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If truth is the first casualty of war, then the collapse of political illusions must be the second. War and its outcomes are never certain. From Thucydides to Clausewitz, connoisseurs of the phenomenon have counselled against its recourse unless it is informed by clear and achievable goals. Violence clarifies. In the case of Vladimir Putin it has exposed the illusion of Eurasianism, the failings of Russian hard power, its loss of markets for its arms industry, and threatens the integrity of the Russian Federation, ultimately reducing it to a satrapy of Greater China.
In the case of Europe, war has clarified not only its relationship with post-Soviet Russia, but also the delusions informing its net-zero energy policy and its future economic security. Significantly, this is not the case with the US (or for that matter Canada and Australia) which despite their commitment to various international environmental protocols remain secure in their fossil fuel and uranium energy resources.
This essay appears in the latest Quadrant.
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As a result of three decades of punitive environmental governance, Europe faces a very difficult winter and an uncertain political and economic future. All European wars since the eighteenth century have been resource wars (whether over population, coal or iron and now oil and gas). This is a basic fact of modern European history that its elites and the history’s fools that advise them ignore at their and their electorates’ cost. The Ukraine war, and the misconceived sanctions regime, immediately exposed Western Europe’s dependency on Russian gas and oil. Consequently, despite recent Russian reverses on the battlefield, Europe remains ambivalent in its support for Ukraine, democracy and freedom.
The energy issue is a case study in how a political elite, infused with abstract norms and transnational idealism about the end of history, created the perfect conditions for the revenge of political realism. Whilst Europe eschewed the hard truths of geopolitics, geopolitics happened on its doorstep.
At first, of course, Western European diplomats continued to argue about whether Putin represented a threat to peace and stability at all, despite the repeated warnings of those closer to Russia’s border. As European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen confessed in her State of the Union speech in September: “We should have listened to those who know Putin … voices inside our Union—in Poland, in the Baltics, and across Central and Eastern Europe.”
European delusion has quickly assumed the form of an utterly avoidable energy crisis. For the EU it represents a regional political humiliation, whilst in the UK it is a very British one, a direct result of a generation of cross-party policy failure.
Together Western Europe’s political elites conspired to deliver a perfect storm. In Germany it reflects the influence of a red/green lobby that inspired the ostensibly conservative Merkel administration to close all its nuclear facilities, which provided 13 per cent of its energy, by 2022. Three nuclear power stations closed in 2021.
Germany is of course central to the European economy. Germany faces a staggering 65 per cent collapse in industrial output if Putin turns off the taps completely, potentially plunging the country into a deep recession. The Scholz government’s seizure of three Russian-owned oil refineries on German soil in late September, in order to secure their oil holdings, indicated the extent of political panic. Asset appropriation is usually the preserve of rogue states such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and indeed Russia, both before and since the fall of the Soviet Union. It is unusual in a Western democracy.
Elsewhere, in Italy, business and domestic users currently face huge hikes in energy prices, although its deluded former Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, declared that the movement away from gas represented only “small sacrifices for large rewards”. Not surprisingly, the economy, Ukraine and EU energy regulations played a decisive role in the Italian elections that gave the populist coalition led by Giorgia Meloni a comprehensive victory. Matteo Salvini’s League, which forms part of the new populist coalition, considers energy sanctions are contributing to “il suicidio Italiano”.
Meanwhile the UK, which left the EU in 2020, remains committed to the net-zero carbon agenda to the detriment of its energy security. Grave errors by past energy ministers range from: opposition to nuclear power in 2001; refusal to back new clean coal plants in 2009; supporting wood pellet plants over new gas in 2012; the end of carbon capture funding in 2015; the closure of the Rough gas storage site for reserves in 2017; the gas fracking ban in 2019.
At the same time, to meet EU rules, between 2000 and 2017 over a third of the UK’s baseload electricity generating capacity was closed without any comparable net replacement. Instead, ministers approved weather-dependent renewables and more interconnectors to import power from the Continent, thus offshoring British energy jobs, resilience and security. New nuclear is already twenty years late.
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson oversaw the running down of British energy security, diversity and resilience, representing the biggest national policy failure since the Second World War. In July the National Grid had to panic-buy staggeringly expensive Belgian electricity to avoid power cuts. As power demand surged during the heatwaves, the National Grid paid £9724 per megawatt hour, more than fifty times the typical price, to prevent blackouts in London.
