on countries serving oil is a technical issue that is solved by the consumer. We in the Czech Republic were 100% dependent on Russia even in the early 1990s, a few years after communism fell. Projects were realized that guaranteed that we get both gas and oil from other sources, too. Aside from Russian oil, we also have Arab oil flowing through Germany, and so on.
But Russia is still an extremely important provider of the fossil fuels and let me emphasize that it is the more problem-free one – in comparison with the alternative which are the Arab states (we have OK business relations with them, too, but it’s easier to imagine that something goes wrong over there). Suggestions that one should close these Russian valves in any foreseeable future are as insane as suggestions that the production of carbon dioxide should be heavily reduced or something like that. None of these things has anything to do with the reality assuming that people don’t want to pay huge amounts of money for the transition. And be sure that we don’t want to pay such money.
It is also a lie that “European nations want to impose tougher sanctions on Russia”. The Czech Republic not only doesn’t want to impose “tougher” sanctions on Russia; it wants to cancel the existing sanctions as well because our top politicians (president, prime minister, a key deputy prime minister – everyone who matters except for the foreign minister) consider them totally counterproductive. President Zeman reiterated this view on Friday on Rhodos on the “Dialogues of Civilizations” event organized by Yakunin, the boss of the Russian railways who is Zeman’s friend and who is incidentally on the American sanction list. Zeman spoke in Russian, by the way, although the official language of the event was English. Almost identical opinions are heard in Slovakia, Hungary, and often Austria and other European countries.
We are not tools to allow someone else to realize his irrational Russophobia. If you want to offer us an alternative source of fossil fuels, you will have to offer a lower price or something else that makes the offer objectively better than what we have – otherwise we will simply refuse your offer. Maybe you are used to dealing with countries in the Middle East etc. according to different rules but we won’t accept those rules. We accept the rules of common sense, free markets, and international law.
I am Russian; I suppose, it would be weird to accuse me of Russophobia.
Remove Putin, and everything you say will make sense.
Don’t remove Putin, and everything you say will remain an unadulterated cowardice.
I am sorry to see that a simple threat of closing the gas valve allows a murderous gangster to dictate his will to Czechs and Slovaks. Where is your pride?
It is not my – or Paul Driessen’s or Barack Obama’s – job to decide about the fate of Vladimir Putin.
Russia is a democracy of its sort and because Putin enjoys something like 85% approval rate (for reasons that are easy to be understood, like tripled GDP/PPP since late 1990s, reunification with Crimea, and so on), it is unreasonable to expect that he will be toppled soon. I doubt I would consider Putin an optimum politician in our country but from an objective viewpoint, he is a very skillful, sensible, moderate, rational politician – probably several categories above the “elite” of the U.S. and the EU these days. And I am sure that any realistic alternative in Russia would be much more anti-West, confrontational, and old-fashioned.
Everyone who is supplying a commodity or product to someone else that is badly needed has some influence and makes the consumer’s behavior more compatible. It’s true about *any* trade relationship. It’s why trade and prices, the wonder of capitalism, also makes nations behaving in more friendly ways towards each other. Find Milton Friedman’s monologue on “the pencil” on YouTube for more comments of this type.
Our national pride has often been limited but if it exists, it means that we won’t directly allow some overlords – in this case those in Brussels and perhaps even D.C. – to dictate whom we should like, whom we should hate, and even what we should buy. Most Czechs arguably stand on the pro-Russian side when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine but even if the percentage were lower than 50%, like 40%, it is obviously a remote problem that isn’t our business and we won’t put our main delivery of fossil fuels at risk because of these remote problems. That’s our pride.
In nations including Poland, you may see some genuine anti-Russian hatred, after a century or more of really lethal hostilities in both directions. We just don’t have this relationship with Russia. The Red Army liberated most of our territory in 1945 – from a truly existential threat for the nation. And then 5 armies of the Warsaw Pact occupied us in 1968 in order to preserve somewhat hardcore communism for 20+ extra years. But the Poles etc. were as guilty as the Russians or Ukrainians or Georgians or Bulgarians and it was really a defense of an ideology, not something we could present in nationalistic terms. Every Czech with basic education and IQ above 80 is able to distinguish Russia from communism or the USSR. Moreover, the USSR has been gone for 20+ years and the 1968 occupation is 45 years ago, comparable to the liberation from the Nazis.
