Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[HeloDude]

24 minutes ago, pbar said:

Somebody probably said this on here already, but why the hell are the Washington elite (from both parties) so worried about Ukraine's borders but don't give a rat's ass about our southern border?

There’s a lot of money to be made (defense spending) with the situation in Ukraine, and military aid/action doesn’t offend certain groups back home when it comes to politics/support to the left.  Back home in the US, there’s not a lot of money for defense contractors to be made with increasing border security (though there is money to be made on border walls, UAVs, etc), but having secure borders equates to “racist policies” and is overall not good politics for the left.  Also worth mentioning that many businesses love illegal immigration for the cheap labor, hence why many on the right don’t truly want it either.  So like most everything when it comes to American politics—money and power, both on the right and the left.

[Prosuper]

Obama 'vented his concerns about Biden and said "don’t underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up"' (thesun.co.uk)

Also , how come all European media is saying there is nothing going on in the Ukraine and US MSM says the sky is falling? Wag the dog?

[HeyEng]

That might be a little bit simplistic, I regularly watch DW News and France24 (I have almost given up on US News channels) and there is quite a bit of coverage on events in Ukraine and mobilization in Europe. Even Sweden has a bit of war nerves and has mobilized troops to reenforce Gotland Island.
Personally I think the idea of a full-blown war happening in the dead of winter and before the Winter Olympics is a bit of hyperbole especially since the hybrid conflict has been more effective for Russia but all it can take is one wrong move!

[SurelySerious]

[Prozac]

14 hours ago, Prosuper said:

Obama 'vented his concerns about Biden and said "don’t underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up"' (thesun.co.uk)

Also , how come all European media is saying there is nothing going on in the Ukraine and US MSM says the sky is falling? Wag the dog?

I’d wager that we still maintain a very robust HUMINT capability wrt Russia. We may be sharing some of our assessment publicly in order to get the response we want from countries like Germany who are currently more concerned about how their own citizens will heat their homes for the remainder of the winter. 

[HeloDude]

1 minute ago, Prozac said:

I’d wager that we still maintain a very robust HUMINT capability wrt Russia. We may be sharing some of our assessment publicly in order to get the response we want from countries like Germany who are currently more concerned about how their own citizens will heat their homes for the remainder of the winter. 

I thought they had green energy?  What’s the problem?

Is Germany Making Too Much Renewable Energy?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/10/is-germany-making-too-much-renewable-energy/

[Q1Checkride]

On 1/24/2022 at 8:19 PM, pbar said:

Somebody probably said this on here already, but why the hell are the Washington elite (from both parties) so worried about Ukraine's borders but don't give a rat's ass about our southern border?

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/01/24/white-house-will-not-answer-the-only-question-that-matters-about-ukraine-and-nato/

 

"The honest answer would be…  We, in the Biden and Obama administration, are doing all this stuff in Ukraine, for Ukraine and under the auspices of protecting Ukraine, because a whole bunch of us from both political parties in/around the DC beltway – along with our families – receive massive amounts of personal financial wealth from the DC money laundering operation of foreign aid money in/around Ukraine."

[Prozac]

30 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

I thought they had green energy?  What’s the problem?

Is Germany Making Too Much Renewable Energy?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/10/is-germany-making-too-much-renewable-energy/

Obviously reality dictates that Germany is still largely dependent on traditional fossil fuels, despite their advancement & promotion of cleaner energy sources. Nord Stream II has been in the works for a long time and anyone with a brain could see that the Germans weren’t going to sustain themselves with windmills alone. My personal feeling is that the Russian aggression issue transcends America’s current culture war obsession and will have consequences that will span multiple US election cycles. I’m old enough to remember the Cold War, which dictated American policies, both foreign and domestic for the better part of five decades. It sure looks like we are firmly established in the early stages of a second Cold War & we would do well to keep our eye on the ball if we wish to stay ahead of our adversary’s OODA loop and in command of the “battlefield”. 

[Prozac]

25 minutes ago, Q1Checkride said:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/01/24/white-house-will-not-answer-the-only-question-that-matters-about-ukraine-and-nato/

 

"The honest answer would be…  We, in the Biden and Obama administration, are doing all this stuff in Ukraine, for Ukraine and under the auspices of protecting Ukraine, because a whole bunch of us from both political parties in/around the DC beltway – along with our families – receive massive amounts of personal financial wealth from the DC money laundering operation of foreign aid money in/around Ukraine."