Meanwhile, a compliant media and the Euro blob keep citing Russia and Ukraine as the reason for this very avoidable energy crunch. The real story is much more damning, delusional and home-grown. The writing was on the wall years ago as governments across Europe slavishly followed EU diktats and closed coal, nuclear and oil-fired power stations without clear policies to build cleaner equivalent replacements. Weather-dependent windmills and solar panels could never fill the gap. The EU’s various power station directives, first supported by the Blair government in 2001, forced the UK to start shutting key plants from 2012.
The crisis has, moreover, exposed Europe’s over-dependence on imported power. This has huge implications for energy security, resilience, future bills and climate change. Why has reliable home- grown generation across the EU, and particularly in the UK, been put at such a discount?
The EU, UK, French and German governments, their advisers, their media and academe all insist it’s a result of Covid disruption and the Ukraine war, and a mere bump on the road to net zero by the end of the decade. Actually, it’s the net zero agenda, the policy of carbon offsetting and what the US former bond trader Stephen Soukup describes in The Dictatorship of Woke Capital as the dictatorship of woke capitalism that have generated the current malaise.
The demonisation of the gas, oil and coal bridge to a non-carbon future has inflicted notable self-harm on the potential of UK and, by extension EU, energy self-reliance. The forced deployment of thermodynamically incompetent and environmentally damaging “renewables” has produced high consumer costs, great fragility of supply and the proliferation of junk assets via environmental governance criteria, undermining the energy foundations of the economy. Nor, ironically, has it contributed to ameliorating environmental problems in useful ways. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria were written into the 2017 UN Principles for Responsible Investing. Pension funds and investment trusts sign up to these woke principles with economic and geopolitical costs. Soukup reports that by the middle of 2017 the ESG movement had gone mainstream as some “1600 asset owners representing $62 trillion signed the UN PRI”.
Net zero explains why the UK failed to develop gas fracking or grant licences for further exploration of the North Sea, preferring green virtue-signalling by offsetting its carbon emissions and importing gas from the Middle East. Like celebrities offsetting flying private jets by planting trees in the Amazon, or being asked to offset your carbon footprint every time you step on a plane, this mechanism only facilitates a multi-billion-dollar financial services industry and increasingly questionable ESG investment vehicles. It is the twenty-first-century equivalent of the papal indulgences sold on a mass scale in the sixteenth century to offset the cost of building the Vatican. The economic consequence of that was the Reformation and a century of religious warfare, culminating in a seventeenth-century global crisis.
The energy crisis has exposed the dangerous and failed doctrine of draconian out-of-date targets and poor policy-making over a generation. A failed energy policy inflicts huge pain on households, industry and the wider economy. It diverts investment and stops job creation. Europe needs to learn and understand how and why political leaders have failed in this most critical area of policy in the national interest.
The tragedy is that it took an energy price shock of the scale currently sweeping Europe to rouse its political elite. Yet while von der Leyen’s recent mea culpa might have been expected to galvanise the EU, it has instead further exposed the divisions between EU states in the east, who generally advocate a tougher stance including further sanctions and more military and humanitarian aid, and those in the west, including Germany, who fixate on the political and economic fallout of a prolonged conflict.
David Martin Jones is a visiting professor in the War Studies Department, King’s College London. He is the author of History’s Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism and the Revenge of History (2020)
Perhaps the most salient lesson for the Europeans is – do not trust the Americans. This war in Ukraine has been a long time coming thanks to US aggression with the help of its European lackeys. Thank the Americans for pushing Russia to resort to war.
However, given the evidence that the US is now profiting bigtime from the European energy crisis, as it ‘fights to the last Ukranian’ in its proxy war designed to cripple Russia, one can only wonder if there were/are bigger plans afoot.
There are those who say the US sabotaged Nordstream and while the claim is unproven, in such circumstances it is wise to ask the question – who benefits?
The Europeans have indeed been foolish in putting all their energy eggs into one flimsy basket, but perhaps their foolishness is even greater than that. Who will they hate more? The Russians for resorting to war to defend their borders or the Americans for cooking it all up and making money out of everyone’s misery? Now, there is a question.
Good old rosross. Once again riding his/her ‘hate America’ high horse..