We don’t constantly play some games from the past and our relationships with the Russian Federation are very good these days. Get used to it. You may have been paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life but the money doesn’t make your assertions true and your plans rational.
As a Russian, perhaps you can show a link where Putin has threatened to close the pipelines?
The source of economic sanctions to date has not been Russia.
It has been the US and the EU.
The only sanctions Russia has enacted – after 3 rounds of US and EU sanctions – were a 1 year ban on food imports.
Unlike the murderous dictators and monarchs that the USA deals with all the time for its oil? Hypocrisy.
I always enjoy hearing the perspective of someone directly affected by the topic at hand. We Americans don’t always remember there are other, valid points of view.
However, there were alternatives offered in the post to using Russian energy. Admittedly, none could replace Russian gas or oil in the short term.
For those who wish to stay away from Mr. Driessen’s rehashed “McCainism”, I suggest reading Prof. Stephen Cohen’s take on the situation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/180942/new-cold-war-and-necessity-patriotic-heresy#
I also suggest browsing articles by Robert Parry:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/03/flight-17-shoot-down-scenario-shifts/
It is ironic that those who condemn the MSM for their simplistic message and agitprop mass deception when it comes to the CAGW issue would fall for the simplistic narrative they are sold on Russia, Putin and Ukraine.
Tom, we have amateurs and ideologues running things now. International relations has always been a distraction to this administration, their focus has always been transforming America into…
Our foreign policy has been rudderless. It’s the Forest Gump doctrine and it moves in whatever direction the wind blows.
Putin is a murderer. Too simplistic for you? Add “poisoner,” “blackmailer,” “thief,” “gangster”, “weapons trader”, “supporter of criminal regimes”, “dictators’ best friend”, “torturer,” “embezzler,” “narcissistic little weasel,” “professional provocateur”…
Sophisticated enough now? Or, maybe, I don’t know this firsthand, and needed some “MSM propaganda” to tell me about this man and his buddies who barely failed to kill me and my family?
You, the shatter-brained Western sophisticates and pacifists, have caused two World Wars already, and are brewing the Third One. May it bring Russian nuclear warheads on your empty skulls, and Russian raping goons on your daughters!
Alexander,
We lack deterrence. The US has a large military, but with global obligations. Europe has largely disarmed and is incapable of defending itself. Fortunately, Russia’s military is also second rate.
Military force is but part of deterrence. The other is will. The USA and EU have none when it comes to Russia.
We do have a high-quality, highly-effective submarine deterrence.
The ‘real’ concern with the recent Scottish vote, was with the deterrent submarine assets based there.
It’s true of course, that there is no “will” to engage militarily with Russia. But that’s because they are the ally.
All the things you say about Putin may very well be correct Alex but I ask again “how is that different from the dictators and absolute monarchs that the USA deals with for its oil?”.
@Alfred Ledner Clayton
The USA does have nuclear deterrence, yes. But I wouldn’t place my money on Team Obama v. Team Putin and nuclear brinkmanship. No, no, no and oh hell no.
Not a pretty vision is it? 😉
Of course, while we & they ‘play games’ with the uniformed services often, deterrent forces are much less often ‘jerked around’. The deterrent is mostly left to its own internal professional devices.
There is a photo-collage ‘out there’, comparing the emotional states & expressions of Obama, with the same emotions, in Putin. Of course, all the Putin-pics are the same photograph, staring a hole in the camera. Angry, sad, sarcastic, bored – all covered by the same picture of Putin.
Being underestimated is an asset. Certain, the White House & America commonly come across like they’re trying out for a movie-part, without even bothering to read the script. We look like bumblers. Sometimes we identify too closely with our ‘harmless’ cover-identity.
But when Bush used the word “misunderestimated”, he may have been tipping his security-briefing. “Nothing wrong with being misunderestimated, Mr. President!”. Bush also openly discussed the value of “misinformation” with the public … so maybe the former wasn’t a slip. Both are candid acknowledgments of normally-hidden ‘mayor reality’.
Yeah, it’s (we are) kinda disgusting, but it is largely an ‘act’, too. 🙂
Russia will not fear missile batteries and gun crews stationed in Poland.
Russia will see its financial doom if Poland rolls in drilling rigs and fracking crews.
