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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Yes I understand what you’re saying, but it needs to be reminded that the post-2009 German economic recovery was highly dependent on cheap Russian gas import. There is simply no alternative, Germany struck gold with Russia selling them cheap gas with euro as the currency of transaction. It was cheap energy that allowed Germany to preserve its high labor wages. That, or expensive energy with depressed wages (like many Asian countries do). No other way around that.
What I think actually happened though (and there are many circumstantial evidence to suggest this), was that Germany was absolutely convinced that the combined sanctions of the world’s largest economies (US + EU) would absolutely demolish Russia’s economy within months, if not weeks, which they often deride as one that is smaller than Italy’s GDP. In their chauvinistic mind, there is no way that a weak economy like Russia’s could ever survive such powerful sanction forces of theirs. With the collapse of the Russian economy, they’d be able to actually carve up Russia’s resources for themselves. In other words, they got greedy.
The EU responses after the war started support this hypothesis. Instead of advocating for ceasefire, the EU continued to pile up more and more sanctions against Russia, somehow hoping that just one more sanction would actually bring Russia to its knee. And they kept waiting and waiting and didn’t see what they expected to happen.
It also wasn’t helped by the fact that Western propaganda churned out in support of Ukraine had distorted their frame of reference, often painting a picture of Russia on the brink of collapse, and it would not surprise anyone that their politicians and bureaucrats actually bought into that. Then, you also have someone like George Soros making headlines saying “Russia would not be able to stop exporting their gas because otherwise their wells will freeze, so Europe just need to hold out a little longer and wait for the Russians to come begging again.” Many European industrialists didn’t even see the perils of their own sanctions until it was too late.
I've had this conversation before but I find it extremely implausible that the West planned all of this out in advance and the lynchpin of the entire plot was being able to destroy Russia with sanctions alone. Again, Germany wasn't even willing to fully participate, and they had to resort to some pretty desperate measures after the pipeline was destroyed. Nothing was done to ensure India's cooperation, and they were saber-rattling with China, neither of which makes sense if they were planning on all this.
I also haven't heard any real explanation for what caused this miscalculation, other than pure stupidity and buying into their own propaganda. I think this is the same flawed analysis behind the initial point that I disputed. When a politician says something you can't just take it at face value, even when it fits into your narrative and makes them look bad, you still have to consider why they're saying it, what they're trying to accomplish, and who they're trying to appeal to. When they started doing sanctions, obviously they would say they thought they would work, but this indicates nothing about their actual beliefs. They were just trying to drum up support for the sanctions, there's no reason why they'd say, "Well, who knows if these will work or not" if they're trying to get people to support them. Very rarely do politicians say something just because they think it's true.
The narrative that fits actual events better without requiring abject stupidity and actions contrary to the actors' own interests, is that Germany did not expect a full scale war and did not plan for losing Nord Stream 2. The outbreak of war came as a surprise to a lot of people, including the majority of this site, and Merkel did not have a crystal ball. The ceasefire was broken due to domestic pressure from the far-right, plus international pressure from the US, which did not assume sanctions would work, but rather saw extended bloodshed as a possibility and did not care, due to the profits it would mean for the military-industrial complex and not caring at all about the lives of Ukrainians. There are internal fractures within NATO and within NATO states, due to competing class interests, it's not one big conspiracy working together.
Why do you think it would need to be a conspiracy? The Europeans simply didn’t see Russia as a potent threat and felt entitled to not giving Russia the respect it deserves. This attitude was all too common during the lead up to Ukraine signing the EU Association Agreement which then led to the Maidan coup. The crass European behavior can be seen as them not taking Russia seriously.
For Europe, Russia is simply a gas station with an economy smaller than Italy. If Italy is barely surviving in the EU, you don’t even have to think about what would happen to Russia when both US and EU combine their economic forces whose GDP is many fold higher than Russia’s.
In other words, they perceive Russia as a nuisance that can be easily crushed when worst comes to worst i.e. a war broke out. No need to anticipate for what will happen in a war when you already see yourself as an economic powerhouse against a tiny struggling economy and has the power to turn it into a pariah state in a matter of weeks, which would then end the war.
Because you're assuming coordination between different groups, even when it doesn't make sense and goes against their interests. This is like the third time I've brought this up - Germany relied heavily on Russian gas, then didn't shut it off, which led the US to blow up the pipeline. How do any of those events make sense in your narrative? Is all of that part of an elaborate ruse to trick people into thinking that my narrative is correct and yours is wrong? It's nonsense.
And this is where I think your narrative is coming from. It's all about Russia surpassing everyone's expectations and proving how strong and powerful it is, and it's like, every event has to be somehow contorted to fit that narrative, when there's much more coherent ways to fit them together.
Tbh, it just seems like this is what you want to believe, in which case I can't stop you. You're not looking at countries' actions and you're also not looking at class interests, it's just "everybody hated Russia and thought they were weak when they were actually big and strong." It's a very biased and oversimplified narrative that I find hard to take seriously, I'm just as skeptical of that as I would be about one that's brazenly pro-Ukraine tbh.
I think you have fundamentally misunderstood what I am trying to say. Europe did not turn off Russian gas because they expected Russia to fold within a few months. They were confident that their sanctions were going to work.
Here’s what George Soros said in May 2022: George Soros says Russia’s gas storage is almost full — and Europe should hold its nerve
The European chauvinists are very used to being the master and going into Global South countries to dictate their economic policy is very common. They expect the Global South countries to come begging for their investments, not the other way round. Without European investments, they would have a hard time growing their economy. This is a very common assumption even in mainstream media - that’s how you get classification like G7, developed markets vs emerging markets etc. I don’t understand why you can’t see this point.