No expressions of hate beyond your invention. Simply statements of fact and reality. Dismissing them as you seek to do does not make the world a better place. Dealing with reality is always better than dealing with fantasy.
Well documented, giving a broader view of the facts, circumstances and motivations. As the USA’s reserve currency meet’s competition from others who no longer want their inflation money printing ‘clipping the wool’ of their productivity you will have those who defend war as a weapon to grab market share, Pirates/Shareholders/Lazy Free riders. Maybe Ukraine can be leased out to Bungles/Bingles/Biggles for 99 years and see how productive he/she/they are?
Not sure about that, Biggles. I pretty much agree with rosross on all issues and as an unashamed America lover, haven’t detected any anti US bias in his/her posts, except to point out the egregious Democrat regimes’ policies from Obama to Clinton and Biden – and yes Clinton gets a mention being up to her neck in corruption and influence, peddling the most disgraceful and manufactured lie ever foisted on a western country, out pique and spite, sacrificing civilisation because she didn’t win an election.
Nicely placed in the first paragraph is mention of the big winner from the energy and climate delusion of
the West: China
How fortunate for China that since Nixon the US has helped empower the dragon by transferring so much manufacturing and technical skills. Now we sell them the coal that we refuse to use for ourselves. So again we can say the winner is ——!
You’ve got it. China has been in control waaaaaay back.
Glen Beck introduced UN Agenda 21 to me while watching his show back in 2011. The control of everything, everywhere. The plan. The next year they had the Agenda 21 meeting in Rio and China was in charge of the meeting.
Glen never told us China was in control of Agenda 21, it took a year and then I had the Ah Haaa moment. Almost ten years ago and they have ran it ever since. If you want to qualify as “sustainable”, China must approve. Coal no good for UK but it’s great for China. US coal is shipped to China EVERY DAY !!!
It never was about Global warming, it’s about taking energy from the West and giving it to China, crashing the West and putting the UN in charge of everything with no borders with China in control. It worked, all countries are “IN” and to get Central Bank “money”, you must be in the sustainable loop which ultimately puts them in control because they control the loot.
And thennnnn… they drop Blovid and shit hits the fan and now they control everything everywhere even worser. Scripted takeover of the planet, just like a bad sci-fi flick or a Clancy Novel. but this is real and there’s no Hero to step up and save the day. Trump is a chump, he played his “part”, a Reality TV Superstar. The Fed and the Pentagon are “in”, creating , funding and DEFENDING the UN takeover, controlled by China. If you want to get control back, your Freedom, all you have to do is beat them – the Fed and the US Pentagon and all the militaries that are in the UN which is EVERYBODY.
No problem, all you need is to print the new World currency and build a new military stronger than all that now exists and build a new tech system to run it all on. A new Matrix, because they control this one. Sure, no problem.
Glen Beck Show on UN Agenda 21, way back in 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p0sfF7jE78&t=65s
FS – excellent post and yes it is all related, from climate hoax, to “blovid” {like that!) to identity politics and race hustling, all trojan horses designed to bring down the west.
>” … the National Grid paid £9724 per megawatt hour” [from the article above]
!!! That’s AUD$17,500 per megawatt hour. NOT gigawatt hour, but merely megawatt hour.
As a comparison, Aus consumes about 30GWh at peak. At that UK price, that is AUD$525 million per hour. Of course, the entire of the UK was not on that insane price all at once, nor would all of the Aus grid be. One can easily see, however, why our hopelessly incompetent, sly and stubborn self-described “elites” refuse to quote supply and demand in GWh, but rather as “powers 10,000 houses” or something equally vapid. The very clever MSM don’t really know the difference.
A very clear and precise picture article, thank you David.
ianl. It may be news to you but the AEMO here has put a cap on electricity prices paid to generators. It is currently $14500 per MWh not significantly less than the British quote. It has been reached several times in the past few years usually in South Australia when the wind don’t blow or blows too hard and the sun has gone bye byes. Expect to see it reached regularly as Blackout Bowen and his idiot mate Matt Kean pursue their green agenda at our expense. We are borderline now but in April we lose 1350 reliable 24/7 MW from Liddell with no replacement source. Andrews is doing his best to eliminate electricity from Victoristan and Queensland has stopped construction of new coal fired generation. At the same time BB wants to move households from gas to electricity (at this point Duracell D cells) and Matt the Green Kean is installing 50000 EV charging points. One thing we do know about the elites; they are all quite mad and they all failed Maths.