[snip -over the top -mod]
There is no silence. The proof still exists, and has been demonstrated many times. Victims are being identified, evidence, what’s left of it (most of it has been hastily destroyed by the Russians, while this destruction was witnessed by Western reporters), is being analyzed. I despise John Kerry but there is no doubt, based on the facts, that this plane has been shot down by the drunk Russian bandits holding Eastern Ukraine hostage on Putin’s orders, using Putin-supplied equipment.
Whatever truth may have been discoverable, was quickly enveloped in ‘The Fog’.
It’s true as Mr. Feht points out, that interference with & degradation of the crash-scene & debris field began early and proceeded energetically. More actors than he credits, however, appear to have been active on the stage.
Considering the airborne conflict in progress at the time MH17 came down, it is possible that errors of identification or targeting occurred … and were then vigorously obscured. There may even have been collusion between conflicting parties, to obfuscate any original evidence.
Show it to us, please.
Yes, the rebels kept the media away from the crash site and destroyed evidence because they wanted to hide the proof the Ukraine shot down the plane.
The rebels fired the missile. The Russians provided the missile. This does not mean the Russians shot down the airliner or ordered it shot down or wanted it shot down. It means Russia provided the equipment, the training and possibly manned the missile launcher. None of that means Putin ordered it.
[snip – over the top -mod]
Answer to Lubos Motl’s ignoble diatribe posted September 30, 2014 at 8:59 am
It is not my – or Paul Driessen’s or Barack Obama’s – job to decide about the fate of Vladimir Putin. It is not your job to tell others, what is their job. It is a duty of every moral man to work toward removal of a criminal dictator.
Russia is a democracy of its sort… Of sort? There is a democracy, or there is none. In Russia, it is no more than a bad joke.
…and because Putin enjoys something like 85% approval rate (for reasons that are easy to be understood… For reasons that are easy to understand, but not for you and for very different reasons (for example, try to vote against Putin, and lose your job).
…like tripled GDP/PPP since late 1990s… Compared to what? Russian GDP in 1990s was almost non-existent, thanks to the same KGB types who ruined Russia.
…reunification with Crimea… Crimea is part of the Ukraine, not Russia, “reunification” is a weasel term used by Russian nationalists to justify aggressive military occupation.
it is unreasonable to expect that he will be toppled soon. Wait and see, what is reasonable, and what is not.
I doubt I would consider Putin an optimum politician in our country… Oh, really? But somehow you decide that he is an “optimum politician” for me and other Russian patriots trying to free their country?
but from an objective viewpoint, he is a very skillful, sensible, moderate, rational politician – probably several categories above the “elite” of the U.S. and the EU these days… This is so subjective and contrary to objective reality that it doesn’t deserve anything but derisive laughter; the U.S. and the EU “elite” may not be “optimal” but they don’t poison and murder people at will, last time I checked.
And I am sure that any realistic alternative in Russia would be much more anti-West, confrontational, and old-fashioned. Nonsense. There are many moderate, pro-Western, educated people who would laugh in your face for saying this. There are various estimates but approximately 20 million Russians ran from Putin’s “optimal” regime to the West since 1991, which shows how little you understand Russians.
Our national pride has often been limited but if it exists, it means that we won’t directly allow some overlords – in this case those in Brussels and perhaps even D.C. – to dictate whom we should like, whom we should hate, and even what we should buy. Most Czechs arguably stand on the pro-Russian side when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine but even if the percentage were lower than 50%, like 40%, it is obviously a remote problem that isn’t our business and we won’t put our main delivery of fossil fuels at risk because of these remote problems. That’s our pride. In other words, you have no pride. I sincerely hope that there are many Czechs who would spit in your face after reading this paragraph.
In nations including Poland, you may see some genuine anti-Russian hatred, after a century or more of really lethal hostilities in both directions. We just don’t have this relationship with Russia. The Red Army liberated most of our territory in 1945 – from a truly existential threat for the nation. And then 5 armies of the Warsaw Pact occupied us in 1968 in order to preserve somewhat hardcore communism for 20+ extra years. But the Poles etc. were as guilty as the Russians or Ukrainians or Georgians or Bulgarians and it was really a defense of an ideology, not something we could present in nationalistic terms. Every Czech with basic education and IQ above 80 is able to distinguish Russia from communism or the USSR. Moreover, the USSR has been gone for 20+ years and the 1968 occupation is 45 years ago, comparable to the liberation from the Nazis. Why point out the obvious? Nothing that you said here justifies supporting murder and pillage.