Short sighted, purely politically motivated, and destructive point of view. Putin’s newly emboldened actions owe as much to the Bush & Trump admins as they do to the current admin’s. Our Russia policies over the past 20 years will have repercussions over the next 50. The issue goes far beyond the current petty politics in the US. Be weary of framing everything to suit your own political views. 

[kaputt]

1 hour ago, Prozac said:

Putin’s newly emboldened actions owe as much to the Bush & Trump admins as they do to the current admin’s. 

How convenient you forgot this gem from 2012. 
 

"The 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back," Obama said, seeking to paint Romney as out of touch on a key foreign policy issue.

Russia annexed Crimea less than two years after this comment. 

[Prozac]

2 hours ago, kaputt said:

How convenient you forgot this gem from 2012. 
 

"The 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back," Obama said, seeking to paint Romney as out of touch on a key foreign policy issue.

Russia annexed Crimea less than two years after this comment. 

I did not forget. Obama's Russia policy was inadequate in hindsight, as was every president's back to Clinton. Now its time to straighten up and deal with the Russian bear in a more serious and considered manner.

[lloyd christmas]

4 hours ago, Prozac said:

Now its time to straighten up and deal with the Russian bear in a more serious and considered manner.

At a minimum, it’ll be 3 years before anything close to this happens.  

[Prozac]

13 hours ago, lloyd christmas said:

At a minimum, it’ll be 3 years before anything close to this happens.  

Honest question: What would you do differently vs. the current admin? 

[tac airlifter]

14 minutes ago, Prozac said:

Honest question: What would you do differently vs. the current admin? 

Kept the Keystone pipeline and never have supported Nord Stream 2 in current form.

Edited January 27, 2022 by tac airlifter
Voice to text fail

[Prozac]

41 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

Kept the Keystone pipeline and never have supported Nord Stream 2 in current form.

Not sure what supporting Keystone would do to help the Ukraine situation.  As far as Nord Stream 2, wasn’t that developed and largely completed during the Trump admin? The Biden admin has been threatening to sanction it since last summer AFIK. 

[FLEA]

12 hours ago, Prozac said:

Not sure what supporting Keystone would do to help the Ukraine situation.  As far as Nord Stream 2, wasn’t that developed and largely completed during the Trump admin? The Biden admin has been threatening to sanction it since last summer AFIK. 

No, the Trump admin did sanction Russia for the pipeline in 2017 and was heavily condemned by the EU for doing so. Further completion was also a major factor in Trump's decision to pull 10K troops out of Germany. (Along with failing to uphold NATO spending and other issues, but NS2 was definitely a key point). Biden immediately reversed that decision before it was implemented and wanted to go for a softer diplomatic approach. 

Putin was smart enough to realize you don't need to control all of Europe, just Germany. They have the largest population/most money in Europe and the rest of Europe happily submits to their leadership. 

Edited January 28, 2022 by FLEA

[arg]

[DirkDiggler]

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine

  Long but well researched/reasoned article.

[Prozac]

3 hours ago, DirkDiggler said:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine

  Long but well researched/reasoned article.

Good read. The “Ukraine isn’t willing to fight” naysayers would do well to note Ukrainian successes against superior Russian forces in Donetsk in 2014/15. Also an excellent discussion advocating for strong US leadership and implications far beyond Ukraine if we abdicate our position as a global leader. 

[tac airlifter]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:56 AM, Prozac said:

Not sure what supporting Keystone would do to help the Ukraine situation.  As far as Nord Stream 2, wasn’t that developed and largely completed during the Trump admin? The Biden admin has been threatening to sanction it since last summer AFIK. 

You really can’t figure out how Keystone factors into this situation and how we shot ourselves in the foot?  
As for NS2, you seem quite confused: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57180674

Not trying to be a prick but your reply indicates you have opinions without knowledge.  Hate Trump all you want, he kept Russia in check when they tested him.  

[Lord Ratner]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:56 AM, Prozac said:

Not sure what supporting Keystone would do to help the Ukraine situation.

You don't know what increasing the supply of fossil fuels from non-Russian suppliers would do to impact a military action that is being leveraged with the threat of cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe from Russia?