Lisa Zembrodt, principal and senior director of Schneider Electric’s sustainability business across the Pacific region, has an article (paywalled) in The Australian 26/12, which starts:
“While Australian households will see the benefits of the federal government’s decision to cap energy prices in their winter power bills, most businesses will be waiting until 2024 before receiving price relief”. and ends:
“The best defence against the rising prices of fossil fuels is to reduce our dependence on them”.
.
They are not allowing comments, not that they would publish one from me anyway. Maybe they initially allowed comments but did not receive any that supported her.
Lb, perused the Weekend Oz with further dismay, the leftward trend continues apace. One wonders if all the celebrity critics of the Murdoch publications ever read them. I think they would be shocked and pleasantly surprised, but then would be denied the warm glow of self-righteousness in having a designated villian! The Adelaide Advertiser is already the propaganda arm of the lgbtq community, letters to editor skew leftward daily.
I subscribe to The Advertiser so my aged-care mother gets a hard copy, but prefer to read the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, on-line access included in The Advertiser price.
If the eighteenth century was the age of enlightenment then the twenty first century must surely be the age of stupidity. When you consider that the average global temperature has not increased since 2000 you have to wonder how we could be so stupid.
Yes, it has long seemed to me to be an age of stupidity.
What triggered a certain somebody’s American animus ,is the delusion of Russian sincere innocence a naivety ,both of which are hallmarks of the great Russian lamb, who abhors the idea of killing people especially Journalists.
And why on Gods good earth does Russia even have to defend it’s borders, people do not want to immigrate there- ‘oh’ silly me, immigration to Russia occurs under the umbrella of forced repatriation .
Rosross is just fishing for material to quietly appear to be oh so original.
What triggered a statement of reality is that facts matter. There is nothing I have said which has not been said by a noted American political analyst, John Mearsheimer, who warned more than a decade ago that American policies toward Russia, in league with Nato, would end badly. As did George Kennan.
These are not my facts but those of American experts from the past decades whose warnings were ignored. And yes, in recent times there are those who counter the views of Kennan and Mearsheimer, as one would expect. But their views go back many decades and their warnings have been shown to be correct.
Why does Russia have to defend its borders from US/Nato creep? We may equally ask, why did the Americans get hysterical when Russia wanted to set up a military base in Cuba, far, far from American borders? The US/Nato aggression is literally on Russian borders so if the Americans can defend themselves when perceived threats are a long way from their literal borders, why are you denying the Russian right to do the same thing.
It has nothing to do with immigration but spheres of interest – Monroe Doctrine as morphed into the modern world. Why has the US/Nato not gone to war in Ukraine but instead opted for a proxy war? Because Ukraine is irrelevant to the Americans in terms of its defence. The proxy war created by the Americans in Ukraine is designed to weaken if not cripple Russia although it appears to be failing miserably on that count.
So, while Russia accepted the gradual creep of countries on its border being drawn into Nato, it has said for decades Ukraine would never be tolerated. When the CIA coup in 2014 threw out the pro-Russian democratically elected President it must have been clear to Russia that there was no choice but to disable Ukraine and to protect the ethnic Russians in Ukraine who have been attacked by the Ukrainian Government for a decade.
Quote: The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-u-s-decision-to-enlarge-nato-how-when-why-and-what-next/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf
Nowhere have I ever painted Russia as some perfect innocent. I have merely made the sourced claims that Russia defending its borders is not surprising and that experts have warned it would do exactly what it has done if the US kept pushing Nato to swallow up countries on Russia’s borders.
They walked into someone else’s country without knocking on the door.
Nowhere have I ever painted Russia as some perfect innocent. I have merely made the sourced claims that Russia defending its borders is not surprising and that experts have warned it would do exactly what it has done if the US kept pushing Nato to swallow up countries on Russia’s borders.
Then they started murdering that other countries citizenry.