We don’t constantly play some games from the past and our relationships with the Russian Federation are very good these days. Get used to it. If you chose to forget your past in order to win condescension from murderous gangsters, do it on your own. Forget that little weasel “we” word.
You may have been paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life but the money doesn’t make your assertions true and your plans rational. This baseless insult says it all: I hit the bull’s eye, you are smarting from it, and you couldn’t refrain from accusing me of being “paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life.” Nobody has ever “paid” me for anything but honest hard work that has nothing to do with politics. Putin’s regime is a continuation of the Soviet power that caused incalculable grief and suffering to generations of Russian people. Putin is the worst enemy of Russia, and of Russian people. Putin and his cohort of thieves rob Russia blind, and dream of re-establishing the Soviet empire. I love Russia, Russian language, and Russian culture. I left Russia because the KGB told me to disappear if I didn’t want to die in “mental hospital for dissidents”; nobody has ever paid me anything for telling what I think — and you would never dare to tell me in my face the dirty thing you wrote here. Coward.
Honestly, your commentary is utterly false.
I know a family where the patriarch is openly and loudly anti-Putin – one who actually lives in Russia. He complains everywhere he goes in public how Putin is evil, a bastard, etc etc. Yet he has no problem collecting his pension, getting his free health care, and even the people around him just politely ignore him.
Do you live in Russia now?
People who are anti-Putin lose their jobs all the time, but then again, so do people who are pro-Putin. That’s the way the world works – especially when you have an overarching bureaucracy in Russia which pre-dates Putin – going all the way back to Stalin’s era. Did these people lose their jobs because they were incompetent? Or perhaps because they engaged in some political maneuvering and lost?
Honestly, your commentary is utterly false. Because you are a Putin’s troll.
I think we’re having a problem with the cookie-cutter US cliches of the hard-done-by USSR/Soviet dissident.
This is probably the wrong site to discuss the geopolitical ineptitude of US Neocons.
As Putin this summer told a group of young people–remember the old joke about everything a Russian touches turns into a Kalashnikov? I’m beginning to think everything the Americans touch turns into Libya and Iraq.
The latest report on MH17 is here: http://www.theautomaticearth.com/russian-union-of-engineers-accuses-ukraine-airforce-in-mh17-crash/
The report is not at the link provided.
This link just points to another article on a different site. That site offers a DOC download; a translation of the Russian engineers report.
It’s not bad, but it doesn’t look conclusive, either.
The document is labeled at the top: “Informational Briefing”.
Decent pics of airframe damages. Intriguing aerial graphs (graphics-text not translated).
Here’s the Russian Engineers Report, in DOC format It opened fine in my Libre Office. Microsoft Word, Open Office, etc.
Thanks. I think the Dutch said that the complete report on the incident will be out next summer. The Russians will not let it be ‘deep sixed’.
Really, what little respect I had for Driessen as a apparatchik in an NGO, was lost with this article.
He talks about how Russia is curtailing natural gas sales to the Ukraine, but makes no mention whatsoever of the billions owed.
I also like how he says European leaders are cowed by Russian threats of natural gas cutoff: where are these threats? Can he at least document one?
Equally it is nonsensical to say these leaders are cowed when the EU has instituted multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia even to the massive detriment of their own people’s jobs and businesses.
It was the US and the EU which instituted sanctions first – not Russia.
At least I can now safely ignore all that Paul Driessen writes – I was always uncomfortable taking any form of data from someone employed by the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise – a neocon think tank which included Dick Cheney as an advisor.
@Alexander Feht
No Russian based news source has ever stated the front of MH17 was shot out with bullets. In fact from the outset they showed the video of the shrapnel damaged aircraft and STATED it looks like a missile strike.
So I will hold you as a liar until you can locate a RUSSIAN news source that says otherwise.
As goes your statements about Putin being many (nasty) things. Does not take a half wit to apply it to O’Bombers regime, Or should I say, handlers.
Statements about not feeding the Russian coffers by moving to Nuclear? Once again, most nuclear plants use Russian engineers and almost half the worlds yellow cake is from Russia. Don’t you know there is only half the worlds yellow cake remaining? Add that to our 2/5 deaths are from cancer.
