EU strategy not to rely on Russian energy will hurt it more on short term but on long term - Russia will suffer more
Not at all. The EU strategy of being economically competitive by taking advantage of cheap gas piped first from the Soviet Union and then from Russia allowed them to cut their production and operational costs so their products could be cheaper or their profit margins could be higher or both.
Rejecting cheap energy will damage the EU economy and force it to turn to other more expensive options and technologies all of which will cost money to develop and might not give the expected results like wind and solar power have failed to live up to expectations so far.
Russia wont suffer because they have the gas.... if the EU does not buy it they can sell it to any other country on the planet which would be very keen to get a large sustainable supply of cheap reliable energy.
Even if they just use it themselves cheap energy will boost their economy and improve the quality of life.
Claiming Russia will suffer more is based on the premise that Russia can't survive without the west... which is totally unproven and likely totally wrong.
And it will not stop at this, once EU gets rid of oil and gas Russian financial institutions will be kicked out of SWIFT etc...
SWIFT is a communications system to enable the quick and easy shifting of money around the place... it is a major western system but there are plenty of other alternative systems that do the same thing.
With the West banning Russia from most aspects except energy Russia has little real need for SWIFT and adding energy and any other minor links to the chopping block means Russia would have no use for SWIFT anyway.
On long run Russia will even more slow down with its economical growth and transition -and its overall record is already not so good compared to CEE and Baltics countries for example.
Hahaha... Russia is balancing its budgets, has large reserves and tiny debts and is in the process of now replacing a lot of technology and material it previously bought from the west. Comparing GDP means very little for a country that is upgrading and growing and developing and starting a new chapter in its history opening up to the rest of the world.
In comparison the west is stagnating under foreign debt that Covid just made much worse, though it didn't have an enormous effect on the west because the west does not make anything any more... it is all outsourcing.
This mess in Ukraine already costs way too much.
A terrible cost in Russian lives, but otherwise a necessary endevour to secure Russia from the crazy people in the US leadership.
Of course, because the colossal Asian market as well as the middle eastern, south american and african market doesn't exist.
Made more interesting because they are growing developing markets that offer potential to feed growth and development and therefore make a lot of money... but the way the west does that all the money goes to the west... the way Russia and China do it both sides develop and grow and make money... a very important difference for the third world if they don't want to keep being called the third world... they have no chance to join the first world of course but Russia and China can lift them up to the second world....
The way I see it the West had organised the world into convenient little boxes
(a modern form of colonialism )
Russia = gas station and commodities .... (in fact the entire southern hemisphere as well)
China and SE Asia = mass production of low margin manufactured products
ME = gas station
India = call centres and programmers ... and lots of farmers
I agree that is how the west views the world and how they would like the world to be, but the presence of Russian nuclear weapons and technology every bit as good as that in the west shows what a narrow view of the world the west actually maintains for itself.
There are countries in Africa and Asia and other parts the west considers to be the third world that are not dirt poor.
G7 = high end high margin manufacturing .... top of the pile
Colonial west with Canada thrown in to give the US two votes on everything.
The hedge fund managers of the world that don't make anything any more...
G7 group are desperately trying to hold onto the high tech position
because there are 1 billion of them
and if the other 7 billion get into high tech then sheer number of brains working on stuff will eventually crush them -
they can see that clearly .... eg China
Very true, but the G7 is just the US with its lynch mob... the purpose of HATO is to keep the EU and Russia apart because if they got together what would the EU need the US for.... it is further away and things it is in charge... which in the case of the west it is, but not for the rest of the world it isn't.
The US is trying to use India the same way it is using the EU as a counter and blocking move to prevent India and Russia and China from cooperating... their moves so far have pushed Russia and China together and India is realising their future would be better with Russia and China than anything the US would let them have.
G7 are 50% of world GDP now .....
Which just shows what a bullshit metric GDP really is.... if the G7 were teleported to a galaxy far far away right now the world would continue on pretty normally...