I have pretty much refrained from commenting since I lived and worked there, am descended from people of that ilk from way back, and have been married to a Russian for a very long time so perhaps I am biased. Your “take” on the situation coincides with mine tho strangely enough my wife disagrees since she and her friends don’t like President Putin all that much. The whole fiasco seems to be a continuation of the white hats Vs the black hats that has been going on since the end of WW2 for if say a Tu-95 (codename Bear) transits international airspace somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere the media screams “fighters scrambled to intercept a Russian spy plane” and say absolutely nothing when NATO aircraft and surface vessels transit international airspace or waters. Cast your mind back to Francis Gary Powers and the U-2. I have no doubt that the Russian intelligence services are as assiduous as the western ones are so one might be forgiven for opining the white hats/black hats situation. Going back to the orange revolution in The Ukraine brings to mind the turmoil of the time where Yushchenko was fed dioxin in a meal, the dioxin placed in it by the SBU, the Ukrainian version of the KGB or FSB, then of course Poroshenko who opened the batting in 2014 by shelling the Donbas area and its civilian population. America has had a hand in there one way or the other, probably not State sanctioned as in the “Hunter Biden” directorship although rumour has it that the bioweapons labs were/are sanctioned by the American State. Then of course we have the possible incursion of NATO to hem Russia in as it were completely forgetting the hue and cry when Khrushchev did the Cuban missiles “go” probably to con the USA into removing nuclear weapons from Turkey. The bottom line, and a very ugly one at that, is that The Ukraine has become or will become a vassal state of the USA and is being used as a pawn in a conflict between the USA and Russia, the western armaments manufacturing people simply rejoicing for the loot rolling in and not caring about the cannon fodder on both sides. The Russian psyche is far different from ours in the west for if, as Putin said, don’t poke the Russian Bear, he meant it, and woe betide the west if that bear is unleashed. Wonderful America has been there to stand up for western democracy and in the main it probably has done that along with interfering with geopolitics. The irony is that they accuse Russia of doing the same and that same good old US of A who bled the UK dry repaying it’s lend lease monies from WW2 until almost the end of 2006 will do exactly that to The Ukraine. Note that the national deficit in the USA is some 31 trillion and that of Russia until recently was exactly zero.
Quote: Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions.
By Ted Galen Carpenter
NATO Expansion — The Trigger for Russia’s Attack on Ukraine? – Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between NATO and Moscow even more dangerous. The West’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, tone‐deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a U.S. foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.
Thinking Through the Ukraine Crisis — the Causes
“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand NATO eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (p. 45). I wrote those words in 1994, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York City and Washington, D.C. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia.”
Source: CATO Institute.
All great and informative.
The old adage you never raise a hand against a lady.
Has NATO ever been in a war?
Putin wants Ukraine back that’s why he is sending his own people there to be slaughtered.
The Ukrainians do not want Russian military in their country, it’s that simple.
It would help if you actually did some research. Has Nato ever been in a war? Yes, as a lackey of the US it has often participated in wars.
Military analysts, including American, have consistently said the Russians have not acted to take Ukraine (back) but to protect the regions closest to Russia and the ethnically Russian citizens from slaughter by the Ukrainian military. That has been going on for nearly a decade. Under UN resolutions such intervention is valid. And it is what the Russians have said.
Russia does not need all of Ukraine, it just needs it to remember that the powerful neighbour with whom it needs to work is Russia not the US. If Canada tried the same idiocy the Ukrainians have tried, the Americans would teach Canadians the same lesson. Power politics as reality.
Many Ukrainians do want the Russians in their country to protect them. Many do not. Probably all Russians wish they were not led by the warmongering fool, Zelensky and were not being slaughtered int he name of US hegemony.
What is simple is that the US set up this war to cripple Russia and the irony is they are more likely to cripple themselves. Poetic justice.
“ Many Ukrainians do want the Russians in their country”
Still a small minority – about 15%. The hatred by the other 85% in Ukraine for Moscow dates back to Holodomor. That hatred has been magnified immeasurably due to Putin’s invasion which is based upon paranoia and greed.
Ukraine’s borders were decided in 1991. These people had 30 years to I’ve to Russia if they were not happy rather than commit treason backed by a nuclear armed bully from the Cold War. Oh and let’s not forget MH-17 shot down in 2014. Putin’s separatists tampered with victims remains and prevented access by international teams to the crash site to cover evidence. Nice and a small peak into the evil. As for Europe they only back America when they need to. Putin himself didn’t expect Europe to unite against him. But they did because they know who is the bigger threat and it isn’t America.
