For how much longer? Can German cars even still compete with the Chinese, or has that ship sailed already? Come, buy the best engineering of yesteryear! Yay!
Russian gas was a cheap way for Germany to produce. The short term economic effects were more important to Merkels electability than any long term plans.
When it comes to gas, Russia never shut off the tap. Instead it was America who blew up the Nordstream energy supply to garner support for a wider war. But now China is producing on cheap Russian gas
At least Germany appears to heavily invest in green energy since Norstream blew up. Bless the sun for shining everywhere.
If we had 1/10th of those balls the world wouldn't be in this shape, I wish to God we had.
Germany is in for 2 lost decades, shutting down nuclear was a mistake, but energy isn't the only issue, Germany needs more workers or they need to fully commit to automation, which they haven't quite yet.
China is now crippled with Russia as an ally. That's about the best strategic success you can expect in IR, take the win.
Your second link agrees with me, it was Ukraine. The mad fuckers pulled it off, we might have helped but even that is more than I'd imagine, our administration is timid AF when it comes to Ukraine and any kind of direct or even covert action.
I get why you'd be furious, but they were defending their homeland, and let's be honest, yours too, if Ukraine had fallen Putin and Xi would have felt they could ask for a lot and we know how that road goes.
I fully support Ukrainian independence but it is being used as a proxy war between the US and Russia right now. They went from a Russian dictator in 2014 to Zelensky now.
America vetoeing the 2022 peace talks to send more Ukrainians into the meat grinder tells it all. At some point a diplomatic solution must be reached. Support is already fading and the only thing this prolonged war has achieved is the death of more Ukrainians and Russians (and profits for Raytheon)
Yeah, that was my bad, I'm not used to checking the user instance.
Merkel made a catastrophic mistake in treating Russia like an rational actor, they're not, they're basically wh40k orks who see weakness and work themselves up into a grievance rage about how the west and everyone else is conspiring to keep Russia from its destined role as world leaders, until they finally reach a threshold and go on a Wauggh.
Like orks, they don't stop until their bloodlust is beaten by their fear.
As an American, we need to give them all our weapons, free of charge, the thought of my taxes going to their rightful purpose of butchering Russians by the hundreds of thousands warms my heart.
We need give them f35s, Ai drone swarms, everything, we need to help them exterminate every vatnik in ukrainian borders within a month.
Alternatively, we admit we will not satisfy the Budapest memorandum and leave Ukraine to their fate.
I'm fine with either path honestly.
For the second path, we would be honor bound to restore the nuclear weapons Ukraine surrendered, or equivalent, I suppose a single Ohio ssbn fully loaded with tridents should suffice.
At that point Ukraine and Russia could begin negotiations for peace.
Personally I don't think any of this will end until 10-20m Russians have died, it's the only language they understand, and they're slow there as well.
Russia started this war to look strong to their partner China, they look far weaker than imaginable, the end game is to partition Russia, the west goes to the European sphere, the east goes to China giving them the resources and land they are so desperate for, and both sides get 50-100 years of peace.
We need give them f35s, Ai drone swarms, everything, we need to help them exterminate every vatnik in ukrainian borders within a month.
That would make Ukraine win the conventional war and promptly get them nuked. The American goal is not to have Ukraine win the war.
Unless Ukraine gets nukes (which America took from them in exchange for a false security guarantee) there is no way Ukraine can win. Not to mention Russia can nuke the rest of Europe.
Your argument is: "America isn't giving Ukraine enough weapons to win the war", "Wait, American can't give them real weapons because then they'd win the war!"
We should give Ukraine back their nukes, but if we aren't we should give Ukraine so many drones the lifetime of vatniks is measured in milliseconds.
The only way to end a war with Russia is to pull an inverse Branigan: Keep encouraging them to throw waves and waves of their men against your rampaging killbots till they run out of men.
As I said, 10 million sounds like a good start.
Russia won't nuke unless they start losing serious Russian territory, remember Priggy made it really far and they only fled in their private jets.
Keep drawing their kids in to their deaths, make sure it's drones killing them while Ukrainians themselves are safe behind the lines, eventually they'll run out of their r-word strength.