 

You're a bit in the dark on this one

[Prozac]

53 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

You don't know what increasing the supply of fossil fuels from non-Russian suppliers would do to impact a military action that is being leveraged with the threat of cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe from Russia?

 

You're a bit in the dark on this one

No, it’s a regional issue. Even with Keystone, it’s far cheaper for Germany to buy energy from Russia & we’d be in the same situation. I actually agree that we’d all be better off with some form of Keystone. But the whole reason Russian energy is a thing is because Europe doesn’t want to pay to ship fossil fuels across oceans. 

[Lord Ratner]

6 minutes ago, Prozac said:

No, it’s a regional issue. Even with Keystone, it’s far cheaper for Germany to buy energy from Russia & we’d be in the same situation. I actually agree that we’d all be better off with some form of Keystone. But the whole reason Russian energy is a thing is because Europe doesn’t want to pay to ship fossil fuels across oceans. 

Obviously economics always apply, but this isn't just about wanting to save a few bucks. Russia has a tremendous amount of leverage in the area because European countries can't just go get their natural gas elsewhere.

 

There's a huge difference between "if we make this political move we're going to have to spend more money on power generation" and "if we make this move there's a good chance the lights go out."

 

Fossil fuels are regularly shipped all over the world; transportation is not nearly as big of an issue as production is, and the Biden administration is quite explicitly dedicated to reducing American production.

 

How exactly are we going to replace Russia as the supplier of European fuel when we are still importing fuel from Russia ourselves?

 

And your take on Nord Stream 2 is so backwards you probably just need to reset your stance and do a little digging.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Lord Ratner

[DirkDiggler]

Objective article that discusses Russia's role in the global oil industry and what a supply disruption in Russia could mean.  Unfortunately it doesn't discuss natural gas, might be addressed in a future analysis.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/oil-market-cannot-afford-lose-russian-supplies 

[jice]

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Obviously economics always apply, but this isn't just about wanting to save a few bucks. Russia has a tremendous amount of leverage in the area because European countries can't just go get their natural gas elsewhere.

 

…[agree with what you said in the middle.]

 

Fossil fuels are regularly shipped all over the world; transportation is not nearly as big of an issue as production is, and the Biden administration is quite explicitly dedicated to reducing American production.

When you’re talking about supplying a continent, transportation is absolutely a much bigger issue than production. The infrastructure for export on that scale by ship to Europe has never existed in the United States and likely will not ever exist, unless/until Russian and Middle Eastern oil cease to be available and/or oil prices rise, irreversibly, to a level that those multi-billion dollar investments make sense. You really can turn production off and on rapidly to respond to the market (think Midland/Odessa TX over the last 12 years). Cap the well, ship your leased equipment back to some about-to-be-bankrupt equipment yard, pay a guy to keep people away, and tell your contractors to go work at Home Depot. Everything will still be there when the prices rise again. 
 

When you build ships and filling infrastructure for them you’d better be damn sure they’ll be useful and profitable in the long term.  If they’re not working at or near capacity, they’re not paying for themselves; if there’s zero throughput, they’re expensive, broken monuments to optimism. We’re exporting primarily to Mexico and Canada not because they’re our best friends, but because there isn’t an ocean of costs (and risk) between producer and consumer. 

For reference, US exports to the waterborne market have been hitting historic highs year over year for the past half decade, but there’s simply no way to “turn the spigot” to create that infrastructure. (Almost exclusively located on the gulf coast.) It’s reactive to the market, which doesn’t support hundreds of billions of dollars of overhead at current oil prices. US oil tends to be more expensive because of the extraction methods required for large portions of it (something at which we’re still truly world-beating), so expecting that infrastructure to materialize out of the kind hearts of corporations in the very short term would simply price US oil out of the market when Russia’s/(country x’s) pipelines turn on again and the market normalizes. 

 
That said (and not saying this in response to anybody’s posts in particular), opposition to domestic pipelines is insane. The product is going to be sent. The nice thing about using pipes is that the product never derails and crashes through buildings or school busses. On the whole, way more environmentally and economically friendly. I’ve got pipes in my house. Work great.

The way we replace Russian oil in Europe… that’s a doosie. Break economics? It just isn’t going to happen until Russian oil becomes proportionally more expensive to extract than it is for us to ship. Or! Lay pipe across the Atlantic… no, guys, not the way aircrew usually do.

Edited January 31, 2022 by jice