@Joe Kirklin
Interesting find. I did hear the submitted Russian radar events prove a following aircraft that peeled back west as the aircraft went down. Scarily similar to the previous spy equipped plane that went missing in the Indian sea..
Thank you for proving my points, портянка.
портянка in mouth? lol
My error. They are quoting non-central news sources that point to machine gun fire. It would reinforce the UKR being responsible. However, missile shrapnel comes from machined billet so *can* blow out in lines.
What is very wrong with the “engineers report” is decompression of the front of an aircraft from bullet fire. The front dome is very thin because it balances internal pressure with oncoming air and carries less structure.
Regrettably much of the responsibility for the civil war in the Ukraine must be laid at the door of the EU hierarchy. Funds, directed by the EU leadership, were channelled into Ukrainian society, money whose purpose was intended to incite Ukrainian agitation for closer union with Europe. It was inevitable that Russia would look upon these overtures as interference in its patch. Of course Ukraine is an independent entity and should be entitled to determine what path it would take, that however does not excuse the west from encouraging forces hostile to Russia to depose the legitimately elected President of that country. OK he was inept and largely pro-Russian, but that is not the point, he had as much of a democratic mandate as most western nations. I am not trying to offset or excuse Russia’s lamentable behaviour towards the Crimea and its involvement in eastern Ukraine, though the shooting down of MH117 was undoubtedly a ghastly mistake, one that ought to have been avoided if the routing of international civil air traffic had been altered to avoid this area where fighting and the use of Surface to Air Missiles had already been employed to shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft. Russia is not the big bad ogre here, the culpable parties really are elements in the west stirring up trouble for their own ends.
Yanukovich was totally corrupt, and abused the law thousands of times. Removal of his regime was a rare triumph of justice in this mean world, mostly ruled by gangsters. Nobody says that EU elite politicians are good or honest, but there are different levels of being bad. Yanukovich was as bad as they come, a criminal.
You mean it was an illegal coup d’état. You are deluded by propaganda nonsense! There was no excuse for the coup backed as it was by Nazis!
Learn some history before you spout off like an idiot!
That reporter on RT was saying how glad he was that Yanukovich was kicked out. Nobody thought it would be a leap into the fire!
And this level of corruption was not existent in any of the other regimes that the Ukraine has had over the last 20 years? Sad for the folks there but ALL their governments have been corrupt.
Given your claimed familiarity with Putin and Russia can I ask what type of response you expected? Roll over and play dead? Let NATO encroach closer and closer? Hardly realistic. About as unrealistic as the article calling for the USA to supply Europe with gas.
I see the straight US propaganda line being parroted here by the ignorami! The Ukrainians shot down the plane and blamed it on the Russians. Why else has the silence been so deafening! The mysterious resignation of the Ukrainian Defense Minister was a clear indication that he was the one in charge.
Of course you couldn’t read it in the
MSM. The US national pinhead of consciousness is full of neocon BS meant to fool simpletons.
German greed for Ukrainian oil and foodstuffs long predated Hitler. 100 years ago today they were trying to get Ukraine to secede from Russia, which they accomplished before the end of WWI. Anyone who thinks that Russia can continue to allow hostile neo Nazi led states on its borders is a complete ignoramus. The US has used momentary weakness to encircle Russia but now the Russians are pushing back and they cannot accept this Western demarche. The Nazis and their successors hold power in the Ukraine despite their filthy ideological history. When they say freedom fighters I say Nightingale Battalion. 7 years of low level civil war in the Ukraine from 1945 -1952 bought and paid for by the OSS/CIA and others.
We protected far too many murderers
after WWII and gave too many of them good jobs in the US. from Wehner Von Braun on down but the secret OSS and CIA fostering of Nazi wannabes, but the Ukrainians were not great fighters, just murderers and plunderers of the defenseless mostly. When they met the Russians in battle they ran like jackrabbits. This is history from which there is no escape, even for the delusional. Obama’s judo- esque reversal of the truth is a Hegelian tactic
tried and true but transparent as whore’s nighty!:)
Russia has better missiles than we do and will not allow us to bomb their old friend Assad either. The Syrian intervention is a war crime and we have backed the wrong people. Assad was an acceptable tyrant in place who had everything under control, under an iron heel yes but women were not 4th class citizens stuck at home under the veil like in Saudi Arabia, but rather like in Saddam’s Iraq, women worked and did not wear the veil by force. They went to college and were doctors and nurses and spokespersons and researchers,
In other words they had a good semblance of freedom! Since the US intervention in the middle rest women have been pushed back 1000 years.