Their GDP is based on the value and use of the US dollar which has been poisoned by the US herself in using it as a weapon which is breaking trust in it...
globalisation was invented for the benefit of the G7 - is another way of putting it
the "rules based order" .... rules made by the G7 .... for the benefit of the G7
Rules they impose on others to chastise other countries despite ignoring those very same rules themselves...
anyway that's the way it looks to me - just my view
Thank you for sharing.
Well there are few wrong assumptions - first EU can not in any case get rid of Russian energy import quickly. Simply it is impossible to switch off on short notice something like that and disconnect trade and infrastructure links that are build over period of 70 years.
That is what the EU itself claims it is trying to achieve, just like Solar and Wind technology was going to save them too but it turns out to be expensive and unreliable. Of course another decade or two of investment and use it might become interesting but the EU is likely to thrash around and turn to coal again or some such stupid idea that led them to damage their relations with Russia and its cheap gas in the first place.
For example Germany has gas contract that stipulates that it has to pay certain amount of Russian gas till 2030 even if country will not consume it. Of course that contract was signed in different times and was ok for both sides since assured stability of supply and production with relatively competitive and profitable prices. But right now no one can guarantee that those contracts can be fulfilled since relationship became too much toxic - no courts or legal institutions can repair that.
If Germany had any say in the matter there would be no problems at all, but this is Americas game which means cutting off all Russian trade with Europe is the goal... the purpose is to cut off income for Russia but Russia can sell gas energy to any country around the world... the core purpose of the Zvezda Shipyards being upgraded and expanded in the Far East is to build LNG tankers the way South Korea makes them... as a backup it can build very large ships like cruisers and CVNs eventually but at the core it will be about gas and oil carrying ships for Russia.
Second EU is not united so much, each country actually has its own national energy policies, that is of course weakness that is now fully exposed. United EU as single buyer on international market is totally different animal even compared to Germany for example. We see this already in LNG market where EU is right now the hottest and most lucrative market, it is so lucrative that it pushed away Asia which was unimaginable thing just few months ago.
Hahahahaha... hottest is bad for the customer... lucrative means high profit margins because the gas price is higher than it should be so even if you normally flog your gas in Asia where the prices are higher it is currently worth while for US companies to ship their gas to Europe... which as you can imagine is not easy or cheap going from the US to Asia means shipping through the Pacific so getting to Europe via the Pacific ocean is a pain in the ass so it will have to be very expensive to make it worth changing.
Third - no serious country or entity like EU can afford to be energy depended and be serious power.
All countries depend on energy, and they flourish and grow with cheap energy and suffer and stagnate with expensive energy driving the cost of everything up.
That is the reason why China will be very careful and will not allow that Russian energy import becomes only dominant one and make China dependent - even if Russian energy right now has super attractive below market price.
China will invest in changing from using coal for energy generation to using gas because it is cheaper and cleaner and easier to transport.
Dependency is OK if the supplier does not use it like a weapon like Russia does not.
The EU on the other hand are trying to weaponise Russian gas and they are going to lose their reliable dependable cheap energy source... and it is really funny because despite the US pushing it they will blame Putin.
He wont care... it is just further evidence if evidence were needed that the EU are idiots that are led by the nose by the US.
For the EU and long term strategy diversification is the goal - that is why it will build more LNG terminals even if that is more expensive compared to pipelines, but once infrastructure is built (additional terminals and interconnectors) it is much more easy to change supplier in case of a need - it makes long term perfect sense.
You are not understanding the scale of the problem... if all the tankers in the world were used exclusively to supply the EU with gas they would only supply about 2/3rd of what they use now.... there is not enough infrastructure available to receive even that amount of gas per year and of course all those tankers are already working fulfilling other contracts... so the EU would have to build all the gas tankers currently operating in the world plus 50% more.... which would cost trillions, and they would also need to build the infrastructure to support all those ships in ports across the EU... and that would deal with the current demand but demand was expected to increase over the next few years which is why Germany and Russia built NSII and Russia also built SSII as well.