Which wars has Nato fought.
Major NATO Military Interventions. …
Anchor Guard, Kuwait-Iraq. …
Ace Guard, Kuwait-Iraq. …
Operation Joint Guard, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. …
Operation Allied Force, Kosovo-Montenegro- Serbia. …
So what, which of those had 6,000 nuclear warheads? NATO threatening Russia was never credible. An excuse to recreate the Russian motherland (Putin’s words).
Yes agreed, Putins imperial ambition for Ukraine which is also the philosophical wish and ambition of Aleksandr Dugin the Russian political philosophical strategist and analyst.
In regard to Russians in Ukraine and Crimea it was Stalin who populated these areas with native Russians- this provided – provides that other dirty rotten scoundrel Putin with the Excuse to intervene (invade)- so the ambition of socialism is a long term outlook that requires eternal vigilance.
In regard to motherlands, re ambition, it was Stalin and Hitler who started the Second World War and it was the free world with the American’s help that tried to end and eventually bought/brought a halt and drew a line for socialist and a la communist ambitions at that particular Cartesian point in relative time.
The bottom line is that socialism is always implemented by coercion and deceit, and in Communism the death of freedom endues, however once people realise and wake up to the true horrific realities ( the fact they have been conned with oleaginous intent) they turn their back on it.
Socialism and Communism work well in theory with other peoples money, that is why the idiot boffins in academia are drawn to it, in its abstract form and sense.
However the socialist / Communist solutions are toxic – always have been, R, and will always remain so – and by the way Rosross only fools make the same mistake.
This is why these socialist creeps always enlist (spoil) and prey on the young and the marginalised to get what they want.
Proper care of individuals belongs in the non toxic environment of the family where one and all are accountable to each other.
Politics, especially Socialism, because it always leads to Communism and is all about the pursuit of power lust.
Politics has no place in either the Church or the Family, these sanctuaries should always be a foil to the fallen states in human nature.
Rosross America may not be perfect, however she has saved the the Worlds bacon on more than one occasion therefore she has earned the right and freedom to have her say and some influence.
Some people and countries Rosross are simply ungrateful when it comes to American help and kindhearted essence.
Socialism is deceitful poop, the hard fought efforts of Hitler and Stalin are the best non living proof of that, and all people of good nature should as djhadley said “ never yield a millimetre to the left”.
I will fight you every inch of the way to your Utopian hell rosross .
Some times coarse concepts are required to stake the claim, I do apologise.
Following on…….. unethical Utopia.
To be more succinct, Socialism and Communism are verbal poop that emanate from brains that lack the common elements of decency, truth and integrity ( that lack heart).
Therefore anything of that nature is excess(greed) or in excess and not a requirement of the bodies true requirements.
You might say then, that the devil said “upon this rock I will build my Church of deception” that rock you may say is the duplicitous compact between Hitler and Stalin ‘vis a vie, WW2.
Therefore the question is in whom am I to trust and follow?
I am sure of only one certainty in life, that the truth is the only one who really and truly a whole heartedly cares for us and our ‘well’ being.
John4:1-42.
You said: Yes agreed, Putins imperial ambition for Ukraine which is also the philosophical wish and ambition of Aleksandr Dugin the Russian political philosophical strategist and analyst.
Not according to anythng he has said, nor according to military actions. Prove this claim.
You said: In regard to Russians in Ukraine and Crimea it was Stalin who populated these areas with native Russians- this provided – provides that other dirty rotten scoundrel Putin with the Excuse to intervene (invade)- so the ambition of socialism is a long term outlook that requires eternal vigilance.
Ukraine and Russia were colonised by the same peoples, Scandinavians and later invaded and populated by others. Ukraine means Borderlands. Ukraine was always the borderlands of Russia which is why it was originally called The Ukraine. For most of its existence it was not independent but a part of Russia.
Russians and Ukrainians had been moving back and forth long before Stalin.
You said: In regard to motherlands, re ambition, it was Stalin and Hitler who started the Second World War and it was the free world with the American’s help that tried to end and eventually bought/brought a halt and drew a line for socialist and a la communist ambitions at that particular Cartesian point in relative time.