Similarly, here, they expected Putin to come begging European customers to buy their gas again, because without the gas sale the Russian economy would collapse. What’s so hard to understand?
Everything that I have said is literally reported in mainstream media.
Where did I ever say that? Russia being able to resist sanctions is a fact, but that does not mean their economy is stronger than Europe’s. It simply means that the global supply chain is far more complex than the European policymakers drafting the sanctions had anticipated. Is it so difficult to understand the difference?
So you're saying that not only was everyone in the West convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mere sanctions would cripple Russia, but also that those sanctions wouldn't even have to include gas?? That's even more absurd than I thought. I'm absolutely baffled at why you think Western leaders have such a ridiculously inflated view of the power of sanctions, when there's such a more reasonable explanation, that they were simply exaggerating the power of sanctions for the people watching at home.
I don't care what he said. This whole time I've been explaining to you why you can't just take quotes at face value, and here you're just posting another quote and taking it at face value, and this time not even from a policy maker. People can confess to murder and still turn out to be innocent. You have to examine why they're saying it. In this case he's saying sanctions will work, as I have explained several times, because he supports them and wants to sell people on them, it tells us nothing about his actual beliefs. People in positions of power generally make public statements because of a rational calculus of what effect that statement will have, whether they think it's true or not is irrelevant. This is why you have to look at actions and interests and not just statements.
You're assuming that what's said in the media is the same reasoning and calculus that's happening behind closed doors. As I said, statements to the public are made based on political calculus, not actual beliefs. The reality is that the West's grip has been slipping even with smaller countries due to Chinese investment, which is why I find it completely implausible that Western policymakers simply didn't consider that Russia could just trade with China and India.
Assume for a moment that I'm correct, and that nobody actually expected sanctions to work. What consequences have any of them faced for saying that they would? None whatsoever. But saying they'd work helped build support for them. So there's a benefit to saying it an no drawback to saying it, so of course they're going to say it. What's so hard to understand about that?
It's literally your whole narrative!
I never claimed you said anything like that.
Right, because you think that they're unbelievably stupid and naive (yet at the same time managing to orchestrate a complicated long-term plot). Did they just not know that China exists? It's absurd to think that they wouldn't consider this possibility.
Here's the points that I think you're being fundamentally unreasonable about:
Taking politicians' words at face value as a reflection of genuine belief, instead of critically examining the calculus of why they would say something
Claiming that the idea that sanctions alone (not even including gas) would cripple Russia is anything but an absurd and blatantly unrealistic fantasy sold to the masses, to the point that policy-makers not only believed it but even relied on it as a lynchpin to their plans.
Believing an oversimplified narrative designed to make Russia look good over a more realistic narrative based on facts and class analysis, which still makes Russia look pretty good.
To the third point, I mean, come on. I can't count the number of cartoons I've seen where the bad guy underestimates the protagonist only for the protagonist to prove their worth. This is exactly the kind of simple narrative about empowerment and resiliance that I'd expect any country to put out during war-time. But Russia is a geopolitical entity and not a shonen character. Both it and it's rivals are composed of various competing interests acting more or less rationally. It's tiring to argue with this nonsense, Merkel does not control Ukraine and is not always in agreement with the US, and she also doesn't reveal her schemes to the hero in a villainous monologue to the hero just for shits and giggles.
I guess we're at an impasse, your narrative seems completely unreasonable to me, while it seems mine seems completely unreasonable to you. I think that our methods of examining the situation and drawing conclusion are completely different and irreconcilable, yours relies far too heavily on quotes, which I find unreliable.
I don’t know what to tell you except that everything I said (the “narrative” as you call it) is grounded on factual reportings by the media. You seem to think that German politicians have some “secret calculations”, but there aren’t: they followed the advice of the academics and their policy think tanks.
Here’s an example, Germany’s position on sanctioning Russian gas was heavily reliant on the following two papers that were published in early March 2022, as the nation was deciding what to do with their energy situation (I actually remember the debates and went back to dig up these two papers for you):
https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkpbs/ECONtribute_PB_029_2022.pdf
https://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Publikationen/Nationale_Empfehlungen/2022_Stellungnahme_Energiesicherheit_V1.1.pdf
The reason you can’t see my point is because you haven’t been following European policymaking and their politics closely. And yes, I know how politicians think and where they get their information/proposals from because I used to work for them.
The fact is, there is no “conspiracy theory” as you keep thinking there is. There is no “secret calculation”. It’s just plain old political and bureaucratic processes based on faulty assumptions of a complex scenario.
Of course there are and it's ridiculous to claim otherwise. Every politician (hell, every individual) considers the effects of their words and what they say or don't say is influenced by that. This is a basic fundamental truth, literally nothing you say could convince me it's wrong lol. Maybe you misunderstood what I meant? That's the only reason I could imagine you disagreeing with it.
I don't read German, unfortunately. Think tanks have the same incentives to say things people want to hear as anybody else, so it doesn't mean much to me regardless. None of this stuff is what I look at to draw conclusions from which is why I think our approaches are just fundamentally incompatible. All the evidence you've presented can be explained by my narrative just as well as yours.
I think I'd be more receptive towards your argument if you were claiming like, they thought the threat of sanctions would be painful enough to deter Russia from crossing the West due to the influence of Russian capitalists. But it would take extraordinary evidence to convince me that everyone essentially just forgot that China exists. It's very obvious to me (and was at the time) that sanctions alone would not cause Russia to collapse and I am unwilling to accept that policy makers with access to much more information and intelligence than me could be so much dumber than me, when more plausible explanations exist.
Sanctions didn't even bring down Afghanistan, nobody seriously believed they'd bring down Russia, it's absurd on its face.