And even taking all of that into account it costs money to first liquify and then transport and then convert back into gas this product so even if the ships were already built and all the gas terminals were ready to receive them and there were places that could supply the gas in that volume (which there isn't for any of those things BTW), the gas the EU would be receiving would be a bare minimum four times more expensive than Russian delivered gas that can be sent with the turn of a few taps and it starts arriving immediately.
If you ban Russian Gas Pipelines and demand only LNG then Russian LNG would still be two to three times more expensive than piped gas.
The EU does not buy Russian gas to help Russia, they buy it because it is the cheapest option and they are the only producers that can produce the volumes the EU needs now and also able to expand capacity for future needs as Coal and Nuclear power generation was to close down in Europe.
Fourth - energy is serious leverage that Russia has over EU. Without that situation totally changes for worse for Russia.
Leverage they have never used because just like the US using the US dollar against Russia and lots of other countries... it is a terribly weak power because when you use it as a weapon you destroy its power and make it useless.
Russia doesn't want EU gas prices to be thousands of dollars per thousand cubic metres because at that price most consumers can't afford to use it.
They want a reasonable price so customers use it.
The US wants high prices because they can't compete fairly against Russia in the EU market for gas.
Yes it will not break Russia but it will make sure doing international business with Russia much more difficult and expensive.
It will damage relations between the west and Russia but the rest of the world it will be business as usual... in fact China hasn't had cheap gas imports all this time because it was all going to Russias enemies in Europe. This little tantrum by the EU created by the US wanting to sell gas is fantastic for Russia and China, because Russia stops helping evil colonial powers who want to kill them and steal their land and resources, and starts helping China who, like Russia just want to remain independent and soverign.
Russia is basically developing too slow already for last 3-4 years despite huge income from resource and agro products exports.
Russia has become independent in food production and now all ties with western commerce are being broken at both ends... the future for Russia looks very bright.
I personally love Russia and I think it is great country with huge potential. Russians are very smart people, I work in big company and we do have quite big branch in Russia, our colleagues there are hard working and very skilled. Of course I do not wish that country ends bad and that ordinary people have economical issues - that is the reason I think Russian leadership lost its compass and is not going to make Russia stronger on long run - actually quite the opposite is happening. I would love that I am wrong, time will tell.
You are in a minority... most who went to Russia wanted to steal from it and make money for themselves.... the Browder types and the Clintons asset stripped the place in the 1990s and damaged the country they pretended they were trying to help... Russia does not grow by being bought by the west... the US prints its own money and so they can offer any price they please but it means nothing. Now that the US is printing too much money and using their dollar as a weapon then countries are going to wake up to the danger and when they stop using it and stop accepting it printing more wont help if no one accepts it any more.
I do not wish bad things for the west but the west is broken... the politicans on all sides are owned by the super rich who could care less about their countries or their people.... they are feeding the war in Ukraine to make money on new Javelins and new MANPADS to refil their weapons stocks... they are scum... but you wont read about the truth because they own the news media too.
Bigger economies such as India and supposedly bigger Germany can't.
Germany abstained from a UN bill to ban the glorification of Nazism... they abstained....
Pussies. Cowards. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
The most challenging though is to find partners in scientific developments, India and China would do thought every country willing is welcome. iran is like 90 millions people... also educated and smart...
There are smart people everywhere... for the last 100 years the smartest people in the west did not have western names most of the time and were collected together from all sorts of strange places... many people in the rest of the world gravitate to the west to earn their fortunes and fulfil their potential... moving forward the best jobs and the best projects might not be in the EU or the US...
we need to double the population of Russia. 300 million Russians cannot be defeated by any force on planet Earth. This is the best guarantee of the security of the state from external aggression.
Always go for quality rather than quantity... improve the quality of life for Russians from Moscow down to the smallest little villiage in the middle of nowhere and the population will increase on it own.
@GD... the like was for rubles for US imports from Russia, not the population stuff....
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