Quote (babun1024 @ 21 Jan 2023 18:24)
Which makes me wonder why all of the media and outside sources are attacking Scholz/Germany.. Us, French and the Italians are the parties who are burdened with the most economical consequences.
I get why Scholz/Germany don't want to send Leopard tanks of their own. But they could at least get out of the way for Leo shipments from Poland/Finland etc.
Quote (DizzyBusiness @ 21 Jan 2023 18:36)
The US has no interest in giving Ukraine long range strike capability, they don't trust Ukraine not to hit Russia
Rightfully so, lol. Does anyone, the pro-Ukraine posters included, have any trust in them not striking Russia if they had the tools?
Quote (Prox1m1ty @ 21 Jan 2023 18:44)
But also an economic argument around allowing Russia to control the resources of eastern Ukraine, and what that could mean for Europe economically.
I don't think Eastern Ukraine is thaaaat resource rich to begin with. Yes, they have coal, so what? We're phasing out our own coal before it even runs out... They might have iron ore, so do other places in Europe. They might sit on oil and natural gas, but so did Russia. There is this argument that Russia started this war because they were afraid a Western-aligned Ukraine could take away their market share on the European oil and gas market... well, guess what, their actions have brought their market share to zero, plus they now sit on more gas and oil than they can ship (to China, India etc.) anyway. Grain can't be the reason either, the Donbass has almost no agriculture and the most fertile soils in Ukraine lie more toward the West of the country. The industry of the Donbass itself also isn't worth a lot, it's 1960s and 70s technology and badly outdated.
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I'm interested what you think Russian reaction/retaliation would be towards Germany for supplying heavier weapons, eg Leopards to Ukraine?
We're not getting any energy supplies from Russia anymore, imports/exports in other fields have plummeted by over 80% as well. So in the economic and political sphere, I don't see how Russia could feasibly retaliate. Also, how do you think they would retaliate against the UK for sending Challenger battle tanks? The way I see it, Russia has run out of escalation options below military action against NATO countries, which they definitely want to avoid since NATO would curbstomp them if it ever came to that.
Maybe they could try to attack or sabotage the underground gas pipelines from Norway to Denmark/Germany, but they would have to move deep into NATO territory to carry that out...
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It appears the most limiting factor of the US is the divided nature of US politics/society; In comparison with authoritarian systems, Western democracy is slow, reactive and less agile.
The main advantage of a pluralistic democracy is that mistakes can be corrected rather quickly. Just look at the way China was stuck with an increasingly damaging and unsustainable zero covid policy for 2.5 years because the system wanted to avoid their dear leader losing his face.
I would put it as follows: authoritarian systems have an advantage at carrying out fundamental political decisions quickly and decisively, but democracies have an advantage in finding the best policies or correcting a course which has come to a deadlock.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 21 2023 11:50pm