Why? Because some of the precious little Obama darlings and all the reinvigorated neocon warmongers and their hypersensitive moralities didn’t like the way he fought a simmering civil war!
Pretentious hypocrites!
As if one’s petite bourgeois morality has anything to do with war. Here we have the usual suspects of Imperialism, the Brits who smashed the Ottomans to grab the Persian oil and the Suez, the French, who got Syria and Lebanon and
us the 20th century carrion crows of geopolitical world cataclysms. We let others do the fighting in two wars and then stepped in and picked up the pieces, for a low cost or at least it was acceptable to those who made the bargain, despite the fact that they later betrayed that very bargain, sealed with the blood of so many.
We have smashed open Pandora’s box and there is no way to close it up again. History will declare the winner of this gambit.
Seems like it showed a truncated piece but the other whole piece still there, sorry mod, but we do worry ,
Andrew and mods,
Thank you for allowing this thread to continue.
Several parties may have had the means and opportunity to down MH17. Among them, only Russia would have no motive.
It is unlikely that “a nation of chess-players” would execute a stupid and meaningless act whose only possible outcome would be more fuel for western propaganda against Putin.
That kind of stuff happens only in the minds of hack Hollywood writers now employed elsewhere: He did it because he’s evil.
Kievan Rus’ was the first incarnation of the Russian state, which coalesced out of the Eastern Slavic tribes under Oleg of Novgorod to protect trade from the Khazar empire to the east.
Now the trouble-makers of the world have managed to pit brother against brother in Ukraine. As always, the question is Cui Bono?
Your words come from heaven like cooling snow on Al Gore 😉
Oh please. Who is accusing Russia of shooting down that airliner? Not even that idiot John Kerry says that. The rebels did it. The Russian-backed rebels.
And their motive was?
Their motive was being drunk, and playing with war toys.
Drunken separatists could not have diverted MH17 from the normal flight path across the Sea of Azov, about 150 miles SW of Donetsk, to a route north of Donetsk.
You are full of helium! There is no proof at all which is why you don’t hear Ibama crowing about it. This was a false flag operation you dummy!
For information of those who wonder, what is going on here:
FSB has a special propaganda department; it is on high alert now, because Putin is planning to blackmail Europe into submission (and, probably, to occupy Baltic states).
FSB agents search Western forums for “Russia, Ukraine, etc.”, and intervene to promote their agenda. This is a part of Putin’s informational “softening up” of the West before he makes his next aggressive move. There are still many old Soviet agents in the Eastern European countries, including Czech Republic, Slovakia, and East Germany, who would like nothing better than to see good old times returning with Russian tanks.
There are, of course, sincere idiots who play into Putin’s hands. Western idiots were always the Soviet fifth column, and, I see with some ironic satisfaction, they are in full force here.
Remember one thing: Putin is a murderer. Not in the sense that every politician who is conducting war is a murderer. No. Putin is personally giving orders to eliminate his individual opponents all over the world. He kills investigating journalists. He kills those who have information proving his financial crimes. He infiltrates his agents in Western financial institutions and law firms, actively suppressing dissent in the West.
Only we are not afraid of him any more. He is finished, he just doesn’t know it yet.
And the House of Saud? Saddam when he was “the west’s guy” fighting Iran with chemical weapons? Need I go on?
Remember one thing Alex: All you say about Putin can be said about most of the west’s allies in the mid-east. Coffee / kettle?
Saudi Arabia and Iraq are not my countries. Russia is.
So we are to have 2 standards. One for Russia and one for our “friends” no matter how murderous they are. Sorry. I disagree.
No, I have the same standard for Saddam and for Putin.
And I consider Barack Obama as the most dangerous thing tha ever happened to the U.S.
We are discussing Russian oil and gas policy of blackmailing Europe, however.
It is you who is trying to shift the discussion to other subjects.
Why are you trying to defend this particular thief and murderer?
Ah, The Mighty Wurlitzer thunders on . . . although in this case, it’s sounding a lot more like a kazoo.
[snip – over the top -mod]