I knew your grasp of history was slight but this is ridiculous. The Germans invaded Russia and much of the heavy lifting to win the war was done by Russia. The Americans came in very late and then tried to gobble all the glory as they had done before. Having been disastrously invaded by France and Germany, the paranoia of the Russians can be explained in ways American paranoia cannot.
You said: The bottom line is that socialism is always implemented by coercion and deceit, and in Communism the death of freedom endues, however once people realise and wake up to the true horrific realities ( the fact they have been conned with oleaginous intent) they turn their back on it.
Not sure why you are going on about Socialism and Communism. Russia has not been socialist or Communist for many decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. You really do need to read some history.
You agree: Socialism and Communism work well in theory with other peoples money, that is why the idiot boffins in academia are drawn to it, in its abstract form and sense.
So does Capitalism for that matter. Communism was a good idea, which was a disaster in practice. Socialism as communism does not work either. However, Social Welfare which is what all developed nations except the Americans have works very well.
You said: However the socialist / Communist solutions are toxic – always have been, R, and will always remain so – and by the way Rosross only fools make the same mistake.
Since there is no issue of socialism/communism I would venture to suggest your obsession is irrelevant.
You said: Proper care of individuals belongs in the non toxic environment of the family where one and all are accountable to each other.
And when family cannot, will not or does not provide then social welfare is needed as the brilliant Victorians realised.
Politics, especially Socialism, because it always leads to Communism and is all about the pursuit of power lust.
You said:Rosross America may not be perfect, however she has saved the the Worlds bacon on more than one occasion therefore she has earned the right and freedom to have her say and some influence.
The US has not saved the world’s bacon more than once although I know it makes that exceptionalist claim. It has participated in wars which others also fought, and generally long before the Americans decided to rock up. The US has waged war, destruction, misery for most of its existence and wrought havoc with its coups, assassinations and warmongering. No nation has a right to such influence.
You said: I will fight you every inch of the way to your Utopian hell rosross .
I have no idea what this ridiculous statement means. I do not believe in a Utopian world and never did. I believe that unless regulations are in place humans will descend to the most base level. That is why the US is such a mess, because it has unregulated capitalism and greed runs Government. This ensures Americans have the poorest quality of life on average in the developed world and also ensures the industrial military complex and corporations are the real Government in the US.
Please post a link to Putin saying he wanted to recreate the Russian motherland. From what I have seen this is just American/Nato propaganda spin and I have watched a few of Putin’s speeches. But please, post a link to him saying it.
December 30 2022
His 2014 essay.
And by the way none of the former Soviet states such as Poland want the Russian garbage and they will fight them to the last man and bullet- like the fins did.
By my reckoning Russia will have to take back all of its former territories in order to provide a buffer zone from NATO,and that in turn means they will have to take even more territories in order minimise NATO- the Russian intent is expansion.
STD.
December 27/12/2022
Yes and what was NATO doing there?
Was it inciting multicultural violence?
Was it a primary case of invade and occupy?
Was there any efficacy in NATO’s prescription?
What were the numbers involved and in what capacity?
Was NATO action a response?
I await your research Peter Pan.
You asked which wars Nato has fought. I told you.
The Russians believe they are protecting and saving ethnic Russians in Ukraine who have been bombed by the Ukrainian Government for nearly a decade.
The British believed they were protecting the French and others from German aggression. And your point would be?
This article omits some significant details. The EU has had a plan for critical minerals for some years, including a special deal with Ukraine.
Then on 27 Feb 2022 Germany and the EU blackmaled Zelensky to sign away his country’s future to EU rule in exchange for the weapons Germany had until then refused to supply plus financial aid.
Control of Ukraine’s vast deposits of lithium and rare earths are essenial for the EU’s Green Energy and Energy Independence. Even if the country is razed to the ground in this war, these deposits will remain intact, to be extracted and processed by mostly German industry at great profit and funded by international reconstruction aid.
Scholze is already boasting Germany having the largest and most powerful armed forces in Europe. Vpon der Leyen is already boasting about ‘Europe’ ie the EU, having its own resources for independent Green Energy.
Never underestimate the EU. It is ruthless, determined and amoral, if not immoral. Make no mistake, Germany in particular is very clear about its aims in this war. In addition to resources for Green energy (and agriculture), it will become dominant in the EU not only economically but also militarily and therefore politically. unlike on previous occasions it now has the cover of the EU.