Unless you frame it as “We’re taking Russian money and using it to defeat the Russians in Ukraine.” Of course it would help if the numbers more clearly aligned.
YES, not a good look, but underlining the crucial argument for decisively beating Putin.
Putin decisively (dismissing the legitimate existence of Ukraine and invading with announced intention of ending the existence of both the government and culture of independent Ukraine) broke away from the hoped for expansion and extension of the post WWII order of mostly peace and world wide trade.
The Europeans, especially Germans, strongly committed, relied on, and invested in a USAian led world safe (enough) from imperially expansionist and disruptive wars. This was the key to allow sane safe world trade optimizing and economically expansive investment across borders, including buying energy resources from the cheapest producers.
That promising “vision” was perhaps too optimistic, and Merkel in particular was imprudent in making Germany dangerously dependent on Russian “good behavior” with its slim track record. However, simply accepting Putin’s armed expansion is unacceptable to Germany (and Poland and others).
Putin having success in Ukraine means far more than a shift of zones of influence in Eurasia, it means giving up on a world without imperial power plays for at least another generation, and the world cannot afford to waste so much time.
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I believe the $24 billion for Russia oil was the figure for 2024 and the aid figure is cumulative since the invasion.
DB2
Problem for Canada, seems they have no gas pipelines that make it to the coast. iirc, some years ago, an attempt was made to build a pipeline to the east coast, but a group in Quebec blocked construction.
The US has pipelines to the coast, so is better positioned to export gas.
Canada’s oil pipeline network is also designed to export to the US, not to it’s coasts, for export.
Steve
You are right. Here is a better article.
If Trump can be understood to be referring to European financial allocations as a whole, his claim can be considered misleading.
No matter how you slice it I think we all can agree that Europe should find every way to discontinue the use of Russian energy.
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Yes, and the Canadians are rapidly coming to regret that they had so trusted their neighbor. They are shifting from the sane and optimal basic stance of “Trust, but verify” to the (necessary when dealing with treacherous parties but far far less flexible and investment expensive) “NEVER AGAIN” because cannot be trusted, to the detriment of both parties.
Macroeconomically, through mechanisms such as this, Trump’s habitual style of negotiation and business (routinely screwing contractors and partners and customers) is extremely destructive of optimal futures.
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Do you see that line going to Victoria? That is what they built after the Keystone pipeline was stalled. I am thinking the pipeline to the east will be built now, especially after this administration.
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Yes, I saw that. Trump already has the Japanese committed to buying Alaskan gas. One of the foreign investments he boasted of last night was the new gas operation to be built in Alaska of which, the Japanese are a JV partner.
iirc, TIG included South Korea in that boast. That is probably aspirational at this point, as I don’t recall a Korean head of state coming to DC. Korea is in the middle of a government crisis, so not really ready to participate in an “arty” deal. Their President tried to stay in office by declaring martial law. The legislature impeached him. He stayed holed up in his home, personal guards blocking the police sent to arrest him. He finally surrended.
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I didn’t know that Steve. Very interesting. I would give you a like but I am unable to like anything for two hours. Maybe I will just start posting my likes LOL
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Yeah, Japan and South Korea investing “trillions of dollars each”. Sounds like blustery BS.
Whadya know, it is blustery BS!
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Key quotes from the link below, written by one of USA’s most notably conservative writers. After accurately summarizing the mix of idiotically partisan gullibility of many “liberal” churchmen and political leftists regarding Stalin before the signing of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, he goes on to say
…here we are again—with another defense of a bloodthirsty, empire-seeking Russia, led by murderers and oligarchs in their illegal invasion of a neighboring country, kidnapping children and killing Ukrainians, with a Russian Orthodox Church cheering it on as a “holy war” of Russian Christendom against the decadent Western world.
Previously pro-Ukrainian voices now have to find a way to shift with the ideology, convincing others that something has changed beyond the price of tribal admission. Zelensky, they might say, was rude for wearing battle fatigues instead of a suit to the Oval Office (while not objecting to Elon Musk wearing a T-shirt and ball cap in the same place).
The Author of the linked article, Russell Moore, is a brilliant reliably honest and moral Bible Scholar, a refugee from the ever more politically compromised and decadent Southern Baptist Church, where he had long been a leading light. As a (thorougjly non-conformist) Christian myself, I still have lots of disagreements with Moore, but my respect for his honesty and brilliance has kept me reading him for over a decade. Never more than now. Take a look at the whole brilliant analysis of the so-called “Conservative Christian” component of the current GOP ascendancy.
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What is “SMiC”?
JimA
TIG is using tariffs to bludgeon our allies and trading partners into submission. The market price of gas may be a secondary concern.
Steve
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Here is some dismal but 100% no surprise news:
Some of Britain’s most cautious, conservative, and long time USA supporters are now (relatively speaking) screaming about the dangers to the Atlantic alliance that has been crucial to world affairs since Roosevelt Churchill. You know how upset they are when they talk about the new found importance of the almost forgotten British nuclear weapons and capabilities.
Guess what, our allies in the world are NOT reacting to our treachery like Charlie Brown with Lucy’s football viciousness. Costs are rising rapidly and soon will be irreversible. Criminal idiocy on are part.
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Europe has provided more money to Ukraine than America.
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The opposition to the nat gas pipeline was from the greens, so there should be some regret there as well. The Greens also opposed the oil pipeline to the west coast but lost the fight.
Looking to diversify its exports, Quebec willing to rethink natural gas pipeline project
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-rethin-lng-saguenay-1.7451297
The Legault government had initially supported the project. It had hoped the project would diversify the economy in the Saguenay area, north of Quebec City, a region largely dependent on the aluminum and forestry industries.
But it had axed it after concluding that the project’s environmental risks outweighed the gains and that Quebecers didn’t want a pipeline.
DB2
Yes, on both a real money and a percapita basis. (I forget which year this is; I screen shotted it but clipped the attribution.)
But getting people who only get their news from right wing sources to believe it is quite difficult, as they’re happy to live in their cocooned little dream world and not face reality.
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The Indian Tribes in Montana would not let the pipeline across their lands because of the oil pipes on their land that have broken, multiple times. So there are good reason’s people do not want the pipelines. Especially when they were going to pump oil sands through those pipes. Some of the dirtiest oil of all.
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Pipelines absolutely make sense, but the industry too often proved totally unwilling to construct them in a form that is sufficiently reliable to be — duh — relied upon.
The pattern of minimal or impoverished infrastructure is typical of cultures high in graft, corruption, and underinvestment in education and health……
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Fantasy land. No need to come to the US with hat in hand.
The citizens of European countries will be thrilled with more wars and more illegal immigration and faltering economy as China kills them slowly.
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